Sorry, folks, I just have not been able to sustain a good connection to post.
If this one note even posts, I will be thrilled (OK, not thrilled, but.. well...).
I've got about 20 things to post and I apologize for not getting into comments. Hopefully, by tomorrow (as in Sunday) afternoon, I can get them up.
The Cliffs Notes version of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's remarks on Iraq today:
Oh, sure it is. I'm positive our antiterrorism bucks are well spent. I'm sure this is at least as true as that President Bush is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize and that I'd make an excellent country-western singer ("Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of li---iii---ife!").
As I posted the other day, Diana Irey, a candidate for Pennsylvania U.S. House of Reps, has been besieging me with emails telling me to vote for her and why I should hate Jack Murtha, a 36-year veteran of the armed forces, who has been quite outspoken about the mess we've made in Iraq.
Yet, as two of Irey's potential constituents have noted to me, Diana isn't just Irey-rate.. er.. irate about Murtha's outspokenness. No, not at all. She wants America to stay in Iraq so she can get some of the high-paid reconstruction money there.
Read the comments here for more on what Cliff Hancuff, CK, and Peter have to say about Irey and Company.Irey's husband stands to make a fortune off reconstruction work in Iraq through one of the many sweetheart deals the Bush-Cheney folks have awarded to corporations who bill for work they often don't start, let alone complete.
Read this at Booman Tribune about Diana Irey's greedy involvement in Iraq and here at home.
A vote for Diana Irey is a vote for the same corrupt, rich-person-only-American dream as well as a vote to make the citizens of Iraq to continue to suffer unnecessarily so the Ireys of this world can make billions off their misery.
If you believe in America, if you count yourself a Christian and/or a patriot, you cannot in good conscience vote for Diana Irey who wants to live luxuriously off the blood and money of others.
Well, this is one state's corrections department that is mightily pissed: just hours before his scheduled execution, this prison inmate committed suicide (successfully).
All search engines are reporting a very hot interest in the not-too-frequently heard about GOP Senator Larry Craig of Idaho and what connection he has, if any, to the Mark Foley scandal and Craig's question of sexual orientation. Also, as to whether or not Larry Craig has been "outted" as a homosexual. There is also this and this.
The savvy Glenn Greenwald has weighed in on some of it here.
Or, as Keith Olbermann just referred to it, "Remember when Mark Foley was at the center of the Mark Foley scandal?"
OK, I think we're almost back working. But I'm not sure.
According to Sally Quinn at WaPo, Rummy has been (has-been indeed!) but perhaps not for very much longer.
Might be. I mean, here we have a teen killing his twin over chewing gum.
John Nichols at The Beat blog over at The Nation talks about communities who are considering impeachment of the Bush Administration and Dubya specifically this fall (as in, next month).
Sound familiar? Very. From the Air Force Times:
Bush says he may ignore new war-funding law
Congress said it wants next year’s defense budget to include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but President Bush has indicated he may ignore that request.
In a “signing statement” released when he signed the 2007 Defense Authorization Act on Oct. 17, the president listed two dozen provisions in the act that he indicated he may or may not abide by.
Among the provisions is Section 1008 of the Authorization Act, which requires the president to submit defense budgets for 2008 and beyond that include funding for the wars and contain “a detailed justification of the funds requested.”
The Bush administration has frequently ignored requirements that it does not like by proclaiming exclusions from the law in signing statements, which are written statements about how the president plans to interpret the law. Since he became president, Bush has issued statements carving out exceptions to more than 750 laws — a rate far higher than any previous president.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he “would not be surprised” if Bush ignores the budgeting requirements spelled out in Section 1008.
“I’m very dubious he will abide by it. He has ignored it before,” the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said during an Oct. 18 press conference.
I think not. Not when the number of reported dead/war death toll about Coalition forces in Iraq has now reached 3,000 (and remember, they cook these numbers frequently so the real figure was likely reached a long time before this.
Interesting post here on the Mark Foley matter, the GOP's packaging of "homosexual lifestyle" message, and Senator Larry Craig, a Republican:
Since the Mark Foley scandal broke earlier this month, increasing attention has been paid to the hypocrisy of Republican leaders. Every election year, these party leaders make what many of us see as anti-gay appeals to religious conservative voters who object to what they disparagingly call the "homosexual lifestyle." What these party leaders don't tell these voters is how many of them actually lead secret lives which include sexual encounters with members of the same sex. Recent stories in USA Today, National Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have discussed this GOP messaging problem. As readers know, my work is bipartisan. The recent use of gays by the Republican Party during this election makes it necessary to focus on the Party and how it facilitates keeping gay men closeted.
My tactics at blogACTIVE have taken a new path from those of the past. Reporting on hypocrisy within the gay community has been going on for years.
My goal with this site and my companion site, Proud Of Who We Are, is to take that message further. To educate not just gays and lesbians about these homophobes, but to educate the greater electorate at large. Because of this, I find myself in the odd position of being one of the few people who seems to be willing to tell religious conservatives, who don't approve of people like me, just how many conservative political leaders are like me.
I have been calling on gay Republican representatives, senators, and high-level staffers to stand up and be proud of who they are, to level with voters about the truth, and to let people decide on their politicians based on truth, honesty and openness.
As this message is posted, I have apppeared on the Ed Schultz Show, a nationally syndicated radio program broadcast in more than 100 cities and on Sirius Satellite. On the show I have called on Senator Larry Craig to end his years of hypocrisy by leveling with Idahoans about who he really is. I am also calling upon several prominent Idaho social conservative leaders to ask them how they square their anti-gay positions with their support for this leader.
I have done extensive research into this case, including trips to the Pacific Northwest to meet with men who have say they have physical relations with the Senator. I have also met with a man here in Washington, D.C., who says the same -- and that these incidents occurred in the bathrooms of Union Station. None of these men know each other, or knew that I was talking to others. They all reported similar personal characteristics about the Senator, which lead me to believe, beyond any doubt, that their stories are valid.
Former Florida Congressman Mark Foley, a Republican, literally could not wait to provide excuses - a number of different ones - for the behavior he exhibited toward teenage male Congressional pages. According to Foley, alcohol made him do it. Democrats made him do it. Some allege that Bill Clinton made him do it. Sexy pages made him do it and now inappropriate sexual conduct by a priest as a child made him do it.
Foley, like most of the rest of the GOP on Capitol Hill, simply refuses to accept responsibility for what was done. If he was indeed inappropriately touched as a child by a priest - as this priest now says happened in one form or another - this is wrong. But being abused is a lot different from then turning around more than five decades later and committing this act against others.
I made a point of not watching Larry King Live tonight where the self-proclaimed brain trust of John Michael Karr, the teacher of children who pretended for about seven seconds that he had killed JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty queen.
What I heard about it after the fact, however, was rather interesting. The new "talk show" shrink, Keith Ablow, did the interview and Karr was taped by a hidden camera doing and saying some pretty odd things when he thought all the cameras and audio were stopped. Whatever else is going on with this "teacher", he's got enough control over himself to present himself one way to the "recording cameras" and quite another when he thinks he is not being recorded. Both sides, however, are amazingly manipulative.
We know now - long before this Karr sit-down - that he was not the killer. Hell, there is no evidence he was anywhere near Boulder where the murder took place.
Seriously though, I think it's time the media and the people who watch/listen to them need to cut this man out of the attention loop.
Who says useless, tyrannical, bullying, and extremist bureaucracy can't be funny?
Well, actually, I suspect the actor (hmm.. he's more of a start than an actor, I think, since the later requires talent while the former involves only a camera, a publicist, and a size Triple-X ego), Wesley Snipes, is not too found of this bureaucracy.
Technically speaking, according to the feds from the U.S. Treasury Department, Snipes is wanted (but only extremely dangerous if his ego sits on you) on a number of possibly felonious charges, including skipping out on more than $12 million in taxes along with a failure to file a tax return for six or more years.
However, I'm pretty damned sure that corporations like Enron and Halliburton have skipped out on far more than $12 milion even in a given year and IRS agents weren't threatening the likes of Fastow and Ken Lay.
Like rats from a sinking ship, are Republicans deserting the Bush-Rove GOP political machine? That's the question answered in this piece at Salon (subscription site, you can opt to choose to look at an ad to give you entry without registration or fee). Snippet below.
I can tell you that in recent days, I've visited a number of campaign sites (in excess of 30 or so) for Republican candiates only to notice that about 80-85% of these GOPers are NOT stating they are the Republican candidate. Diane Irey, candidate for U.S. Congress of Pennsylvania, running on a platform of "eliminate the unpatriotic Jack Murtha - Irey did not happen to donate 34-36 of her life to the U.S. military, I notice) is one example. I think this "failure to disclose" is pretty damned interesting and telling.
From that Salon piece:
When a NASCAR race is on, the patrons at VFW Post 392 don't hesitate to flip from the American League baseball playoffs to watch. This is a watering hole for military men and the women who keep them honest, a place where people keep name tags on their own liquor bottles behind the bar and still talk about their dislike for Bill Clinton. A full copy of the U.S. Constitution hangs on one wall, across from a bumper sticker that reads "I Love Jet Noise." In the men's bathroom, there is a "Hanoi Jane Urinal Target" in each of the commodes, along with a bull's-eye picture of Jane Fonda in all her 1960s antiwar glory.
But you might be surprised by the political views of the folks inside. Hugh McCabe, a retired Navy lieutenant commander who is sipping a glass of white wine with his niece, son and daughter-in-law on a Sunday night, has had just about all he can take from Washington.
"Anybody who is an incumbent, vote 'em out. That's my feeling," says McCabe, who wears a red plastic bracelet at the members-only bar here at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post to show his support for the troops. "We need a third party in government called common sense."
According to CNN, a court has decided that since Ken Lay, former head of Enron and convicted in May for crimes that could have led to decades in jail, died in July, his convictions will be wiped away as if he was never charged or convicted. Also, the U.S. Department of Justice now can't collect the many, many millions of dollars to help repay Enron investors.
Doug Marquardt at All Things Democrat tenders some suggestions on how to prevent voter fraud on election day. Go check it out.
The rhetoric since North Korea's apparent test of nuclear weapons last week is bad and getting worse. North Korea called the U.S.-pushed U.N. sanctions "a declaration of war" and today have said they are willing to deliver "merciless blows" (according to CNN).
However, we don't have to look any further than the Bush Administration for culpability. Both Bush and U.N. bully ...er, Ambassador John Bolton were both very quick to refuse to rule out military action.
Lynne Stewart, the attorney of record for one of the Jersey-based Islamic religious leaders (the blind sheik) tied to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, appeared in court in Manhattan today for sentencing. The world needs more, not less, people like her.
Stewart, already battling breast cancer, has been charged to 2.5 years or more. She has an exceptional record of passionate representation for those who need it most, notably:
A firebrand civil rights lawyer who has defended Black Panthers and anti-war radicals was sentenced Monday to nearly 2 1/2 years in prison — far less than the 30 years prosecutors wanted — for helping an imprisoned terrorist sheik communicate with his followers on the outside.
Lynne Stewart, 67, smiled, cried and hugged supporters after U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl pronounced the sentence of 28 months.
The judge said Stewart was guilty of smuggling messages between her client and his followers that could have "potentially lethal consequences." He called the crimes "extraordinarily severe criminal conduct."
But in departing from federal guidelines that called for 30 years behind bars, he cited Stewart's more than three decades of dedication to poor, disadvantaged and unpopular clients.
"Ms. Stewart performed a public service, not only to her clients, but to the nation," Koeltl said.
The judge said Stewart could remain free while she appeals, a process that could take more than a year.
Stewart was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and her lawyer Elizabeth Fink had warned in a plea to the judge: "If you send her to prison, she's going to die. It's as simple as that."
Outside court, Stewart said she thought the sentence was "a victory for doing good work all one's life." She added: "You get time off for good behavior usually at the end of your prison term. I got it at the beginning."
The newly crafted (and crafty) detainees bill passed by Congress which effectively kills the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and chops the hands off anyone who dares request looks like a real beaut. Once the Supremes decided the Bushies current way of handling military prisoners was NOT constitional, Bush simply went to Congress and told them what to do. And, being total pussies, Capitol Hill indeed gave Bush what he wanted,
From today's New York Daily News:
At this month's christening of the nuclear aircraft carrier bearing his name, former President George H.W. Bush delivered a rousing endorsement of his son.Who would have thought that the very worst thing Poppy Bush could do to the United States, despite his four disappointing years as president, was to bring Dubya into the world.
"I am very proud of our President," the elder Bush said in rain-swept ceremonies in Newport News, Va. "I support him in every single way with every fiber in my body."
Yet many of his closest former aides beg to differ.
Indeed, one of the worst-kept secrets in Bush World is the dismay, in some cases disdain, harbored by many senior aides of the former President toward the administration of his son - 41 and 43, as many call them, political shorthand that refers to their numerical places in American presidential history.
For five years, the 41s have bit their collective tongues as, they complain, the 43s ignored their counsel. But as the war in Iraq has worsened and public support for the current administration has tanked, loyalists of the elder Bush have found it impossible to suppress their disillusionment - particularly their belief that many of 43's policies are a stick in the eye of his father.
"Forty-three has now repudiated everything 41 stands for, and still he won't say a word," a key member of the elder Bush alumni said. "Personally, I think he's dying inside."
To 41 loyalists, the bill of indictment is voluminous. Some alleged 43 has betrayed his father's middle-of-the-road philosophy by governing as a divider, not the uniter he promised in the 2000 campaign. Others, like former 41 speechwriter Curt Smith, argue 43 isn't conservative enough.
"Conservatives want limited government, a balanced Middle East approach, a foreign policy that builds, not destroys, and general, not special, interest," Smith said. "Bush 41 endorsed all of the above. Bush 43 supports none."
A common refrain of the 41s is that 43's muscular approach to foreign affairs - what one derided as "cowboy diplomacy" - has estranged the U.S. from its allies and diminished its authority around the globe.
Cause for celebration?
Sadly, I don't think so. We've gone in less than 40 years from a count of 200 million in 1967 to this at a time when:
Supposed spy satellites have picked up increased activity and people near the site of the first reported nuclear weapon test in North Korea, which the U.S. (and a few other countries) believe indicates the Kim Jong-Il crew is getting ready for a second test.
The U.S. isn't playing this any better than Jong-Il has. Reminds me of a paragraph from the latest Maureen Dowd column I referenced earlier:
It’s clear, after all, that the North Koreans are acting immaturely in response to W. acting immaturely. They want attention because the Bush administration inexplicably refuses to talk to them. And they know, in the pre-emptive world ordained by nutty Dick Cheney, that the best way to protect themselves from the fate of Saddam Hussein is to actually go nuclear, rather than merely fantasizing and boasting about it.While I don't pay much attention to 60 Minutes' Andy Rooney, I notice that his topic last night was the hypocrisy of the U.S. telling other countries they couldn't have nuclear weapons considering we have the most anywhere
Clusterfuck Nation, by James Howard Kuntsler.
(Any relation to the late, famed attorney? Dunno.)
Uh... I always assumed he just crawled out from beneath a rock and that the first word he ever uttered (and the most frequent one he still utters), is Fuck. But here's this from the Wayne Madsen Report:
October 16, 2006 -- George W. Bush's "Svengali" Karl Rove seems very sure that the GOP will not lose control of the House and Senate in the mid-terms, even though polls indicate a huge Democratic tsunami is building that will turn control of both bodies over to the Democrats. Rove's name has come up in the Mark Foley scandal at a time the furtive presidential counselor has been busy traveling around the country, obviously attempting to tamper with the election process at the municipal, ward, and precinct levels. Rove, who allegedly knew about Foley's problem with underage male pages, pressured and possibly blackmailed the Florida congressman into running for re-election in 2006. Rove's cross-currents with the GOP "Velvet Mafia," the closeted gay network within the Republican leadership is nothing new. The editor was the first to disclose the homosexuality of Rove's adoptive father in a June 4, 2006 article:"WMR, June 4, 2006 -- In mid-summer 2004, some time after I wrote an article for CounterPunch about the agit-prop crimes of Karl Rove and while I was speaking out against Rove on a number of radio shows, I was contacted by a credible source in Palm Springs, California who told me he was talking to one of his acquaintances who was just getting over the death of his longtime 'significant other.' Then the Palm Spring resident dropped the big bombshell -- the acquaintance's 'significant other' was Louis Rove, the adoptive father of Karl Rove. Louis Rove reportedly suffered from emphysema."
Later, in their book, The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, Texas journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater, confirmed that Louis Rove was gay. Rove, who was recently quoted by former White House "faith-based initiatives" coordinator David Kuo in his new book, Tempting Faith, describes the publicly anti-gay Rove as scornful of Christian fundamentalists, referring to them as "nuts" and "goofy."
Rove may have more to worry about from his erstwhile Religious Right allies. There is much talk in Washington about who appears on a mysterious "list" of closeted gay Republicans. This editor believes it is beyond time to relate a story about information received about Rove in 2002 from a former senior editor for the right-wing Washington Times publication consortium. During one late evening at the National Press Club, the editor stormed in clearly upset. He told me, "goddamit, Rove is b***f****** [a well-known GOP lobbyist and policymaker in DC]." I asked him if he was sure. He replied, "Yes, I can't do anything with this story [a reference to his right-wing publisher] but you can have it if you want." I've had the story since 2002 and now it is time to release it. The GOP is rife with closeted individuals whose secret preferences have clouded and continue to cloud their judgment. We have seen this clearly in the cases of Mark Foley, Jim Kolbe (prior to his coming out), Charlie Crist, and other GOP officials, including congressional staffers and officials of the Republican National Committee.
MoDo channels Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain (neither is the best candidate for their party and certainly not for the U.S.). Snippet here; go there for the rest:
Hillary Clinton became a senator because men abused her. Her husband humiliated her in public and her opponent, Rick Lazio, hounded her in a debate. She was a sympathetic figure to many voters only after she went from pushy to pushed around.Jump to the rest.
So John McCain must be wary as he figures out how to push her around. He must slide in the shiv chivalrously.
This week, he managed to attack her three ways in one sentence: as a senator, as a wife and as a future opponent. This raises the question: Is it a smart move, pleasing a base that cringes at stories of these celebrity senators palling around, knocking back drinks on an overseas trip? Or is it a misstep, making Mr. McCain look like a sexist bully for pointedly blaming his fellow senator for her husband’s old policies — and calling her “Mrs. Clinton” just to rub it in?
On a trip to Detroit to campaign for a Republican Senate candidate, Mr. McCain singled out Hillary for a shellacking on North Korea. “I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” he said.
The next morning on CBS’s “The Early Show,” he was asked why he would blame the Clintons for North Korea’s batty behavior.
It’s clear, after all, that the North Koreans are acting immaturely in response to W. acting immaturely. They want attention because the Bush administration inexplicably refuses to talk to them. And they know, in the pre-emptive world ordained by nutty Dick Cheney, that the best way to protect themselves from the fate of Saddam Hussein is to actually go nuclear, rather than merely fantasizing and boasting about it.
But the Republicans love to blame Bill Clinton for everything, from the radioactive Congressional page explosion to the radioactive North Korean explosion.
Mr. McCain told Hannah Storm that he “was responding to attacks made on President Bush by Mrs. Clinton, Senator Kerry, Senator Reid and other Democrats.” Hillary advisers noted that she was called “Mrs.” while the others were called “Senator.”
Just as the male Republican front-runner, known for a short fuse, must be careful how he attacks the female Democratic front-runner, the former first lady must be careful how she attacks the war hero.
Krugman talks about some tough - but important - reality with the upcoming November 2nd mid-term elections. A big snippet is here, but jump over there for the whole thing:
In a recent interview with The Hartford Courant, Senator Joseph Lieberman said something that wasn’t credible. When the newspaper asked him whether America would be better off if the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives next month, he replied, “Uh, I haven’t thought about that enough to give an answer.”Read the rest.
Why wasn’t this a credible answer? Because anyone with the slightest interest in American politics — a group that obviously includes Mr. Lieberman — is waiting with bated breath to see how this election goes, and thinking a lot about the implications. If the Democrats gain control of either house, no matter how narrowly, the American political landscape will be transformed. If they fail, no matter how narrowly, it will be seen, correctly, as a great victory for the hard right.
The fact is that this is a one-letter election. D or R, that’s all that matters.
It’s hard to think of an election in which the personal qualities of the people running in a given district or state have mattered less. Given the stakes, voters who answer “yes” to the question Mr. Lieberman claims not to have thought about should think hard about voting for any Republican, no matter how appealing. Conversely, those who answer “no” should think hard about supporting any Democrat, no matter how much they like him or her.
There are two reasons why party control is everything in this election.
The first, lesser reason is the demonstrated ability of Republican Congressional leaders to keep their members in line, even those members who cultivate a reputation as moderates or mavericks. G.O.P. politicians sometimes make a show of independence, as Senator John McCain did in seeming to stand up to President Bush on torture. But in the end, they always give the White House what it wants: after getting a lot of good press for his principled stand, Mr. McCain signed on to a torture bill that in effect gave Mr. Bush a completely free hand.
And if the Republicans retain control of Congress, even if it’s by just one seat in each house, Mr. Bush will retain that free hand. If they lose control of either house, the G.O.P. juggernaut will come to a shuddering halt.
Yet that’s the less important reason this election is all about party control. The really important reason may be summed up in two words: subpoena power.
Even if the Democrats take both houses, they won’t be able to accomplish much in the way of new legislation. They won’t have the votes to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate, let alone to override presidential vetoes.
The only types of legislation the Democrats might be able to push through are overwhelmingly popular measures, such as an increase in the minimum wage, that Republicans don’t want but probably wouldn’t dare oppose in an open vote.
But while the Democrats won’t gain the ability to pass laws, if they win they will gain the ability to carry out investigations, and the legal right to compel testimony.
I can't open my email box without getting campaign mail from Diana Irey, apparently a Pennsylvania candidate running on a platform of defeating Jack Murtha. Based on her campaign Web site - which goes out of its way NOT to identify her political affiliation - I'd guess she's a fair weather Rethuglican.
Now I've never lived in Pennsylvania and I'm certainly not registered to vote there. Hell, I can count on hands and feet the number of times I've even visited the state. So I keep asking why the hell Irey sends me all this hate mail about Jack Murtha. If she and her campaign workers is as organized as her incessant emails to me implies, God help Pennsylvania.
I bring this up because Jack Murtha, who as a human being I am sure is not perfect, spent more than 30 years defending the United States as a Marine (I believe) before he became an elected critter in Pennsylvania. By comparison, the only thing I can tell Diana Irey has done is spent a LOT of time in a beauty salon having lots of highlights added to her hair and even more time in front of a mirror perfecting her "image".
Her Web site is filled with ineffectual crap like "Defeatocrat" and "You Don't Know Jack".
Ms. Irey, let me suggest it is you who does not know Jack. I know what Murtha has done for his country while I have difficulty believing you would do anything that might muss your manicure.
You've got some nerve, lady (and I use that term loosely). You can't even be honest enough with voters to indicate your political party affiliation (but hey, if I was a Bush GOPer, I'd be damned embarrassed, too).
Also, I spotted at least four lies on one page of your Web site (like making Murtha sound like he's the only one who votes for Congresstional pay raises; hell, I know a few Dems who vote against them, but I can't name a single damned Republican who has done so and they're the party in power) and I don't even know Pennsylvania all that well.
So, Ms. Irey, since you've decided to push yourself into my email two-three times a day, let ME do a greater service to Pennsylvania than I bet you ever shall:
Well, the good news is that I finally got a few hundred emails answered. The bad is that the mail server seems to be about as useful as a member of the Bush Administration.
Hopefully, everyone will get their responses shortly. If you don't see one and I owe you one, shout (but softly, tyvm).
Absolutely no argument here, except (probably out of respect for Hillary's presidential plans) our 42nd president did not indicate that some of the absolute worst extremists have been the Christian far right who will allow no compromise on their agenda:
DES MOINES, Iowa - Former President Bill Clinton told Iowa’s Democratic Party faithful on Saturday that the actions of “an extreme sliver” of the Republican Party have backfired and “profoundly divided” the country.I've already had this dialogue, almost continuously since December 2000 and even more so after 9-11-2001. While I'm not always sure what it has accomplished, a few folks have hinted to me in conversation that my willingness to speak has make them feel empowered to do so.
“We’ve got a big responsibility. Forget about 2008. Forget about the politics. Just go out and find somebody and look them dead in the eye and say You know, this is not right’...This is America,” Clinton said. “We can do better and this year, it’s a job that Democrats have to do alone.”
Gee, where does a girl start with this much goofiness? Mind you, I'm still trying to recover from the discovery that the fem blogger who concentrated so carefully on ass fucking (AnaMarie Cox, the original Wonkette) is now chief at Time.com.
First, I think we're playing a deadly and rather dumb game with North Korea. If we actually DO end up at war with them, you're going to see our troops take a much worse whooping than they've gotten in Afghanistan or Iraq. Kim Jong-Il's Army is not only larger than ours, its military people are just about the only ones in the country besides Jong-Il who eat on a regular basis. This means we'll be fighting people who know the only way their families will survive is if they win against the wicked west.
Sure, the U.N. agreed to sanctions against Jong-Il and North Korea, but this is a game, too. As often happens with such sanctions, they are tough to impose and even more difficult to try to police. Once North Korea makes a move against these (and they probably will, most other countries do), Bush will swagger and tell us "hey, we gave 'em a chance and they blew it." Great.
As I've stated before, I think it's the height of assinine that Bush refuses to enter into direct talks with N Korea; the excuses he's giving are particularly lame, even for him. Like Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek, I say it's past time we sit down to talk with them. You also may want to check out Newsweeks' current cover story which gives some of the background on exactly how North Korea happened to join the rather exclusive Nuclear Club.
Reported also at Newsweek is this from a senior N Korean official Kim Yong-Nam is response to Bush's and John Bolton's threats re: the nukes:
Remember: Bush and Bolton made it very clear they would not rule out going to war to "beat" N Korea down.If the United States continues to ... apply pressure on us in various forms, we will have no choice but to take physical steps to deal with that."
[Ed. note: Our sincere wishes for Jesus' General's swift - and manly! - return to perfect health and a score of 11 on 1-10 manliness scale!]
I tell you, I had no idea. I really didn't.
It never entered my mind to think that Ken Mehlman (Chairman of the Republican National Committee), Karl Rove, Jeff Gannon, Mark Foley, Jonah Goldberg, David Drier (sp?), Byron York, Lindsey Graham, David Frum, OR even "I am no girly man" Arnold Schwarzenegger along with "The Passion of the Bigot" Mel Gibson are not just extremely happy (such as gay) but also closet Democrats.
Thank God that Jesus' General is able to refer us to "rocket scientist" Cliff Kincade who, posting at News With Views, offers us this fine bit of critical analysis:
The complex nature of the “dirty trick” against the Republicans over the Mark Foley scandal is beginning to emerge. It doesn’t involve a George Soros-funded group or emails that had been in the possession of the media or shopped around by Democratic operatives. Instead, the GOP has played a trick on itself. The party brought so-called gay Republicans into positions of power in Congress only to realize that the confidential information they held about a secret gay network was political dynamite that could backfire.
[...]
So if the gay Republicans are not really Republicans, what are they? One veteran observer of this network told AIM that the Foley scandal should make it crystal clear that the gay Republicans are in reality “liberal activists” who want to use the party to advance the same homosexual agenda embraced by the Democrats.
[...]
It seems appropriate to note that one of the few Republicans financially supported by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the pro-Democratic group to which Trandahl made his contributions in 2000, was Rep. Jim Kolbe. Was the first “openly gay” Republican member of Congress a closeted Democrat as well? It’s certainly the case that he started acting more like a Democrat once his secret life was exposed.
Of course, justice Bush-style effectively means no justice whatsoever. So, without further adieu:
John Bolton, U.S. world class bully ambassador to the U.N., kept after the N. Korean ambassador yesterday after sanctions were imposed until that ambassador said "this is a declaration of war" and stalked out. So Bolton was on all the Sunday shows pretending he's a "great" man. As the folks at Think Progress point out, Bolton would not rule out military action (aka war) against North Korea by American troops.
At least one man remains locked up from those terrible and not particularly legal "Muslim" sweeps that took place here after September 11th (9/11)... no charges, no justice, no release.
Elsewhere, in beautiful downtown Guantanamo Bay (aka Gitmo), a military lawyer and a paralegal have been ordered by the Bush Defense Department NOT to speak out on the subject of abuse against war detainees there.
In Iraq, at least 5 American service men and women and 26 Sunnis have been killed in suicide bombs and other attacks in Iraq. So far this month alone, 46 U.S. soldiers have died with October not quite half over yet. Also from Think Progress, a new poll shows that three out of every four Americans support troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Fox (Faux) News' Chris Wallace ignored 14,000 emails from those who wanted this dimwit (definitely not his father's son) to ask Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (from whose lips the truth has never, ever emerged) about the U.S.S. Cole and why she did nothing to act on terror intelligence in the eight months leading UP to September 11th.
And one more: Not apparently busy enough with losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and making sure money goes to everything but where it should, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has launched a major smear campaign as political payback against NATO general Jeffrey Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander for European Operations. From Think Progress:
Gen. James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was quoted in Bob Woodward’s State of Denial as believing the Iraq war is a “debacle” and that “the Joint Chiefs have been systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld.” Jones is also quoted as cautioning Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace: “You should not be the parrot on the secretary’s shoulder.”
To the dismay of Rumsfeld and his supporters, Jones has stood by the criticisms reported in the book. He recently said, “I don’t challenge Bob’s characterization of it, except that had I seen [the book], I probably would have suggested that the tone was more critical than I intended it to be. … I did talk about Iraq with a concern that Iraq deserves.”
Jones now finds himself the target of a smear campaign at the hands of Rumsfeld’s allies:“Military and civilian officials close to the secretary are taken aback by Gen. Jones’ comments,” said the former aide, who asked not to be named. “Rumsfeld certainly takes a very different view of how he has empowered the Joint Chiefs by involving them in every decision. James Jones is highly political — a real Washington operator. He of all generals to claim that the chiefs have become political is highly ironic if not laughable.“.“
The anonymous aide said Rumsfeld is particularly upset because he believes Jones owes him gratitude for recommending Jones to become the first Marine general to head the NATO Command in Jan. 2003. “Rumsfeld bent over backwards to accommodate this guy,” said the former official.
Before the war, Jones criticized Rumsfeld’s plan to topple Saddam Hussein by using special forces in a repetition of the tactics that succeeded in Afghanistan. “It would be foolish, if you were ever committed to going into Iraq, to think that the principles that were successful in Afghanistan would necessarily be successful in Iraq. In my opinion, they would not.” Now, Rumsfeld and his allies are determined to ruin the reputation of a general whose assessments have been proven correct.
... and with any luck whatsoever, I'll get everything replied to before Bush achieves "victory" in Iraq, or tomorrow morning... whichever comes first. ::hoot::
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