On a final note tonight...

I am just so gushy happy that my hard-earned tax dollars - and yours - will be going not to protecting our ports or cities, but to protecting the well-heeled people who could afford tickets to the SuperBowl tomorrow.

Now the reason to spend tens of millions on extra security for an event where if you added up the IQ of all spectators and players might come out to oh.. about 82 (that's cumulative, not average) is why exactly? Thank you, I thought the reason was that specious. Now I know.

Rolling Eyes Ever Upward

Another terrorist alert for planes coming from Britain and France to the US, just like over Christmas. As you may recall, the European authorities all basically said the US security alert then was nonsense, that none of the leads panned out in any way (and a few alleged they were made up out of whole cloth on America's part), and just seemed to be a way to strong arm our air marshals onto their flights.

This must be why you can fly to London from NY for $99 right now. After all, the way to reward a staunch ally in the war on terror is to make people afraid to buy their products (including use their airlines). Rumor has it they didn't warn Mr. Blair (Mr. Bush's third puppy) that David Kay was about to say the Dictator Had No Clothes in regard to the WMD. From what I can tell, the WH won't be happy until the Brits hang Tony.

From the Karl Rove Management Seminar: The way to make your enemies really afraid of you is to show them how badly you treat your best allies.

Credit Where Due

Reading through Cursor.org brought me to a Timothy Noah article in Slate touching upon a subject I knew nothing about: that Jack Paar helped end the dreadful, hateful, miserable, Joe McCarthy-loving career of so-called newsman Walter Winchell.

While Jack was long gone by the time I came around and sometimes watched my mother watch The Tonight Show, that's a debt of gratitude I did not know until tonight that was owed. A tip of the hat to you, Mr. Paar. I wish we had more of you, considering how many O'Reillys, Coulters, and Rich Lowrys we have today.

Just One Not So Simple Question

If the WH has planned the GOP Convention in NY right near what was Ground Zero and as close to the anniversary date as possible to take full advantage of the moment and if Rudy Giuliani is indeed being seriously considered as a Cheney replacement (at least in name, since I doubt they'd flush Cheney out of the bunkers from which he commands), how can the WH and its people dare to block the 911 investigation so mightily?

How can they trod on the memory of the dead for their own selfish purposes when they will do nothing to determine exactly what went wrong? That, my friends, doesn't just take chutzpah. It takes... I'm not sure... but perhaps cold-blooded greed of an incalculable degree.

Post-Kay Fallout

Cursor.org does a better roundup of David Sanger's article in The New York Times related to David Kay's comments on lack of WMD and the WH's response to them than I managed to muster in an hour of sitting here.

Heart-Saddening Story

No More Mister Nice Blog today (1-31-04) details a story from a Monticello, NY paper regarding a 77-year-old woman struggling now and about to see the condition worsen considerably under Mr. Bush's forced-through Medicate plan. Read it and weep. Then resolve to get the people who pushed this through OUT of office in November.

The Real Reason We Attacked?

I'm sorry, but I find this story of one of Saddam's palaces being used to host a big SuperBowl party tomorrow to be disgusting on so many levels, I cannot begin to count. Since the day the first tank rolled into Iraq, we've used these palaces for photo ops that made us seem like shallow imperialists.

For the record, I don't believe our below-minimum wage soldiers are shallow imperialists. But I think the people who set the stage for this and then gave the OK for it suffer from a bad case of this and it has severely, perhaps irrevocably changed America's stature in the world's eyes.

Remember? We were going to give the palaces back to the people of Iraq who paid for them. But we haven't. We use them for Paul Bremer, and visiting American dignitaries, and visits from celebrities, and SuperBowl parties. I'm sure we're not going to pay the people of Iraq rent for our use of them either.

And another point...

Compare Judy Dean with this woman, oft ridiculed by a number of different blogs and many different people. Here's a woman who clearly got her job probably because of her well-placed husband's connection and when she finds time to actually do that job (write), she fills space with every bit of sad, schizoid minutae from raising four children (including a son she named Paris - I thought only Michael Jackson did that).

Here's a woman who would hate Judy Dean for no more reason than Mrs. Dean/Dr. Steinberg can balance thoughts in her head, a busy medical practice, being a mother, and making a sacrifice for more than herself.

I assume NRO only prints Ms. Gurdon because they want to point out how shallow a woman's life is supposed to be. But if I want one-dimensional human beings, I can turn on the TV. I choose not to, however.

Give me Judy Steinberg Dean in 3-D instead.

This Katha Pollitt piece

Read it and you can appreciate why I find Judy Steinberg Dean a refreshing alternative to the usual potential first lady. Refreshing is the word, too. She talks, dresses, and behaves like a classy regular American (just one who happened to finish med school and went on to run the medical practice she and her husband built alone once he entered politics).

She makes me like Howard even more as a candidate. She's also willing to give up a heck of a lot for us if her husband gets the Democratic nod and then wins the WH.

Imagine a First Lady who isn't just baggage.

Oh yes, we've been fortunate enough to have them before. But all these years after her death, they're still telling wild and perhaps untrue stories about Eleanor Roosevelt. Betty Ford and Rosalyn Carter both brought a great deal to the American experience, although they were forced into a quieter role. Hillary Clinton seemed to threaten people. Too bad.

Judy is awesome, and I suspect that's why she's drawn so much fire. Some people want to carve some huge wedge out between the American people and this intelligent, nice lady before they can warm to her. What nonsense!

Minnesota

is about to launch a drug information site designed to give residents information about buying cheaper drugs across the border into Canada. This is an interim bandaid; our answer is not to drive up drug prices to Canada (and they're being threatened with such by pharmaceutical companies) or force the poorer here to risk the wrath of Customs by importing.

WH Blocks 911 Panel from Obtaining Own Notes

The White House insists it wants a fair investigation into 9-11, then stonewalls, underfunds, under time-commits, and blatantly withholds. This Washington Post piece says now the WH won't even let members of the panel have access to their own notes.

Rather than let this be blown away or resorting to conspiracy theories that the WH was far more intimately involved with 9-11 because it allowed them to pull the crap they have, why not allow a free, balanced, decent investigation that Americans can trust? Instead, all they've done is defeat the "freedom" they talk about so often and fuel the conspiracy theorists.

Sad way

to wake up to the last day of January: Karzai in Afghanistan says the latest American attack there killed 10 civilians (and we hear almost nothing about casualties there anymore) plus 3 more American GIs are dead in Iraq (no work on civilians there).

Media Fairness: Clinton vs. Bush

From a panel before the United Auto Workers CAP Conference, former Clinton Aide Paul Begala, in response to a question from a UAW worker about whether Mr. Bush is getting such a free ride from the media:

"Let me give you some statistics," responded panelist Paul Begala, "I worked for Bill Clinton in 1992 and …in anticipation of this very question, I looked this up on Nexis. There were 13,641 stories about Bill Clinton 'dodging the draft' …and there were 49 stories about Bush and the National Guard," Begala said.

Does anyone

find it slightly odd the California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would say this to the local press corps?

...let's all work together. And please, continue selling my projects and selling my philosophy and various different things we're trying to get out there.

Bush "Military" Records

From Buzzflash, here's a link to a CompuServe users site with details about Mr. Bush's military record obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (Bush will repeal that next week).

NY Times

They featured two good articles (now yesterday) that you should catch.

One is from Robert Reich on the split in the Democratic Party between those who just want Bush out (NH primary votes would seem to indicate a fair number of GOPers would like to send George back to Crawford, too) and those who really want to change politics. I must admit that I fall into the latter category myself.

The other is from Paul Krugman, who notes that the man who was going to restore honor and integrity to the WH just doesn't seem to be accomplishing that mission. ::Slapping chest in deep and utter surprise::

George? He didn't bring back honor and integrity? But he brought equality! He's not screwing an intern... he's screwing all of us, and doesn't even stop at the borders of this country! Sarcasm mode off.

"Intelligence Probe Could be Risky for Bush"

Gee, you think? So apparently is any real, worthy probe of 9-11 or any of the other nonsense they've dragged us into under a veil of bullshit covering secrecy.

"Speak Out," she says

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg urges any American who is concerned about the curtailment of privacy and civil liberties in post-911 America to speak out loudly and often. Good for her.

Freedom of expression:use it or lose it to those who don't want you to have it.

No Iraq Probe, Zero Accountability

Mr. Bush won't endorse an investigation into the WMD/so-called intelligence failure. Isn't it time to stop having the foxes watching the hen house? Not that Condi doesn't make a nasty-faced little vixen...

Let the Poor Pay for Missiles in Space?

Since Mr. Bush is hell-bent to keep cutting taxes for the rich, I guess the rest of us will have to pay for the huge jump in space missile defense spending he wants.

Wait? Did you just ask why? Did you happen to suggest that most of the tests on what was known as Star Wars has shown it to be a collosal failure for all but the wallets of fat-cat military industrialists? Did you say, "Well, missiles in space would not have stopped anything that happened on 9-11?" Did you have the nerve to wonder, couldn't this money be spent better elsewhere, such as on health care to keep America healthier or for schools to educate the next generation who'll have to pay a LOT of Mr. Bush's debt?

The nerve of you!