Garry Trudeau, Quintessential Patriot

‘Doonesbury’ comes to aid of Fisher House
Trudeau donating profits from new book to military charity

By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Thursday, June 30, 2005

Love him or hate him, Garry Trudeau, the man responsible for the “Doonesbury” comic strip, is doing his part to help wounded troops and their families.

Trudeau is donating all his proceeds from the sale of his newly released book “The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time” to the Fisher House Foundation. Also, Andrews McMeel Publishing, the book’s publisher, is contributing 10 percent of its take from the book to Fisher House...

Fisher House offers family members of wounded troops temporary housing at little or no cost during their loved one’s hospitalization. With locations at 32 veterans and military hospitals throughout the United States and in Landstuhl, Germany, Fisher House is largely funded through private donations.

“The Long Road Home” tells the story of B.D., a popular “Doonesbury” character who, while serving in Fallujah, Iraq, is wounded and has his left leg amputated. The comic strip follows B.D. along his journey of injury and recovery — from Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany to the amputee ward at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

I don't think I really need to explain why I think Trudeau is a quintessential patriot, because it should be pretty obvious. Feel free to disagree as I know some of you shall.

Time Will Reveal Source

Oh boy, this will be interesting...

Time Inc. announced today it will comply with a court order to hand over the notes of correspondent Matthew Cooper to a prosecutor investigating the leak of an undercover CIA operative's identity, and so avoid jail time for the magazine reporter.

In a statement issued by the magazine's editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine, the magazine said the delivery of the confidential source documents "certainly removes any justification for incarceration."

The announcement came three days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times and one day after a federal court judge repeated a threat to jail the two journalists for contempt for refusing to disclose their sources. The reporters told the judge yesterday they were prepared to spend four months in jail rather than answer questions about their confidential government sources...

Cooper and Miller were found in contempt of court in October for refusing to answer questions from special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald about their conversations with anonymous government sources in the summer of 2003. Fitzgerald's investigation focuses on whether senior Bush administration officials knowingly leaked Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, alleged in a Times opinion piece that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence information to make the case for war in Iraq.

ROB BORSELLINO = My New Hero

Why do we know all about . . .

For years I've felt like this country is dumbing down, losing touch with what's important.

About a month ago, I thought I had the defining moment.

A woman on TV was shown a picture of the U.S. secretary of state and - with complete self confidence - she identified her as "Mona Lisa Rice."

I was sure we had bottomed out...

Yes, Rob, I'm on your wavelength.

DeLay Starts Looking For His Tap Shoes

DeLay inquiry set to move; GOP ethics chairman backs down

The Republican Chairman of the House Ethics Committee has retreated on a bid to have his chief of staff become co-director for the Committee, paving the way for ethics investigations of House members, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), RAW STORY has learned.

In a letter to members of Congress today, Ethics Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) indicated he will retreat from a plan to have his personal chief of staff Ed Cassidy serve as co-director of the committee.

The move is a breakthrough for Democrats, who have demanded all aspects of the committee remain bipartisan. Once a chief counsel is selected, the committee can organize and begin investigations into House members, including Republican leader DeLay.

Looks like DeLay might actually have his ass handed to him. Can't wait to see how this all plays out.

US suspected of keeping secret prisoners on warships: UN official

The news has been spilling out, folks. I've been posting something new rather frequently, so don't stop with this post, there's more to get under your skin below...

But hey, don't go anywhere just yet, because there's some fanTAStic news - detainees are being held on luxury cruise liners, all decked out with pools, mai tais and a complete exercise facility so they don't become fat on the mounds of food available at the four-star buffet! Okay, I made up the bit about mai tais - they can't have those anyway.

The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said.

While the accusations were rumours, rapporteur Manfred Nowak said the situation was sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry.

Sure, this could all be made up lies. If so, then the US will have no trouble cooperating with an open invastigation. After all, we don't torture people, right? If we didn't do anything wrong, then there's nothing to hide.

Saddam Linked to 9/11???

Have IQs in DC dropped sharply, or are they under the impression OUR IQs have dropped sharply?

GOP lawmaker: Saddam linked to 9/11
N.C. representative says 'evidence is clear'

A Republican congressman from North Carolina told CNN on Wednesday that the "evidence is clear" that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

"Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11," Rep. Robin Hayes said.

Told no investigation had ever found evidence to link Saddam and 9/11, Hayes responded, "I'm sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places."

Hayes is the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism! HELLO!!?!!

BUSH HIMSELF STATED that "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks." Did evidence sudedenly surface that we are unaware of? Where IS this evidence? If you're gonna make such a bold statement, back it up. Come on, DEFINE YOUR SOURCE.

I DECLARE SHENANNIGANS! This is getting fucking retarded.

Bushness As Usual, Plus: Fake Applause?

I didn't watch the speech last night. Partly because I was busy and party because I can't stand to watch him. But I did hear and read some of the highlights. So if you didn't watch it yourself, here ya go:

Bush said nothing new. But CSPAN has the whole thing if you want to see it.

Oh, and this little tidbit is making the rounds on the blogosphere... The only applause that occurred during the speech was prompted by his team to get the soldiers to do it. If you watch the CSPAN video, it occurs around 25:35. I've poked around and found that George Stephanopoulis, Terry Moran and Kelly O'Donnell all made references to the applause having been started by Bush team members. I'm waiting for a clip or two to be up on Crooks & Liars, but you can start to read up about it at DailyKos. Some right-wingers are all up in arms saying that the soldiers were ordered not to clap (which seems awfully silly considering he needs to show how much support he's getting, plus, wouldn't you think that if staffers got people clapping that they would assume it was ok to clap after that?)

There's more I could yip about, like his repeated invokation of 9/11, but what it comes down to is that he said nothing new, his speech didn't appear to be very uplifting, and it came across as a pathetic attempt to grab a few points in the polls. I guess we'll just have to see if it worked.

World's First Nuclear Fusion Plant

SWEET! Looks like someone's actually moving forward toward alternative fuel sources.

Science's quest to find a cheap and inexhaustible way to meet global energy needs took a major step forward on Tuesday when a 30-nation consortium chose France to host the world's first nuclear fusion reactor...

The project will seek to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the sun produces energy. It would be cleaner than current nuclear reactors, would not rely on enriched uranium fuel or produce plutonium.

Whether it works or not remains to be seen, but who knows what could be discovered along the way. Perhaps this will goose the US into doing some research as well? Can't have other countries making more money than us now...

Pre-War Vs. Post-War

Just thought I'd stir the pot up a little more. This is a list of quotes about the Iraq war over a 2 month period quoted from a USA Today article printed April 1, 2003:

Changing rhetoric of war

* Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

* March 4, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait.

* March 11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."

* March 16, Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside."

The war begins

* March 20, President Bush, in an Oval Office speech to the nation: "A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict."

* March 21, Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon news briefing: "The confusion of Iraqi officials is growing. Their ability to see what is happening on the battlefield, to communicate with their forces and to control their country is slipping away. . . . The regime is starting to lose control of their country."

* March 27, Bush, at a news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked how long the war would take: "However long it takes. That's the answer to your question and that's what you've got to know. It isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory."

* March 30, Myers, on Meet the Press: "Nobody should have any illusions that this is going to be a quick and easy victory. This is going to be a tough war, a tough slog yet, and no responsible official I know has ever said anything different once this war has started."

* March 30, Rumsfeld, on Fox News Sunday, when asked whether Iraqis would "celebrate in the streets" when victory is won: "We'll see."

Death Throes May Last For Years

In a shocking - yes, SHOCKING - statement, Rumsfeld tells FOX NEWS that the insurgency could last FOR YEARS TO COME.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday he is bracing for even more violence in Iraq and acknowledged that the insurgency "could go on for any number of years."

Defeating the insurgency may take as long as 12 years, he said, with Iraqi security forces, not U.S. and foreign troops, taking the lead and finishing the job.

The assessment comes on the heels of the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll showing public doubts about the war reaching a high point -- with more than half saying that invading Iraq was a mistake.

My god. And here I was feeling so safe and secure that the insurgency was in it's last throes.

Is anyone else getting a little sick of this yet? Or will right-wingers simply fall in line, stare blankly and say "They are always right. We believe everything they say. Internets."

US Secretly Met With Insurgents

I suppose this is what Rove was talking about when he said liberals would rather offer therapy and understanding to the terrorists...

One of the Americans at the talks introduced himself as a Pentagon representative and declared himself ready to "find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances," The Sunday Times said.

Damn those liberals! They've infiltrated the Bush administration and are taking their hippie ways to the Iraqi insurgents! Ferret those little bastards out so's we kin get back to bombing the hell outta the place!

Okay, enough snark, I'm still tired from the wedding I attended yesterday. Don't forget to read below about Dick's secret meeting with a cardiologist. Lots of secret meetings going on around here.

Everything's Fine! Nothing To See Here!

Dick may be having heart problems, but you wouldn't know it if you asked the White House.

Vice President Dick Cheney visited a renowned orthopedist Friday while in town for a forum held by a conservative think tank, his spokeswoman said.

Cheney met with Dr. Richard Steadman to evaluate an old football injury to his knee, Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said.

But if you ask Arianna, she's got a different story...

At the Vail Valley Institute dinner tonight, I kept asking what those in the know here knew. Little by little, here is the story I pieced together: After the Secret Service secured the Vail Valley Medical Center, including the parking lot, the Vice President arrived under his own power and checked in at the orthopedic center under the name “Dr. Hoffman”. He was immediately whisked to the adjacent cardiac unit, suffering from what was described to me as “an angina attack”. The security was so high that a Secret Service agent wouldn’t let an ER nurse out of the bathroom that she had gone into just before the Veep arrived.

Oh stop Arianna! Dick's in the best shape of his life? How could you even suggest he might not be fit and healthy?!?

Yay! BOOBIES!

Not to distract everyone from the more important issues at hand, but I thought everyone would like to know that Justice's breasts are no longer being hidden behind the Blue Drapes of Shame that John Ashcroft ordered so he wouldn't be photographed with a boob near to his head.



(Was this the money shot?)

Taking A Personal Day

Kid Bastard and I will be taking our daughter to the Bronx Zoo tomorrow so we won't be around until the afternoon.

Feel free to read the latest from Kid Bastard, along with Moxie's most recent post that generated the most dialog to date. Later kids!

The Boy Who Cried "9/11"

So, there's been a great deal of bleating about 9/11 from the right lately. In particular, Karl Rove's recent bit of rhetoric springs to mind:

"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," [Karl] Rove said. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."...

While I'm sure some liberals did suggest therapy, even I'M not THAT liberal. You murder 3000 of my fellow citizens, you don't get therapy. You get prison, at the very least. I do, however, support criminal prosecution over military action, as I feel terror cells are structured more like a criminal organization rather than a nation-state. As such, it is through criminal investigation and prosecution that they will be beaten, not a massive show of military strength. Given that the only real quantifiable successes in the War on Terror have been through the actions of various police agencies around the world (including the FBI), the facts would seem to bear this out.

And yes, conservatives, specifically the administration, DID prepare for war... with Iraq. Oh, certainly there was a bit of flash and dazzle in Afghanistan. Going directly into Iraq would have been tough to sell even in the fear-soaked days following 9/11. But Iraq was always the main target. If Richard Clarke is to be believed, both Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush were looking for the Iraq connection immediately after the attacks. And by focusing on Iraq to the detriment of the situation in Afghanistan, those who truly DID attack us were allowed to escape. Which brings me to the next part of the Rove quote:

"Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies."

But they have not defeated our enemies. Because they did not understand them, they allowed them to escape and regroup elsewhere. By focusing on their personal vendetta with Iraq, they provided our enemies with a rallying point and proving ground for new recruits. By not understanding our enemies, they made them and their cause that much stronger. The fact that global terror attacks have risen so sharply in the time since the Iraq invasion that the State Department no longer even reports on them lends some legitimacy to this notion.

To build upon what Moxie said in her post... By understanding our enemies, we understand their weaknesses. By understanding those weaknesses, we understand how to exploit them and, ultimately, this leads to their defeat. But to go even further, we need also to understand those whom our enemies exploit, and attempt to turn them against our enemies. Because without a willing source of jihadists and martyrs, terror cannot thrive.

I advocate this approach. If for no other reason, than because the "blow a bunch of stuff up and hope all the bad guys are dead when the smoke clears" approach has not been very effective so far.

But let's talk a little more about 9/11. As Moxie said, we live in New Jersey. We could see the burning towers with the naked eye from numerous points within walking distance from our house. 9/11 scared the hell out of me, and it got me all manner of angry. I want justice for the victims, and closure for their families. What I do not want, is for the victims of 9/11 to become the poster children for every partisan agenda (right and left) currently up for debate. For example, the suggestion that the victims of 9/11, en mass, would be in favor of a constitutional amendment banning flag burning. That is beyond ridiculous. It is idiotic.

The 9/11 victims were all people. Just people. They weren't saints or icons or symbols of American ideals, they were just people. For every loving father, devoted wife, flag-waving patriot and hard worker in those towers, there were just as many slackers, abusive spouses/parents and flag-burning rebels. You know how I know? Because they were people. And in any group of people you have sweethearts and you have assholes, saints and sinners and all points in between. To suggest that these people would all speak with one voice from beyond the grave is as foolish as suggesting they all spoke with one voice while they lived. They didn't, they don't, and to suggest otherwise is absurd at best and offensive at worst.

To seek justice for their murders is an admirable goal, and one that both parties should have no trouble getting behind. But to drape oneself in their corpses to lend credence to a partisan agenda is an affront to their memories, and a slap in the face to those they left behind. I call on leaders of both parties to stop this sort of rhetoric, and pledge not to do it again.

We owe these PEOPLE no less.

Rove Works Hard to Bring Dems Together

What another fucking moron. As offensive as this idiot's statements were, THIS guy is just LOOKING for a Democratic Party AssKicking.

"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," [Karl] Rove said. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."...

"Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies."

FUCK YOU, YOU POMPOUS MOTHERFUCKER.

I live in NJ. 9/11 had a HUGE impact on this area, and I was lucky enough not have someone I know perish in the towers. But I was 100% supportive of finding Osama Bin Laden and bringing him to justice whether by court or by an "accidental" shot to the skull.

Fuck you, Rove. Fuck you and your sound bytes. Fuck you and your arrogant fat ass. You are a stupid fucktard.

Isn't it a common philosophy that to defeat one's enemies one must understand one's enemies? Don't football teams study rival teams to look for weaknesses to exploit to help them win? Don't boxers study their opponents so they know how to fight against them better? Don't students study test material in order to achieve the best scores? JESUS HOW FUCKING BASIC CAN YOU GET?

This is the inherent problem with Bush and his stupid cronies. Let's go in and blow the place to shit, make a half assed attempt to look like we're "getting the bad guys" and have no fucking plan whatsoever. AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE - IRAQ HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11!!!

OMG, I think I am going to have an aneurism. If any Ringers actually fall for this shit, I officially dub thee retarded.

Goddammit I need a drink.

NOFX Has The Best Song Ever

It's so old school garage punk. I MUST have this on my MP3 player.

NFSW, or put your headphones on.

ARE YOU INSANE!?!

No, seriously, is this guy out of his fucking mind?

Well, first of all, the morons in Da House actually approved the Flag Burning Amendment. Yes, that's right, I said MORONS. BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING MORONIC.

But what is MORE MORONIC, is this fucking asshole:

"Ask the men and women who stood on top of the (World) Trade Center," said Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif. "Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment."

Is he actually saying that the men and women who died on 9/11 all want you to make sure the flag never gets burned in protest? Is that fucking dickhead actually saying that? This dipshit from CALIFORNIA.

HOW DARE HE.

What, is he John Edwards now? Does he speak to these murdered people and get all their opinions? How DARE he use the dead to prop up his agenda like that. How DARE he PRESUME to speak for all those people who died. Who the fuck does he think he is! The fucking arrogance you have to have to pull that! My god, that is so offensive I can't even think straight anymore.

I wouldn't presume to speak for the living, let alone the dead. I wonder if what that jackass said pisses off any 9/11 victims' relatives as much as it offends me.

Or is he talking about the men and women who sifted through the rubble for months and months looking for bodies? Does he think that all they were thinking about was how they needed to have an amendment to ban flag burning?

Goddammit this is ridiculous, and a big fucking waste of time. Oh yeah, I feel so much safer at the prospect of not being able to burn the flag!

Fucktards.

Frist Flip-Flops, WMDs Are Coming!, and Flag Burning

Even though Republicans smugly wore flip-flop sandals on their hands to poke fun of John Kerry at the RNC last year, Bill Frist Reversed Himself to push the Bolton vote. I don't suppose that those same Republicans will be at all upset with Frist (R-KittyKiller) for flip-flopping though. Oh the hypocrisy.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Tuesday he would keep pressing for a vote on embattled U.N. nominee John Bolton's confirmation after President Bush insisted that throwing in the towel was not an option.

Hours earlier, Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters he would not schedule another vote on Bolton "at this juncture," having lost two since May at the hands of Democratic critics.

In other news, there's a 70% change of WMDs being used somewhere in the world within the next 10 years. I really wished CNN would source this study, so I can find out just how they arrived at these numbers. Secondly, don't you think we could make a safe assumption that someone, somewhere wants to use WMDs? It is making me a bit concerned, though. If they were SO SURE there were WMDs in Iraq and there actually were none...

Lastly, people who think that a few pieces of cloth should be left untouched are being gits. Part of the meaning of the US flag is that we have the right to burn it or desecrate it in protest. If this passes, they'll have to go lock up all these people running these websites because the flag is being used improperly. When did this country stop being so free?

Operations in Iran Have Begun

Markkind has an excellent post regarding this, and I can't spend enough time on my work break to delve as deeply into this as I want to, but I thought everyone would be interested in reading about this...

The US war with Iran has already begun
by Scott Ritter

As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah's to an "axis of evil" (together with the newly "liberated" Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of "democracy" to the Iranian people...

The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.

The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.

President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran...

Most Americans, together with the mainstream American media, are blind to the tell-tale signs of war, waiting, instead, for some formal declaration of hostility, a made-for-TV moment such as was witnessed on 19 March 2003.

This is not right, people. This is very very wrong. And if wingnuts could wrench their eyes away from the bright and shiny flashing lights of FOX News long enough to read about what's really going on, maybe... JUST MAYBE... some of them will realize that this is bad.

So the answer is just keep poking people with the short sticks we're left with? We should just waltz in and do whatever we want? Are we so drunk with arrogance that we no longer care about the moral or terroristic implications?

Fucking A. This really stinks to hell.

YEP, We're SAFE!

Illegal immigrants accessed nuclear weapons facility
But Department of Energy report says nothing was compromised

Sixteen illegal immigrants gained access last year to one of the most sensitive weapons sites in the country, according to a report issued Monday by the Department of Energy's inspector general.

The inspector general's investigation found the illegal immigrants were construction workers on jobs at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Knoxville, Tennessee.

The workers used "false documents" and "gained access to the ... site on multiple occasions," the report said...

"This situation represented a potentially serious access control and security problem," the report said.

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. See, this is where using Homeland Security to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen would be a good idea. Or - get this! - the NATIONAL GUARD. Because I think Nukular Facilitillies might be a good thing to protect against terrorism. But hey, I'm just a registered voter. Not like I'm one of them smart politicians or anything.

Yes, let's dick around in a country that has nothing to do with the terrorism that occurred on US soil almost 4 years ago. That makes LOADS of sense. Right.

Did Republicans Hide Ohio Scandal To Help Win Election?

It's not as though the nation has been paying close attention to the Ohio Coin Scandal (I refuse to call it Coingate, because I am sick of seeing -gate tagged onto everything), but for those who have, the heat is really on Republicans. The Toledo Blade, the newspaper that has been investigating this, has some interesting things to report.

At the same time [the 2004 presidential election campaign was in high gear] - beneath the surface and out of public view - allegations were swirling that Tom Noe had laundered contributions into President Bush's campaign, and facts were emerging that the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation had lost $215 million meant for injured workers in a Bermuda hedge-fund...

Democratic allegations of a GOP cover-up in the loss of $215 million managed by a Pittsburgh firm have surged in the last few days. Records released last week show that high-ranking aides to Gov. Bob Taft worked to suppress revelations about the hedge fund loss in the final days before the presidential election.

Now, I would NEVER subscribe to some crazy theory that the Republicans would want to suppress bad news right before an election so it wouldn't hurt Bush's chance at being elected. Because that would be crazy. Crazy talk, I say!

There's a Reason We Oppose Him

And it's not because we hate America. I am so sick of that old chestnut being trotted out every time someone from the opposition has the temerity to speak out against the imperial designs of a corrupt administration. It's effective, of course. It worked during the Cold War, why shouldn't it work now? Any who dare to criticize the Great Leader are obviously traitors who seek the destruction of our Homeland and offer succor to the Enemy.

Well, screw that. I love America, and the reason I criticize this administration is because I will be damned if I will watch the country I love destroyed from within by spoiled rich bastards with overdeveloped senses of entitlement. And I refuse to sit idly by and say nothing while our image around the world is irrevocably tarnished by an administration that had not only chosen war as the first resort while insisting it would be the last, but had already begun to fight it long before addressing either Congress or the UN.

Troop morale in Iraq is low, I agree. But it is not, as some have suggested here, because Democrats are opposing the war. No, it is because they have seen nearly two thousand of their comrades killed and thousands more wounded in what we were told would be a "cakewalk", among other rosy predictions. We were told they would be greeted as "liberators", where they are now clearly seen as occupiers. They were told "Mission Accomplished" and yet are still mired in a vicious guerilla war with no end in sight. They fight a well-armed insurgency because those in power had no post-invasion plan to secure the country, or the stockpiles of arms and ammunition that had, until the invasion, been secured by the UN. They face an increasingly hostile citizenry because there were not enough troops sent with the initial invasion to maintain order and secure the country's infrastructure (though the oil ministry seemed to be quite the priority). The following quote and link illustrate the inability (or unwillingness) of those in power to sufficiently plan for the aftermath of the invasion, despite repeated advice from top military advisors to do just that.

A similar warning came from Thomas Pickering, who had served the first President Bush as UN ambassador and had headed up a Council on Foreign Relations study on Iraq which concluded that the U.S. mission had lacked "vision and strategy." Pickering, too, urged Bush to make clear that the current U.S. deployment of some 200,000 troops in and around Iraq would have to be maintained for along time to come. Or, as General John Abizaid, who will assume command of the Iraq mission from the retiring General Tommy Franks next month, put it in congressional testimony this week, "for the foreseeable future." For obvious domestic political reasons, the Bush Administration going into the war had downplayed the scale and duration of a post-war occupation mission.

When then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told legislators that such a mission would require several hundred thousand U.S. troops, his assessment had been immediately dismissed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as "wildly off the mark." Wolfowitz explained that "I am reasonably certain that (the Iraqi people) will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down." Six weeks ago, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was still suggesting the U.S. force in Iraq could be reduced to 30,000 by the end of the year. But the prevailing assessment in Washington appears to be shifting to the idea of afigure closer to Shinseki's.

http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,461462,00.html

So don't tell me that the troops in Iraq even have the time to notice what I think of the president and his elite. They're too busy trying to stay alive, since those in power couldn't even manage to properly equip them for this war. And it is because all this is happening to American troops that I oppose the war and those who chose to start it. It is because I support our troops that I want them brought home now, and removed from a situation where their hopes for survival diminish daily.

Because, frankly, we could also use them here, especially those in the National Guard. We have been told time and again that the Bush administration is making us safer, that they are doing everything in their power to prevent another 9/11. But, in clear dismissal of nearly all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, our ports are still unsecured, our chemical and nuclear facilities are vulnerable to attack and the celebrated Department of Homeland Security has yet to get its act together. It has squandered its budget, failed to organize the various agencies under its watch and functioned largely as an on-demand fear monger with threat-level elevations dictated by the administration, rather than the actual intelligence.

Some who comment on this site have attempted to paraphrase the "Bush lied, people died" slogan into "Newsweek lied, people died", as though the editors of that magazine presented blatant falsehoods that led directly to people's deaths. No. While it is true that the Newsweek article depended on an unreliable source for certain details, the core facts of the article are no longer in dispute and have, in fact, been verified by the Pentagon. The riots that led to those deaths were over the mistreatment of the Koran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. The specifics are irrelevant. It was the abuse of the Koran that caused the riots, and that abuse (regardless of its specific form) did occur. But, of course, the best way to distract people from an unflattering truth is to focus on the discrepancies in the source.

I oppose an administration that wraps itself in the cloak of moral values and shows itself to be anything but moral. It is immoral to deny an entire segment of the American people their right to the pursuit of happiness by seeking to deny them the right to marry. It is immoral to starve social programs that give needed aid to the poor (children and the elderly in particular) in order to enable tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest citizens. It is immoral to promote the notion of a Social Security crisis and then offer nothing more than the vagaries of the stock market as a solution, which would do much to line the pockets of Wall Street brokerage firms, but do little to guarantee economic security for future generations of retirees. It is immoral to use the suffering of one woman to distract the country from your own failures and corruption, citing a belief in a "culture of life" after using lies and deceit to lead the nation into a war that has resulted in nothing but death. It is immoral to systematically remove environmental protections while insisting those same actions will strengthen them (The "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives, to name two).

I am an American citizen, and I love my country. And it is because I love my country that I am performing one of my most essential duties as an American citizen. I am demanding accountability from my leaders when I believe they are acting counter to the best interests of America.

We have been lied to, we have been pandered to and we have been set one against the other, Republican against Democrat, liberal against conservative, all to the detriment of this great country.

* Special thanks to Moxie for much of the research included in this post.

Left-Leaning Bloggers Should Be Proud

It's hard to rally people together. In my lifetime, I can only point to a few times where enormous groups of people came together around a single event... one of them being the 500,000+ people that marched in NYC last August. That was really exciting, and I can only hope that I can bring my daughter to an event like that someday.

I think as we become more like hermits, busily tapping away at our keyboards and not gathering enough energy to make a phone call let alone driving all our asses to one place and time to protest something, liberal bloggers have discovered that they can still make a difference by only taking a little time to screw around on the computer.

This is one example of what we can accomplish just from behind our desks:


Member of Congress, front from left to right, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee, D-Texas, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., accompanied by aides, walk down Pennsylvania Ave., towards the White House as they hand-deliver petitions, Thursday, June 16, 2005 in Washington. The petitions are signed by 105 members of Congress and more than 540,000 Americans demanding that President Bush provide a detailed response to the evidence in the 'Downing Street Memo'. The so-called 'Downing Street memo' says the Bush administration believed that war was inevitable and was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the ouster of Saddam. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

My name is on one of those pieces of paper there. Along with more than 540,000 other people's names. Are we all insane conspiracy theorists? Are we all just insane people desperate to take down our government? Right wingers would have middle-of-the-road people believing we're slobbering at the mouth to expose their children to gay porn and encouraging teen sex so we can turn around and push them into getting an abortion.

No, we are not. I see it as my duty as an American citizen to stand up and say something when the government acts in a way I do not approve. Maybe the majority of people approve of the way the government acts, as it apparently did back in November 2004. But maybe as time goes by and the government continues to act in more devious ways, or contradicts it's own stance, or the justifications for their actions sound more and more lame.

But we left-leaners can take heart that we are doing something, even if it seems like a small effort. We are being credited with helping to bring the DSM to the US mainstream media, where we have been wallowing in a black hole of "news" such as a formerly black man who likes little boys and a formerly hot poptart who has decided to turn into frumpy white trash.

Just a couple of hours ago, the AP released a rather long article...

When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein...

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law...

"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."

While there are many staunch Bush supporters that will simply bury their heads in the sand or act as if this changes nothing, I think this will further diminish Bush's numbers in the polls as more moderates realize just what this all means.

I Got Farked, And I Didn't Enjoy It

So I took a gander at my traffic stats and noticed a little spike, which makes me extremely curious as to where they were coming from. Discovered that about 2,500 sessions came from Fark.com today, one of my favorite haunts. Searched through and discovered that someone was hotlinking to a graphic from my site.

BAD JUJU ON THEM FOR PRACTICING POOR NETIQUETTE!

I think I was extremely kind not to totally fuck this guy by replacing the picture with something incredibly obscene, something that would make even a pretty laid back liberal like me queasy. Had he asked, I probably would have said it was ok, or at least recommended using a photohosting site. Anyway, this is what it ended up looking like:

Brazen Disregard of Todays' News!

Yep, that's what I'm showing! Because I'm taking off from work early to go see the new Batman Movie and then going to see my kid's graduation ceremony. In all honesty, I feel much like Mr. Incredible twitching about Dash "graduating" from 4th grade to 5th grade, but she's so darn cute in her little dress!

In the meantime, chew on this:

A brief message to the Knuckledragger wing of the Republican party:

You guys are idiots. Total, blazing idiots. In fact, I've never seen such a collection of morons in my life, and that includes the Nixon guys.

When I say idiots and morons, I don't mean walking into walls or sticking your hands into vats of bubbling tomato sauce. I mean, you guys are wrong. And you're wrong so often and on such a massive scale that science should come up with a new term for your species: homo stupidus...

Can't Deny It, Can't Pretend

Poll Shows Dwindling Approval of Bush and Congress

Increasingly pessimistic about Iraq and skeptical about President Bush's plan for Social Security, Americans are in a season of political discontent, giving Mr. Bush one of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and Congress one of its lowest rating in years, according to the New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Forty-two percent of those polled said they approved of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job, a marked decline from his 51 percent rating in the aftermath of the November election... Sixteen months before the midterm elections, Congress fared even worse in the survey, with the approval of just 33 percent of Americans, and nearly three-fourths saying Congress did not share their priorities...

Two-thirds said they were uneasy about Mr. Bush's ability to make sound decisions on Social Security. Only 25 percent said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling Social Security, down slightly from what the poll found in March...

Moreover, only 37 percent said they approved of Mr. Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, down from 45 percent in February. And a strong majority of Americans now say the United States' effort to bring stability and order to Iraq is going badly - 60 percent, up from 47 percent in February.

I'm not one to count my chickens, but them numbers ain't good. If Dems become increasingly vocal, I think the country will be in the perfect position to make some major changes come mid-term elections next year.

Would anyone like to place bets?

(PS, I'm taking Basic Statistics and actually understand the polling methods they used - GO ME!)

What EXACTLY Did He Say?

It all started with a call for comment by my conservative buddy, Markkind, regarding Durbin's recent statements that have appeared to send Ringers into some sort of orgasmic tizzy. Subsequent calls for comment via my comment areas and additional emails is prompting me to create a separate post about it.

I first visited the article Markkind referenced, which is as follows:

BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 4:11 p.m. EDT

Durbin Supports the Troops
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, took the Senate floor yesterday and likened American servicemen to Nazis (link in PDF):

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]--I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

We are fighting an enemy that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil 3 1/2 years ago and would murder millions more if given the chance--and according to Dick Durbin, our soldiers are the Nazis.

I apologize for the quote inside quote inside quote, but I felt it was all relevent. So let's take a look at this for a moment...

James Taranto believes that Durbin is saying that our servicemen/women are equivalent to the Nazis. Re-reading Durbin's quote, I do not see anything remotely close to "Our soldiers are Nazis."

What I DO read is his reference to a report from an FBI agent's firsthand accounts of the conditions of at least 5 different detainees, unless he is referencing many separate incidences relating to a single detainee. I then read Durbin saying that if all reference to modern events or technology was removed from the report, a reasonable person could mistake such descriptive treatments of a prisoner/of prisoners as having happened at another time or place in history typically associated with torture and death of innocent people.

Is he equating Guantanamo Bay with Auchwitz? No. And nor should he. Auchwitz was the site of hundreds of thousands of horrific deaths at the hands of people who wanted to exterminate entire groups of people they didn't like. As of yet there is no evidence of the US rounding up Iraqis indiscriminately and executing them.

His statement speaks to the treatment of prisoners in our custody, regardless if they are innocent or guilty. When this description of how we treat prisoners is absorbed by the world at large, it bolsters the perception that the US is just the mean bully on the block with too much power for its own good. Durbin really didn't need to say it, since a lot of the world already thinks it.

Sucks To Be Bush, Dude.

Well, first there was Rumsfeld's admission that Iraq is "statistically" no safer than when we started occupying it.

Then came the news that the House bitchslapped his attempt to retain broad powers of the Patriot Act.

Now comes the news that C-SPAN will be covering the Conyers Hearings on the Downing Street Memo at 2:30pm today, despite Republican efforts to quash them.

Bush looks to be having a bit of a bad week. Maybe I will bake him a cake.

Oh, and Mary Carey wants to have sex with the Bush twins.

Terri Was Long Gone

Terri Schiavo's autopsy came out and BIG SURPRISE, it doesn't support Bill "I look at videos and can make a medical diagnosis" Frist nor Tom "another one who thinks he knows every fucking thing" DeLay's assertions that Terri could have been rehabilitated and become a productive member of society.

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused...

He also said she was blind, because the "vision centers of her brain were dead," and that her brain was about half of its expected size when she died 13 days following the feeding tube's removal...

"The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain," he said. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

Are we done now, or will Save Terri people try to spin it in a different light? I'm all a-flutter with anticipation.

PS: One more time, for the folks in the back - if I EVER have the misfortune to end up in a similar state, SMOTHER ME WITH A GODDAMN PILLOW. I would never want my slack face plastered all over the news or become someone's "cause".

Lots of Tasty News Treats For This Morning!

After trying to point the finger at the chief sponsors of the resolution that apologizes for past failures in passing anti-lynching laws, it turns out that Bill Frist was the one being a prat and vetoed the request for a roll call that would have put senators on the record. Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the article (username: dailykos, password: dailykos, email: kos@dailykos.com). It still passed with a voice vote, but boy some people are jerks! Lengthy quote, but it shows just some of the asshattery that goes on:

Bob Stevenson, Frist's chief spokesman, said Tuesday evening the procedure [the late Monday evening voice vote] the majority leader established was "requested by the sponsors."

The chief sponsors of the resolution, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.), disputed that assertion.

Landrieu said Monday before the resolution was adopted she would have preferred a roll call vote but had to accept the conditions set by Senate leaders.

When Stevenson was informed of Landrieu's statement, he amended his comments to say "at least one of the sponsors" had requested adoption on a voice vote and in combination with a resolution related to Black History Month.

Allen press secretary David Snepp took issue with Stevenson. "I don't know why Bob Stevenson would characterize it that way," he said.

Snepp said Allen, since agreeing to sponsor the resolution, had insisted that he preferred a roll call vote.

Planning agreed that Landrieu and Allen "made every effort" to have the resolution debated during the day, when it would attract the most attention from the public, and with a formal roll call of the senators.

For fuck's sake people, it's signing a resolution that formerly apologizes for not taking quicker action against LYNCHING.

AMERICAblog has a post about how roll call voting works and how voice voting works, as well as a final list of senators that weenied out. Guess what party they all belong to? Come on, I know you can guess! I'll even give you a big hint: the party they all belong do does not begin with the letter D, I, or G.

LATEST ADDITION (12:47pm): Here's the updated list - 2 more Republicans were errantly left off the list of twits.

LATEST LATEST ADDITION (06/16/05 @ 11:23am): The most updated list.

UPDATE: Hehe, got so wrapped up in the one story, I forgot to list the rest... Call me overtired.

AP reports that GOP members (on record and off) are getting increasingly nervous over Bush's enormous slide in ratings. Not that his slide in ratings is a surprise to anyone, but at least they're big enough to admit things aren't looking so hot. That's something, right?

Oh and isn't THIS rich! Bush is accusing DEMOCRATS of setting up roadblocks! I'm sorry, I didn't realize the job of the Democrats is to be Bush's lapdogs (doesn't Blair already have the honor anyway?)! PS: this speech was made at the same dinner function where PORN STAR MARY CAREY was in attendance. Bet those conservative, fmaily-values groups are SO HAPPY about that. Seems that the White House doesn't really want to talk about how they feel about porn stars, guess as long as they show up with a check, it's cool!

OOPSIE! More British documents are surfacing in the wake of the Downing Street Minutes that talk of haphazard planning.

Takes all kind of wackos to work for Bush. This former Bush team member says the WTC collapsed due to professional demolition. Not even *I* can get behind that one. He's an economist, not a demolition expert.

One last note: Stephanie Miller says "George Bush could have sex with a sheep on the White House lawn and set it on fire and my mother would say, 'Oh Stephie, the president is just trying to help. Why do you hate America so much?'" which reminded me that I still had this:



Later kids!

DSM Hearings Being Held At DNC

Republicans are being dickheads again and didn't allow Rep. Conyers space to hold forums on the Hill, so they ended up being held at the Democratic National Committee. Probably just as well, since Sensenbrenner would just get pissy and walk off with the gavel or something. Conyers has the 500,000 sigs he was asking the public for, so he's started the ball rolling.

The forums have been held in smaller committee rooms, often with C-SPAN coverage and formal witness lists.

In a sign of how far relationships on the committee have soured, majority staff recently announced a new policy to deny any request from a committee Democrat for the use of a committee hearing room...

A committee source said committee Democrats are still planning to hold the forums when they find other available space.

Regardless of what people thinks of Conyers' actions, it does NOT make Republicans and the Bush administration look good. By pulling this kind of shit, they paint themselves badly, as though they are trying to hide something by bullying the underdog. If the minutes don't prove anything, then why can't they hold a hearing and explain it? I mean, only about 100 representatives are backing Conyers - not like it's just him and Joe Schmucky from East Bumblefuck, Montana (no offense Mr. Schmucky, you do a great job there!).

Michael Jackson is a Freakish Pervert

So, apparently Moxie is still getting comments from Jackson's army of asswitted fucktards on a post she wrote back in March, telling her how pathetic she is for daring to criticize the perversions of a washed-up aging pop star. I mean, Christ, she gets less vitriol for criticizing the President, for fuck's sake.

Kids, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but Michael Jackson is a Freakish Pervert. He likes to fondle young boys, and enjoys child pornography. While I have no clear evidence to back it up, I am also going to suggest that he practices beastiality, given his penchant for sleeping with a monkey in a diaper. Perhaps the diaper makes Bubbles seem more child-like, which, as we all know, makes Mike all manner of hot and bothered.

I have not been following the trial. Why? Well, for one thing, there are WAY too many other stories that are far more interesting and important. For another, he's guilty. He did it, he knows it and therefore I didn't need to watch his trial. The only reason he was not found guilty and sentenced to 10 years of savage beatings followed by 10 years locked in a pit of live scorpions was because the mother of his accuser was just as much a freak as he is.

And he is a FREAK. He's a freak and a pervert and he likes touching little kids in untouchable places. He has decided to make up for his lost childhood by stealing the childhoods of other children. He is a vile ugly child molester, and in a perfect world he would be thrown into the general population of the most violent maximum security prison on the planet.

Oh, and his music sucks ass.

And This Is Our Ally?

U.S. Opposed Calls at NATO for Probe of Uzbek Killings
Officials Feared Losing Air Base Access

Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials...

There are stirrings of dissent on Capitol Hill about placing access to the air base at the center of U.S. policy, however. Six senators warned Rumsfeld and Rice in a letter last week that "in the aftermath of the Andijan massacre, America's relationship with Uzbekistan cannot remain unchanged."

The senators -- Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), John McCain (R-Ariz.), John E. Sununu (R-N.H.), Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) -- added that "we believe that the United States must be careful about being too closely associated with a government that has killed hundreds of demonstrators and refused international calls for a transparent investigation."

Funny, I thought killing your own citizens was a bad thing that invited US occupation in order to free them from your tyranny. Or something.

What Wonderful Folks These People Are!

Those New York Christian Coalition people are so nice!

They'd like to go back to the days of Hitler, when people were made to wear labels indicating they were homosexual. Because we must be warned about those eeeevuuuul gays based on a study conducted by people who don't like gays!

The leader of a conservative Christian lobby group says that gays should be required to wear warning labels.

"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one to two years off the average life span, yet we 'celebrate' a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span according to the 2005 issue of the revered scientific journal Psychological Reports," said Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York Christian Coalition.

The journal regularly publishes articles described by many mainstream psychologists as misleading and faulty. The homosexuality morbidity study was conducted by the conservative anti-gay Family Research Institute.

*YAWN*

When will they get tired of being horrible bigots? It's so last century.

Hell Hath Frozen Over?

GOP Congressman Wants Troops Out of Iraq

A Republican congressman who voted for the Iraq war said Sunday that "we've done about as much as we can do" in the country and that the reason for invading Iraq has proven false.

Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina will be among the lawmakers introducing legislation this week calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq.

"When I look at the number of men and women who have been killed — it's almost 1,700 now, in addition to close to 12,000 have been severely wounded — and I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there," Jones said on ABC's "This Week."

Well hot DAMN! Someone in the GOP has some sense! Will Republicans call him a flip-flopper? He voted for it before he was against it, you know! Will they toss his ass out of the GOP for not towing the company line, as they say?

What say you, Republicans?