skippy the bush kangaroo

to the tune of "gary, indiana" from "the music man"...

garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
pseudononymous is out

garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
that is what she's all about

if you'd like to have a logical explanation
why she favors blogs with government regulation
we could hide behind unknown identification
she might think it crass
she can kiss our ass

garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
not bill shakespeare, goethe, menken, stein, twain, or camus

but garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
garance franke ruta
we say ...who???

holden at first draft thinks joe-mentum liberman is getting nervous with ned lamont nipping at his heels...he's suddenly sounding like a democrat!

john, over at a lie a day, follows his grandmother's advice upon the deaths of casper weinberger and lyn nozfiger.

we are pleased as a platypus to add the very funny and fine just ain't right to our permanent blogroll. helen wheels, who writes it, also contributes to little green fascists, and suggests we visit her sister blog, betty jo's white world.

and now, we are full of mixed emotions as we announce that we have deleted three blogs from our roll. we shan't tell you which ones, but we have a policy here at skippy international to list only blogs that link back to us.

these three blogs, very large, established, important blogs, at one time (we thought) did link to us. they no longer do. even worse, when we wrote emails asking them why skippy was no longer on their blogrolls, 2 of the 3 didn't even bother to write back. the bastards! (and, in one case, the bitches!)

if these blogwriters change their minds and decide to put us on their rolls, we'll be happy to reinstate them on ours. but, much like garance franke ruta, we have made an arbitrary decision based less on content and more on our own ego. of course, this means we won't be linking to the federalist papers, either, or garance franke ruta, for that matter, but rules is rules.

we now return you to our regularly scheduled blogging.

nyeve's dkos diary documents her encounter with a pharmacy cashier when she went to buy her mother's lipitor:

in response to la's gigantic protest march last weekend, linkmeister quotes woody guthrie.

I suspect we all know the answer to No. 5.

the national debt clock keeps on ticking while our country's future keeps on taking a licking....

the national debt clock, as it is known, is a big clock. a spot-check last week showed a readout of 8.3 trillion -- or more precisely 8,310,200,545,702 -- dollars ... and counting.

but it's not big enough.

sometime in the next two years, the total amount of us government borrowing is going to break through the 10-trillion-dollar mark and, lacking space for the extra digit such a figure would require, the clock is in danger of running itself into obsolescence. - afp

those who enter the country illegally and take jobs caring for our society shunned elderly and disabled, cleaning homes and offices, picking and harvesting our food, slicing, sauteing and serving famished foodies, caring and nurturing the kids of the well to do but don't want to do it's.....all the while paying their taxes?

or...

those who only work hard illegally hiding their money offshore so it won't be used to give u.s. soldiers body armor and healthcare?

a former kpmg llp tax partner pleaded guilty monday, saying he helped wealthy investors dodge millions of dollars in taxes with fraudulent documents, sham companies and phony tax shelters.

...he was among 19 defendants charged with conspiracy last year in a tax scheme that the government alleges helped affluent kpmg clients escape $2.5 billion in taxes.- ap

who really are the ones "taking" from our country?

country star, honky tonk legend and entrepeneur buck owens died on saturday at the age of 76.

buck, co-host of 'hee haw,' and singer of 'act naturally,' was performing onstage at his nightclub, the crystal palace in bakersfield, california, just hours before his death, sez the latimes:

mr. and mrs. skippy had the pleasure of seeing buck perform at the crystal palace more than once, as it was one of their favorite spots to commemorate their anniversay. buck would encourage the audience to send up to the stage notes telling who was celebrating what, and he would give everyone a shout-out during the show.

the skippy's were pleased when buck used their 20th anniversary as a straight line for a joke, something along the lines of marriage being longer and more boring than the show that night.

the shows that the skippy's saw were never bad...buck owens and the buckaroos always gave their best, and the audiences were always up on their feet, dancing along with one of the greatest country singers ever to strum a pedal guitair.

thanks for all the great music, buckaroo.

to antagony & ecstasy and a brooklyn bridge.

how do we know that garance franke rupta is her real name?

stephanie mcmillan's recent minimum security comic with bill napoli's home phone numbers has been getting so much attention lately, that stephanie is auctioning off the original drawing on ebay. she will donate half the proceeds to the planned parenthood organizations of minnesota, and north and dakota, and the other half to the oglala sioux indian tribe (which promises to open a women's health clinic on their sovereign land).

when you lie and cheat while investigating liars and cheats?

the turnaround expert who led enron corp. through its bankruptcy engaged in unacceptable billing practices and has agreed to cut in half the $25 million he has been seeking as a "success fee," the justice department said monday. - ap

listening to the ed schultz show at lunch today, he had a caller who called up and said that he had some friends who worked at the irs in a certain section that dealt with quarterly business returns and that they specifically tracked illegal usage of social security numbers. these folks alerted businesses to " bad ss numbers" and gave them a certain period of time to resolve the issues.

according to the caller, during the clinton administration these folks found hundreds of thousands of bad ss numbers and were doing a good job of tracking down folks using them. and, also, according to the caller, the u.s. chamber of commerce asked the bush administration to dismantle this "group" because it didn't want businesses to be in the "policing" business.

anyone hear this show and heard of this group of irs agents?

julia, elayne, gavin, and a host of others are announcing the release of and they cook, too, a cookbook of favorite recipes by your favorite bloggers, benefitting doctors without borders.

we wonder if they include recipes for humble pie and crow, something the other side should be eating right about now.

bob fertik and david swanson send us this piece from impeachpac detailing the various cities that have passed impeachment resolutions.

ava at peace takes courage links us to their new animation 3 years.

red state has issued a formal "goodbye, mr. cheats" for dommie darko...apparently he will spend some time to "wander in the wilderness" for a while, "as he rightly should":

[ed. note: you wish! ]

[ed. note: or, you'll find an opportunistic shallow-thinking son of a crony too lazy to do his own work. you decide]

[ed. note: this one is shooting fish in a barrel. insert your own joke here]

[ed. note: also, ignoring reality]

[ed. note: cue the music: when you walk, through a storm, keep your head up high...]

[ed. note:wow. how often do you hear about someone getting fired from a blog?]

[ed. note: aside from the fact that it's no longer a charge, but an admitted crime of ethics, that's rather like saying, "putting aside the whole raping and pillaging thing, genghis kahn was a pretty decent chap."]

[ed. note: oh, we see, "coretta scott king was a communist" makes fun of communists, not negros!]

[ed. note: yeh, "his father was a bush appointee, who liaisoned with jack abramoff." that is obscene...]

[ed. note: first we've heard of it, but we'll happily pass it on. did you know dommie darko had a cocaine addiction?]

[ed. note: huh??]

[ed. note: if he was a real conservative, we wouldn't have a problem with him. it's the chickenhawk plagarist thing that got us.]

[ed. note: here's one: how about, the constitution?]

[ed. note: f*ck you!]

addendum: the nytimes says pj o'roarke denies he ever gave dommie permission to use his words under dommie's byline:

we're grateful to get hits from any source, but following one link back this morning, we came upon the gateway pundit, who tried to prove that lara logan's piece on realiable sources yesterday was not trustworthy, because she implied that there was a quagmire, when in fact, there were only 4 deaths:

we read gateway pundit's piece, and wondered aloud to ourselves, where did lara make the statement that dead american soldiers are the watermark defining a quagmire? in fact, reading through the transcript, we tried to find where lara used the word quagmire in the first place? uh, the answer is...nowhere. she said "who says things aren't falling apart in iraq?"

[ed. note: apparently gateway pundit says, as well as strategy page]

our point is that gateway set up a strawman, ascribing a point to lara that she didn't make or even imply, and then tore it down. what lara did say was:

[emphasis ours]

that situation, we believe, is what lara was talking about when she said "who said things weren't falling apart in iraq?" this, along with 40 dead today by suicide bomber, 69 dead yesterday, a cache of headless bodies found north of baghdad, etc. etc. etc. is what lara was referring to.

it's fine to try to make the case that things aren't falling apart in iraq. but to aruge the validity of only one reason, when the original statement included several different points of why things are going badly, is incomplete at best, and disengenuous, at worst.

one other note about gateway pundit's piece: we ourselves checked the icasualty site to find the 4 dead soldiers that the pundit insists does not make a quagmire, and found something interesting. there were not 4 casualties, but 7.

there was no week in march, no matter how you configure it (even with artificial parameters, ie, tuesday through tuesday) in which there were 4 or fewer american casualites.

this is not a big point, but we relish the irony that the hardly-ever-right wing makes something as simple as a counting error in their attempt to discredit lara logan's reporting.

that, along with the newly-minted neocon meme accusing reporters of working "on a balcony" (hey, guys, if a reporting working on a balcony in baghdad is cowardly, don't you find it telling that you're on a whole different continent?) undermines the whole premise.

in other words, if your piece has the headline that says someone else made a blunder in reporting, don't make a blunder in reporting.

addendum: we didn't even notice this one till our 8th or 9th reading of this post. gateway pundit starts out by saying

except, gp, lara works for cbs. tell us again about how she blunders?

their teeth may be crooked....but americans' teeth are simply falling out due to lack of dental attention.

from the chicago tribune:

dental care for the needy remains painfully scarce in the chicago area, leaving tens of thousands of people with untreated cavities, toothaches and bleeding gums.

the ailments are distressing in themselves, but research also has linked them to serious conditions such as heart disease and premature birth, and they can worsen the effects of diabetes.

...stroger hospital, the centerpiece of the county's system, gets 7,000 calls a month from people who want to see a dentist, but its clinic has only 777 monthly appointments, he said. even then, in-demand services such as dentures simply aren't available.

of 24 community-based health clinics run by the county in chicago and its suburbs, eight offer dental care. finding community resources for patients is "extremely hard," thomas said.

the outlook isn't any better with the city's public health system: just two medical clinics offer general adult dental services, in englewood and on the lower west side.

hey...but we've got the best medical care in the world they tell us. But, apparently, it's just for those who can afford it.

the "mainstream u.s. media" finally gets a clue about the downing street memos....

but behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. during a private two-hour meeting in the oval office on jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to prime minister tony blair of britain that he was determined to invade iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by mr. blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by the new york times.

"our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," david manning, mr. blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between mr. bush, mr. blair and six of their top aides. - nytimes 27 march 2006

c reported on his recent talks in washington. there was a perceptible shift in attitude. military action was now seen as inevitable. bush wanted to remove saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and wmd. but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. the nsc had no patience with the un route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the iraqi regime's record. there was little discussion in washington of the aftermath after military action. - the times online - 1 may 2005

now if we could get awol to go sleep with someone other than laura so that politicians and the american public will pay attention.

the koufax awards voting closes tonight.

since we don't have a 'roo in this fight, we don't endorse any of the nominees, as they are all fine writers of fine blogs.

not as fine as ours, but, who said life was fair?

we will tell you that we ourselves voted for talkleft in the single issue blog category, and we have had lunch with jane hamsher of firedoglake, but beyond that, we have no preference.

we're going to sit in the corner and pout now. don't mind us. it's not like we coined any phrases or anything.

to little thom's blog.

fdl informs us of two great segments we missed on tv today (because we chose to go see "find me guilty" with vin diesel. vin's a nice guy but he hogged the popcorn).

first, fdl informs us we missed markos moulitsas on reliable sources discussing our role (in the broadest sense of the word "our," meaning all of the left side of blogtopia*; that is to say, skippy had only a little to do with it) in l'affaire dommie darko.

secondly, on the same program, cbs reporter lara logan "kicks some kurtz bootay," as fdl puts it, on the subject of why the media doesn't report "good news" from iraq.

our good blog buddy john has both segments up at c&l;: here's kos and here's lara.

*and yes, we coined that phrase...

to loci5.

our letter to the editors of the albuquerque tribune concerning their editorial stop impeach talk, dems, and just win:

it's easy to do!

it's even being discussed in the washpost!

via the agonist, brattleboro becomes the 6th vermont town to pass an impeachment resolution.

or roughly the entire population of the city of cleveland, ohio, (the 33rd most populace city in the country) shows up in downtown los angeles to show support of immigrant's rights.

apparently the u.s. army has a few jobs that u.s. citizens won't do, either. think this administration wants to trade citizenship for live bodies for their little "wars for pleasure?"

cecilia fire thunder of the oglala sioux tribe of south dakota.

meet little antonio and little ed.

to the highest bidder from the arab world.

livers, sans the onions, are on the bidding block, too....

st. vincent conceded in september that its doctors had improperly arranged for a liver transplant to a saudi national, bypassing 50 people on a regional waiting list whose conditions were more dire, and that hospital staff falsified records to hide the arrangement. the saudi embassy paid $339,000 for the operation, as much as 30% more than the hospital would have received from the government or insurance. - latte times

tom burka nails it:

in major white house shakeup, bush to replace rove and cheney with rove and cheney

to gideon starorewski and one man's opinion.