It's becoming more and more a Shakespearean Tragedy on a scale that was unimaginable at the end of the 90's. For all the AWCB's who sent this idiot to the pinnacle of American Power, here's a headline for you:

U.S. toll in Iraq matches highest monthly level

At least 135 Americans killed in November, military says

Since U.S. forces invaded Fallujah on Nov. 8 to regain control, they have found about a dozen IED “factories,” a number of vehicles being modified to serve as car bombs, and at least 10 surface-to-air missiles capable of downing aircraft, Whitman said.
...
Whitman said other discoveries in Fallujah include:

* Plastic explosives and TNT.
* A hand-held Global Positioning System receiver for use in navigation.
* Makeshift shoulder-fired rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenades, 122mm rockets and thousands of mortar rounds.
* An anti-aircraft artillery gun.
* More than 200 major weapons storage areas.

Believing that Fallujah is an endpoint for insurgency is the same fantasy-land imagineering that believing ignoring Osaman bin Forgotten will make Al-Qaeda disappear. For every Iraqi we harm wheter they meant our troops harm or no, we are incurring blood-debts in a country where that means something. If there is no consensus that the "elections" in January are representative of the will of the Iraqi's and not for the placement of a puppet government (and I give that a real small possibility), then it's truly going to be Vietnam II, in spades.

Juan Cole has an excellent commentary about this up today, and if you haven't checked it out, make it a stop before hitting the rack tonight.

With his usual clarity and prescience (remember how he was soooo convinced about Iraq?), Der Duchess proclaims:

I cannot see how Iran will be prevented from becoming a nuclear power short of military action.

OK, Andrew, I've now done your blog for you for about a year...go on out and start earning some money to pay off those back taxes on the beach house. After all, I'd be sad if the beagle was homeless.

Having never fought in a war that they couldn't send someone else's kids to, the NeoCons have to be just having Wargasms over this:

The International Atomic Energy Agency praised Iran yesterday for suspending its uranium-enrichment work and removed an immediate threat of sanctions against the Islamic republic, which built its program in secret over 18 years.

The IAEA resolution endorses an agreement Iran struck with Britain, France and Germany two weeks ago to suspend its nuclear activity in exchange for assurances that it will not be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
...
The White House, convinced that Iran's true intention is to build nuclear weapons, has been skeptical of the new diplomatic track that led to Iran's current suspension deal. But it is taking a wait-and-see approach, U.S. officials said, convinced the negotiations will fall apart within months.
...
For two years, the White House has pushed for tougher diplomatic moves against a country that President Bush once said was a member of an "axis of evil," along with North Korea and Iraq.

If there's anyone out there who believes that the 1600 Crew is not just looking for an excuse to launch a "preemptive" strike against Tehran, I have a bridge for sale. After all, remember those NeoCons...they never met a war they wouldn't fight as long as they don't have to go. For real.

Miss me? Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. It's good to be back and in the saddle so to speak. I am still working with the web designer on the other site. My partner has gone kind of silent, so I have been trying to pick up for both of us.

Now, back to snarking....

As other countries recruit high-caliber scientific talent due to the dim-wits running INS, and have populations more interested in science than science controversy, look for whole areas of our technological leadership to erode under the watchful eye of the 1600 Crew and it's special rightwing branch of theological morons.

In a referendum on Sunday, Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a law that allows medical research on stem cells taken from human embryos but bars cloning. Other European countries have adopted more liberal laws.

Low IQ Americans hard at work making us all look good overseas.

Embassy folks can be some of the most idiotic government employees around. When I was stationed overseas, one of my troops fell in love with another sailor of the opposite-sex variety and wanted to get married. Since he had no birth certificate, the embassy would not allow him to get married in country, despite the Top Secret Background Investigation paperwork I took up to them on his behalf. They needed a birth certificate. He and his fiancee got a MAC flight to Travis, got married at the Base Chapel, took a week's leave in the states and came back. Thanks to all our friends at State for realizing we all fly the same flag outside our offices. Assholes.

Our good friends, the Pakistanis, who are about one coup away from becoming a virulently anti-US Islamofascist state have just successfully launched a short-range nuclear-capable ICBM.

The Pakistani military says it successfully test-fired a nuclear capable ballistic missile Monday.

A military statement said the surface-to-surface Ghaznavi missile of the Hatf series has a range of 290 kilometers. It said the test-firing was a part of a planned series of tests designed to further refine Pakistan's missile systems.

Looks like Preznit Dangerous Pretzel has nominated a new guy for the non-Job of the cabinet: Commerce Secretary (did Don Evans actually do anything?)

If confirmed by the Senate, Gutierrez would succeed Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a Texas confidant of Bush's, who announced his resignation shortly after the Nov. 2 election. The president announced his selection at the White House, calling Gutierrez "a visionary executive" and "one of America's most respected business leaders."
...
"He learned English from a bellhop at a Miami hotel," President Bush said in introducing Gutierrez at the White House. "Carlos will now carry on the work of a distinguished leader, Commerce Secretary Don Evans," the president said.

Is anyone out there hearing the faint echo of Chickenhawk wardrums again?

Iran escaped U.N. censure over its nuclear program but Washington, which accuses it of seeking an atomic bomb, said on Monday it reserved the right to take the case to the Security Council on its own.
...
A spokesman for U.S. President George W. Bush said: "The implementation and verification of the agreement is critical."

"Iran has failed to comply with its commitments many times over the course of the past year and a half."

Draft, anyone?

Looks like the Supremes are going to have another chance to piss all over their valued assertion of "States Rights" (the last stream of urine flowing, of course, on Bush v. Gore). Will the desire of the actual citizens of states be able to be trump the feds insane desire to keep medical marijuana out of the hands of those who need it?

Local sheriff's deputies and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents disagreed when they converged on Diane Monson's house in Oroville, Calif., two years ago.

The county cops accepted Monson's explanation for growing six marijuana plants: She had a doctor's permission to smoke it for back pain, so the pot was legal under the state's 1996 "medical marijuana" law.

Well the 1600 Crew is out to drive the nails into what's left of the New Deal. Doctrinaire AWCB's have always hated the New Deal and FDR. You'd think after 70 years they'd get over it. Some hatred just transcends generations, I guess.

President Bush plans to overhaul his economic team for the second time in two years and wants to tap some prominent replacements from outside the administration to help sell rewrites of Social Security and the tax laws to Congress and the country, White House aides and advisers said over the weekend.
...
One senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow can stay as long as he wants, provided it is not very long.

The federally-mandated robbery that's going to occur if this "privatization" is enacted will make the S&L; bailouts of the 80's look like play-money. Think of the old pictures of men and women in soup lines and that depression-era caricature of a person with a tin-cup and an apple stand. Then think of your grandchildren living that scenario. Scary isn't it?

OK, so does Moses come to graduation? Or do new grads study for the Bar Exam in the Sinai? Forty days and all that?

What Debra Meador read disturbed her. It didn't seem right that schoolchildren were once barred from holding prayer groups after class. Or that the Ten Commandments couldn't be displayed in a government building.

So at 34, the human relations specialist from Lynchburg made good on a longtime interest by enrolling in law school. But unlike most prospective lawyers, she applied to only one place.

"I wanted to take it in a Christian setting," said Meador, a member of the inaugural law class at Liberty University, a Baptist college founded here in 1971 by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. "I don't believe anyone could be neutral. We're willing to tell you what we believe and to follow that."

By the Hairy Thunderer, it's getting weird out there.

Sorry for the light posting the last few days. I have been working on the new site, and working at the j-o-b. I'll do better, I promise. I may or may not be near any internet access Wed to Sunday coming up...Mrs. Fish is taking us away for the holidays...but I'll try and be a better correspondant.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled snarkus territorialus...

It's not really that big a thing with anyone in the SCLM, because it requires both actual thinking, and a small grasp of mathematics, but what the dollar is doing overseas is something to watch. It's sort of the "stealth" National Security monster, it's got about all the sex appeal of the midwatch in a Top Gun movie, so you never see it. But Preznit Economic Disaster could very well be not only spending out grandchildren's inheritance, but damaging our National Security in ways so far under the radar no one is watching.

The dollar slid back toward last week's record low against the euro on Monday after a weekend meeting of world finance chiefs ended with no agreement to stem the greenback's decline.

G20 policymakers made no mention of the dollar's slide in a communique issued at the end of their meeting in Berlin, reinforcing the view that major nations have accepted the need for a weaker dollar to correct the United States' trade gap.
...
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Saturday the euro's rise was "worrying" and blamed the United States for not addressing its budget and current account deficits.

Following Schroeder's critique, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said his country was committed to cutting its record budget deficit in half over the next four years. But in a swipe back at Europe, he said all countries were responsible for boosting growth and correcting trade imbalances.

It's the set-up. My guess: the 1600 Crew are getting the SCLM onboard by getting them to print stories about manning levels in Iraq.

Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq say it is increasingly likely they will need a further increase in combat forces to put down remaining areas of resistance in the country.
...
But the forces available for these intensified operations have become limited by the demands of securing Fallujah and overseeing the massive reconstruction effort there -- demands that senior U.S. military officers say are likely to tie up a substantial number of Marines and Army troops for weeks.
...
With some fresh U.S. forces already arriving in Iraq as part of a long-scheduled rotation, and two newly trained Iraqi brigades due to start operating next month, U.S. military leaders had hoped to avoid further increases.

But over the past week, a closer assessment of the forces needed for the Fallujah recovery effort and future offensive operations revealed a gap in desired troop strength, at least over the next two or three months, according to several officers familiar with the issue.

I solemly promise that if I get to be on the local draft board to give due consideration to all deferment applications from the local republican junior gentry. Not. After all, they're all of the warrior tradition, right? As long as the warriors are from another family...

Ever one to be looking for the leftie dragon to slay now that the Angry White Christian Bigots have all but cast him and his Milky Load from the Temple, the Duchess seeks for ways to sort-of-ingratiate himself with his former masters.

...But it's inconceivable that he would have given so much power and authority to a black female peer. Why does Bush get no respect on this score? I guess it reveals that much of the left's diversity mania is about the upholding of a certain political ideology, rather than ethnic or gender variety itself.

All this is beside the fact that had the Big Dog appointed an black female to the position, Sullivan would have had the next issue of TNR after the appointment bearing a cover with a picture captioned "Pander Bear" with Bill Clinton's face morphed into that of a panda at the National Zoo.

Being totally incompetant. Remember a country called Afghanistan? The one we went and invaded with you know, actual justification. The one where there was virtually no dissent from anyone on the war waged there? That place. The one that the 1600 Crew tried to starve of reconstruction funds. The place where the 1600 Crew allowed Osama bin Forgotten to haul ass and thumb his nose at Preznit Kissin' Condi.

Remember all that vaunted Democracy? Well, as in all things it touches, the 1600 Crew is managing to do what Fearless Leader does best: Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.

Heroin production is booming in Afghanistan, undermining democracy and putting money in the coffers of terrorists, according to a U.N. report Thursday that called on U.S. and NATO-led forces get more involved in fighting drug traffickers.

``Fighting narcotics is equivalent to fighting terrorism,'' said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. ``It would be an historical error to abandon Afghanistan to opium, right after we reclaimed it from the Taliban and al-Qaida.''
...
Opium is the ``main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples,'' the report said. It valued the trade at $2.8 billion, or more than 60 percent of Afghanistan's 2003 gross domestic product.

Most is smuggled across the eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida remnants demand transit and protection fees, Costa told reporters.

I read this story first on-line, I can't remember where (it was the NYT), and this caught my eye:

Tensions are flaring between the Army and some of its veterans, who say they are surprised and confused about their obligations and unsure where to turn.

"I consider myself a civilian," said Rick Howell, a major from Tuscaloosa, Ala., who said he thought he had left the Army behind in 1997 after more than a decade flying helicopters. "I've done my time. I've got a brand new baby and a wife, and I haven't touched the controls of an aircraft in seven years. I'm 47 years old. How could they be calling me? How could they even want me?"

And I was thinking about applying to Medical School, which now might be in the really Bad Idea Category.

The Chickenhawk contingent doesn't seem to be able to figure out. And, judging by the fact that we now have over 1200 brave, dead American Servicemen and women in Iraq, it seems that the Chickenhawks will never be breaking the code.

Senior Marine intelligence officers in Iraq are warning that if American troop levels in the Falluja area are significantly reduced during reconstruction there, as has been planned, insurgents in the region will rebound from their defeat. The rebels could thwart the retraining of Iraqi security forces, intimidate the local population and derail elections set for January, the officers say.
...
The pessimistic analysis is contained in a seven-page classified report prepared by intelligence officers in the First Marine Expeditionary Force, or I MEF, last weekend as the offensive in Falluja was winding down. The assessment was distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq, where one officer called it "brutally honest."

I pity the fool who has to deliver this assessment to Bubble Boy. I doubt any one will...it's kind of like how the Generals treated Hitler...no one wanted to be the bearer of bad news, and so it is with the 1600 Crew, no one wants to tell Preznit Their Blood His Gutz that war is not a video game, and it's certainly tougher than raising incipient alcoholic party girls.

"The assessment of the enemy is a worst-case assessment," Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas III of the Army, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said of the Marine report in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "We have no intention of creating a vacuum and walking away from Falluja."

Oh, sorry. I got carried away, I was talking about the Angry White Christian Bigot Party, formerly known as the GOP. Let's see, when they're the minority they can scream about perceived injustice; when they drive an investigation to impeach a sitting president over a blow job since they're the sorest losers in history that's all OK. Now, they again want to win by changing the rules, indeed appear to have changed them to allow the BugMan to remain in the House Leadership if indicted.

House Republicans demonstrated their loyalty to Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Wednesday, changing a party rule that would have cost him his leadership post if he were indicted by a Texas grand jury that has charged three of his associates.

Did I mention that our old friend Ken Pollack has a book out? And that it's about [wait for it] ... IRAN!

The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday.
...
Iran has long been known to have a missile program, while denying that it was seeking a nuclear bomb. Powell seemed to be suggesting that efforts were underway, not previously disclosed, to arm missiles with nuclear warheads.

As the 1600 Crew begins to purge the CIA of "politically" unreliable (read: Democrats) employees in favor of folks who will happily confirm what ever intel the 1600 Crew wants confirmed, look for the quality of intel reaching actual decision-makers to be just slightly better than what could be gotten from a fortune-teller or the magic-8 ball in Crashcart's desk.

Mr. Goss has selected a covert officer who runs the agency's Counterterrorism Center to become the new chief of the clandestine service, known as the directorate of operations, the officials said. They declined to name the officer, a former chief of American espionage operations in Latin America, because he is still under cover. They said he had been chosen despite having been removed from the Latin American post in 1997 after a C.I.A. inspector general's report criticized him for "a remarkable lack of judgment.'' At the time, many at the C.I.A. considered his removal to be unwarranted.

So much for National Security, eh?

It's amazing isn't it that someone so "allegedly" famous and well known as the Duchess can be so myopic about reading the archives of the very blog she has penned, isn't it? Right before begging for money (and we suggest that if you were ever tempted to give to that horses ass, you donate here), Saint Andrew makes this statement...

I am openly gay because I am Catholic, because my faith teaches me not to be afraid of the truth, and requires me to speak up against injustice and cruelty.

They still believe we were wrong to remove Saddam from power without incontrovertible proof of WMDs of a type unobtainable in police states; they still believe America had no moral sanction for such an action; and they are even more determined to prove the superiority of their case now that the war was such a military success. So they have to turn the fallible evidence before the war into "lies"; and they have to turn the difficult but worthy post-war reconstruction into a "quagmire."

Not being content with just having the election over, Sherri Annis' husband and republican mouthpiece, has to again relate more scurrilous shit just to make all the little republi-clones feel validated in their selection.

But Chicago Tribune correspondent Jill Zuckman says: "A lot of these things just don't happen in plain view of reporters. And few people within the campaign were willing or able to discuss the state of the candidate's marriage. The only thing that was apparent was that Senator Kerry's wife tended to put crowds to sleep while speaking, and I think that was captured in the profiles written about her."

As the rats desert the ship, the latest one to head for the land of six-figure speaking and seven-figure lobbying fees is Colin "A Man of No Integrity" Powell. Word has it that he'll be replaced by Buh-Wheat in Drag...Preznit Pootie Tang's real wife, National Security Mis-Advisor and Chevron Board Member Condi "Shoop Shoop..it's in the way he kisses" Rice. Everytime I see Kinda-Lying Rice, I wish I had the concession on whatever it is that she puts on her hair.

Once I wondered what Powell would do when he left the 1600 Crew. After all, he got his woefully inadequate son a day-job, lied to the UN and the world, looked the other way as his boss lied, and lied and lied. Then I remember that he was the staff officer who investigated the My-Lai charges, albeit from the safety of his offices at MAC-V, and I know that he'll head off to live out his golden years untroubled by conscience. He gave that away sometime between Saigon and Washington DC, and it's been MIA ever since. Witness: the last four years and the Vietnam-like mess he is a prime architect of through wilful misdirection and deceit.

Colin Powell could renounce all his worldy possessions, take a vow of poverty and live the life of Mother Theresa, and he'd never atone for his performance over the last four years and his culpability for the Iraq War.

And then there's Michael.

Mark Kleiman has an interesting post about the use of the American Flag and it's meaning in politics. I can only hope that if there are many more years in Iraq, and certainly by 2008 his suggestions for using/wearing flags will be more in the sentiment of John Prine, than what he's (rightly) suggesting.

...
But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

Yeah, it's been a muzik kinda night so far...one of the only Chicago songs I can stand, "Dialog Pt 1 & 2" is playing on iTunes...

I was posting a comment with my patented lack'o'tact over at Steve Gilliard's place in his post on Lynne's Little Lesbian (or is that Dick's Deferment Daughter?). Anyhow, the jist of the post was this from AmericaBlog...the Mortal Majority is pissed because Dicks Deferment and her partner were up on the stage together at an "event" with Dick. Seems that the the Christo-Fascists who are expecting you know, payback are a little irate that not one, but two of them evil homerseckshewals was allowed up on the stage with the Consecrated-One In Waiting himself. The Assistant Consecrated One is not allowed, by the way to refer to himself as "not a good man".

Anyhow, as I was attempting snark at Gilliards place, it hit me. I think I have the theme song for the 1600 Crew. Disclaimer: I have never been a huge Stones fan, but one song of theirs has always sent shivers up my spine...Sympathy for The Devil. Think about the lyrics:

...
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
’cause I’m in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
...

Keep Your Jesus off My Penis (audio)

Now that Preznit Knows Candy is getting ready to add all the real wingnuts who hate America to his Coalition of Greedy for the No Lobbyist Left Behind Administration 2: Grand Theft Government....he's sending Rod "Teachers are Terrorists" Paige back to Texas. Check how the New Whore Times writes of Paige, a man who never met a statistic he couldn't pervert:

A Texan like Bush, Paige, 71, rose to prominence as an award-winning superintendent in Houston before becoming the nation's first black education secretary. He has been an outspoken defender of No Child Left Behind, the education law at the center of Bush's domestic agenda. emphasis added

Specifically, allegations that have been made about schools in Houston, Texas under the watch of superintendent Rod Paige, the man chosen by President Bush to be the Secretary of Education. Paige's focus on quantification of results became known as the "Houston Miracle." There was a dramatic decline in dropout rates and an increase in test scores.

But critics have alleged that these results that sound to good to be true were, in fact, completely fabricated. Houston schools claimed a dropout rate of 1.5% when in fact the actual dropout rate is estimated to have been higher than 50%. This incredible discrepancy, some critics say, was deliberately done through false student transfers and other means to cover up for students who had dropped out. Some former students were surprised to learn that they had been "transferred" to schools they had never even heard of before.

At the same time, test scores were directly manipulated through a sinister process that hurt the very kids the school system was supposed to be educating. The plan was simple: educators evaluated students potential to pass required standardized tests. Those who were judged as potentially failing the tests were reclassified as "special" and therefore, no longer required to take the tests. Only students who were predicted to achieve passing grades were allowed to participate. This scam was brought to light when parents became angry and questioned why their children were reclassified.

Thus, the "Houston Miracle" is now becoming known as another notorious example of "cooking the books" and the alleged architect behind it all has been chosen by our president to be the highest educator in our country.

And to Mr. Paiges credit, the one part of the NCLB most useful in upcoming years: the rule directing schools who want federal money to pony up lists with name and addresses of all student for yup, recruiters. Gee, and I thought "All-Volunteer" meant just that...

Fill in the blanks:

________ itself makes me want to puke. ________ propaganda, created by that pillar of sanctimony, ___ ____, is a highly elevated form of torture.

Happy Friday!!!

answer key Andrew's Blog; Wingnut; Andrew Sullivan

Whorie Kurtz aka Mr. Sherri Annis had a blerb in his Media Nutz column about John Kerry:

The New Republic wants him off the stage:

"He's back. Actually, he never even left. John Kerry, according to reports in The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, plans to have a prominent role in the Democratic Party. Apparently he's contemplating a political action committee and think-tank to help define the party's future. And, according to those around him, he's also considering another presidential run in 2008.

"Our reaction to this is . . . how to put it? Well, here goes: No. Please. Stop.
...
"Kerry's inner circle has come away from the election apparently convinced that he represents the aspirations of nearly half the country...

Charles Krauthammer, who has to be one of the more moronic examples of raving wingnuttery:

A myth was born. Explained the USA Today headline: "ANGRY WHITE MEN: Their votes turn the tide for GOP."
...
I ... found not a scintilla of evidence to support the claim. Nonetheless, it was a necessary invention, a way for the liberal elite to delegitimize a conservative victory.
...
Plus ca change ... Ten years and another stunning Democratic defeat later, and liberals are at it again. The Angry White Male has been transmuted into the Bigoted Christian Redneck.

Yeah, I thought that little leap of intuition might be beyond him...since it would involve looking in the mirror.

I love this. From the first headline I read about this, it seemed like Preznit Man-on-Dog and his Poodle were genning up more reasons to send troops off to achieve the ummm...unachievable? Preznit Not2Bright had the Poodle of Mass Distraction over for dinner and drinks and a good round of English Boarding School Derriere Hi-jinks and came up with this:

In a joint White House news conference three hours after Arafat was buried in the West Bank, the two leaders pledged renewed efforts to support the development of democratic institutions in the Palestinian territories and signaled that Middle East peace would be a top priority in Bush's second presidential term.
...
"We're committed to the success of these elections, and we stand ready to help," Bush said. "We look forward to working with a Palestinian leadership that is committed to fighting terror and committed to the cause of democratic reform." ...

In U.S. dealings with Palestinian leaders, "we'll hold their feet to the fire to make sure that democracy prevails," Bush said at another point in the news conference."

The president also said he plans to visit Europe as soon as possible after his Jan. 20 inauguration as he seeks to mend relations with allies and "deepen our trans-Atlantic ties" during his second term.

Hey, if he goes to Paris, maybe all the Frenchmen could scrape out some toe-cheese to donate for the state dinner...I'm sure that there would be no shortage of volunteers to provide food for the mission accomplie banquet!!

I don't need another week like this. Worked every night except one until 1am, which accounts for the lack of...blogging/snark/venting. I'm getting ready to crash and burn, because I have to go back in tomorrow. So thanks for checking back in...we now return to our regularly almost-scheduled-bad attitude.

Ah, how could I forget, the infamous "Attitude Check"... right up there with my short-timers chain (and/or calendar)...

And that's the tag that needs to get stuck in Alberto “Ghraib” Gonzales TODAY! Preznit NumbSkull'n'Boner:

Mr. Bush said he was confident that Mr. Gonzales would be "a steward of civil rights" as head of the Justice Department. He praised Mr. Ashcroft as "a superb public servant" and said Mr. Gonzales, whom he called a personal friend, would be a worthy successor.

Gonzales is responsible for hiding so many 1600 Crew secrets he's got a second career as a grave-digger one day. He's the one who started out his reign of error by penning the Executive Order banning the release of documents that were releaseable by law, to prevent all the dirt from Bush I and hence Iran-Contra, dealings with Iraq pre-Gulf War I, any and all Crashcart dirt...the list goes on. It really did not matter that Congress put the law on the books, it only took Abu Gonzales to write a directive ignoring a law...and now he's supposed to enforce them. Right.

...The nominee said he was committed to "justice for every American - on this principle, there can be no compromise."

I wonder how the zealous prosecution of Kenny-boy would be carried out with old Abu Gonzales in charge over at Justice...interesting how Democratic donor Martha Stewart made it to the lock-up so quickly, but the very thief, Kenny-boy (our boy Abu was deeply involved with Enron's law firm) is still jetting around the world, living the life of a free man while the investors and employees he butt-fucked (it's that Values Thing) are still wondering why they did not get a kiss in the morning.

Abu Gonzales Pass it on....

It comes as no surprise that the Chickenhawks live to hear the sounds of their own shreiks for war. Michael Ledeen, who should really really be riding around Iraq in a semi-well-armored Humvee, checking for IED's takes the cake again. From his Not-So-Greatest Hits:

I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue.
Michael Ledeen
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

...They are right, and I hope the president agrees with them. I also hope that he knows it is a mistake — a potentially enormous mistake — to look at Iraq as a thing in itself instead of one battle in a far larger war. We will never have security in Iraq so long as fanatics rule in Tehran, Riyadh, and Damascus.

And then let's turn to his incredible NeoCon powers of prescience:

Just as political considerations (mostly Tony Blair's, not ours) delayed the liberation of Iraq beyond all rational measure — thereby enabling the terror masters to plan the Iraq strategy we have seen — so politics (driven by the Jerry Bremer and endorsed by the State Department and the National Security Council brain trust headed by the soon-to-depart Robert Blackwill) imposed the catastrophic withdrawal of the Marines from Fallujah last spring. I trust that nothing of the sort will happen this time, for each retreat only ensures more deaths and a more difficult and costly battle next time.

I wonder at what point after the invasion of either Iran or Syria, Ledeen will retire to a secluded ranch or something in a red state, and write "If they had only followed my fabulous, bold plan, then we would not be losing this War on Terror!". As he fixes another martini, and writes an op-ed about how the government is spending too much on Veterans benefits and a Middle-East War Memorial...things that are only making us more introspective and not celebrating our Warrior Culture.

Oh, wait...now I remember, Michael Ledeen, honor graduate of the George Armstrong Custer Military Academy. Yeah, that's it.

No surprise that the Post is flogging (yet again) a story about how the 1600 Crew went after the eeeevangelical christian vote. Almost up to or past the point of breaking the law (gasp!) it would seem.

As the presidential race was heating up in June and July, a pair of leaked documents showed that the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign was urging Christian supporters to turn over their church directories and was seeking to identify "friendly congregations" in battleground states.

Those revelations produced a flurry of accusations that the Bush campaign was leading churches to violate laws against partisan activities by tax-exempt organizations, and even some of the White House's closest religious allies said the campaign had gone too far.

Just a thought: if there's a "friendly congregation" in a non-battleground state, would it be true that Preznit Village Idiot was not interested in them? In fact, probably could give a shit about them at all? Seems likely.

Seems that there's a judge who believes that our criminal justice system is made for well, justice. He's ruled that the "military tribunals" that the Crawford Cowboy blathered on and on about are not compliant with the Geneva Conventions, that slight technicality that has thus far kept the Chickenhawk Commandos from summarily gut-shooting "detainees" captured in battle that they don't like and then leaving them to die.

The special trials established to determine the guilt or innocence of prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are unlawful and cannot continue in their current form, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

In a setback for the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge James Robertson found that detainees at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions and therefore entitled to the protections of international and military law -- which the government has declined to grant them.
...
Human rights advocates, foreign governments and the detainees' attorneys have contended that the rules governing military commissions are unfairly stacked against the defendants. But Robertson's ruling is the first by a federal judge to assert that the commissions, which took nearly two years to get underway, are invalid.

The Bush administration denounced the ruling as wrongly giving special rights to terrorists and announced that it will ask a higher court for an emergency stay and reversal of Robertson's decision. Military officers at Guantanamo immediately halted commission proceedings in light of the ruling.

"We vigorously disagree. . . . The judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war," said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. "The Constitution entrusts to the president the responsibility to safeguard the nation's security. The Department of Justice will continue to defend the president's ability and authority under the Constitution to fulfill that duty."

Just remember that my friends...if they determine you are a "terrorist" (by some means they don't have to disclose) a fair and speedy trial is a "special right".

Not one to face the real scorn of the people he's governing, Preznit Dances With Chickenhawks is moving most of the US Law Enforcement community into Washington for the coronation inauguration ceremony in January.

An unprecedented level of security will frame President Bush's second inauguration, with officials planning to use thousands of police officers from across the country, new screening technology for guests at the inaugural and a military contingent that could include a combat brigade of as many as 4,000 troops.

Security is always tight on Inauguration Day, but it will be magnified for the first inauguration since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Law enforcement officials have been preparing for months to protect U.S. and world leaders and citizens who attend.

Organizers are planning a traditional inauguration capped by a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and the usual evening balls. As tens of thousands come to Washington to watch the Jan. 20 swearing in, the city will be filled with military personnel, FBI agents in full SWAT outfitting, snipers on rooftops and scores of bomb-detecting dogs.

Gosh, I feel safer already, don't you? Oh, and those 4,000 troops, are they just returning from or on their way to the Mess in Mesopotamia? If Presidentissmo Arbusto shows up wearing a splendidly bemedaled uniform, a weird hat and mirror aviator shades for the inauguration, my take: we're well and truly fucked.

A while back I ruminated about the possibility of all of us oldies (but goodies) being called back to become cogs in the Eternal War machine...we know how to march (well, some of you anyhow, I was in the Navy after all), we know how to salute, and we know how to get shit-faced at the club on Friday night. Seems that Auntie Donnie and the Dancing Neocons want to give us that opportunity all over again.

David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua'i resident has married, started an auto window tinting business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.

David Miyasato is suing the Secretary of the Army for recalling him to active duty. He had been told to report to a South Carolina facility.

But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.

So, with that in mind...is your discharge from the reserves framed and hanging on your I-Love-Me wall? Looks like it better be...draft? What Draft?

A quick update on the new site, and an abject apology for not getting any posts done over the last couple of days.

We (my partner in crime and I) have been working on getting the new site up and running. We're waiting to hear from a designer or two I have contacted to get this finished. We have the site, Moveable Type is installed, now all we need are a few finishing touches.

Here's the general outline: It's going to be a site dedicated to making resource available for local and state-level organizing and activity. I think that's where we have to start rebuilding. If any organization we build can have an impact on elections, especially at the so-called "grassroots" level, then we can begin to have an impact on more regional and national issues.

Our vision for the site has two parts, one a blog but with a difference; it will hopefully be a clearinghouse of ideas/materials/resources for folks out there in the field. If you have forms/lists/templates anything that might be useful and "transferrable" to someone else, leave it on the site, there will be place to put materials like that. There will be areas for open discussion of what works/worked etc... for everyone to share. Especially, share your sucess (and conversely failure) stories. We can all learn from both.

The second part will involve a discussion forum, not unlike the old chat boards/forums we all remember so fondly. My main concern there is security for those leaving messages/posts. I don't want to turn it into Freeper bait.

Ambitious? Absolutely. But we're going to make a difference, one local election at a time. As our neighbors see us as being as "normal" (whatever that means) as they are, they're going to be less likely to buy into the vilification of the Democratic party and Democrats as folks who are against what they think they're for.

Anyhow, that's where it stands. If some of you want to be "guest bloggers" over there, let me know. Ideally, I'd like to see something along the lines of PolState...someone or six people representing each state. The more, the merrier.

If you have ideas/suggestions/comments leave them in the comments or send me an e-mail. My partner and I are excited to see this move forward, but it'll go nowhere without participation. On to Victory!

I appreciate everyone who has visited, and everyone who has left a comment in the previous post. Keep 'em coming. I have begun a project for all of us, that I'll be ready to announce in the next day or two. I think it'll be something that will help us get started.

There were a lot of outstanding comments and kind words in that post, here's one that I wanted to share with you from reader Paul:

Jo,

Here's where to start:

Do you have children? What is thier history or science books saying? When they bring home thier text books check them out! Is creationism being taught as science? Is the civil rights movement being covered? What is your childs curriculum? What are they being taught in school? Is the school teaching the kind of progressive values you and I beleive in!?

Attend zoning and planning board meetings are thier plans for an unwanted developement in your community? Are boards taking adquate care to ensure that the environment is being protected? Familarize yourself with with your local zoning ordinance. Does it cover issues such as landscaping, handicap parking, traffic safety?

Attend your council meetings, ask about your local budget, is your community adquately funding programs for the elderly, recreation, and public saftey, is your local health department funded to fullfill it's obligations to protect the communities health? What companies is your community doing business with? Are they paying a living wage? Are they hiring minorities? Do they take measures protect the environment? Learn about the people making decisions for your community!!!

How and where do you get your water? Are the proper safeguards being used to protect your water supply?

What kinds of industries are in community?

Does your community have a recycling program? Why not? Is it being enforced? If not why?

Find out who the chairperson is of your local Democratic party is? Ask if they meet? If not why? Offer to help organize a meeting (nothing attracts people like a couple of pitchers of beer, I've done it and seen it!)!!!

Read your local paper!!! Take all your progressive ideal and apply them to your community.

Posted by Paul at November 4, 2004 10:55 AM

And yes, we need everyone, Chief. I'm proud to see the number of folks who are starting to respond to this. We need to be together, positive in our beliefs and goals. Just because the republicans handed us “Morning in Amerika”, there's no reason for us to have Mourning in America. Right?

And welcome to all the folks who dropped by from Daily War News. Come back again, we'ed love to have you join us!

It's 1964 for us. The republicans want to use their magic way-back machine to transport our society back to a mythical “Happy Days” past. I think it stopped in 1964, and tossed out the Democrats, we're not welcome in Utopia. It's not a Utopia that would make me too happy anyhow.

I want to rant, cry, vent. Maybe I will. But first I want to talk. I want to talk about how we lost. I want to begin a dialog about how we can win.

The republicans successfully defined us as the party that's anti-God because we don't want a theocratic state, where a woman has no choice and prayer is best left at the door of a public school classroom, not in it. They defined us as anti-Gun because we don't want to see police officers assasinated in the streets with assault weapons loaded with armor piercing ammunition. They defined us as faggot-loving liberals because we believe that everyone has a place in America.

We have been defined as people we know we're not.

Many of you are my fellow veterans, brothers and sisters who understand the value of leadership, and the value of following. Perhaps it's time the folks in this community stepped up and used what our Uncle taught us, how to lead, to show that we can be disciplined thinkers, movers and shakers who can begin the dialog, the introspection and take the first steps to serving the country we love one more time.

Some time back, someone posted somewhere, that the Democratic "consultants" worked and got paid a percentage for the ads they placed on behalf of their campaign; the republican consultants worked for their party and their beliefs. Perhaps that was a difference in their performance, they were looking out for their message, not their bank accounts.

This is not about veterans running the show. This is about our community being in the front line, being the ones to be the first to stand up, shake it off, and begin the long road back. We need everyone. We need focus. We need ideas.

Bring someone in. I don't have all the answers, but if we begin talking perhaps we will begin the process of catharsis and discovery we need. If you have a post to put up here, I'll post it for you, or if you want a login, we'll arrange that too. We have stood on the walls, walked dark posts, stood the midwatch. We understand patience. We know sacrifice. Let's find each other and others and begin to lead.

Study. Time. Patience. Work. Let's start there, and lead our party and country again. I'm not trying to be arrogant. I'm not trying to be the HMFIC, I'm just trying not to scream and I want to start the dialog and the work to regain our country.

If what I just heard on CNN is true (and it comes via Aaron Brown) from the Ohio Secretary of State, Blackwell, there are upwards of 250,000 provisional ballots to be counted over the next 11 or so days. If that's true, and Kerry does well (as I expect) in IA, MN, WI, MI then it could be the narrowest of victories. Toss in NV and it might be ours. I go to bed hoping....

[edited]

From CNN via Kos:

Ohio - African American precincts are performing at 106% what we expected, based on historical numbers. Hispanic precincts are at 144% what we expected. Precincts that went for Gore are turning out 8% higher then those that went Bush in 2000. Democratic base precincts are performing 15% higher than GOP base precincts.

Florida - Dem base precincts are performing 14% better than Bush base precincts. In precincts that went for Gore, they are doing 6% better than those that went for Bush. African American precincts at 109%, Hispanic precincts at 106%.

Pennsylvania - African American precincts at 102% of expectations, Hispanics at 136% of expectations. The Gore precincts are doing 4 percent better than bush precincts.

Michigan - Democratic base precincts are 8% better than GOP base states. Gore precincts are 5% better than Bush.

The Korner Kiddies have their collective panties all in a twist over the exit polls up at Kos and MyDD.

Jonah:

I know everyone's edgy. I know this is a tense time. The election's a big deal, blah, blah, blah. But none of it justifies some of the idiotic and nasty nonsense (a tiny minority of) you folks are hurling at me and/or us.

Do I sense freepi heads getting ready to explode?

The Duchess has taken the pledge. No, not the one against barebacking, this one:

After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn't vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

Oh, and she forgot her caveat: “Unless said president's last name is ever Clinton”, in which case she pledges to be the first into the gutter. Ain't she sweet?

PS:Sullivan might want to get an editor, or join Mark Steyn:

STEYN THREATENS TO QUIT: If Kerry wins today, Mark Steyn has said he won't wrote again for a while ...

I heard someone on a Millionaire Pundit show or was it C-SPAN say that if the 1600 Crew gets tossed, the hottest things inside the beltway will be Microsoft Word and Literary Agents. Everyone with “Access” will want to tell their story about how their advice was ignored on (a) The War in Iraq (2) The Economy (3) Getting Fearless Leader more, better information than he got from Cotton Condi, Auntie Donnie and Unka's Dick and Karl.

I suspect publishing houses will be opening the bidding on Wednesday morning.

Jeff Greenfield? Of all people. Said this?

Would you have wanted Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield in charge during the Cuban Missile crisis?

Yet another reason to avoid Wal-Mart. I don't mind them reporting the election...but Fox? Oh, come on. Well, on second thought, it's that whole demographic thing I guess.

So, I'm sitting out here on the Quad at the Electoral College, sipping my double skinny mocha latte, watching my puppy roll around on the lawn, and talking to all the hot young babes for Kerry who think the puppy is so cuuuute. When it comes to me:

Kerry: 285
The Other Guy: 253

The puppy told me. If you want to work out the numbers, check out the electoral calculator over at Kos...

Like many of you, I've been watching some of the Millionaire Pundits blather on about the election tomorrow. Some of them are actually starting to look and sound like they believe a sea change is coming.

It's been so long, and the tunnel has been so dark, that any light seems like the end. When the sun rises, and sets and rises once more, we'll see if democracy has indeed rewarded us with a new President and a new chapter for our country.

I feel like I'm about to take my first checkride tomorrow...nervous and excited and ready for almost anything. I've never tubed a checkride...so maybe that's a good feeling to have.

As the campaign closes in the next two days, this little gem just dropped out of the NY Times...I don't think it's much of bombshell, but had it been a page one story a week or two ago, it would certainly have provided an opening for the Dems on a facet of the health care issue.

Remember, Fearless Leader goes on and on and on ad nauseum about John Kerry wanting “Big Gubmint” to take over health care. Interestingly it seems, so do the bidnesses that support the republicans. It's good for the bottom line and makes Wall Street, that ultimate arbiter of social justice orgasmically happy.

In the national debate over what to do about the growing number of working people with little or no health insurance, no other company may be taking more heat than the country's largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores.
...
Now, Wal-Mart finds itself under attack for what critics see as its miserly approach to employee health care, which they say is forcing too many of its workers and their families into state insurance programs or making them rely on charity care by hospitals.

Wal-Mart vigorously defends its health care policies, saying it offers affordable coverage for all employees.
...
But critics say the reality for too many Wal-Mart workers and their families is no insurance - either because they are unable to meet the company's eligibility requirements or because they cannot afford monthly premiums as high as $264 a month for family coverage on an $8-an-hour cashier's wage. Wal-Mart says its employees make $10 an hour on average.
...
The company says it spent about $1.3 billion of its $256 billion in revenue last year on employee health care to insure about 537,000 people, or about 45 percent of its work force. Wal-Mart says that 23 percent of its employees are not eligible for coverage, but that it covers 58 percent of those who are.

That compares with an insured rate of 96 percent of eligible full-time or part-time employees of Costco Wholesale, the discount retailer that is Wal-Mart's closest competitor nationwide. Costco employees - most of whom are not represented by a union - become eligible for health insurance after three months working full time, or six months part time.

At Wal-Mart, which has no union employees, many who work full time must wait six months to become eligible. Part-time workers are not eligible for at least two years. Because of turnover, some employees never work long enough to become eligible.
...
Many employees say they simply cannot afford the health plans being offered. Ms. Caizza, for example, worked about 32 hours a week, making $8 an hour. Full-time employees make about $1,200 a month on those wages, meaning the $133 to $264 they are asked to pay for family coverage may not be within their reach. And even the cheapest plans come with a hefty out-of-pocket price for employees, where they may be on the hook for as much as $13,000 in medical costs for their families.
...
"We work very hard for that to be affordable," said Ms. Chambers, the Wal-Mart executive, who said she thought the prices for the least expensive plans were "a very reasonable opening-price point.''
...
But Wal-Mart says it is not reasonable to ask companies like it to solve the problems of the uninsured and the escalating cost of medical care. It needs to be "part of a national debate," Ms. Chambers said.

I personally don't shop at Wal-Mart, because of the conditions and employment practices it chooses to use. I realize that this is a choice that not everyone can or wants to make. If there were a Costco locally, I'd choose to support it because it seems to be a company with a social conscience. But that's just me. If my having to pay an extra buck on my grocery bill means that someone who works gets to have health insurance, then fine. But then, I'm a Democrat, I'm the type who foolishly believes that Government uses my tax dollars to help and protect us. Until about 2000 of course.

1. MacBoosh
   
2. The Persian Princess Diary
   
3. More on the Persian Nukes
   
4. Hey!
   
5. Thank a Christo-Fascist today
   
6. Why they love us...
   
7. Oh, goody
   
8. Tit and Tat
   
9. Seen that Movie too...
   
10. Up in Smoke