Was this "study group" paid? Can I get a job like that? 4 years into Bush's pointless war of choice and the best this vaunted "study group" can come up with is to recommend that we "start to pull back". Duh. One phone call to John Murtha a year ago would have been much more efficient. Next time how about we listen to the liberals BEFORE childish, dimwitted conservatives bring on disaster.
Howard Dean was right. George W. Bush was wrong. Period.
The corporate media that dismissed or ignored the likes of Dean and went hog wild for the war owe the nation an explanation. They carry a lot of blame for America's nightmare in Iraq. Not as much as the greedy monkeys Cheney and Rummy or the idiot neo-cons - but they carried water for the mindless prowar thugs and insulted thoughtful liberals at random and for fun in the run up to Bush's disaster of choice. The liberals were right all along. America would have been better off listening to the Left in the first place.
As usual.
New Hampshire's motto is Live Free or Die and God bless 'em they're living up to it.
New Hampshire health officials announced plans Wednesday to routinely give girls a newly approved vaccine to protect them against cervical cancer.
"New Hampshire will be the first state in the country to offer the vaccine in its universal children's (vaccine) program," said Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen.
The state's Vaccine for Children program is funded by the federal government and private insurers and offers immunizations for a variety of diseases at no cost to children through age 18.
Stephen said the vaccine for the human papillomavirus -- or HPV -- will be provided free to girls ages 11 through 18.
Our friends at the Christian right don't think that girls should be given the vaccine because they believe it will encourage them to have sex. But based on what they did to their formerly incoming president I think you know we can't trust their judgment.
You see, they elected a new President, Joel Hunter, who thought Christian meant Christ-like and wanted to focus on poverty and the environment. Well, that dog just wouldn't hunt so he stepped down.
Hunter announced he would take the coalition in a new direction, emphasizing other moral issues that he believed younger conservative Christians found equally compelling. "I look forward to expanding our mission to concern itself with the care of creation, helping society's marginalized, human rights/religious issues and compassion issues," he said in a press release announcing his appointment.
But that goal did not sit well with some rank-and-file supporters. Representatives of several statewide Christian Coalition groups that have separated themselves from the national body in recent years cited Hunter's comments as emblematic of their tensions with the national organization.
They would rather keep their focus on abortion and gay marriage instead of helping the poor and being good stewards to the earth. (Those are "lefty" issues, GASP!)
And just to round out the story for a little local interest, a man was rescued from Lake Parker here in Lakeland yesterday morning from the jaws of an 11 foot alligator. What the man was doing in a heavily infested lake at 3:45 am I don't know but the good news is he's ok.
So, Mr. Bush said today that we are not leaving Iraq until the job is done. So why is he bothering with his meeting with Al-Maliki? Mr. Cheney was summoned to Saudi to have a chat about the war. Maybe the Princes will tell him how to solve the Iraqi problem.
In case Mr. Bush hasn't noticed Iraq is in worse than a civil war. There are more than two sides fighting each other. It's a giant mess.
How do we now describe victory? Obviously it's not democracy so perhaps it's that the Iraqis don't have enough electricity to be subjected to the Head On ads.
David Gergin said on Hardball that failure is the only option but the challenge is how can we leave without chaos.
How indeed.
Okay I admit it: Over the holiday I made my "why Hillary can win" speech twice to friendly audiences of family all of whom are moderate Democrats, greatly relieved by the midterm result. None of them are paticularly opposed to a second President Clinton.
This is what is always said among us DEMS when Hillary comes up:
1. "She Can't Win!" and 2. "She is so divisive."
Both of these statements can't be defended, and they are classic cases of a GOP meme infecting the DEMS unnoticed.
First number 2 - "she is so divisive" is a ridiculous concern. The single most divisive President since 1865 currently holds office. The word "divisive" is a Maguffin.
Number 1:
Of course she can win. This idea that she can't is weird, wrong and silly. I personally think she could win in her own right. However, simply go through the major GOP contenders and one will see just how viable a Clinton 2 president is....Let me tee them up and bat them down.
A. John McCain - tough Hill could well lose this race. But how- exactly - is sending thousands of more troops to Iraq going to play in 2008? McCain might not look so good upon real close inspection. Hill., on the other hand, has been trashed and lived.
B. Rudy G. Thrice married, lived with a gay couple when his wife would not leave Grace Mansion. Pro Choice. Pro Gay rights. Which GOP primary was this guy gonna win again? Hill would beat him in NY in the general.
c. Condi Rice, 6 words: Single black woman. South Carolina Primary.
d. Newt Gingrich: interesting battle. The "Clinton" brand beats the "Gingrich" brand. Hillary gets every state Kerry got, plus Ohio and New Mexico.
e. Mitt Romney. One term Gov. of Mass. Mormon. Deep South. End of story.
f. Bill Frist. I could beat Bill Frist. So could you.
On election night Chris Mathews commenting on Hillary's victory speech remarked that he could not take his eyes off her husband. This according to his panel, was the problem with Hillary as a candidate - Bill would always be on stage, too.
This proves how off the conventional wisdom is about Hillary. Bill standing behind her sucking up the air, and exhaling intelligence and nostalgia, is actually Hillary's most lethal weapon. She knows this. How come Chris Mathews can't see it?
Hillary can win. Not sure I want her too. But she can. And she'd make a good president.
Get over it.
The definition of failure: George W. Bush.
After four years of George W Bush's "war for no reason" he has to meet the head of the government he installed in Jordan's capitol - Baghdad is too dangerous. Enough said.
Now I will listen to some right wing talk radio idiots so I can hear the "good news".HAHAHAHA.
Motto for 2007: LISTEN TO THE LIBERALS.
We knew what was gonna happen all along.
So Rumsfeld feels bad after W opened the trap door on him. Waaaaaaa Waaaaaaa boo. hoo. Donald Rumsfeld should be forced to walk around Sadr city wearing only a sandwich board that says: "Hi I'm Don Rumsfeld. I forced the U.S. to invade your country with no post war plan. My glibness, arrogance and stupidity has greatly contributed to the destruction of your country."
So Robert Novak now thinks something is "deeply wrong" with the Bush administration. Welcome aboard, dipshit. Those of us truly concerned about the direction of the country and the 20,000 maimed Americans Rummy gave us have been saying this for years.
We very much need consistent liberal leadership in this country. Conservative governments are disastrous. How many more times do we need this proven before we start giving liberals their due. We are almost always right. The Right is almost always wrong. How many more people will have limbs blown off for a mistake?
Thanksgiving day 2006:
1. Bring our men and women home.
2. Hold Bush/Cheney/Rummy/Rice to account for their destructive lies and negligence.
3. Thank and praise God that the Democrats won.
4. Eat.
The Empty Chair at the Table
By BOB HERBERT
Philadelphia
The old stone house in the close-knit Mount Airy neighborhood that Sherwood Baker grew up in had for many years been the scene of rollicking holiday gatherings.
"We would have big, ridiculous dinners," said his mom, Celeste Zappala. She chuckled. "They weren't formal, believe me. The dishes wouldn't match and we'd never have enough silverware. But it was great fun."
Sherwood, a big man at 6-4 and about 250 pounds, would be there with his wife, Debra, and son, J.D., his two brothers, and sometimes his dad, even though he is divorced from Ms. Zappala. Others would be there, as well. "We'd look for stray people," Ms. Zappala said, "somebody who didn't have someone to be with. We could always fit more people around the table."
The gatherings are more subdued now. Ms. Zappala can still remember almost every detail of the April evening in 2004 when the man in the dress uniform with the medals on his chest showed up on her porch with the bad news.
"He had a notebook in his hand," she said. "I could see him very clearly even though it was dark and kind of raining. So I came out on the porch and I looked at him. And I knew, but I didn't want to know."
Sgt. Sherwood Baker of the Pennsylvania National Guard had been in Baghdad only six weeks when he was killed. The bitter irony that will always surround his death was the fact that he was helping to provide security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was hunting for the weapons of mass destruction. He died on April 26, 2004, in an explosion at a factory that was being inspected.
Grief is magnified during the holidays, and with the toll in Iraq steadily mounting, there are now thousands of families across the U.S. who are faced, like Sergeant Baker's relatives, with an awful empty space at their Thanksgiving tables.
Ms. Zappala pulled out photos of Sherwood and the rest of the family laughing it up at holiday parties, and spoke of the ferocious grief that has since gripped everyone. "We won't be the same now," she said. "We're totally different people than we started out to be.”
One of the family's last Christmas presents for Sergeant Baker was a global positioning device. "He was told that he had to have one," said Ms. Zappala, "but the Army wouldn't buy it for him. So we got him one. That was our last Christmas together, 2003. We were all trying to be happy but each of us was frightened and worried about what was going to happen to him."
Sergeant Baker's story, for the most part, was typical. He was a social worker who joined the National Guard in 1997 in part for civic reasons, but also because he needed help paying off his college loans. "It was extra money," his mother said.
What was unusual was that Ms. Zappala was a longtime peace and social justice activist. She opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning, and the last thing in the world that she wanted was for her son to be in it. Sergeant Baker told her not to worry, that no one from the Pennsylvania National Guard had been killed in combat since World War II.
But she worried. And when it was clear that Sergeant Baker would be sent to Iraq, she looked for a way out. "I told him, 'If you don't want to do this, I'll take you to Canada,'" she said. "But he said, 'No, I made an oath before God. And besides, they would court-martial me. I'll just go. I'll do it and I'll come home.' "
Ms. Zappala remains opposed to the war and is an active member of the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out. There's a sign on her porch that says, "War is Not the Answer." But she's found that there's no comfort to be drawn from her protests, however strongly she believes in them.
"Where's the comfort in being right?" she asked. "Everything we said was right. Sherwood died looking for the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. All the nonsense about the Al Qaeda connections and Sept. 11th. They were all lies. It was all wrong. But none of that brings Sherwood back to the table."
While standing on the porch where she got the terrible news about her son, Ms. Zappala spoke of the many other families that have lost children, or other close relatives, to the war. "I'm very aware that it didn't just happen to us," she said. "For everybody, it's the same horrible loss. It's the same tragedy. It doesn't make any difference whether someone was for or against the war. We've met families who were very supportive of the war and we were crying with them. The pain is the same."
Lawrence O'Donnell was just on Countdown and he was amazing.
They were talking about the draft and he said that the burden of this war is not fairly shared. Charlie Wrangle's bill would only allow deferments for health or conscience.
He said that "the powdered pundits who show up on the chat shows - not one of us have served. We are combat cowards. Not one of us have seen combat; every one of us has avoided service. So when those who say that we can't win but we can't leave why aren't you in Iraq and if you're too old why weren't you in Vietnam? Why is this something we can delegate when we know we're going to lose?"
He also quoted a family member in the army who said that the military is at war but America isn't. No, we're supposed to shop.
I am all for a draft in the form of national service. Other countries, Germany, Israel have this where you have to serve in some form for two years.
Let's at least have the debate. Almost 3000 of us have died in Iraq. Let's honor them with an honest discussion about serving our country.
More proof modern conservatives are mentally ill and amoral- here.
Only Fox/Murdoch would okay a deal with the devil in the first place. Conservatives are dangerous and must be controlled. They are a virus.
Hey right wingers.... if you would just listen to liberals and heed our advice in the first place you would not have these periodic melt downs. We were right all along. It did not take liberals 6 years, a trillion dollars, untold death and destruction, and severe damage to the republic to figure out Bush/Cheney/Rice and Rumy were evil, amoral, moronic, greedy, stupid buffoons.
Welcome about the reality ship, neo-con assholes.
Lesson: PAY ATTENTION TO LIBERALS SOONER.
Both Blair and Bush should apologize for their war and resign. After Blair admitted he and his master created a disaster in Iraq he said this: "It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy -- al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other -- to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war." WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? Mr. Blair, the civil was created BECAUSE of the little "accident" of bad planning, numbnuts. The 'disaster" is entirely an accident of planning. If given a few Iraqi history bullet points - any random moron would have told you the chance of civil war, and Iranian interference in an Iraqi power vacuum was 100 percent with the post invasion "plan" Rummy etc cooked up. For Christ sake, I figured it out watching a little CNN here and there at a gym in Hollywood. WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Michael Moore has promised to be respectful of those people who lost last week -here- Good for him. The Bushies do not deserve any respect. The neo-cons have done 100 years worth of damage to this great country in just 6 years. Maybe we should ask a few Vets who have lost limbs whether the Neo-con, GOP, no oversight morons deserve respect.
As for Pelosi - I have one thing to say: RAHM FOR SPEAKER!!!
The plan for Iraq:
1. Arrest Donald Rumsfeld. Try him for war crimes.
2. Censure Bush and Cheney.
3. Seize all Bush /Cheney family assets and use them for Bushwarofchoice Iraq vets healthcare needs.
4. Draft the Bush daughters and Mary Cheney.
5. Force every neo-con, con, moderate and apologist for the Bushies who condescended to and ignored the LIBERALS (who have been proven correct at every turn) to read what they wrote in 2003 and 2004, then read what Howard Dean, Barack Obama, and a slew of others on the Left wrote at the time. Out loud. On television. Especially Richard Cohen, Chris Hitchenlumpen - the drunk over at Salon - Andrew Sullivan, and Matt Miller -the "moderate" on Left, Right and Center.
6. Send in enough troops to control Baghdad and Basra and control the oil wells. (Oil is what this war is, and was, always about. W finally admitted it 2 weeks ago. And until we invest huge amounts in fuel alternatives, we will have to retain a police force in the Middle East. Unless you drove a hybrid to work today - WAR IS THE ANSWER for you. )
7. Install a strong man. Ensure he has control and will not attack anyone, including his own people.
8. Get as many troops as we can the hell out.
None of my Dem friends can tolerate my insistence that Hill and Bill can get back into the White House - and have a better than 50% chance of doing it. "She can't win" is the chant. It is sort of like "weapons of mass destruction" or "elite Republican guard" or "liberal media" or "Vin Diesel is straight" - say it often enough and all questioning of the facts on the ground stops. Why Clinton 08 looks better and better.... her main rival in the GOP wants MORE troops in Iraq. When, in the next two years, is THAT going to become a winning idea? Keep talking, McCain. And frankly, he does not look well. A shabby reason, but it counts. Mr. Macaca is gone. The ex Mayor of NY - is - gee- a guy who must run in the GOP as a gay rights supporting, thrice married, pro choice Yankee. That'll help turn out in South Carolina. He would lose his own state to her.
Hmmm. 3 down....
Moving on to Frist. Senator Clinton versus "Dr." Frist. Who wins? Come on.
Arnold can't run. Too bad for the GOP - he would beat her.
Clinton/Tester - anyone?
Anything can happen.... including President Clinton on 1/20/09. Believe it.
Does any one get the sad irony (Note to self: is it really ironic? Check with Alanis) of the "Iraq Study Group." ?
These decisive, "tough guys" - Rummy, Cheney, and that marshmallow in the White House (who has failed at everything he has ever tried....) - need a "study group" to save their tired asses from the disaster they created. Imagine FDR creating a "study group" ? Or Lincoln? You can't. Why? Because they were real men, with real leadership skills, who actually thought things through and took responsibility for their actions.
Bush 2 is the worst president ever. He is the worst leader of a western democracy in a century. Okay MAYBE that other TORY - Neville Chamberlain - is worse. Maybe.
2006: The Year of the ‘Macaca’
By FRANK RICH
OF course, the "thumpin' " was all about Iraq. But let us not forget Katrina. It was the collision of the twin White House calamities in August 2005 that foretold the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Back then, the full measure of the man finally snapped into focus for most Americans, sending his poll numbers into the 30s for the first time. The country saw that the president who had spurned a grieving wartime mother camping out in the sweltering heat of Crawford was the same guy who had been unable to recognize the depth of the suffering in New Orleans's fetid Superdome. This brand of leadership was not the "compassionate conservatism" that had been sold in all those photo ops with African-American schoolchildren. This was callous conservatism, if not just plain mean.
It's the kind of conservatism that remains silent when Rush Limbaugh does a mocking impersonation of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms to score partisan points. It's the kind of conservatism that talks of humane immigration reform but looks the other way when candidates demonize foreigners as predatory animals. It's the kind of conservatism that pays lip service to "tolerance" but stalls for days before taking down a campaign ad caricaturing an African-American candidate as a sexual magnet for white women.
This kind of politics is now officially out of fashion. Harold Ford did lose his race in Tennessee, but by less than three points in a region that has not sent a black man to the Senate since Reconstruction. Only 36 years old and hugely talented, he will rise again even as the last vestiges of Jim Crow tactics continue to fade and Willie Horton ads countenanced by a national political party join the Bush dynasty in history's dustbin.
Elsewhere, the 2006 returns more often than not confirmed that Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, are far better people than this cynical White House takes them for. This election was not a rebuke merely of the reckless fiasco in Iraq but also of the divisive ideology that had come to define the Bush-Rove-DeLay era. This was the year that Americans said a decisive no to the politics of "macaca" just as firmly as they did to pre-emptive war and Congressional corruption.
For all of Mr. Limbaugh's supposed clout, his nasty efforts did not defeat the ballot measure supporting stem-cell research in his native state, Missouri. The measure squeaked through, helping the Democratic senatorial candidate knock out the Republican incumbent. (The other stem-cell advocates endorsed by Mr. Fox in campaign ads, in Maryland and Wisconsin, also won.) Arizona voters, despite their proximity to the Mexican border, defeated two of the crudest immigrant-bashing demagogues running for Congress, including one who ran an ad depicting immigrants menacing a JonBenet Ramsey look-alike. (Reasserting its Goldwater conservative roots, Arizona also appears to be the first state to reject an amendment banning same-sex marriage.) Nationwide, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote fell from 44 percent in 2004 to 29 percent this year. Hispanics aren't buying Mr. Bush's broken-Spanish shtick anymore; they saw that the president, despite his nuanced take on immigration, never stood up forcefully to the nativists in his own camp when it counted most, in an election year.
But for those who've been sickened by the Bush-Rove brand of politics, surely the happiest result of 2006 was saved for last: Jim Webb's ousting of Senator George Allen in Virginia. It is all too fitting that this race would be the one that put the Democrats over the top in the Senate. Mr. Allen was the slickest form of Bush-Rove conservative, complete with a strategist who'd helped orchestrate the Swift Boating of John Kerry. Mr. Allen was on a fast track to carry that banner into the White House once Mr. Bush was gone. His demise was so sudden and so unlikely that it seems like a fairy tale come true.
As recently as April 2005, hard as it is to believe now, Mr. Allen was chosen in a National Journal survey of Beltway insiders as the most likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Political pros saw him as a cross between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush whose "affable" conservatism and (contrived) good-old-boy persona were catnip to voters. His Senate campaign this year was a mere formality; he began with a double-digit lead.
That all ended famously on Aug. 11, when Mr. Allen, appearing before a crowd of white supporters in rural Virginia, insulted a 20-year-old Webb campaign worker of Indian descent who was tracking him with a video camera. After belittling the dark-skinned man as "macaca, or whatever his name is," Mr. Allen added, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
The moment became a signature cultural event of the political year because the Webb campaign posted the video clip on YouTube.com, the wildly popular site that most politicians, to their peril, had not yet heard about from their children. Unlike unedited bloggorhea, which can take longer to slog through than Old Media print, YouTube is all video snippets all the time; the one-minute macaca clip spread through the national body politic like a rabid virus. Nonetheless it took more than a week for Mr. Allen to recognize the magnitude of the problem and apologize to the object of his ridicule. Then he compounded the damage by making a fool of himself on camera once more, this time angrily denying what proved to be accurate speculation that his mother was a closeted Jew. It was a Mel Gibson meltdown that couldn't be blamed on the bottle.
Mr. Allen has a history of racial insensitivity. He used to display a Confederate flag in his living room and, bizarrely enough, a noose in his office for sentimental reasons that he could never satisfactorily explain. His defense in the macaca incident was that he had no idea that the word, the term for a genus of monkey, had any racial connotation. But even if he were telling the truth - even if Mr. Allen were not a racist - his non-macaca words were just as damning. "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia" was unmistakably meant to demean the young man as an unwashed immigrant, whatever his race. It was a typical example of the us-versus-them stridency that has defined the truculent Bush-Rove fearmongering: you're either with us or you're a traitor, possibly with the terrorists.
As it happened, the "macaca" who provoked the senator's self-destruction, S. R. Sidarth, was not an immigrant but the son of immigrants. He was born in Washington's Virginia suburbs to well-off parents (his father is a mortgage broker) and is the high-achieving graduate of a magnet high school, a tournament chess player, a former intern for Joe Lieberman, a devoted member of his faith (Hindu) and, currently, a senior at the University of Virginia. He is even a football jock like Mr. Allen. In other words, he is an exemplary young American who didn't need to be "welcomed" to his native country by anyone. The Sidarths are typical of the families who have abetted the rapid growth of northern Virginia in recent years, much as immigrants have always built and renewed our nation. They, not Mr. Allen with his nostalgia for the Confederate "heritage," are America's future. It is indeed just such northern Virginians who have been tinting the once reliably red commonwealth purple.
Though the senator's behavior was toxic, the Bush-Rove establishment rewarded it. Its auxiliaries from talk radio, the blogosphere and the Wall Street Journal opinion page echoed the Allen campaign's complaint that the incident was inflated by the news media, especially The Washington Post. Once it became clear that Mr. Allen was in serious trouble, conservative pundits mainly faulted him for running an "awful campaign," not for being an awful person.
The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen's defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of "faith."
Perhaps the most interesting finding in the exit polls Tuesday was that the base did turn out for Mr. Rove: white evangelicals voted in roughly the same numbers as in 2004, and 71 percent of them voted Republican, hardly a mass desertion from the 78 percent of last time. But his party was routed anyway. It was the end of the road for the boy genius and his can't-miss strategy that Washington sycophants predicted could lead to a permanent Republican majority.
What a week this was! Here's to the voters of both parties who drove a stake into the heart of our political darkness. If you'll forgive me for paraphrasing George Allen: Welcome back, everyone, to the world of real America.
Right now the New York Stock Exchange is paused to commemorate Veterans Day.
I have a couple of suggestions for the Democrats who are now in charge.
1. Encourage people to actually support the troops by getting everyone involved in the war. Point us to ways to help like Booksforsoldiers.org, anysoldier.org that help the troops get things that make life a bit easier in combat. Conserve energy, since Mr. Bush has now, finally, admitted that we are in Iraq for the oil. Shoot, if you knit you can make helmet liners, help pay for helmets with Cher, get them body armor. Prove that we actually support them.
2. Darfur, Darfur, Darfur. Genocide is not acceptable. We need to do more than we're doing. Show the world that we are compassionate.
Raising minimum wage and lowering prescription drug prices are a great start. Let's use the power we have been given to improve all lives.
Who is cutting and running now? Classic GOP behavior: make a huge, expensive, deadly mess and when it comes time to be accountable - RUN FOR THE HILLS!
And the lie W told just 2 weeks ago about Rummy was dismissed this week as campaign rhetoric. W lies with devious ease. Conservatives have no moral center.
After all is said and done - Bush and his team are cowards. With out a doubt they will go down in history as the worst administration ever. It is time to put the Clintons back in the White House to right the ship.
One word for Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid: subpoena. Our fighting men and women deserve no less.
Also has anyone heard any right wing radio freaks insist the media is not reporting the "good news" out of Iraq - lately?
So a few things I learned from the election last night and its aftermath:
1. Daddy is going to bail out W once again. Robert Gates - the new, improved Rummy, comes directly for daddy Bush's circle. James Baker will provide a shield for W to hide behind next week.
2. George W Bush essentially quit today during the news conference. The subtext of the whole thing was A. "I am taking my toys and leaving" and B. "Please don't investigate my peeps to much. I promise to be nice until I am out of here. "
3. Karl Rove is not a genius and never was. He won because he had weak opponents ( Donna Brazille and Bob Shrum) was willing to be utterly amoral, and was shrewd enough to leave no tracks. A forceful Democratic team spanked his sorry ass.
4. The W years are - as we liberals have been saying all along - a failure of epic proportions. Should the admin. recover a bit before 2008 it will be because moderates from Daddy Bush's realm do the work.
5. The anti choice phonys got bitch slapped in South Dakota. The country is pro choice.
6. The Neo cons are dead and gone. And not because the administration is dysfunctional (it is) or because no one followed through after the invasion (rummy's stupidity) - the neo cons have been thrown on to the ash heap of history - BECAUSE THEY WERE WRONG.
7. Rove's "permanent majority" is history. Why? Because it was based on dirty tricks, fear mongering and patronage - not ideas.
8. Dems have some major new stars. And Montana has just become the most powerful small state in the nation.
9. Thank God the governor of West Virginia is a Democrat. (figure it out)
10. Jack Murtha has more integrity than every person in the W admin. combined.
11. Elliot Spitzer could be the first Jew elected President.
OK - so here's my take.
Rumsfeld resigns. Bush appoints Joe Lieberman. The Republican Governor of Connecticut appoints a Republican Senator.
What do you think?
Update:
I was completely wrong. It happens. Gates, ex-CIA Director is going to be named by Bush to succeed Rumsfeld.
It was an interesting conspiracy theory, however.
The long national nightmare is over. We can now begin to heal from the 6 destructive, hellish years of GOP rule. We are starting to get our country back.
Karl Rove is not and never was a genius. He is a fierce, smart, mean, person who never had any real competition from Democrats. He did this year. And he lost.
Ban electronic voting machines now. Ban them. Outright. The Republic did just fine without them for 230 years. Ban them. A nation of the People, by the People, for the People should never be subject to computers. We cannot become a nation of the hackers, by the hackers, and for the hackers.
Ban electronic Voting Machines Now.
Limiting the Damage
By PAUL KRUGMAN
President Bush isn't on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.
There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that "this is not about the midterm elections." But the editorial's authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won't fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won't change strategy in Iraq; he won't change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.
At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush's character. To put it bluntly, he's an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood - and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself "pleased with the progress we're making" in Iraq.
In other words, he's the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.
The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism - almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied - may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America's future.
And it should be a matter of intense national shame that Mr. Bush has quietly abandoned his fine promises to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
The public, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 and was still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt two years ago, seems to have figured most of this out. It's too late to vote Mr. Bush out of office, but most Americans seem prepared to punish Mr. Bush's party for his personal failings. This is in spite of a vicious campaign in which Mr. Bush has gone further than any previous president - even Richard Nixon - in attacking the patriotism of anyone who criticizes him or his policies.
That said, it's still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry's botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I've got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.
Moreover, the potential for vote suppression and/or outright electoral fraud remains substantial. And it will be very hard for the Democrats to take the Senate for the very simple reason that only one-third of Senate seats are on this ballot.
What if the Democrats do win? That doesn't guarantee a change in policy.
The Constitution says that Congress and the White House are co-equal branches of government, but Mr. Bush and his people aren't big on constitutional niceties. Even with a docile Republican majority controlling Congress, Mr. Bush has been in the habit of declaring that he has the right to disobey the law he has just signed, whether it's a law prohibiting torture or a law requiring that he hire qualified people to run FEMA.
Just imagine, then, what he'll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don't have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a "cataclysmic fight to the death" if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas - which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush's history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.
But here's the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush's ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That's why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.
Mr. Bush wants us to focus on taxes and the war on Tara when we vote on Tuesday.
Taxes? Could that be any more selfish? Worry about taxes when our troops are being killed in Iraq for his unjustified war? That's a death tax. It is the first line of defense when you talk to a Republican. "You're going to be paying more in taxes if the Democrats win." Fine. I'll pay. As long as the Democrats manage the war and perhaps restore our constitution to its original condition.
I met a true believer today who told me the sad story of my taxes and that Bush had the "cajones" to fight back after we were attacked on 9/11. He was convinced that Saddam and Osama exchanged cookies and perhaps nuclear tips.
Perhaps he was unaware that in Mr. Bush's fight on the war on Tara he was the one giving out nuclear tips to anyone with access to the internet.
Now a whole new slew of neocons are running way from Bozo Bush. I am fed up with it somehow being news when conservatives realize how screwed up they are... Guess what, neo cons and mass media overlords - liberals KNEW EXACTLY how Iraq would turn out -
and said so -
and it did.
We were right.
All along.
Rather than making a big deal out of the fact that right wingers occasionally come out of their fog - let's just stop listening to them. "Oops. Sorry. Just came to. And an invasion based on inference and "curveball" and my desire to win at RISK and with not nearly enough troops is actually a bad idea!!! GEE what was I thinking?!" -DOES NOT CUT IT. Especially for our dead and maimed. We continue to heed obviously deluded conservatives AT OUR OWN PERIL. These people are dangerous.
And post Goldwater conservatism in America is based entirely on delusion. Ask Mark Foley. Check out the melting ice caps. Read Fiasco. We went to war because a few people had a delusion. We shall pay for this delusion for.... well, forever...
Ya know why? - Because you deserve it. Stupid, lying, conservatives are destroying this and other countries.
Go Borate. Go Borate. To be sure many Democrats are morons. But Republicans are evil morons. Oh and - the October surprise is in November this year.... sudamn whosain will be convicted this weekend - can Rove/Bush can take credit for it before the election begins here and the bloodbath escalates there? Democrats: the issue is not Saddam anymore - it is the handling of the war. TALK ABOUT HOW BUSH BOTCHED THE AFTERMATH when asked about Saddam.
Democrats - over the next 5 days incessantly repeat these 2 words: Bush- Botched.
Bush Botched Bush Botched Bush Botched Bush Botched.
Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.
They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry - a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service - and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.
Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.
They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.
What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men - to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that?
What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got - get over it.
What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military histories - from "Cobra II" to "Fiasco" to "State of Denial" - all of which contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we've been making it up - and paying the price - ever since.
And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people they're fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we're addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing - demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation - to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases.
Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century - to bring out the best in us. His "genius" is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.
And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country's health, prove him wrong this time.
Let Karl know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has - through sheer incompetence - brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.
Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq - and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate - it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.
It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.
I, for one, don’t think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see.
More proof here. Another gay bashing right winger is taking it in the face. The best thing about this story? The Right - up the butt - Rev. Ted Haggard - - was doing it with a 49 year old male prostitute. 49??? This Bush Republican is the anti-foley - who liked his closet full of young meat. Conservatives are mentally ill. Conservatives in power are mentally ill and dangerous. How much more proof do we need? Become Democrats cocksuckers - or stop bashing gays from the pulpit during the day and taking it up the ass in a sling at night. Conservatives are like drinking alcoholics. Denial. Rationalization. Fear. Lies. Disintegration.
Liberals always win in the end....
Oh and "cocksuckers" is not an insult. Merely a statement of fact. As far as I am concerned the world needs more cocksuckers... there really are not enough good ones...
Of course the Kerry nonsense is Bush Rove Bullshit - Bush and
Rove are nothing but bullshit - however there is a silver lining: Kerry's 2008 campaign is now D.O.A.
We DEMS will not have Kerry to kick around anymore. Thank God.
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