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    Friday, September 29, 2006

    Republicans chasing cock.

    Do all Republicans live in opposite land? This Republican Foley was chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. It would be hilarious if it was not so pathetic. The man is a child molester. I got no problem with Mr. Foley chasing young men, all middle aged men deserve the right to humilate themselves in their own special way. But keep it legal, asshole. And keep it out of the House of Representatives. Asshole.

    How can you tell if the Republican is having an affair or trying to seduce minors? He always runs on a family values platform and blames everything on gays and lesbians. It seems almost certain at this point that if a GOP congressman bashes gays he is chasing cock.

    Have there ever been more perverts and criminals running the government? Tom Delay, Ney, Don Sherwood, - and who was that cry baby from San Diego who was run out of D.C. and into jail??? The list goes on - but it is Friday and the dodger game has started.

    For God sake - Vote Democratic.

    How to destroy a great nation before the mid term elections

    This ought to scare you. Bushie can lock YOU up any old time he wants. From the LA Times: "The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights."

    That sucking sound you hear is the soul of our country being removed.

    Thursday, September 28, 2006

    Iraq

    I just finished mowing the lawn with the old fashioned non-gas push mower. It's work but it's good exercise and you can feel self-righteous while you're sweating like a mad man. (I also hung two loads of clothes out to dry today, call Al Gore!)

    It's very zen mowing the lawn with a quiet mower. I was writing a TV show in my head about a senator's wife who ends up becoming senator. He's a Republican and she's a Democrat and what she would say about the Iraq war.

    Basically, it's bull shit. We cannot continue on the course we are on - period. If President Bush truly wants to win he HAS to put more troops on the ground. Since we don't have more troops he HAS to initiate a draft. If any Republican says that Democrats are cut and run they are stay and die. Because that's what is happening. We are spending $2 billion per week on the war. $2 billion. I cannot even comprehend that amount of money. That's almost $12 million per hour. Where is all this money going? Where's the oversight?

    There's the story today about the millions squandered building a police training station that is going to have to be destroyed because it's a piece of crap, literally, crap falls from the ceilings along with urine. There's the escalating violence with 100 Iraqis being killed every day. There's Iran funding Moktada al- Sadr. There's the poll that 61% of Iraqis support killing Americans.

    We are not winning and we cannot win if we do not change (or actually get) a strategy.

    Perhaps the generals talking to Mr. Murtha know that we don't have the troops and that's why they want to re-deploy. Perhaps they know we don't have a strategy for success under Mr. Rumsfeld and they don't want to be responsible for any more American deaths because of his lack of planning.

    Whatever the reason, there is no reason for any Democrat to take any crap from Republicans on Iraq. I believe the phrase is shit or get off the pot. More troops or pull out.

    Anthrax

    Keith Olbermann was sent a letter with a white powder in it. Obviously he is pissing people off. Editor and Publisher has the "article" that the NY Post wrote about the subject. Yeah, they're completely unbiased. They call him a loudmouth, acerbic and caustic. They're just reporting the news and adding no opinion to the gossip pages.

    But it got me thinking about the previous anthrax letters that were sent to Peter Jennings (oh, how I miss him), Tom Daschle and Pat Leahey. Bush & Co, keep insisting that we haven't been attacked again but what about the anthrax? They've never caught the person or persons responsible. Five people were killed. Doesn't that count as an attack?

    The lies never end.

    Wednesday, September 27, 2006

    Bush says we are "naive".

    Little Man Bush said yesterday that those who don't support his Iraq idiocy are"naive". Hmmm.
    Let's see -"We will be greeted as liberators" was naive."Mission accomplished" was naive."Oil will pay for the war" was naive. "The insurgency is in its last throes" was naive. Gee- can anyone add any shockingly stupid and naive statements from this administration's quacks I can't remember just now? Making fun of the fact that we found no WMD's was not naive - it was just insulting and degrading to our solders. So Bushie- when you compulsively attack Iran next year- SEND YOUR OWN DAMN KIDS.

    Tuesday, September 26, 2006

    Bi-ass

    OK, so if you watched the Daily Show last night our friend, Mr. Stewart, showed the press' reaction to President Clinton on Fox News Sunday.

    Combative seems to be the word of the day. Furious was tossed in as well.

    But just a couple of weeks ago President Bush had an interview with Brian Williams of NBC and was equally combative.

    And yet...

    At Mr. Bush's press conferences he is often combative and sometimes furious but it doesn't seem to be the news. Odd. I don't know if it is just the shock of seeing a Democrat fight back or the fact that the media does indeed have a bias and it just doesn't run our way that has made this such a story.

    But I'm damn glad President Clinton said what he said. Now if he can just infuse the entire Democratic party with his spine we'll be fine.

    Because the current administration must be stopped. I don't want to be a part of a country who tortures, who ignores the rule of law, who spies on its people without a warrant. That doesn't work for me. I like the Constitution. I like our radical founding fathers and not just because Tom Jefferson was a fabulous red head. They stood up for what was right in spite of the costs.

    I want my country back, thank you very much.

    Notre Dame/Michigan State and the election.

    1. Karl Rove is not a genius. He is smart and hardworking - what he is doing -again - in this campaign is not hard to see or figure out.
    2. Rove frames the debate, goes on offence, executes a multi-platform direct assault over and over again. So ABC does hit job. Chris Wallace does hit job. Condi Rice does hit job. THIS IS COORDINATED. From the top. The message is simple and clear. Bush = good. Democrats = bad. And what story is not in the news this week like it should be??? 16 "Intelligence" agencies say the war in Iraq has increased terrorism. We are hearing about Clinton instead.
    I loath Rove - but my my my - He is good.
    3. Unless and until Democrats deal with the fact that the GOP is vicious, well coordinated, and perfectly willing to lie, engage in character assassination, and cheat they will not win elections. Defeating these people is not hard. Rove can be defeated. Sadly, the Bob Shrum "let's play nice Democrats" are still ascendant. Democrats are going to have to: A. play offense. and B. "stoop to their level" - because if they don't the criminal insanity will go on. And on. Lives are in the balance. We have got to win.
    4. Democrats must face the fact that by and large - the media is now pro Republican. Accept it. Deal with it. Make plans that incorporate the fact that A. Democrats need the media. and B. It will spin any story against Democrats if given the chance.
    5. Expect to start hearing chatter like this - "are the Democrats going to botch this election, too?" Like Notre Dame last Saturday against Michigan State - Rove is about to pull out a victory in the last 9 minutes. Why? Cuz our coaches suck. They need to be fired.

    Monday, September 25, 2006

    Torture and Rummy the Dummy

    There is so much immorality coming from the Right these days it is hard to know what to blog about this A.M. I am trying to figure out the torture thing - and, f.y.i., the G.O.P. "compromise" allows torture. So why do immoral ones in the White House want to torture human beings so badly?
    We know - and they know - it does not work. So that reason is no good. They are unconscious sadists - other people doing the dirty work of their cruelest impulses. This reason works for me to an extent. Actually, it sums up Bush's entire life. But here is the reason that makes the most sense - TORTURE CREATES ENEMIES. They need enemies. They want the war to be endless - because they are addicted to war - as long as other people's kids are fighting it. If there is no enemy they must create one. And they are doing a very good job of it. TORTURE CREATES ENEMIES - which is what the immoral ones want more of. Also - the army may be turning on Rummy the Dummy - a very helpful development. It's sad but true - right now the Pentagon may be the only institution in our great country that has the power to end the insanity Bush created.

    Sunday, September 24, 2006

    Once again the liberals were right all along.

    Once again the Liberals were right all along. Idiot Bush and gasbag Cheney's invasion of Iraq has MADE TERRORISM WORSE. In fact, it has created terrorism. Told ya, so - about 4 years ago.

    The media must stop condescending to the Left and start listening to us.

    Saturday, September 23, 2006

    Chris Wallace is a revolting pigman.

    Fox News is a viral infection. What asswipes like Chris Wallace do not realize is that in defending their own class and hoodwinking half the country with fearmongering and distractions they always - eventually - destroy themselves. Which is why liberals win every argument in the long run.
    Nevertheless, The swiftboating of Clinton continues from the lying scumbags on the Right.

    The country and the world were so much better off when Clinton was in office. Anyone who thinks Bush is a better President than Clinton is an evil idiot. In denial. Probably a real or potential sociopath. With unresolved daddy issues. Self centered in the extreme. Stupid, but shrewd. (which could be the name of George W Bush's memoir. )

    It is self evident that Clinton is our best President since JFK.

    Friday, September 22, 2006

    Clinton

    There's a poll on AOL that asks how would you rate President Clinton's second act?

    How would you rate Clinton's work since he left office?
    Excellent 67%
    Good 14%
    Poor 11%
    Fair 8%
    Total Votes: 81,067

    The next poll is about when he was President.

    How would you rate Clinton's work as president?
    Excellent 53%
    Good 20%
    Poor 19%
    Fair 8%

    That's 81% approval since and 73% approval during his presidency.

    Those are numbers Mr. Bush dreams of having. Granted, falling gas prices mean higher approval ratings but he's still well under 50%.

    I love what President Clinton is doing now with his Global Initiative. I think we all want to be called to do something great. We all want to do nice things for other people. Sometimes we just need direction or opportunity. It really is selfish this business of doing good things. You are the one who benefits because it makes you feel good. God love President Clinton for tapping into that.

    I was painting my friend's bedroom today - she's having some health issues - and I thought wouldn't it be great to set up a company to do this kind of thing for other people with cancer or AIDS or just elderly people. Turns out there already is an organization called Paint Your Heart Out but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea.

    In these polarized times it's important to find things that bind us together.

    Obviously our approval of Bill Clinton is one but the call to service is another.

    To quote J.D. Salanger, "Let's just be courteous and kind to one another."

    Republican asshole of the week.

    Today's GOP asshole of the week is George Allen. Who distanced himself from his own Jewish heritage by saying "My mother made great pork chops."
    Wow. Whatanasshole!!!!!! You go, George!

    And a word about invective: Having just listened to The Iliad I am now all for it in public discourse. The Iliad - one of the primers for the Western civilization is invective, occasionally interrupted by military battles. It's really good. They should teach it in the schools...

    Wednesday, September 20, 2006

    Is there a Democrat in the house?

    Has anyone seen the Democratic Party? I was just wondering as the election is upon us. Somewhere between Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart the Democrats are lurking. If only the Democratic Party was a kidnapped white girl - CNN would be heading up a search party.

    I guess Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are too busy with press releases and mass emails to actually come up with a coherent campaign. Who wants to bet the Democrats remain in the minority in both the Senate and House? I bet they will. Hope I am wrong - but they are blowing it again. On the other hand the GOP campaign is amazingly fluid and graceful in its viciousness.

    Iraqi president not so good. Democracy on the march - out of town.

    How long until little man Bushie and his posse of goofballs give up on the "freely elected president of Iraq" and just put in a military strong man? 3 months? 6?
    But then again - Bushie disbanded the Iraqi army - another brilliant move - so there really is no military from which to pluck a "strong man."

    However, Saddam is still around. Not particularly tanned - but he is rested.

    As a proud liberal I repeat with pride and dignity: TOLD YA SO!!! And a note to main stream media types: Save us all a lot of trouble next time and pay attention to the liberals BEFORE THE WAR.

    Tuesday, September 19, 2006

    Why does Bush want to torture?

    We know it does not work. Krugman asks it in the NYT yesterday and comes up with "to show that he can" - as a major thrust of the Cheney administration has been to expand presidential power.
    Let me add - Bush and Cheney and Rice are sadists. That's why torture appeals to them. It really is that simple.

    AND they are, no doubt, building the same bullshit case against Iran, with the same tactics. So next year when they begin the attack - we shall hear the same bullshit on CNN that Hitchens and Judas Miller and the rest of the whores and liars and idiots spewed the last time.

    Monday, September 18, 2006

    Are all conservatives stupid?

    Yes. They are. Eventually. Conservatives are not inherently stupid - but conservative thought processes eventually makes them stupid. The smart ones always moderate after a while to avoid becoming dumb. See the Goldwater doco tonight on HBO for proof of that.
    Pope "not john paul" the first - is the latest example. Can you fire a Pope? Lordy, any moron walking down the street would have thought twice about that Islam bashing quote. Another in a fine line of conservative and far right moments - Insult one fifth of the world's population. You go, Pope! It is minor in the history of stupid or vicious conservative moments. It doesn't have the breadth of a mindless Iraqi invasion or Jim Crow laws - but it is a lovely addition to the conservative book of anal retentive idiocy.

    And - as more Tucker Carlson types run from Iraq lies - remember: Liberals have been saying what you people are now finally saying FOR YEARS. Welcome aboard.

    Sunday, September 17, 2006

    Frank Rich 9/17/06

    The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies

    By FRANK RICH
    RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's "Path to 9/11" so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: "For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression."

    No kidding: "The Path to 9/11" was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that "we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them." Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a "truce" and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.

    You'd think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD's by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized "Path to 9/11," supposedly based on the commission's report, only advanced the nuts' case.) If you're a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what’s the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It’s better to game the system.

    The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that's why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he's about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in "the context in which I made that statement last year." The vice president invoked "context" to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its "last throes."

    The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase "I haven't read the story." He told Tim Russert he hadn't read The Washington Post's front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone "stone cold" or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report(PDF) contradicting the White House's prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was "no evidence of resumed nuclear activities" in Iraq. "I haven't looked at it; I'd have to go back and look at it again," he said, however nonsensically.

    These verbal tics are so consistent that they amount to truth in packaging - albeit the packaging of evasions and falsehoods. By contrast, Condi Rice’s fictions, also offered in bulk to television viewers to memorialize 9/11, are as knotty as a David Lynch screenplay. Asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News last Sunday if she and the president had ignored prewar "intelligence that contradicted your case," she refused to give up the ghost: "We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq," she insisted, as she continued to state again that "there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda" before the war.

    Ms. Rice may be a terrific amateur concert pianist, but she's an even better amateur actress. The Senate Intelligence Committee report released only two days before she spoke dismissed all such ties. Saddam, who "issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with Al Qaeda," saw both bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as threats and tried to hunt down Zarqawi when he passed through Baghdad in 2002. As for that Zarqawi "poisons network," the Pentagon knew where it was and wanted to attack it in June 2002. But as Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported more than two years ago, the White House said no, fearing a successful strike against Zarqawi might "undercut its case for going to war against Saddam." Zarqawi, meanwhile, escaped.

    It was in an interview with Ted Koppel for the Discovery Channel, though, that Ms. Rice rose to a whole new level of fictionalizing by wrapping a fresh layer of untruth around her most notorious previous fiction. Asked about her dire prewar warning that a smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud, she said that "it wasn't meant as hyperbole." She also rewrote history to imply that she had been talking broadly about the nexus between "terrorism and a nuclear device" back then, not specifically Saddam - a rather deft verbal sleight-of-hand.

    Ms. Rice sets a high bar, but Mr. Bush, competitive as always, was not to be outdone in his Oval Office address. Even the billing of his appearance was fiction. "It's not going to be a political speech," Tony Snow announced, knowing full well that the 17-minute text was largely Cuisinarted scraps from other recent political speeches, including those at campaign fund-raisers. Moldy canards of yore (Saddam "was a clear threat") were interspersed with promising newcomers: Iraq will be "a strong ally in the war on terror." As is often the case, the president was technically truthful. Iraq will be a strong ally in the war on terror - just not necessarily our ally. As Mr. Bush spoke, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was leaving for Iran to jolly up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    Perhaps the only way to strike back against this fresh deluge of fiction is to call the White House's bluff. On Monday night, for instance, Mr. Bush flatly declared that "the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad." He once again invoked Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, asking, "Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?"

    Rather than tune this bluster out, as the country now does, let's try a thought experiment. Let's pretend everything Mr. Bush said is actually true and then hold him to his word. If the safety of America really depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad, then our safety is in grave peril because we are losing that battle. The security crackdown announced with great fanfare by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki in June is failing. Rosy American claims of dramatically falling murder rates are being challenged by the Baghdad morgue. Perhaps most tellingly, the Pentagon has nowstopped including in its own tally the large numbers of victims killed by car bombings and mortar attacks in sectarian warfare.

    And that's the good news. Another large slice of Iraq, Anbar Province (almost a third of the country), is slipping away so fast that a senior military official told NBC News last week that 50,000 to 60,000 additional ground forces were needed to secure it, despite our huge sacrifice in two savage battles for Falluja. The Iraqi troops "standing up" in Anbar are deserting at a rate as high as 40 percent.

    "Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning," John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month. So what do we do next? Given that the current course is a fiasco, and that the White House demonizes any plan or timetable for eventual withdrawal as "cut and run," there's only one immediate alternative: add more manpower, and fast. Last week two conservative war supporters, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, called for exactly that - "substantially more troops." These pundits at least have the courage of Mr. Bush's convictions. Shouldn't Republicans in Congress as well?

    After all, if what the president says is true about the stakes in Baghdad, it's tantamount to treason if Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and John Boehner fail to rally their party's Congressional majority to stave off defeat there. We can't emulate our fathers and grandfathers and whip today's Nazis and Communists with 145,000 troops. Roosevelt and Truman would have regarded those troop levels as defeatism.

    The trouble, of course, is that we don't have any more troops, and supporters of the war, starting with Mr. Bush, don't want to ask American voters to make any sacrifices to provide them. They don't want to ask because they know the voters will tell them no. In the end, that is the hard truth the White House is determined to obscure, at least until Election Day, by carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.

    A day without television

    A humble proposal: once or twice a week turn off the TV for 24 hours. Choose your own day or days. Schedule it in for the week - make a "no TV today" appointment. The disgraceful Nancy Grace reminds me yet again that one option never gets mentioned when the "did TV cross some line?" discussion comes up. TURN THE TV OFF.

    Not always. Not forever. I like TV. I like cable TV. A lot. I depend on Keith Olberman for actual news during a news program. I love my Simpsons. But shut if off for 24 or 48 hours every week. Better yet - radical as it sounds - turn off media for 24 hours straight every week. And take the god damn Lieutenant Uhura ear piece phone thing off and just go out without having to talk to anyone while you shop for bloody groceries. None of us are that important or interesting. The freakish ear piece can't be good for the brain. It just can't. Don't give up the cell phone. Just STAY OFF IT while you're pumping gas and ordering coffee. What the F**K is every one chattering about? Listen in at your local Piggley Wiggley or Trader Joes- the answer is - NOTHING. The difference in level of insanity between a crazed homeless person yapping on the corner and the person blabbing into the kidney bean phone receiver in the car is a matter of degrees.

    Went to the USC/Nebraska game yesterday. Nebraska fans (the nicest and smartest in the world) were texting after every play. The SC fans behind us were on the phone and watching a small TV. It is silly. We never ARE where we ARE anymore.

    TV - especially cable news - slowly cooks our brains. Information that actually matters has been removed bit by bit. Turn it off for 2 days every week. Take the leap. The world will open up.

    Thursday, September 14, 2006

    Bob Herbert 9/14/06

    The Stranger in the Mirror
    By BOB HERBERT
    We had elections in New York and around the country on Tuesday. But it seems to me that the biggest issue of our time is getting very short shrift from the politicians, and that's the fact that the very character of the United States is changing, and not for the better.

    One of the things that stands out in my mind amid the memories of the carnage and chaos of Sept. 11, 2001, is the eerie quiet - an almost prayerful quiet - that hovered over a scene on the western edge of Manhattan that afternoon.

    I stood for a long time outside the triage center that had been set up at the Chelsea Piers sports and entertainment complex. Sunlight glistened off the roofs of ambulances lined up in military fashion on the West Side Highway. Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel were standing by, waiting for what they thought would be the arrival of legions of seriously wounded victims in need of emergency care.

    There seemed to be very little talking. As I recall, most of the people maintained a kind of stunned, awed silence.

    The expected onslaught of victims never came. As the afternoon faded, I headed east, along with others, toward the morgue at Bellevue Hospital.

    What I thought was the greatest expression of the American character in my lifetime occurred in the immediate aftermath of those catastrophic attacks. The country came together in the kind of resolute unity that I imagined was similar to the feeling most Americans felt after Pearl Harbor. We soon knew who the enemy was, and there was remarkable agreement on what needed to be done. Americans were united and the world was with us.

    For a brief moment.

    The invasion of Iraq marked the beginning of the change in the American character. During the Cuban missile crisis, when the hawks were hot for bombing - or an invasion - Robert Kennedy counseled against a U.S. first strike. That's not something the U.S. would do, he said.

    Fast-forward 40 years or so and not only does the U.S. launch an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a small nation - Iraq - but it does so in response to an attack inside the U.S. that the small nation had nothing to do with.

    Who are we?

    Another example: There was a time, I thought, when there was general agreement among Americans that torture was beyond the pale. But when people are frightened enough, nothing is beyond the pale. And we're in an era in which the highest leaders in the land stoke - rather than attempt to allay - the fears of ordinary citizens. Islamic terrorists are equated with Nazi Germany. We're told that we're in a clash of civilizations.

    If, as President Bush says, we're engaged in "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century," why isn't the entire nation mobilizing to meet this dire threat?

    The president put us on this path away from the better angels of our nature, and he has shown no inclination to turn back. Lately he has touted legislation to try terror suspects in a way that would make a mockery of the American ideals of justice and fairness. To get a sense of just how far out the administration's approach has been, consider the comments of Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, "should not be the first."

    And Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who is a former military judge, said, "It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them."

    How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

    The character of the U.S. has changed. We're in danger of being completely ruled by fear. Most Americans have not shared the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few Americans are aware, as the Center for Constitutional Rights tells us, that of the hundreds of men held by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, many "have never been charged and will never be charged" because there is no evidence justifying their detention.?

    Even fewer care.

    We could benefit from looking in a mirror, and absorbing the shock of not recognizing what we've become.

    Ann Richards moves on.

    One of the great ones went home yesterday. Ann Richards made me proud to be a Democrat. She will be missed.

    Wednesday, September 13, 2006

    Dems are losing. How can this be?

    My gut tells me this story is true. Dems are not at all in a good position to win either house of congress. The fact is the National Democratic Party has yet to present a consistent plan, or reason to vote Democratic - and it is September 13. Meanwhile, the GOP plan is coordinated and effective. If Dems take the House it will be by a thin margin. With a plan of attack and good messengers we could have picked up 50 seats. We MAY pick up 17.
    "We are not Bush" is not a winning plan..
    Pelosi, Reid, and the rest are AWFUL. My god, I am sick of watching idiot Democrats lose winnable elections. We need another party.

    Tuesday, September 12, 2006

    In Keith We Trust.

    Watch the video.
    Proclaim the truth.

    Monday, September 11, 2006

    God Bless Keith Olbermann

    I'm sure Keith Olbermann's comments will be on Crooks and Liars. If you didn't see it live do not miss it.

    "The President says he is protecting our freedoms but criticizes us for using them."

    It was brilliant.

    Please write MSNBC and Keith and thank them and him.

    The way to look back on 9/11

    Bush's failure as a President, a world leader, and as a man since September 11, 2001 is total. The invasion of Iraq will go down in history as the worst decision any President has ever made. Rice, Cheney, Rummy and Bolton - have been wrong about everything since 9/11. Starting with allowing the Taliban to fester in Afghanistan, through all the bullshit they fed us and themselves about Iraq that has created a terrorist state in the middle of the middle east - THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG. In any other job Bush, Cheney, Rum, Rice, and Bolton would have been fired out right. They are incompetent on an epic scale.

    The best way to honor this day is to say a prayer for those who died, for the loved ones of those who died, and for the well being of the country we love. We all need to get through the next two years and 5 months and then begin to repair the damage Bush has caused us all.

    Saturday, September 09, 2006

    Frank Rich 9/10/06

    Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?
    By FRANK RICH

    "THE most famous picture nobody's ever seen" is how the Associated Press photographer Richard Drew has referred to his photo of an unidentified World Trade Center victim hurtling to his death on 9/11. It appeared in some newspapers, including this one, on 9/12 but was soon shelved. "In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world," Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, "the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo."

    Five years later, Mr. Drew's "falling man" remains a horrific artifact of the day that was supposed to change everything and did not. But there's another taboo 9/11 photo, about life rather than death, that is equally shocking in its way, so much so that Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Photos kept it under wraps for four years. Mr. Hoepker's picture can now be found in David Friend's compelling new 9/11 book, "Watching the World Change," or on the book's Web site, watchingtheworldchange.com. It shows five young friends on the waterfront in Brooklyn, taking what seems to be a lunch or bike-riding break, enjoying the radiant late-summer sun and chatting away as cascades of smoke engulf Lower Manhattan in the background.

    Mr. Hoepker found his subjects troubling. "They were totally relaxed like any normal afternoon," he told Mr. Friend. "It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it." The photographer withheld the picture from publication because "we didn't need to see that, then." He feared "it would stir the wrong emotions." But "over time, with perspective," he discovered, "it grew in importance."

    Seen from the perspective of 9/11's fifth anniversary, Mr. Hoepker's photo is prescient as well as important - a snapshot of history soon to come. What he caught was this: Traumatic as the attack on America was, 9/11 would recede quickly for many. This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American. In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust themselves off and keep going explains both what's gone right and what's gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state the nation finds itself in today.

    What's gone right: the terrorists failed to break America's back. The "new" normal lasted about 10 minutes, except at airport check-ins. The economy, for all its dips and inequities and runaway debt, was not destroyed. The culture, for better and worse, survived intact. It took only four days for television networks to restore commercials to grim news programming. Some two weeks after that Rudy Giuliani ritualistically welcomed laughter back to American living rooms by giving his on-camera imprimatur to "Saturday Night Live." Before 9/11, Americans feasted on reality programs, nonstop coverage of child abductions and sex scandals. Five years later, they still do. The day that changed everything didn't make Americans change the channel, unless it was from "Fear Factor" to "American Idol" or from Pamela Anderson to Paris Hilton.

    For those directly affected by the terrorists' attacks, this resilience can be hard to accept. In New York, far more than elsewhere, a political correctness about 9/11 is still strictly enforced. We bridle when the mayor of New Orleans calls ground zero "a hole in the ground" (even though, sadly, he spoke the truth). We complain that Hollywood movies about 9/11 are "too soon," even as "United 93" and "World Trade Center" came and went with no controversy at multiplexes in middle America. The Freedom Tower and (now kaput) International Freedom Center generated so much political rancor that in New York freedom has become just another word for a lofty architectural project soon to be scrapped.

    The price of all New York's 9/11 P.C. is obvious: the 16 acres of ground zero are about the only ones that have missed out on the city's roaring post-attack comeback. But the rest of the country is less invested. For tourists - and maybe for natives, too - the hole in the ground is a more pungent memorial than any grandiose official edifice. You can still see the naked wound where it has not healed and remember (sort of) what the savage attack was about.

    But even as we celebrate this resilience, it too comes at a price. The companion American trait to resilience is forgetfulness. What we've forgotten too quickly is the outpouring of affection and unity that swelled against all odds in the wake of Al Qaeda's act of mass murder. If you were in New York then, you saw it in the streets, and not just at ground zero, where countless thousands of good Samaritans joined the official responders and caregivers to help, at the cost of their own health. You saw it as New Yorkers of every kind gathered around the spontaneous shrines to the fallen and the missing at police and fire stations, at churches and in parks, to lend solace or a hand. This good feeling quickly spread to Capitol Hill, to red states where New York had once been Sodom incarnate and to the world, the third world included, where America was a nearly uniform object of sympathy and grief.

    At the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush found just the apt phrase to describe this phenomenon: "Today we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called 'the warm courage of national unity.' This is the unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress." What’s more, he added, "this unity against terror is now extending across the world."

    The destruction of that unity, both in this nation and in the world, is as much a cause for mourning on the fifth anniversary as the attack itself. As we can't forget the dead of 9/11, we can't forget how the only good thing that came out of that horror, that unity, was smothered in its cradle.

    When F.D.R. used the phrase "the warm courage of national unity," it was at his first inaugural, in 1933, as the country reeled from the Great Depression. It is deeply moving to read that speech today. In its most famous line, Roosevelt asserted his "firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Another passage is worth recalling, too: "We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective."

    What followed under Roosevelt's leadership is one of history's most salutary stories. Americans responded to his twin entreaties - to renounce fear and to sacrifice for the common good - with a force that turned back economic calamity and ultimately an axis of brutal enemies abroad. What followed Mr. Bush's speech at the National Cathedral, we know all too well, is another story.

    On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference "how much of a sacrifice" ordinary Americans would "be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines." His answer: "Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever." He, too, wanted to move on - to "see life return to normal in America," as he put it - but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.

    This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush's war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher's irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding "all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Fear itself - the fear that "paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," as F.D.R. had it - was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.

    Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of "no sacrifice whatsoever." Speaking in Washington about how it was "the time to be wise" and "the time to act," he declared, "We need for there to be more tax cuts." Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.

    And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.

    Hitchens revealed



    Christopher Hitchens reads the Senate report on Bush's pre-war lies, has a meltdown, and reverts to his natural state.

    Mocking Bush is patriotic

    Last night on Real Time Bill Maher's last new rule was that it's time to start mocking the President in earnest.

    It's the patriotic thing to do.

    After all on Thursday night Mr. Bush said that it's hard work to convince people that Iraq is part of the war on Tara and on Friday we finally get the report that Pat Roberts has been blocking from the Senate intelligence Committee saying that Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. (Eat shit Christopher Hitchens).

    Plenty to mock there.

    The report also said that Saddam viewed Bin Laden as a threat to his regime, he wanted to kill Zarqawi and Bush & Co. relied on the INC for intel even after the intelligence community said that their pants were on fire.

    So, you have to wonder if the people who still believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 will finally get the message. Apparently the less education you have the more likely you are to believe it so probably not. I can't imagine their buddy Rush or Fox & Friends are going to fill them in on the report so they can go on in their delusional state.

    Dick Cheney is going to be on Meet the Press tomorrow. I hope that Russert will show Mr. Cheney's previous statement in light of the new report and press for some answers.

    Then again I hope to win the lottery this weekend, too.

    Not bloodly likely.

    Friday, September 08, 2006

    Conspiracies exist. I told you so.

    I said this yesterday - The ABC docudung is the result of a right wing conspiracy. These people are relentless and patient. Thoughtful Americans ignore and condescend to the idea of Right wing conspiracies at their peril. And one other thing - I am glad that people are in the street protesting. I have long believed that the media was the first problem the Left had to confront - and direct action was the best way to do it.

    But what is up the 4 o'clock on Friday protests? Who thought of that? Do any of these people LIVE in Los Angeles, or have jobs? Saturday at 1pm is the time to schedule a protest. Disney employees would not be there. But 50,000 people could line the sidewalk. Not 50.
    Planning a protest for 4 on a Friday in Southern California = subconscious desire to fail.

    We really need to bump it up a notch on the Left.

    Thursday, September 07, 2006

    The ABC's of Bullshit

    Two pieces of bullshit have hurt liberal causes more than any other in the last 30 years.

    1. The media has a "liberal bias".

    2. Believing in conspiracies is silly - causing immediate eye rolls and smug condescension among liberals when anyone uses the word conspiracy. This smugness has done progressives more damage than any right wing attack.

    The truth:
    1. Like all entrenched institutions the media is conservative in all areas including its world view. ABC happily broadcasting an idiotic lie over 2 nights about 9/11 is just more proof of this conservative bias. And is, no doubt, a fine example of the melding of number one and number two above.

    2. Conspiracies exist. Essentially, history is one conspiracy after another, with a few intervening natural disaters, and periodic human greatness and human error. Here is Webster's second definition for the C word: to act in harmony toward a common end. Does anyone truly think the piece of shit ABC is dumping on us all next week is random? Conservatives conspired on all levels to see it through along with all the other Democrat baiting going on until the mid-term election - and, no, they don't talk to each other and make task lists. But they do conspire. Why is this so hard for liberals to confront? The propaganda run up to the Bush war was a series of conspiracies between right wingers, Judy Miller types, and the larger media. And it worked. Frankly, it does not even need to be secret for long. Just long enough to get the deed done. Ask the senators who stabbed Julius Caesar.
    Until we on the Left understand what we are up against idiocies like the Clinton impeachment, and atrocities like the Iraq war will continue. The first step is to stop whining about the media and force it to change.

    Wednesday, September 06, 2006

    She is FROM Imperial Polk County

    According to the official Urban Dictionary there is a new definition we all need to learn.

    1. Katherine Harris crazy

    (n.) As insanely optimistic as Congresswoman Katherine Harris. Usually characterized by an overly optimistic estimation of someone's chances of achieving success.
    Did you hear Jim just bought 500 dollars in lottery tickets? That boy is Katherine Harris crazy if he thinks he's going to hit the jackpot.

    That's right, friends and neighbors, Ms. Harris has won the primary. Thank God.

    No matter how much voodoo Karl Rove tries to do, he won't be able to pull this one out of his ass.

    Snakes on a plane, man, snakes on plane.

    She's not witty, or all that pretty - but she is titty.


    Okay - do we need anymore proof that most GOP voters belong in an asylum?

    Tuesday, September 05, 2006

    Tony Blair goes boom.


    Of all the people who were hypnotized over to the dark side by Idiot Bush II, Tony Blair may be the most distressing and disappointing. He once was a solid Labor Prime Minister. The connection to Linda Blair in the The Exorcist is more than a common name. Tony Blair's head has spun, he clearly became possessed by something weird after Bush came into office, and he spewed rhetorical green vomit - And now he is finally being shown the door. Goodbye, you sad little lap dog.

    More & Longer

    This could, of course, be a reference to the Testicle Festival. Unfortunately it's about the Iraq War.

    We have been fighting in Iraq longer than WWII and now more of our troops have died in Iraq than in the attacks on September 11.

    As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.

    The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.

    The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.
    I'm reading the book that John suggested, Bush on the Couch, and this quote from Bush in September 2003 really hit me.

    Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: between those who seek order, and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangster; between those who honor the rights of man, and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children without mercy or shame.
    Can we talk about projecting?

    Let's hope November brings about a change to put our president in a straight jacket before he bombs Iran.

    Monday, September 04, 2006

    The Testicle Festival

    Lynne told me about this. I do believe The Testicle Festival ranks as one of the great unsung American events. It is the ironic answer to all the over wrought, self indulgent agida going on right now at Burning Man. Who wants to go to the Testy Festy? I will give up a weekend watching football and refining my couch buttgroove....
    Sadly, I won't be eating any balls as I am relocating to planet Vegan shortly. (Two adverbs in one sentence!!!) But still - an Undy 500 tricycle race???!!! Come on - that's some good shit.
    Happy Labor Day!

    Sunday, September 03, 2006

    Arnold goes green in a blue state.

    Feeling proud to be a cali boy these days. We now have tough environmental standards written into law. Someone needs to tell the business "community" to stop whining This "community" whines about everything. The business "community" needs to grow the fuck up. We could all be roasting and choking to death and some chamber of commerce bozo would still be whining about the horrible burden of government. Or the minimum wage. Or what ever else benefits something other than their perceived profit margin. So Arnold went green to win in a blue state. Whatever it takes. It's not like the Dem - who ever he is - has a chance anyway.

    It's Official. I love Frank Rich

    Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis
    By FRANK RICH

    PRESIDENT BUSH came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.

    Last week the man who gave us "stuff happens" and "you go to war with the Army you have" outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who "ridiculed or ignored" the rise of the Nazis in the 1930's and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a "moral or intellectual confusion" and fail to recognize the "new type of fascism" represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of "Defeatocrats" but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

    What made Mr. Rumsfeld's speech noteworthy wasn't its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That's old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld's performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America's fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

    Here's how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler's appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain's hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

    Mr. Rumsfeld didn't go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld's trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator's use of torture - "beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks" - on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had "disappeared." American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

    According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld's Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University's National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

    In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is "a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last." He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary's own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

    Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn't recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford.

    For further proof, read the address Mr. Rumsfeld gave to Pentagon workers on Sept. 10, 2001 - a policy manifesto he regarded as sufficiently important, James Bamford reminds us in his book "A Pretext to War," that it was disseminated to the press. "The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America" is how the defense secretary began. He then went on to explain that this adversary "crushes new ideas" with "brutal consistency" and "disrupts the defense of the United States." It is a foe "more subtle and implacable" than the former Soviet Union, he continued, stronger and larger and "closer to home" than "the last decrepit dictators of the world."

    And who might this ominous enemy be? Of that, Mr. Rumsfeld was as certain as he would later be about troop strength in Iraq: "the Pentagon bureaucracy." In love with the sound of his own voice, he blathered on for almost 4,000 words while Mohamed Atta and the 18 other hijackers fanned out to American airports.

    Three months later, Mr. Rumsfeld would still be asleep at the switch, as his war command refused to heed the urgent request by American officers on the ground for the additional troops needed to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in Tora Bora. What would follow in Iraq was also more Chamberlain than Churchill. By failing to secure and rebuild the country after the invasion, he created a terrorist haven where none had been before.

    That last story is seeping out in ever more incriminating detail, thanks to well-sourced chronicles like "Fiasco," "Cobra II" and "Blood Money," T. Christian Miller's new account of the billions of dollars squandered and stolen in Iraq reconstruction. Still, Americans have notoriously short memories. The White House hopes that by Election Day it can induce amnesia about its failures in the Middle East as deftly as Mr. Rumsfeld (with an assist from John Mark Karr) helped upstage first-anniversary remembrances of Katrina.

    One obstacle is that White House allies, not just Democrats, are sounding the alarm about Iraq. In recent weeks, prominent conservatives, some still war supporters and some not, have steadily broached the dread word Vietnam: Chuck Hagel, William F. Buckley Jr. and the columnists Rich Lowry and Max Boot. A George Will column critical of the war so rattled the White House that it had a flunky release a public 2,400-word response notable for its incoherence.

    If even some conservatives are making accurate analogies between Vietnam and Iraq, one way for the administration to drown them out is to step up false historical analogies of its own, like Mr. Rumsfeld's. In the past the administration has been big on comparisons between Iraq and the American Revolution - the defense secretary once likened "the snows of Valley Forge" to "the sandstorms of central Iraq" - but lately the White House vogue has been for "Islamo-fascism," which it sees as another rhetorical means to retrofit Iraq to the more salable template of World War II.

    "Islamo-fascism" certainly sounds more impressive than such tired buzzwords as "Plan for Victory" or "Stay the Course." And it serves as a handy substitute for "As the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down." That slogan had to be retired abruptly last month after The New York Times reported that violence in Baghdad has statistically increased rather than decreased as American troops handed over responsibilities to Iraqis. Yet the term "Islamo-fascists," like the bygone "evildoers," is less telling as a description of the enemy than as a window into the administration's continued confusion about exactly who the enemy is. As the writer Katha Pollitt asks in The Nation, "Who are the 'Islamo-fascists' in Saudi Arabia - the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents?"

    Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as "a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites": All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic "ideological struggle of the 21st century." One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.

    "“Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists," said the congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president's speech. "It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis." And with Americans caught in the middle. If we owe anything to those who died on 9/11, it is that we not forget how the administration diverted our blood and treasure from the battle against bin Laden and other stateless Islamic terrorists, fascist or whatever, to this quagmire in a country that did not attack us on 9/11. The number of American dead in Iraq - now more than 2,600 - is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago.

    Saturday, September 02, 2006

    Fabulous people I am blessed with - Amy Lloyd

    When it comes to the people in my life I am blessed beyond what a reasonable person should expect. A dear friend Amy Lloyd has written a wonder of a book for teens and preteens called The Secret Lives of Freaks which can be downloaded/purchased here. I have had the pleasure of reading it. It is a delight - just like the author. Check it out.

    Friday, September 01, 2006

    How are we winning?

    BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Rescue crews pulled bodies from the wreckage of bombed buildings Friday after a barrage of coordinated attacks across eastern Baghdad killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 286 within half an hour, police said.
    Now that Lisa Bonet Ramsey's killer has not been found and the war in Israel is over perhaps it's time for the press to start covering the wars we're fighting. It's not going well.

    Because if we move on to Afghanistan:

    KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An insurgent attack on Friday killed one British soldier and seriously wounded another in the latest fighting to wrack southern Afghanistan, while suspected Taliban gunmen ambushed and shot dead a district chief, officials said.
    How can we win either war if we don't commit completely to one or the other? Sort of reminds one of Germany fighting on two fronts. Hard to do.

    Meanwhile we now have 150,000 troops in Iraq, so obviously we will not be bringing the boys home soon.

    How does Rumsfeld still have a job?

    An obtuse post about a docudrama called Death of a President.

    A docudrama is causing drama at the Toronto film festival. Read about it here. I bet ya it won't be shown on TV or get distribution in the U.S. But I really want to see it.

     

     
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