Okay - I admit it - I simply do not understand the why any thoughtful Democrat would choose Obama over Clinton in the 2008 election. What, exactly, has Obama done to be qualified for the Presidency? Made very good speeches. and... and??? nothing. He is our Giuliani. Except he is less qualifed than Rudy. Shut up about Clinton's war stance, lefties. Do you want to win the general election or not? None of the current GOPs can beat Hillary. All of them can and will beat Obama. We are leaving Iraq, regardless of who wins. And frankly, her stance - which i disagree with - is held by the majority. Get over it.
I read comments on other liberal blogs about Clinton and they are largely indistinguishable from right wing rants. The Huffington Post's glorification of the 1984 rip off creator is the perfect collaboration of mindless fear of strong women and flashy Hollywood "cool". Childish liberals are all squishy with pro Obama squeals. Obama is less qualified to be President than W. Do the math, kids - its true. Should we hope and pray he is another Lincoln - or go with a qualified candidate? And Obama is no JFK either. WW2 vets should take offense to this comparison. Obama is a good guy who is sexy and makes good speeches. If I was in Illinois and had voted for him I would be pist.
Almost all contempt for Clinton is sexism and fear. With Glenn Beck we see it clearly as that. But in our own house we hide behind "cool." It's bullshit. A powerful woman is scary to the Left and Right. The hilarious South Park episode this week nails it. And actually treats her with kid gloves (relative to that show) until an ATF agent is killed by her vagina.
Get it?
1973 versus today.
My Favorite:
Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary, hugs him to comfort him.
1973 - In a short time Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2006 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.
The rest are here.
President Bush has said repeatedly that the most important part of his job is protecting the American people. And yet...
Cutting funding of the FDA has lead to how many food scares? Spinach, lettuce, Peter Pan Peanut Butter (I had to return four jars - DAMN YOU TWO FOR ONE SALE!) and now pet food. Nothing is more horrific than hurting babies or pets.
Changing the rules for the Interior which meant that local citizens had less of a voice in the decisions for forests and gave the power to corporations. Recently overturned.
Climate change data being manipulated by non-scientific personnel to water down the imminent danger to us.
Federal Prosecutors being fired because they were protecting us from rotten Republicans.
Our troops being housed in deplorable conditions during the rehabilitation because we didn't plan for so many casualties.
Our troops in those deplorable conditions because we didn't adequately protect them with body armor or up armored vehicles. Forget about the lack of training and time home...it goes without saying in a war without end no one is going to get that.
Karl Rove using the GSA which is supposed to be completely non-partisan to get out the votes for Republicans. Just one of the many scandals Mr. Rove is involved with and don't get me started on his dancing.
Everything that the President has done in direct contradiction of the constitution including reading our mail, listening to our phone calls, reading our emails, suspending habeas corpus, issuing signing statements and using executive privilege to cover his wrong doing.
So how exactly is Mr. Bush protecting us?
Can you say IMPEACH?
All this talk about the supplimental spending bill and adding provisions about bringing the troop home has got me wondering. Why is it that when the President announced the surge he and his White House said they had the funding for the surge through October and now if they don't get this bill passed by April 15th the troops won't have food?
Where did all the money go?
Or, just like the President lied about the numbers of troops he was actually sending he was also lying about the dough?
Read this from the Los Angeles Times: Why do Straights hate Gays? Good question. Better question: Why do Straights fear Gays? Fear is beneath the very real hate. Why does two people of the same gender loving each other, and having sex with other cause so much panic in "straights"? Everyone accepts this terror to such a degree that it is rarely questioned. Of course straight men get up tight around gay men...blah blah blah...
Why? Postulate: homophobia in heterosexuals has little to do with homosexuals.
Sometimes it is referred to in young men as "gay panic". This is a misnomer. "Gay panic" should be called "straight panic" - fear that one is not straight enough or "man" enough.
The idiotic superbowl snickers commercial is a fine example of "straight panic."
What causes this "straight panic" Is it a biological reaction? Is it cultural? Is it fear of death - like so much else? Why do straights fear gays so much? Labeling homosexual behavior immoral, - hurting, killing, mocking and debasing those oriented sexually and emotionally toward the same gender springs from terror not hate. It is a deep seeded fear that has no basis in reality. So why does it occur? I really do want to know.
Straights pay dearly for this nonsense. Not as much as gays - but the price heterosexual men and women pay for the free floating irrational homophobia in this society is still extraordinary. Pervasive, irrational homophobia destroys platonic intimacy between straight men, which in turn makes deep intimate bonds with wives and lovers something "gay" and therefore feared, and therefore almost impossible to attain. I would suggest this: for straight men much FEAR OF INTIMACY WITH WOMEN IS A RESULT OF FEAR OF - OR LACK OF - BONDING WITH MEN. Men and women are neither from Venus or Mars. They are from Earth. The clap trap pop psychology bullshit industry invariably neglects the most obvious reason egalitarian relationships between adult men and women are so difficult in America - BECAUSE ALL DEEP, AFFECTIONATE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ADULTS ARE SUSPECT IN AMERICA. In fact, anything that cannot clearly be made into a commodity in post industrial profit driven America is suspect.
Straight men fear gay men is a true sentence. Remove the modifiers to make it truer: Men fear men. That fear can be, and is, commodified all the time.
The appalling ,stupid, violent institutionalized bigotry of heterosexuals toward homosexuals must be changed. Many good people are working toward this. I want to add this: Gay men and women should not be asking why non gays hate them - but why they fear homosexual behavior so much. Hey straights in America - WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? Keep asking until an answer is given because there is nothing authentic to fear.
And that terrifies those who profit from victimizing gays and lesbians.
Hiring Katie Couric has got to be the worst decision in CBS history - or at least since Rhoda and Joe got married. I am not pretending to be an adult on this blog unlike other reputable Lefty blogs so will I say it simply and clearly - Couric was a vicious little bitch on 60 minutes last night. Why do journalists who are failing always feel the need to give head to the far right? The Edwards are out in front on a number of important issues. Unlike Obama and my current pick: Clinton. The fundamental tactic of the Right is to keep the Left on the defensive. John Edwards is on offense regarding Health Care and Iraq. In football good defense wins championships. In politics good offense wins the big prize.
Reminder of who we are dealing with on the other side: Newt Gingrich served his wife divorce papers while she recovered from cancer surgery. Rudy Gulianni informed his second wife of their divorce via televised news conference. They truly believe that the rules the rest of us live by do not apply. Conservatism is a mental illness.
I am a proud Clinton loyalist - but Edwards is a real no b.s. Democrat after all. And looking much more authentic than Obama or Clinton. National Healthcare has got to happen - and happen soon. Our healthcare system is overpriced and overrated.
Okay all you delusional people who have deified Obama: Look here. He's just another politician. And what is up with the gang sign that guy in the middle is throwing?
I never thought Obama could stop Clinton - I did think that he would hurt Edwards - Now I wonder if I got that backwards - The more apparent it is that Obama is just another opportunist the more Edwards will threaten his campaign. I would vote for Obama if need be, but I loath that he immediately weaponized him campaign to attack and insult Clinton. Never trust the candidate HOLLYWOOD/HUFFINGTON falls for. Hollywood has not gotten is right since Bobby Kennedy.
All that said - lordy the GOP side has the freakiest bunch of candidates in decades. Adulterers, men who ditch their wives while they are recovering in hospitals. Men who ditch their wives by calling a press conference. It is a shame Harold Stassen is not around. It coulda finally been his year.
Compare the marriages of John and Elizabeth Edwards- But there has always seemed to be something special about the Edwards marriage. Let me rephrase that: There has never been a scintilla of doubt about their commitment to each other, never the slightest public hint that, even for an instant, they found themselves on different pages. and say....
Newt: "He walked out in the spring of 1980.... By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said, "Daddy is downstairs. Could he come up?" When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from my surgery." - Jackie, his first wife.
or...
Rudy: Giuliani openly brought his girlfriend, Judy Nathan, to official events at Gracie Mansion, the family home. His wife, Donna Hanover, had to get a court order to stop him from bringing Nathan into the house where she and their children were still living. Furthermore, Hanover learned about Rudy's plans to divorce her through a televised news conference he staged.
Democrats are better people than Republicans. Liberals are better people than Conservatives. How much more evidence do we need?
The attacks from the Left on Hillary Clinton are psychotic and sexist. Arianna Huffington in particular is has some strange vendetta and blind spot about Senator Clinton. The nasty "viral" attack Hillary bile that rips off the Apple Ad by some arrogant K-Street insider is causing perverse glee at the Huffington Post.
Honestly - the LEFT is so politically stupid. Obama, like Rudy, is a house of cards. His support is largely within the LEFT WING ECHO CHAMBER. Last seen in that grand group masturbation called THE HOWARD DEAN CAMPAIGN.
What creeps me out about the Clinton bashers on the LEFT is that it is so CLEARLY SEXIST AND BASED IN RESENTMENT. The bile spewed at her is not worthy of Karl Rove. It is offensive to life long Democrats.
Here's what Senator Clinton knows that the self important Left does not: HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS. She does not need the Left to get the nomination or the White House. She needs the middle, the money, and the rank and file.
She has them all.
Obama has Hollywood $$$, David Geffen, a pack of smokes, and good looks. Good for him.
After 6 years of doing any damn thing they wanted the Bushies are finally seeing how the American system works. Thank God the Democrats/democrats won last November. I do not know if Cheney/Bush hurt the republic to such an extent that it is too late to repair it. But the system is finally working again. God bless the subpoena. "Unitary Executive" is a fancy phrase for "King" or "Dictator". It is an anti-American idea-
The arrogance of the Bushies is still shocking 6 years later - as is the cognitive dissonance - most of them truly seem to think that the rules do not apply when it comes to what they want. It is the BRATTY TEEN ADMINISTRATION.
Mind game: Replace George Bush with Bill Clinton and imagine the reaction of Fox News and the right wing chattering classes to GonzoGate. Hypocrites. All of them. Since conservative ideology fundamentally contradicts reality - hypocrisy is inevitable. That last sentence has been proven over and over again in the last decade. Look at the facts. Conservative = Hypocrite.
 The death and carnage and amorality of the illegal, unnecessary Iraqi invasion 4 years ago is being covered elsewhere. I want to add two things not being mentioned enough:
1. THE ESSENTIAL reason for this war is oil and profits. We are killing people for other people to make money. Deal with it.
4 years later - this obvious truth is largely avoided by the liberal blogs. Who has made money? What was protected by the invading Armies? What was ignored by the invading Armies? Answer those 3 questions then prove -somehow - that this war was not created by very rich people to be fought by poor people so that very rich people could get even richer.
I am not a Marxist. But the obvious is the obvious....
Not only is the war illegal and immoral. It is fundamentally unAmerican.
2. Liberals were right about the Iraq war all along. Many conservatives and all neo-cons, and most moderates were wrong all along. The Voice of liberals in the U.S. should be listened more intently and with more respect. The fact is WE WERE RIGHT/THEY WERE WRONG.
Again.
THE IDES OF MARCH
By FRANK RICH
TOMORROW night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush's prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it's an eternity. That's why a revisionist history of the White House's rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same "bad intelligence" before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion's aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. "If only I had known then what I know now ..." has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.
By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, these warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant, mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be over in a flash.
Now many of the same leaders who sold the war argue that escalation should be given a chance. This time they're peddling the new doomsday scenario that any withdrawal timetable will lead to the next 9/11. The question we must ask is: Has history taught us anything in four years?
Here is a chronology of some of the high and low points in the days leading up to the national train wreck whose anniversary we mourn this week [with occasional "where are they now" updates].
March 5, 2003
"I took the Grey Poupon out of my cupboard."
- Representative Duke Cunningham, Republican of California, on the floor of the House denouncing French opposition to the Iraq war.
[In November 2005, he resigned from Congress and pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors. In January 2007, the United States attorney who prosecuted him - Carol Lam, a Bush appointee - was forced to step down for "performance-related" issues by Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department.]
March 6, 2003
President Bush holds his last prewar news conference. The New York Observer writes that he interchanged Iraq with the attacks of 9/11 eight times, "and eight times he was unchallenged." The ABC News White House correspondent, Terry Moran, says the Washington press corps was left "looking like zombies."
March 7, 2003
Appearing before the United Nations Security Council on the same day that the United States and three allies (Britain, Spain and Bulgaria) put forth their resolution demanding that Iraq disarm by March 17, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, reports there is "no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.". He adds that documents "which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." None of the three broadcast networks' evening newscasts mention his findings.
[In 2005 ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.]
March 10, 2003
Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks tells an audience in England, "We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." Boycotts, death threats and anti-Dixie Chicks demonstrations follow.
[In 2007, the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy Awards, including best song for "Not Ready to Make Nice."]
March 12, 2003
A senior military planner tells The Daily News "an attack on Iraq could last as few as seven days."
"Isn't it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?"
- John McCain, writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.
"The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular."
- Jay Leno, "The Tonight Show."
March 14, 2003
Senator John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, asks the F.B.I. to investigate the forged documents cited a week earlier by ElBaradei and alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction: "There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."
March 16, 2003
On "Meet the Press," Dick Cheney says that American troops will be "greeted as liberators," that Saddam "has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization," and that it is an "overstatement" to suggest that several hundred thousand troops will be needed in Iraq after it is liberated. Asked by Tim Russert about ElBaradei's statement that Iraq does not have a nuclear program, the vice president says, "I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong."
"There will be new recruits, new recruits probably because of the war that's about to happen. So we haven't seen the last of Al Qaeda."
- Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism czar, on ABC's "This Week."
[From the recently declassified "key judgments" of the National Intelligence Estimate of April 2006: "The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."]
"Despite the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress. Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from White House, Pentagon and other government policy makers for intelligence that would make the administration's case 'and what they say is a lack of hard facts,' one official said."
- "U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms," by Walter Pincus (with additional reporting by Bob Woodward), The Washington Post, Page A17.
March 17, 2003
Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who voted for the Iraq war resolution, writes the president to ask why the administration has repeatedly used W.M.D. evidence that has turned out to be "a hoax" - "correspondence that indicates that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear weapons from an African country, Niger."
[Still waiting for "an adequate explanation" of the bogus Niger claim four years later, Waxman, now chairman of the chief oversight committee in the House, wrote Condoleezza Rice on March 12, 2007, seeking a response "to multiple letters I sent you about this matter."]
In a prime-time address, President Bush tells Saddam to leave Iraq within 48 hours: "Every measure has been made to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it." After the speech, NBC rushes through its analysis to join a hit show in progress, "Fear Factor," where men and women walk with bare feet over broken glass to win $50,000.
March 18, 2003
Barbara Bush tells Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" that she will not watch televised coverage of the war: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
[Visiting the homeless victims of another cataclysm, Hurricane Katrina, at the Houston Astrodome in 2005, Mrs. Bush said, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them."]
In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street Journal writes, "There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored Al Qaeda members."
[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House's use of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, "Any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned in the run-up to war."]
In an article headlined "Post-war 'Occupation' of Iraq Could Result in Chaos," Mark McDonald of Knight Ridder Newspapers quotes a "senior leader of one of Iraq's closest Arab neighbors," who says, "We're worried that the outcome will be civil war."
A questioner at a White House news briefing asserts that "every other war has been accompanied by fiscal austerity of some sort, often including tax increases" and asks, "What's different about this war?" Ari Fleischer responds, "The most important thing, war or no war, is for the economy to grow,"” adding that in the president's judgment, "best way to help the economy to grow is to stimulate the economy by providing tax relief."
After consulting with the homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, the N.C.A.A. announces that the men's basketball tournament will tip off this week as scheduled. The N.C.A.A. president, Myles Brand, says, "We were not going to let a tyrant determine how we were going to lead our lives."
March 19, 2003
"I'd guess that if it goes beyond three weeks, Bush will be in real trouble."
- Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel teaching at Boston University, quoted in The Washington Post.
[The March 2007 installment of the Congressionally mandated Pentagon assessment "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" reported that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 9, 2007, there were more than 1,000 weekly attacks, up from about 400 in spring 2004.]
Robert McIlvaine, whose 26-year-old son was killed at the World Trade Center 18 months earlier, is arrested at a peace demonstration at the Capitol in Washington. He tells The Washington Post: "It's very insulting to hear President Bush say this is for Sept. 11."
"I don't think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after three and a half months," when Iraq's government is providing more cooperation than it has in more than a decade.
- Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector for the United Nations.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans support going to war in Iraq, up from 59 percent before the president's March 17 speech.
"When the president talks about sacrifice, I think the American people clearly understand what the president is talking about."
- Ari Fleischer
[Asked in January 2007 how Americans have sacrificed, President Bush answered: "I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night."]
Pentagon units will "locate and survey at least 130 and as many as 1,400 possible weapons sites."
- "Disarming Saddam Hussein; Teams of Experts to Hunt Iraq Arms" by Judith Miller, The Times, Page A1.
President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure."
Price of a share of Halliburton stock:$20.50
[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]
March 20, 2003
"The pictures you're seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the Seventh Cavalry racing across the deserts in southern Iraq. They will - it will be days before they get to Baghdad, but you've never seen battlefield pictures like these before."
- Walter Rodgers, an embedded CNN correspondent.
"It seems quite odd to me that while we are commenced upon a war, we have no funding for that war in this budget."
-Hillary Clinton.
"Coalition forces suffered their first casualties in a helicopter crash that left 12 Britons and 4 Americans dead."
- The Associated Press.
Though the March 23 Oscar ceremony will dispense with the red carpet in deference to the war, an E! channel executive announces there will be no cutback on pre-Oscar programming, but "the tone will be much more somber."
March 21, 2003
"I don't mean to be glib about this, or make it sound trite, but it really is a symphony that has to be orchestrated by a conductor."
- Retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, CNN military analyst, speaking to Wolf Blitzer of the bombardment of Baghdad during Shock and Awe.
["Many parts of Iraq are stable. But of course what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone."
- Laura Bush, "Larry King Live," Feb. 26, 2007.]
"The president may occasionally turn on the TV, but that's not how he gets his news or his information. ... He is the president, he's made his decisions and the American people are watching him."
- Ari Fleischer.
[The former press secretary received immunity from prosecution in the Valerie Wilson leak case and testified in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby in 2007.]
"Peter, I may be going out on a limb, but I'm not sure that the first stage of this Shock and Awe campaign is really going to frighten the Iraqi people. In fact, it may have just the opposite effect. If they feel that they've survived the most that the United States can throw at them and they're still standing, and they're still able to go about their lives, well, then they might be rather emboldened. They might feel that, well, look, we can stand a lot more than this."
- Richard Engel, a Baghdad correspondent speaking to Peter Jennings on ABC's "World News Tonight."
I didn't get to watch all of Valarie Plame Wilson's testimony yesterday but I saw enough to be even more disgusted with the Bush administration. If that is even possible.
We got to see a career spy who's career was needlessly destroyed to cover up an administration's lies to get us into war. We also saw a real person who has put her life on the line for our country. I hope the jurers in the Scooter Libby trial watched and realized that the nice guy they convicted ruined someone's life. And all of her contacts.
No wonder President Bush I cried when Jeb left office. As the former head of the CIA his other son's actions have to cause him great pain.
And let the right go on notice. General Hayden said she was covert. That should be enough for them to admit that what Rove, Scooter and Ari did was wrong. Robert Novak should be excommunicated from the press. Obviously the right cannot admit that they were wrong and Novak will keep writing his op-eds. They will not let anything like facts get in the way of their opinions.
John has said that Rove is not so smart. Boy, oh boy, is he right.
Somehow he managed to extracate himself from the Plame scandal but I'm hoping he will finally be held accountable for Gonzalez-gate.
James Moore, co-author of Bush's Brain, said that everything is political for him. In other words, he doesn't believe in governing, which explains how this White House has managed to screw everything up from Katrina to Iraq. There are no actual plans to deal with issues, only spin.
We are going to pay for the consequences of this administrations lack of planning for years.
They are scum. When will we learn that conservatives simply cannot be trusted to guard American values. Joe McCarthy? Richard Nixon? Newt? The hellish nightmare that is Bush 2? Republicans simply should not be allowed to govern. They have now become the party of corruption, greed, and anti-Americanism.
 John my John,
Here's a comment I posted on Huffington in response to General Pace. Use it any way you'd like.
Love, Jeff
I am an Iraq War vet. This morning, for the first time in a long time, I felt a surge (sorry to use that word) of hope! When it has seemed for so long that no one in any kind of position of power in our government had any lingering attachments to reality, Marine General Peter Pace reaffirmed at least a little of my confidence in our leaders. General Pace is the first Marine to hold the position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so as a marine, I have always felt proud of our first Marine to hold this position. Yesterday he said, "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way." I sat at my computer alone and let out a loud "Oorah!" Finally we can end this insanity and bring the troops home from Iraq, start taking care of them like they deserve and begin trying to make reparations to Iraqis AND convict the criminals that made this mess! Yes Sir, I was just about jumping for joy... a betrayed patriot relieved...the eternal optimist validated...UNTIL I realized that he was not talking about a corporately motivated war of aggression based completely on lies where we have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in a country that posed no immanent threat to our nation thereby making our nation infinitely more hated than we ever were and exponentially less safe...he was talking about gay people. Glad we've got our priorities straight...did I say straight?
Former Lance Corporal Jeff Key
Iraq War Vet, USMC
Vice President Cheney said that Democrats were undermining the troops by not just funding what he and W. want them to.
And they call him, TONE DEAF.
Once again, Mr. Cheney, you really need to watch the news. Yesterday it came out that your former company, Haliburton is going to move it's global headquarters to Dubai. Granted, they are going to keep an office in Houston and Delaware will still be the corporate headquarters so they will continue to pay taxes. My feeling is that they are moving their corporate officers offshore to avoid possible subpeanas.
Nonetheless, on a day when the news is all about your war profiteering former company it seems a bit, well, ridiculous, for you to talk about undermining troops. Wasn't it your company who gave the troops bad water and food?
You need to get back to your undisclosed location and keep quiet.
MSNBC has two posts up that needs quick answers.
1. • Will Clinton win the war of attrition? answer : YES.
2. Haliburton moving HQ to Dubai. Why? Because they have extracted as much out of the American Middle class as they can and now - showing zero loyalty to Texas, Houston, America and have the sense of decency and morality of a tweaking Hitler youth so they are ditching Texas for Arabia. Proving again - THE LEFT WAS ALWAYS RIGHT ABOUT THE PIGS IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE WAR. The war was and is about a MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS TO THE VERY VERY RICH.
Face facts, America:
Conservatives are scumbags. VOTE LIBERAL!
I still do not understand the Faux Debate that the LEFT is having about whether or not Clinton needs to apologize for her vote to authorize the Bush to attack a country that did not attack us. Points being missed here:
1. No one is asking if an apology is appropriate. It is assumed it is. Because while going after Clinton for being "calculating" (a code sexist term for BITCH just as "articulate" is code racist term for "My God! That negro is SMART!!" ) no one seems to be care if Edwards apology is also "calculated". Edwards apology is the right political move for 08 so it must be sincere. THE POSSIBILITY THAT CLINTON ACTUALLY SEES NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE HAS NOT OCCURRED TO ANYONE INSISTING ON AN APOLOGY. There is, in fact, no "calculation".
2. I never thought the war was correct, just, or moral. However in 2002 there were reasonable Democrats who believed that Iraq was the logical next military move. Bush lied- dishonest information was handed out like candy on Valentine's Day. Senator Clinton made a choice to vote for authorization. What was she thinking!!!???
A. She knew Bush was spewing bullshit and voted yes anyway. OR
B. She did not know Bush was a lying scheming war mongering fiend, assumed he had the country's interest at heart - as most Americans did in 2002 - and having lived with a President believes they should have power in time of crisis to make bold moves. Further she thought the men and woman in the White House would competently prosecute the war if it came to that - and voted yes.
Of course if CHAOS was the goal (and it seems it was) the Bush team did a great job.
3. Let's say the whole thing is about political calculation on her part - and clearly this is at least partially true - apologizing is a bad political move. FOR GOD'S SAKE DO WE WANT A DEMOCRAT TO WIN OR NOT? AND NO MORE BULLSHIT ABOUT HOW IT DOES NOT MATTER ANY WAY - CUZ WE WANT A "REAL" CHOICE - NEWT OR CLINTON? McCain OR CLINTON? - contrary to the flavor of the month club - Rudy is a nonstarter so forget him - he'll be long gone by this time next year - ROMNEY OR CLINTON? BROWNBACK OR CLINTON? These are not "real" choices?? DOES ANYONE THINK WE WOULD BE HEARING ABOUT FBI ABUSES IF THE GOP HAD WON LAST NOVEMBER????
and sorry kids - Edwards is a fine man who will end in Clinton's cabinet- And Obama - well I like this man a lot - but I simply will not gamble that he might be another Lincoln - regardless of how good he is on camera - 2 years in the U.S. Senate, a few autobiographies, and sex appeal ARE NOT ENOUGH IN 2008. and like it or not - Obama simply will not win the general. Iraq Hussein Osama. Barak Hussein Obama. I wish we were less vapid as a country. We are not. McCain or Newt would run Obama off the road in the general. But 4 more years of ignoring global warming, not developing oil alternatives, GOP judges, and attacks on gays, and empowered religious bigots IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Unless Gore changes his mind, Clinton is still our best chance.
PS - I would listen to Hagel if he runs as an Independent. His voting record is putrid, though.
PPSS - I repeat the deification of Obama is A. inappropriate until he proves himself and B. in large part because of unconscious sexism on the Left.
ANYONE BUT THE MOST QUALIFIED CANDIDATE!!!
IS NOT A PLATFORM TO RUN ON AGAINST THE GOP IN 2008
Why Libby's Pardon Is a Slam Dunk
By FRANK RICH
EVEN by Washington's standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.
A president who tries to void laws he doesn't like by encumbering them with "signing statements" and who regards the Geneva Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn't going to start playing by the rules now. His assertion last week that he is "pretty much going to stay out of" the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon is whether Mr. Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans' political fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008.
Either way, the pardon is a must for Mr. Bush. He needs Mr. Libby to keep his mouth shut. Cheney's Cheney knows too much about covert administration schemes far darker than the smearing of Joseph Wilson. Though Mr. Libby wrote a novel that sank without a trace a decade ago, he now has the makings of an explosive Washington tell-all that could be stranger than most fiction and far more salable.
Mr. Libby's novel was called "The Apprentice." His memoir could be titled "The Accomplice." Its first chapter would open in August 2002, when he and a small cadre of administration officials including Karl Rove formed the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secret task force to sell the Iraq war to the American people. The climactic chapter of the Libby saga unfolded last week when the guilty verdict in his trial coincided, all too fittingly, with the Congressional appearance of two Iraq veterans, one without an ear and one without an eye, to recount their subhuman treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
It was WHIG's secret machinations more than four years ago that led directly to those shredded lives. WHIG had been tasked, as The Washington Post would later uncover, to portray Iraq's supposedly imminent threat to America with "gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence." In other words, WHIG was to cook up the sexiest recipe for promoting the war, facts be damned. So it did, by hyping the scariest possible scenario: nuclear apocalypse. As Michael Isikoff and David Corn report in "Hubris," it was WHIG (equipped with the slick phrase-making of the White House speechwriter Michael Gerson) that gave the administration its Orwellian bumper sticker, the constantly reiterated warning that Saddam's "smoking gun" could be "a mushroom cloud."
Ever since all the W.M.D. claims proved false, the administration has pleaded that it was duped by the same bad intelligence everyone else saw. But the nuclear card, the most persistent and gripping weapon in the prewar propaganda arsenal, was this White House's own special contrivance. Mr. Libby was present at its creation. He knows what Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney knew about the manufacture of this fiction and when they knew it.
Clearly they knew it early on. The administration's guilt (or at least embarrassment) about its lies in fomenting the war quickly drove it to hide the human price being paid for those lies. (It also tried to hide the financial cost of the war by keeping it out of the regular defense budget, but that's another, if related, story.) The steps the White House took to keep casualties out of view were extraordinary, even as it deployed troops to decorate every presidential victory rally and gave the Pentagon free rein to exploit the sacrifices of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman in mendacious P.R. stunts.
The administration's enforcement of a prohibition on photographs of coffins returning from Iraq was the first policy manifestation of the hide-the-carnage strategy. It was complemented by the president's decision to break with precedent, set by Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter among others, and refuse to attend military funerals, lest he lend them a media spotlight. But Mark Benjamin, who has chronicled the mistreatment of Iraq war veterans since 2003, discovered an equally concerted effort to keep injured troops off camera. Mr. Benjamin wrote in Salon in 2005 that "flights carrying the wounded arrive in the United States only at night" and that both Walter Reed and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda barred the press "from seeing or photographing incoming patients."
A particularly vivid example of the extreme measures taken by the White House to cover up the war's devastation turned up in The Washington Post's Walter Reed exposé. Sgt. David Thomas, a Tennessee National Guard gunner with a Purple Heart and an amputated leg, found himself left off the guest list for a summer presidential ceremony honoring a fellow amputee after he said he would be wearing shorts, not pants, when occupying a front-row seat in camera range. Now we can fully appreciate that bizarre incident on C-Span in October 2003, when an anguished Cher, of all unlikely callers, phoned in to ask why administration officials, from the president down, were not being photographed with patients like those she had visited at Walter Reed. "I don't understand why these guys are so hidden," she said.
The answer is simple: Out of sight, out of mind was the game plan, and it has been enforced down to the tiniest instances. When HBO produced an acclaimed (and apolitical) documentary last year about military medics' remarkable efforts to save lives in Iraq, "Baghdad ER," Army brass at the last minute boycotted planned promotional screenings in Washington and at Fort Campbell, Ky. In a memo, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley warned that the film, though made with Army cooperation, could endanger veterans' health by provoking symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The General Kiley who was so busy policing an HBO movie for its potential health hazards is the same one who did not correct the horrific real-life conditions on his watch at Walter Reed. After the Post expose was published, he tried to spin it by boasting that most of the medical center's rooms "were actually perfectly O.K." and scapegoating "soldiers leaving food in their rooms" for the mice and cockroach infestations. That this guy is still surgeon general of the Army - or was as of Friday - makes you wonder what he, like Mr. Libby, has on his superiors.
Now that the country has seen the Congressional testimony of Specialist Jeremy Duncan, who has melted flesh where his ear once was, or watched the ABC newsman Bob Woodruff's report on other neglected patients in military medical facilities far beyond Walter Reed, the White House cover-up of veterans' care has collapsed, like so many other cover-ups necessitated by its conduct of this war. But the administration and its surrogates still won't face up to their moral culpability.
Mary Matalin, the former Cheney flack who served with Mr. Libby on WHIG and is now on the board of his legal defense fund (its full list of donors is unknown), has been especially vocal. "Scooter didn't do anything," she said. "And his personal record and service are impeccable." What Mr. Libby did - fabricating nuclear threats at WHIG and then lying under oath when he feared that sordid Pandora's box might be pried open by the Wilson case - was despicable. Had there been no WHIG or other White House operation for drumming up fictional rationales for war, there would have been no bogus uranium from Africa in a presidential speech, no leak to commit perjury about, no amputees to shut away in filthy rooms at Walter Reed.
Listening to Ms. Matalin and her fellow apparatchiks emote publicly about the punishment being inflicted on poor Mr. Libby and his family, you wonder what world they live in. They seem clueless about how ugly their sympathy for a conniving courtier sounds against the testimony of those wounded troops and their families who bear the most searing burdens of the unnecessary war WHIG sped to market.
As is often noted, any parallels between Iraq and Vietnam do not extend to America's treatment of its troops. No one spits at those serving in Iraq. But our "support" for the troops has often been as hypocritical as that of an administration that still fails to provide them with sufficient armor. Health care indignities, among other betrayals of returning veterans, have been reported by countless news organizations since the war began, not just this year. Many in Congress did nothing, and we as a people have often looked the other way, supporting the troops with car decals and donated phone cards while the same history repeats itself again and again.
Now the "surge" that was supposed to show results by summer is creeping inexorably into an open-ended escalation, even as Moktada al-Sadr's militia ominously melts away, just as Iraq's army did after the invasion in 2003, lying in wait to spring a Tet-like surprise. And still, despite Thursday's breakthrough announcement of a credible Iraq exit blueprint by the House leadership, Congress threatens to dither. While Mr. Bush will no doubt pardon Scooter Libby without so much as a second thought, anyone else in Washington who continues to further this debacle may find it less easy to escape scot-free.
Too much, too many people. It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.
Thank you Grandmaster Flash. Perfect description for the last couple of weeks.
Let's see, we've got Robert Mueller testifying that the FBI has been somewhat over zealous in checking us all out. Illegally. We've got Scooter Miller going to jail unless he gets that pardon that Lindsey Graham insists he should get because lying to federal prosecutors is just not that big a deal. Unless you're Bill Clinton. We've got Newt admitting putting the screws to both Bill Clinton and an aide at the same time. We've got the horrible mess at Walter Reed and beyond. We've got the Comptroller General of the United States saying that we are in deep shit and unless we do something now we are going to be a third world country. We've got the report that no one in the administration is to mention polar bears because we don't want anyone to realize that there might be a problem with global warming and the possible extinction of said polar bears. We've got Alberto Gonzalez firing federal prosecutors to make room for Rove's pal and to get people more in tune with the Bush administration's goal of going after Democrats. We've got General Petreus saying that the military option cannot solve the problems in Iraq. And finally we've got Anne "Faggot" Coulter posing with a gay porn star.
How can you keep up? How can Bush even manage to pull out a 28% approval rating?
Meanwhile, as the spring thaw comes we are going to have even worse news coming out of Afghanistan.
It really is time to put politics aside and deal with all of this.
We have to have national health care.
We have to have a policy that gets us off oil.
We have to deal with Iraq - Joe Biden seems to have the best idea.
We have to commit to Afghanistan otherwise we're going to go the way of the Soviet Union.
We have to end the genocide in Darfur.
We have to stop global warming.
We have to raise taxes to get us out of debt.
Give me a candidate for President who's willing to be a grown up and face the horrific future in a responsible way.
Do the lies, bullshit and hypocrisy ever end for conservatives and neo-conservatives? This week alone Coulter says faggot then hugs poor put upon 36 year old Columbia student Mark Rod Sanchez Majors who is revealed to be an escort and gay porn star and now Gingrich admits affair while impeaching Clinton for lying about an affair. Meanwhile Conservatives believe Libby should be pardoned for lying to the feds under oath. The psychotic cognitive dissonance of Republicans and authoritarian conservatives is not even funny anymore. It is dangerous. Freakish. These people must no longer be put in power.
Unmarried Mary Cheney has baby with gay lover. DON'T QUESTION HER ABOUT IT- NO FAIR!
Mark Foley spews on House pages for years. No one in GOP leadership gives a shit.
Ted Haggard does crystal and has sex with male prostitute. While railing against gay "sinners".
Mark Sanchez goes on every right wing bullshit show he can find to attack evil liberals - (who, FYI, are fighting for equal rights for gays and lesbians) is called a great American by all the authoritarians - oh and he is also a male prostitute -F.Y.I.
and that is only since STANDARD TIME RETURNED LAST OCTOBER!!! These people are sick fucks.
Mark Sanchez's blog this morning is offensive and weird and idiotic. (support those helping suicidal gay teens here - Mark, you should lend a hand. ) Straw men are set up and knocked down through out Sanchez's freakish rant. (Apparently porn is full of "liberals. - anyone have any old Bobby Kennedy Does Dallas super-8s?)
Why do conservatives always have excessive and vicious judgements and very high standards for everyone but themselves?
Poor little XXX Sanchez got called out because he glad hands with people who think gay sex should be illegal, then gets all huffy when pictures of him kissing men show up. Liberals are not relentlessly hypocritical - that's the difference. Certainly their are liberals who are also hypocrites. But hypocrisy is not a way of life for liberals. It is for conservatives. By definition. What authoritarian conservatives believe and being human directly contradict.
in the last 5 months alone...
Mark Sanchez.
Ted Haggard
Mark Foley
Mary Cheney
Ronald Reagan is not even a "Reagan Republican" anymore. I wonder what Barry Goldwater and Ronnie are thinking as they watch the party of Bush destroy itself? Hagel better run for Pres. to save the GOP.
 The Democratic field is much stronger than the GOP's in Presidential race. Rudy G. will implode soon enough, despite Chris Mathew's bizarre adulation. Yes, that IS a pic of Rudy in DRAG. Newt G. may ride back in to give the Cons something to get jacked up about. And would become the instant front runner. But not a winner. The DEM field is strong, but Hillary and maybe Edwards - are the only ones who can win the General Election. When will the pic of Obama taking a drag on a Camel Wide show up? It matters. The people he needs are not the black vote - he'll get most of that by default. He needs S.M.Ms - SOCCER MOM MODERATES. Like it or not, smoking matters to many of these voters. A president who smokes ain't gonna fly.
Hillary remains the default winner unless Gore gets in.
Why don't we just have all the primaries for the next 3 Presidential elections in Feb of 08? 2008 on Tuesday. 2012 on Wednesday and 2016 on Thursday. The presidential election is now going to be 2 years long.... with the general election set by Feb 15 next year. It is ridiculous.
And screw daylight savings time. Why don't we just eliminate standard time at this point? "Standard" time will be four months out of the year from now on. It is idiotic. And pointless. And annoying.
 Accountability is needed for the "problems of leadership" with Walter Reed and everything else related to this illegal, immoral, unnecessary war in Iraq. Start here: the people responsible for this disaster are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfwitz, the greedy motherfuckers at Haliburton and the staff of Fox News. Bushco has visited a disaster on this great nation. We must stop giving the levers of power to Conservatives and Neo-conservatives. How many American boys and girls have to die and be mained for the lies, profiteering, and stupid fantasies of conservatives?
Too much, too many people. It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.
Thank you Grandmaster Flash. Perfect description for the last couple of weeks.
Let's see, we've got Robert Mueller testifying that the FBI has been somewhat over zealous in checking us all out. Illegally. We've got Scooter Miller going to jail unless he gets that pardon that Lindsey Graham insists he should get because lying to federal prosecutors is just not that big a deal. Unless you're Bill Clinton. We've got Newt admitting putting the screws to both Bill Clinton and an aide at the same time. We've got the horrible mess at Walter Reed and beyond. We've got the Comptroller General of the United States saying that we are in deep shit and unless we do something now we are going to be a third world country. We've got the report that no one in the administration is to mention polar bears because we don't want anyone to realize that there might be a problem with global warming and the possible extinction of said polar bears. We've got Alberto Gonzalez firing federal prosecutors to make room for Rove's pal and to get people more in tune with the Bush administration's goal of going after Democrats. We've got General Petreus saying that the military option cannot solve the problems in Iraq. And finally we've got Anne "Faggot" Coulter posing with a gay porn star.
How can you keep up? How can Bush even manage to pull out a 28% approval rating?
Meanwhile, as the spring thaw comes we are going to have even worse news coming out of Afghanistan.
It really is time to put politics aside and deal with all of this.
We have to have national health care.
We have to have a policy that gets us off oil.
We have to deal with Iraq - Joe Biden seems to have the best idea.
We have to commit to Afghanistan otherwise we're going to go the way of the Soviet Union.
We have to end the genocide in Darfur.
We have to stop global warming.
We have to raise taxes to get us out of debt.
Give me a candidate for President who's willing to be a grown up and face the horrific future in a responsible way.
 Imagine the response of the conservative dominated media if Barak Obama jokingly introduced Al Franken who then stood up and called Laura Bush a cunt.
When can we, as a nation, rid ourselves of this evil, amoral, depraved, corrupt group called "conservatives"?
We need to call conservatives in America what they are: dangerous and evil.
Conservative friends will tell me that nobody really looks at Coulter as a serious person. With her calls for assassinations of public officials, general name-calling, and highly casual relationship with anything resembling facts, she's the court jester, a source of entertainment whom nobody really thinks of as one of the grown-ups. But there she is, a featured speaker at this event... and there are the attendees, clapping for her.
Dick Cheney is a dick. He chastises the Democrats for not supporting the troops if they cut funding. TODAY. Where is Scooter to tell him that the timing is a bit off, what with the Walter Reed scandal? And apparently it's more than just Walter Reed; it's all over the country at VA hospitals. Nice job, Mr. Cheney. See, it's kind of funny, if you're a sick as you, that first you send troops without the proper equipment and when they come home wounded you screw them again.
And speaking of Bitchification, Ms. Coulter. Calling John Edwards a faggot? Really? That's where you're going? Good to know that you're still in fifth grade. Will the Republicans be in an uproar and demanding apologies? Doubtful.
Help me out here, how can anyone continue to support this administration? Oh, wait, the new poll by the New York Times has President Bush's approval rating at 29%.
Say goodnight, Dick.
When will it finally be okay to ignore the Neo-Conservatives? How often do they have to get it wrong before the media finally says "you are not legitimate." Listening to Neo-cons talk about foreign policy is akin to asking Bozo the Clown about molecular biology. Pointless. Why don't we give flat earthers a segment on Hardball every night instead? Neo Cons are wrong about everything . Obviously. Their theories are speculative and destructive. They lie to accomplish each successive "goal" which , in turn, make the world less safe, kills a lot more people, and weakens our country.
The Liberals - like Michael Moore - have been proven correct again and again and they are marginalized by the main stream media. The exact opposite of what should be happening.
When is it okay to say to Duck, Cheney! and his band of neo-con idiots, you have the right to your views - but we will no longer give you the megaphone?
Your track record sucks.
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