Howdy, David! I suppose this might also count as a post!

It is a sad commentary on our society that a college education has become so expensive the freedom to choose one's major has been hijacked by the need to pay back 10's of thousands of dollars in student loans. One of the lasting legacies of the 2cnd Bush admin is the complete dismantling and destruction of the Federal Pell Grant system. Just another shade of black and blue on the eye of the american people.

Following you this past 6 months brought me `up close and personal' to the evolving media.

You said, "....people their age do not want to pay for information...." But they may be quite willing to pay to post information they want to spread/preach!

On this blog, you've got several JJs' (`Junkie Journalists', pun intended) who will pay you to be on your blog since this blog is apparently their only outlet to kill time!

As far as in the `real' world where I reside when I'm not here, I pay for multiple publications but the only info. I pay over the web, are for financial/investment purposes and they are tax-deductible! Maybe that's the key! Let's Get creative!

Dave, you could have told the students that real journalists are needed to cover the indisputable fact that World Trade Center 7 was brought down by a controlled implosion and therefore that 9-11 was an inside job. You could have told them that there are no inside-the-beltway journalists, such as yourself, who are willing to cover the topic which is the story of the century. I think that alot of people would pay for that information. We need a new breed of reporter these days in the mainstream press. Ones that are not afraid!!

Ah, yes, jounalism classes...

I remember making a quick exit when hearing that I'd be taught to write at a 5th-grade level and in a style appreciated by only the lowest common denominator...

Maybe I shouldn't have dropped it, but I was working in TV and sensationalism was on the rise! Microwave towers! Live video links!

That cute, little "press" card in the Fedora hatbands seems to lack a little something, by comparison.

-T

Mr. David Corn,

I see so many smart and very savvy young folks. Politically informed and very interested.

There will be changes but as long as rags like the NYT's and WaPo carry subscribers it seems to me people are willing to pay to be misinformed.

Thanks again, for all of your work.

Kirk

Maybe you should beat it, Korn.

to find out stuff before other people and disseminate it.

is that what journalists of today think that they are doing? move over dan rather! look at me! i'm edward r. murrow! ha ha.

LIVE FROM BAGHDAD: dead journalists

"But I do believe that for all the wonderfulness of the Internet, it has also allowed bad (and cheap) information to compete more efficiently with good (and expensive to produce) information."

Oh, you mean like judith miller, the expensive liar, as opposed to say, Mike Rivero, who was screaming "LIES, LIES, LIES" from day one, for free?

"Mama, don let y'o baby grow up to be a newsman..."

Kathleen, from the previous thread. Apples and oranges, dear.

That Hastert is not concerned about governmental spying on ordinary Americans has nothing to do with the fact that it does not bode well for the separation of powers of the 3 branches of government that the executive branch raids a congressman's office.

Hastert may be *alarmed* for the wrong reasons, but there is ample reason to be alarmed when the FBI raids a congressman's office.

Ref Post 4

I would love to see articles concerning what really happened on 911. Building 7 was absolutely a controlled implosion and there was no evidence of a plane in the Pentagon. Why will "real journalists" not cover this?? I sometimes wonder if 100 years from now when we're all dead and gone if the truth will be known by then. I wonder how this 911 story will be told; how history will be taught.

I thought they had a warrant. Interesting how much concern pelosi and hastert show over seperation of powers when it's one of their own being held over the coals. pelosi sure wasn't very concerned about the bush ordered NSA wiretapping WITHOUT warrants, and no apparent separation of powers, 4 years ago.

http://strawandclover.com/

It's a post which we all appreciate, especially they with dial-up. Have a good weekend Davey.

If you're in over the weekend working on your book, toss us a new thread - an open thread will do.

"Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.": -- Thomas Paine - (1737-1809)

=
"If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors.": - John Locke: - (1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Source: Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], #228 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 465

=
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams - (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution." 1776

===
Thanks ICH Newsletter!

Judy - click my name to discover why the mcmedia does what it does -
history is written by the winners -
never underestimate the power of yosemitesam.

Judy, don't worry, the truth about Pearl Harbor only took about 50 years to be told, and the OKC bombing is still under investigation, don't lose hope! They can't talk about it until they are granted permission by the powers that be, but the day is coming when that info will be used to make the agenda progress. Unfortunately I'm afraid it will not be a good thing for America.

3

"Where do they come UP with these dumbasses?"

Re #20: neil, that is a very good question, but, errr... which ones?

Carey from the previous thread, when I said march on DC, I didn't mean to stop there. I was kinda fantasizing about the torch and pitchfork scenario! And maybe what daddy bush mentioned, something about what the people would do if they knew the truth of what they had been up to, something about stringing them up from the lamp posts? Hey, it was his idea, not mine.

Saladin, why don't you think it will be good for America? You think it will all be twisted? I really don't know what happened, I just know we're being lied too.

I did click on your name in post #18 - I see I have a lot of reading to do. Thanks!

Study Wants Nuclear Weapons Outlawed

A study led by former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix called Thursday for outlawing nuclear weapons and reviving global cooperation on disarmament including security guarantees to curb the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

As long as any nuclear, chemical and biological arms remain in any country's arsenal, "there is a high risk that they will one day be used by design or accident," the two-year probe by the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission concluded.

Despite the end of the Cold War the stocks of such weapons remain "extraordinarily high" including 27,000 nuclear weapons, about 12,000 of them still actively deployed, the commission said, making 60 recommendations to free the world from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Here is an idea: Hans Blix for UN Secretary General?

capt

Chinese is right.

Judy, after all I have seen and read I have reached the conclusion that America is being set up for a fall. The 9/11 info will just be the final blow. What more will the NWO architects need to convince the people that they have a renegade govt. that will stop at nothing to maintain power, including the murder of their own citizens, (as if they haven't done THAT before) What has happened in the past 5 years is so f**king weird, if someone had predicted these events 10 years ago I would have called the guys with the straight jackets to take them away. Now, between the economy, the Orwellian state of the union, the never ending wars of aggression, the overt invasions of sovereign nations to control energy resources, oh god, I could go on and on. Something very wicked is coming, I don't know what, but I have a very bad feeling that 9/11 will be the catalyst, just like it was to set this nightmare in motion. And I don't see any politicians doing a damn thing to stop it.

capt, 12,000? Will we have global warming or nuclear winter? Jeez Louise, how many do they need to keep M.A.D. up and running? And bush wants even more? FUCKING CRAZY PEOPLE!!!

Letter to WRH

READER: Re: Britain rules out force against Iran
There is a very good chance that Iranian terrorists are going to attack Britain using nuclear weapons.

WRH: On 6/6/6 , the day of England's first match at the World Cup
----------
UGH. I have been trying to ignore this superstitious date, but there are those who may be happy to take advantage of it.

I am floored by how fast so many things have changed.

I HATE change, personal, political, etc. I would prefer gridlock to radicalism.

Too much, too fast is by definition never a good idea. UGH!

capt

The "Change" was meant in general, I would welcome a major change about nukes, get rid of them.

capt

#30
or a change in leadership.

Republicans plan controversial votes on gay marriage, flag burning

WASHINGTON - When President Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, Republicans said a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage sealed the election, drawing legions of conservatives to the polls.

Bush and Republican senators now will seek another dose of conservative magic to embolden their party's base. Call it nostalgia - or election-year jitters.

In Saturday's radio address, Bush will urge support for a national ban on gay marriage. A meeting Monday at the White House with opponents of gay marriage will follow, then a full-blown debate and vote in the Senate on a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman.

Next, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., wants votes on two perennial conservative causes: repealing the estate tax and giving Congress the constitutional authority to ban flag burning.

None of the measures is expected to pass, though the estate tax debate could yield a compromise that applies the tax only to the largest inheritances.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

When the polls are very bad the GOPhers play to the hate. Screw them and anybody so easily manipulated. The thinkers have been waking up and are not likely to be lulled into blind lock-step.

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894)

capt

"Where do they come UP with these dumbasses?"

By Neil
______________________________________________

NY Post: Gore's Own Charts Says 'Global Warming' Got Worse When He Was In The White House.
______________________________________________

Neil - there called progressives and they were born this way!!!

A little regime change (here at home?) It is the neo-paradigm.

Jeanne from the previous blog! Fox ratings tumble! I believe that a station can be conservative or progressive but on some issues the viewers need to see some objecivity in their reporting on certain issues. Fox News is too one sided in reporting the news. They are a quacky reporting news service.

Dear Mr. Corn:
You have given the students good advice. Our son speaks fluent Japanese. I do not know about his Japanese writing skills. He tried to study Chinese but there are so many different dialects that he just stayed with Japanese.
Sincerely, Gerald

Where is the outrage? Americans are silent on many issues and they are getting what they deserve. Silence is tacit approval of the policies and practices of this Nazi regime.

#32
Capt,
It bugs the hell out of me when I hear about those useless none issues. We have MAJOR problems with the economy, global warming, health care costs and what does congress come up with to work on? The estate tax, gay marriage and flag burning. Congress is about as worthess as wet cardboard.

Re #32: Jeanne, I can think of seveal uses for wet cardboard. Try using 'inedible jellyfish'?

Gerald,
My neighbor is from China and she is an interpreter. She only knows two dialects. Very difficult even for those born there.

Jeanne,

They have used the device before and so far it has worked. I figure they are stealing the elections so it is just a fabricated excuse to serve up when the neocreeps win in a landslide (contrary to all polls).

I hope I am completely wrong - but them worry what can a D majority do if most of them vote with the GOP?

UGH!

capt

David,

Journalism students are usually persuaded by the "making a difference in the world" argument for going into the profession. That used to be the case when there were only 3 major networks and a few handful of politically influential newspapers in this country. Counter that with cable T.V., cable news, and cable everything else not to mention the internet and you have a recipe for a distracted audience that could care less about what goes on in the world, only what goes on around them. That used to include families who would have dinner at the table together and discuss events of all interests and then retire to the television where news was watched for an hour. Now, dinner is served in many areas of the house, kids retire to video games, or if you're lucky, outside to play, and parents are busy finishing work they couldn't get done at work. Journalism hasn't changed, the world has changed. It will be up to future generations to decide if it was for the better. I tend to favor the variety, but most news today is presented as entertainment instead of just telling the story.

#37
I meant to write inedible jellyfish. Yes. Thank you. Have you ever tried to think about what is less useful than this congress and white house? You find when you do that the world finds uses for everything except worthless human beings.

American Soldiers

2,769 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan for Bush and his lies.

If you were listening, some old wedge issues have again surfaced for the 2006 election - gay and lesbian marriages. Why do Americans always fall for the Nazi spin on wedge issues? All moral issues are important in the eyes of God. In terms of human beings is a blow job more significant than the murdering of human beings? If you say you are moral human being, you cannot accept murders and war crimes and condemn blow jobs. Too many Nazi Americans have stinking thinking.

#38 Jeanne, good information!!!

HuffingtonPost has two interesting science stories just now. My cut-n-paste isn't working and the url's are too long for me to correctly key in, likely:

"Scientists say we are not entirely human..."

"Scientist finds largest impact crater likely to ..."

I sorta knew the first, but the second fills a knowledge gap of long standing.

Next week, we'll be discussing getting 10 commandments back in front of SCOTUS, tax-breaks for the pious, and the "War on Christianity"....

Working for my brother, tonight, who's meeting his granddaughter, I've learned something...

NEVER VOLUNTEER to work friday night...for any reason, for anybody!

-T

Funny we haven't heard this story in the MSM. Of coruse, they loathe the military and no soldier they loathe would ever do such a thing.

Soldier gives his Purple Heart to injured CBS reporter Kimberly Dozier

Just because there are a few bad apples in all professions, don't condemn the profession for the actions of a few.

A look into the future.

Govt, Major News Orgs Must Pay $1.6 Million To Scientist Once Accused Of Spying...

Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear weapons scientist once suspected of being a spy, settled his privacy lawsuit Friday and will receive $1.6 million from the government and five news organizations in a case that turned into a fight over reporters' confidential sources.

Lee will receive $895,000 from the government for legal fees and associated taxes in the 6 1/2-year-old lawsuit in which he accused the Energy and Justice departments of violating his privacy rights by leaking information that he was under investigation as a spy for China.
---------------------
When those dumb sh$ts leave the white house we'll be stuck with the bills. The prisoners of Gitmo will be heading for the courts. All the prisoners in those secret courts will sue. Everybody says Bush never plans to leave. Yes he does. Psychopaths leave when it gets ugly.

Hajji,

After seeing your post this morning I called Jackie only to find out that JB was heading back this afternoon. Sounds like they had a good visit, though I was still hoping to see him while he was here.

Now lets get one thing clear, unless JB employs you, you are not working "for" him, you are working "in place" of him. The Friday thing I know all too well, especially when I was in the Army. Weekend duty never failed to produce unending drama and idiocy.

Re #41: Jeanne, finding something 'less useful' is going to be difficult. As useless:

tapeworms
ticks
lice
bedbugs

#49
Still more usefull than this congress. Keep trying.

Useless: dictionary names all 535 current members of Congress.

Totally useless: dictionary names all members of the executive branch, as well as the above.

David Benson,

Were you talking about this crater?

Giant crater in Antartica discovered

The only thing this congress and white house is good for is as an example of how not to serve. They are usefull as an example only.

They got elected for one thing only...to make money, line their pockets. That's it. They put up these phony, base candy bills only as a front.

But don't let me stop you. Please continue to try and find something less useful. It's a good exercise.

That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

Jeanne 41, my dad had a funny saying, that "so and so" was as useful as a "wave in a slop bucket." He was usually referring to some republican in power.

On uselessness:

As useless as water meters in Iraq? Electric heaters in Baghdad during the summer?

capt

Saladin,

They are all as useless as a wave in a slop bucket. Your dad was right, not just about them all being useless.

"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."

~ George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

All political thinking is pretense.

capt

I've heard "as useful as a bucket of warm spit".
Congress and the White house aren't anywhere near that useful.

That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled, demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

911 was our generation's pearl harbor.

....george w. bush

Four square,

Your point being?

"The vice-presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit." ~ Vice President John Nance Garner

#64
Well...that's right, Capt. Cheney ain't even worth a pitcher of warm spit.

Capt,

Never heard of him. Indulge me for a moment, whose VP was he?

By the way, I agree.

Speaking of WARM spit (and Iraqi heaters)

Spec. Spank (who goes in front of the promotion board, next week) reports a balmy, breezy 107 degree daytime temp in Tal Afar...

-T

Whew Haj...107...that's TX weather. Sometimes it's hotter than that...then you have the dreaded humidity! I will be so glad to get outta this hell hole!

Don't let the bed bugs bite=),
G

TRH, my dad would refer to republicans, but the truth is, he really hated politicians in general. When I was little Tom McCall was, I believe, the govenor of Oregon, and he would always refer to him as "Hog Jaw McCall." It always cracked me up and I could invent endless ways to make fun of it. Being a kid, anything obnoxious was funny! Especially the image of a wave in a slop bucket, that was funny AND obnoxious!

Hajji,

Looks like we will be seeing SGT Spanky before long.

Gretta, I used to live in Mesquite TX, about 13 miles east of Dallas. The only thing worse then the humidity was the fire ants!

#67
I don't think there is warm spit in Tal Afar. I hope he's drinking lots and lots and lots and lots of water. And I hope he gets his promotion.

You got that right, Saladin. I have ant bites on my ankles NOW...along with 6 spider bites on my knee. UGHHHH! (I was working...knelt down in some mulch...wearing shorts....*sigh* and NO I will never learn. lol I need a new job!

GARNER, John Nance, (1868 - 1967)

GARNER, John Nance, a Representative from Texas and a Vice President of the United States; born near Detroit, Red River County, Tex., November 22, 1868; had limited educational advantages; studied law, admitted to the bar in 1890, and commenced practice in Uvalde, Uvalde County, Tex.; judge of Uvalde County, Tex., 1893-1896; member, State house of representatives 1898-1902; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-eighth and to the fourteen succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1903-March 3, 1933); served as minority floor leader (Seventy-first Congress) and as Speaker of the House of Representatives (Seventy-second Congress); reelected to the Seventy-third Congress on November 8, 1932, and on the same day was elected Vice President of the United States on the ticket headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt; reelected Vice President in 1936 and served in that office from March 4, 1933, to January 20, 1941; retired to private life and resided in Uvalde, Tex., until his death there on November 7, 1967; interment in Uvalde Cemetery.

More HERE

The one think useful about below 0 temps in the winter...it kills those kinds of critters. And it keeps the big bugs out.

V & I are no resigning some of our contracts, and actually plan to end our landscaping business this year. We have a few options, but taking one day at a time. I do know that I want to get outta this state before I kill someone or get killed.

Right on Jeanne...but it never gets below 30 here. We may get a freeze a couple of times a year.

Saladin,

Your dad was wiser than most in this country these days. I think it goes back to the saying "if a politicians lips are moving, they're lying."

That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.

The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq.

That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.

The obvious irony being Garner would have been the president if he stayed on as VP.

capt

#77
Gretta, here's the recipe to get yourself rid of fire ants. You want to have it so cold your breath freezes as you breathe in. And your feet freeze as you wait for the city bus. And the oil freezes in the engine. And the mighty Mississip freezes. And your warm spit freezes before it hits the ground.

Did we need him as Pres. back then capt? Garner died before I was born, and I slept through my history classes.

#79
Yes...I believe you.

Ooooh been there, Jeanne. I moved to TX from NY 3 years ago. lol

#82
No,that's what we had Truman for.

Capt,

Thanks for the history lesson. I am curious to know why he gave up the post after having served so long when he would have been an obvious choice to become the nominee for President of his party.

He was likely tired?

I have no clue if he would have been better or even different from Truman.

Just pointing out the irony of his quote.

capt

Mr. Corn,

I would never push/guide my child towards journalism. He is much too smart for that line of work.
I also wouldn't bare another child to face the world we live in today (as much as I love children and as much as I would love to have a baby girl). I worry for my son's future all to often. He is only 10, but lives for war movies, games, etc. His father was military, as well as his grandfather. I hope they allow Mom's to live on base! =P

Jeanne,

Truman was no sure thing. Remember that the press declared Dewey the winner long before the press mangled the 2000 election results. I like Harry Truman but you have to admit, there was a chance being taken their by the party.

Capt,

My guess? Probably bored to tears.

Garner lived 15 days shy of 99. Think of what he saw in his lifetime. My husband's grandmother grew up in a small town about 50 miles outside of Minneapolis. She used to tell us of seeing her first plane. She had to stay close to her brothers because of the wolves. She talked of panters. I don't know what they were exactly. Cougar? She experienced the radio coming into existance. The TV. Indoor plumbing. And as an old woman her grandson began in the computer business as a programmer. Wow.

I feel the same way, Gretta. I refuse to bring a child into this hell that we live in today. There is too much hate. There is too much wrong. Things were much simpler back in the day.

Hasta Manana!

New Army documents reveal US knew of and approved torture before Abu Ghraib scandal

New Army documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union today reveal that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez ordered interrogators to "go to the outer limits" to get information from detainees. The documents also show that senior government officials were aware of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

So, no real honor for the "brass" as they knew they had condoned (even encouraged) torture. The "brass" stood by in silence while a handful of reservists were sent to prison.

capt

Wow is right, Jeanne. Can you imagine what WE will be saying to our children when we are old? God knows what they will have done when we are of age.

Mark, sucks huh? I have always been a naive, sweeeeeet little country girl (who later on moved to NY & was still a naive, sweeeet little country girl)...usually with a positive outlook & always trying to find the good in everything. BUT people have taken that from me (even in HERE last year! One dude blessed me out because I blogged that i got roses for my bday...there is NO room for good news in here.)
Anyway...I have adapted. I have changed so much. I get angry WAY more than before. I have issues with issues in our world! I frown more than I smile. It seems that nobody wants you to be happy.

Mark, #91

Sorry to see you feel that way. My 1 year old son, also named Mark, is my fourth son. The oldest is 18 years old and just completed his first year in college. The other two are 14 & 7. I don't expect either of them to change the world, but then again, all of them may. As may all children. Your excuse is lame since no child is born into greatness, they rise to it. If you are married, I hope your wife desires not to have a child. If you are single, good luck.

Well, Truman ascended when FDR died - then the war ended. Even with the use of the bomb Truman had a few advantages, not the least of which was incumbency. The peace dividend was huge.

The fact that Dewey even came close is testament to Dewey’s popularity - some say he only lost because of the Lucky Luciano thing. That much is probably true.

capt

Capt,

Never heard of that connection. I still think you were correct in your original assessment. It wouldn't have even been close.

Mark,

Not to pick on you Mark, but what, to you, was "back in the day?" Next, was "back in the day" when you were old enough to know what was going on? Just curious.

#26 Saladin

Nicely put. On the march thing, listen, I've been in a bad mood all day since I learned that the girl my son has been sweet on all year, feelings she returned, has just sent him a message via another girl that she no longer likes him. He, and I am so proud of this, went to her and said that if she wanted to tell him something--to tell him personally, not through a messenger. He kept this from me for a week, holding it in all to himself.

UGH! The visceral emotions that can come out of a mother! I've kept myself under control, but I just want to beat her up. Ah well, this is just the first of many, I'm sure. The emotions startled and depressed me.

That said--#28 Saladin again. This is spooky, that 6/6/06 date. You may be onto something.

On your suspicions in #26, God it sounds so right in many ways. I hope and pray not.

Gretta,
I understand.

TRH,
What I mean is, society and everything with it has worsened through the years. Each generation seems to be worse.
Back in the day --was when my grandparents were living. Things were simple and easier for them. My grandfather worked; my grandmother was a mother to my father, then later was a full time grandmother to me and my siblings. Now, both parents HAVE to work, it seems.
I work with children. I see so many life-altering mistakes being made--that can be helped. People are just too busy to care, it seems.

Unbelievable what laughs this blog can bring!!!!

`Agent' #88 Gretta says to our esteemed Journalist/Author/Host....

Mr. Corn,

I would never push/guide my child towards journalism. He is much too smart for that line of work.
I also wouldn't bare another child....
Posted by: Gretta at June 2, 2006 11:06 PM
==========================================
David:

What do you think of her `judgement' on journalists' smartness?

BTW, when she `bares' her child, let's hope it's not something illegal.

As LBH love to say, you Cornnuts are so corn-fused!

Gretta: Don't get too bent out-of-shape, you gave me (& a few others I'm sure) some good chuckles. Thanks!

Mark,

The reason I ask, is that Michael Stivic said the same thing to his wife, Gloria in the early 70's when she brought up the subject of having a child. She won. Baby Joey was born later. It was from an episode of "All in the Family." Producer Norman Lear. If all people thought like you, as well as your parents, there would be no we, you, or for that matter, any taxpaying citizens to support you should you become disabled or old enough to draw social secutity, should you be lucky enough that it still exists when you reach retirement age.

Gretta,
Sorry, but I got caught up in answering TRH.
You have to keep your chin up. Most people do NOT want you to be happy, especially if THEY are not happy. It's a human emotion called jealousy. Let them deal with their faults. Be happy, tell anyone who rains on your parade to F**k off --even in HERE. We all have our problems, some more than others.

TRH said, "Your excuse is lame since no child is born into greatness, they rise to it." Haven't you been paying attention? That may be true for one or two lucky people, but not the rest. Only the rich can rise to anything, the rest of us peasants are doomed to scratch our way to any kind of passingly decent life.

Well,
I'm volunteering to do traffic control for a triatholon tomorrow. 7:30 AM. Good night folks.

100 Happy if you have an issue with Greta's post why don't you take it up with her, instead of posting your lame 'Dear David' post as if David is listening and Gretta is not.

Happy,
You're an asshole. Sorry David but that illegal statement is over the line.

ummm happy? I mispelled the word which I am sure MOST on here would forgive since MOST have mispelled as well. I am glad you had a good laugh.

Mark, #99

Back in the day doesn't tell me anything. True, some families survived on one income but that is true to this day. "Back in the day" most families only had one car, now both adults and their child old enough to drive has a car. There used to be only one T.V. now there are three or more. There used to be two or three children to a bedroom, now each child has their own room. You blame a changing world for not bringing a child into it, rather than judging yourself on how you would raise a child in this world. You don't have to conform. That is your choice.

TRH, I know that there arent many people that think like that. The way the world grows colder & colder just scares me.

Happy doesnt seem like a happy person if he has to make fun of others like that. Ignore IT, gretta.

Good nite jeanne. Good nite all. I am exhausted myself.

Carol,

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in KY.
I pity you for thinking that opportunity does not exist in this country for those who aspire to it. It doesn't mean being famous, it means having opportunity to succeed. I would place my bet on those who rose from poverty to succeed than those who were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth any day. They greatly outnumber those who are still feeding from that silver spoon.

Dewey vs. Luciano

We now know this part of his activities are true since a secret investigation of the whole Luciano/War effort question was made public in 1977. The Herland Report was commissioned in 1954 by New York Governor Thomas Dewey, the same man who convicted Luciano (right) in the 1930's, and the one who approved his pardon and deportation to Italy in 1946. Since the public did not know of Luciano's war effort, vicious rumors were floated as to why he was being let out of jail early. Payoffs to Dewey were suggested and it was to counteract these attacks that Dewey initiated the secret report in 1954. Luciano, then living in Italy, was naturally very concerned that this report be kept secret since he had been helping the Allies fight against Italy. The Navy was also anxious to keep it's alliance with the mob a secret.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

The one very big thing that made Dewey famous was convicting Lucky Luciano.

The problem is it was reported (correctly) that Dewey also approved a pardon and deportation. Dewey was not at liberty to tell people why he pardoned Luciano. It was a secret that Luciano helped at the docks in NY and helped in a huge way with the invasion of Italy (where else do Mafioso come in as handy)

So Dewey was kind of hoodwinked on the whole Luciano thing, it was the military that needed his help and traded a pardon and deportation for it. The Truman camp (so it is said) started a whisper campaign about Dewey being paid off (why else would he parson Lucky and remain silent on the issue?)

Everybody thinks of Truman as a "salt of the earth" kind of man, he may have been but the political machine (as always) was as underhanded and sleazy as they are today.

capt

Neil & Jeanne & Mark,
It is not worth it =)

Have fun with your volunteering, Jeanne...it's good to know that people still do unselfish things out there!

Gnite too,
G

Happy wont post again tonight for the same reason he addressed his last post to David and not Great, he's a coward.

Great = Gretta

105

100 Happy if you have an issue with Greta's post why don't you take it up with her,....
Posted by: neil at June 2, 2006 11:55 PM
================================================
Ahem...., neil, did you read the last sentence (below) of my post #100? Oh, well! You also didn't have any inkling of why I addressed #100 to David, either.....(Hint: This post by David talks about journalism!)

neil: down here! from #100

Gretta: Don't get too bent out-of-shape, you gave me (& a few others I'm sure) some good chuckles. Thanks!

Posted by: Happy to the Yahoos at June 2, 2006 11:47 PM
=========================================

107
....I am glad you had a good laugh.
Posted by: Gretta at June 2, 2006 11:58 PM
=========================================
Peace to you! The world is much better than what Leftover Cornnuts believe!

Misspelled. Two esses.

Mark,
My parents grew up during the depression, and then came a war that took all the young men away. My dad and all his friends left. My mom's brothers and cousins. And then when the war was over they had to start their families in a new world. They lived in their basements as they built their own homes. They just made things work. They watched a president murdered. They watched the civil rights movement. They felt the cold war. They just kept on. They lived their lives.

Bush is a nobody. He's going to disappear into history as the rotten president that he is. And we will keep on because that's what the middle class does. We are the ones who make America work. The big CEO's don't understand that. The lobbyists don't understand that. The politicians don't understand that. But it's the truth. And when the middle class says enough, things will change. And we are close to that day. Very close.

Happy,
And one last thing...for the record on what i wrote on #88....
Mr. Corn wrote today: "Drop that Laptop and Hit the Lab"...did you read it? I was not demeaning him or his line of work, and he knows that, I am sure. There are more rewarding & higher paying jobs than journalism...I am sure most will agree, including Mr. Corn.

Gnite all,
G.

TRH, if you're not born with a silver spoon up your ass you'll pretty much go nowhere. One by one all doors of opportunity are slamming in the middle class's faces. For one thing, college is being priced out of the game for the average joe.

Capt, #111

I bow at the master of historical information. I know politics as usual has been in existence a long time, but how would the current MSM handle the information you just posted?

Happy. I read it and your mean-spirited digs at Gretta through your 'Dear David' post. You think its ok to mock people you don't agree with but you don't have the self-respect to address them directly. Instead you address your commentary 'Dear David'. You're not just an asshole, you're a coward too.

Happy?
I am not a leftover cornnut...or even a David Corn "fan", if it is any of your business. LOL

Sorry carol...I am tired and my nails are way too long.

Jeanne, I thought you were going to bed? lol

Carol,

Please make a valid argument. You are here in America and complaining of no opportunity to succeed. Is there a better opportunity for you elsewhere?

Stones star given tour all-clear

The Rolling Stones will begin their European tour in July after Keith Richards was given the all-clear following brain surgery.

The guitarist is thought to have fallen out of a tree while on holiday in Fiji.

"Excuse me, I fell off of my perch," he said. "Sorry to disrupt everyone's plans - but now it's full steam ahead."

Several concerts have been rescheduled but 10 dates are still postponed and two German concerts, in Nuremburg and Leipzig, have been cancelled.

The first performance will be at the San Siro stadium in Milan on 11 July, a show that was put back from 22 June.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

"The guitarist is thought to have fallen out of a tree while on holiday in Fiji."

Is thought to have fallen out of a tree? I thought that was the one thing of which they were sure!

Either way - Good for Keith!

capt

We (middle-classed) just have too work a LOT harder to succeed. I am a believer in fate. Whatever was meant to be will be.

Good-night all. §º¿º§

He was smoking the palm leaves, capt.

Jeanne #117

You may not see this til tomorrow afternoon, but you don't know how right you are. The lowest income earners in this country pay no federal taxes via the earned income tax credit. The top income earners will pay if it is cheaper to pay than shield their income from the black hole that is D.C. The rest are those who earn to much to receive credit or shield. That is the " middle class." That may be only 60% of Americans but it is still the majority. I still say a government that recieves less, can spend less.

TRH...I am right there in the middle, paying out $$$$ each April. I wouldnt complain...but the thing that bothers me is...lots of the lower income families receive so many benefits that we pay for. They become "spoiled" or dependant on these checks, food stamps, etc. that they feel that there is no need for them to try to improve their situations. It handicaps them, so we continue to pay more & more each year. (Note: The lower income families that I am talking about do not include those who can not help themselves.)
I found myself handing cash out to a self-proclaimed homeless man y'day holding a sign beside the road. *sigh* I guess I have no right to complain at all.

See ya tomorrow...maybe. No Corona's for me.
Gnite for real lol,
G

A military investigation into allegations that U.S. troops intentionally killed Iraqi civilians in a March raid in a village north of Baghdad has cleared the troops of misconduct, two defense officials said Friday, despite dramatic video footage of slain children.

Gretta, happy hangs out here for the sole purpose of provoking people, he doesn't contribute and his favorite theme is condescention, it's par for the course with bushbots.
TRH, you may want to brush up on the new and improved CFR plan for North America, it may have been the land of opportunity in the past, but those days are slipping fast. Do you wonder why the immigration issue has come to the fore all of a sudden? Well, This will open your eyes

More can be found Here at the CFR.ORG website

While it may be 1 AM David Corn time, it is only 10 PM at my house!

Hajji, #67, It's a mite warm in Baghdad, too.

Neil, I used to think that Hapless was a coward, too. It didn't take long to realize he's just too stupid to know any better.

After slapping my knee and chuckling endlessly at the fare offered up by the 3 stooges, I decided to check out Redstate and see what the wannabe Conservative pundits and practiced plagiarists are up to. Remember copyboy Ben (AKA Augustine) who got busted stealing from other writers?

His conservative brethren are saying what the 3 stooges are afraid to admit. And the stuff they are writing is better than anything I've posted in my Thursday Night Funnies.

First there's this breathless discussion of the fact that Ms. Busby in California said that you don't need "papers" to vote and you don't need to be registered to help gotv. Papers dammit! You know "papers" is secret liberal code for "citizenship!" Call the Minutemen, the illegals are coming. Bilbry is just a momma's boy; he says so himself. Kinda strange for a Lobbyist.

Then there's the gay marriage schtick that is getting ruined by the rotting carcas of the Bush presidency. The issue is further clouded by the stench of decaying mummies in the Republican party. These guys are like crabs stepping all over each other trying to get out of a bucket. It's a veritable free-for-all.

The immigration "compromise?" This quote sums it up best: "I am hopeful that this opportunity, or excuse if you prefer, to save the Republican party from self-inflicted trauma will be taken swiftly." The conservatives are barely coming to realize that they've knocked off a few more toes by trying to polarize the country. I find it particularly amusing to watch them discuss the reasoning behind Mr. Reid trying to talk them into making fools of themselves. IF he's for it, they are wary. Dumbasses.

IF that isn't impressive enough, check out this nifty little bit of Pretzel Logic: "There are times when military and political necessity forces you to conclude an unsatisfactory peace with one enemy in order to destroy a still more dangerous foe. I believe we are at that juncture in the global war on terrorism where me must consciously choose to lose one war in order to win the more important one." It's an argument for waiving the white flag in the War on Drugs to concentrate on the war on Terror. Republican surrender. He wants to legalize drugs. It takes every bit of force of will for me to choke back the giggles.

The conservatives now have reason to be proud of their tinfoil hats!

Democrats are conservatives in Louisiana and Conservatives are liberals in DC. Heh, indeedy.

Remember my complaint to Jeanne that the "honest" Conservatives aren't doing anything to challenge incumbents and it is ruining the Party? That Toomey guy from the reactionary Club for Growth agrees with me:
"Frustrated Republican voters, fed up with big-government Republican incumbents and seeing credible challengers supported by conservative institutions, made sweeping changes."
"The danger for GOP majorities across the country this fall is that Republican voters may still be frustrated with their incumbents. In the fall, they won't have primary challengers through which to vent their frustration. But they can stay home. Republican officeholders have very little time left to demonstrate to these voters that it's still worth coming out to vote."

They have this hypothetical poll about voting for President Bush running for a third term in '08. The responses? NO. Hell No. No fucking way. and Get the fuck outta here. I'm beginning to think that their blind hatred of Bush is an indication that they're a bunch of ne'er-do-well layabouts with no drive or ambition. Those Gloom and Doom whiners will never get anywhere in life with an attitude like that. Excuse me while I go out onto my deck and laugh my ass off. Factless, you and Hapless ..... CRACK ... ME .... UP!!!

They want to dump Hastert for blowing the edge they'd gotten in the Jefferson affair. Thank you Mr. Hastert; here's your sign.

They are sick unto death of the Committee chair selection process:
"Inevitably, it involves a choice between two or three milque-toast, establishment legislators. Such candidates raise an awful lot of money. They vote with Leadership. They pay their dues over many years. But normally, the roll shows their absence from any legislative battles of significance. Remember the choice conservatives had between Jerry Lewis, Hal Rogers, and Ralph Regula for the Appropriations Chair. Tough to get excited about guys that are either unmistakenly boring, timid, liberal, or downright hostile to conservatives."

Ouch.

Last but not least, by far, the best rant was this one on the likelihood of having to deal with President Pelosi. Yes. Those morons are actually contemplating President Pelosi. I had to stop three times to wipe the tears from my eyes. It was THAT DAMNED FUNNY!

The conservatives have officially gone off the deep end. What's worse, the phreeks at DKos are just as goofy. Typical liberal logic at Dkos stipulates that Bushco knew that Saddam had no WMD because Cheney predicted a cakewalk. Why else would they believe that we'd stomp on the Iraqi Republican Guard unless they knew that they'd been defanged? Right.

welcome back pandemoniaco
==============================

and now for the ha report - because people just want to say ha!

Rocky shoals for Bush marriage? Informed sources Inside the Beltway report that First Lady Laura Bush has established temporary residence in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC as a result of a tiff with President Bush over an extramarital relationship involving her husband. Mr. Bush's tryst is said to involve Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

While she was National Security Adviser, Rice, who has never been married, referred to George W. Bush as "my husband" before she corrected herself and said, "the president." Rice was speaking at a dinner when she made her "husband" remarks.

#135, I am not a big fan of Laura or mushroom cloud. But, I cannot see Hitler Bush screwing mushroom cloud and jeopardize his marriage. I believe that Hitler Bush's I.Q. is about room temperature but is he really that stupid? Nazi American politicians are enamored with thoughts of sex.

Men and politicians zip up you pants and stop your constant trolling!!!

FOR MEN ONLY

Dear Male Cornposters:

The Duke University incidence has quieted down and so for men it may be back to business as usual. I want to share with you three incidences. These are actual incidences.

1. My wife had a supervisor who would from time to time come to work and talk to herself out loud. My wife and the girls in the office always knew when she and her husband had a falling out. She would go into her office and flop on her chair. The girls would hear her say, "Men think that they are so smart because they have that thing. If they ever looked closely at that thing they would realize that thing is not attractive." Frankly, she is right. Men, our thing is really not that attractive. Please be very careful about falling totally in love with your thing.
2. My wife was a medical transcriptionist for twenty-four years. She would never bring home her work. She would from time to time talk about what the girls would say but these were rare occasions. She did mention two reports. The first one deals with a man who was so in love with his thing that he put his thing in the hole of a vacuum cleaner. He thought that the sucking of the vacuum cleaner would give him a new high. What he did not realize was that the force and the spinners inside the vacuum cleaner caused him a great problem. With his thing in the vacuum cleaner he turned it on but he had to pull out his thing because the incidence required 60 stitches to his thing. If his thing was not that attractive before the incidence, can you imagine now how his thing looks like with 60 stitches?
3. The second report deals with a man who felt he was a great lover and God's gift to women. He would screw around with married women, engaged women, and single women. He loved screwing around with women. He was caught screwing around with a married woman. The married man did not confront him with the incidence. The married man with five of his male buddies found this guy and put him on the ground, holding his hands, legs and torso. The married man had super clue. With the super clue he stretched the thing to the section just below the belly button and the thing was attached to that part of the body. Until the man could have surgery or whatever procedure would be necessary to detach the thing from the abdomen the man when he would piss would be pissing in his face.

I share these incidences with you because your thing can cause you and others great hurt and remember to be humble. Your thing is not that attractive.

Sincerely,

Gerald

It is sleep time for me.

we interrupt this ha report to bring you this update:
Third claim of atrocity rocks US servicemen
==================================
and now back to the ha report -
because sheople just want to say ha!

An interview with Condoleezza Rice turned bizarre last week, when Fox News correspondent James Rosen appeared to try to fix her up with "Fox & Friends" anchor Lauren Green.

ROSEN: "All right. I close with a gift for you. You met this person once, I believe, but you really, I think, ought to know each other because this woman is, I think you'll have an interest in knowing her. She is one of our Fox News anchors in New York. Her name is Lauren Green. She is brilliant, she's beautiful, she's African-American, she's single and she's a concert pianist in her spare time.

RICE: My goodness.

ROSEN: And she asked me to give you her CD, and I promised her that I would.

RICE: That's perfect.

ROSEN: And here's her doing a number of different classical pieces.

RICE: Well, that's special.

When asked if Green is a lesbian, a Fox News spokeswoman said, "I don't know."

this concludes the ha report. withholding a higher journalistic standard: the ha report, because people just want to say ha!

the ha report has been brought to you by the makers of PENTA LAWN 2000
tired of your lawn being destroyed when a plane crashes on it?

Indeed, Pande, it IS hot in B'dad!

The weather here is rainy, stormy...dog-barking and shakin'...

But things just got a little brighter! The 4am phone call from Spec. Spanky to give us a 7/24 - 8/7 R&R leave date as being APPROVED!

That means he'll be here for Sgt Karl's wedding!

He says to tell you all, who he hasn't been able to thank personally, "THANK YOU", not only for your help with the candy and toys thing, but with the positive thoughts and prayers and those midnight dreams from you succubi, especially! (you know who you are!)

He wants to do nothing more than float, watertubing on the Green River up near Saluda, NC, drink beer and look at green trees, grass and maybe re-introduce himself to some of the prettier girls in the region.

I guess we'll just have to take off the whole last week of July AND the first week of August...anybody wanna work in the ER for a little while? It isn't brain surgery...well USUALLY it isn't brain surgery, but every now and then....

I'm usually the most zen...calm and unexcitable...but I can't get back to sleep. Maybe I'll crack an early am lager in honor of the mid-day heat near Tal Afar!

-T

TRH,

"Looks like we will be seeing SGT Spanky before long."

Was it inspiration, coincidence or inside information?

-T

Der Spiegel Interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Is it me, or is this guy articulate, informed, clever and intelligent? Imagine what it would be like to have a president like that!
________________

Ahmadinejad: I know that DER SPIEGEL is a respected magazine. But I don't know whether it is possible for you to publish the truth about the Holocaust. Are you permitted to write everything about it?

SPIEGEL: Of course we are entitled to write about the findings of the past 60 years' historical research. In our view there is no doubt that the Germans -- unfortunately -- bear the guilt for the murder of 6 million Jews.

Ahmadinejad: Well, then we have stirred up a very concrete discussion. We are posing two very clear questions. The first is: Did the Holocaust actually take place? You answer this question in the affirmative. So, the second question is: Whose fault was it? The answer to that has to be found in Europe and not in Palestine. It is perfectly clear: If the Holocaust took place in Europe, one also has to find the answer to it in Europe.

On the other hand, if the Holocaust didn't take place, why then did this regime of occupation ...

SPIEGEL: ... You mean the state of Israel...
.................

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, with all due respect, the Holocaust occurred, there were concentration camps, there are dossiers on the extermination of the Jews, there has been a great deal of research, and there is neither the slightest doubt about the Holocaust nor about the fact - we greatly regret this - that the Germans are responsible for it. If we may now add one remark: the fate of the Palestinians is an entirely different issue, and this brings us into the present.

Ahmadinejad: No, no, the roots of the Palestinian conflict must be sought in history. The Holocaust and Palestine are directly connected with one another. And if the Holocaust actually occurred, then you should permit impartial groups from the whole world to research this. Why do you restrict the research to a certain group? Of course, I don't mean you, but rather the European governments.

SPIEGEL: Are you still saying that the Holocaust is just "a myth?"

Ahmadinejad: I will only accept something as truth if I am actually convinced of it.
__________________

Good Interview...seems like a guy I could have a beer with!

-T

Ahmadinejad Praised in Iran as a Caring Leader
______________

ARAK, Iran -- The ordinary Iranians who poured into the local soccer stadium to hear President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one day last month arrived carrying high hopes and handwritten letters. They left with just the hopes. The letters were collected in oversize cardboard boxes, then hoisted into the postal van Ahmadinejad has taken to parking prominently when he barnstorms the provinces, in an audacious campaign to make every Iranian's wish come true.

"I actually wrote him two letters," said Reza Karimi, 41. "One was about the problems we have in this neighborhood. The other was about my problems.

"Of course," Karimi added with a wave of the hand, "I do not expect him to answer me individually. But I believe he would at least solve the problem of the neighborhood.

"I believe if he really could, he would help us."

That belief, far more than anything Ahmadinejad has said about nuclear power or the Holocaust, defines Iran's energetic president for the people who elected him almost a year ago, as well as the legions he appears to have won over since taking office in August. If his image in the West is that of a banty radical dangerously out of touch with reality -- "a psychopath of the worst kind," in the words of Israel's prime minister -- the prevailing impression in Iran is precisely the opposite.

Here, ordinary people marvel at how their president comes across as someone in touch, as populist candidate turned caring incumbent. In speeches, 17-hour workdays and biweekly trips like the one that brought him here to Central Province, Ahmadinejad showcases a relentless preoccupation with the health, housing and, most of all, money problems that may barely register on the global agenda but represent the most clear and present danger for most in this nation of 70 million.
_______________

A nation whose citizens still have faith in their intelligent, articulate elected leadership...go figgur...

Little wonder Buscheney & Connedyaliest'ya et al wanna nuke 'em! They're afraid 'Murkuns might demand the SAME!

-T

Saladin,

I had read that CFR report somewhere before. Probably from you. I don't like that thought at all.

Hajji,

All the above. Glad to hear he will be home. Give him a salute for me and all the others who appreciate his service. I am sure you, Jill and many others are proud.

I was listening to Hannety on Friday and he couldn't understand why some commanders were being blamed or possibly under investigation for the Marine patrol accusations of civilian killings, which is still under investigation. That is the way it is in the military.

In 1987, we were in the field. Our 1st SGT. Went back to post on a supply run and caught a soldier who had been AWOL in the barracks. He handcuffed him to a radiator in the day room until the MP's could come and get him. The Commander of our unit, who was at least two hours away, in the field, was relieved of his command and the 1st SGT was relieved of his post and reassigned. The commander was a Major who graduated from West Point and his dad was a General at the time. That's just how it works.

Mental degeneracy may be caused by lead poisoning. Or by a poor dip in the gene pool.
~
How to Avoid Pleurisy: Never make love to a girl named Candy on the tailgate of a half-ton Ford pickup during a chill rain in April out on Grandview Point in San Juan County, Utah.
~
My books are not taken seriously. But that's all right; they are given playfully.
~
And I am struck once again by the unutterable beauty, terror, and strangeness of everything we think we know.
~
One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principles of common sense, as validated each day by work, play, and living experience. But this remains the most utopian and fantastic of ideals.

-Edward Abbey
______________

All adult males should read A Fool's Progress, at least, to discover more about what drives them onward...outward...homeward.

All adult women should read it to re-affirm what they suspect they KNOW...that men are an entirely different, difficult beast, perhaps fathomable but only very, very carefully and never too seriously.

-T

TRH, what pisses me off the most about that CFR plan is that they intend to implement it without even asking "we the people" what we think, much less put it to a vote. The CFR members are just a bunch of rich, elite power brokers, unelected by anyone, empowered to make decisions that affect everyone in the country.
Even though bush is running roughshod over the constitution, the precedent was already set by FDR in 1933, and exacerbated by kennedy and nixon. Here is the awful history of these politicians and how they have slowly but surely contributed to the erosion of our democratic republic.

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement
of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent
encroachments of those in power than by
violent and sudden usurpations."

James Madison, address to the Virginia Convention, June 16, 1788.

The Path To Dictatorship

It makes clear that no matter who people think is running the show from DC, those men behind the curtain call the shots.

The Chinese language has 105 different dialects. Learning 1, 2, or 3 dialects is better than none.

LewRockwell.com has several good articles today.

A must read article

Saladin #132 I have noticed! =) He has no idea of my beliefs....most dont & really dont seem to listen to me anyway lol, so I really dont care. I have learned NOT to sweat the petty, and NOT to pet the sweaty!

Gotta do some estimates then errands today. (maybe sneak in alittle shopping!)
Pande, meet me at the Forum for lunch today? Molique Rose's place?

Have a fantastic day! =)
G

Kennedy, Sour Grapes, and the Neolib Order
Kurt Nimmo | June 3rd 2006

Or, the main difference between the politicians of left and right.

...Kennedy may complain about vote fraud. However, he is not likely to admit the entire system, Democrat and Republican, is but a one party system essentially representing the same corporate plutocratic financial interests. "We only have one political party in the U.S., and that is the property party, which essentially is corporate America, which has two right wings, one called Republican and one called Democrat," Gore Vidal told USA Today in 2003. Vidal takes this formulation from Ferdinand Lundberg.

"...the entire system, Democrat and Republican, is but a one party system essentially representing the same corporate plutocratic financial interests..."
_____________

If one were to suggest that this is a BAD arrangement he'd likely find himself accused accused of being a socialistic, communistic, liberalistic, nihilistic, mentally deranged anarchist.

Or a "Cornfused CornNut!"

-T

Hajji, I read that interview with the Iranian President. It was maddening how the interviewer continually ignored what he said while putting words in his mouth and refusing to answer simple questions. He made a very legitimate point about throwing holocaust revisionists in prison as if they were a threat to society, and questioning why the Germans of today feel guilt and must continue to pay reparations for something that happened 60 years ago which they had no part in since most of them weren't even born yet.

Hajji, that arrangement is also known as free market capitalism to those who are easily duped!

#155 Saladin,
Most people still look at each of us with disgust of what our ancestors did before we were born. I have been verbally attacked about owning slaves, and I am only 36 years old! My great-grandparents didnt even own slaves.
Then, while living/working in NY, a co-worker and I were having a discussion. He jokingly said "Just dont get the KKK to come after me because I am Jewish." (I am not a member of the KKK for the record.) I was like, "Why would the KKK want to harm YOU?" He said "because we killed Jesus!" Like he was alive back then?
I hold no prejudices against any religion or race. The only prejucies I may have are for people who have personally did wrong to me or my family...and that would include people of the same race/religion as myself. It is a sad world out there!

Will try to check back in later...being beckoned that it is time to get in the car!
Ciao,
G

And now, some very important news for men;

Men's Backsides Rated As Ultimate Attraction For All Women On Earth

2006/06/02

The majority of men think that women love to stare at men's protruding body parts. And this is a typical men's mistake. Women actually like square-built men but the most important thing about men for women worldwide is well-shaped buttocks. Guys can make their buttocks super attractive if they regularly make at least 30 quick squats in the morning and in the evening.

Today, women prefer well-nourished men to lean athletes or sumo wrestlers. A large-scale research conducted in Germany revealed that only fifteen percent of women like muscled men with wonderful relief and no fat. At that, 69 percent of female respondents stated that they found men's little paunches rather attractive from the physiological point of view. Doctors say that the blood of well-nourished men contains a high level of estrogen and it is enough to protect them from cardiovascular diseases. Estrogen prevents clot formation. Men having small paunches will live longer than lean men of the same age. And this explains why women choose fleshy partners . But it is important to know that only slight corpulence is good for health.

Men and women have a different notion of a model man. Twenty one percent of men say that a model man must have a muscled body (21 percent of respondents say it is first of all important), muscles on his arms (18 percent), a big penis (15 percent), he must be tall (13 percent) and slender (10 percent). Men say that other characteristics of a model man are of less importance. But women appreciate absolutely different characteristics in a model man. They say that the most important body part of a model man is his buttocks (39 percent), his tall height (11 percent), his fatness (11 percent), haired chest (7 percent), slenderness (5 percent). It should be mentioned that women ranked the size of a penis as 20th among their criteria of a model man.
----------
Here's to myth shattering!

Saladin,

My Helsinki Bartender/Philosopher (those mesh nicely, don't they?) pal tells me that such an attitude toward those who question the "official" holocaust line, numbers, or anything else is definately not limited to Germans. It is widespread throughout Europe. He also mentions that there's not much likelihood that the Iranian President would be arrested for what he's said (after all it is what he has been erroneously QUOTED as saying) should he attend the World Cup matches.

Yimmy says that those with whom he studies tread so lightly around the subject that most students fear to ask ANY questions, even though there ARE published histories that cite many inconsistencies within the stories.

I was hoping that he'd be visiting this summer, but the incredibly low prices and packages offered by the former Soviet Bloc nations will find them somewhere on the Black Sea. We're looking at maybe hooking up in the Carribean, somewhere and then coming back here in July of '07.

I truly value the reporting and opinions from people who're outside the walls of "Murka". Jim says he now lives in "a xenophobic country with a language closer to Klingon, than english."

He just recieved (yet another) degree or some sort. This one equals a bachelors in English Philosophy, taught in Finnish. He expects to get his Master's by next spring. His stories and observations are priceless...and all too rare.

-T

#137
Gerald,
I snuck a peak at your report. Very educational. Thank you on a man's perspective.
I volunteered to do traffic control at a triathlon. Nice scenery.

Hajji,

I visited Dachau in 1986. There is no question the holocaust occurred. Even the FRG at that time admitted it. Was it systematic? Only for those who followed Hitler's orders. There is no question he wanted a master race and part of that had to do with the extermination of Jews. I venture there just as many Germans who helped Jews escape the wrath than those who rounded them up. I believe the only thing questionable is the numbers. Once somebody was taken, nobody knows for sure what happened to them. And unless there was an actual account of the population of Jewish people in Germany, Poland, Czesklovokia et al at the time, then the number is just a guess in my opinion. The fact that it occurred is horrendous enough. No need to sensanalize it by arguing numbers, I say.

TRH, that it ocurred is not in question, it's the details. And, why are people being thrown into prison for creating debate? It is ludicrous that anyone should be subjected to 5 years of lockdown for what really amounts to a thought crime. This subject, like any other where history is concerned, should be wide open to research and disagreement. The fact that it isn't is very suspicious.

Re #52: Yes, TRH, thank you for putting in the link to a report of an important discovery.

Re #75: Jeanne, with global warming you might not be having those 0 degree F nights any more. The bark beetle infestation, over 10 million acres of trees dead or dying (so far), in eastern British Columbia, is blamed on a series of abnormally warm winters. So the bark beetles haven't been kiiled by the cold.

#163
I'm waiting for the termites.

Space Aliens!

Space Aliens!

HoffingtonPost, upper right.

Space Aliens!

maureen dowd: teaching remedial decency

off topic, but just in on Yahoo: (I try really hard not to read headlines, but this caught my eye)
Scary or just a normal thing?

By BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writer

TORONTO - Canadian authorities said Saturday they had foiled plans for terrorist attacks in southern Ontario with the arrests of 17 people who were "inspired by al-Qaida."

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they had arrested 12 male adults and five youths on terrorism-related charges, including plotting attacks with explosives on Canadian targets. The suspects were either citizens or residents of Canada and had trained together, they said.

"This group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices," said assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike McDonell.

That is three times the amount used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he said, referring to the April 19, 1995, attack that killed 168 people and injured more than 800.

"The men arrested yesterday are Canadian residents from a variety of backgrounds. For various reasons, they appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida," said Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations with CSIS — Canada's spy agency.

However, he said, there did not appear to be any direct link to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

Officials showed evidence of bomb making materials — including a cell phone-bomb detonator — a computer hard drive, camouflage uniforms and what appeared to be a door with bullet holes in it at a news conference Saturday.

The arrests were made Friday and about 400 officers were involved in the operation.

Heavily armed police ringed the Durham Regional Police Station in the city of Pickering, just east of Toronto, as the suspects were brought in late Friday night in unmarked cars driven into an underground garage.

The Toronto Star reported Saturday that Canadian youths in their teens and 20s, upset at the treatment of Muslims worldwide, were among those arrested.

The newspaper said they had trained at a camp north of Toronto and had plotted to attack the Canadian spy agency's downtown Toronto office, among other targets in Ontario province.

In March 2004, Ottawa software developer Mohammad Momin Khawaja became the first Canadian charged under the country's Anti-Terrorism Act. Khawaja was also named, but not charged, in Britain for playing a role in a foiled bomb plot. He is being held in an Ottawa detention center, awaiting trial.

The Canadian anti-terrorism law was passed swiftly following the Sept. 11 assaults, particularly after bin-Laden named Canada as one of five so-called Christian nations that should be targeted for terror attacks.

The other four countries, reaffirmed in 2004 by his al-Qaida network, were the United States, Britain, Spain and Australian, all of which have been targeted in terrorist attacks.

The anti-terrorism law permits the government to brand individuals and organizations as terrorists and gives police the power to make preventive arrests of people suspected of planning attacks.

Though many view Canada as an unassuming neutral nation that has skirted terrorist attacks, it has suffered its share of aggression, including the 1985 Air India bombing, in which 329 people were killed, most of them Canadian citizens.

Intelligence officials suspect at least 50 terror groups now have some presence in the North American nation and have long complained that the country's immigration laws and border security are too weak to weed out potential terrorists.

Back & forth today...
G

Ok last one:

LOS ANGELES - Luis Hernandez just laughs as he sells fake driver's licenses and Social Security cards to illegal immigrants near a park known for shady deals. The joke — to him and others in his line of work — is the government's promise to put people like him out of business with a tamperproof national ID card.

Later,
G

Saladin,

I agree. Everyone has the right to their thought and opinion, regardless of which side of an issue it may be. What happens often, sadly in many cases, is that thought and opinion is based on hearsay rather than research. There is no reason in the world, in the internet age, that people can't do the basics of research before forming their opinion. The information age is great, yet many are too lazy to use it.

Sure, maybe Tom Edsall can become a blogger - just like David Corn. But will his income be the same? Probably not - unless he massively gets into Ad-Sense and Blog Advertising. David Corn and Tom Edsall - Bloggers, can say what ever they want - they are their own editors. Like it or not, the institution of the Newspaper is being reshaped in the 21st Century because of the rise of the Internet and alternative media (portable devices that tap into information).

So what is a person to study in college if .... all knowledge ends up....being free? It's almost as if capitalism itself is going to be obsoleted by the Internet.

TRH, people should do research, but you can't force them to. Why should it be a crime to spew out BS that is easily refuted? Politicians do it all the time! ;-) If you haven't read that Der Spiegel interview you really should. The Iranian president sounds very polite and rational, but the interviewer sounds like a jerk!

Tamper proof ID card? Ha excuse me while I laugh at this. This government hasn't designed any system that is tamper proof they like to make back doors so that they can manipulate the things. So this ID will be tamper proof for about two weeks, then you can buy them for five hundred bucks and it won't be any different than today. Anything man can make he can duplicate. Especially if the machines that read them are available to the public and they kind of have to be don't they? Nope, just another step for the fascist right to try and control the sheeple who actually are just sitting on their butts letting it happen, they might try to put bar codes on the arms next that would do it, or would it?

Well, WebMetricsGuru, lets see....thinking into future. Money to be made. How?

1. There are those who prove they are legit and have the ability to attract and sustain an audience.

2. Advertisers begin to call.

3. Media planners notice and study the demographics. Encourage their clients to advertise on the site.

4. Growth

5. Buy out.

6. Maybe.
------------------
Networking is a must. Cornblog- Nation, Tom Paine.
Crooks and Liars - Young turks, Firedoglake, Jesus General.

--------------
I think what has to happen for the college student is at least one class on internet communication- blogging, networking, ethics, whatever you need to do to be successful on the internet.
I don't think newspapers are dead but they will be if they don't mean something to the reader. The Village Voice is dead. They got rid of all their 1st rate reporters, those that drew in the audience, and they are running on the cheap. A USA today format.
And they have to quit selling the newspapers as coupon books. Jeez. I don't buy a newspaper for the money I can save on a coupon for tissue paper and cantelope. They need to respect the reporters more than that.
Some of the best stories I have read in the newspaper you are not going to get on TV. The 3 day series on returning vets, conjoined twins and their surgery, immigration, teen abuse, drugs. So many good subjects that need more than one day to do it justice.
The Star and Trib - my newspaper is good. They have a lot of news that relates to my life in my area. I really like the City Pages. Very Minneapolis / St. Paul. They dig into real issues too. They ain't afraid of no politician or business or issue. They give me the news. Same with Raw Story. That's a magazine. Like it.
Are newspapers dead? I don't think so but they have to really pay attention to what the reader wants. The newspapers can give me coupons but so can a lot of other venues. If they depend too much on that it's going to kill them. They need to pay attention to what they give an audience that no one else can. I think they lost sight of that.
I think.
IMHO
And all that.

#172
They can't even tamper proof the Homeland Security building.

#153 Saladin

First off, I'll have to return to The Path To Dictatorship. It's a book! Looks good though, I skimmed a few chapters.

Now, as for Kennedy, Sour Grapes and the Neolib, you might be surprised to hear that I agreee with this. Many are the times that my sister, my brother-in-law, the rest of my family (except for my husband who's an Independent) and I have longed to leave the Democratic Party. We are tired of the Dem's endless lack of spine. We're not blind to Democratic shenanigans. Lust for power and greed knows no party lines. This is basically the thesis behind the Carey McWilliam's book I keep talking about, The Education of Carey McWilliam's. Throughout the twentieth century from the New Deal on, this neolib ideology has been developing.

BUT, at this stage of the game, there is really no other choice. Your ideas are radical and completely sound, but, they cannot be implemented as yet, it's as simple as that. Reality barges in. People get impatient with the step-by-step process, but in essence, it's the only way to proceed. Too many battles to be fought, one must pick their battles. One step up, two down. In the end, however, and here's where the ultimate optimism kicks in, a sound government can be achieved. It will have its faults, but then, it is a human invention.

Hajji and Saladin,

I was so angry when they threw that British writer in jail for claiming the Holocaust didn't occur. Who the hell is the government to decide and censor scholarship, no matter how much one might disagree with it? I hate to say it Capt., but the same holds true, to a certain extent, with hate speech. There is the annoying but absolutely essential First Amendment. Still, that doesn't stop us from fighting hate speech or those who wrongly think there was no Holocaust.

#174,

The so called tamper proof ID's will come in handy - more than most people think. The little reported advantage is the box : "Are you now or have you ever been a terrorists" we will be able to tell right off!

The people that check "Yes" are the only ones we have to wiretap and generally keep an eye on. It will simplify everything.

capt

"I hate to say it Capt"

You lost me?

capt

#158 Saladin

Amen to that! All hail a man's shapely butt. That's how both my husbands caught me and how I lost my virginity.

BuzzFlash has a short bit on a book entitled "F.U.B.A.R..."

That sounded sexist, didn't it?

#178 Capt.

We've been discussing over the last few days "hate legislation" and hate speech, and how much we despise things like gay-bashing.

Carey,

I am still at a loss?

Are you saying that I am against the first amendment?

I may have failed in communicating something. I also try to fight hate (speech or otherwise) as it is always ugly. I give a monthly stipend to the SPLC because it is a cause that supports my deeply held belief that hate sucks!

I am at a loss. I must be missing something.

capt

#172
"So this ID will be tamper proof for about two weeks, then you can buy them for five hundred bucks and it won't be any different than today."

What the F, I didnt write it, just passed it on because I knew it was senseless. I live amongst a majority of the illegals, so I see first hand what can happen. =)

BBL,
G

On the subject of legitimate scholarship, this is an interesting, if extreme example, of what can happen when a researcher doesn't follow the basic rules of methadology.

Could it be that more guns cause less crime? Could it be that criminals who suspect their potential victims are armed would be deterred from committing crimes? That's what John R. Lott Jr. argued in his 1998 book "More Guns, Less Crime."

Lott's reputation has indeed been "seriously damaged" by critics, but only because they have described many apparent holes in his dubious research and misleading calculations. Blocking the sale of a book based on a literal interpretation of a single word would be outrageous.

Shooting Holes in a Lawsuit

Capt, you told me that you are a "cold SOB" and surely have seemed hateful to me for no reason, yet you think hate sucks?
Sorry, I think my head just spun all the way around.

Going back out,
G

#183 Capt.

NO!!!! I was saying that the First Amendment gets in the way when one is fighting hate speech and legislation! Freedom of Speech allows all manner and forms of speech in. Of course I know you fight hate speech, that's what I was saying, the First Amendment, although we worship it, can be an annoying thing at times when it's used for the cause of hate. In no way was I implicating you, you silly. I am in full agreement with you on just about everything.

#160 Jeanne, what does your husband say about your side job? Jeanne, how do you survive the wnters in Minnesota? The Twin City area is beautiful with the lakes in and around the area.

You have all heard that Bush on Monday will push for a constitutional ban on gay marriages. Where was he after the 2004 election and all his political capital? These wedge issues are starting to turn me off. The wedge issues are money makers for the people who say they oppose certain issues, such as abortion, gay marriages, capital punishment, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. Right after the elections these issues are put away in the closet to come out for the next election. Nazi America is THE LAND OF HYPOCRITES!!!!! Why are we treated like mushrooms? Why are we kept in the dark and fed shit all the time?

It is about the time for me to get ready for the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This is one hour that I sense total love. This one hour of love is helpful in my trying to survive in a country filled with hate and hypocrites.

"I was saying, the First Amendment, although we worship it, can be an annoying thing at times when it's used for the cause of hate."

Oh, I know, I hate that! (Tee Hee)

"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!" ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )

capt

"I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few." ~ Benjamin Disraeli, campaign speech at High Wycombe, England, November 27, 1832

A British politician's stump speech - but a good quote just the same.

Benjamin Disraeli is most well known for his quote:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

capt

121 by neil
Happy. I read it and your mean-spirited digs at Gretta.... You think its ok to mock people you don't agree with....You're not just an asshole, you're a coward too.
Posted by: neil at June 3, 2006 12:17 AM
===========================================
neil, thank you for simply being a Classic libeal!

People do stupid things all the time which they later laugh off! My highlighting Gretta's faux pas was for fun but in your twisted `I'm the victim' world, "mean-spirited".....you know what, I'm Happy.

As for mocking people, this blog is nothing but mocking people; starting with David. What? you don't see it coming from the Left? Well, that's ok, you're a liberal and I'm Happy,

Name-calling is another liberal specialty! But, please don't stop. My purposes here is to put Lefty hypocracies on display. You and the JJs' together spend 10 times the amount of time I, LBH & factcheck spend, repetitively skewering the Right (`mocking' is the right word?).

One of you, Panty, thinks me/us stupid; typical Lefty `misunderestimation' of the Right. Fine, power to that kind of thinking! I'm perfectly Happy being thought of as stupid so long as me and my `people' are in control of the bulk of the wealth (and recently, political power) in this country. AND, may I add, we feel no guilt in being financially successful.

As an aside, yours truly spent 2 hours this morning sorting, cleaning, inventorying & packing Scout equipments to get it ready for Summer Camp. What about you, neil, did you do something for your community these past days? Do you think assholes and cowards, especially financially successful ones, can be good at community services? What about serving as Scout leaders?

Speaking of the SPLC, go to SPLC.org and read "Into the Mainstream."

Some of the organizations mentioned in the article, promote bigotry but some are described as hate groups. The author notes that, "Around the country, ideas that originated on the hard right or in the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists are finding their way into the mainstream. In a number of cases, these ideas have become commonplace in American minds.

The discerning reader will find that some bloggers get their talking points from these various groups.

SPLC.org An array of right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable

Liberals, try to be Happy and become at least `The Glass is half full' type of folks!

June 03, 2006
More Than Half Full
By Lawrence Kudlow

You can't win with the economic pessimists.

The cult of the bear still reigns....mainstream media, as those who want to tear down the economy continue to manufacture justifications for their declinist American views. If jobs reports...come in below, the pessimists predict recession.

So it was with Friday's 75,000 increase in non-farm payrolls for May. That number was greeted derisively, despite the fact that over the past 33 consecutive months, 5.3 million new jobs have been created. Through the year ending in May, 1.9 million new jobs have been created with the unemployment rate moving down to 4.6 percent -- the lowest rate in nearly five years and below the average of the last forty-five years.

But wait -- there's even more good news being clouded out by the pessimist frowns: The Labor Department's household survey, which focuses on self-employed owner-operators of new entrepreneurial businesses, showed a booming May jobs increase of 288,000. You won't likely hear a peep about this in the mainstream media, which shuns this survey month after month.

Year to date, the entrepreneurial household sector has produced 1.2 million new jobs (326,000 of which are self-employed), compared to only 730,000 from the corporate establishment payroll survey. Historically, when a big spread opens up between these two series, it is the payroll survey that gets revised upward, or that catches up in future months. This was particularly the case in 2003 and 2004, when the Democrats who proclaimed a "jobless recovery" had to eat crow.

.....Right now, total employment in the U.S. stands at a record high of 144 million. This is a big number, just as 4.6 percent unemployment is a low number....

This is all part of a job-full recovery. Over the past three years, real GDP in the U.S. has been averaging 4 percent annually....

....Nitpickers and ankle-biters will always see the economic glass as much less than half empty. I continue to view it as much more than half-full. And the data are there to prove it.

Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the co-host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.
=============================================
Message for Panty: Save your breath about labor participation rate.....IF all the panhandlers are included, everybody is participating!

Carey, I keep hoping that the people will not wait until it's too late to see what is happening. We are definitely "pack" creatures and need leadership. People of all cultures have always had leaders of some type. I am afraid that need is being taken advantage of, combined with the political apathy and laziness so many feel today, we are looking at the loss of what was a good ideal. I have often wondered, if we have a democratic republic, doesn't that make all Americans Democratic Republicans? How did that turn into two battling ideologies? And how is it that we seem to be moving in the direction of a mutated form of socialist fascism, two of the most hated forms of govt. to ever come down the pike? Yet many don't seem to have noticed.

I've never seen capt be hateful. Never. I've seen him be a scold (IMO), but never hateful.

Militant Jesus

The main character, the hero of the Left Behind novels, is Jesus Christ, the militant warrior messiah returning to conquer evil and bring a utopian paradise to the world. Upon his return tens of thousands of non-believing soldiers are struck dead. Here is LaHaye and Jenkins describing that final battle:

Their innards and entrails gushed to the desert floor, and those around them turned to run, they too were slain, their blood pooling and rising in the unforgiving brightness of the glory of Christ.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Can you feel the love?

capt

Judge Narrows Focus of Libby Trial

In a ruling today granting Scooter Libby limited access to classified information, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton gave him some bad news: This trial will be about lying. Of course, this is what you'd expect in the trial of a man who's accused of perjury and obstruction of justice. But Libby's lawyers had been trying to complicate matters by seeking documents on far-ranging topics, such as Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, his wife's affiliation with the CIA, etc. The judge will have none of it.

As he wrote:

"the only question the jury will be asked to resolve in this matter will be whether the defendant intentionally lied when he testified before the grand jury and spoke with FBI agents about statements he purportedly made to the three news reporters concerning Ms. Wilson’≥ employment. The prosecution of this action, therefore, involves a discrete cast of characters and events, and this Court will not permit it to become a forum for debating the accuracy of Ambassador Wilson’≥ statements, the propriety of the Iraq war or related matters leading up to the war, as those events are not the basis for the charged offenses. At best, these events have merely an abstract relationship to the charged offenses.

Not a good sign for Libby. You can read the order here.

More from the AP.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

I think Libby is in some big trouble IF he is not pardoned. Bush will sign the pardon to preserve executive privilege and to keep Cheney from having to testify under oath. These guys lie too much and too often to ever be cross examined under oath.

capt

She gave us the ax

N.Y. terror money was cut by woman from the sticks

The Homeland Security official who signed off on funding cuts for New York and extra cash for the heartland is a small-town gal whose back-door appointment to the job was mired in controversy.

Tracy Henke, 37, assistant secretary for grants and training, wasn't quickly confirmed by the U.S. Senate after her nomination last year because of allegations she played politics in her previous post.

So an impatient White House appointed her while Congress was in recess, drawing howls of outrage from lawmakers and sparking questions about her qualifications.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Do I see a "heckuva job Tracy" in the works?

capt

Jesus as pilot of Enola Gay, yes, I can see it! And behind the B-29 trails a banner which reads, "Love each other as I have loved you."

Caroline,
Capt & I have discussed things on here for over a year. He was "not-so-nice to me when I recently came back, or at least I felt it that day. He has a right to be whatever way he wants to, when he wants to. I am not his mother or his keeper, but I was trying to make a point about what he did say in his post.
That's all. No need to get upset. He doesnt care. lol

Peace,
G

I think Kirk know that I do not come in here to put down anyone.

knows*

Geo. W Bush: "Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple."

It's cute, but implies GWB thinks...

Gretta,

I haven't a clue what you are on about?

I think you have been gone too long to remember my pitiful sense of humor? (it sounds funny in my head, not so much in type)

I was making every effort to be funny. You made it a point that nobody replied to you so I did so.

If you do not get it, so be it!

capt

Hate speech legislation is an un-American criminalization of thought and violates the First Amendment. Thoughts and speech, no matter how despicable they may be, are protected by the Constitution.

In the long run, it won't matter. Mr. Bush is systematically dismantling the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He is abrogating the separation of powers between the Leg., Exec. and Judicial branches; warrantless searches; torture; illegal renditions; holding US citizens withour access to an attorney or the courts, you know the list.

Hold on, there's a knock at my door....

If you wear Rove colored glasses I am completely - gut splitting - knee slapping hilarious but you have to hide the shotguns before donning the specks! (safety first)

capt

We need a new thread.
Carey,
Could I borrow that book?? (The Path To Dictatorship) hehehehehe

Capt,
Libby is in deep trouble, I agree with you. Do you really think he will get a pardon?

Gretta,
It seems like you are a target for other's to take their frustrations out on. Run, girl, run! No, don't go away. You can not let people push you away with words. It may not seem like it, but we still have some of our freedoms.

"It may not seem like it, but we still have some of our freedoms."

At least they're not yet quartering soldiers in our homes.

I am not "on about" (wtf? lol) anything. Sorry, I couldnt "read" the humor in it. Hang on, I will laugh in a sec.

Laughing hysterically now (ohhhhh I seeee how funny it was now.....
G

Marky,
I could care less, seriously.

Rick,
Right, and I am thankful for that.

Re #206: RicK, 'despicable' speech may be protected, but not all speech. Something about no right to cry "fire" in a crowded theater... Also, there are libel laws, although much, much weaker than in Britain...

However, always, "gedanken ist frei". Nowone knows your thoughts if you don't express them.

You also don't have the right to conspire to murder or incite a riot. Of course there are limits but these limits are not related to their content, but to their effects.

Libel laws are unrelated to the First Amendment. The First Amendment is a limitation on the government to regulate my speech. Libel and slander are legal causes of action between private citizens for saying/printing things that are not true and that cause some sort of (legal)damages. They also pre-date the Constitution as causes of action.

I hope all hate speech goes the same way as the "N" word.

Once commonplace and accepted, then seen as an insult and demeaning, then politically incorrect and eventually it reflects poorly on the person using it and makes them seem just plain dumb.

I do not believe in any limitations of thought or speech, I have to take responsibility for that to which I willingly listen.

I control my ears - not anybody else's mouth (or brain).

I strongly believe in education as the tool for addressing fear and all hate is based in fear. All hate is self-loathing grown from fear of a part of "self" so we need to educate people about how to get past the hate and find peace in acceptance of themselves. The wisdom and tolerance to live in peace with others will only follow self acceptance. Just as it requires self-respect to respect others, self-love to love others.

"I want freedom for the full expression of my personality." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." ~ Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

capt

Gretta,

No reason to be snarky, I was being serious.

I have never been very funny. All apologies.

capt

"However, always, "gedanken ist frei". Nowone knows your thoughts if you don't express them."

Is that the German version of keep your mouth shut and let people think you're stupid v. open your mouth and confirm it?

Regardless, whether we speak or not should remain a choice and not be based on fear of governmental regulation. Don't be surprised to lose this right. It is actively under attack: the flag-burning amendment.

Re #214: I agree, RicK. However, libel laws are an attempt on the part of government to regulate your speech. Yes?

No prob, capt. I guess I was caught off guard. You and I never had a problem in the past.

"I control my ears - not anybody else's mouth (or brain). " VERY wise words...

Have a good evening...I am off to get showered & dressed. I am starvinggggggggggg!

Ciao,
G

Yes, David. That was part of what I was referring to.

Good evening, gretta & all. I am hungry also.

"Gedanken ist frei" is also the name of a German beer-drinking song. I can remember the tune but not the rest of the words...

I don't recall that it has much to do with stupidity. What do young men sitting in the basement of the Rathaus drinking beer brought by bar-maids think about?

Generally, libel and slander are from the English common law and pre-date even the formation of this country. Here in Florida, our state constitution adopts all common laws unless superceded by a statute. Libel and slander are still common law actions here; other states, I don't know.

I guess you could look at recognizing the common law and providing a court system to adjudicate disputes as governmental regulation. But it is, at its core, a dispute between two individuals and not a person and the government.

"Most people receive very little training on how to live effectively and harmoniously with themselves and others. This I believe is an unfortunate outcome of our parenting beliefs and methods, as well as society's educational systems. It seems to me these beliefs and systems empathize academic and vocational skills and place little or no emphasis or value on providing a person with the essential skills to live a life of personal fulfillment, contribution and self actualization. I believe it would be a safe assumption that the great majority of people work at jobs in which they find very little personal satisfaction. Without proper training on how to make wise choices in one's life, the chances are very slim anyone will make them."

~ Sidney Madwed

*******

Sidney Madwed (if not familiar with him) is a bit of a loon but I have always thought the above quote hits on more than one profound truth.

I truly believe that people that are able to live in harmony with themselves naturally find harmony with others. Sadly we never actually teach harmony. We expect kids to learn self-harmony as a byproduct of problem resolution. It is like saying war teaches us peace.

Teach one generation - specifically how to live in harmony with themselves and many problems would pass - maybe even war. Imagine the day hate is obsolete. That is a goal on which most people could agree.

capt

"What do young men sitting in the basement of the Rathaus drinking beer brought by bar-maids think about?"

Same thing I do. Took me awhile to learn that there's more than just porn on the internet.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
John Andrew Holmes, "Wisdom in Small Doses"

What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.
Hansell B. Duckett

The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.
Robert Jackson

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
William Penn (1644 - 1718)

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.
Maxims of Ptahhotep, 3400 B.C.

#'s190 & 199 Capt.

Loved the Tom Lehrer quote. Your comment in #199 also had me bent over in laughter.

This article was in Whatreallyhappened.com today. While I don't agree that the reasons Bush and Cheney went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq were totally motivated by pro-Israel beliefs, I mean pleeez, these guys are solely motivated by oil, oil and oil. Still this is interesting.

For generations, Republicans were strong supporters of the American military. But now that top military men are in open rebellion against the amrchair civilian hawks--the hard-line pro-Israel ideologues who directed President George Bush to order an invasion of Iraq and who now want war on Iran--the angriest voices condemning the military are from GOP circles.

Clearly some people in high places are not happy with the pro-Israel internationalism of the Bush regime.

Military Men who Oppose Neocon Warmongering Under Attack

The Not-Filibustered Alito-Lieberman Disaster Unfolds-- Time to Dump the Lot of the Invertebrate Democrats

Let's talk about the DLC. When I use the acronym, it is a dirty word, just like, for Rush Limbaugh ditto-heads, liberal is a dirty word. A DLC democrat is an invertebrate, turncoat, right-wing, cowardly, consorting with the enemy saboteur who does nothing but enable the Republicans. People who put up with them are either deluded or colluding.

We need to show them the door or convert them. Maybe we should help them start a new centrist third party. It would probably pick up an awful lot of disgusted republicans who can't stand Bush, but who, having been born and raised Republican, can't imagine voting Democrat. That's a risky thing to do, but it helped Clinton when Perot took the same path.

Bottom line, dump the bastards. Start with Lieberman and, in CA Jane Harman, who has sided with the reptilians too many times. Get the ball rolling.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Another profound truth. The DLC and/or "blue dog" Democrats do not stand up. The rolling over is very old and way too predictable.

capt

PS - Thanks Carey I hoped it would make you giggle!

I read (weeks ago) that many Israeli (Likudites?) were sending a message that Bush should STFU about connecting Iraq and Iran to American support for Israel. It did not play well on most of the planet, especially not in Israel.

capt

224 That was hilarious, Rick!

fuel for coleman lanterns = $10.00/gal.

there's porn on the internet?

Carey, I think oil is a HUGE fringe benefit. My theory is that blackmail is the big motivator. A certain party says, "play it our way and you can rule the biggest energy resources on the planet, otherwise, we talk." And I'm willing to bet they have a lot to talk about.

Dear EmailNation Subscriber,

Watch Katrina vanden Heuvel this Sunday morning, June 4, on CNN's Reliable Sources from 10:00 to 11:00 EST nationwide. The Nation's editor and publisher will be discussing the media, the war and Bush in conversation with other journalists and host Howard Kurtz.

And don't miss vanden Heuvel's Editor's Cut, her regularly-updated Nation weblog.

Finally, please visit The Nation online to listen to RadioNation with Laura Flanders, to read new Nation blogs, to view newsfeed links updated each day, to see when Nation writers are appearing on TV and radio, to find info on nationwide activist campaigns, and to read exclusive online reports and special weekly selections from The Nation magazine!

Best Regards,
Peter Rothberg,
The Nation

P.S. If you like what you read at TheNation.com, please consider subscribing to The Nation at a sharply discounted rate. Subscribing is the only way to read ALL of what's in the magazine week after week--both in print and online.

capt @ 225:

Great quotes.

*blush*

Thanks to Quotationspage.com

And a good quote search engine. There are some good ones on nearly every subject there.

capt

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed: Ayn Rand - (1905-1982) Author - Source: Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's "Money Speech"

=
"Every evil, harm and suffering in this life comes from the love of riches.": Catherine of Siena - (1347-1380) Dominican Tertiary - c.1370

=
"Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all? -- Samuel Adams - (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."

===
Thanks ICH Newsletter!

Being Church

Dear Cornposters:

We are called to be church and to live the values of Jesus. Being church asks us to bring the same love and forgiveness we received from Jesus to the world. Being church means we are asked to overcome doubt, fear, anxiety, hate, and evil in any shape or form.

Being church meant praying together, working together, and remaining together despite differences of religion, race, gender, socio-economic, etc. Church means breaking bread together and hearing the word proclaimed.

Being church meant being willing to die rather than forfeit faith.

Being church meant living in the awareness of the risen Christ and offering the joy of that same awareness to others. Being church meant belonging to a life-sharing community wherein no one suffered for lack of food, clothing, shelter, companionship or any other necessity of life.

Being church meant being people who no longer thought solely in terms of me and mine, but of us and ours. Being church meant leaving the security of home and family in order to bring the good news to others, regardless of distance, danger, or inconvenience. Being church meant sharing in such a manner that others were drawn to desire a similar belonging.

In 1968 the Latin American bishops declared that to be a church is to be an agent of social justice, an instrument of liberation, a defender of the poor and oppressed.

People often ask where God is. Show me God. Open your eyes and see that God is everywhere. The power of God is where we give and share our talents. God lives in us and He calls us to let Him use us. God's spirit lives and breathes in the works of charity and justice. One thing is clear to be a church is to be united with our brothers and sisters around the world.

Sincerely,

Gerald

P.S. Where did we go wrong?

Who will weep for the cemetery of innocents?
By Joan Chittister, OSB
I read one Memorial Day speech after another this weekend, from one end of this country to the next. Every one of them was incomplete. One question went unanswered, in fact, unasked, in all of them: What are we supposed to do when the numbers of war dead continues to climb? How does a person handle so much "death by cable television?"

The macabre list is growing beyond belief. It touches every part of the population, and in slithery, menacing ways touching even those seemingly unaffected by it as well. Day after day the stories come in.

More than 20 civilians killed in a brutal massacre in Haditha. Not by them but by us as U.S. Marines turned on civilians -- women and children among them -- to avenge the death of one of their own, to compensate for their accumulating frustrations and losses.

Two more journalists join the more than 120 reporters and commentators already killed in Iraq, another headline reads. And this, in a country where, we were told, the war had ended, the mission -- whatever it really was -- was "achieved," and the people were "liberated."

Almost 18,000 U.S. soldiers wounded, the government finally tells us, more than 10,000 of them "seriously" -- meaning "disabled for life."

Almost 2,500 U.S. soldiers have died while their children wait at home for fathers to return, while their wives are pregnant with the children the fathers will never see, while their parents find themselves bereft of sons and daughters they never dreamed they would outlive. And all of them with nothing but a triangulated flag to cling to for comfort, for the future.

Thousands and thousands of anonymous Iraqis -- whom no one counts and no one names -- shot, bombed, missing, gone. Some of them under the rubble. Many of them in the graves. Unending files of them fled from the cities they loved while just as many more are left in their villages or city centers helpless, unemployed, simply waiting for the next act of insurgency, the next massacre. By somebody. Anybody.

Indeed, the traumatized stare into space on both sides. They have had too much stress, too much horror, too much loss, too much unending, relentless, agonizing fear to go blithely on in the face of such horror, pretending that it does not exist.

Those symptoms have a name, of course, to denote the scarred and shattered and dead of soul. Posttraumatic stress disorder they call it, meaning, of course, the agony that comes from having seen the inhuman, having done the inhuman, having been part of the inhuman.

Like the young soldier assigned to carry the little girl with the bobbing head to a body bag while, he reports, his comrades cleaned up the evidence of the massacre in which she had been killed and her brains dripped down his fatigues and spattered his boots.*

Then the emotional crippling comes. In the dark this time. Where they will suffer alone all the rest of their lives.

And what about the rest of us?

We have three choices, it seems.

First, we can become totally desensitized to the mayhem around us and the devastation it has left in its wake.

Dinned day and night by TV replays of real life war strikes, life becomes one large unending Nintendo game for us. Reality becomes just like the software we buy so our children can shoot at digital figures who never bleed, never cry, never look us in the eye before we shoot them.

The second choice, of course, is simply to turn away from it, simply unwilling to engage with it anymore. After all, in the end, when all the talks are finished, all the petitions are signed, all the political campaigns over and the votes tallied, it is out of our hands. Better to watch a soap opera, better to drown our conscience in situation comedies. Be positive. Be hopeful. Trust.

But there is a third choice, more true to the spiritual tradition that bred us, more cleansing of our psyches, and, in the long run, more effective. We can, with the second century monastics of the desert, rediscover the power of "the gift of tears," the sense to recognize and unmask the tragedy of evil in the society around us and the sense of powerlessness within us that enables us to ignore it, to take it for granted, to accept it.

We can, as Christians, begin to regret, to repent, to decry, to grieve the evil.

"The beginning of compunction is the beginning of new life," George Eliot wrote. Remorse is not nothing. Grief is not useless. It changes the heart of a people. It cautions them to think better, to think in new ways, before they are once again tempted to bomb and beat a people into submission, into "freedom." It makes them new -- and eventually the society with them. One person at a time finally learns to feel. It's called "soul."

It's possible that we are now approaching the margins of the human condition. We are drowning in insensitivity. We are escaping into escape.

We have lost the capacity to weep ourselves into the fullness of our humanity.

From where I stand, it seems to me that until we are willing to face what is happening in our name in this society, to regret it, to own the agony of it, it will go on. We will go numbly on, totally unaware of the diminishing effects of this culture of violence on both them and us.

We will go on in our time heaping up a cemetery of innocents and, on Memorial Days to come, call ourselves good for having done it.

* From a CNN interview with Susie Briones, mother of Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones. Ryan Briones told the Los Angeles Times that he took photographs of the of Iraqi civilian victims in Haditha and helped carry their bodies out of their homes as part of the cleanup crew sent in after the Nov. 19 killings.

P.S. Where did we go wrong? When did we turn our backs on the true God?

"Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing voices, be able to turn lies into truth?..."

orwellrollsinhisgrave.com

Requiem for the Faith-based Greenback

The great dollar sell-off has begun in earnest, although to a large extent, it is being concealed from the public.

Wary currency traders have been expecting a dollar-slide for months but were nervous about the possibility of widespread panic. Everyone from Bill Gates to Paul Volcker has predicted that the current trade deficit of $800 billion (7% of GDP) would inevitably produce a weaker dollar, so it is only natural that China, Japan and other foreign lenders would begin to cut back on their purchases. The danger to the United States, however, remains extreme. If the transition doesn’¥ go smoothly, it could precipitate a run on the dollar and trigger economic pandemonium. No one wants to see the world’≥ economic powerhouse pirouetting through the ether in flames. By the same token, no one wants to be the last man holding onto stockpiles of scrip that are diminishing in value.

The delicacy of the situation explains the sudden appointment of Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary. Paulson is a brainy insider who has the bone fides to manage a very tricky "retreat" from the dollar. America’≥ economic future will depend heavily on his ability to steer the ship of state through troubled waters.

As we said, there was no doubt that China, Japan and others would eventually reduce their dollar-holdings as America’≥ debt continued to mount. What is surprising though is that a sell-off did not occur earlier when Bush enshrined his reckless tax cuts and profligate spending as "permanent". The administration’≥ fondness for living beyond its means has never been in doubt, now greenback will pay the price for Bush’≥ excessiveness.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Seems like the dark clouds on the financial horizon are growing fast, the financial storm is coming. The weak dollar policy has only one purpose. It masked the failure of sound fiscal policy that has been the rule for many previous and the current administration.

capt

The Evil Is In Our Government
by Paul Craig Roberts

Is the Bush Regime a state sponsor of terrorism?

A powerful case can be made that it is.

In the past three years the Bush Regime has murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and an unknown number of Afghan ones.

US Marines, our finest and proudest military force, are under criminal investigation for breaking into Iraqi homes and murdering entire families. In an unprecedented event, General Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, has found it necessary to fly to Iraq to tell our best-trained troops to stop murdering civilians.

General Hagee found it necessary to tell the U.S. Marines: "We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional, and most importantly, lawful."

The war criminals in the Bush Regime have dismissed the murders as "collateral damage," but they are, in fact murders. Otherwise, there would be no criminal investigations, and the Marine commandant would not be burdened with the embarrassment of having to fly to Iraq to lecture U.S. Marines on the lawful use of force.

The criminal Bush Regime has now murdered more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein. The Bush Regime is also responsible for 20,000 US casualties (dead, maimed for life, and wounded).

Bush damns the "axis of evil." But who has the "axis of evil" attacked? Iran has attacked no one. North Korea has attacked no country for more than a half-century. Iraq attacked Kuwait a decade and a half ago, apparently after securing permission from the US ambassador.

Isn’¥ the real axis of evil Bush-Blair-Olmert? Bush and Blair have attacked two countries, slaughtering their citizens. Olmert is urging them on to attack a third country –†Iran.

Where does the danger to the world reside? In Iran, a small religious country where the family is intact and the government is constrained by religious authority and ancient traditions, or in the US where propaganda rules and the powerful executive branch has removed itself from accountability by breaking the constitutional restraints on its power?

Why is the US superpower orchestrating fear of puny Iran?

The US government has spent the past half century interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, overthrowing or assassinating their chosen leaders and imposing its puppets on foreign peoples. To what country has Iran done this, or Iraq, or North Korea?

Americans think that they are the salt of the earth. The hubris that comes from this self-righteous belief makes Americans blind to the evil of their leaders. How can American leaders be evil when Americans are so good and so wonderful?

How many Serbs were slaughtered by American bombs released from high above the clouds, and for what reason? Who even remembers the propagandistic lies that the Clinton administration told us about why we absolutely had to drop bombs on the Serbs?

Wasn't it evil for the US to bomb Iraq for a decade and to embargo medicines for children? When US Secretary of State M. Albright was asked if she thought an embargo that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified, she replied, "yes."

The former terrible tyrant ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is on trial for killing 150 people. The US government murdered 500,000 Iraqi children prior to Bush's invasion. When the US government murders people, whether Serbs, Branch Davidians at Waco, or Iraqi women and children, it is "collateral damage." But we put Saddam Hussein on trial for putting down rebellions.

Gentle reader, do you believe that the Bush Regime will not shoot you down in the streets if you have a rebellion?

May 29, 2006

Four square,

You seem astonished. Do you not already think this is happening and has been happening for some time? Why do you think most major media outlets have such contempt for cable news and the internet. There used to be few voices, now there are many, and the big can't control it.

#195 Saladin

I've been popping in and out, and will have to pop out in a minute again.

These questions you ask are existentialist in the end. It causes us to stay wakeful at night, (besides the ever-present need to eat--and making money for that). I could offer all kinds of answers, but none would do. Not religious, not philosophical, not spiritual, not moral. It's a combination of all things, the gray matter of life and the human condition. I mentioned this in my e-mail to you on global warming.

Yes, we are "pack" animals. Scientists would point to the naturalist theories, that greed and need for power come naturally to us, since they are a great help in surviving. It's just not as apparent as it used to be in this modern world.

This country, as you, Saladin, have frequently pointed out, has been on this path of self-destruction since it began. I do have an ultimate faith though. Not that this country will remain preeminent. Our days of empire are over. And that is good. Some say that the world will come to an end. (I mean Christian rightist fundamentalists.) I don't think so. God put too much time and effort into this experiment. But he/she did intend for us to keep working at keeping it nice. Like a parent telling their children to clean their rooms. I truly think humans are going to clean up their act....Oh, I just remembered an article by Edward Luttwak on the need for civil war. I'll get that to you guys soon. Anyway, I believe a new sort of spirituality is going to trinkle in. An understanding of things more important than money. A feeling of being at one with the universe. And that will lead to better behavior and understanding.

#223 Capt. The Sidney Madwed quote applies to these deep questions. I think, as a society, Americans do have a problem with teaching children how to cope with these existential problems. But you know, and I digress here, that before the 18th century, Europeans didn't treat their children the way we do now. They were treated as extra hands in labor. Not with the lovey-dovey stuff that is commonplace now. Still, in the hopes that our children "make it" we do teach them the hard-core values of money and not enough about love and socialistic, communal values. Teaching "self-harmony" should be an essential part of the parental handbook.

As regards the almost militant trek towards socialist fascism, it does appear unstoppable. But the "pack" will someday become aware, it will, however, clearly take banging people over the head. And the corporate media are not going to do that. We have to make all of the noisy splash. Cannonball time!

P.S. Saladin, I think the blackmail was in order to control the oil.

Under the Cold Eye of History
by Robert P. Watson

Ever since 1948, when historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. first polled leading scholars and asked them to rank our presidents, updated polls have been released every few years. As a participant in the current poll, I spent several weeks thinking long and hard about the best and worst of our country's presidents -- and about President Bush's eventual place in history.

As aides and supporters worry whether Bush's presidency can be "salvaged," I respectfully suggest the future of the country, rather than the president's legacy, is the topic more worth pondering. The forthcoming poll will be the first to include a preliminary ranking of this President Bush. So, here is my prediction:

There is much agreement by scholars as to the greatest presidents; they are Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt, with Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson not far behind. These great leaders provide a standard by which all presidents are measured -- and clues as to how Bush measures up. From the great presidents we know that the country is well-served by leaders who exhibit the following traits:

Humanity, compassion, and respect for others
A governing style that unifies, not divides
Rhetorical skills and the ability to communicate a clear, realistic vision
Willingness to listen to experts and the public
Ability to admit error, accept criticism and be adaptable
Engaged and inquisitive, with a sense of perspective and history
Integrity, inspiring trust among the people
Moral courage in not shrinking from challenges

Unfortunately, Bush's presidency has been the polar opposite of this list. This brings up the matter of who are our worst presidents. Again, scholars are in agreement, listing Warren Harding, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

Like them, Bush has been tone deaf, disinterested in advice and evidence that contradict his beliefs, intellectually disengaged from the crises that have enveloped his administration, and arrogant in exercising power. Bush's failure is most apparent in the major crises of his presidency, namely mishandling the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, recklessly amassing the world's largest deficits and debt, and failing to lead on pressing challenges such as the skyrocketing costs of health care, fuel and a college education.

In each case, he steadfastly refused to adjust, adapt or alter his flawed strategy. These missteps bode poorly for Bush because a president's ultimate legacy is how he responds to crisis, particularly war.

Undoubtedly, the source of the problem rests with Bush's personal style. Ironically, this is the very trait about which he and his supporters boasted as a candidate.

Bush's shortcomings are numerous and can best be seen in the mountain of wildly foolish and juvenile official remarks he has made in office, from his premature boast of "mission accomplished" aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to his goading terrorists and suicide bombers to "bring 'em on!" And they have.

The president continues to proclaim success in the face of overwhelming and incontrovertible failure, while spinning or even outright suppressing facts and evidence to the point where one wonders if he is in touch with reality. Examples abound, including his insistence that an "abstinence-only" policy will prevent HIV-AIDS or his decision to legalize the sale of assault weapons. Bush has repeatedly suppressed intelligence about the war, ignored medical evidence in decisions by the FDA and mocked scientific studies on environmental degradation, while both his attorneys general have stood behind legal and constitutional interpretations that fly in the face of reason, precedent and the vision of the Founding Fathers.

A particularly disturbing trait of this president has been the culture of secrecy and deceit that has permeated the White House, a problem compounded by his refusal to explain himself and treatment of questions (and questioners) as if they were treasonous. To be sure, unlike Lincoln (who appealed to "our better angels" in times of crisis) and FDR (who affirmed that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"), Bush opted for the low road, governing on fear and distraction. Far from uniting the nation and reaching out, he has sealed himself off from the public, press and critics and divided this nation more sharply than anytime since the Civil War.

Indeed, the president has long passed the point of simply being untrustworthy; he has made a mockery of the office. That Bush will be remembered by history as a failure is now conventional wisdom among scholars of the presidency.

So, the question becomes how far down the ranking list will he be?

Bush will likely be remembered much as is Warren Harding, who was disinterested in policy details, brought a group of corrupt cronies to the White House and stumbled through one mishap after the other. He is remembered as something of a jovial but incompetent puppet for corporate interests, and for setting the nation on a course to the Great Depression.

But it is James Buchanan, president from 1857-1861, who often earns the dubious title of "worst president" because he lost the Union to civil war on his watch, and failed to change course until it was too late.

When history renders its cold assessment of George W. Bush, I believe he will find himself alongside Harding and Buchanan as one of the worst presidents in American history. Bush's legacy will likely be that of death, deficits and deceit, and it could well take this nation a decade or more to recover from his presidency.

KY politics. You have to love it. Spokesperson for the Governor uses the "F" bomb in a press conference. Helen Thomas even comments. Didn't know she was a KY native.

Lexington Herald

Gerald,

I love you man but you gotta learn to link. Your last two posts are killers.

How times change. I used to hate it when the DC press corps peppered politicians in an endless repetition of the same question. I used to think of that as bad, kind of wasted time. You know - Ask a question that will be answered? HA!

I am 180 degrees from that view now.

I wonder if I will live long enough to come full circle? It was odd that David was able to pose a single question to Rove and it did made some waves. One question and a non-answer? It still boggles my mind. Thank goodness someone is still willing to ask. Make the slugs sweat a little or at least demand the non-answer.

capt

TRH, my simple copy/paste post comes across as astonishment? sigh. i am astounded that you would find me astonished my friend!
ha ha - click my name!

TRH 245,

"...What can I say? I F*cked up! I'm f*ckin' SORRY! "

-Brett Hall, Fletcher Communictions Director

MOST lying politicians (but I repeat myself) believe Helen Thomas is from the lowest levels of hell!

-T

TRH,

Speaking of KY politcos, what do you think of Rocky Adkins? I talked to him, briefly, in Morehead at the regional basketball tourney, then wrote him a heartfelt letter...

...no response at all. He COULD knock 'em down from 20', though, couldn't he?

-T

Hajji,

I don't remember Rocky Adkins. Who did he play roundball for? Would be interesting to know where in KY Helen Thomas is from. Capt, are you still out there?

Four square,

Just saying, that has been happening for quite some time. You seem to act like it is something that could happen. That has already come and gone. I say, good riddance.

I think Helen Thomas is from Michigan.

Capt, I went nuts the other day trying to find a quote from Captain Kirk. I couldn't find it. I have a vat of WAV files from Star Trek and it wasn't there. I could swear at the end of one of the movies, maybe The Search for Spock, that he said as they stole a space ship maybe, "Let's see what's out there." I figure I should watch a couple of the movies over, or at least fast forward to the end of them.

Then I thought of you. Man, could Capt find it? Or maybe I'm just wrong. I know at one time he said something like, "Let's see what she can do." Hell, I'm probably wrong about that, too. Anyway, that's your mission should you choose to accept it.

Ok, out to the garage to putz and blast my stereo.

come and gone? i think it will only get worse. we will have video "evidence" of terrorist attacks left and right. subliminal messaging everywhere. duck and cover! be afraid! but first buy this new thingamabob! - j

Can't believe it but I found it. Helen Thomas is from Winchester, KY. Small town about 30 minutes east of Lexington.

Infoplease

Born in Winchester, Kentucky, Helen Thomas was raised in Detroit, Michigan where she attended public schools and later graduated from Wayne State University.

Upon leaving college, Helen served as a copy girl on the old, now defunct Washington Daily News. In 1943, Ms. Thomas joined United Press International and the Washington Press Corps.

TRH, Gerald knows how to link and James is well aware of what is going on via the media. Come? Yes. Gone? Not freakin hardly!

Saladin,

Maybe not gone, but not nearly as influential.

Observer, wonder when she moved to Michigan? I bet she had to buy shoes when she moved there. My youngest two sons, currently being raised in KY wouldn't wear shoes without putting up a fuss. The one year old will only wear sandals. He still hasn't worn shoes.

This thread is about students following their dreams and aspirations. Well, I must tell you about another group of kids with whom I just spent the day.

For reasons unpoken here, I visited the Children's Hospital here. The experience was at once joyous and sorrowful, exhilirating and depressing, laughter-filled and tearful.

The first activity I watched was footraces around the floor, under the impramatur of the hospital itself. It wouldn't be exceptional, except most of the kids didn't have hair. Further, they were all dragging dripbags and various other machines attached to their little bodies like so many motorcycle sidecars.

The only sense of profound despair was that of the parents. You could see it in their eyes. And, yet, even they were there to enjoy every precious moment. Unlike the children, these adults knew the time might be short.

Many - most of these darlings will not make it to their bacculaureate. And yet there is sense of joy, a sense of hope, that transcends all misery. Would that we should all have such an epiphany.

As surely as there is a God in Heaven, He will either cure these kids or bring them to His side. And in that thought is the hope for the world.

I would ask that we each hold a civil tongue, regardless of our political persuasions.

I would ask to remember that we are all in this experience together.

I would ask to remember that, when the rancor and dissatisfaction with life - and with each other - becomes unbearable, we remember these Godly messengers whose only sin was to be born.

Believe me, all our problems pale by comparison.

James,

Why the four square? You have no reason for disguise.

#237 Wowwwwww Gerald! I dont usually read the long ones...I dont sit still that long, but I read that one! =)
Temptation & greed, I would think that is where we went wrong.

Trying to reform myself,
G

factchecker (#259) That was awesome! =)

Helen Thomas was born in Winchester, Kentucky, on August 4, 1920, to Lebanese immigrants. Helen was the seventh of nine children. When she was four years old, the family moved to Detroit, Michigan.

She became the first female White House bureau chief of a wire service in 1974.

Helen Thomas worked for UPI from 1943-2000, when she resigned after UPI was purchased by the Unification Church.

oh i'm not hiding behind those squares. everyone knows it's me, it's just that i couldn't find any ancient hierolyphs so i'm stuck with those squares. actually they are rectangles - don't mind me; spongebrain rectangle pants!

Has anyone ever determined whether the "Where's the Beef?" lady from Wendy's commercials was Helen Thomas? Awfully close resemblence and certainly a question Helen would ask.

Four rectangle,

I forgive you. Press on!

It was Clara Peller, who was born in 1902 - much older than the unsinkable Helen. For a fleeting moment I thought you had rehabilitated yourself. Now this comment.

PS Clara was buried in the Jewish Waldhiem Cemetery, but I would imagine that she'd welcome Helen the Lebanese and vice versa.

Waldheim

Observer,

I was kidding. I knew it was Clara Peller. You have to admit, there is a resemblence and that would be something that Helen would ask, if given the chance.

The problem is if you've got to pay your sources can you believe them? Young jounalists should not be discourarged by this, otherwise they would be walking around with garbage bags full of money looking for "news". People will say any thing for cash. At least the news orgs try to corroberate with a second source. The second source also might want the money. Rove is on the run to save the republican majority. So beware of leaks, rumors, and smears similar to what he did to
John McCain. He needs to be watched very closely. which is difficult from the Whitehouse fence

Damn_Em

Are you implying Rather had a second source in his bogus document story of Bush guard service? I think not. The original was bogus, they knew it, yet they ran with it. Don't give credit where credit is certainly not due. The MSM will do anything to get the story first, facts be Damned_Em

I don't see the resemblance. But, I'll take your word for it that you were kidding.

However, I don't think Helen would waste her time on such a ridiculous question. I think you know that, too.

#217 Not factual, TRH.

Good journalists would rather have the story right, than to be first. First is good, but not if their ducks are not in a row.

Observer,

I remember watching an interview of Clara Peller many moons ago. If I mentioned her name in the question, I would be admitting they were not the same person. I'm not saying "where's the beef?" would be typical of Helen, only that she is the only one out there with the guts to ask it. And in this day and age, I think it would be an appropriate question regarding many things.

Thank you for taking my word. Never meant to be a knock on Helen. I disagree with her politics but she does have moxi about herself that I admire.

Rove is on the run to save the republican majority. So beware of leaks, rumors, and smears

leaks rumours and smears are just par for the course business as usual -
i say beware of another false flag terror attack. ala 911.
a leaked republican memo has already said that another terror attack would be good for the republican's sagging popularity. and a leaked DOD memo has said that another terror attack will open the door once and for all to a police state of emergency martial law. and certainly if the "iranians" dare to terrorize america, america will have no choice but to fiercly retaliate.

Observer, #273

See, you were trying to be first to dispute me. You referred to #217 instead of #271. I know that is a typo, but you should have consulted a second source before you clicked on "post."

Let's just have some fun, shall we?

And the gene pool just keeps eroding. Please do not try this at home. But if you are tempted, go ahead.

You have to read it to believe it

If I was in charge of National Security Carl Rove would be my biggest concern for making bushhitler really real. Unless they are all in it together. Then it is already over. I might be paranoid but I see this preemption of public survielance as a prelude maybe dreaming up martial law and stopping the 08 election leaving king bunnypants inpower for the "good"of us. Then he would be king of the oil industry of the world

Dick-tater Arbusto Al Saudi.

Damn_Em

Wishful thinking? Not even the most partisan of either political parties would allow that to happen. If it were declared, as you suggest, who would enforce it? All of our troops are in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world. The national guard maybe? Only a governor can activate the guard. Recall the last time the guard was activated in a civil emergency? Does the words "Tin soldiers and Nixon calling" ring a bell? You think there is an insurgancy in Iraq? Try imposing martial law in the U.S. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Guess what Monday is? Monday is the day President Bush will speak about an issue near and dear to his heart and the hearts of many conservatives. It's also the day before the Senate votes on the very same thing. Is it the war? Deficits? Health insurance? Immigration? Iran? North Korea?

Not even close. No, the president is going to talk about amending the Constitution in order to ban gay marriage. This is something that absolutely, positively has no chance of happening, nada, zippo, none. But that doesn't matter. Mr. Bush will take time to make a speech. The Senate will take time to talk and vote on it, because it's something that matters to the Republican base.

This is pure politics. If has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in gay marriage. It's blatant posturing by Republicans, who are increasingly desperate as the midterm elections approach. There's not a lot else to get people interested in voting on them, based on their record of the last five years.

But if you can appeal to the hatred, bigotry, or discrimination in some people, you might move them to the polls to vote against that big, bad gay married couple that one day might in down the street.

NYT | June 4, 2006 | The Public Editor

Hillary and Bill: A Relationship Too Political to Be Ignored

By BYRON CALAME
COMPLAINTS about the May 23 Page 1 article on Hillary and Bill Clinton add up to one of the most uniformly negative and partisan reader reactions to a Times article during the past year. Most decried as tabloid journalism the story about the couple and the political implications of their marriage for her Senate re-election campaign and presidential aspirations.

"I do understand the fascination people have with the Clintons and their marriage, but I do not understand why such a tawdry piece belongs in The New York Times, let alone on its front page," wrote a reader from Washington. And a reader from Aurora, Colo., complained: "What a non-newsworthy story. The Clintons' marital relationship has nothing to do with anything."

I disagree. Over all, I found the article a worthwhile piece of journalism that deserved to be published in The Times.

(link)

In two courtrooms in two different states this week, there was one common outcome: a small victory for citizens challenging the government's domestic spying activities. As you know, the legislative and executive branch have endeavored to insulate the program from judicial scrutiny, and the press meanwhile has shifted its attention away from the furor over domestic spying towards more "important" things...like the health of Bill and Hillary's relationship, or just how Taylor Hicks became the new American Idol. But domestic spying is front and center in courtrooms across America.

(link)

Judge limits classified data given to Libby

Items compiled from Tribune news services
Published June 3, 2006

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A former White House aide facing perjury charges will get only a prosecutor's summary of classified documents assessing the damage to national security from the leak of a CIA officer's identity, a federal judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton also said lawyers for Lewis "Scooter" Libby must settle for a prosecutor's version of information contained in secret government documents that describe CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history.

Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, faces perjury and obstruction of justice charges alleging he lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury about how he learned about Plame's CIA status and what he subsequently told reporters about her. His trial is scheduled for January.

Walton said special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald convinced him that providing Libby's lawyers with classified documents describing the consequences, if any, of Plame's outing and her CIA employment history "could cause serious if not grave damage to the national security of the United States."

(link)

TRH - Try imposing martial law in the U.S. You ain't seen nothing yet.

that's a very good point. bushco must realize that they would ultimately be very sorry if they imposed a police state on america, but still, another terror attack and most of the population would bend over backwards to bend over forwards. so to speak.

Ex-Hollinger Official Allowed to Skip Hearing for Canada Day

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- John Boultbee, one of three men indicted with Canadian publisher Conrad Black on corporate fraud charges, has won permission to skip a court conference so he can spend Canada Day with his friends and family in British Columbia.

Prosecutors had said Boultbee wasn't taking his situation seriously.

Black faces 12 charges of racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of justice. The U.S. accuses him of using Toronto-based Hollinger Inc. as a vehicle to enrich himself and his associates at the expense of shareholders. Prosecutors say Black stole at least $92 million with the help of Boultbee and others. Boultbee had been Hollinger's chief financial officer.

The office of Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald filed papers telling St. Eve that Boultbee's request demonstrated ``a gross lack of appreciation by this defendant of the gravity of these proceedings.''

Tuite, an attorney in Chicago's Arnstein & Lehr, last week filed papers arguing that the long trip for the short conference could cost his client more than $3,000. Boultbee lives in Victoria, British Columbia, an island city south of Vancouver. He plans to attend a Canada Day celebration at his country club, Tuite's papers said.

Fitzgerald's office replied that the trip could be made for less than half the sum cited by Tuite, attaching a print-out from the travel website Orbitz.com to make its point.

Sign on to this. The proposal is to make mastectomies an out of office procedure. NOT! Think of the many complications. They will do anything to cut back on medical costs, women, that means you. In the time of cancer, can you imagine?

PETITION

No matter how many Haydens, Boltons, Gosses, Ashcrofts, Gonzalezes, Alitos, Browns and Chertoffs Bush appoints and Congress slobbers with approval, it still came down to 12 citizens who listened to the evidence for four months, deliberated for six days and tendered a clear, unassailable verdict: guilty as sin. Lay and Skilling -- poster boys for the leaner, meaner GOP machine, the ?smartest guys in the room? -- are now convicted federal felons.

Before we gloat over the misery of two other fellow human beings -- two fallible people with families, house pets and houseplants just like all of us -- maybe we should take a moment, in the interest of common decency and national healing, to conduct our own moral inventory. First, look in the refrigerator. Then look in the mirror and ask yourself: ?Will five bottles of champagne be enough?!?

Let?s begin celebrating the downfall of the GOP machine. Indeed, consider the convictions of Lay and Skilling (and the earlier conviction of Andy Fastow, Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff) the first pitches in an extra-inning game that we have to win. There is no second place, no consolation prize. If we lose, that?s it; the ?great experiment? in democracy known as America is over. The judicial system is our ?Casey at the Bat.? It must do for our nation what the legislative and executive branches of the federal government have failed so miserably to do.

Happily, in Patrick Fitzgerald, we have the judicial equivalent of David Ortiz standing on deck in the Plame case investigation. He has, like the Enron jury, carefully gathered and weighed the evidence, indicted Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney?s right-hand man, and slapped Judith Miller in jail for, among other things, being Libby?s press whore and mouthpiece in the run up to the illegal war in Iraq. You might want to keep some extra bottles of bubbly on hand, because word on the street is that Fitzgerald will soon indict the two human slugs, Mad Dog Cheney and the Turd Blossom Rove.

(link)

Stop Drive-Thru Mastectomies

Sign the petition and make a difference!

Sign this petition. By doing so, you'll ensure that women who are diagnosed with breast cancer won't have to worry about being forced out of the hospital after undergoing a mastectomy! The Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2005 will guarantee that women and their physicians, not insurance companies, will decide when they are ready to go home. So voice your support now with your signature. Lifetime will deliver your signature, along with the millions of others, to Congress. Please add your name to the list to help get this legislation passed. (Presione aqui para espanol.)

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Is this the right petition/site?

capt

#246 TRH, I can link and I have been linking but if the article is not that long, I could try to post. Sometimes an article can hit a person with great information.

TRH, This is a long article but a great one

Multiply Haditha by Thousands

Are American soldiers operating like savages? Yes, war is hell and immoral behavior can place a person in hell. Our soldiers should never have been placed in this hellish war. Hitler Bush made Iraq a war of choice in order to pacify his deranged mind. War is Hitler Bush's pacifier for a little baby.

Like Bush Nazi Americans are blood sucking vampires

Nazi Americans love their manure

All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself. -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The Nazi Fourth Reich became operational when it chose its savior, Hitler Bush, who was then governor of Texas. The Nazi Fourth Reich is an evil and a vile regime

Grateful Dead keyboardist dead at 51

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Vince Welnick, the Grateful Dead's last keyboard player and a veteran of several other bands, including the Tubes and Missing Man Formation, has died at age 51, the Grateful Dead's longtime publicist said.

Welnick died Friday, said Dennis McNally, who declined to release the cause. The Sonoma County coroner's office said Saturday that an autopsy would be performed next week. Welnick lived in the northern California town of Forestville, but McNally said he did not know if he died at home or in a hospital.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Another "Rest in Peace"

capt

Invoking Secrets Privilege Becomes a More Popular Legal Tactic by U.S

WASHINGTON, June 3 — Facing a wave of litigation challenging its eavesdropping at home and its handling of terror suspects abroad, the Bush administration is increasingly turning to a legal tactic that swiftly torpedoes most lawsuits: the state secrets privilege.

In recent weeks alone, officials have used the privilege to win the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a German man who was abducted and held in Afghanistan for five months and to ask the courts to throw out three legal challenges to the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program.

The privilege has been asserted by the Justice Department more frequently under President Bush than under any of his predecessors — in 19 cases, the same number as during the entire eight-year presidency of Ronald Reagan, the previous record holder, according to a count by William G. Weaver, a political scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso.
---
---
Under Mr. Bush, the secrets privilege has been used to block a lawsuit by a translator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sibel Edmonds, who was fired after accusing colleagues of security breaches; to stop a discrimination lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Sterling, a Farsi-speaking, African-American officer at the Central Intelligence Agency; and to derail a patent claim involving a coupler for fiber-optic cable, evidently to guard technical details of government eavesdropping.

James,

Still don' see it happening. Look at all the fuss over airport security checks and the flying public is a miniscule percentage of the overall population.

Gerald,

Thanks for the link. I knew there was more to you than copy & paste.

James, those rectangles that people are seeing are from the chinese characters that you're using. Babblefish translates them as "without the Airplane." But many web browsers can't display them using regular characters; so they just throw up blocks.

Gretta, I just celebrated my 16th anniversary last week in DC; and I plan on celebrating another 40. Mrs. Pandemoniac would split you in two with an emory board if I had lunch with you (without her). BTW Mr. Rose's Philly Phamous is at The Quarry, not at The Forum; but I don't know if it's still open for business since he got traded to the Knicks. I live closer to La Cantera than either The Forum or Quarry.

"Name-calling is another liberal specialty!"

Not denying that it is fun or easy; but it isn't our specialty. Try rereading Factless and Clueless and your old posts. You'll see every epithet under the sun. The difference between bedwetters like you and liberals like us is that you can dish it out but you can't take it.

"One of you, Panty, thinks me/us stupid; typical Lefty `misunderestimation' of the Right."

Facts don't bear that out. 9 out of every 10 statements that you Bushbots post are inaccurate or straight up lies. Which is it? Are you stupid or lying. Either admission is fine by me. By the way, your little nickname for me is by far the most precious one I've ever gotten on the Cornblog -- even cuter than Ms. Saladin's Pan, or Clueless' "Joooeek."

"I'm perfectly Happy being thought of as stupid so long as me and my `people' are in control of the bulk of the wealth (and recently, political power) in this country. AND, may I add, we feel no guilt in being financially successful."

This is what I mean, Factless.

"Do you think assholes and cowards, especially financially successful ones, can be good at community services?"
Posted by: Happy lectures liberal at June 3, 2006 04:38 PM

Yes, you can serve; but I doubt you'll ever be good at it.

"Believe me, all our problems pale by comparison."
Posted by: factchecker at June 3, 2006 11:02 PM

I agree. Furthermore, try visiting the local Fisher House to see brave men and women and their families who's only sin is believing that they were being sent to defend their country only to find that they'd been lied into a war. It is painful to see the children knowing that their families have been torn apart and will live with that for decades.

And I feel ya' when you say that we should avoid obscene language. Problem is, I find the profiteering and mindless destruction of the lower and middle class in America to be obscene. And many of you conservatives are PROUD of the fact that it is being done. See Hapless' proud confession.

And if you think that kind of idiotic ranting deserves a civil reply, I have a phrase, two words for you. One begins with the letter F and the other begins with the letter Y. And it isn't Fabulous Yams.

Off to church .... man o man, are my legs sore. Those thrusts are killing my thighs.

TRH, what fuss? I see people doing just what they are told.

I can't wait to find out what all those hallibuilt detention centers are for. They say illegal aliens, but soon there won't BE any, so what's the REAL reason? Bird flu? HAHA

TRH,

Rep.Adkins played for Elliot Co., in Sandy Hook, before moving on to Morehead. (A contemporary of your nearby cousin, I think) After that, he realized he was a short, slow, balding guy and left basketball behind.

He seems to have been instrumental in several Eastern KY development projects, including that most desireable of industries...prisons. He speaks a lot of social and campaign reform, governmental accountablility and such. He SEEMED to be wildly popular among the young people he took the time to shake the hands of.

I was somewhat turned off by the way he was always looking for the next hand to shake, instead of focusing on the one he was shaking...

...but that's poli-ticks, in a nut-shell!

-T

Neil,
My belief on homosexuals is that if a man wants to poke another man...that is his biz. If a woman wants to *coughhhhhhhhhh* (not saying it) another woman....that is her biz. As long as I (or my child) am not affected by it, then it is not my biz. Things that I do inside my home are nobody else's biz so I would be hypocritical to say others can not have the same right.
For the record, I sleep with a man (a cute Italian one). =)
I am not to judge others, though I may look at a woman in the mall & think, "Wow, her shoes dont match her outfit." =)
But I think that just may be a "woman" thing. I am nobody's keeper, but my own (and ofcourse my child's). I believe that, if people do wrong or right, then they will reap what they sow or be rewarded for their actions. When I have done wrong, it always came back to me 10 fold (in a bad way). When I have done right, it always came back to me 10 fold (in a good way).

A joyful Sunday to all,
G

Water Fuel Experimenter and Team Threatened
Ken Rasmussen's research team has been working on a process that turns out to have similarities to the super-efficient electrolysis process being developed by Professor Kanarev. Rasmussen's work ceased after a member of the team was threatened at gunpoint.

by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News

VENTURA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, USA -- On May 16, a technician who was one of a team of garage experimenters investigating a hydrogen-on-demand technology was run off the road near a rural intersection and accosted by four white, middle-aged males in black suits, carrying Glocks and Mac tens. The assailants were driving a late model, black Lincoln Town Car.

This comes just one month after Bill Williams was similarly threatened because of his experimentation with running a vehicle on a Joe cell.

The victim in this latest incident is an associate of New Energy Congress member, Ken Rasmussen, who had been working together with him on the project. Rasmussen also runs an alternative energy news service at http://www.commutefaster.com/Energy.html They had been working on the project together.

A week before the incident, Rasmussen learned of the work being done by Professor Kanarev in Russia. Both use a pulsed signal, and both were seeing similar performance rates. Kanarev holds multiple patents, and is widely published. A day before the incident, a person who was interested in funding the project of Rasmussen et al., and who had been trying to reach him since November, had finally made contact.

Rasmussen reported the incident for the first time publicly in his news today. He said, "As editor of this page, my life has now been threatened by 2 loaded guns pointed in the face of a good friend."

"Using information which could only have been obtained by monitoring digital cell phones and e-mail, the assailants portrayed to the victim that they had total control over his personal life, and was told to remain silent and to not talk to government authorities." He was told that if he did not comply, a family member would be killed. The assailants produced extensive details about this target family member. The threat also included himself, his family and all associates if he did not stop work on the process immediately. The threats made actually applied broadly to anyone working on overunity.

"I'm breaking the story to warn others who might be involved in similar technologies," said Rasmussen.

These thugs knew things I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW. Their boss has digital cell phone tapping technology at the very least. Other details were probably obtained by wire tapping neighbors and friend's phones too."

In closing, Rasmussen said, "We have this kind warning to fellow experimenters who try to challenge the conventional physics being taught to students around the world. Challenge the system, the system that says oil is god, and there are paid mafia goons all over the world who will stop you for a few measly dollars. We know, because we met their guns face to face. Please continue your noble research, but PLEASE PLEASE watch your backside."

Rasmussen's words to the assailants were that if anyone was harmed, the plans for this technology would be plastered all over the Internet. He believes that cowering to bullies is not good policy.
-----------
Is it any wonder that technology to get us off fossil fuel dependency never gets anywhere?

Saladin,
You are so right. I know one guy (illegal) who works at this place we maintain. He has a SS# but it will not go through the computer?? (not sure how that works).., but the employer gets around it somehow so that he can work there, and have taxes taken out. He and his parents/family (all illegal) receive checks/food stamps/medicaid that WE pay for. *sigh*

Gretta, a BIG AMEN to that! I have always felt that moral judgements of others are the most hypocritical kind there are. Who of us does not have something they regret, and who has room to pick at splinters? Regardless of whether we feel abortion or homosexuality or porn or a host of other "moral" issues is right or wrong is not relevent. We only have control of our own actions. If there is a God who will judge and condemn, then each person will have to answer for their own behavior. MYOB is good advice.

Biden was uhm...ENTERTAINING...on meet the press. Nobody shows exasperation better. That he can say..."I've been saying this for 3 years! When am I gonna hafta stop saying this on your show?"...with a straight face...whooooeeeee!

He DID say, "Get ALL US forces (except for the "Over the Horizon" contingent) out of Iraq NOW! (by "Now", of course he says it'll take until the end of '07)

Hans Blix followed with his patented, "Inspections are what were needed, NOT INVASION!" comments. Is cautioning BUSHCHENY to dial back its rhetoric on Iran, before it goes too far. He mentions the little fact that the IAEA actually READ the Non-Proliferation Treaty and it says that "...this agreement will not be used to keep signatories from developing nuclear programs for non-weapon use..." (I'm paraphrasing)

The whole, "Why do they want nuclear power when they've got OIL?" question is not one asked to the US or Mexico or Venezuela or anybody else...

Time to get ready to go play "Poppi"! Today's mission...find a level spot for the "Slip 'N Slide"!

-T

"For the record, I sleep with a man (a cute Italian one)."

Don't say that. You'll mess up my visuals. In my mind's world, you sleep with a woman. However, I like the suggestion that she is Italian, and will make the appropriate mental alteration.

Now Rick...that is what fantasy is for! lol
Too funny!

Actually Gretta, it's even worse. The money to support illegal immigrants is being borrowed. Our great grandchildren will still be paying the INTEREST on that money! I think I read that the interest alone on the current deficit is 350 billion a year. imagine what it will be 10 years from now! At that rate, it will never be paid. What a perfect scam, eh? Typical banks, making you pay for something 3-4 times over. We have President Wilson to thank for that. Now, we will NEVER escape this crushing debt, it will just get worse and worse.

"Today's mission...find a level spot for the "Slip 'N Slide"!"

Downhill = increased speed.

Oh, just to show the the MS-insn't for what it is...the "round-table" moved right on to "Hillary, Hillary, HILLARY"!!!

Where do they GET these dumbasses?

-T

Saladin,
If we all minded our own business, can you imagine what this world would be like?
My neighbors peer out their windows when I go out to water my plants/flowers! One lady (80 something) calls my home, not knowing I have caller ID, and wont say anything. lol creeeepy!

#309 Saladin,
I figured so much. It is SO depressing to think about what our children/grandchildren will have to live in!

Rick,

It is a delicate balance for a 2-year old daredevil!

I'm thinking an initial downhill with a slight rise at the end...

(I, personally, would build a ramp to the pool!)

-T

Haj,
Those things HURT...my son's stomach/knees are always so red & sore when he slips, then slides. I bought him one of those little floats (the ring) so it helps.
Wear sunblock!

Gretta, kids are pretty much numb to that sort of thing. When I was a kid one of my favorite things to do was climb to the top of a pyramid sized pile of bark mulch and roll to the bottom. My brother and I would spend hours doing that. We always ended up chock full of ting splinters, but we didn't care. My parents thought we were insane!

whoops, TINY, not ting. There were no ting trees in Portland :-)

Saladin,

Re-pine mulch.

We had a "Woolco" a block or so away where we would build forts from 50-lb bags of mulch and topsoil...amazing we were never killed in an avalance...

Rope swings, swimming in (basically) open sewers, falling out of trees, dangerous non-helmeted bike riding, (gasp!)drinking out of hoses...didn't seem to kill many of us. (although many would argue for its detri-MENTAL effects!)

I'm off! Good Sunday to all 'yall!

-T

Normalizing the Unthinkable
John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on the failure of the world’s press

06/03/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The late journalist Edward R. Murrow might well have been rolling in his grave on April 21. That's because Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a lecture that day in Washington, DC to journalists at the Department of State's official Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists.

For the Bush administration to use the memory of a person who stood up to government propaganda is ironic to say the least. Secretary Rice told the assembled journalists that without a free press to report on the activities of government, to ask questions of officials, to be a place where citizens can express themselves, democracy simply couldn't work.

...Robert Fisk

Next to speak was Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, arguably the world's most experienced Western reporter in the region. Fisk pulled out a copy of the New York Times and spread it out on the lectern. This is from this morning's paper: Al-Qaeda's man in Iraq gets encouragement from HQ, Fisk read aloud. An interior minister official said, officials said, the American military said, the Iraqi government said, some American officials here observed, and some military officials have said, two American intelligence officials said, one Pakistani official said, and I've only got to column two, Fisk exclaimed. I've always believed that your major newspaper should be called American Officials Say. Then you can just scrap all the reporting and have the Pentagon talking directly.
-------------
David is right, journalists are really not necessary when we have the office of propaganda known as the Pentagon.

Saladin,
You are right again. I guess my mother & your mother musta felt the same way as I do now! Switching roles from child to parent is not easy. lol
We used to play under my grandma's house with all of the black widows, snakes, etc. I can not see myself crawling under a house now for ANY reason!
But I am gonna go outside in this heat and play around with my flower beds until it is unbearable.

Sounds good to me. I have a monster tomato growing in a pot on the balcony that I have to figure out a way to tame. Lots of little grape tomatoes on the way! One of my favorites!

A state of emergency

Bush is a danger to the constitution in his wartime capacity as commander in chief

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday June 1, 2006
The Guardian

Within the Bush administration something that senior officials call the "war paradigm" is the central organising principle. They do not use the phrase publicly, but they bend policy to serve it. After September 11 the war paradigm was instantly adopted. George Bush, who proclaimed "I'm a war president", assumed the paradigm as his natural state and right. According to its imperatives, the president in his wartime capacity as commander in chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances. Some of the paradigm's expressions include Bush's fiats on the treatment of detainees, domestic surveillance and international law, and his more than 750 "signing statements" - interpretations of laws that he claims he can implement as he chooses.

(link)

According to an e-mail received from Truthout.org Executive Director Marc Ash, three independent sources have confirmed that attorneys for Karl Rove were handed an indictment late last week.

However, the office of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald would not confirm, deny or comment on its investigation on Truthoutís report. ìWe know that both Roveís attorney Robert Luskin and Roveís spokesman Mark Corallo have categorically denied all key facts we have set forth. We know we have information that directly contradicts Luskin and Coralloís denials,î Ash wrote in the e-mailóìthis is what we believeóRove may be turning stateís evidence. We suspect that the scope of Fitzgeraldís investigation may have broadenedóand clearly to Cheney...î

Prior to these possible new developments, Rove has been asked to testify five times during the grand juryís ìPlamegateî investigation.

The leak investigation, which led to the indictment last year of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis ìScooterî Libby, began after administration officials were accused of disclosing Plame's identity as part of a broader White House effort to discredit critics of the administration's justification for the Iraq war.

(link)

"The president of Mexico has arrived in the U.S. ... I thought this was encouraging. He offered to take President Bush's job for $3 an hour cash."

-- David Letterman

"At the end of last night's `American Idol,' Ryan Seacrest announced that more than 63 million votes were cast, which is more than any president in U.S. history has ever received. ... In a related story, this morning Hillary Clinton bought a karaoke machine."

-- Conan O'Brien

I have not been impressed with much of what you do David. You say that you warned journalist students about not getting paid.

They are not worried about getting paid, they are from the elite classes, generally and like most good artists survive through their parents.

How did you get to be a journalist? I would guess through the same methodology. Having wealthy parents. You don't come across as hard scrabble...thus you don't perceive into certain areas of human life.

Instead of telling these students to get tough...why don't you in your reporting? Try emualting Robert Fisk for example...or somebody who takes chances.

wow pande, you say that my rectangles actually have a meaning? and all this time i could have just copy/pasted them from the simple chinese to english translation of the babelfish program? damn, what will they think of next?
"without the airplane"....hmmm, whatever could that mean?

No indictment for Rove but jury still out
By WILLIAM D. McTAVISH
Contributing Editor
Capitol Hill Blue

Contrary to some published reports, Presidential advisor Karl Rove was not indicted two weeks ago by the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name but he remains a focus of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, sources close to the investigation say.

"No indictment, sealed or otherwise, has yet been issued against Mr. Rove," says an investigator working on the case. "But," he adds, "that doesn't mean one isn't in the works if Fitz (special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald) can make his case." [. . . ]

Reporters for major news organizations have worked for the past two weeks trying to confirm existence of an indictment but have come up empty [. . .]

"Rove has always been a focus of the case," says a lawyer who has worked on the case. "Surely you don't think Patrick Fitzgerald is going to be satisfied with just Scooter Libby. There are bigger fish out there and he holds the frying pan."

Political scientist George Harleigh, a Republican insider who worked in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, says the White House has been trying to head off a Rove indictment since the investigation of the leaking of Plame's name began.

"They keep throwing up roadblocks to the investigation but even an administration as out-of-touch as this one can see the handwriting on the wall," Harleigh says. "If Fitzgerald can find a way to bring Rove down he will do it

(link)

you don't perceive into certain areas
- Stu Pidity

Your assumptions about Corn's family wealth and his ability to 'perceive into certain areas' and demonstrate an understanding and concern for issues that affect the lower income class is just that, assumption.

It is posts like Pandemoniac's at 298 that shows he is not a serious person. He is a failure at life, and therefore expects anyone who has achieved any success to have gained it nefariously.

He does not believe in the triumph of the human spirit, only the crushing hand of government. He probably never met a government program he didn't like.

But that's OK, because nobody in the real world takes him seriously. The more time he spends here, the less time he and other little minds can spend interfering with the work of adults.

He rants and raves here because he is so totally shunned by reality. Perhaps a little more positive action and a little less negativity would change both his outlook on life and his ability to cope within it.

I have a feeling about something.

Ehem......

I was watching MTP today. I know. I know. Anyway, I heard a discussion about Bush and the issues of Iran. There has been a battle going on in the background between Cheney and Condi Rice about the way to proceed. Rice has won out for now. I immediately recalled the discussion on the rumor of an affair between condi and Bush.

My feeling?
I think Cheney and his people are pushing those rumors to weaken the standing of Rice.
"She's only persuading Bush because they are having an affair."
As if she's suddenly not capable of doing the job everybody thought she was so capapable of two months ago.

At the same time doing damage to Bush because it is heard by the base and because his family has to deal with the information. This group (the Cheney fanatics) has done it to Clinton and McCain and how many others. No ethics. They are capable of anything.

Just a feeling.

factboy says Pande is a failure. The other one says Pande is riddled with guilt for being successful. Both try to deflect from the fact that they just had their hat handed to them.

Greetings.

330 I do like this part:

'Perhaps a little more positive action and a little less negativity'

If we all just lived this way, life would be better on earth, wouldn't you agree?

331 Most logical people know that Bush & Rice are not having an affair. He or she would never take that chance. I wouldn't think that Dick would start or keep a rumor going like that, especially now. That is just a personal opinion though.

I am reading from bottom to top--where I left off last night.

309 Saladin
That is one reason I do not want children. I am glad that everyone doesn't feel the same as me or the human race would be obsolete. To bring a child into this chaos would fill me full of guilt. I personally could not handle that. I am proud to be an American, and glad I can make my own personal decisions.

'I am glad that everyone doesn't feel the same as me or the human race would be obsolete.'

I said the above so I don't get ridiculed again for my feelings or for the way I want to live my life. heh It is a truth, though.

FatChucker,

Ever notice how everyone's glad Pande posts here and pretty much everyone thinks you're an asshole?

Pande is a success with his family, his business AND his blogging hobby. You, on the other hand spew "facts" without sources and fire off character analysis like Dickless Cheney shoots quail.

This, right on the heels of a "why don't we all just get along" post...

Kinda solidifies my theory of the "mouse of many faces". Squeek Squeek.

kisses,

-T

Good morning! I hope all is well with everyone. I'm so glad it's Friday. Can't wait to sleep in tomorrow. I shall go I shall come on the site (All about cellular telephones
http://cellphone.ccity1.com/

#224 Rick

That was hilarious--what Mark said.

By the way, you wouldn't by any chance be a lawyer, would you? You certainly seem to know alot about law. My brother's an attorney and you two sometimes sound alike.

Or are you just well-versed in First Amendment law?

Pande,
The Forum...the Quarry....whateva. I was only joking! I would never eat lunch with a stranger, especially one on a political blog! lol
The Italian would never allow it either. I would have 6 bodyguards following me around.

The food joint is still open...his mom & sister have always ran it. He never had the time...he also still has his office over here close to where I live.

Was river-walkin' last night. Too many drunky ppl on Sat. nites.

Robert, I replied to your email.

Heading back outside,
G

332 by Alan
...The other one says Pande is riddled with guilt for being successful.....
Posted by: Alan at June 4, 2006 02:42 PM
============================================
Alan, I know you (& all Regulars) know that Panty admitted to the `guilt'....So, I just want to point out to the silent non-posters that: liberals just can NOT handle simple, absoulte truth...even something less than one day old and verifiable by all as FACTS, not Judgements!

Just a couple of days ago, james/4-squares/no-plane wanted to argue who between us posts more... Pretty ridiculous, ain't it?

Now, Alan RUSHES to the (falsified) defense of Panty...see #234 from previous thread on, how appropraite again, "credibility"...

#234 Last Thread - by Panty

LBH posed this question to Panty earlier:

"Or, is it just progressive guilt of being successful?"

Yes.

.....

"I wish you folks would try to be a little more intellectually honest."
Posted by: factless at June 2, 2006 04:32 PM

I wish you were even-handed and intellectually honest enough to admit the facts. How hard is that?

Posted by: Pandemoniac at June 2, 2006 05:00 PM
============================================
One of my key purposes of exposing Lefty hypocracies achieved! This weekend's battles have been won, rather decisively!

BTW, Panty, please, oh, pretty please, find the 9 out of 10 statements on this post that are lies! You are who you are, a punk who can't live up to his rhetorics but is enjoying the good live like us Happy folks!

Oh & Congratulations on your anniversary, Pande!

Ciao,
G

Now Gretta dear, you wouldn't have lunch with ME?
hehe

To kill time & to close the gap w/james/4-square/no-plane, thought I point out something on Panty......No psychoanalysis here, just the facts!

He has a habit of `spoofing' the opposition's postings by physically altering their names/handles...It struck me today (`factless' for `factchecker')that this happens so freqently, it confirms (to me at the least) certain traits I hold of him....Some thing along the line of `credibility' when you can't even acknowledge your oppositions face-to-face, in the blogoshpere sense! Much like Corky?!

What kind of credibility does one think someone who would resort to a pretty low-life

Amendment to #343

I said: "Some thing along the line of `credibility' when you can't even acknowledge your oppositions face-to-face, in the blogoshpere sense! Much like Corky?!"

The above was not strong or accurate enough! Revise to: When Panty can't even cut & paste the oppositions' posted handles w/out taking the time to physically alter them, it tells you something about his characters....

What about it, punky Panty, how about quote people verbatim? Not hard,! Really.

I'm jumping all around the blog today, so excuse me--I'm multi-tasking. The French Open (tennis) is on, cooking and playing soccer with my son.

#230 James

Say it ain't so. $10.00 a gal. for lantern fuel? Geez!

#304 Gretta

My ex-husband is from Taiwan. He stupidly jumped ship to enter America after we had already married, so he ended up being illegal and didn't have to be. Through marriage to me (in Egypt of all places), he could have entered legally. Still we were obliged to go through immigration hell for two years to alter his status and get that damn green card. (One of the reasons the marriage ended in divorce.)

While he was illegal (during the ongoing process of becoming legal) he worked without a social security number in several restaurant establishments and then as a landscape designer. Taxes were taken out of his paychecks. I don't know how it works. We were told that he couldn't work while treading through the horrid process of legalization. When you've entered illegally (back then, 1974-76, there was no amnesty) you get zilch. I'm very much for amnesty. Of course he had to work for survival, so he just did.

This is what many people are talking about including Molly Ivins (from Texas too). If you want to curb illegal immigration you must start with the employers who hire the illegals. Gerald mentioned that someplace back too, as have others.

BY THE WAY ALL, John McCain backed out of a fundraiser for Brain Bilbray recently citing differences on amnesty for illegals. Bilbray is an utter jerk. (He's running for Duke Cunningham's seat in my district.) Still, McCain's doing radio ads for Bilbray. you want to talk about flip-flopping? THERE'S SOMETHING WE CAN USE AGAINST HIM IN THE UPCOMING 2008 RACE! AMONG ALL HIS OTHER FLIP-FLOPS HE'S DONE AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO

I was watching a movie on Sundance or one of those fancy liberal movie channels called "The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bimayan". It's about the life of a family who lives in the caves around the place where the Taliban destroyed the giant statues of the Buddha. There was a funny scene where a neighbor of Mir, the boy, tells the recent history of Afghanistan. He says that an American named Osama Bin Laden bombed a city in the United States and somehow managed to blame the Taliban for it. How did someone without the convenience of the American Media noisemachine come by that assessment?

I complained earlier that Republicans are not providing stiff challenges in their primaries. I figured since Lamont was challenging Lieberman and Tester and Morrison were squaring off over Burns' seat that there were others. This one proves me wrong. "Menendez is running to replace Corzine in the Senate: Menendez, a congressmen for 14 years, faces James D. Kelly Jr., who lives in a group home for the mentally ill."

Sounds like a fair fight, one kook taking on another.

And speaking of kooks. Patriot Boy is after Michelle Malkin and her parents' citizenship status. He wonders if she's an anchor baby.

Even the reactionaries at Wizbang agree that the Conservatives in California are getting desperate in their attacks on Busby.

The Chart of the week shows that Larry Kudlow is a lying shill for the White House.

More interesting bits of info:
Total household debt as a percentage of GDP increased from 70% in 2001 to 90% in 2005. For the 2001-2005 period, Household debt increased at a compound annual growth rate of 11.55% -- more than twice the growth rate of the last 3 4-year periods.

While the Right Wing Noise Machine often complains the media's economic coverage causes the general negative perception of the economy, the reality is simple.

1.) Job growth is weak.
2.) The jobs created don't pay as well as jobs lost.
3.) Incomes are stagnant after inflation.
4.) People have charged the last 4 years of growth on their respective credit cards.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is basically a credit card economy. And the bill is coming due.

#259 Factchecker

That's the first thing you've written in a while that I completely agree with. A very moving tale indeed.

#322
I have a hard time putting this "war paradigm" BS and the Bush administration in the same sentence. Look at Iraq. Look at the aftermath of Katrina. This administration can't even control a 1st grade classroom with a clown and an ice cream truck.

#330
What? Sorry I wasn't listening.

hap 343 - To kill time & to close the gap w/james/4-square/no-plane, thought I point out something on Panty

you're pulling way ahead! - i hate these inane back and forths but i must point out that i've known pandemoniaco for a long time now and if he wants to make fun of my rectangles he will feel free to do so!

Hapless, my point is made with Factless' post @#330: he writes 134 words and the only "fact" presented is the number of the original post I made. Hence the name Factless.

I've asked him for input and information and others have repeatedly asked him (and you) to present veifiable facts. Even when I agree with him that we should be glad that we are better off than those in the children's hospital or the local Fisher House, he thinks that I'm all Doom and Gloo (as you like to say). Literacy skillz are a glaring weakness amongst you Reactionaries.

You prefer invective, lies, ad hominem and asinine comebacks. This is why I compared your presence here to that squishy feeling you get when you step on dog poop. We only have ourselves to blame for not being observant and aware enough to walk around your business. I try to let your idiocy stand, convicted of itself, unless I have information to link from the Fed, the BLS, GAO, the US Census Bureau or some other entity that is in the business of collecting facts. I'm all about the facts, dude. Go back and reread any of the posts I've made refuting what you or Clueless have written in the last 6 months (you'd have to look under "baf" for Clueless' older posts). Most of the time, you walk right into the fact-blender without even knowing that you are more likely to incite pity than annoyance. Hence the name Hapless.

Clueless is more prone to presenting information than either you or Factless. Unfortunately for him, it's all lies or rumor or a sticky combination of the two. A quick factcheck proves him wrong. But he hasn't the faintest clue that he's been had. Hence the name Clueless.

"The 3 stooges" fits y'all to a T.

It isn't a game or a ploy or the result of some underlying guilt. You guys have come by your monikers honestly. If that bothers you, you only have yourselves to blame.

You've never responded with facts or information to any of the suggestions that me or Robert Schwartz had proferred in reply to Clueless. All we got was a roll of the eyes and a repeat of the myth that there is no DNC agenda. Kinda like Conservatives in DC. No Ideas. No Facts. No Leadership. No Clue. Just lots and lots of deficit spending.

So let's try this again and see just how honest you really are. For about the 10th time .... what's the difference between the Civilian Labor Force participation rate and the Unemployment rate and why is the labor participation rate a better gauge of the health of the job market? Why is there a closer correlation between the labor participation rate and poverty levels than the unemployment rate and poverty levels? Why do Republicans insist on talking about the Unemployment rate rather than the labor force participation rate? If you can answer those questions honestly, I'd be Happy to stop calling you Hapless. I've got a pretty good feeling that I'll be able to continue calling you Hapless cause you just don't have what it takes to go "toe to toe" with someone who enjoys calling you on your bullshit. Bon chance, moron.

"Money is what now matters. Patriotism is ridiculed. Integrity and ability are of little consequences."

~ James Warren,1726-1808

Member of The Massachusetts General Court & Friend of John Adams

Paymaster General of the Revolutionary Army
Letter to John Adams in France warning him that profound social changes had occurred since he had left.

Courtesy: Eigen's Political & Historical Quotations

**********

Everything old is new again?

capt

Carey, #345
I have heard about the immigration hell. My better half's father had to go through it to move here from Italy even though he was married to an Italian-American already. He said it was worth it though. He worked his azz off through the years since he has been here. Now, I can respect that. He has never asked the government for a dime. And I can respect the illegal Mexican guy that I mentioned earlier for wanting to work and make a better life for himself, but I just dont enjoy paying for it.

Mark, #342
Hellll nooooo!! lol =P

Spending my $25/hour free time on, of all things, background on Mr. Corn.....Came up w/this 9-25-2003 Buzzflash Interview. A lengthy interview but here is a small (redacted)portion.....David's take on GWB (over a year before the `04 Election)...

CORN: I do not think George W. Bush is a puppet. I think he is in charge...in foreign policy. After 9/11, I think he saw himself as being placed in the office providentially to lead the country at this point in time. He certainly is not a details man,....in the sense that he can only make decisions based on what information he gets.....

I get the sense....that he’≥ not a fellow who second-guesses his instincts and natural inclinations and....I do believe that he’≥ there calling the shots.

...there are agendas....that have been there before George Bush. We have the whole neo-cons,..., and traditional-cons... For years, they wanted war against Iraq...to enhance the strategic positioning and security of America. They thought you ought to take out Saddam Hussein. And with the neo-cons, I’≠ not even sure it’≥ to help the oil companies. With Cheney and Rumsfeld, it might well be a piece of that as well.

...And then 9/11 rolls along,...And I think he takes the attitude that...I’≠ not going to let any potential threat sit out there or even get close to our town. I’≠ going to take you out ahead of time.....We’≤e going to go to war.

I think after 9/11 he has a psychological imperative to protect the country. Al-Qaeda’≥ very difficult to deal with; the causes of terrorism are a very difficult task.....But at the end of the day, I don't think Bush is being manipulated by these folks. If he’≥ not on the same page for the same reasons, he is there for reasons of his own.....

BUZZFLASH: So you don't subscribe to the theory that really this administration is run behind the scenes by Cheney, and possibly Rumsfeld?

CORN: ...I don't think it has to be. I think there’≥ enough congruence of interests. One interesting thing is....immediately after 9/11, the next day Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld are saying: Let’≥ hit Iraq now......And what does Bush do? Bush says no. This is kind of illuminating. He says he believes Saddam is behind 9/11, but there’≥ no evidence yet. He’≥ not eager to go up against Iraq, even though at that point in time a lot of his advisors are.

....Bush is indeed a practicing CEO with a very, very, very strong board of directors.....And Bush gets to make the call at the end of the day. I don't think he is deferential to Rumsfeld and Cheney. I do think he has this sense of mission. And guys and gals with senses of mission are not the type of people who will be treated as puppets....
=============================================
I find the views of most Corn Lefties on GWB do NOT mesh well w/David's.

#289 Capt

Once again, you save me. Yes that's where the petition is. I don't know why the link didn't work for me. I did it right, I think....

ANYWAYS THE PETITON ON OUTPATIENT MASTECTOMIES IS AT #289--THANKS TO CAPT.

#288 Neil

A wonderful essay. Your comments are always astute.

FACTCHECKER, I gave you a compliment, but find it was a misplaced one. You're the same slime you've always been. Don't you read your posts? Or do you just insult for the hell of it and then pretend you're actually moved by a visit to Children's Hospital? What a hypocrite!

oh by the way hap: wanted to argue who between us posts more... Pretty ridiculous, ain't it?

please hap, it's debatable whether or not i wanted to argue.

I can handle disagreements, and can agree to disagree, but all this name-calling is unnecessary.
I remember WAY back in here... some guy had told the "old" Chris that people might would listen to him more if he didnt use such vulgar language and attack others. Chris (for a while) did seem to calm down and actually did discuss things like a civilized person. He earned my respect, and that is not easy to do.
Just a thought.

Off to the cemetary...check ya later,
G

#303 Saladin

YIKES! While reading this, I thought I was reading fiction with a message. This is for true??? God damn! Completely mindboggling.

The more I read, the more I think that the fix is in. That so-called "terrorist" attack (contrived) is imminent. Maybe not tomorrow (6/6/06) but quite soon. Yes, and then Bush will become the Oil King as someone said here. (I'm just too busy to go back and attribute the apropos label to the proper author. Step forward please, if you're still online.)

#'s 323 & 326 Neil

Somewhere pretty far back I posted a Salon piece on Jason Leopold, the author of the original rumor of Rove's indictment. He posted that in Truthout and they've struggled ever since to prove that he's a valid reporter. He's got one heck of an iffy background.

There is no doubt in my mind that Fitzgerald is after Rove. He just wants all his pickets nicely lined up and inpenetrable. Or is that unpenetrable? Can't find it in the dictionary. Anyway, he wants no dangling, petty loopholes.

George Bush, Self-Deluded Messiah

by David Corn
April 20, 2004

It's hard to know what is more disturbing. That George W. Bush misled the public by stating in the months before the Iraq war that he was seriously pursuing a diplomatic resolution when he was not. That he didn't bother to ask aides to present the case against going to war. That he may have violated the U.S. Constitution by spending hundreds of millions of dollars secretly to prepare for the invasion of Iraq without notifying Congress. That he was misinformed by the CIA director about one of the most critical issues of the day and demanded no accountability. Or that he doesn't care if he got it wrong on the weapons of mass destruction.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Love that vintage perspective. Seems David has had a handle on "The Lies of George W. Bush" (and the politics of deception) far longer than most inside the belt-way.

capt

Is the President a Pathological Liar?

Bush's unhealthy relationship with reality

By David Corn
Thursday, December 4, 2003

It was a set-up question. Conservative radio talk-show host Michael Medved was trying to bait me, to push me into saying something so out of whack about the commander in chief that I would destroy my own credibility before the audience of his nationally syndicated show. It was a ruse I’∂e become quite familiar with in recent weeks, since I published a book demurely titled The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. In scores of media interviews, right-wing hosts have pressed me to pronounce Bush the all-time biggest SOB-of-a-liar in the White House and essentially accuse him of being a psycho. I have resisted the invitations, choosing to stick to my just-the-facts case that Bush has misled the public on a host of issues the war in Iraq, his tax cuts, global warming, Social Security, his own past and more. The goal of these interlocutors is to dismiss any harsh critique of Bush as nothing more than angry-left name-calling. I obviously believe Bush has lied often and consistently about grave matters, but I have shied away from labeling Bush "pathological" and the like.

Now I wonder about that.

What forced this reconsideration was a speech Bush delivered in late November to several thousand troops at Butts Army Air Field in Fort Carson, Colorado. On this occasion, Bush served up the usual rah-rah about the war on terrorism. But as he was hailing the U.S. military, he remarked, "Working with a fine coalition, our military went to Afghanistan, destroyed the training camps of al Qaeda and put the Taliban out of business forever."

Out of business forever?

That was a false statement. Days before Bush's speech, a U.S. helicopter crashed near Kabul, and five American soldiers were killed. These troops were hunting Taliban remnants. Two days before the speech, a rocket was fired at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul; Taliban insurgents were the prime suspects. On November 16, a U.N. aid worker was assassinated, apparently by the Taliban. In Kandahar, the Taliban was threatening to harm Afghans who participated in local elections.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Bush a liar? Go figure. Saying things he knows are completely false?

capt

Re #359: Carey, its 'impenetrable". As capt says, go figure...

Mandatory Draft Bill Snuck In

On February 14, 2006, Congressman Charles Rangel (Democrat - NY) introduced a bill (Universal National Service Act of 2006 - HR 4752 IH) aiming at drafting everyone - men and women alike - from the ages of 18 to 42 into the military for a minimum period of 2 years.

Or to quote the bill: "To provide for the common defense by requiring all persons in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes."
_____________

timing is everything!

And Rangel is a Democrat?

spending hundreds of millions of dollars secretly to prepare for the invasion of Iraq without notifying Congress.

oh that reminds me of this:

Ameriraq - The New Colonial Frontier

The United States is now building a striking diplomatic complex on the bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad. When finished, it will cost more than a billion dollars and consist of 104 acres of grounds, offices, living quarters, eating places, athletic clubs and community facilities.

Little work in the meantime has been done to restore basic infrastructure such as power, water and sanitation systems (to the iraqis). Softly enough to escape notice, Bush has recently backhandedly admitted plans for bases by asking Congress for funding--over and above the annual budget, the costs of war-fighting, and the new Embassy construction. This may look like mafia bookkeeping to some, because money originally appropriated to rebuild Iraq appears to have been devoted to American bases and operations.

Hmmm...I guess so. I dont trust politicians (on either side) or the media.
I wish they would draft me. I love my country. =)

Off to dinner,
G

they're ALL democrats, even the republicans!

Greta,

It is a piece of doomed legislation... Rangel is basically saying "Let's see how important your wars REALLY ARE to you!"

If the sons and daughters, grandchildren and wives of politician were required to serve in active, combat-ready units...there'd be little, if any drum-beats for dollar-sucking warfare!

-T

#364 Gretta, I have been saying to myself that If the DEMOnS introduce and pass the reinstatement of military service that I would not vote for them and I would not vote for the Nazis. This reinstatement gives the go ahead for endless nuclear wars preempted by our Nazi government. I have said back in the early 1970s that I felt America was no longer my country. I could not respect the government as far back as the 1970s.

James and Gretta, some here have theorized that he introduced that bill to purposely rile people up and get them active. I hope that's true, and, I hope it works! What on earth are all these people supposed to do with their children while they are off forcing democracy in the middle east meat grinder? It's not possible to enforce such a ridiculous requirement.

The sons and daughters of the rich and famous will never serve to fight on foreign soil. Only the cannon fodder of the poor and middle class sons and daughters will fight on foreign soil. If the rich and famous sons and daughters serve it will be on domestic soil simmilar to Hitler Bush's service time. He worked to have a Nazi elected to Congress.

American Soldiers 2

2,770 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan for Bush and his lies.

18,500+ American soldiers have been maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan for Bush and his evil lies.

45,000+ American soldiers are suffering from PTSD.

Over 350,000+ Iraqis have been killed in Iraq since Bush declared shock and awe bombings on March 19, 2003.

Contamination from depleted uranium may have affected 125,000+ American soldiers and several million Iraqis.

Are you feeling more safe and secure with Bush in the WH and Cheney as his chief hatchet man overseeing Nazi America and her citizens?

Our military men and women are used as cannon fodder for a terrorist Nazi American government.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, AND NEITHER DO WE. George W. Bush, August 5, 2005

Rigged elections doom American democracy. American soldiers are being killed and maimed TO PROMOTE A NAZI AMERICAN STATE.

Henry Kissinger says that military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

Nazi America is a mirror image of Hitler Bush.

Nazi Americans continually justify sin.

Nazi Americans are accomplices with Bush for his murders and war crimes.

sal, timing is everything!

Hajji and Saladin, Nazi Americans are too fat, lazy, and sassy to be active. Plus, Nazi America loves wars, endless wars and the dismemberment of human being's body parts. Once Nazi Americans have tasted blood, they will never acquire a different taste. Plus, Nazi Americans love the smell of napalm in the morning and the smell of burning flesh in the evening. We are a nation of blood sucking vampires. Nazi America has been created to kill human beings. That is Nazi America's manifest destiny.

"Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings."

~ Jimmy Carter (1924 - )

Gerald, that is an exageration. Most people do not want to actually FIGHT these wars. Even the war supporters are just armchair warriors, a lot of patriotic hot air but no action.

James, just for the record, I use Firefox and your name appears as ????. I checked the thread out on IE and it's the 4 squares.

Hajji,

The named seemed familiar but probably because of campaign commercials. Did you wash your hand before and after shaking his? You know where yours has been!

My name apprears as 666. Go Figgur!

Thanks, David, for your refreshing honesty, although you are a bit tardy. I am a student at Northwestern University, home of Medill, who was majoring in polisci and economics and preparing to be a journalist. Three years ago, I dropped my majors and switched to biomedical engineering and started taking Chinese. I saw the writing on the wall. Absolutely true story. Fast forward to now... I graduate in two weeks. However, you are still behind the curve. Biomedical engineering is not what it's cracked up to be -more hype than not -while Chinese students are dreadfully uncreative and do not inspire confidence. I think the best college combo is to major in computer engineering and Hindi. Computer tech may have stumbled in the past five years, but the skills the curriculum teaches you are multitudinous compared to bioengineering, which is just a lot of memorization. And Indians are the true world-beaters. They combine aggressive work ethics, education, which the Chinese also have, and maybe in greater supply, with a very mature sense of direction. In other words, Indians know how to debate, and think, and weigh options, and find their own way in life, whereas the Chinese just wait for Leader (parent, government, teacher) to tell them what to do. These may seem gross simplifications, but trust me, once you've been through engineering education, you get to know a LOT of Asians, eastern and southern. Good luck being a professional busy body. You've got a tough road to hoe.

Saladin, wars are created by the aged persons and fought with the younger people who give their blood and lives to keep and satisfy the lifestyles of the wealthy.

380 by Jack

.....Biomedical engineering is not what it's cracked up to be.....
Posted by: Jack at June 4, 2006 07:18 PM
===========================================
Non-Political Posting

Jack:

May I ask you to expand on the above?

I'd hoped my 20-yr old would major in that but he chose differently (an 800 math SAT Score seem to indicate an engineering or math aptitude); but still broadly related. Georgia Tech (Happy's 70s' haunts) and Emory U. in Atlanta have a top-ranked joint biomed program and my son was accepted but turned it DOWN!

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." ~ Jeannette Rankin (1880 - 1973)

"The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it." ~ John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

"[Y]ou wouldn't by any chance be a lawyer, would you?"

Guilty as charged.

The Constitutional stuff is not work-related, though. If you haven't heard, our president is systematically sterilizing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I could handle it when he was just an incompetent boob since Americans have the right to vote in any dumbass they want. But, it pisses me off when that dumbass turns out to be a criminal.

There are more citizens participating in *newsgathering* and *news* dissemination, but there is only a smidgen of real reporting on blogs; there is a lot of aggregation, but little original reporting.

I'm afraid there is a conceit among citizen bloggers that they are the sentinels, supplying truth, and the "professional" reporters are passe, dishonest, and lazy.ÔøΩ

Just wait until there are even fewer professionals monitoring powerful institutions. When there is even less original newsgathering, and those students who learned to speak Chinese and work in labs, or learned Hindi and computering engineering have graduated, there won't be anyone returning reporters' phone calls because the "newsmakers," the ruling power elite, will be in total charge of the what is the news.

"But, it pisses me off when that dumbass turns out to be a criminal."

I second that emotion!

capt

#326 Stu Piddy

How cute. A warning. This blog is courtesy of a great journalist. You are in his territory, do you understand? David C. is too conscientious to pull the plug on you, but most all of the other cornbloggers will.

#358 me

Whoops! I keep thinking today is the fifth. Sorry abut that.

#385 Rick

HA! God I'm good. Just kidding.

The Number of the Beast

The number 666 is cool. Made famous by the Book of Revelation (Chapter 13, verse 18, to be exact), it has also been studied extensively by mathematicians because of its many interesting properties. Here is a compendium of mathematical facts about the number 666. Most of the well-known "chestnuts" are included, but many are relatively new and have not been published elsewhere.

The number 666 is a simple sum and difference of the first three 6th powers:

666 = 16 - 26 + 36.

=====

It is also equal to the sum of its digits plus the cubes of its digits:

666 = 6 + 6 + 6 + 6³ + 6³ + 6³.

=====

666 is related to (6² + n²) in the following interesting ways:

666 = (6 + 6 + 6) ·†®6² + 1²)
666 = 6! ·†®6² + 1²) / (6² + 2²)

=====

The sum of the squares of the first 7 primes is 666:

666 = 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17²

====

The sum of the first 144 (= (6+6)·®∂+6)) digits of pi is 666

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Quite a collection of 666 stuff. 6-6-66 was not a hell day but I often wonder if it was in June of 1066 that Harold lost to William.

capt

Gen. Batiste: Direct Link Between Haditha and Rumsfeld's Bad Judgment

Today on CNN Late Edition, retired Army General John Batiste said there was a "direct link" between allegations of serious misconduct against Iraqi civilians at Haditha and the "bad judgment" of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 and 2004. Batiste explained that Rumsfeld's war plan left troops "under-resourced [and] overcommitted." The result was an "unbelievable" strain on U.S. forces. Watch it:

Transcript:

I, however, see a direct link between Haditha, the national embarrassment of Abu Ghraib, going on four years now of uncontrollable chaos in Iraq, with the bad judgment, poor decisions of our secretary of defense back in late 2003 and 2004.

I question his competency. And I speak for the American people. We deserve accountability.

BLITZER: Well, what specifically did he do wrong, in your opinion, that could have resulted in this kind of alleged atrocity at Haditha or what we all know happened at Abu Ghraib?

BATISTE: Wolf, we went to war with his plan, his plan alone. He all but ignored the U.S. Central Command's hard work to develop a strategy that would have worked in Iraq, that would have accounted for the hard work to build the peace and stop the insurgency.

We should have deployed with up to 380,000 coalition troops, in addition to the Iraqi security forces, to establish security in that country, to secure the boarders with Iran and Syria, to intimidate the insurgent.

We went in under-resourced, overcommitted. And the strain on the force is unbelievable.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Yet we hear "Rummy is doing a heckuva job"

At what point does poor policy and poor decisions create the perfect poor storm?

Too mixed the metaphor?

capt

#379 and #382

I worked a blood drive last week. We had to entertain the people for ten minutes while they recouped from giving blood. I talked to one guy who's a programmer. My husband is also. He told me that his company and others are moving to China from India because the standard of living is increasing too much in India. Pay is becoming too high and the workers are jumping from job to job to get higher pay as the American workers were doing in the 90's. That didn't take long.

I have two kids who are college grads. The best advice I can give any kid is go with their passion. Why go into something because the money is there but they hate their life? Also if I tell a kid to go with their passion I'm not trying to influence them in any way. I am telling them to live the life they want. And I'm telling them to listen to their gut about the direction they should go. My daughter is BROKE. Poor. Not starving but likes hand outs. And she is HAPPY. I think she's even happier than you Happy. She's living with kids like her and they all get by just fine.
Why yesterday, I went to her apartment and the full grown adults she was living with were shooting water balloons from a sling shot. They were threatening people waiting at the bus stop but alas...these full grown adults couldn't manage to get he sling shot to go in any direction except the porch ceiling. They ended up very very wet on a very very hot day. I heard a lot of laughter. Why, I even witnessed an attempt to shoot a water balloon of gigantic proportions. These artist don't understand physics. They try anything.

#385
Rick,
You have a lovely way with words. Excellent post.

Iran to Make Offer by Six Powers Public

Leader Protests U.S. Tone in Nuclear Dispute but Hints at Breakthrough

The latest effort was agreed upon by the six major powers in Vienna on Thursday. It includes an extraordinary offer by the Bush administration to bring senior U.S. diplomats into direct talks with Iran, breaking a taboo of 27 years. Iran had solicited the American overture, but today Ahmadinejad seized on the tough language used by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while announcing the historic offer last week. "You have been talking about 'musts' and 'mustn'ts' in your offer. This is not something we accept," Ahmadinejad said. "You have to change your language. You have got to recognize our rights and talk to us based on mutual respect."

The combative tone of Ahmadinejad's evening speech followed a day of relatively optimistic, if somewhat veiled, statements. Both Ahmadinejad and his foreign secretary spoke of a possible "breakthrough" if negotiations were revived.

"I think it's pretty significant, especially if Ahmadinejad used the same word," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research institute based in London. Speaking before the president's speech, Fitzpatrick said the relatively conciliatory language out of Iran carried additional weight in the absence of prominent public statements from more moderate figures in Iran's government, and that U.S. officials have ratcheted down their own rhetoric.

"You need serious responses on both sides," he said. "It looks like we might be having that."

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, speaking about Washington and Europe, told a news conference that "we think that if there is goodwill, a breakthrough to get out of a situation they have created for themselves" is possible.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

It would be a blessing to come to any agreement that will prevent war.

I am not holding my breath, not yet. I predict the fly in the ointment will be nuclear non-proliferation in Israel. That might well be the deal breaker.

capt

Thanks all of ya. I am so clueless about some of the subjects.
Saladin, when I tried to join the military & found out I could not, I was so upset...totally devastated. (The "old" hris & I talked about this via emails.) But NOW, I see it as fate, and I am glad to be here with my son full time. He has a wonderful dad (but a lousy husband...reason for divorce) who gets to see him for the summer and alternate Christmas's. A child needs both parents, unless one of them is useless.

#292
Not only that but this administration was too busy meeting with lawyers during all this to make sure their hind ends were covered rather than making sure the military had the necessary tools to keep the military people's hind ends safe. That's the mentality. Get the lawyer's ok so I can do what I want to do and not get into trouble rather than do whatever is possible to keep those going into harms way safe. This is a sick group with criminal tendencies.

Marine's wife: US troops were out of control in Haditha

The wife of a Marine staff sergeant from the same battalion accused of killing civilians in Haditha, Iraq told Newsweek that "a total breakdown" in disclipine including drug and alcohol abuse may have been partly to blame.

"There were problems in Kilo Company with drugs, alcohol, hazing, you name it," said the woman unidentified by Newsweek. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."

On the other hand, in a Time Magazine cover story about the Haditha killings (Registration required link), a freelance photoghapher who spent five months in Iraq traveling with Kilo company called it the "most human" unit he embedded with.

"They were never abusive," Lucian Read tells Time. "There was a certain amount of antagonism and frustration when people didn't cooperate. But it's not like they had KILL 'EM ALL spray-painted on the walls."

Full article here--

Probing a Bloodbath

-------------------
This is such a tragedy. The stress, the lack of leadership, the overwork, the heat...everything came together to make this. When I read about the speed I thought about some of the stories I've read where the men go for days straight working. How do you keep that up? You take this pill to keep you awake and this pill to help you sleep though the stress and noise and the discomfort and the filth.

Is President Bush Gay Goating For Elections?

WASHINGTON-- Gay Marriages versus the sacred traditional marriage; Political expediencies versus scapegoating.

These appear to be the themes discussed since President Bush's radio address promoting the support of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

While, Bush's position is obvious the majority position in America some do not like the timing or the tone of the address. Those opposed to the amendment feel if they are being "politically scapegoated".

As part of his address, Bush said, "An amendment to the Constitution is necessary because activist courts have left our Nation with no other choice." He also said, "As this debate goes forward, we must remember that every American deserves to be treated with tolerance, respect, and dignity. All of us have a duty to conduct this discussion with civility and decency toward one another, and all people deserve to have their voices heard."

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

"Gay Goating For Elections?"

If you have to ask the answer is yes. The only real question is will the rabid Reich-wing stoke enough hate to self-destruct? I know some GOPhers and none are happy with Bush in general and they see this ploy for what it is. Most no longer claim to be republican they are all independents now. (with a few exceptions)

This is nothing less than institutional hate. The premise that people are concerned about the activist judges is BS. More people care far more about their rights under the law and their privacy as a matter of respect for those laws.

This will go down in history as the worst case of over-reaching stupidity. They know darn well this will never pass and they are distracting from the wiretapping and violations of our rights. The war is a mess. The "news" just lies or reports on nothing.

Had enough? I think more and more people would answer yes.

capt

Was the 2004 election stolen? No.

....One has to wonder what, after all of this, Kennedy might have brought to the debate. There could have been an earnest exploration of the issues in order to finally shed some light on the problems we face in elections, and a call to urgently begin repairing our electoral machinery. Voting reforms are forever on the backburner in Congress; even the 2000 election did little to prompt improvements. If only someone with Kennedy's stature would outline this need.

If only. Whatever his aim, RFK Jr. does not appear intent on fixing the problem. He's more content to take us through a hit parade of the most popular, and the most dismissible, theories purporting to show that John Kerry won Ohio, theories that have been swirling about the blogosphere ever since the race was called. I scoured his Rolling Stone article for some novel story or statistic or theory that would prove, finally, that George W. Bush was not the true victor. But nothing here is new. If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again," you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say.

If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data. The first salient omission comes in paragraph 5, when Kennedy writes, "In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots." To back up that assertion, Kennedy cites "Democracy at Risk," the report the Democrats released last June.

That report does indeed point out that many people -- 26 percent -- who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn't say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn't find their names listed....
--------------
Another take.

Jeanne @ 394.

Thanks, but I'm not sure "piss" and "dumbass" are 'lovely.'

Senate to vote on gay marriage amendment

"Why do we need a constitutional amendment? Marriage is between a man and a woman. What's the game going' on here?" said Sen. Joseph Biden from Delaware.

The president and his party are hoping to re-energize conservatives before the midterm elections, but political strategist David Gergen said it could backfire.

"Nobody thinks this ban is going to make on the record books. Everybody, including the skeptics within his own conservative base believe this is mostly about trying to win votes in November," said Gergen, a former presidential advisor.

But for many who marched in favor of gay marriage, the issue isn't purely political.

"Marriage is this foundation of family in America, and we are real families," said Jennifer Schumaker.

Regardless of what side of the issue Americans fall on, Gay marriage will face another trail by fire on Capitol Hill this week.

The Senate bill could come to a vote on Wednesday, but neither side believes it has the votes needed to pass.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

They know it will not have the votes necessary?

I guess it does not matter as long as Bush is: "asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution."

Imagine how easy it will be to rid proper heterosexual society of the gays - network those telephone records and round them up!

capt

#401
Rick,
When you dislike the Bush administration as much as I do it is lovely.

#402
Bucket of warm spit.

It's all about freedom, it just looks like fascism.

It's all about Christian love, it just looks like hate.

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." ~ George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

I think Rick has a way with words and makes a point in political prose!

There are far worse words that would still qualify as accurate. I read some restraint into the post.

Just my two cents (now only worth one cent)

capt

4 Days and 20 hrs. till the beginning of the World Cup. I am stoked and will be sorely disappointed if we don't make the Semis. We made the quarterfinals the last time around.

It's been about 5 hrs. since I challenged Hapless to regain his Happy lot on this blog. Oh well, I knew it would work out this way, or he'd claim ignorance or stupidity. He's a dude of a thousand excuses. Come on Hapless, give it that ol' college try.

For all you Doom and Glooers, you might enjoy Juan Cole's blog. Me? It's downright depressing.

Or you smoke your hash, drop your acid, qualudes, mescaline, whatever you can get your hands on to ease the pain of seeing your friends dead and dying, rotting before they're even dead because of the stinking wet jungle where you crouch forgetting how and why you're there, if you ever even really knew, and the smell, now that's something you never forget and the nightmares, seeing your buddy's guts laid open and not a fuckin thing you can do for him, yeah war is glorious noble and all that shit they try to cram down your throat.

Jeanne @ 403,

Gotcha, but that may be my first 'lovely.' From my wife, it's usually 'stop it' or something along those lines.

#407
What's a World Cup?

JUST KIDDING.

I dunno if I qualify as a "Doom and Gloomer" but I have not been able to read all on the Informed Comment for a while.

I cannot read all the bad news, I am far too cynical to be able to care and yet it makes me ache.

UGH!

capt

#408
Exactly. It's not a human environment anymore. It's hell. When in hell....

406:

Thanks, capt

407:

I went to the FIFA site. The US plays at 18:00 local time. Any idea what time that is EST?

World Cup is a planetary protection device . .

nevermind

I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect.
George Carlin (1937 - )

That time is apparently noon on 6-12.

Once there was The People - Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People, and it made a hell of earth!
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, oh, ye slain!
Once there was The People - it shall never be again!
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936), As Easy as A.B.C. (1917)

Time Conversion

Here's a site to assist in converting times from Central European to Eastern Time (daylight or standard)

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

418

Added to favorites. Thank you.

Hey!

Turns out I'm workin' 3rd shift tonight! (Helen, my 72-year old compadre, needed off) Ah...ER life!

-T

Burning some midnite oil, caught Panty #407, had to retrace to see what he was ranting about (his `challenge' back @ #351)

407 by Panty

...It's been about 5 hrs. since I challenged Hapless to regain his Happy lot on this blog....

Posted by: Pandemoniac at June 4, 2006 11:05 PM
==========================================
You just don't get it, man! Dumbass! I don't give a shit what name you call me in making comments! Call me `Hapless 666 Cubed', whatever makes YOU HAPPY! But when you cut and paste, as I do w/your posts, DO NOT go change it, specifically the historical/archival name & time stamp! It's dishonest and is spoofing! But that''s exactly who yuo are!

Bill Kristol: "Maybe Bush will become Supreme Leader"

We see Bill Kristol let his guard down today on FOX News Sunday and he tells us how much he bows down to Bush.

Video-WMP

Video-QT

emailer Dave: "Bill Kristol was discussing recent comments made by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameni -- then, in mid-comment, Kristol stopped himself and said, with no hint of irony, "Maybe we should have Supreme Leader Bush. I kind of like the sound of that."

Bush did implement Kristol's PNAC plan in the Middle East-so "Blood on his hands" Bill is paying Bush the proper respect and we wonder why all W.H. televisions are tuned in to FOX.

(h/t David)

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Dick-tater Arbusto Al Saudi is just "asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution."

The pretense complete?

capt

Khamenei: No Nuclear Weapon Program, No First Strike
Goal is Energy Independence
Abu Ghrayb, Haditha Weaken US Human Rights Claims

The US media presented only a snippet from the speech of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran on Sunday, in which he threatened to damage oil supplies to the West if the US militarily attacked Iran. He did say that, but he also announced that Iran had no intention of striking first, had not attacked and would not attack another country, and that it has no nuclear weapons program and does not want a nuclear bomb. I didn't hear any of those statements reported on television.

For some strange reason, a relatively full text of important speeches given by world leaders is almost never provided to the public by any US media in English. I doubt there are even a handful of speeches easily accessible in English by Spanish President Zapatero, e.g. I cannot entirely explain this strange phenomenon, of the coccooned and almost deliberately ignorant approach to the world of the US corporate media and their audience.

The odd thing is that the American public pays tax dollars so that the Open Source Center of the USG can translate such primary texts. They are, however, not made freely available, though you can get them via university and maybe other good libraries.

Below I present the OSC translation of some important passages of the speech. I should think it is obvious that I loathe Khamenei and his regime, but I suppose I have to say so yet again in today's wretched intellectual environment. I find Khamenei's claims that Iran does not abuse human rights to be particularly offensive.

Still, I do think that if the public is going to hear part of Khamenei's speech, it should hear some of the other parts, too.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Read the full text of the speech. I also linked to the full text of the letter he sent to Bush a week or two back.

See what you think?

capt

#392 Capt.

First off, I enjoyed your post on the number 666. Amusing, even if I didn't understand alot of it. But I better start, I can't even get along with my son's fifth grade math book.

On a more serious note, YES, Haditha and God knows what else is definitely the Pentagon's/Rumsey's fault. A while back I posted an article about the high rate of suicide among our troops and the fact that pyschological trauma means nothing to the commanders/military bureaucracy. These boys are still being kept on the front lines. We are so strapped, we don't feed or armour our troops properly and we keep them on extended or multiple tours. Heck, my husband had to do four tours in Viet Nam, so perhaps this is nothing new. But it sure goes to show us that it means nothing but hypocrisy when the Pres. and co. say they support our troops and accuse others of not.

David Benson--thanks for coming up with the right word, "impenetrable".

Colbert Tells College Graduates: Get Your Own TV Show

NEW YORK At the close of his commencement speech before 250 graduates (and 4000 others) at tiny Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. on Saturday, satirist Stephen Colbert left them with a piece of advice: Get your own TV show. “It pays well," he observed, "the hours are great and you have fans. Eventually, some nice people will give you an honorary degree for doing jack squat.”
---
---
He added that the border with Canada also has to be secure so Canadians cannot bring their "skunky beer" into the country. He backed English as the official language of the United States — “God wrote (the Bible) in English for a reason: So it could be taught in our public schools.”

You just can't Make this stuff up! (last graph)
__________________
-From WaPo

The Tony Snow show continues each day at the White House. Friday featured the long-anticipated first flare-up between NBC's David Gregory and the new White House press secretary. The topic was same-sex marriage:

Gregory: The president wades into this when it's politically expedient --

Snow: Oh, David, come on.

Gregory: Don't 'come on' me!

Snow ( delighted ) : This is what people have been waiting for!
_________________

I, uhm...thing I just threw up, a little!

-T

File under:How Many Lawyers does it Take...?
________________

WASHINGTON -- The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office.

Meeting in New Orleans, the board of governors for the world's largest association of legal professionals approved the creation of an all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties.

They include a former federal appeals court chief judge, a former FBI director, and several prominent scholars -- to evaluate Bush's assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Bush has appended statements to new laws when he signs them, noting which provisions he believes interfere with his powers.

Among the laws Bush has challenged are the ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and ``whistle-blower" protections for federal employees.

Another member, Patricia Wald, is a retired chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, appointed by President Carter.

She said she had monitored the use of signing statements by previous administrations, but ``the accelerated use in recent years presents a real question about separation of powers and checks and balances."

Wald also said she was especially interested in studying how signing statements affect the federal bureaucracy. As a judge, Wald said, she dealt with many cases involving challenges to decisions made by administrative agencies. She said that courts are deferential to such decisions because they are supposed to be made by objective specialists in the agencies. But a heavy use of signing statements could call that assumption into question.

``If Congress passes a law telling the people in the bureaucracy that `this is what you should do,' and the president signs it but attaches a statement saying `I don't want you to do it,' how is that going to affect the motivation of the bureaucracy?" she said.
________________

A meeting of lawyers in New Orleans? What they "discover" will depend on who's picking up the check!

"Allright who ordered the 27 "Gumbotinis"?

-T

Oy, Hapless. You don't care; but you bray donkeylike over and over about it. Methinks he doth .... what's the quote? Methinks he doth sucketh his thumb too much?

Up till 2 in the a.m. looking up the lpfr? If you don't know what the labor force participation rate is, just come out and say it. I'll 'splain it to ya' real gentle-like. You know me, I'm such a sweetie.

I guess they didn't talk about the lfpr back in MBAschool? What kinda fly-by-night organization schooled ya'?

4 Days, 11hrs., 10 min till the World Cup!!

Time to make the donuts.

capt 423, kristol is a total moron if he REALLY believes bush is a leader of any kind, much less the supreme kind!

#423 capt, Kristol verifies my prediction that Hitler Bush will never leave the WH!!!!!!!!!!

The wedge issues are again coming out of the closets for another election and the stupid Nazi Americans will fall for it.

When you worship the devil, Nazi Americans deserve a devil incarnate nation.

Nazi America is a terrorist nation, an evil nation, and the most corrupt nation to ever been hatched.

Mandatory Draft Bill
Snuck In - To Be
Debated 6-6-6

The House is to convene on June 6 (06/06/06] to debate and possibly adopt this bill, that is, unless a vast public outcry succeeds in derailing this insanity, which you can do by writing a letter of protest to your congress person through

http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm or http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html

Phone calls are even better. The numbers of all US Representatives are at:

http://clerk.house.gov/members/index.html


If you question the validity of this bill, go to:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-4752 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.4752
----------
Now we will see if the people give a shit about anything at all. I will be calling, faxing, emailing AND writing, a LOT!

The Mystery of Haditha

Washington Post

BACK TO THE BUNKER

By William M. Arkin
Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page B01

On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The exercise is the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration since 9/11, a focus of enormous and often absurd time, money and effort that has come to echo the worst follies of the Cold War. The vast secret operation has updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that "essential" government functions continue undisrupted should a terrorist's nuclear bomb go off in downtown Washington.

After 9/11, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had set up a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work outside Washington on a rotating basis to ensure the continuity of national security. Since then, a program once focused on presidential succession and civilian control of U.S. nuclear weapons has been expanded to encompass the entire government. From the Department of Education to the Small Business Administration to the National Archives, every department and agency is now required to plan for continuity outside Washington.

Moreover, since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the definition of what constitutes an "essential" government function has been expanded so ridiculously beyond core national security functions -- do we really need patent and trademark processing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? -- that the term has become meaningless. The intent of the government effort may be laudable, even necessary, but a hyper-centralized approach based on the Cold War model of evacuations and bunkering makes it practically worthless.

That the continuity program is so poorly conceived, and poorly run, should come as no surprise. That's because the same Federal Emergency Management Agency that failed New Orleans after Katrina, an agency that a Senate investigating committee has pronounced "in shambles and beyond repair," is in charge of this enormous effort to plan for the U.S. government's survival.
-----------
Do they think their survival will be even remotely important to the rest of us in an event like a nuclear bomb attack.? Supreme leader? Supreme idiot is more like it. I hope everyine is taking all possible steps to prepare for the worst. Since our dear "leaders" will be hiding out in underground bunkers you can forget any help from them. Stock up on supplies while you can, fresh water, firearms and ammo! Better to be prepared and not need it then to be caught without.

Freedom To Fascism Filmmaker Aaron Russo: "I Know How Evil These People Are" by William Norman Grigg

That growing sense of outrage coalesced into Aaron Russo's Mad as Hell, a 1995 pilot for a proposed television talk show. Russo relates that although his pilot didn't sell, his potential impact on the national scene was recognized by some very important people.

"Shortly after I made the pilot, I was approached by one of the younger members of the Rockefeller family," he told The New American. "He seemed to think that I had some potential and was offering to mentor me. He even discussed with me the possibility of arranging an invitation for me to join the Council on Foreign Relations. And he seemed to be very interested in my views about a number of subjects I hadn't really given much thought to." One specific subject of interest was the feminist movement.

"[The Rockefeller family member] asked me what I thought of the 'women's movement,' and I told him that I support equal opportunity," Russo continues. "He looked at me and said, 'You know, you're such an idiot in some ways. We' - meaning the people he works with - 'created the women's movement, and we promote it. And it's not about equal opportunity. It's designed to get both parents out of the home and into the workforce, where they will pay taxes. And then we can decide how the children will be raised and educated.' That's how they control society - by removing the parents from the home and then raising the children as the elitists see fit."

Russo recalls conversations in 2000 with his Rockefeller acquaintance that, in hindsight, seemed to portend 9/11 and its aftermath.

"About a year before 9/11, this guy was telling me that there would be 'an event' in this country that would change it dramatically," declares Russo. "He was predicting a war in Afghanistan and in the Middle East to control the region's energy reserves, and at some points he was actually laughing about it."

"I know how evil these people are," Russo said grimly.
-------------
Evil doesn't even begin to describe these monsters.

MADSEN: WITNESS TO BUSH'S HOMOSEXUAL ACTS COMES FORWARD?
Source: Wayne Madsen Report

George W. Bush's marital problems have just taken another turn for the worse. Apparently, Mr. Bush has not only engaged in an extra-marital affair with a member of the opposite sex who is also a senior member of his Cabinet, but also a member of the same sex. WMR received the following release this morning from Leola McConnell, Democratic candidate for Governor of Nevada (who has been endorsed by WMR). McConnell is a one-time professional dominatrix.

"President Bush's speech to the nation Monday. If he doesn't say he's a gay American or at the least a bisexual one then he shouldn't be making one at all. And the notion that it would be in regards to writing bigotry into our nation's Constitution is reprehensible. Too bad it isn't me doing the rebuttal because in 1984, I watched him perform (with the enthusiasm of homosexual male who had done this many times before) a homosexual act on another man, namely Victor Ashe. Victor Ashe is the current Ambassador to the nation of Poland who should also come out like former Governor McGreevey of New Jersey and admit to being a gay American. Other homo-erotic acts were also performed by then private citizen George Bush because I performed one of them on him personally.

None of this would be the business of anyone but President Bush's little ruse to save his failed presidency by using DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] to divide Americans one from the other has to be exposed as the act of a desperate closeted homosexual man. The only crime in being GLBT is in the hiding. The President needs to come clean with the American people about his own past sexual behavior before he tries to besmirch the humanity of people in search of sincerely committing to the same bonds of matrimony he's afforded. He violated his own vows of monogamy having a homosexual affair with a long time family friend of whom his wife had no knowledge. His hypocrisy seems to know no bounds.

I had planned to run for governor of Nevada without going into any of this but his planned nationally televised address to the nation makes it necessary for me to address his attempt at division in as public a way as he picked to try this Bushification of reality regarding same sex marriages.

Sincerely, Leola McConnell Liberal Democratic candidate for Governor of Nevada"
----------
Of course these rumors have been swirling since the gannon/guckert scandal which also involved rove and god only knows how many others in the WH. It wouldn't surprise me a bit. Liars and disgusting hypocrites, every one.

America: Freedom To Facism Movie

Saturday, 03 June 2006

The Scariest Goddamn Film You'll See This Year

AMERICA: FROM FREEDOM TO FASCISM "FOUR STARS (Highest Rating). The scariest goddamn film you'll see this year. It will leave you staggering out of the theatre, slack-jawed and trembling. Makes 'Fahrenheit 9/11' look like 'Bambi.' After watching this movie, your comfy, secure notions about America -- and about what it means to be an American -- will be forever shattered. Producer/director Aaron Russo and the folks at Cinema Libre Studio deserve to be heralded as heroes of a post-modern New American Revolution. This is shocking stuff. You'll be angry, you'll be disgusted, but you may actually break out in a cold sweat and feel a sickness deep in your gut; I would advise movie theatre managers to hand out vomit bags. You may end up needing one." --- Todd David Schwartz, CBS
------------
Anyone who doesn't think the parasites in charge aren't 100% responsible for 9/11 and every vile and evil thing that has happened since is asking for a very rude awakening, and they won't be prepared.

Pande,

Methinks your rhetorics is make Hapless anger.

Pande,

Ooops...sorry.

Methinks you're rhetorics are make Hapless anger.

That is all.

Kevin Zeese: Both Parties Selling Country to Highest Bidder!"

Baltimore IMC

Baltimore, MD - On Sunday afternoon, June 4, 2006, a Forum, which dealt with the topic of Iraq, Iran and Militarism, was held at the Cork Gallery. It is located near the historic Greenmount Cemetery. The event was sponsored by the Generations for Peace and Democracy, a progressive group. The speaker at the affair was the popular anti-war activist, Kevin Zeese.

Zeese said, we know that both parties are selling the country to the highest bidder. So, in a historical context, where do you want to be? Republicans controlled by corporations? Democrats controlled by corporations? Or, with some independent movement that is going to challenge the lack of representation of the people. I think in a historical context, we know where we want to be...What we do now will have an effect. We make a difference. So, waking people up to make a difference is very important to moving things forward electorally.
Zeese is the director of DemocracyRisingUS., an organization working to end the Iraqi War and the Occupation. He was also an ex-press secretary for Ralph Nader in 2004. Presently, he is an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, who is looking to bring together, in a unity campaign, the combined electoral efforts of the Green, Populist and Libertarian Parties, along with disenchanted members of the state's Democratic and Republican organizations. According to this morning's Baltimore Sun, 5.3 percent of the state's 3 million registered voters were either unaffiliated with a political party or enrolled in a minor party. That's up from 13.4 percent of 2.7 million voters in 2000.

Zeese underscored in his over hour long address that, we've got to break the two party straightjacket, so people can vote for what they believe in and make their own choice. The two parties treat all of us as children, as lazy morons, who are stuck watching too much TV...So, many voters feel trapped.
The general election, in Maryland, is set for Nov. 7, 2006. Zeese has labeled the two opposition parties as corporate dominated. He has written that if there was ever a moment for Marylanders to get organized and to throw the bums out, it's right now. The Baltimore Sun also wrote that Zeese is addressing issues that major parties won't, such as challenging U.S. policy in Israel and calling for tax reform.

Continuing with his remarks, Zeese said: I'm the only person in the [U.S.} Senate race in Maryland, other than [candidate] Bob Kaufman, who's opposed [to the U.S.] bombing Iran. And a lot of that again is Hard Right Israeli Lobby pressure. Richard Cohen, who writes for the Washington Post, said that 65 percent of the Democratic Party's resources comes from the Hard Right Israeli Lobby and 35 percent of the Republican Party's resources come from the same [place].
Meanwhile, the prime architect of the Iraqi War, the then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, a grotesque Neocon, has come out of this debacle smelling like a rose. He was rewarded with the high paying sinecure of the presidency of the World Bank, in Washington, D.C. It is also beyond cavil that the country was lied into the war by slick operatives of the Bush()-Cheney Gang, who were aided an abetted by War Hawks in the U.S. Congress, like: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), Rep. Peter King (R-NY), and the convicted felon and now ex-member of the House of Representatives, Randy Duke Cunningham (R-CA).
---------
At least the people of Maryland have someone they can get behind. Some truth and courage at last.

The 3-Ring Circus called Nevada

Former porn star Mimi Miyagi of Las Vegas filed as a Republican candidate for governor, with a campaign slogan of "For the bare and honest truth" and an entourage that included a cheering section of "campaign cuties," two bodyguards and a makeup artist.

Miyagi signed up a few days after Leola "Muscles" McConnell, a Las Vegas bodybuilder who prefers the term "domina" to dominatrix, got into the crowded race as a Democrat. They're among nine candidates who filed for governor.

I'll believe Ms. McConnell about her relationship with GWB only if Larry Flynt verifies it.

All GREAT posts this morning!

Thanks!

capt

I posted that story because it was from Wayne Madsen, who has always been reliable.

"Stock up on ... firearms and ammo!"

Use cash!

Die Gedanken sind frei

Our Thoughts Are Free
Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts freely flower,
Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them,
No hunter can trap them,
No man can deny:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure,
My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure;
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny--
Die Gedanken sind frei!

And if tyrants take me
And throw me in prison
My thoughts will burst free,
Like blossoms in season.
Foundations will crumble,
The structure will tumble,
And free men will cry:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

Neither trouble or pain
Will ever touch me again.
No good comes of fretting,
My hope's in forgetting.
Within myself still
I can think as I will,
But I laugh, do not cry:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

*********************************

I first came across this song in an old Weaver's songbook I had as a kid.

Use cash, while it's still worth something.

No Peaking: The Hubbert Humbug
Guerilla News Network -- Excerpted from Armed Madhouse
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
By Greg Palast

Saddam had to go, we really should take a look at the theory that we went into Iraq to get its oil. A ride up "Hubbert's Peak" will allow a clearer view of the real topic of this chapter: the geo-politics of petroleum.

********************************

Palast has been on a number of shows recently, pitching his new book. He has been arguing that the main reason that we invaded Iraq was not so much to get Iraq's oil, as to keep it off the market and allow oil prices to steadily increase.

Mission accomplished?

Hey Pande ass- heres what your party thinks about you Corn-nuts-LOL!!!

________________________________________
'Centrist' Democrats Sound A Warning About 'Liberal Fundamentalism'
By Susan Jones

A group of "centrist" Democrats is warning of an "undertow" in the Party's effort to recapture control of Congress.

It warns that some activist groups, such as MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, want to introduce "ideological litmus tests" for elected officials -- and "intimidate or even purge those who do not meet a narrow definition of what makes a 'real Democrat.'"

The Democratic Leadership Council said the phenomenon is best illustrated by the efforts of liberal advocacy groups to defeat Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) by recruiting money and volunteers for his more liberal challenger.

According to the DLC, such efforts "not only threaten party unity and divert attention and resources from the broader goal of defeating Republicans; they also signal an intolerance toward dissent and diversity that can repel voters and make an enduring Democratic majority more difficult to achieve."

In a message to supporters, the DLC described Lieberman -- with whom it sometimes disagrees -- as a man of integrity who puts his country above his party and personal interests.

"We need more, not fewer, people with Joe Lieberman's character in the Democratic Party," the DLC said.

MoveOn.org's political action committee recently endorsed Lieberman Democratic challenger, noting grassroots frustration with Lieberman's "continued support for the war in Iraq" and his support for "Big Oil's energy bill."

The DLC noted that one of the reasons for its founding in 1985 was to resist "liberal fundamentalism," which it describes as a "conformist tendency to stifle dissent among Democrats and require adherence to litmus tests devised by interest groups and ideological advocates."
________________________________________________

The DLC knew all the way back in 1985 that you fools were going to bring the party down-ATENTION CORNUTS! Listen to your party and give up already!

#438 Saladin

Good morning. Right on to your comment. I wonder where to get this movie? Probably, we'll have to wait for the DVD huh?

Gay Marriage Ban Short of Votes in the Senate

Ben Nelson is the only Democrat said to be voting for the amendment. Sen. Arlen Specter is not. He said he only allowed it to go through his committee to give Republican leaders the debate they wanted on the floor to pursue their election goals. Jesus.

At the conference Mr. Corn references, Helen Thomas was asked how any party could contain both Dennis Kucinich and Joe Leiberman.

She replied that it shouldn't.

Of course, the DLC doesn't like the progressive wing of its own party. They get their funding from the same corporate trough as the RePIGlicans.

Saladin @ 437,

Did you bother checking the history of Leola McConnell?

Did she say where she was in 1984 when she witnessed this?

Are there any other witnesses to this alleged occurrence?

Did you know she also claimed a five-year affair with Bill Bennett?

Did you know that this story had been floating around the Internet for at least the past several months before she came out recently with her version? Most of the older versions had President Bush in the relationship in college, as Victor Ashe was his roommate at Yale.

Doesn't this "news" release also reveal Wayne Madsen for the charlatan he really is?

This woman is a nutcase extraordinaire, yet you believe her because you want to believe her.

Saladin, you're a lot brigher than most posters to this blog. How can you fall for this pile of you-know-what?

#400 Jeanne

Yes! Supposedly there was going to be a publicity drive with the publication of the article. What happened to it? The other problem, I hate to admit, is that Robert Kennedy Jr. has a poor voice, it's shaky. My sister says it sounds like something's wrong with his throat.

Still, all I've seen are negative reviews! Wolf Blitzer interviewed Bobby, and kept asking why rven the Democrats aren't following up on this, implying the whole time that Bobby was full of shit. Oh, and Wolf kept saying that the article was so long--almost in a self-congratulatory manner that he had actually read the whole thing. We're so proud of you Wolf, that you read something. Other places, I've seen quotes like "The Rolling Stone is an entertainment newletter designed to promote music and pop culture", once again implying that this article not be taken seriously. It is so damn infuriating.

Typical, avoid substance of my post and comment on the tangentials....

Panty @ 430

Hapless. You don't care; but you bray donkeylike over and over about it....
Posted by: Pandemoniac at June 5, 2006 07:36 AM
==========================================
I `nailed you' on dishonesty of doctoring peoples' blog signatures, what says you to that? Nothing!

I started on this blog to `fight' your collective foul mouths and name-callings! Remember, some of you thought I was hired by David and which I never denied nor admitted to!

I've stayed consistent to my purposes and will continue to `bray' about these `missing' common coutesies (even among foes) from dumbasses like you!

This IS a public forum, even while anonymous! Do you allow your kids to be like the way you behave here? Do you allow them to act up in public (but anonymous like in a crowded flea market or something)?

If you had a no-ID phone, you probably would be making all sorts of obscene ranting and raving calls.

A Guided Tour of Class in America
A Tomdispatch Interview with Barbara Ehrenreich

People fall for shit all the time, especially when the shit corroborates their preconceived notions. If the shit doesn't fit, they dismiss it as bullshit. If the shit fits, it is good information.

That makes someone smart?

capt, 1066 Oct 14

Robert Schwartz, thank you. Those are not the original words, but the tune is so good that many ideas can be adopted to fit "Die Gedanken ist frei!"

"I started on this blog to `fight' your collective foul mouths and name-callings!"

v.

"dumbasses like you!"

Is this what you teach your scouts?

You're welcome.

As to the original, my German isn't so good...

Of course, the DLC doesn't like the progressive wing of its own party. They get their funding from the same corporate trough as the RePIGlicans.

By Robert

Robert, Nice try but again a lame attempt to justify the waco left. Who does MOVEON.ORG get its funding from?

The biggest Corporate pig of all, Dr Evil: George "the billionare" Soros

Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush
Financier Contributes $5 Million More in Effort to Oust President
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page A03

NEW YORK -- George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.

"It is the central focus of my life," Soros said, his blue eyes settled on an unseen target. The 2004 presidential race, he said in an interview, is "a matter of life and death."

Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush.

Overnight, Soros, 74, has become the major financial player of the left. He has elicited cries of foul play from the right. And with a tight nod, he pledged: "If necessary, I would give more money."

"America, under Bush, is a danger to the world," Soros said. Then he smiled: "And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."

Soros believes that a "supremacist ideology" guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans." It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ("The enemy is listening"). "My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me," he said in a soft Hungarian accent.

Soros's contributions are filling a gap in Democratic Party finances that opened after the restrictions in the 2002 McCain-Feingold law took effect. In the past, political parties paid a large share of television and get-out-the-vote costs with unregulated "soft money" contributions from corporations, unions and rich individuals. The parties are now barred from accepting such money. But non-party groups in both camps are stepping in, accepting soft money and taking over voter mobilization.

"It's incredibly ironic that George Soros is trying to create a more open society by using an unregulated, under-the-radar-screen, shadowy, soft-money group to do it," Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson said. "George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party."

So I'm sure you'll join me in calling for publicly financed elections?

lol

#436 Saladin

Whoa! Interesting converstions that Russo had with the Rockefeller family member.

#451 Robert S.

This is what Hillary Clinton is doing. Letting Rupert host a fundraiser for her.....come on! The DLC is one nasty group. It promotes the neolib ideology that Saladin and I were discussing earlier.

#448 Robert S.

Veeery interesting. But still, how does one explain the permanent million dollar military bases being built atop oil fields? Maybe it's to keep the oil for themselves until oil prices have reached an ultimate peak. Then sell it off.

Hapless, I answered you post regarding "dishonesty" long, long ago.

"I `nailed you' on dishonesty of doctoring peoples' blog signatures, what says you to that? Nothing!"

See post 351.

There is nothing dishonest about substituting a fitting nickname for the handle one has chosen. Everyone knows who I mean when I use the names Clueless, Factless and the more obvious Hapless. I've been either Pande, Pan or a variant of Pandemoniac for over a year. I've never backed down from a query or a dispute. And I doubt that Sal, James, Haj, the Corkster or anyone else who's gotten their handle mangled would disagree. Look at Clueless, he doesn't squeal even a tiny bit. Neither does Factless. They know I'm just funnin' them.

"I started on this blog to `fight' your collective foul mouths and name-callings! ... I've stayed consistent to my purposes and will continue to `bray' about these `missing' common coutesies (sic) (even among foes) from dumbasses like you!"
Posted by: Hapless rides the short bus at June 5, 2006 12:50 PM

Genius, I say. Fight foul mouths with obscene remarks. Fight name-calling by calling others stupid, idiot, and other less imaginative terms. Is that a republican skill? Healthy Forest Initiative = No Tree Left Behind. Clean Skies Initiative = the most smog-filled, polluted skies in decades. The War on Terror = Jihadi training ground in Iraq. It goes beyond the law of unintended consequences. You're a one-dude wrecking crew, destroying every conservative talking point after another. Hapless to a T.

Don is right. I done made Hapless Angery. But that's OK. At least now you're answering the bell instead of sitting there with your eyes covered waiting for the ref to stop the pummeling that you are getting.

Soooooo .... you're just gonna let me continue calling you "yellow" for not answering the simplest questions regarding economics and public policy? I keep forgetting. If I want an original response, I need to confine my questions to this topic, your true area of expertise. Because like your hero, nobody's buying your MBA crap. BTW, here's a little link to help you in your research on the lfpr. Notice how it takes a nosedive when Mr. Bush takes office. Seems like that with all of the more positive indicators.

You know all those cutsie nicknames Bush comes up with for other guys? Let's take another look at that following the lead provided by the WMR report on Leola McConnell.

Actually, it makes some sense, all of these rumors. As factchecker points out, Victor Ashe was his roomate in college. Now wasn't Bush doing cocaine and alcohol at this time? Doesn't coke make you horny? Just a thought. We already know what a horrid hypocrite GB is.

Re # 461 and Publicly-financed elections:

No problem at all with public financing of elections, as long as I can contribute as much as I want also, purusant to the following:

UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
AMENDMENT I
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishiment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

In the alternative, I would suppose you would also prohibit newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from publishing any editiorials or political ads during election seasons, just to be consistent. People expecting to influence elections make major financial investments in these organs.

And you would outlaw both MoveOn.org and SwiftBoatVeteransForTruth.org, as they both contribute heavily to candidates.

Finally, you would probably also have to prohibit all of the blogs on both the right and left, as people with political agendas pay huge sums of money to keep those running.

Now, do you want to be consitent, or do you want to be silly?

Now I can't wait to be with the Republican mothers from my son's school this afternoon. We're working on a project, a traditional gift the fifth grade gives the school before leaving to attend middle school next year. By the way, we're all sad to leave this lovely, neighborhood school.

I think I'm going to enjoy working on this project now. Just wait till I tell them about the WMR report. Oh boy!!!

Carey, as William Shakespeare said of alchohol:

“it increaseth the desire, but reduceth the performance”

new thread.

Besides the Chech Republic and Italy, what other teams are in the same round-robin as the USA and what players on the US team are the ones to watch?

I'm excited for World Cup Soccer too but I'm uninformed about personnel and play styles. Pande et al, anything you care to share and link too is greatly appreciated. Oh, Happy, I'm also interested in strategies for 'capture the flag' so feel free to share those here.

My home state team UMass made it to the finals in NCAA D1 Lax. I was in Ithaca NY when they started their run. It was against #5 ranked Cornell. Big Red came out fast but lagged in Q2 and Q3.

An alum from the class of '60 who played lax back in the day, commented on the sluggish play with an explananation,"Cornell just finished exam week." Then he asked me if UMass had also just finished exam week. I joked, "I don't know if UMass has exam week."

I watched the rest of the D1 Lax tournament on TV. Umass won it's second round game against #3 ranked Hofstra and it's semi-final game against #2 ranked Maryland. In the finals, the UMass Minutemen played #1 ranked Virgina Cavs even for almost three quarters before they fell behind and finally lost. The Cavs are the best.

Now on to World Cup soccer. Pande, give us the goods.

PS I'd comment on Bush's cynical and purely-political call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage but I'll leave that to others.

If you can, watch and listen to the panel on C SPAN about the amendment; and watch the replay of Katrina Vanden Heuvel, David Corn and others from The Nation talking about politics and journalism.