That's what next. The after Miers. Some white guy that supports banning abortion. Or to be more precise, supports making it illegal so that a whole market of back alley or black market procedures gets created. It makes sense, after all it is the Republican way isn't it? Just let the "market" take care of it all, right? Brilliant.

Well, we'll see how far this one goes. Stay tuned for the hearings. Should be good.

Well, what a difference a day makes. Yesterday it looked like Harriet's going to fight it out, today, she's down for the count. What gives?

What looked like a handgrenade, actually turned out to be a handgrenade. And for a while it looked like Bush's team found the pin and was going to manage to put it back in, when the grenade went off.

So, now that they are trying to pick themselves off the floor, what do you think they will come up with? Will Bush listen to reason and put up a centrist for nomination (see Roberts... sort of) or will he become Limbaugh's bitch and nominate some extremist to the bench? Hmmm...

I have another hypothesis for you. This may be a little far fetched, but I wouldn't put anything past Boy Genious / Turd Blossom. Try this on for size:

The Administration knows that Fitzgerald will come out with the Plamegate investigation findings any moment. Given where all the fingers points to, the Bush team decides to have Miers "quit" just in time for a second nomination to be put forth when the news cycle is taken with talk of top level criminal indictments. And so, switch the news cycle back to the nomination, taking the pressure off the VP and all the rest of the crooks. Too far fetched, you say?

We'll see.

Today's Nobel Peace Prize award to the IAEA and El Baradei, incidentally awarded by a body that is as independent as it gets, would make it seem like our esteemed president G W Bush is somewhat of a liar, having publically discredited the agency and it's leader, by insisting against all reason and evidence that Iraq is in posession of nuclear weapons, or is in months away from completing a nuclear device. A claim that amounted to a cassus belli and justified an invasion. Of course, the fact that he didn't wait for the UN to finish their inspection, that Saddam ultimatelly allowed, helped maintain the veneer of righteousness. Which by the way, should serve as a polite "shut the f#&k up!" to the crowd saying that the Europeans thought the same thing and the Clinton administration thought the same thing. Point is that neither the Europeans or Clinton ordered the invasion of Iraq. Bush did. Before the inspection completion. And, of course, once it was obvious that there was no nuclear or bio program to be found, we transition to "Freedom's on the march" as the reason, after a quick discredited stop on "harboring al Quaeda"

Remember these lies when you gas up at the pump this weekend:

"Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies." (Second Debate)

"If we failed to act in Iraq, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day." (2004 State of the Union)

"The Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."

The intelligence "leaves no doubt that . . . Iraq . . . continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

In October 2002 Bush stated, "[Iraq] is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."

I listened today to the president's speech on terrorism. Here's the long and the short of it: long in rhetoric and short in substance. More self back-patting. One interesting point. It struck me that this speech was appealing to our collective fear much more than our need to be better and inspire us to actually WANT to make things better. Another interesting thing is that you can hear the other side making the same claims of success in their fight with almost the same language. Here's an example you sould read while picturing Bin Laden with some cloth background and an AK next to him.

"There's always a temptation, in the middle of a long struggle, to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world, and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder. This would be a pleasant world, but it's not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday's brutality. This enemy considers every retreat of the civilized world as an invitation to greater violence. In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory."

Evidently, if the voting goes well and there is a majority of votes for it, the constitution passes. If the majority votes are against it, then only the "registered voters" ballots will be counted. Not all the votes cast will be counted and tallied. An interesting switch that the UN decries and Washingtom may just see it as a great step forward for Democracy, no doubt in it's hurried flight from Iraq.

From ABC News: "Election rules hold that the constitution will be defeated if two-thirds of voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it even if it wins majority approval nationwide. Sunni Arabs have a sufficient majority in four provinces.

But on Sunday, parliament passed a new interpretation of the rules declaring that two-thirds of registered voters must vote "no" not two-thirds of those who actually vote. The interpretation raises the bar to a level almost impossible to meet. In a province of 1 million registered voters, for example, 660,000 would have to vote "no" even if that many didn't even come to the polls."

So this here is an interesting story. If, 9 years ago, I would have told a republican that Bill Clinton and Al Gore along with their respective chief of staff and assitant have been involved in leakig the identity of a CIA operative, I would have been faced with some rabid person foaming at the mouth and demanding that the president be impeached. In the absence of such damning national security breech evidence, they settled for the next best to national security threat to impeach him with. A blow job, of course. The question is, when is ANYONE going to call the current administration out on it's fake patriotism and expose them for what they really are? You know the kind of patriotism I am talking about, right? The kind that calls for the terrorists to be "wanted dead or alive" and then obstructing the 9/11 commission. Or the kind of patriotism that during the Vietnam war found an easy out in the Texas National Guard, or, in Cheney's case, busy with "other priorities".

Samuel Johnson said it right: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." So true.

Introducing the predictably named operation... Iron Fist! Those pesky insurgents. By the way, that's what we call them. They may very well call themelves Iraqis. What we call ourselves is liberators. And what they call us is invaders. I guess it all depends what side of the liberation/oppression fence you're on, and who wins the fight, of course. But, back to the new military operation. All these names that are meant to inspire(us) and frighten(them). We're so fortunate to have an administration with a good spin machine that can pull together names exhibiting this level of sophistication. Consider "Shock and Awe". Or "Iraqi Freedom". Or "Platinum Turban". Ok, the last one is not part of the roster of operations conducted by the US Army. But should it be? Hey, why not have some fun with this? Why not Operation Ageless Boyfriend? Or Operation Angry Wombat? At best we may just confuse them into submission. At worst we'd be fodder for editorial cartoonists everywhere. And since we're already there...

Make your own operation name at this website. Fun, fun, fun.

The republicans are having a bad week. Looks like the crookery and racism are coming out kinda at the same time, doesn't it? DeLay indicted and Bennett makes an instinctively idiotic remark on his radio show. This from the author of "The book of Virtues". Yes, same guy that had a gambling problem. I guess both racism and hypocrisy are virtues in this case. What's more, these are the guys in charge of the country. Missing Clinton yet? Missing economic well being? Missing government surpluses? Missing peace? Missing international respect for our country? I bet the republicans are missing Clinton as well. Mostly because their true face and complete ineptitude can remain hidden behind bitching about Whitewater or Travelgate! Think about it. The cronyism in the Clinton administration is represented by hiring an associate in the Whitehouse travel office. The fallout of a bad decision there is over charge on some airline tickets. The cronyism of the Bush White House is represented by Michael Brown at the head of FEMA. The fallout of a bad decision here... Well, we all saw the impact of Brownie's inept leadership. And we all have to tolerate a few more years of Bush's.

All this is way too depressing to even draw anything about it...

Looks like things are kinda catching up to Mr DeLay. You know how it goes, you put your president in power, you take the House and the Senate, and what's left to do but get cocky. Really really cocky. And when you do something stupid do stuff that not only gets you in trouble but also makes your party look stupid as a bonus.

You all are going to love this: DeLay was named as the Center for Christian Statesmanship's Distinguished Christian Statesman for 2002. And as a dedicated Christian Statesman, seems like getting indicted for campaign finance violations, in other words fraud, is just what Jesus would do, right Tom? Here are some priceless quotes that give you a pretty good idea about the Christ like behavior of the Majority Leader. You know, the same "Leader" who's taking lobbyist paid golfing trips. I'll bold out for you the relevant items that highlight DeLay's qualifications as a christian and make him just the kind og holier than though, smug public figure you want to look up to!

Tom DeLay: Bold for Christ,
Rep. DeLay began to follow Christ seriously in 1985, during his freshman term in Congress. After viewing a Christian videotape about fatherhood, given to him by Rep. Frank Wolf, he realized that his life did not reflect the principles of Christianity. Rep. DeLay wept over his sins and rededicated his life to Christ. Shortly after his recommitment, he began attending a regular Bible study for members of Congress.

Working to Transform Culture
Now, Majority Whip DeLay is focusing his political and personal efforts on seeing our culture transformed. On Capitol Hill, DeLay is determined to use his position as the third-ranking Republican member to restore the "Judeo-Christian ethic" that he says has been undermined in recent years. (-- looks like by his own behavior --)

It is apparent that Rep. DeLay's deep commitment to Christian values does not stop when he approaches the halls of Congress. He does not consider it an option to separate his personal faith from his role as a congressman. A true Christian statesman, Rep. DeLay is well-known for his excellence in public service, and he never loses sight of the people he serves, including his own staff.

You can read the rest of this drivel here.

Hey everyone, guess who else is in New orleans again? It's Bush! For the 7th time this month! We all get the picture! You care. Now...

Indeed there was talk again of rebuilding NO and "making it better than ever"! Which in the president's (and I am using the term loosely) mind probably means paving it over, drilling and installing oil rigs every mile down the coast. Here's a suggestion, when rebuilding the city, don't forget it's greenbelt. Because if you all do, this WILL happen again. So give generously to the rebuilding effort. And make sure the rebuilding is done in all the important places.

There was a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday about Osama BinLaden and how capturing him is not all that important. This from the general in charge of fighting terrorism in Pakistan. If we bother to think about this statement for even a moment, we realize that if Pakistan captures OBL, Pakistan loses all the American attention and cash assistance. Read all about it here.

More importantly Musharraf loses the American support and prop-up assistance, a coup insues, the region is distabilized and Pakistan becomes a rogue muslim state with nukes. Great. But how about our fearless leader and his flip flopping on the OBL issue? Here's some statement samples:

--"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." President Bush, 9/13/01

--"I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'" President Bush, 9/17/01, UPI

--"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." President Bush, 3/13/02

--"I am truly not that concerned about him." President Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02

--"Because he's hiding..." Bush, explaining why Osama bin Laden has yet to be captured. (Washington Post interview, Jan. 16, 2005)

Yes folks, there is a nasty little new war brewing. And it promises to be a good one. Perhaps a bit of shock and awe to get things started? Who's this war against?Well, it's against Cindy Sheehan and her people coming to Washington to say a few things to the president about all this war business.

I mean, come on, a housewife taking on the Rove and Bush? Give me a break. If they managed to make mincemeat of Kerry's, McClellan's and McCaine's military records, what do you think's going to happen to a 48 year old woman named Cindy Sheehan, from Vacaville, California? She has a record, you know! I mean what kind of a mother raises a honor student, eagle scout marine? Disgusting. So Rove and team should have absolutely no trouble taking down some unknown, right? Well, we'll see.
Stay tuned. Carpet bombing sure to come.

As it turns out, not much. So he gets fired. Kicked to the curb and sent home. After an unremarkable career, Mr. Brown you have a thoroughly disgraceful dismount. What better time than this time of disaster to "spend more time with your family"? Surely, no-one knew, and Bush least of all, that when appointing Brownie to this post we'll be hit with a catastrophic disaster that will wipe out an entire American city. It was probably thought that, much like the ambassadorship to Monaco, this will be a good post to reward an incompetent nobody's loyalty to the president in the time of need. Well, what do you know, here comes fate kicking you in the ass and suddenly there are a lot of (poor/black) people needing you. And for a while it looked like Brownie will be able to skate. But alas, the media getting it's balls back pretty much pinned the federal fault on the head of FEMA. Where it rightfully belongs. Remains to be seen if there will be any fallout for the one that gave him his job.

Here's a timeline of Brownie's sad and unremarkable FEMA tenure.

We hear a lot about the Katrina response. The Whitehouse does not want to play the blame game, (while pointing their thumb over their shoulders back at the local officials, Gov. Blanco, Mayor Nagin et all.) This is something that fortunately for us all is very easy to de-bunk and actually assign the blame where it actually belongs. To FEMA and this incompetent administration, followed by the state and local government. In this order. How can one be so sure, you ask? Well, let's go through the timeline of the hurricane and document some of the key steps at which point some key decisions were made.

Friday, August 26. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency for Louisiana. 3 days before hurricane landfall.

Saturday, August 27. President Bush officially declares that a "state of emergency" exists in Louisiana and orders Federal aid to the affected areas to complement state and local relief efforts. This would indicate that the Federal Authorities (FEMA) has authority to preposition supplies, personnel and authorize relief efforts.

Sunday, August 28. Louisiana Governor Blanco sends letter to President Bush requesting various federal aid. One day before hurricane landfall. This is in effect, when grouped with the previous point, a pretty clear request for federal aid from the Gov. and a release of federal aid from the President. One day before landfall.

Monday, August 29. 6:10 AM: Katrina, a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds, makes initial landfall near Buras, La. FEMA Head Michael Brown urges emergency service personnel "not to respond to hurricane impact areas unless dispatched by state, local authorities."

This is the official argument ender on this subject. All the republican talking heads and Bush appologists can just relax and enjoy being just plain wrong about all this.

Here's a bit of good news. A bit of good news that requires some inquiry. Every (almost) family will receive a $2000 debit card. Which is good. The tricky part is getting the cash. The Bush admin. is asking for $50 billion in relief funds for the NOLA victims. Question is where exactly are we going to get this cash from? Considering that there is a war that costs about 1 billion / month going on in Iraq and Bush is hell bent on repealing all the taxes that support such things as infrastructure and dams to hold back things like floods in the New Orleans area.

Let's do the political math here: Bush wants to repeal the estate tax, all the president's men are calling it the "death tax", because you see, death happens to all of us and it is scary. Estate happens to considerably less people than death and it has a Dallas, Southfork ranch feel to it. And if you want to get regular people to vote for it, appeal to their fear. Preferably fear of something that is guaranteed to have happen to them. Yes! Death is it! So, how is a president to repeal a tax that helps a lot of poor and middle class non voting people but helps a few rich and voting pals? Easy. By having them think that they are the beneficiary of this tax cut. But will he be able to sell it to the American people? Sure he will. Leave ot to Turd Blossom Karl Rove. He'll figure it out. And you can bet ot will leave the Democrats in the dirt holding their balls and weeping.

As in: if I ignore it hopefully it will go away. This president has managed to make himself more irrelevant than Monica Lewinski. Bush's faith based disaster management has proven nothing short of disastrous. And no amount of black people hugged on national TV will make this better. But one thing you can be sure of. Judging by this administation's response to catastrophic failure, someone will be getting a medal here shortly.

So, America, are you ready for a terrorist attack? Well we'd better be, because our leaders have their heads pretty far up their collective asses and it doesn't seem you can count on them for anything. Which is interesting seeing that this administration has pretty much made their mission to say 9/11 and National Security as many times as it takes to get elected. Make no mistake, this hurricane response has been a complete failure of leadership from the highest level on down. Anyone who claims otherwise, is a complete and total moron. Which brings me to this point. It is becomeing harder and harder to even listen to Bush supporters. What is going on here? Can these people that support this enormous failure of a president see that, say rolling FEMA in the dept of Homeland Security, making it a non cabinet agency and putting a failed horse competition judge at it's helm has been a bad move? A move that will ultimately hurt this country for a very long time? To mention only the most recent failure.

Let me get this straight. Clinton getting his winky whacked by a fat chick is worse than thousands of people dying because this president (and I am using the word president loosely here) cannot just say: Brownie, override all the local authority, airdrop supplies to the Dome and Convention Center and bring in the guards in the next day. Do it now Brownie or you're fired. Actually, I'd be very happy to see Brownie fired, tried and jailed right now. Overall, this blaming of the local authorities for not being able to respond to a national size catastrophy is ridiculous. Considering that the affected area is the size of England, it makes perfect sense for the Bush supporters to blame the mayor of NOLA. We should start mentioning the word impeachment here and there.

Yes folks, it's the same startled and annoyed Bush that visited New... sorry, Biloxi today. After all, the events did cut his 5 week vacation short by a whole 2 days. Yes, he visited Biloxi and he flew over New Orleans. Didn't land, of course.

Which is neither here nor there because he is irrelevant at this point. Both as a leader and as a president. What did you expect from him? Relief? An admission of fault? Sure, the admission of fault came. Bush characterized the efforts to date as: "unneceptable". Of course, after he told the FEMA personnel that they are doing a "great job" I feel a congrssional medal of honor coming people! Perhaps the FEMA head, Brown? Kinda makes you miss the days of Bush being catatonic for 7 minuutes, doesn't it?

Oh, and in related news, guess who's getting the contract for clean-up? You know it, HALLIBURTON. I kid you not.

Iraq has a new constitution. Which covers 2/3 of the major population groups inhabiting the place. Yay! We've done a great job. We deposed an impotent dictator with no friends, wrecked the place (more than it already was) looked for some inexistent weapons, which we didn't find, just like we were told by countless inspections, tried to tie the dictator guy running the place to our worst enemy that was and still is wanted "dead or alive" and finally we come around to our final reason for being there, promoting democracy. Speaking of, whatever happened to the whole cowboy attitude towards Bin-Laden? Anyway...

So, now we have this constitution, the crowning achievement of our efforts in the region, which covers most of the ethnic groups there. The remaining 3rd is not happy about this and is silently cleaning the guns, sharpening the knives and lining up the grenades in preparation for the exciting new civil war coming up any day now. The important thing is that the "constitution" gives someone an awesome opportunity to claim success, just in time for the 2006 midterm elections.

Freedom's on the march!
Better get the hell out of the way!

Whatever happened to Rumsfeld? Is he sidelined by the Bush admin. in an effort to cut down on comic relief? I sincerely miss the old coot. With his patronizing demeanor and dismissive comments. It truly was an awsome spectacle, seeing him treating the press core like idiots when asked questions like: "Hey, do we have enough troops on the ground?". His answer to this (paraphrased) question asked after Gen Shinseki was unceremoniusly dismissed for saying that we may need 350k troops on the ground to pacify the place, was: "It's ridiculous to think that we'll need more troops to hold the country than it took to conquer it." Here's a trip down memory lane. For comic relief purposes, of course.

Here's something I'll never understand. Why can Tom De Lay and the republicans in general be "supporting the troops but not the war" back when Clinton ordered troops in Bosnia in a humanitarian mission, and now call democrats traitors, appeasers, when dems try and question the Iraq war? Seems to me like a bit of the old hypocrisy game at play. Here's a rich sampling of past quotes from various leading republican figures.

And when I say leading, of course, I do mean leading us straight into the gaping maw of hell at a brisk marching pace, to the cadence of a peppy John Philip Sousa march played by Rush Limbaugh on a harmonium. Makes you just want to drive a spike in your head and march right along, doesn't it?