No WMD and Saddam would have left Iraq...

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/International/2005/10/30/1284645-sun.html

Boy, the Bushies really wanted this war didn’t they?

Bush's Watergate

From the Independent in UK.

Sleaze, leaks and an indictment add up to the worst presidential crisis
since Nixon. And it will get worse. The White House has lost one key man but the
whole chain of command may be engulfed by a scandal slowly revealing the lies
that led to war.

I wish I could get this deal

You get fired, lie to Congress and you keep your job, but without the responsibility or accountability. All so you can share your expertise, expertise you were so sorely lacking that it got you fired.

Is this what they taught you in your MBA program? Keep the incompetents on the payroll so they can share their incompetence? Doesn't seen very MBA-like to me, but then again this idiocy happens every day with this crew.

Apparently, Brownie's influence is still being felt in disasters (so I guess they are getting their money's worth as Brown shares his incompetence with others), even if Jeb plays the team player and takes a bullet for his incompetent brother.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9823799/

Jeb Bush accepts blame for slow aid efforts

A victory for the people rebuilding New Orleans

What a tragedy for Bechtel and other Bushie supporters, they have to pay prevailing wage to the very people who were left homeless and unemployed by the Bushie’s incompetence and lack of foresight in fixing the levees BEFORE the storm. Especially since the contracts they awarded were no bid and no oversight, the ability to screw employees doing the work was just a Bushie Bonus. Shameful.

Not a defeat for Bushies, but a victory of for the people of the Gulf Coast.

They won! Rep. George Miller (D-CA) played a pivotal role in organizing
cosponsors for a bill to overturn the president's Gulf Coast Wage Cut. Later, he
found a way to force a vote on the legislation. Unwilling to face that prospect,
today the White House caved in and revoked the wage cut on their own.

She taught us a small act could change the world

Lying is one thing, being dumb is another

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9805923/
Frist didn't think these letters would come to light?

Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly
informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his
holdings, according to the documents.

In January 2003, after winning election as majority
leader, Frist was asked on CNBC whether his HCA holdings made it difficult for him to push for changes in Medicare, a federal health program for seniors that added to the hospital company's revenue.

'I have no control'

"I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust," Frist replied. "So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock." He added that the trust was "totally blind. I have no control."

MY FAVORITE PART:
"He [Frist] could have been more exact in his comments," said Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Frist

"he could have been more exact"????, yeah could have told the truth. He was very exact in his comments. "I have no control" is VERY EXACT. It's absolute and it turns out it was an ABOLUTE LIE.
Shameful.

The UN helping Bush with some convenient timing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1598038,00.html

The Bushies are going to get all indignant about this and try to pretend like they care in a pathetic attempt to make America forget about the criminal actions of Rove, Libby, Frist, DeLay and dozens of others and the general incompetence of this administration. Let's invade Syria, third times the charm.

Was the UN convened when the US assassinated Ngo Dinh Diem? I can't remember? Or any number or Latin American rulers? Again, just askin.


BREAKING NEWS President Bush calls for United Nations to convene after
"deeply disturbing" report implicates Syrian officials in assassination.

More recruiting material for the terrorists

I know the Bushies love this stuff, but so does bin Laden. Makes his recruitment efforts so easy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9755213/


I took a Business Ethics class a while back. One of the things it suggests is to foresee your actions and think if you'd want your mother or grandmother to read about in the newspaper.

Obviously war is a different environment, but I'd suggest a wartime version to that. As a US soldier, you should ask if you'd want your actions to appear as the lead on Al-Jazeera or on the cover of Crazy Terrorist Daily, knowing specifically that any explanation or context will be absent.

Just a thought. I know war is hell, but if this is a war on terrorism, the goal should be eliminating terrorism, not creating more terrorists.

Hearts and Minds people.

It's never there fault

"I'm not a hurricane expert," Chertoff said several times in responding to criticisms from members of a special House panel set up to investigate the dismal federal response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,200 people, flooded New Orleans and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands.

Will he say the same thing when there is a terrorist attack?

More amoral actions by the GOP

Haliburton and the president's lobbyist friends get no bid/no oversight contracts in Iraq and New Orleans

…but we’re going to let old people freeze to death this winter.

Seems like a pretty amoral way to start displaying fiscal responsibility

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9765654/

What exactly would Jesus do?

I wonder how many homes the Alaskan Pork Bride to nowhere would provide heat for?

DeLay Arrest Warrant

http://dailydelay.blogspot.com/2005/10/arrest-warrant.html

The blame game continues as long as it's the Bushies covering their own asses

Will he say the same thing when there is a terrorist attack? I"m not a terrorism expert?

Take some accountability you spineless sissy.

"I'm not a hurricane expert," Chertoff said several times in responding to
criticisms from members of a special House panel set up to investigate the
dismal federal response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,200 people,
flooded New Orleans and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands.

While you were out

A friend of mine was married a couple of weekends ago. Upon he return he asked if Bush was still on the ropes. I assured him that everything had been fixed while he was gone:

Oh no, it’s all sorted out.

He’s got an exit strategy for Iraq and fired Rumsfeld for his overseeing of the erosion of America’s moral authority in the world
He caught bin Laden
He fired Rove and Libby for committing treason
He withdrew Harriet Miers nomination and nominated someone whose qualifications extend beyond “he knows her heart”
He’s fixed the economy, FEMA and the budget
He’s eliminated pork from the budget
Everyone has healthcare
He fixed global warming and the endangered species act.
Provided money to AIDS that he promised for Africa

And a bunch of other little things. He’s had a busy week.

Somehow he managed to fit in a completely scripted “impromptu” conversation with some soldiers in Iraq and despite a videotape of the soldiers being told what to say and how to say it, Scotty M denied that it was scripted. PRICELESS

Everything in NOT "surreal"

From the land of overused and MISUSED words comes "surreal". For the past few years it seems like EVERY time something happens to somebody it's "surreal". Well, NO IT"S NOT. Everything can't be surreal so stop saying it. You don't sound smart, you sound like an idiot to anyone with half a brain.

From Penn Jillette

A quote from Penn that appeared in Time Out New York (as quoted in Playboy)

“It’s so weird that these theists, these cranks are so anti-science yet so
willing to reap the benefits. They’re so willing to give everything to God
but not willing to suffer polio”

Will...again

Last week, Will pointed out the Bush is not and hasn't been a Conservative since he took office. This week, Will puts another nail in the coffin of the fake form of Conservativism that the Bushie's and their ilk have been peddling for the past 6 years. I've been telling some of you that you aren't really Conservatives. As you don't believe me, maybe George Will is a more acceptable bearer of the truth for you.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9629463/site/newsweek/

In 1987 Reagan vetoed a transportation bill because it contained 152 earmarks-pork-costing $1.4 billion. The bill President Bush signed contained 6,371, costing $24 billion. The total cost of the bill-$286 billion-is more, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than the combined costs of the Marshall Plan and the interstate highway system.

More proof that they lie about EVERYTHING

They have an inability to tell the truth about ANYTHING.

Read the article and then read this:


On Oct: 12th:
Scott McClellan was asked whether the teleconference the president had with troops in Tikrit was scripted. Here's what he said ...
QUESTION: How were they selected, and are their comments to the president pre-screened, any questions or anything...
MCCLELLAN: No.
QUESTION: Not at all?
MCCLELLAN: This is a back-and-forth.

The US government is such a joke

Shame on Canada, Shame on the US government for pursuing a sick pot grower.

The war on drugs is over idiots...and drugs won. Now get your shit together and spend your resources fighting terrorism and fixing Iraq...and the budget and New Orleans and etc etc. Then you can move on to the real important stuff like kidnapping sick pot growers and stopping boys from kissing.

Shameful

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/13/patient.arrest.ap/index.html

Pathetic Pandering

Bush keeps saying that he doesn’t have a litmus test for SC Justice, yet when his evangelical base starts griping he has to admit that he has one litmus test that is completely irrelevant to the job. Especially, when he and his Bushie minions keep talking about how Judges should put their personal opinions aside and interpret the Constitution in it’s original form. We all know they really mean impose Bush’s drastically misguided version of a Christian Theocracy and not the Constitution, how else do you square it’s continued trampling of State’s democratic process through exceedingly lame expansions of the Interstate Commerce Clause to invoke Federal Authority where NONE existed 10 years ago, let alone when the framers got together.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/12/miers.religion/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush suggested Wednesday that Harriet Miers'
evangelical Christian beliefs were part of the reason he nominated her to the
Supreme Court. But later a White House spokesman said her religion played no
role in her selection.

"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet
Miers," Bush told reporters at the White House. "They want to know Harriet
Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they
form opinions."

"Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion," Bush said
during Oval Office comments with visiting Polish President Aleksander
Kwasniewski. "Part of it has to do with the fact that she was a pioneer woman
and a trailblazer in the law in Texas."

The right wing media fails again

And the Bushies got all riled about this, despite it being WHOLLY IRRELEVANT to their irrational fear of boys kissing:

On an Illinois radio show I did last week -- available on our website or at this
link -- one anti-gay caller characteristically avoided offering a reason why
the government should continue excluding same-sex couples from marriage and, as
usual, went to the "slippery slope" diversion of "polygamy." As new proof that
the sky was falling, the caller said that the Netherlands, which has ended the
exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, has now also allowed a trio of man
and two women to wed. Before yet another right-wing scare tactic gathers
traction, please note that this claim -- that the Netherlands registered a
multi-partner "civil union" -- is untrue.

Following the radio interview, we looked into the caller's claim and found an erroneous September 27 report in something called the Brussels Journal -- www.brusselsjournal.com -- misusing the term "civil union" and talking about something "registered by a notary." Once we checked this with a leading Dutch expert who follows legal developments in family law, we learned that the only legally relevant thing that happened was that three people, with the help of a notary, signed a private cohabitation contract -- and did not enter into any kind of legal state-recognized union. Such personal agreements are not registered, and do not have legal implications for third parties. In both these respects, as well with regard to the state's imprimatur, a personal agreement or contract is different from both marriage and registered partnership. (And civil union, as such, is not a legal status in the
Netherlands).

Again, this was a private arrangement among three people, not a
marriage or partnership or union. According to our Dutch expert, there is no law
in the Netherlands (nor in most other countries) that limits the number of
parties who can among themselves make a personal agreement or cohabitation
contract. Dutch law does not regulate cohabitation contracts as such. Some Dutch
laws (for example in the fields of tax and social security), however, attach
certain legal consequences to the de facto cohabitation of two people (whether
or not these cohabitants have signed a cohabitation contract), but never to the
de facto cohabitation of three or more people. With respect to de facto (i.e.
unregistered) cohabitation there has not been any recent change in Dutch law.

Do I hear 37?

Bush approval dips below 40 percent
NBC-WSJ poll shows only 28 percent believe U.S. headed in right direction

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9672058/

I'd like to know about the disconnect between the 39% who approve of the President and the 28% who think we're headed in the right direction. Who are the 11% who think we're headed in the wrong direction, but still approve of the President? Doesn't the President steer the ship?

"public intoxication" in New Orleans?

Back to the cops who gang up to beat on old men.

If cops arrested everyone in NO who was publically intoxicated, wouldn't they have to arrest EVERYONE?

Why America hates Unions

Here is the union's response to a group of white officers beating on an old man who was immobilized with his head against a wall:

The head of the New Orleans police union said the officers told him they
had acted appropriately.

"They feel they were justified in their actions and they were using the amount of force necessary to overcome the situation," Lt. David Benelli told WDSU in New Orleans.

Now, I have a Master's Degree in Labor Relations and I once thought Unions were a noble cause. that was until I worked part time at the Post Office. Unions basically seem to exist today to give multi-millionaires bigger salaries and defend racist and incompetent cops. They also defend incompetent employees. I saw it at the Post Office, the only people to need the union were the ones who did the least work and the most bitching.

Unions had their day, but when the Union defends beating an old man without question it proves how truly irrelevant they are to defending the rights of the DECENT working man and woman who don't act inappropriately.

In Other FOotball news

Just got home from Sun Devil stadium where I watched my Ducks defeat the ASU Sun Devils. First game I've seen this year, since I moved from OR to AZ and had to sell all of my tickets.

Terrence Whitehead ends up with the Double Triple (100 yds rushing and 100 yd recieving)...a beautiful night for football in Tempe, even better for those of us in green.

Defense wins football games

My son's flag football team (2-0) was playing another undefeated team today. Most of the game his team was a mess, but with 44 seconds left the game was tied 12-12. My son lines up in linebacker spot and their QB drops back. He throws. Ball goes up, into a group of 4 boys. My son jumps a little bit higher and at full stride he intercepts the ball. He never breaks stride as he alludes the entire team to run 3/4 the length of the field for what turns out to be the game winning touchdown.

Sweet

Al Hamilton...spinning in his grave

I guess Alexander Hamilton never presumed we'd have an utterly shameless president

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers,

"The Appointing Power of the President," No. 76 To what purpose
then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of
their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation.
It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and
would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State
prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to
popularity. . . . He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the
most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than
that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of
being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the
necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments
of his pleasure.

Let’s not forget that the Imperial Presidency we see today is not what the framers envisioned. So, Al and his pals would likely be quite shocked at today’s goings on.

This is not so much what we’ve seen in our lifetimes, but remember Congress is designed to be the superior body.
The Senate’s consent is required on major appointments
Congress can remove a President or a Supreme Court Justice, not vice versa
Congress controls the purse
Congress declares war

Congress over the years has allowed the Executive to act in ways not envisioned by the framers and Bush is just the best example of why that’s bad for America.

Those pesky states

I'm making the assumption that the Bushies (who still claim some Conservative street cred despite the fact that they have less Conservativism in them than Barry Goldwater had in his pinkie) , support the Federal Government's dramatic usurpation of state powers to dictate to the people of Oregon on an issue they have TWICE voted for directly. If my assumption is correct, please tell me how that opinion squares with your rantings of about the State's democratic rights about banning gay marriage.

I suppose they are hoping for a little judicial activism here, right. Dictatorship of the judiciary and all that...

Right to Die

"The John Roberts Court will hear its first high-profile
arguments today, when the justices take up a case involving doctor-assisted
suicide. Oregon law allows terminally ill people to take lethal drugs to end
their lives. But the Bush administration has tried to override this law by
threatening to prosecute doctors involved in such cases. The Supreme Court
should make it clear that Oregon can allow doctor-assisted suicide," The New
York Times reports. In Cato's friend of the court brief http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/gonzales-oregon.pdf
,
co-author Mark Moller, a Cato senior fellow in constitutional studies, argues
that the federal government must respect the special role of states as
laboratories of experiment in our constitutional framework.

George Will calls out the President on Conservativism

This would appear to be the nail in the coffin that was the Bush Presidency. Will has called out Bush on Conservativism, something I've said for years. Will joins the chorus of other real Conservatives, who still believe in smaller government and state's rights. But will is more mainstream than Pat Buchanan and I think this represents the true end of the President's effectiveness within his own party.

More Proof of the President's Lame Duckness

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9601116/

As I said earlier today after reading George Will call out the President is NOT a Conservative, that this presidency is over.

Connecticut: democracy inaction

Democracy in action. As such those Bushies who keep complaining that the courts should stay out of this and let the legislatures decide will wholly support this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20051002-11084100-bc-us-gayunions.xml