More failure

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13361343/

Why no comments about this most egregious example of failed Bush foreign diplomacy. While Bush et al are in a pissing match over who gets to sit at the table, NK is off building more nukes AND developing missile technology that will reach America. Makes it seem like offering to sit down with them at the table and giving them some oil and food would have been a small price to pay for our safety. Remember, NK is holding the cards, they have NOTHING to lose.

So far Bush is 0 for 3 on the Axis of Evil. Let’s hope they learn something from their failed efforts with NK when dealing with Iran, but I doubt it. After all, there are Mexicans mowing lawns in California and boys kissing in Massachusetts that must be dealt with.

Double Standard

Every time Michelle Wie or Anika Sorenstam fails to make a cut in a men's pro tournament it is some sort of proof that woman can't play on the men's tour. Well, if those few examples make that so, what does it mean when the world's best golfer can't make the cut? Does that mean he doesn't belong on the tour?

Thought so, now shut up.

Music

Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" is going to be a HUGE hit.

Still can't get enough of DCFC.

Can NOT wait for the Shins new CD...October release?

And I'm going to admit it...I am into Kelly Clarkson. I'm not proud...no I AM Proud. The songs I've heard rock..."walkaway" come on. Just don't tell my brother.

History will judge harshly

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13181735/

In 20 years, Americans will look back in disgust at this effort, just like we do today when we look back on when Southern states used their own laws to encourage and legally protect discrimination. Even "conservatives" will look back and deny they were ever homophobic.

Fortunately for us in America all the real problems have been solved, so we can focus on the real issue …boys kissing.

Now that this clown has fixed everything else

Now, that everything is peaceful in the Middle East, the budget is balanced and every child has enough food and health care, it's now time to spend our time stopping from boys kissing.

Of course, considering that Bush has been pissing on the Constitution since the day he took office, I wouldn't expect him to realize that the Constitution was put in place to limit the powers of the Federal Government. it is truly sickening that this hypocritical criminal is going to use the Constitution to try to raise his poll numbers.

When will the impeachment begin for this fool?

and God told me that tornadoes will hit the middle of the country

What a crackpot.

The Guard rescues Bush again...? Probably not

Against it before they were for it. Six months ago Secy. Chertoff said using National Guard on the border would be "horribly over-expensive and very difficult."


I know the Bush WH is a master in foreign policy, exemplified daily with events like N. Korea and Iran developing nukes, Iraq, Afghanistan falling back into Taliban control, trade issues with everyone from the UK and Canada to Venezuela, and of course Hamas being freely elected, but let’s just imagine the political repercussions of an 18 year old kid in a US military uniform shooting a Mexican citizen on the border of Texas or Arizona.

Why the drama? She's unelectable

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12762092/

Hilary is NEVER going to be elected President. you think the conservatives turned out for Bush II, they'll turn out in RECORD numbers to vote against Hilary...I don't care who is running.

As for Murdoch, yes he's Conservative, but he'll do anything to make a buck. And for years Conservativism has been very lucrative, as Hilary moves to the right he can move to the left and still make money.

If Hilary is the Dems best hope in 2008, you might want to get used to having a Republican in the WH until 2012

it's like changing the artwork in your house when it's got 4 feet of water on the floor

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/19/mcclellan/index.html

Every single time you watched McClellan it simply reminded you he was NO Ari Fleischer. But, I’m sure that changing the messenger is going to turn this corrupt, amoral administration into a virtuous one. Not that getting rid of the incompetent Sec of Defense or the corrupt VP would accomplish anything…

I guess you wouldn't have to deal with an insurgency

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060418/ts_nm/nuclear_iran_dc_18

This is the incredible irony that the Bushies have provided while destroying the GOP and America’s standing in the world. Like in Iraq where War is Peace and every terrorist bomb over there is good in our war on terrorism. Bush would use Nukes to make the world safe from Nukes.

You can’t make this shit up.

sixth general calls for Rummy to go home

The following is response to a Bushie friend of mine who claimed that any general who criticizes the Sec of Def is incompetent, he's also called the Democrat partisans, haters of America..you know typical Bushie bullshit

Showing exactly what you know. You don’t make General in the US Military by being incompetent, after all it’s not the Bush administration.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-13-rumsfeld-generals_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

"We need a new secretary of Defense," retired major general Charles Swannack, former commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, said on CNN. He said Rumsfeld had micromanaged the war.

Retired major general John Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 agreed.

Marine lieutenant general Greg Newbold, the former Pentagon top operations officer, who called Iraq an "unnecessary war" in a Time magazine column this week.
• Major general Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training Iraqi troops in 2003 and 2004, wrote last month in The New York Times that Rumsfeld is "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically."
• Army major general John Riggs, who told The Washington Post that his former colleagues in the military believe Rumsfeld and his close aides "should be cleared out."
• Marine general Anthony Zinni, the former command of U.S. Central Command and a longtime critic, said Rumsfeld should retire.
Despite Bush's support, such criticism could be enough to help force out Rumsfeld, said Loren Thompson, a military expert at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia think tank.
"It is so uncommon for senior military officers in the United States to criticize civilian leaders that it has to make an impression on the White House and Congress," Thompson said.

Another day, another lie exposed

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

It's been so long

It's been so long and no word from me. DeLay quits, the continued incompetence of the Bush WH, the GOP abandoning the Bush ship as fast as they can. The all of the sudden critical issue of illegal immigration (I guess the GOP needs something other than supporting Bush, destroying America's economy with staggering debt, criminal behavior and the Iraq civil war to run on in November) is huge.

But this latest hypocrisy and possible treason is too much.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/07/whitehouse.leak/index.html

He didn't flip flop? How precious is that. Let's ignore that leaking classified information should put every one of the amoral idiots in prison for decades, but the issue for him is whether he flip-flopped. Of course he didn't, when he said People who leak classified information should go to jail, he wasn't talking about him. The man thinks he's King, can you imagine if Henry VIII thought the rules he made applied to him? Do you think any amoral dictator beleives the rules apply to them. Come on...this man and adminstration is pathological.

If I was a Republican or more importantly a COnservative I'd be abandoning this immoral criminal ship as fast as I could (see Fukuyama and Bartlett's books in recent weeks).

trashing a man's legacy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_en_mu/obit_owens

yahoo and EVERYONE else is going to say that Buck was the Hee Haw host which completely diminishes his contributions to country music. The man had so many hits, the Beatles loved him, and these obits are going to make him seem like a joke.

I weep with you today Dwight.

No wonder France didn't go along

No wonder France didn’t go along. They knew the truth.

France awaits the NeoCons apology.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11927856/


But on that very trip, there was also a secret contact made. The contact was brokered by the French intelligence service, sources say. Intelligence sources say that in a New York hotel room, CIA officers met with an intermediary who represented Sabri. All discussions between Sabri and the CIA were conducted through a "cutout," or third party. Through the intermediary, intelligence sources say, the CIA paid Sabri more than $100,000 in what was, essentially, "good-faith money." And for his part, Sabri, again through the intermediary, relayed information about Saddam’s actual capabilities.
…

For example, consider biological weapons, a key concern before the war. The CIA said Saddam had an "active" program for "R&D, production and weaponization" for biological agents such as anthrax. Intelligence sources say Sabri indicated Saddam had no significant, active biological weapons program. Sabri was right. After the war, it became clear that there was no program.
Another key issue was the nuclear question: How far away was Saddam from having a bomb? The CIA said if Saddam obtained enriched uranium, he could build a nuclear bomb in "several months to a year." Sabri said Saddam desperately wanted a bomb, but would need much more time than that. Sabri was more accurate.

A worse scenario than I imagined before

This is a disastrous outcome that I really hadn’t envisioned.

The prevention of a Sunni-Shia civil war should now be America's foremost priority in Iraq. Such a war might not only suck in Iraq's immediate neighbours, pitting Saudi-backed Sunnis against Iran-backed Shias.

Imagine if Iraq, instead of being the jumping off point for “democracy” in the middle east, was actually the Sarajevo (killing of Archduke Ferdinand) for a horrible regional war amongst the countries in the area.


From this article in the Economist:

SOMETIMES after people peer into an abyss, they have the sense to step back. For
the moment, however, Iraqis are continuing their march of folly. The bombing
last week of the Shias' revered Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra unleashed
the most intense sectarian violence since the American invasion and the toppling
of Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago. What began as a Sunni-dominated
insurgency against the occupiers is now beginning to look increasingly like a
civil war between Iraqis themselves. This is no doubt exactly what the mosque's
attackers were hoping for. Such a war would plunge Iraq deeper into mayhem and
mark the definitive failure of George Bush's vaunted “freedom” project in the
Middle East, not just in the eyes of Arabs but in those of Americans, too. In
the aftermath of the new violence, one poll showed Mr Bush's approval rating at
34%, the lowest of his presidency.

A schism not just in Iraq, but
also in Islam The prevention of a Sunni-Shia civil war should now be America's
foremost priority in Iraq. Such a war might not only suck in Iraq's immediate
neighbours, pitting Saudi-backed Sunnis against Iran-backed Shias. It might have
effects even further afield, along the Sunni-Shia fault-line that runs through
Islam as a whole (see article). At this point, however, it is no longer in the
power of the Americans alone to prevent such a catastrophe. It is primarily a
job for Iraqis themselves. And it is not so much a military job as a political
one. The Shia majority that came out on top in January's general election needs
urgently to show that it is willing to share real power with the parties that
represent the Sunni minority.

Until now, two menacing factors have
worked against this. First, most Sunni Arabs, who have run Iraq since its
creation nearly 90 years ago, seem bizarrely loth to admit that they number
barely a fifth of the population—and cannot see why they should not continue to
run the show. Hence their endorsement of the insurgents, even while electing
representatives to parliament. Second, the newly dominant Shia Arabs, with 60%
of the people, seem increasingly loth to grant the Sunnis a fair share in
government, especially since they seem unable or unwilling to stop insurgents
from carrying out sectarian outrages such as bombing the shrine. Many Shias now
think they simply can and must bash the Sunnis into submission—and may better be
able to do so once the ring-holding Americans and their allies go. Worse still,
the Shias are divided among themselves, with three of their parties competing
bitterly within the ruling alliance. After the shrine's bombing, many prominent
Shias actually blamed America for the deed. With so deep a reluctance to embrace
compromise or reason, what possible hope for the future?
Optimistic as it may
seem in the circumstances, the events surrounding the bombing of the shrine may
hasten the much-needed first big step towards forestalling all-out civil war:
the formation of a unity government embracing all the main ethnic and religious
factions. Though the new constitution gives the recently renominated prime
minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a couple more months to forge a ruling coalition,
he should speed things up before sectarian hatreds overtake the country. It is
vital that at least the four—and preferably the five—leading alliances in
parliament (the Islamist Shia list to which Dr Jaafari belongs, the Kurds, the
main Sunni Islamist group and the non-sectarian secularists led by Iyad Allawi,
a Shia who has Sunni partners) team up in a government. It is equally vital that
key ministries—defence, interior and finance, among others—be shared out, with
Sunnis getting serious ones, and that ministers are prevented from packing them,
as before, with cronies. And the Shias should respond to the urgings of
America's ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, that the present interior minister, a
Shia who is said to have allowed sectarian death squads to operate out of his
ministry, be sacked.
Once in place, it is no less essential that a unity
government amends the new constitution. Much of the constitution is sound, and
it was duly approved in a national referendum. All the same, it has become
increasingly vital to reassure the Sunnis both that their provinces will get a
fair share of future oil revenues and that a Shia “super-region” will not emerge
in the south and so break Iraq up. The hardest task of a new government will be
to disband militias and reintegrate them into genuinely national forces. So far,
most of the Iraqis recruited into the new Iraqi army have been Shia, and their
loyalty to the idea of a multi-confessional state is at best uncertain.
For
the Shia leadership, making compromises such as these will require a supreme
effort of self-control. Having been long oppressed, Iraq's Shias feel that they
are gathering strength and are owed their place in the sun. The insurgents have
sorely provoked them, striking mercilessly at their homes, markets and holy
places. Until recently, influential politicians and clergy, especially the
Shias' Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had succeeded, as outrage followed
atrocity, in restraining the hotheads from wholesale communal revenge. But their
words are now being less dutifully heeded.

America in the middle It
would be wrong to say that the insurgents are beating the Americans on the
battlefield. But they don't have to. The insurgents win merely by making Iraq
ungovernable. The occupying forces and their Iraqi allies have been losing fewer
men than before. But they are no longer the main targets. The Americans and
their allies must not stay indefinitely: virtually all Iraqis long for them to
go. Yet most of Iraq's elected leaders, struggling to build a coalition, agree
that an American rush for the exit would, at this stage, still be likelier to
provoke a descent into all-out civil war than prevent it.
The greater the
sectarian mayhem, the happier the insurgents. Only when the sour Sunni minority
is properly represented in a new government is there the faintest chance of
persuading enough of the insurgents and their supporters that they have a stake
in the new order. Dr Jaafari and his Shia friends have no time to lose. They
must compromise, and fast, or risk being left with only the rump of what was
once Iraq.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Weren't we hostages to middle eastern oil production 3 days ago?

The man hasn't vetoed ANYTHING, not a spending bill, not anything and now he's threatening to veto ANY bill that forbids Arab interests from running our Ocean Ports. One of the very governments that 2 days ago, who were "holding us hostage" with our oil dependence, now they are going to protect our most sensitive places of entry.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/21/port.security/index.html

Usualy Bush speech full of distortion and fear

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11465801/

Bush continues to imply that these unstable governments in the middle east are we get all of our oil from. When the VAST majority of our oil comes from North America. Below is a chart of Imports, let’s not forget that the US produces 40% of it’s own oil. So which unstable Middle East country are we overly dependant on?

Typical use of fear to distort the truth from the Bushies…good thing those crazy bastards are rioting over cartoons makes you worried about your oil when it has almost NO IMPACT on US oil supplies.

Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries)(Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country Dec-05 Nov-05 YTD 2005 Dec-04 Jan - Dec 2004
CANADA 1,892 1,776 1,642 1,556 1,616
MEXICO 1,707 1,658 1,550 1,552 1,598
SAUDI ARABIA 1,438 1,267 1,438 1,449 1,495
VENEZUELA 1,183 1,009 1,231 1,379 1,297
NIGERIA 1,174 1,163 1,060 1,006 1,078
ANGOLA 425 641 450 306 306
IRAQ 390 572 520 626 655
ECUADOR 340 264 276 261 232
KUWAIT 268 273 215 205 241
ALGERIA 212 265 228 199 215
BRAZIL 159 65 94 0 51
GABON 139 66 127 233 142
COLOMBIA 135 281 156 135 142
NORWAY 66 103 119 63 143
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO 62 70 62 22 49

LAME

I saw the headline/hyperlink that said “first photo of Bush and Abramoff”. So, I clicked you can imagine my disappointment with the lameness of calling this a photo of the two of them. I do believe that Bush and he were good buddies and as usual Bush abandons his friends when they no longer provide any utility or they get into trouble (see Kenny Lay), but this is dumb

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1158908,00.html?cnn=yes

In response the biggest Bushie i know

He sent me this link and attempted to call me out as some lover of Iranian nuke development:

From: Names Deleted to protect the ignorant
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 21:19
To: Me and some other friends
Subject: How about you guys?
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/821b8e1c-8f47-11da-b430-0000779e2340.html
Or do you support letting them have nukes? Where do you stand? There's no room
for nuance. It's one or the other

.
Here is my response, in typical fashion because it's so damn easy the Bushies attempt to be cute provides the opening to point out that this is Bush's mess:

Geez, if Bush had not blown his military wad on Iraq, he might actually be in a
position to do something other than ask the Russians to take the lead. (funny
despots working with despots).

As I've told you a thousand times, Iran has a HUGE secular pro-west faction. The WORST THING Bush could do would be to invade or some other military dumb shit. It would turn those friendly to us, against us.

But, hey that Bush foreign policy is working wonders in the
middle east isn't it? Since Bush took over, two radical groups have been
democratically elected in the region, in Iran and now you've got Hamas running
Palestine.

And like I said before the Iraq debacle, if they have nukes or WMD, Israel will take care of it. Especially now, since Bush's foreign policy incompetence put Hamas in power, which will give rise to Netanyahu in Israel and that crazy bastard's going to bomb everyone.

Looks like Bush blew it. AGAIN

Oh, yeah and Osama Bin Laden is still alive, while the Taliban controls
most of Afghanistan. Well played George.

May be time to raise the terror level.