Well it looks like somebody at the DNC is awake:

DNC Special Report: Memo to President Bush

Dear President Bush,
August has been a difficult month for Americans. While you were vacationing at your ranch and raising millions of dollars for your re-election campaign, American soldiers kept dying in Iraq, the American economy continued to flounder, and new reports emerged describing just how little your administration cares about our environment. But at least someone got some good news: your friends at Dick Cheney's Halliburton have been awarded even more uncontested contracts for oil in Iraq.

- rob 6:29 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Man, feel the love.

Ex-Envoy Criticizes Bush's Postwar Policy

"There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing."

In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?"

Wow. But hey he's just some Bush hater.

Zinni's comments were especially striking because he endorsed President Bush in the 2000 campaign, shortly after retiring from active duty, and serves as an adviser to the State Department on anti-terror initiatives in Indonesia and the Philippines. He preceded Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as chief of the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. military operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

No, he's like more and more people, a patriot finally willing to say outloud what many of us are thinking. A great wrong is happening to our nation right now, and it is being done from within. Bush is a danger, not just a failure, a danger.

But Bush is strong on defense! Really? Read about the reaction the military gave to this speech:

Zinni's comments to the joint meeting in Arlington of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association, two professional groups for officers, were greeted warmly by his audience, with prolonged applause at the end. Some officers bought tapes and compact discs of the speech to give to others.

- rob 6:26 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Thanks George: We’re Number 5!

Ah, what does America care what the world thinks. Well, if you want their money you should care.

Foreign investment dries up

… the United States that showed the largest drop in investment from overseas, falling from first to fifth position worldwide with a drop of 80% in foreign investment compared to 2001.

Emphasis mine. Next November please take an hour from your daily life and take a step in saving the future of our nation.

Whistle Ass’s mess is going to take decades to repair, not years, decades.

- rob 6:20 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The Looting of America

Bill Clinton: The Era of Big Government is over!

George W. Bush: No it Aints!

Report Finds Size Of Government Up Sharply Under Bush

The Bush Administration has brought the era of big government back, say a Brookings Institution scholar and a growing number of conservatives dismayed about such growth under the Republicans' watch.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reports:

"While the number of official government employees declined slightly after President Bush took office, the Brookings study to be released Friday finds the number of full-time employees working on government contracts and grants has zoomed by more than one million people since 1999, bringing the overall head count to more than 12.1 million as of this past October."

The "eight-page report is likely to fuel debate about the administration's approach, at a time when budget deficits are ballooning and Mr. Bush is pressuring Democrats to hold down federal spending." The report "finds that the growth is happening entirely outside traditional civil-service hiring channels.

'The Bush administration is overseeing a vast expansion of the largely hidden federal work force of contractors and grantees,' according to the report, written by Paul Light, who directs the Center for Public Service at Brookings, a nonpartisan think tank."

Privatization means many things to many people. To George Bush it means: Taking money from governmental control to private control. Bush is not moving control of our nations bureaucracy to private concerns for reasons of efficiency and savings (two lofty goals), but for the sole reason of removing congressional oversight on said bureaucracy. Your money is being taken from a public employee, that in the end is overseen by an elected official whom (supposedly) represents you, to a private employee in a corporation that is not beholden to anyone. If things look bad for the private concern (complaints, missing funds, and what not) they’ll just need to increase their campaign contributions, that’s all. Bush has made much of our government more faceless and unaccountable than before while proposing the opposite. Your money has moved from control of your elected official to the control of Bush’s campaign donors and friends.

If you want to see real looting, don’t look to Iraq. The out-right theft is happening down in Washington.

- rob 6:16 PM - [PermaLink] -

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So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?

Is it to early for a psycho-analysis of Bush? A Post-mortem of a man, as he is still pResident? Not for a site with a name like ours!

As the alcoholic George Bush approached his 40th birthday in 1986, he had achieved nothing he could call his own. He was all too aware that none of his educational and professional accomplishments would have occured without his father. He felt so low that he did not care if he lived or died. Taking a friend out for a flight in a Cessna aeroplane, it only became apparent he had not flown one before when they nearly crashed on take-off. Narrowly avoiding stalling a few times, they crash-landed and the friend breathed a sigh of relief - only for Bush to rev up the engine and take off again.

Not long afterwards, staring at his vomit-spattered face in the mirror, this dangerously self-destructive man fell to his knees and implored God to help him and became a teetotalling, fundamentalist Christian. David Frum, his speechwriter, described the change: "Sigmund Freud imported the Latin pronoun id to describe the impulsive, carnal, unruly elements of the human personality. [In his youth] Bush's id seems to have been every bit as powerful and destructive as Clinton's id. But sometime in Bush's middle years, his id was captured, shackled and manacled, and locked away."

- rob 3:47 PM - [PermaLink] -

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White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says

Okay. It looks like a US paper is carrying the story.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — Top White House officials personally approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the United States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when most flights were still grounded, a former White House adviser said today.

Could Ari have lied? Shocking.

Well, It looks like Snopes already has an update on their report about this. I disagree with them discounting the whole affair. A flight did happen, it may or may not have happened before restrictions were lifted, and the FBI did give them brief interviews. The point is though at the time hundreds of American citizens were rounded up by Ashcroft, some of whom had very scanty connections to terrorism, unlike some of the Bin Laden family. They didn't get to see lawyers, they didn't get the protection of the constitution, but some bin laden family members got a chartered flight. I think it is definitely worth discussing.

- rob 9:28 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Bin Laden family's US exit 'approved'

THE United States allowed members of Osama bin Laden’s family to jet out of the US in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even as American airspace was closed.

Former White House counter-terrorism tsar Richard Clarke said the Bush administration sanctioned the repatriation of about 140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians, including relatives of the al-Qaida chief.

"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an aeroplane filled with Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, leave the country," he said.

Mr Clarke said he checked with FBI officials, who gave the go ahead. "So I said: ‘Fine, let it happen.’"

He first asked the bureau to check that no-one "inappropriate" was leaving.

"I have no idea if they did a good job," he added.

Dale Watson, the FBI’s former head of counter-terrorism, said that, while the bureau identified the Saudis who were on the plane, "they were not subject to serious interrogations".

Hello? American Press?!? There's a story over here?!? You all mentioned it a bit in September, 2001, but stopped mentioning it when Ari said it did not happen. Well it looks like it did. Stop looking at MTV awards footage of Madonna kissing Spears already and report the news!

- rob 2:29 PM - [PermaLink] -

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EPA lifts ban on selling PCB sites

Look what happens when terrorists bomb buildings in Iraq, our domestic environment protections get weakened!

The Bush administration has ended a 25-year-old ban on the sale of land polluted with PCBs. The ban was intended to prevent hundreds of polluted sites from being redeveloped in ways that spread the toxin or raise public health risks.
...

The decision, already in effect, has not been made public. It is being treated as a "new interpretation" of existing law, according to the memo, which was obtained by USA TODAY. As such, no public comment was required.

Hey "interpret" this: pResident Whistle Ass is a fraud, a failure, and a danger to our country!

- rob 2:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

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She's at center of high-tech voting debate

Bev Harris, who broke the whole Diebold voting machine "security" issue is finally getting (though lukewarm) some press for her fight to save democracy.

The ultimate issue, she said, is the future of democracy in a world where politicians and prospective government contractors are able to control companies that count tens of millions of votes.

Without reforms, Harris claims electoral fraud isn't just possible, it's inevitable — and quite possibly on a large scale.

"You come up with $50,000 for a programmer with a gambling problem and say, 'Can you do this for me?' It's going to happen."

- rob 2:23 PM - [PermaLink] -

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DC 9/11: Time Of Crisis


"Hey George pretend you interested in what I'm saying"

Hey those of you with VCRs and cable with Showtime (I don't qalify for that combo), set your timer's to: Showtime East 09/07/03 8:00 PM, and be prepared to vomit.

I some how think they'll remove the 15 to 20 minutes of him reading the goat book.

- rob 2:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The Magdalene Sisters

I Saw this movie this weekend. I knew of the story before hand, but even so, I was unprepared for the overpowering dread this film left me with (as one moviegoer said to another as we left the theater, “well now what do you have planned for us, hitting our heads with a hammer), nonetheless I recommend this film.

Here’s Roger Ebert’s explanation of what the film is about:

Here is a movie about barbaric practices against women, who were locked up without trial and sentenced to forced, unpaid labor for such crimes as flirting with boys, becoming pregnant out of wedlock, or being raped. These inhuman punishments did not take place in Afghanistan under the Taliban, but in Ireland under the Sisters of Mercy. And they are not ancient history. The Magdalene Laundries flourished through the 1970s and processed some 30,000 victims; the last were closed in 1996.

"The Magdalene Sisters" is a harrowing look at institutional cruelty, perpetrated by the Catholic Church in Ireland, and justified by a perverted hysteria about sex. "I've never been with any lads ever," one girl says, protesting her sentence, "and that's the god's honest truth." A nun replies: "But you'd like to, wouldn't you?" And because she might want to, because she flirted with boys outside the walls of her orphanage, she gets what could amount to a life sentence at slave labor.

This film has been attacked by the Catholic League, but its facts stand up; a series of Irish Times articles on the Internet talk of cash settlements totaling millions of pounds to women who were caught in the Magdalene net. What is inexplicable is that this practice could have existed in our own time, in a Western European nation. The laundries were justified because they saved the souls of their inmates--but what about the souls of those who ran them?
…

... the closing credits remind us once again that the Magdalene Laundries existed and did their evil work in God's name. The Church in Ireland has changed almost beyond recognition in recent years, and is now, like the American church, making amends for the behavior of some clergy. And the Irish Times articles report that some Protestant denominations had (and have) similar punishments for sexuality, real or suspected. The movie is not so much an attack on the Catholic Church as on the universal mind-set that allows transgressions beyond all decency, if they are justified by religious hysteria. Even today there are women walled up in solitary confinement in closed rooms in their own homes in the Middle East, punished for crimes no more serious, or trivial, that those of the Magdalene laundresses.

We look at Afghanistan and we think “well that could never happen in the west.” We read about this and think, “well that could never happen in America.” So we try to forget the Mission Schools Native Americans were forced to go to, where their mouths would be literally washed with soap if they spoke a word of their native tongue. And we try to forget the sterilization of orphans in the fifties (or that a charity now will pay drug addicts $200 to get sterilized) . And we definitely try to forget the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (that didn’t end until 1972).

A great source of evil is an institution. Institutions are not evil in and of themselves, of course not, society needs institutions, it’s a mandatory ingredient. But an institution diminishes personal guilt. When you work at an institution and do horrible things, you are just doing your job. When you combine institutions with religion (like the laundries) you create an opportunity for true evil to arise, now your horrid acts are not just your job, they are acts of a greater good. One does not feel guilty of beating a young girl if this beating will save the girl's soul (but alas, look what it does to both their souls).

Ashcroft and Bush must know that separation and Church and State is both for the good of the people and the good of religion. No one wants to see their religion used for such wickedness as described above. But if a church (any church) becomes the defacto law in this nation the Taliban will happen here. Afghanistan isn’t a victim of Islamic law gone made, it is a victim of religious law gone mad. That wouldn’t happen with Protestants you say? Please ask the victims of witch burnings on their opinion of that.

Separation of church and state saves the soul of both.

Freedom of religion allows the religions to flourish in decency. Undo influence of any religion draws that religion to evil. The same goes for political parties. One should never have all the power, neither republican nor democrat. Constant competition of who is better, who represents the people more, etc is what keeps them and anyone in check.

- rob 2:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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For those of you who missed it yesterday (I did).

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 124

Special bonus, this edition is: The Whistle-Ass Edition

1. The Whistle-Ass Administration
Want to hear the misAdministration's latest excuse for the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I'm warning you: this excuse is so weak that if you asked it to walk ten paces it would say "Screw that, I'm going back to bed." Okay, here goes. Administration officials said last week that they are suddenly concerned that all the bullet-proof, solid-as-a-lump-of-titanium evidence they'd gathered about WMD may have actually been stinking, rotten lies passed on to them by - gasp - Iraqi double agents. That's right, the Administration is now alledging that Saddam Hussein sent out spies to spread false rumors that Iraq was in possession of WMD, thus forcing the United States to tip its hand and invade. I'm sorry, I'm writing this down but it's just making no sense. Saddam Hussein sent spies to convince U.S. intelligence officials that he had WMD when he really didn't, so that we would invade his country, remove him from power, kill his sons, and kill him if we ever got our hands on him? And we were completely fooled by this ruse? I actually can't believe the Administration has sunk this low. It's pathetic. Oh, and by the way, guess where this latest information has come from: believe it or not, "former Iraqi intelligence agents." Boy, all that British intelligence must have really sucked if our government is now relying on the word of people who used to spy for Saddam Hussein to convince America that we were right to invade Iraq. What next?

The Republican Party
Next time you hear a Republican complaining about how Democrats are un-American, ask them this question: why is the Republican party outsourcing its fundraising activity to Asia? That's right, believe it or not, and despite the patriotic God-Bless-America rhetoric the party likes to spew, the GOP is using call centers in Gurgaon and Noida in India to raise funds for the party and for George Whistle-Ass Bush's presidential campaign. "Enthusiastic fund-raisers" in India will now be cold-calling American familes (probably either right around dinner-time or at six o'clock in the morning) using a panhandling process which involves a "high degree of automation in order to limit human intervention." So basically the GOP is employing robots in India to try and scrounge money off of Americans. How patriotic. Seems to me that we have plenty of unemployed people in America right now who could do this job, but then that would probably be too expensive and you can hardly blame the GOP for wanting to look abroad for cheap labor. I mean, duh. Geez, you'd think we wanted them to stimulate the economy or something. Not that most of the unemployed people in America are going to want to do jack shit for George Whistle-Ass Bush anyway, and rightly so. Hey, I have a question: if the Republican Party is leaving America, does that mean they don't love it any more...?

- rob 12:46 PM - [PermaLink] -

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CBS | Top Ten Things Overheard at President Bush's Labor Day Barbecue

10. "After 35 days of vacation, I think I've earned a day off"

9. "Secret Service! Cheney's headed for the pork ribs!"

8. "It's true that we haven't found any relish yet, but we believe it exists and we will continue to search for it"

7. "What a great idea to use camp X-ray detainees as waiters"

6. "Check out my hilarious 'Commander-N-Chef' apron!"

5. "These hot dogs are so good, they make me want to invade Frankfurt!"

4. "I still can't believe that moron's president"

3. "Who made this potato salad -- Chemical Ali?"

2. "A toast to all the American taxpayers who paid for this spread"

1. "Laura, honey, am I on fire again?"

- rob 12:36 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"The Dog called him Whistle Ass"

- rob 12:34 PM - [PermaLink] -

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