My Flag

I was sitting in the parking lot at Shop Rite, staring at the flag, flying in tatters in inclement weather. It was a sorry sight. What the hell is wrong with America? I always protected the flag. I folded it into triangles every night at sunset and it never touched the ground, never on my watch. It's everything to me. It's everybody whoever fought in a war so I could suck the air. It's sacred. Not flying around in rags. What the hell is that?

- Michael 4:58 PM - [PermaLink] -

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TIMELINES

Iraq, 1916, May 9: Secret agreements between Great Britain and France. Lower Mesopotamia (from Persian Gulf to a point north of Baghdad) assigned to the British; northerly portion of Arab state divided into British and French spheres.

1917, March 11: Baghdad taken by the British. Economic restoration of the region goes steadily forward under British control.

1919. Great Britain given a mandate for Mesopotamia by the Supreme Council at Paris.

1923, March 25: A treaty is signed with Great Britain which allows the maintenance of British troops in Iraq until 1928, and provides for British advisers for at least 15 years. The native army is to be trained by British officers and foreigners are to be tried before mixed courts.

1928, January 5: Prime Minister Jafar Pasha el Askari announces the Government will cooperate with the British government in sending military forces against the Wahabi tribesmen who have attacked Iraqi frontier tribes.

1933, August 6: Open warfare near Zakho is reported between the Iraqi army and several hundred Assyrian invaders.

1933, August 16: Hundreds of Assyrians are reported massacred in northern Iraq.

1933, September 11: The cabinet pledges continued allegiance with Great Britain.

1933, October 29: The cabinet resigns and King Ghazi refuses general elections.

1945, September: China occupies Vietnam north of the 16th parallel; British troops occupy Vietnam south of the 16th parallel.

So there it is. Fucking World War Two wasn't three weeks old before the British got into Vietnam, after their fiasco in Iraq.

What are we, the goddamn British? Didn't anybody tell the guys in charge -- make that Republican imperialists -- that world domination DOESN'T WORK? Where the hell is George Washington? This country is being dragged down the shithole by a pack of fulminating, raving lunatics, and Americans can't make up their mind. They sit on their hands. The jury is out.

I got news for you, the jury is over. It's a military tribunal now, and a lying thief has your gonads in a vice.

- Michael 1:48 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Quickies:


This Is Bush's Vietnam


Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirsblockquote>The same Gallup Poll showed an 8-point lead for Bush amongst registered voters (52%-44%). Before you get discouraged by these results, you should be more upset that Gallup gets major media outlets to tout these polls and present a false, disappointing account of the actual state of the race. Why?

Because the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat.

Wondering what it would be

to have lived in Vietnam in 300,000 B.C. under Binh-Gia, Nui-Do, and Son-Vi

- Michael 9:07 PM - [PermaLink] -

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How to Start Each Day With a Positive Outlook

1. Open a new file in your PC.
2. Name it "George W. Bush"
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your PC will ask you, "do you really want to get rid of George W. Bush?"
6. Answer calmly, "yes," and press the mouse button firmly.
7. Feel better.....

- rob 9:24 AM - [PermaLink] -

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The Greed Factor
Sanctions against rogue regimes would have been abandoned if Dick Cheney had had his way.

As Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Cheney helped lead a multinational coalition against Iraq and was one of the architects of a post-war economic embargo designed to choke off funds to the country. He insisted the world should “maintain sanctions, at least of some kind,” so Saddam Hussein could not “rebuild the military force he’s used against his neighbors.”

But less than six years later, as a private businessman, Cheney apparently had more important interests than preventing Hussein from rebuilding his army. While he claimed during the 2000 campaign that, as CEO of Halliburton, he had “imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq,” confidential UN records show that, from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was in charge. Halliburton acquired its interest in both firms while Cheney was at the helm, and continued doing business through them until just months before Cheney was named George W. Bush’s running mate.

Perhaps even more troubling, at the same time Cheney was doing business with Iraq, he launched a public broadside against sanctions laws designed to cut off funds to regimes like Iran, which the State Department listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1998, Cheney traveled to Kuala Lumpur to attack his own country's terrorism policies for being too strict. Under the headline, “Former US Defence Secretary Says Iran-Libya Sanctions Act ‘Wrong,’” the Malaysian News Agency reported that Cheney “hit out at his government" and said sanctions on terrorist countries were "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and [were] a bad policy.”

Two years later, Cheney traveled to another country to demand America weaken restrictions on doing business with Iran’s petroleum industry, despite Clinton administration warnings that Iranian oil revenues could be used to fund terrorism. “We're kept out of [Iran] primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran,” he told an oil conference in Canada. “I think that's a mistake.”

Now new reports suggest Cheney’s desire to do business with Iran may have amounted to more than words. Details of Halliburton’s activities in Iran have been investigated by the Treasury Department and were recently forwarded to the U.S. attorney in Houston. Such an action is taken only after Treasury finds evidence of ‘serious and willful violations’ of sanctions laws. Halliburton already admits one of its subsidiaries “performs between $30 [million] and $40 million annually in oilfield service work in Iran.”

- rob 4:55 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Far graver than Vietnam
Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale

'Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

- rob 4:51 PM - [PermaLink] -

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GIs claim threat by Army
Soldiers say they were told to re-enlist or face deployment to Iraq

COLORADO SPRINGS - Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.

Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

- rob 4:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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God-fearing Morons

Here's a one-way conversation I had with someone at the New York Times two days ago (sorry, I have to protect privacy, so my responses only):

Subject: P.S.
none of this matters.

Subject: Re: P.S.
yeah. It's gigantic distraction

Subject: Re: P.S.
Y*s

Subject: Re: P.S.
More specifically:
This election is boiled down to God-fearing morons who'll pick between someone they don't care about and a God-fearing moron. Who do you think they're gonna pick? I dare you to write this TRUE story

I know, you're not in the prediction league.

The Bush campaign theme from now to November should be "America gets what it deserves ... Because Jesus says so"

Subject: Re: P.S.
I'm moronizing the swing god-fearing voters, not Bush himself. People vote their reflection in the mirror, is all I'm saying. Personally, I think Bush is wily, cunning, and criminally insane. But you know what? He doesn't have the love that Hitler had, otherwise he'd ride around in an open car. I think that's a difference

- Michael 10:21 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Go Naked For a While

Heinz Kerry Visits Hurricane Aid Center

There is already a stir about Teresa Heinz Kerry saying

Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids.

There is going to be outrage about a statement quite frankly makes sense and would save lives:

NEW YORK - Teresa Heinz Kerry, encouraging volunteers as they busily packed supplies Wednesday for hurricane relief efforts in the Caribbean, said she was concerned the effort was too focused on sending clothes instead of essentials like water and electric generators.

"Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites). "Water is necessary, and then generators, and then food, and then clothes."

Is the American right really pro-life, or is it pro-appearences? You can die as long as you aren't naked. What Teresa is saying makes complete sense.

- rob 8:57 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Hold Them Accountable

- rob 5:51 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Good News: It is safe to have Bumper Stickers again!

Bumper Sticker Insubordination - A Kerry fan gets fired, and then hired, for her politics.

The same is true of Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Ala., who on Sept. 9 was fired from her job at Enviromate, a company that makes housing insulation, for driving to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker in the rear windshield of her Chevy Lumina. The person who did the firing was Phil Geddes, who owns the company and is an enthusiastic Bush supporter. (Although Gobbell hasn't done any proselytizing for Kerry at Enviromate, Geddes distributed a flyer to all Enviromate employees explaining why they should vote for Bush.)
...
The story was picked up by Daily Kos, a political Web log, and spread quickly around the Web. By this morning, Geddes, who has declined to comment publicly on the matter, had apparently had enough of the bad publicity. Through an intermediary, he offered Gobbell an apology and said she could have her old job back. But Gobbell said she wouldn't return without some written guarantee that Geddes wouldn't turn around and fire her once he was out of the spotlight. Then, late this afternoon, Kerry himself phoned Gobbell. "He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up," Gobbell told me. "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked."

So good news for bumpersticker fans!

Thus we at TCS would like to reintroduce (for a limited time):
The new FEAR MORE YEARS bumpersticker
Now even uglier!

Speaking of Bumperstickers, we also got a new half size one that reflects an earlier bumper sticker:



As always, checkout the TCS store... we've changed things a little.

- rob 5:36 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush Doesn't Want To Win The War On Terror
It's been to good for him

C.I.A. Unit on bin Laden Is Understaffed, a Senior Official Tells Lawmakers

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.

- rob 1:54 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Two Articles via Daily Kos:

One Frustrating:

Ethics committee postpones DeLay investigation

In another show of the power of money in Washington, the House Ethics Committee resorted to an option that has never been used before that could, in effect, kill the ethics investigation into Tom DeLay?s illegal fundraising and his role in Texas redistricting. After nearly three months of reviewing the charges against DeLay, the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Ethics committee postponed today's hearing and have decided to put before the committee the question of whether to proceed with the investigation. This unprecedented move could result in a deadlock among the ten member committee resulting in no further action in this Congress.

"I'm outraged that the Committee is giving DeLay a pass," said Morrison. "Soliciting funds for legislative favors, funneling corporate contributions to state races and personally redrawing districts to ensure his power in Washington---these are serious charges and they merit investigation. But when four of the five Republicans on the committee have accepted thousands of dollars from DeLay how can they be trusted to judge him impartially? If DeLay is innocent of these violations he should demand the investigation proceed so his name can be cleared.

One funny:

Bush's imaginary conversations

Well, Bush continues to lose it.

Allen also calls attention to this utterly fantastical tale Bush told yesterday, while arguing that his audience would have to pay more taxes to fund Kerry's plans.

"So I said to him the other day, well, how are you going to pay for them?" Bush said at the Ottawa County Fairgrounds in Holland, Mich. "And he said, 'That's easy -- just tax the rich.'"

Of course, this conversation only happened in Bush's fevered mind.

But there I was, last week, hanging out with ol' George. And so I said to him, "well, how are you going to get our soldiers out of Iraq? And he said, with that frat-boy smirk of his, 'that's easy -- in body bags and wheelchairs.'"

We cracked a few jokes about OB-GYN practicing their "love" on their patients, when I suddenly turned serious agains, "George, how are you going to pay for your $3 trillion for the proposals in your acceptance speech, far and beyond what you claim Kerry has proposed? And he said, 'That's easy -- by saddling our future generations with trillions in new debt, in addition to the trillions in debt I've already added in the past three years.'"

- rob 1:48 PM - [PermaLink] -

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219 GIs Wounded In Past Week

So whose going to ask Rummy: "Are things still going well in Iraq?"

- rob 1:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Ve Are The Party! You Must Vote Vith The Party!

Parking Authority employees say they were told to contribute to GOP - or else

PHILADELPHIA - Employees of the Republican-controlled Philadelphia Parking Authority said they were told by their superiors to contribute to the GOP, or risk losing their jobs, a newspaper reported.

Five employees said they were pressured on the job to contribute $275 per year, the Philadelphia Daily News reported for Tuesday editions. Campaign finance records show dozens of $100 contributions this year from workers making $25,000 or less.

State law forbids demanding political contributions from public employees or contractors.

"It's extortion," said Michael J. Vecchione, who was hired two years ago to work in the authority's impoundment lots. The four other employees spoke to the Daily News on condition of anonymity.

- rob 5:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The GOP Senate Getting Read The Miranda?

Miranda sues to stop Judiciary memo probe

Manuel Miranda asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop a Justice Department and Secret Service investigation into whether a crime was committed when he and another of Sen. Orrin Hatch's former employees got Democratic documents from a computer server shared by both sides. Miranda worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Hatch, R-Utah, is chairman.

Miranda said in papers filed Monday that the investigation was solely to hide senators' own wrongdoing.

"Senators used all their official power and their influence over the press to disguise their own wrongdoing, by systematically accusing plaintiff of escalating degrees of criminality," the pleading said.

At the same time, it said, "Other senators failed to defend the plaintiff, a loyal staff aide, and failed to address the apparent misconduct of their Senate colleagues, appearing more interested in avoiding criticism to themselves."

Ohhhh... did Frist and Hatch get their hands caught in the cookie jar?

- rob 5:16 PM - [PermaLink] -

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George Bush: Creating More Terrorists Everyday Then Kerry Could Even Dream Of

Krugman: Taking On the Myth

On Sunday, a celebrating crowd gathered around a burning U.S. armored vehicle. Then a helicopter opened fire; a child and a journalist for an Arabic TV news channel were among those killed. Later, the channel repeatedly showed the journalist doubling over and screaming, "I'm dying; I'm dying."

Such scenes, which enlarge the ranks of our enemies by making America look both weak and brutal, are inevitable in the guerrilla war President Bush got us into. Osama bin Laden must be smiling.

- rob 3:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Yesterday Was Monday


The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 170

1. George W. Bush When George W. Bush was selected, we all knew bad things were on the horizon. But if you'd told me that by the end of his first term 3,000 civilians would die on American soil and 1,000 American soldiers would die in Iraq, even I wouldn't have believed you. Last week marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which, despite his failure to do anything after receiving a memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in United States," are somehow a centerpiece of Bush's current election campaign. Meanwhile, after misleading the country into believing that Iraq was culpable in the terrorist attacks, and despite all evidence to the contrary, Team Bush is still conjuring up the specters of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda in the same sentence while on the campaign trail. As we all know, Bush ignored bin Laden and instead went gung-ho into Iraq - and last week also marked the death of the 1,000th American soldier in that misbegotten campaign. So, to recap, Bush ignored al Qaeda until it was too late, then ignored them again so he could conquer Iraq by falsely connecting them to al Qaeda and lying about their weapons of mass destruction capabilities. Now Iraq is a quagmire, and our troops are dying at a rate of two a day over there. Yet somehow Bush has persuaded half of America that these are the very reasons for which he deserves another four years. Somebody please wake me up when this nightmare is over.

- rob 3:06 PM - [PermaLink] -

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- Monday, September 13, 2004 -

On second thought... maybe you shouldn't buy any of our stuff .

Moulton woman says she lost job for sporting Kerry sticker on car

MOULTON — Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high.

Lynne Gobbell said her boss fired her last week because of the Kerry-Edwards campaign sticker on the back of her car.
Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.
...
"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "

She went to Gaddis' office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Gobbell said Gaddis told her to "get out of here."
...
She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, " 'I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,' " Gobbell said.

- rob 4:40 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Powell Also Sees That He Has Two Hands

Powell Sees No 'Direct' Link Between Hussein, Sept. 11

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he had "seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime and what happened on 9/11."

Asked how he believes Sen. John F. Kerry would respond to a terrorist attack, Powell said, "I can't tell you how he might respond to it. As commander in chief, I think he'd respond to it in a robust way."

- rob 4:38 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Republicans 2000: Look if you can figure out how to use the ballot your vote shouldn't be counted. Rules are Rules.

Republicans 2004: Look just because we can't figure out what day it is doens't mean George shouldn't be on the ballot. Rules Schmules

Did Bush camp err on ballot papers?
Democrats say the president may have missed Florida's filing deadline, but say they don't plan a challenge. (because they are idiots - they should at least make some political hay out of this)

TALLAHASSEE - After the Florida election fiasco of 2000, the most obscure parts of state election law keep attracting attention.

The latest effort to disqualify Ralph Nader as a presidential candidate in Florida has led to renewed scrutiny of papers filed by other candidates - including President Bush.

State law sets a Sept. 1 deadline for the governor to certify a list of presidential electors for each party's candidates.

But Sept. 1 was also the day President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were being nominated at their party' convention in New York. Consequently, some of their paperwork did not arrive at state elections headquarters until Sept. 2, a day after Gov. Jeb Bush certified the candidates for president.

- rob 4:31 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Today's GOP

Oklahoma Republican Tob Coburn: Canadate for Senate

In 2003, President Bush appointed Coburn chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, giving him a prominent platform as he prepared to run for the Senate. If elected, Coburn would not only help the GOP maintain its power but would surely emerge as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the country. The former three-term congressman, one of Newt Gingrich's "revolutionaries" from the class of 1994, an Okie from Muskogee, thunders for traditional values and crusades for limited government. He packages this political agenda in his image as a kindly family doctor -- an obstetrician.
...
According to records obtained by Salon, Coburn filed an apparently fraudulent Medicaid claim in 1990, which he admitted in his own testimony in a civil malpractice suit brought against him 14 years ago by a former female patient. The suit alleged that Coburn had sterilized her without her consent. It eventually was dismissed after the plaintiff failed to appear for the trial. In his sworn testimony, Coburn admitted he sterilized the then 20-year-old woman without securing her written consent as required by law. He blamed the omission on a clerical error, but maintained that he had her oral consent for the procedure. (Salon has been unable to contact the woman and is withholding her name out of respect for her privacy.) Coburn also revealed under oath that he had charged the procedure to Medicaid -- despite knowing that Medicaid, also known as Title 19, does not cover the cost of sterilization for anyone under age 21.

A Family Doctor... Medicaid Scammer... A doctor who sterilized a patient without her consent... homophobe... yep he's definitely Republican Senate material. Maybe he and the other Republican Doctor Senator (Frist) can go out and kill some cats.

- rob 4:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

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You can take away my vote,
when you pry it out of my cold Dead Hands

Or you could live in Georgia or Maryland (or many other places unfortunately) where you can just pretend to vote, but never know what your actual vote was.

It's like a democracy but with out that bothersome citizen participation part.

Maryland: Touch-screen display hits snag

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski gained first-hand knowledge yesterday of potential glitches that haunt Maryland's costly and embattled electronic voting system.

Working the crowd at the Takoma Park Folk Festival, Mikulski encountered a demonstration of the touch-screen voting system, which gets its first statewide general-election roll-out in less than two months. She decided to give the AccuVote TS manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems a try, with troubling results.

On a referendum question that is part of the sample ballot on the machine, Mikulski pressed the screen to vote "no." But her vote was displayed as a "yes."
...
Activists in Maryland are seeking a similar requirement here. The Campaign for Verifiable Voting and others have sued the Maryland State Board of Elections, asking that voters who don't trust the touch-screen machines be allowed to vote on paper. A lower court has rejected the argument, but an appeal is pending before the state's highest court.

Despite growing discomfort with the electronic machines, Maryland has become one of the first states in the nation to convert to touch-screen voting technology. A new $55 million system was used statewide in the March primaries, largely without incident. Election officials say the machines are safe and reliable.

However, security flaws identified by computer researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere show that Diebold's underlying software is vulnerable to hackers.

A pro-paper trail group, TrueVote Maryland, is attempting to gain permission for its poll watchers to record problems with the machines on Election Day. Linda Schade, a coordinator with the group, said she hoped Mikulski's experience at the festival would persuade her to assist in that effort.

Georgia: State gets 'F-minus' on voting machines

WASHINGTON — With Election Day less than two months away, a conservative group rated Georgia's paperless touch-screen voting system the worst in the nation, with Florida and several other states not far ahead.

The Free Congress Foundation, a longtime fixture of the political right, warns in a new report that if the Nov. 2 vote totals are contested, the result could be a "fiasco," since so many states have installed electronic systems that have no paper ballots that can be recounted.

Georgia, the first state to install a paperless system in all counties, was graded "F-minus" based on the reliability of the equipment and its capacity for a "verifiable recount."

- rob 4:04 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Check out the flyer for George's first political race (which he lost): Bush's First Run for office

Notice it says that after Harvard he served in the U.S. Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard. Gee... the Air Force says that being in the Texas Air National Guard doesn't count as Air Force work... a little padding of the ol' resume. I also not that he coached a little league team so I don't see why he felt the need to pad the resume. How come he doesn't mention his time at Project PULL?

- rob 3:49 PM - [PermaLink] -

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No Wonder His Stomach is Hurting Him
(yes that's a real photo... it was at a 9/11 service)

Gaps in Service Continue to Dog Bush

President Bush's military records, including personal flight logs just released by the Pentagon, paint a picture of a solid, if hardly outstanding, pilot who energetically performed his duties for much of a six-year stint with the Air National Guard. Then, in the spring of 1972, the picture changes.

After initially expressing his intention to make flying "a lifetime pursuit," Bush checked out an F-102 interceptor jet for an 80-minute spin on April 6, 1972, in Texas , and never piloted a military plane again.

This seems to be great material for an anti-drug ad: I was energetic, I performed my duties, and I dreamed of becoming a pilot... until cocaine brought it all crashing down... my dreams of flying laid flat on a mirror covered in white powdery lines. I couldn't take a physical because my shame would be revealed. I was grounded. Now look at me, a sad emotionally stunted man... my dreams are gone.. instead of being in the company of pilots with my office in the air, I'm in the company of neo-cons behind a desk in an oval office." - George W. Bush

- rob 3:46 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Idiots protecting our children's "morality"

My Book Is Porn? Sure Did Fool Me

I've observed these shifting sands personally during my years of writing for "The Simpsons." When the show debuted in 1989, it was slammed by President George H.W. Bush. His wife called it "the stupidest thing [she] ever saw." Churches condemned the show, and schools banned Bart T-shirts.

It was in reaction to this that I started writing children's books. This was a stretch for me because I hate children. I have no kids, but neither did Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter and Hans Christian Andersen. You wouldn't want your kids within a mile of Lewis Carroll. My books share the Simpsons sensibility: wise-guy humor with appeal to all ages. But I kept the language clean and the messages upbeat.
...
Oddly, they all seemed to like the book and appreciate the message, but they found the last page pornographic. I was baffled. On the last page, the boy who looks like Lincoln hopes he can help his little brother, Dickie, a baby who, it turns out, looks exactly like Richard Nixon. If they had said the joke was dated, or easy, or over kids' heads, I might have agreed with them. But pornographic?

I think I've figured it out: These people assumed the baby was named Dickie because he looked like … well, I can't say it. I'm in enough trouble as it is. Let's just say they couldn't tell our 37th president from parts of the male anatomy. Some might argue that Dick Nixon himself had that resemblance, perhaps accounting for our endless repulsion and fascination with the man, but how could people not recognize that the baby in the picture was Dick Nixon? He had a 5 o'clock shadow, he was waving two Vs for Victory … the kid had a little tape recorder, for crying out loud.
...
It's also a little scary that most of my critics proudly bill themselves as teachers and school librarians. As for me, I've learned three things about the self-appointed watchdogs of modern morality:

1. They have no sense of history.

2. They have no sense of humor.

3. They have filthy, filthy minds.

- rob 3:32 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
- James Madison



"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves."
- John F. Kennedy



"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.