And heard in this desolate land was the horse scream of G. Gordon Liddy: "you guys need a plumber?"

For Two Aides in Leak Case, 2nd Issue Rises

People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier.

They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.

Wow, that's better coordination then they had prior to 9/11... better planning then they had for post-war Iraq....

Bush Administration: When you're good at CYA and smear nothing else matters.

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Hey, ho, way to go Ohio

Petro: Noe stole millions

Mr. Petro said there is evidence that Mr. Noe pocketed nearly $4 million in money invested with the coin fund through the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation since 1998.
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The attorney general said the theft began on March 31, 1998, the day Mr. Noe received the first of two $25 million payments from the workers’ compensation bureau, and continued until late May — more than eight weeks after The Blade first reported on April 3 that there were problems with the state’s investment.

“On Day One, Tom Noe took $1.375 million and put it in his personal or his business account,” Mr. Petro said. Records show that Mr. Noe immediately began using the state’s money for his personal use, the attorney general said.

A week later, Mr. Noe and his wife, Bernadette, made $4,500 in contributions to then-Secretary of State Bob Taft’s campaign for governor.

Hmmm... and how soon after this did Noe become a Bush Pioneer?

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Hi, I'm John Bolton, yep that's really me in Florida - you just never know where I'll pop up next

From: Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: July 17, 2005 - July 23, 2005 Archives

Today's Times says that John Bolton did not disclose having given testimony before the Plame grand jury in the forms he had to fill out for his confirmation hearings. That took that too mean he hadn't been called.

But on Hardball yesterday David Shuster said Bolton did testify.

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American Heroes - They come in all shapes and sizes

Last of WWII Comanche Code Talkers Dies

OKLAHOMA CITY - Charles Chibitty, the last survivor of the Comanche code talkers who used their native language to transmit messages for the Allies in Europe during World War II, has died. He was 83.
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The group of Comanche Indians from the Lawton area were selected for special duty in the U.S. Army to provide the Allies with a language that the Germans could not decipher. Like the larger group of Navajo Indians who performed a similar service in the Pacific theater, the Comanches were dubbed "code talkers."

"It's strange, but growing up as a child I was forbidden to speak my native language at school," Chibitty said in 2002. "Later my country asked me to. My language helped win the war and that makes me very proud. Very proud. "

America hadn't treated him or many of the native Americans right and yet they served bravely and saved unknown hundreds of their fellow soldiers' lives. Thank you Charles Chilbitty.

Really cool invention brings teens awards
Physics students: They came up with an environmentally friendly, economical air conditioner

Tyler Lyon, Daniel Winegar and Chad Thornley were overtired and giddy as they tackled a science fair project. Their idea: Eliminate the use of Freon in automobile air-conditioning systems by relying on the Peltier effect - of course.
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Today, the young inventors say, U.S. drivers use about 7.9 billion gallons of fuel each year to run their air-conditioners, which draw power from the engine. By adopting their contraption - which taps into the electrical system, using fans to blow hot air through five Peltier chips and then releasing cold air - they say the country stands to save 3.9 billion gallons of fuel annually, or about $10 billion based on current gas prices.

Furthermore, the product would free drivers from Freon - which despite improvements, remains an ozone-depleting chemical in current air-conditioners. The Peltier chips, which they purchased on eBay for $9.99 each, have a life span of 20 to 30 years and an unfaltering cooling capacity.

All excellent and impressive but this I love:

After they had already begun their work, Lyon and Winegar learned about a 1964 General Motors analysis that explored the idea before the car company concluded it wasn't possible.

Going in with open minds, however, the teens were not deterred and pulled off what GM rejected.

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Mississippi - keeping the poor counties poor

The News for South Mississippi: Court Rules State Not Liable To Pay For Legal Help For Poor

The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled that the state is not obligated to help counties pay for hiring lawyers for poor criminal defendants.
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Quitman County sued the state in 1999 after it was forced to borrow several hundred thousand dollars in the early 1990s to defend two men convicted of killing members of a local family.

Good job Mississippi - why should Quitman have the money for its school's? I mean educated children actually commit less crimes, and who needs that. And besides educated children earn more money when they graduate - thus increasing Quitman's tax base, allowing it to spend more on schools... creating a cycle of growth and prosperity... who knows what horrors that may lead to. Yes Mississippi - its best to keep the poor counties down.

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Ooops

Rove, Libby Accounts in CIA Case Differ With Those of Reporters

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

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When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Are American Eyes Watching?

Treaty gives CIA powers over Irish citizens

US INVESTIGATORS, including CIA agents, will be allowed interrogate Irish citizens on Irish soil in total secrecy, under an agreement signed between Ireland and the US last week.

Suspects will also have to give testimony and allow property to be searched and seized even if what the suspect is accused of is not a crime in Ireland.

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Because you need a really big budget to save the Earth?

How Earth-Scale Engineering Can Save the Planet
Maybe we can have our fossil fuels and burn ’em too. These scientists have come up with a plan to end global warming. One idea: A 600,000-square-mile space mirror

One with a 600,000-square-mile space mirror I could check my hair all day!!!

David Keith never expected to get a summons from the White House. But in September 2001, officials with the President’s Climate Change Technology Program invited him and more than two dozen other scientists to participate in a roundtable discussion called “Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change.” While administration officials were insisting in public that there was no firm proof that the planet was warming, they were quietly exploring potential ways to turn down the heat.

Most of the world’s industrialized nations had already vowed to combat global warming by reining in their emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief “greenhouse gas” blamed for trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. But in March 2001 President George W. Bush had withdrawn U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty mandating limits on CO2 emissions, and asked his administration to begin studying other options.

Keith, a physicist and economist in the chemical and petroleum engineering department at the University of Calgary, had for more than a decade been investigating strategies to curtail global warming. He and the other scientists at the meeting—including physicists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who had spent a chunk of their careers designing nuclear weapons—had come up with some ideas for “geoengineering” Earth’s climate. What they proposed was tinkering on a global scale. “We already are inadvertently changing the climate, so why not advertently try to counterbalance it?” asks retired Lawrence Livermore physicist Michael MacCracken, a former senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program who helped organize the meeting.

Yes why try some preventive methods when you can hand out an insanely huge government contract instead - You did know Halliburton has experience with Space Mirrors - didn't you?

That said - investigating extreme ideas like this is probably prudent - but we can do so much right now, and really for comparitively much less - so perhaps Bush's sci-fi fans could come down to earth a little? I mean, that is what we are trying to save.

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Richard Jewel - British Style

UK boy wrongly labelled as bomber

A photograph of a passport purporting to show bomber Hasib Hussain was in fact that of a 16-year-old British boy with the same name.

The photo, together with documentation showing two other bombers visited Pakistan, was published on Monday.
...
Photographs of the passport were published in Pakistan and then around the world.

However, the 16-year-old at the heart of the confusion has now been interviewed at his High Wycombe home by Pakistani TV station ARY.

"I first saw my photograph on Channel 4 [news] and I was terrified," the boy told ARY.

"I didn't want people looking at me saying, hey, you are supposed to be dead," he told ARY, "or someone saying that there goes the London bomber."

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Kids These Days - What's with Their Parents?

Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors

Children ages 8 to 10 spend an average of 6 hours a day watching television, playing video games and using computers, according to the Kaiser study. And that's during the school year. No study has been done on vacation habits, but TV ratings show kids watch more during the summer.
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Since 1995, the portion of children ages 7 to 11 who swim, fish or play touch football has declined by about a third. Canoeing and water skiing are down by similar amounts.

The relationship between kids and their bikes is especially telling.

In 1995, 68% of children ages 7 to 11 rode a bike at least six times a year. Last year, only 47% did.

God... that's awful.

It gets worse:

Darrell Mueller, 54, runs the parks and recreation programs in North Platte, Neb. His childhood was spent outdoors playing ball, riding his bike and building forts. Even today, he hates being inside.

His children are the opposite. They prefer being driven to school, which is just two houses away.

His 11-year-old daughter, Ivy, spends hours instant messaging her friend across the street. He asks why she doesn't just go over and play with her friend. "This is more fun," his daughter explains.

Mueller's 16-year-old son, Taylor, spends nearly every waking hour in his room, playing the Warcraft fantasy game on the Internet with people from around the world.

"I call him the caveman because he never leaves his room," Mueller says. "He comes out now and then for dinner, but he can't eat with us. He has to get back to his game."

Okay for the record, I have children, I let them watch TV (a little), I let them use the computer (a little). Helpful hint - my computer is a 5 year old imac (slow) and I have the cheapest possible cable (no good channels).

Actually the saddest part of the article is that parents actually feel safer about their kids being indoors.

The lure of television and video games isn't the only thing keeping kids indoors. Parents are more afraid of letting kids roam in a world of heavy traffic and reports of pedophiles and missing children.
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Cole's mother, Janet Begley, drove them to the event and sat in a beach chair behind the boys reading Hidden Prey, a murder mystery.

She says she would never let her son play in the woods without an adult. She won't even let him go alone to the park down the street. "Parks are where pedophiles go," she says.

I looked at some crime statistics - crime is up just a bit since the mid seventies (when a lot of these parents were kids), but in many areas like murder they are actually down. Children went missing then, there were pedophiles then. We only hear about it more.

The sad truth children are most frequently taken by people they know, so keeping them indoors and away from the parks and nature doesn't really reduce their chances of being taken (which are small anyway), and keeping them indoors does steal some of their childhood.

We have all as a society become so scared that we are sucking a little of life out of ourselves. The goal of a terrorist is terror. You change your policies and life out of fear. We're doing that to ourselves with our "missing blond teen" obessions.

Does 'stranger danger' go too far?

Brennan Hawkins, the 11-year-old Utah Boy Scout who was found on Tuesday after going missing for four days, told his family that he was afraid rescuers "would steal him," perhaps delaying authorities from finding him in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City.
...
Consider these numbers: Every day in this country about 2,000 children are reported missing. That means close to 800,000 kids are reported missing every year, but only 115 kids a year are victims of what is viewed as classic stranger abductions. So is the stranger-danger lesson maybe outdated?

So if you really want your children to be safe, maybe keep them away from friends and relatives and let them play in the park alone. Or maybe we need realize that there are dangers in the world, and though we want our children to be safe and secure, we also need to let them live and so we need to just be reasonable and use some common sense.

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Leaking Standard: No pal left behind

.... And Rove's conduct met the standard for removal from his post that the president laid down in 2004 when he promised to fire anyone involved in the leak.

Now that Rove's involvement in leaking information has been confirmed, the president has decided to modify that pledge. Bush let it be known on Monday that he would fire any staffer who "committed a crime."

Schoolchildren, take note. There will still be high standards for you, your teachers and your schools. But at the White House, the rule is a little different: No pal left behind. Unless, of course, he is an out-and-out criminal. That's quite a standard.

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Georgia voters are Diebold guinea pigs

What McKinnney's office has just released is a group of documents that lend the visible evidence necessary to take this issue out of the hands of conspiracy theorists, and put it in the public purview of government officials.
Georgia's Diebold elections have been fraught with massive problems from day one and election officials have hidden the problems from the voters.

Georgia's election officials sought to protect Diebold instead of the voters.

The first document is a list of bugs and failures experienced in Georgia's 2002 election, none of which have been resolved to date, much less in time for the 2004 election.

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Roberts did a favor for the Bush family - so, you know, he's a pal.

Daily Kos: SCOTUS Nominee Involved in 2000 Election Theft

In the future the entire supreme court will consist of these folks:


Well maybe not Rory Cooper from the RNCC - he just doesn't seem to have his heart in it - besides who ever heard of 10 justices?.

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Yes that's the title of the article: America's Big Malignant Tumor - Libs are salivating that Karl Rove might go down. But hasn't the worst cancer already spread?

Just read it - I can't figure out what to quote.

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Earlier this week it was Monday

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 206 - Democratic Underground

6. Bill Frist and Friends
Last week Democratic senators suggested an amendment which would "deny access to classified information to any federal employee who discloses a covert CIA agent's identity," according to the Washington Post. Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, we shouldn't be letting federal employees who run around gabbing about CIA agents get their hands on even more information about CIA agents, right?

Sadly the Republicans didn't see it that way. Instead, Sen. Bill "Follow The Balloon" Frist proposed a different amendment which would prevent "Any federal officeholder who makes reference to a classified Federal Bureau of Investigation report on the floor of the United States Senate, or any federal officeholder that makes a statement based on an FBI agent's comments which is used as propaganda by terrorists organizations thereby putting our servicemen and women at risk, shall not be permitted access to such information or to hold a security clearance for access to such information."

Uh, what? If you're as confused as I was, read David Corn's analysis. It turns out that Frist's amendment was aimed directly at Dick Durbin, who made that remark about Nazis on the senate floor not so long ago.

Hmmm... so Democrats propose an amendment which would actually improve U.S. national security by removing the security clearances of those caught leaking; Republicans propose a stupid and irrelevant counter-amendment purely for the purposes of a) chilling free speech on the Senate floor, and b) making a partisan political dig. And I thought the adults were in charge.

Interestingly, Frist's amendment failed by 64 votes to 33 with 20 Republicans voting against the measure when they realized that Frist's definition was so broad that they might all lose their security clearances.

As for the Democratic amendment - you know, the one that would actually improve our national security - that failed too by 53 votes to 44. Down party lines. Yup - every single Republican senator voted against it. So I guess they don't want to make America safer after all.

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Well there you go: Plame's Identity Marked As Secret

Short version: Valerie Plame's name was on the memo, but as Mrs. Wilson. Striking down two lame Rove excuses: 1) He didn't say her name: her name is on the memo as Mrs. Wilson and Rove said "Wilson's wife." I think that's pretty much settled. 2) She wasn't covert: well I think marking a name as secret certainly does imply that perhaps the CIA wished to keep it... I dunno... secret?

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Here's a bit of icing to the Downing Street Memo cake that the press just don't want to dig into... is the fact that our President knowingly lied to the nation to go into war too bitter? (we promise... the cake isn't yellow)

The description of Wilson's wife and her role in the Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at the CIA was considered "a footnote" in a background paragraph in the memo, according to an official who was aware of the process.

It records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.

The allegation was already disproved and the State Department thought Wilson's investigation was redundant and lame. Wilson's investigation backed up the State Department's opinions, and so did additional investigations. The White House continued to want investigations to prove what they had already decided - and even when every investigation came up with the fact that Saddam had not sought uranium from Niger they decided to through it into the State of the Union Address anyway.

The State of the Union is a Presidential obligation. It is required by the constitution. And Bush has known lies in his speech. One of a bucket full of lies that is then used to lead the nation into a war where tens of thousands of people have died. This is why the Rove story is a big story... and I think some in the press are starting to realize this... finally.

If anyone in the press wants a Pulitzer - find out who forged the documents found in Italy in the first place. Was it the same typewriter that the TANG memos were typed on?

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Roberts - upholds the law and notes the need for police restraint

It is these kinds of daring decisions that made Bush stand up and take notice: Roberts Upheld D.C. French-Fry Arrest

As a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Roberts wrote a decision last year upholding the arrest of a 12-year-old girl who violated the ban on eating food on Washington's subway system, Metro.

But Roberts said that while the arrest was legal, he felt transit officers overreacted by handcuffing and jailing the girl.

"No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," he wrote. "Her shoelaces were removed, and she was transported in the windowless rear compartment of a police vehicle to a juvenile processing center, where she was booked, fingerprinted, and detained until released to her mother some three hours later — all for eating a single french fry."

If it was a :freedom fry" she would have been set free immediately.

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While Rove is pretty sure (and I think he's probably right) that reporters in DC can't walk and chew gum at the same time, reporters in New Mexico actually have the ability to control people's minds.

Reporters in New Mexico also carry cool light sabers.

Beware of Reporters

Beware of those sneaky reporters and their mind-bending tricks. That's the warning officials are giving employees of New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department.

Agency spokesman Matt Dillman says "unscrupulous reporters" will use a "Jedi Mind Trick" to get information.

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The Supreme Court - just another political prop

Here's a headline I'm sure will shock you: Supreme Court Pick Shifts Attention From Rove, Agent Disclosure

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's nomination of a new Supreme Court justice may give White House adviser Karl Rove a temporary reprieve from public scrutiny of his role in the disclosure of an intelligence operative's identity.

About six in 10 Americans who are paying close attention to reports about who leaked information that helped unmask a covert intelligence agent say Rove should resign, according to a poll conducted last week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The Supreme Court announcement may freeze things, ``and that's probably a good thing for the White House,'' said Carroll Doherty, an editor at the Washington-based Pew Center.

Bush accelerated his search for a Supreme Court nominee in part because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name, according to Republicans familiar with administration strategy.

If the media is unable to pat their head and rub their tummy - then Rove wins. In fact - listen up media - Rove has such little respect for you guys that he's pretty sure you can't cover his story and the Supreme Court story at the same time.

Rove thinks you are drooling idiots.

Is he right?

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Well I was wrong - it wasn't Edith Bunker who was nominated to the Supreme Court, but rather Bob Roberts - that folk singing ultra conserva... oops, sorry, wrong again, it was John Roberts.

Who? I dunno either, but some people do: John G. Roberts Jr. - dKosopedia

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Is being generous good for business?
Costco CEO profits as he offers top pay, benefits

(so right there - the answer is yes - being generous is good for business)

Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, the shirts appeal to upscale customers - and epitomize why some retail analysts say Sinegal just might be America's shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.

But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.

Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

Yes Bill. in any business relationship of consumer, employee, and stock holder it is really what the analyst feels that is important. Please people think of the analysts... each year Goober the dart throwing chimp beats them in predicting the best stocks. They are people too - prick a wall street big shot, does he not bleed (and all over his Armani at that)?

Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like the fact that low prices do not come at the workers' expense.

"This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."

He also dismisses calls to increase Costco's product markups. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said that heeding Wall Street's advice to raise some prices would bring Costco's downfall.

"When I started, Sears, Roebuck was the Costco of the country, but they allowed someone else to come in under them," he said. "We don't want to be one of the casualties."
...
"On Wall Street, they're in the business of making money between now and next Thursday," he said. "I don't say that with any bitterness, but we can't take that view. We want to build a company that will still be here 50 and 60 years from now."

If shareholders mind Sinegal's philosophy, it is not obvious: Costco's stock price has risen more than 10 percent in the last 12 months, while Wal-Mart's has slipped 5 percent.

Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., faulted Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.

"He has been too benevolent," she said. "He's right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden."

The end of long term investment strategies is going to be the death of America's businesses. Short term is short sighted.

Wall Street has become like Hollywood bigwigs. You have a great movie script and then the bigwigs say "hey if we thrown in some breasts and an exploding building we might have a better box office" so in the end the movie goes over budget and loses its soul. Wall Street wants to force a business to follow the path they have declared the correct path: Cheap labor, suffering employees, and poor service and they are confused when people who don't follow that strategy succeed.

Doesn't Wall Street understand that if everyone makes $3 an hour and pays for their own healthcare that they might not be as interested in actually purchasing anything?

Is Wall Street too dim to realize that the American economic machine is actually run by the poor and lower middle class? That is why the idea of a tax cut for the rich helping the economy is bunk. What in the long term is better for a company - someone buying their product or someone buying their stock. Believe it or not Wall Street would probably say "Stock," but in the end you still have to have someone buy something - that is why the company is there. You cut taxes for the poor you get out of a recession and stay out longer. You cut taxes for the rich you get a bump that may get you out of the recession but you quickly fall back into one... or you stagnate... you know - like now.

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A long interesting piece: Daily Kos: Dean Speaks, but what I really liked was this:

Gov. Dean said that universal healthcare is a business proposition. He used GM's recent announcement that they were opening new plants in Windsor (Canada) just across the U.S. border rather than in Michigan because even though the taxes were higher in Canada, in the end it was cheaper for GM to move there because Canada's health care system saved them money.

Exactly! Universal Healthcare needs to be sold as pro-business because IT IS! Universal Healthcare will save jobs, help the economy, oh and as an aside it will save lives (but we don't have to emphasise that part).

If I may be so bold as to recommend some old TCS points that I put more then a few minutes effort into (unlike these recents days...weeks):

Enough with helping people already

Bush was going to run the nation like a corporation.

Stop playing defense

and

Doing the Right Thing is good for business

Off topic: There's a really ugly page on this site called "better than average posts" but it hasn't been update in TWO YEARS - wow back then we only had a dozen visitors a day - now we have... ummm... a few dozen!

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America's own homegrown religious extremist international terrorist (anyone remember the Atlanta Olympic Bombing? Anyone?)

Rudolph gets life in abortion clinic blast

Would his name be as well know as, say, Moussaoui if he wasn't Christian?

I'm just asking.

Speaking of Atlanta, I still think the FBI and Janet Reno should give huge Christmas gifts every year to Richard Jewell for decades to come - man, did they screw that guy.

Hey, have we caught the Anthrax guy yet?



(isn't the NYPost fun...)

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Pay no Attention to The Man Behind The Curtain

Bush desperate to get Rove out of the news is handed a hat by Karl and picks out a name.

Watch him read out the results live - prime time - 9PM tonight. I'm sure it will be even exciting then the lottery drawing.

(pssst... It's Edith Bunker... )

Court Speculation Centers on Female Judge

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is close to making his first nomination to the Supreme Court, and Washington was abuzz with speculation Tuesday about Judge Edith Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

ooops... sorry I meant Clement... Edith Clement.

She'll be the only supreme court justice who will love it when you throw the beads at her.

Update: Put the beads away, the nominee isn't from New Orleans, the nominee is John Roberts - sorry Edith.

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Listening to the BBC this morning and they were interviewing a British conservative about national (in Britian) security and he said "Post 7/7" more then once, i.e. "Post 7/7 we need to look at security differently." or something like that.

What does Karl Rove work in England too?

Actually he does but he goes by the name of Carl Rovington and repeats words like "what what" and "quite quite" a lot and also so "brilliant" quite a bit.

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Hi - We're ADM - you may know us by our tag line "supermarket to the world." You hear that all the time in our ads when you watch news shows. In fact that's the only time you will see our ads, mostly because the ads aren't directed to you, they're just there as an excuse for us to give networks money, as a gentle reminder that if they ever do a news story on us, that money will disappear. Call it "insurance."

You wanna know why we call ourselves the supermarket to the world? Because we love musak and pushing high fructose corn syrup on to consumers. Its great - we sell the sugar equivilant of crack and everyone dumps it into their products.

And our profit margin is great because we have congress in our pocket and each year they send us millions of your dollars to grow corn. Ever wonder why a buger is cheaper then a salad everywhere... because salad's aren't made of corn - and American cows pretty much are. And corn is as cheap as air, thanks to your tax dollars - hell we only charge for corn to provide enough cover to launder money.

Heck between us and Monsanto - we own everything edible - down to the DNA level, you can start making out checks to us right now.

All of this leads to this article (somehow - I leave the seque up to you): Study Says Ethanol Not Worth the Energy

"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment," according to the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.

The researchers included such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production, said Pimentel.

The study also omitted $3 billion in state and federal government subsidies that go toward ethanol production in the United States each year, payments that mask the true costs, Pimentel said.

"investing in solar, wind, and hydrogen energy," please... does wind even have a lobby? The last time wind was mentioned in Congress was when Dennis Hastert farted when someone naively talked about DeLay and ethics in front of him.

- rob 5:48 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Hi as President I will create enemies where there were none.

As President I will spend billions of dollars on personal vendettas and errands for oil companies

As President I will weaken our national security for political reasons

And these promises I promise to keep (and Bush was as good as his word)

Studies: Most foreign fighters didn't wage terror before Iraq war

WASHINGTON - New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank Ã?— both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States Ã?— have found that the vast majority of them are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war.
...
An analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior al-Qaida operatives, "the vast majority of non-Iraqi Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

The Israel study says: "Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya."

Bush: I Recruit Terrorists

- rob 4:38 PM - [PermaLink] -

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This goes back to many a post here from around a year ago.

It seems that many conservatives are motivated by the belief that the only thing that holds them in personal check is laws. Basically one of the most importnat tenants of the "personal responsiblity" crowd is that no one is responsible for their own behavior. Not only that, it seems their in ability to see nuance, or shades of grey, or anything beyond black and white leads them to aquate things they don't like to heinus crimes. And if society is cool with things they don't like, it is only understandable that people would commit heinus crimes. There will be, and always were, morons like this, and that is no big deal. But now society seems to be okay with morons like this becoming Senators - what's next sex with box turtles?

Santorum (gosh it just sounds like a dirty word - and yes if clicked the page the comes up is pretty dirty) has been pusing the idea that Catholic clergy who sexually abused boys in Boston did it because Boston is liberal. Boston is cool with gays, Boston doesn't pre-judge divorced people (though they do get divorced a heck of a lot less then in those fabulous red state areas), and Boston probably even likes R rated films.

Now in, say, Alabama, Catholic clergy abused boys because of something in the water (I guess... let's ask Dr. Frist)

SANTORUM ALSO BLAMES THE VICTIMS OF CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE - Santorum Exposed: The Blog

Two years ago, in 2003, an Associated Press reporter asked him to clarify his original remarks about Boston. Once again, Rick stood by them, then went on to say this:

"In this case, what we're talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We're not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We're talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a perfectly fine relationship as long as it's consensual between people. If you view the world that way, and you say that's fine, you would assume that you would see more of it."

Post-pubescent men? Is Rick saying once a boy hits puberty he is an adult? Is he saying that 12, 13 and 14 year old boys who were molested by trusted authority figures were not actually raped but engaging in a "basic homosexual relationship"?

Wow. Does that mean that if a middle-aged man (or, for that matter, a 21 year old man) engaged in a sexual relationship with a 12, 13 or 14 year old girl, Rick would consider that a basic heterosexual relationship?

- rob 4:16 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Look 1,700 hundred American's didn't die for WMD... they didn't day for 9/11... and they didn't die for Free elections in Iraq.

Seriously, why did we go there?

Bush Lied To Congress On Iraqi Elections

A State Department official confirmed that there was an effort to give direct funding to certain candidates. “The goal was to level the playing field, and Allawi was not the sole playing field,” he said. Warrick was not operating on his own, the State Department official said. “This issue went to high levels, and was approved”—within the State Department and by others in the Bush Administration, in the late spring of 2004....

The Bush administration will reveal the names of sources for political purposes (and screw the British), they will reveal the names of CIA agents for political purposes (and screw our search for WMDs), they will fix an election that thousands have died for, and yet we all still pretend they wouldn't (and didn't) fix our own election this past October? When does naivity become the Stockholm syndrome?

- rob 3:44 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush: Look Rove is my man, I don't care if everyone knows I'm a stinking liar, or that you can't trust my administration with our own national secrets - I just know that without Rove I'm a pretzel choking, falling of a segway, illerate loser - with him I'm President. Pretty damn simple really.

Daily Kos: Moving the goalposts

- rob 1:05 PM - [PermaLink] -

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