Sunday, December 31, 2006

Well Hung, #2

Via S.M., we get Robert Fisk's take on the quicky hanging of Saddam.
We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.
....
Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS Stark when, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam's excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

My emphasis.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Heh

Via WTF Is It Now?



Worse than Satan, indeed!

Unfuckingbelieveable


Hung Saddam

No, not like a horse, so get your minds out of the gutter. Josh Marshall talks about the state murder of Saddam Hussein. I must say that Saddam is (was?) an evil bastard. Yes, he did many awful things. There, now you know that I think Saddam was a bad man. But none of that justifies what we, the U.S. of A., under Bu$hCo, has done concerning his capture & trial. The trial itself was a sham, no one can really deny that. Because of Bu$hCo's incredible vanity, Saddam was held in U.S. custody while he was tried by Iraqi courts. Explain that to me. He should have been tried for crimes against humanity in the Hague, at the World Court. Only Bu$hCo doesn't like that court, it's too oriented towards, yes, wait for it, justice. By the U.S. keeping the keys to Saddam's cell, & then having him judged by the chirping parakeets in Iraq, the U.S. admitted that the trial was more about kangaroos & less about blind justice. This conviction (& I agree that Saddam was guilty of crimes against humanity) is so tainted that I doubt it will ever be recognized as a result of court system that was free of U.S. coercion. &, of course, killing Saddam will change nothing. It will only show the world that the U.S. condones murder, in any form. That is too bad for the world. I agree with Josh Marshall, Saddam's execution is a sign of U.S. weakness, not strength. It will go down with all the other failures in Iraq, including that miserable failure, George W. Bu$hCo.

Here We Are

& it's not a good place.
A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a ''major'' reason for the event. The Ayles Ice Shelf -- all 41 square miles of it -- broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.

Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw.

''This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years,'' Vincent said. ''We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead.''
More here.
An ancient ice shelf has cracked off northern Ellesmere Island, creating an enormous, 66-square-kilometre ice island and leaving a trail of icy blocks in its wake.

''It really is incredible,'' says Warwick Vincent of Laval University, one of the few people to have laid eyes on the scene. ''It's like a cruise missile has come down and hit the ice shelf.''

The breakup was so powerful, earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up the tremors as the 3,000 to 4,500 year-old shelf tore away from its fjord on Ellesmere.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

I'm Back

Well, I'm back from the Cities & the first Xmas with The Twins. Here are some pics of the happy time.







Sunday, December 24, 2006

This Helps

So Bu$hCo knows what he's doing? We just need to keep listening to the neocons in his head.

One of Iraq's most influential Shiite clerics rejected an American-backed proposal to isolate Shiite extremists in the national government, saying the country should govern itself with the help of anti-U.S. firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr, according to politicians who spoke with the cleric Saturday.

Shiite politicians met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in this holy Shiite city and then said they had thrown their support to al-Sadr, who demands a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

"The Sadr movement is part of Iraqi affairs," said Haider Abadi, a leader of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party. "We won't allow others to interfere to weaken any Iraqi political movement."
Ali al-Adeeb, another member of the Dawa party, said Shiite leaders, including the prime minister, will resist U.S. attempts to sideline al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
It's Xmas Eve & me & the Mrs. are down at The Kid's. The Son-in-Law's brother & parents are here with The Twins, as well. It's The Babies first Xmas & they have no idea what's going on. The tree was decorated this afternoon & the gifts, all wrapped, are under the pagan symbol of the day's getting longer & moods getting lighter. I've already looked down the alley both ways & don't see a boat, so it will be one more year of disappointment. With that, I need to wish my loyal four readers an extremely

Merry Xmas


Friday, December 22, 2006

WTF?

Via RLK we get this report. This is what is wrong with America. Really, people, let's do something.

(Text) National Public Radio News is reporting that many stranded travelers on highways in Colorado — except for the ones headed to ski resorts, to which the roads have already been cleared as a priority — and homebound residents may have to wait days for roads to reopen.

But of course, the ski industry’s inbound routes are a moneymaker. So those have to be cleared first. Never mind that few if any of those roads more than incidentally offer access to, say, groceries or firetrucks or ambulances (that aren’t making ski-accident related runs).

Virgina Is For Haters

Thanks to The Kid & The Babies (they must have let her have a tiny bit of time for herself) we get the moron from VA continuing to make an ass of himself. Via TPM Muckraker we get the story & the video.

Anne Rogers Clark, R.I.P.

It was the English Cockers that I was interested in.

More On The Pipeline

Here's more on the pipeline construction first brought to our attention by ShutterWi. The DNR, of all agencies, ought to be thinking & acting on providing a model for alternative energies. It has to start somewhere.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

No Sleep For You

Well, Bu$hCo will demand more study in this situation. Seems straightforward to me.

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.
....
But many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern cordillera - which have a slightly different genetic identity from bear populations elsewhere in the world - have remained active throughout recent winters, naturalists from Spain's Brown Bear Foundation (La Fundación Oso Pardo - FOP) said yesterday.

The change is affecting female bears with young cubs, which now find there are enough nuts, acorns, chestnuts and berries on the bleak mountainsides to make winter food-gathering sorties "energetically worthwhile", scientists at the foundation, based in Santander, the Cantabrian capital, told El Pais newspaper.

We'll See

The fog is apparently lifting. Now we will see whether or not justice is served. It is still disappointing that apparently only two were charged with murder.

Eight Marines were charged Thursday in the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last year.

Finally

I've been waiting a long time for cooler heads to prevail. It looks like my waiting has been rewarded. Take this, Mrs. coldH20, & the Kid.

But contrarian voices can be heard in the wilderness. An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

Emphasis added.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Thanks

For small favors.

"No tengo futuro (I have no future)," Jeb Bush told Spanish-language reporters in Miami, when asked about any possible political ambitions after he steps down next month.

My emphasis.

Another Dam Thing

When will we learn that dams are more trouble than they are worth. It's long past time that the world begin to work really hard on alternative energies that don't destroy the very home we inhabit. Not to mention the cold-water fish.


http://himachal.nic.in/fisheries/F13.jpg

Farmland Conservation

What a concept. Merry Xmas Minnesota trout.

Someone Was A Bit Late

& in more ways than one.

The project supervision and assessment general manager of the European Union-sponsored Health for Healthy Society, Augustus Tiamberg from the Philippines, was shocked to meet a man with four wives and 42 children in the village of Tabanlı in Muş province on Monday, asking those around him to leave him alone for a minute to catch his breath.

Tiamberg told the DoÄŸan News Agency: "This is a historic day. I cannot believe what I saw and heard. I am in shock. I need a minute by myself."

The project is briefing the region's people on family planning. The people are warned against inter-family marriages and having as many children as they can feed.

Craters

Here's a cool map of impact craters on our lovely planet, yes, our Mother Earth. Eat me, dork-faced gender doofusses.

The Wild Man Of Borneo Discovered


Not quite, but Borneo continues to amaze me. I hope the world doesn't destroy the legendary home of one of the great icons of my youth, the aforementioned Wild Man.

http://www.picking.com/borneo3.jpg

Over the last 17 months, scientists have identified 52 new plant and animal species in the rainforests of Borneo, a Southeast Asian island, the World Wildlife Fund announced yesterday. The finds include 30 unique species of fish, two tree-frog species, three new trees, a plant that grows only a single large leaf, 16 types of ginger, and a partridge in a pear tree. The world's second-smallest vertebrate -- a fish 0.35 inches long -- was discovered, as well as a catfish with an adhesive belly and protruding teeth. (Alas, the legendary Wild Man remains elusive.) No wonder Charles Dickens described Borneo as a "great wild untidy luxuriant hothouse made by Nature for herself." As always, the diverse habitat is threatened by human activity; only half of Borneo's original forest cover remains, thanks to deforestation for rubber, palm oil, and paper pulp production. And we had been so optimistic there for a moment.

You Go, Doghouse

Doghouse Riley has a great post on Bu$hCo & our stressed military. Here are some sirloin tips:

Stressed, motherfucker? You walked outta the shop with a crystal vase and you come back with two handfuls of sand, and stressed is all you have to say?

What stopped you from increasing the size of the army in 2002? In 2003? What in the name of Allah stopped you from asking the American taxpayer, and the American corporation, to pay for it? Certainly not the economic miracle your tax cutting has wrought.
....
What's caused you to stand by while men of both parties who had served honorably, even heroically, in the war of your youth were slimed for your personal political gain? A war they fought and bled and suffered in, a war you relied on string pulling and wheel greasing to keep you clear of (and even then screwed around)?

The Leader Of The Free World

Well, the other day I mentioned outrage fatigue & Bu$hCo does his best, an oxymoron, I know, to outrage me one more time. What a buffoon, or something, maybe a maroon, or a cartoon. There, Les, I rhymed. & here is our President, speaking today at a press conference. Well, somebody's President.

A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country -- and I encourage you all to go shopping more.

Heh-Heh

Via Dependable Renegade.


Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Lucky For Us


This Van Hollen is on our side. There are two links in that first sentence.


chris-vanhollen.jpg

This one isn't.


Is J.B. Van Hollen the devil of cranberry pollution? I need answers.

Sen. Brownback Is A Brown Shirt

This sort of bullshit is what is really wrong with America. Brownback ought to recuse himself from the human race.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Slow

My posting has been slow for awhile. Outrage fatigue is one reason, The Twins are another big reason. Also, my laptop has been making helicopter take-off sounds lately, & it doesn't seem to be getting any better. A new laptop is in the works, but it's not here yet. The holiday season is also a reason. I generally have a difficult time with the double whammy of sentimentality & nostalgia that are required to muddle through the not-really-birth-of-Christ day & the lack of a party New Years. I find both emotions to be debilitating, so I keep them off in some Neanderthal bear cave in my head, but they keep trying to sneak out & light a fire at the cave mouth. If I keep bah-humbugging enough, I'm able to drive them back into the darkness to doodle on the walls, & then I am able to get into January & maybe some ice fishing. (Yes, I know, Jim Harrison called it The Moronic Sport, but things can get thin up here.)

Saturday, December 16, 2006

The Babies


It's been great that I can go & look at pics like this over at the babies' blog. It's very helpful when I think about Bu$hCo or the woodpile.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Hey, Hey, LBJ


As much as I hated LBJ for his Vietnam policy, & I did hate him for it, we will never see the sort of anguish in Bu$hCo that LBJ evidences with this picture. & we, as a nation, are poorer & in more danger, for it.

http://z.about.com/d/history1900s/1/0/4/O/viet37.jpg

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Culture Of Death

So, suddenly, Bu$hCo has fallen in love with body counts. & Tony Snow says its because the American people think that our troops are "doing anything" in Iraq. Jesus Fucking Christ. I thought we were reestablishing the electrical grid, building schools & hospitals, etc.? Apparently, we Americans can only see progress over the piles of dead Iraqis. & apparently, our troops are just killing Iraqis, not rebuilding. Why is that? I thought that was our strategy? I just hate these people that claim to be governing us.


The image “http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/genocides/cambodia/CambodiaSkulls.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The new Bu$hCo metric for success.

Via Atrios.

Calling Bullshit

I no fan of either Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton, however, what a different world it might have been. Digby has a great post on the media & their (non)role in educating the country.

Is it a sin, in and of itself, that Greenfield trivialized Barack Obama for his wardrobe and compared him to a holocaust denying psychopath? Not really. Is it a major goof for Jeanne Moos to simultaneously go out on the street and ask people if they think his "weird" middle name means that he can't be elected? Probably not.

But you'll have to excuse us hotheads for reacting strongly when we see these things because the last time the media decided to have "fun" and tell "jokes," this way, enough people believed them that it ended up changing the world in the most dramatic and violent way possible. We are in this mess today at least partly because these people failed to do their duty and approached their jobs as if it were a seventh grade slumber party instead of the serious business of the most powerful nation on earth.

I don't know what is wrong with them and their social construct that makes them so susceptible to this, or why they fail to see how this bias toward phony Republican machismo distorts political reporting, but it's a big problem for this country. Whatever their psychological or political motivations, we cannot take the chance that these narratives will go unchallenged again. Bad things happen. Wars. Torture. Dead people.

Somebody in this culture has got to be the sober, factual, reality based journalists and it only stands to reason that those who are trained and paid to be sober, factual, reality based journalists would fill that role. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are very good at political humor. (Even Dennis Miller is funnier than Greenfield.) The late night comics do a great job at skewering politicians. Leave them to it.

Until the mainstream press recognizes the extent of their laziness and gullibility --- or pay a price for their political bias --- we will keep reminding them and their audiences of their transgressions even if that makes us thin-skinned hotheads who are trying to fill blogposts. We all have our jobs to do.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

J.B. Von Hollen A Crook?

We may never know.
Attorney General-elect J-B Van Hollen is drawing scrutiny for allowing donors who give 500 dollars to join a special club of contributors.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

More On Evil

Enough Said


She knows a robust economy won't bring back the dead.

President Michele Bachelet, herself a torture victim during the Pinochet rule, did not attend the ceremony.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Cold Bones

Baby dinos in Antarctica. No joke, cool.

The bones of a baby plesiosaur have been recovered from an Antarctic island, scientists reported Monday.

In life, 70 million years ago, the five-foot-long animal would have resembled Nessie, the long-necked creature reported to inhabit Scotland's Loch Ness.

A Little Levity

For the I Just Go Nuts At Christmas crowd. Thanks a lot to RLK.

In case you're wondering about the late night/early morning post, I've been dealing with insomnia lately. This Santa temping gig is getting on my nerves, yesterday's shift at Rosedale especially.

It was like that my whole shift. I'm on my third outfit, having been peed on again last night. That's not the worst of it. I think I'm losing my ability to hear high pitched sounds thanks to the banshee wails of suburban children ripped from their TVs to do photo opps for their grandparents.

Otherwise things are slowly getting better. I only dropped two of the little bastards yesterday. The first was just fine, and the other hardly showed any marks at all.


Home

Ojibwe religion returned.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

One Less Evil Bastard

On earth. Henry Kissinger will probably attend the funeral of his dear friend. Fascists, both. But the world is a slightly better place without Pinochet.


Pinochet
FORMER DICTATOR PINOCHET 'ruled with iron fist, died a pariah.'

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Unbelieveable

Via Atrios we get another glimpse of how deluded Bu$hCo has become.

Durbin said he challenged Bush's analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that's what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now — work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.

Bush, Durbin said, "reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response" and emphasized that he is "the commander in chief."

Friday, December 08, 2006

Hee Hee Hee


The Decider slips to a new strategy, er, tactic, er, look out, terrorist in Chicago. & it's not Rex Grossman. Scroll down to read about his anemic 1.3 passer rating last week.

The national job approval rating of President Bush has plummeted to 30%, an all–time low in the latest Zogby International telephone poll, sinking below the 31% approval rating he dropped to in early June.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Two Patriots

Via Crooks & Liars.

First we have our own Russ Feingold:

Unfortunately, the Iraq Study Group report does too little to change the flawed mind-set that led to the misguided war in Iraq. Maybe there are still people in Washington who need a study group to tell them that the policy in Iraq isn’t working, but the American people are way ahead of this report.

While the report has regenerated a few good ideas, it doesn’t adequately put Iraq in the context of a broader national security strategy. We need an Iraq policy that is guided by our top national security priority – defeating the terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11 and its allies. We can’t continue to just look at Iraq in isolation. Unless we set a serious timetable for redeploying our troops from Iraq, we will be unable to effectively address these global threats. In the end, this report is a regrettable example of ‘official Washington’ missing the point.
Second, President Al Gore:

Well, the report this morning is actually one of several studies. There's one in the Pentagon. There has reportedly been one in the White House itself is (garbled) up. They're all basically saying the same thing, Matt–this is an utter disaster. This was the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States and now we as a nation have to find a way, in George Mitchell’s words—"to manage a disaster." but—I would urge the president not to try to separate out the personal issues of being blamed in history for this mistake and instead recognize it’s not about him. It’s about our country and we all have to find a way to get our troops home and to prevent a regional conflagration there.

Emphasis added.

Jesus F. Christ

Looks like it's religion day, or, at least, religion reference day. Now our dumbass of a President wants all of us, especially children, to ingest or inhale more lead. Yes, Virginia, it can get worse.

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The agency says revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant.

Another Reason To Live In Wisconsin

Where in the Bible does god say you can't hunt on Sunday? What morons.

"We had some pretty passionate people, people who were for it or against it," Duda said. "The main reason people opposed Sunday hunting were religious reasons."


Blue Laws are just lame. & they accomplish nothing, but to make their advocates look just like the loons that they are. Sorry loons, it's a human figure of speech.

The image “http://www.idiocentrism.com/loons.1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Jeebus

This is about the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Apparently, these guys have used up all of their brains & ears at NASCAR races.

But he has ditched the nice-guy reflex of always turning the other cheek. When he spots a Wal-Mart clerk writing "Happy Holidays" on a window, he boldly complains: It should say "Merry Christmas."

The clerk erases the offending greeting. Chalk one up for Christian testosterone.

"I wouldn't have done that before," Stephenson says proudly. "I am no longer a doormat.
"

What a man!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

In Iraq

Things are going so well. Via The Raw Story.

Ten U.S. troops were killed in Iraq on Wednesday, a major blow on the same day a high-level panel in Washington recommended gradually shifting U.S. forces from a combat to a training role.

Cafferty

He's correct, you know. I watched it this a.m. & felt the same.

Alert: Real Cute Babies Ahead




Go here for more.

Dick

I, too, am sick of the ReThugs referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. It is so stupid, but I guess everybody has the right to free speech. But it's use belies Bu$hCo's claim of a new bipartisan tone in Washington.

Infrastructure

While Iraq will go down as the most lethal blunder in the history of America's foreign policy, the utter abandonment of our infrastructure will rank as the most lethal domestic policy blunders. This is not entirely Bu$hCo's fault, but a short look at Katrina's aftermath will leave no doubt about the direction of America's compassion. Here is a story that ought to outrage the American people, as well as the new Democratic majorities in Congress. There is no excuse in the 21st century for this to happen. It is no longer about customer service & customer safety, if not life, but all about shareholder value. Why won't the people who have the ability fix it? What's wrong with America?

''The perception out there is no one else is having this many power outages,'' Davis said. ''The perception out there is maybe you guys have spent a little too much time on Wall Street and not enough time worrying about Main Street.''

Sixteen deaths in Missouri and Illinois have been blamed on the storm and its aftermath. At least a half-dozen storm-related deaths were reported in other states.

More on Ameren officers, i.e., how to contact them here. & here's another storm that Ameren had problems with. Hmmm. Today Ameren's stock price as of 12:07 p.m. EST is $54.19 USD. On July 19, 2006 the price was $50.00 plus change USD. Here's the stock for this year:


Apparently, Wall Street doesn't give a damn about how this company takes care of its customers, in fact, 19 dead people (updated toll) no longer have to worry about Ameren's crappy service or how much Wall Street loves death.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Hope For Gingrich




& other heartless ReThugs.

It is a small animal that scientists find interesting for a particular reason: whereas humans cannot regenerate damaged heart muscle adequately after a heart attack and the destroyed muscle tissue scars over instead, following damage, a newt’s heart can be completely repaired and the organ’s function can be completely restored.


Hemp

Via RLK we get this AP story by James MacPherson. I don't have a link since I received this in an email & haven't figured out how to get to the original source. Anyway, it's a step in the correct direction. Here are the opening paragraphs.

North Dakota farmers may start applying for state licenses to grow industrial hemp next year but no seed may be sown until federal drug agents approve, Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson says.

"We'll see where it goes," said Johnson, who has been pushing industrial hemp as a crop in North Dakota for more than a decade. "Hopefully, North Dakota will be the first state where producers can grow hemp for legitimate uses."

Monday, December 04, 2006

Don't Cry For Me Argentina Or Something

clammyc says all the right things about the worthless Bu$hCo twins. Luckily, these Twins make up for it. Via BooMan.
And since I am being chartiable, I won’t even take the cheap shot of saying that they should enlist in the military, even though that would be the only moral thing for these two to do. But damn, they are in their mid-twenties already. A time that thousands of our own troops will either never get to see, or never get to enjoy – all because of the stubborn “oopsies” of President petulant poopie pants. While I don’t expect them to have one shred of decency since the apples don’t fall too far from the tree, there are some very basic questions and telling actions. Have they attended one military funeral? Have they spoken up once about the service that our troops are providing for this country? Do they even know that a “war” is going on at all – started by their own father? Do they even care?

What's The Matter With Kansas?

New law?

In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.
....
Violators of the new law may face punishments that include jail time, stiff fines, and rehabilitative education and training to rid organisms suspected of evolutionary tendencies. Repeat offenders could face chemical sterilization.
....
Some warn that the strict wording of the law could have a deleterious effect on Kansas' mostly agricultural economy, since it also prohibits all forms of man-made artificial selection, such as plant hybridization, genetic engineering, and animal husbandry. A police raid on an alleged artificial-insemination facility outside McPherson, KS on Friday resulted in the arrest of a farmer, a veterinarian, four assistants, one bull, and several dozen cows.

Oh, it's The Onion.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Nothing Is Ever Learned

This is what makes me sick about America. & the 50 years? How about 500 years of racist activity? These bastard ReThugs think lower taxes are the only thing worth acting upon. Sick.

But Teddy Gordon, the attorney for a white woman whose 5-year-old son was assigned to a more distant Louisville school rather than his neighborhood school, said the district's program was "nothing more than a hard-core, mechanized quota.''

The Bush administration agrees. In papers filed with the court, Solicitor General Paul Clement outlined the administration's position: A district can assign students by race when necessary to make up for its own intentional discrimination, but not to integrate schools that were never deliberately segregated.

Let me see, a school in the south that was "never deliberately segregated."? Don't make me laugh. &, of course, Bu$hCo agrees.

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/kkk.jpg

New Orleans

UPDATE: THIS is the link The SideKick sent me. The post linked to below is still worth a read, since it responds to the link he sent. I apologize for any confusion. & all the link talk. & if you don't like it, link this. Don't cross me today, the Packers are down 24-zip & it's still the first half.

The SideKick sent me this link from First Draft. He's right, I'm not happy. Then there's post from My DD. Bu$hCo's abandonment of New Orleans, & our inability to force the issue, is a cause for shame. More than a year later & less than half of the pre-Katrina population has returned. I'm not even sure that had Bu$hCo not chosen to go to war with Iraq, he would be doing anything different about the Gulf Coast. He would just be regaling his old enablers with stories of being drunk in the Quarter. What a vicious, little man.

As If

I'm not holding my breath. This whole business of compassionate capitalism has been gratuitously recycled my whole life. Wal-Mart anybody?


http://www.capedmaskedandarmed.com/jonathan/NOV_8_04/DSC09289.jpg

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2419/capitalism5sm.jpg

Water, Water, Everywhere

Lake Superior drying up? Well, not exactly, but this trend is worrisome.

Lake Superior has dropped nearly a foot this year to its lowest late-autumn water level in eight decades, a startling decline that is raising worries about shipping, shorelines and fish populations.
....
Long-term lower levels on Lake Superior, as on any lake, would be a problem for shorelines, where vegetation might change and then be disrupted by a quick rise, and where people might be tempted to build new structures, Johnson said. She and others said that wetlands, like those along the south shore, would lose water, reducing habitat for wildlife and underwater organisms, and eliminating the water-filtration role that wetlands play.

The Worst President Ever

Here.

He didn't rush to help the Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina because the country was overextended in Iraq and had a massive budget deficit. Texas conservatives always say that LBJ's biggest mistake was thinking that he could fund both the Great Society and Vietnam. They believe he had to choose one or the other. They call Johnson fiscally irresponsible. Bush learned this lesson: He chose Iraq over New Orleans.

Here.

The fact that Bush followed the invasion of Afghanistan, which had sheltered al-Qaeda, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, will puzzle historians for centuries. It is as though, after Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR had asked Congress to declare war on Argentina.
....
The war will join the sinking of the USS Maine and the grassy knoll among the topics to exercise conspiracy theorists for generations, and the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib will join images of the napalmed Vietnamese girl and executed Filipino rebels in the gallery of U.S. atrocities.

Here.

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court's unprecedented rebukes of Bush's policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.

Emphasis added.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Reminder

It's Saturday night & I'm not feeling very well. My right knee has been killing me for awhile. The pain meds plus aspirin aren't doing the job. So I just sit here. Oh, it's winter, there is snow on the ground & it's been cold. Here's the reminder.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Wal-Mart Sucks

Anybody surprised by this?

Wal-Mart again has been listed as having more workers on Medicaid and Washington's Basic Health Plan than any other private employer in the state.

Look Out Bu$hCo

The oversight begins. Things are looking up for America. Speaker-elect Pelosi scores big on this selection.

But Mrs. Pelosi chose him over Ms. Harman in part because he has repeatedly taken a more combative stance toward Bush administration policies like the invasion of Iraq, military tribunals for terrorist suspects, and the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

Mr. Reyes voted against authorizing President Bush to go to war with Iraq, and in June he said that the failures in Iraq “cry out for oversight.”

In September, Mr. Reyes blasted the White House’s justifications for the National Security Agency wiretapping program.

“I take very seriously our obligation to provide the president with the tools that he needs to provide for national security,” he said, “but I also reject the notion that the authorization for use of military force allows the president to ignore the Fourth Amendment and conduct warrantless surveillance on American citizens.”

Oh, & by the way, Harman is no "centrist". In fact, she's barely a Democrat. This whole centrist/moderate meme is just another ReThug attempt to make the Democratic Party cower in the corner. Speaker-elect Pelosi's excellent choice for chair of the House Intelligence Committee is proof that we have a Speaker-elect with a backbone.

Paul Krugman

Via Susie Madrak, since I won't, on principle, pay the NYT for the pleasure of some of their columnists. The nation is all the poorer for their greed.

How serious a slump is the bond market predicting? Pretty serious. Right now, statistical models based on the historical correlation between interest rates and recessions give roughly even odds that we’re about to experience a formal recession. And since even a slowdown that doesn’t formally qualify as a recession can lead to a sharp rise in unemployment, the odds are very good — maybe 2 to 1 — that 2007 will be a very tough year.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Webb Update

Bu$hCo's not only a moron, he's a complete dickhead.

As President Bush is well aware, a couple of weeks before this dinner the tank riding next to Jimmy's in Iraq was under fire and three marines died.

My sources are telling me that the way President Bush approached Webb with his tone, it appeared he was asking the question of how Jimmy was doing in a mocking manner, while he was certainly aware of the tragedy that had hit his unit a few weeks earlier.


It's just like his mocking of an about-to-be-murdered-by-the-state prisoner in Texas.

"`Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me,' "

- Excerpts from The Houston Chronicle August 10, 1999

Enjoy

Just make sure you're wearing some kind of underwear. Via The General, who doffs his helmet to some guy named Brian. That must mean that this guy named Brian is responsible for the hilarity, or the truth, as the case may be.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

You Point A Finger At Maliki

& there are three more pointing back at you. You know, we invade his country, destroy his country's infrastructure, disband his army, kill his citizens, & it's all the elected prime minister's fault that things are so fucked up. Bu$hCo can't take responsibility for anything. The fault always lies elsewhere. But I see that he has passed that on to his daughters. The whole family is an embarrassment to America.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A Stupid Stupid Man

& some of you voted for him. I hope you are happy.

This is another of those stories that I stay out of the way with my commentary/snark and let the story speak for itself:


From The Hill

President Bush has pledged to work with the new Democratic majorities in Congress, but he has already gotten off on the wrong foot with Jim Webb, whose surprise victory over Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) tipped the Senate to the Democrats

Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son’s old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.



Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

Sorry for the shortness, etc, but the content speaks volumes

Bush is clueless.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Amur Tiger Time

Peace On Earth - Colorado Edition


I'm sure y'all have heard about this. Here's a pic of the offensive wreath.



Democracy In Latin America

More good news from south of the border.

Partial returns from Sunday's voting showed that Rafael Correa - who has worried Washington with calls to limit foreign debt payments - would join left-leaning leaders in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, where he is friends with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez.
....
...Correa, who has called President Bush "dimwitted,"....

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Happy Turkey Vacation Picks

Happy & cute progressive women of all ages.





Butterflies Are Free

Via The SideKick we get this story on global warming. While Bu$hco cuts brush, the world burns.

As the Bush administration debates much of the world about what to do about global warming, butterflies and ski-lift operators, polar bears and hydroelectric planners are on the move.

In their separate ways, wild creatures, business executives and regional planners are responding to climate changes that are rapidly recalibrating their chances for survival, for profit and for effective delivery of public services.

Butterflies are voting with their wings, abandoning southern Europe and flying north to the more amenable climes of Finland. Ski-lift operators in the West are lobbying for leases on federal land higher up in the Rockies, trying to outclimb snowlines that creep steadily upward.

Polar bears along Hudson Bay are losing weight and declining in number as the ice shelf melts and their feeding season shrinks. Power planners in the Pacific Northwest, which gets three-quarters of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, are meeting in brainstorming sessions and making contingency plans for early snow melts, increased wintertime rainfall, lower summertime river flows and electricity shortfalls during hotter, drier summers.

With the issue of a warming planet shifting rapidly from scientific projection to on-the-ground reality, animals and plants are being compelled, along with businesses and bureaucracies, to take action aimed at self-preservation. They are doing so even as the Bush administration eschews regulations, laws or international treaties that would require limits on carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists say are the main cause of global warming.

A newly published synthesis of 866 peer-reviewed studies of the effect of climate change on wild plants and animals has found what its author, Camille Parmesan, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, describes as a "clear, globally coherent conclusion."

Sad To Say

I'm an educator, but this is just about the stupidest thing I could imagine a group of teachers could do. Go read the whole thing, it will make you sick.

No, I'm talking about a development that is much more insidious and disturbing -- the Exxoning of America's Science Teachers....

M.M.

Michael Moore, via Suburban Guerrilla.

Is this utter failure the fault of our troops? Hardly. That’s because no amount of troops or choppers or democracy shot out of the barrel of a gun is ever going to “win” the war in Iraq. It is a lost war, lost because it never had a right to be won, lost because it was started by men who have never been to war, men who hide behind others sent to fight and die.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Van Hollen, Again

Good job, you loser.

Despite the narrow margin of his win, however, Van Hollen is now sending signals that he intends to review roughly two dozen environmental actions brought by the state Department of Justice against the federal government, local governments and private parties. That's a review that the WMC wants, as do the many business interests that have benefited from lax enforcement of environmental laws by the Bush administration and by some local governments.


Emphasis added.

Idiots

Just what we need. Some people are just too stupid to believe. & a president of a school board, an adoption lawyer, go figure, who hasn't read Angelou's book. Now there is a reason to recall the dimwit.


Checking Out?

He never checked in.

And yet since the election he seems to have disappeared from the conversation entirely. Like he's just checked out. It's not his thing anymore.

Iraq

Chuck Hagel counters St. McCain, the stup.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.


Via Atrios.

Feeling Safer Yet?

Just The Man? Well, no.

In 1984, Robert Gates, then the No. 2 CIA official, advocated U.S. airstrikes against Nicaragua's pro-Cuban government to reverse what he described as an ineffective U.S. strategy to deal with communist advances in Central America, previously classified documents say.

Hugo!

Chavez is not the devil.

Citgo has allotted 250 gallons of heating oil or the equivalent for each household. With Citgo figuring that each gallon is worth $2.25, the donation is $562.50 per household, about a 40 percent discount on most winter heating bills for homes on Chippewa reservations. The program runs from Nov. 15 until March 15.

Van Hollen - Is He A Crook?

We may never know.

Van Hollen's campaign finance reports show he has accepted about $3,500 from donors affiliated with cranberry operations since 2005, including $600 from Zawistowski's wife, Rosalind.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Cute Babies



I'm late turning in an essay on being a grandfather. But it's hard to work when this kind of cuteness is just across the living room. It's coming Oh Queen of the Bay area who ought to be Queen of the MidWest. Bask in the reflected glow of the cutest babies in the history of the world.











Crap

Just a cakewalk.

In the deadliest attack on a sectarian enclave since the beginning of the Iraq war, suspected Sunni-Arab militants used three suicide car bombs and two mortar rounds on the capital's Shiite Sadr City slum to kill at least 150 people and wound 238 on Thursday, police said.

The Shiites responded almost immediately, firing 10 mortar rounds at the Abu Hanifa Sunni mosque in Azamiya, killing one person and wounding 14 people in an attack on the holiest Sunni shrine in Baghdad.


http://www.twainquotes.com/cakewalk.gif

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Stuff

So I'm flipping through the channels & came across a Tony Bennett thing. Jeez Louise that guy can sing. & he's 80 years old! Keep it up man.

Now, after searching through the internets & their tubes & stuff, I'd ask you to visit these fine places.

Some great pics - tundra swans, porcupines, bear tracks in the snow, bald eagles, albino deer over at the SideKick's place.

Something about growing up at Mixter's.

BurdockBoy has stuff about babies, among other things.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

We're Winning

A Captain wants to help Iraq, now she just wants to go home. They have no idea of what they are fighting for. Neither does the American public.

Women

No woman deserves reproductive health services, at least according to Bu$hCo & this moron. He works at a place that opposes contraception. Now there is a modern idea. What was all this bipartisan crap I heard last week. Maybe Holy Joe will say something useful. Don't count on it.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Sham

It's probably too fine a touch for this. I feel so much safer.

Bloggered UPDATE #2




I just don't know so I'm going to republish a pic, even though you can get to it through the archives on the left.

Jesus In A Camisole

Some difference.
Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, said a key difference is that the stakes are higher with Iraq.
& the ReThugs said it was the dirty hippies who spit on Vietnam vets? This is one big gob of saliva. But John Kerry gets hung out for actually speaking the truth. Some liberal press corps. Why aren't they slamming Hadley? I guess we'll never know.

Joke, Good Joke

From Julie Mason from the Houston Chronicle.
"Q: How is Vietnam different from Iraq?

"A: Bush had a plan for getting out of Vietnam."

Via Froomkin, other.

No Tears

For this son-of-a-bitch.

Bloggered

It seems Blogger has decided to eff with me today. A bunch of posts from this week appear on the editing list, but don't appear on the blog. I'll try & fix it. But what do I know?

I'm A Thief


I'm just going to steal this post from the incomparable Tbogg. It made me laugh, then snicker, then get a little pissed. All good states of physical being.

Bull Headed



I know I've told this story before, but too bad, here it goes again:

Back in the day, when we were living in a different house, we had a dog-door installed for Cooder the Best Dog In the World. Because our house was located on the edge of a canyon we used to have problems with opossums and raccoons coming into the yard who had no qualms about attempting to come inside looking for a snack. Like most dog doors the one we had installed came with a security door, in this case made out of sheet metal, that slid down in order to block critters from using it from either side. Occasionally, okay...lots of times, I would forget to pull up the security door and Cooder, thinking it was free and clear, would clickity-clack clickity-clack across the room and smack his head (thwack!) up against the door. Now most dogs would either bark to be let out or would deploy the Devastating Big-Eyed Imploring Look of Sadness to get a little help here. Not Cooder. Cooder would go back up to the door and press his head against it, leaning forward on his little stumpy basset legs because he knew, he just knew, that... it... was... going... to... open eventually. I could sit there for almost five minutes and he wouldn't move; he'd just lean. Cooder was a sweet dog, but he was never short-listed for a MacArthur Grant.

Which brings us to George W. Bush:

White House officials said Wednesday that President Bush would renominate six of his earlier choices to sit on the federal appeals court, leaving Democratic senators and other analysts to ponder what message he is sending.

At least four of the nominations have been declared dead on arrival in the Senate by Democrats who have consistently opposed them as unacceptable. All six nominations will remain before the Senate through the lame-duck session of Congress and then will expire.

When the 110th Congress is seated in January, Mr. Bush can deliver another list of judicial nominees to the Senate, which will by then have a Democratic majority.

Mr. Bush’s motive in sending up the nominations has been closely analyzed, with several Democrats and liberals labeling it as provocative and a sign that he does not intend to seek compromise as he suggested he would after Republican losses in the elections last week.

[...]

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who will be the leader of the Judiciary Committee, said, “Barely a week after the president promised to change course by working in a bipartisan and cooperative way with Congress, it is disappointing that he has decided to ‘stay the course’ on judicial nominees.”

But Edward Whelan, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who has supported Mr. Bush’s judicial nominations throughout the first term, said Democrats were engaging in “rhetorical gamesmanship.” He said that despite the changed numbers in the Senate, Mr. Bush was not obliged to offer a unilateral surrender. He said the president was resubmitting the nominees for the lame-duck session because Democrats had refused to comply with the usual courtesy and moved to have the nominations expire at the last recess.

The four nominees whose chances of confirmation are viewed as nearly impossible are: William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel who was involved in setting many of the interrogation policies for detainees; William G. Myers III, a longtime lobbyist for the mining and ranching industries and a critic of environmental regulations; Terrence W. Boyle, a district court judge in North Carolina; and Michael B. Wallace of Mississippi, a lawyer rated unqualified for the court by the American Bar Association.

Six years in office and he still hasn't learned a damned thing