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.

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.

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.

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,"....

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.

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.

Some Fond du Lac parents have asked school officials to remove former U.S. poet laureate Maya Angelou's autobiography from the high school curriculum.

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.

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.

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.

Union Yes! Again

Houston janitors win, despite being run over by cops on horses.

Noe Sentenced To 18 Years

Finally, an almost appropriate sentence for a Bu$hCo supporter.

Love the chains.

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.

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