Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Nice Fish Department

World Record brookie. Good for the char. Good for the lake. Good for the angler. & good for National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame. & so sorry to the vanquished fish.




Mrs. coldH2O & I saw this fish in Thunder Bay, Ontario way back in 1972. We were married in January of that year & for a honeymoon toured the beer factories of Milwaukee. It was there that I learned an important life skill: tap beer is best at the brewery. Later in '72 we went on a more official honeymoon with two friends & their son. We went up north of Thunder Bay, & it was a fun trip. We did catch some brookies, but nothing like this one. It was displayed at a small tourist information building. It had been skinned & then plastered to a piece of slab wood. It was cool.

Here is the new record brook trout. By the way, the brook trout is actually a char, that's why I am using both terms char/trout interchangeably.





NOTE: There are a lot of links in this post, click on them all if y'all want to find out some good stuff. Remember, it's fish like this that we must save for our grandchildren, at least my granddaughters. & that's why we fight for peace, & NOLA, & against Bu$hCo.

Judy, Judy, Judy

Booman Tribune has this good post.
It's a cruel irony for Judy that all the thanks she gets for obstructing this investigation for over a year is to be destroyed by the people she set out to protect. I love it.

Let this be a lesson to anyone that does business with the Bush administration. I don't care if you are Karzai, Maliki, Lieberman, or Judy Miller...there is no profit in it. They will destroy your reputation quicker than you can say Colin Powell or George Tenet.

Too Young

Molly Ivins, R.I.P.

& too good.
She ended the piece by endorsing the peace march in Washington scheduled for Saturday. 01-27 "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!' " she wrote.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Bad News

Real bad news.


http://encyclopedia.quickseek.com/images/Sunglass-c.jpg

Jeez Louise

Here's what the rest of my week looks like. Damn NOAA.
Wednesday
Chance Snow. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%
Hi 18°F

Wednesday Night
Slight Chance Snow. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 20%
Lo -2°F

Thursday
Slight Chance Snow. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 20%
Hi 15°F

Thursday Night
Snow Likely. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 60%
Lo -5°F

Snow. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 80%
Hi 2°F

Friday Night
Chance Snow
Lo -17°F

Saturday
Chance Snow
Hi -3°F

Saturday Night
Partly Cloudy
Lo -22°F




http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/media/gallery/art/mech/images/ColdWeather.jpg

I hope yours looks better.

Bu$hCo Talked To Everybody

Well, not so much.
Trucks are in particularly short supply. For example, the Army would need 1,500 specially outfitted -- known as "up-armored" -- 2 1/2 -ton and five-ton trucks in Iraq for the incoming units, said Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, the Army's deputy chief of staff for force development.

"We don't have the [armor] kits, and we don't have the trucks," Speakes said in an interview. He said it will take the Army months, probably until summer, to supply and outfit the additional trucks. As a result, he said, combat units flowing into Iraq would have to share the trucks assigned to units now there, leading to increased use and maintenance.

Via First Draft.

Send in the cavalry, for crying out loud. There are a lot of Morgan horses that need the work.

http://www.wquercus.com/acadie/2005/049.jpg

Dick dick

Eugene Robinson.
If you've been following the Lewis "Scooter" Libby perjury trial, I can understand how you might confuse Dick Cheney with Tony Soprano. Cheney's office is beginning to sound a lot like the Bada Bing, minus the dancers.

Court has been in session for only a week, and already we've heard about characters being set up (Libby, allegedly, to save political wizard Karl Rove), strung along (media bigwigs, who were to be played like patsies), buried in mud (former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who questioned the raison d'etre of the Iraq war) and ratted out (the famously leak-averse Cheney, revealed to be willing to leak like a washerless faucet when it suits his purposes).

Monday, January 29, 2007

Just More Bullshit

Since Bu$hCo can no longer fool the voters, he, being The Decider, decided to circumvent the Congress once more time. The Decider, The Dictator.
President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

So much for democracy. Oh, & feeling safer yet?

Jim Jones, Not Insurgents

So much for the new strategy working.
The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said on Monday.

Thanks Supreme Court


Via Booman Tribune. Dick "dick" Cheney shows what his five deferments during Viet Nam taught him.
Wolffe: Bob Woodward reported that President Ford thought you had justified the war wrongly, and that Ford agreed with Colin Powell that you developed a fever about Saddam Hussein, about terrorism. Did you feel that was accurate?

Cheney: I've never heard that from anybody but Bob Woodward.

Wolffe: And other comments—criticism from [Brent] Scowcroft about not knowing you anymore. People have gotten quite personal, people you worked with before. You wouldn't be human if you didn't have some reaction.

Cheney: Well, I'm vice president and they're not.

Farming In Wisconsin

The Dead

The Rev.Robert F. Drinan, R.I.P.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/7/7a/180px-Robert_drinan.jpg


Gump Worsley, R.I.P.


Gump Worsley protected the net for the New York Rangers before being traded to the Montreal Canadiens.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Good

& about time.
MADISON, Wis. - Gov. Jim Doyle plans to appoint a global warming task force and create an energy independence office to coordinate an effort to dramatically expand the state's use of renewable energy by 2025.


& an almost immediate UPDATE: News from the Winter Carnival in MN.
(WCCO) St. Paul During Day Two of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, a home-grown Minnesotan and world-renown Arctic explorer used the "coolest celebration on earth" to raise awareness of global warming.

Will Steger and a self-proclaimed team of explorers/educators plan to embark on a four-month, 1,200-mile dogsled expedition of Baffin Island in the northern most Canadian territory of Nunavut.

During Saturday's appearance at the carnival, he stressed the need to increase awareness of global warming -- it's real and it's happening.

"I never thought in my lifetime I would see these great changes in the Arctic," he said -- commenting on rising temperatures at the polar ice cap, rising sea levels and changes in migratory patterns among indigenous animals. "I really have to show these changes in the arctic to everyday people to show this is real."

Friday, January 26, 2007

Another Drowning Victim

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Regional Office
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Midwest Regional Office announced a plan to reduce staffing at its national wildlife refuges by approximately 20 percent of its workforce over the next three years. The personnel reductions are the result of nationwide budget shortfalls in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

Asshat

Norm Coleman (R-Dumbass) caught in the dumpster. Good headline from the WaPo.com
Norm Coleman Injured in Dumpster Dive


Thursday, January 25, 2007

A Little NOLA Humor

I'm just glad they have a little left.
At one point, I was nudged by a woman in the group who announced: "The penises are coming out."

No, there weren't any flashers present but there was a large papier-mâché member being worked on by the sub-krewe next to us. They call it George. Why, I have no idea but it's their penis so they can call it whatever they want. I asked the guy who was working with the member if he was the penis handler. "Nope," he replied, "I'm the penis wrangler."
Update on The Twins.

If she keeps using this face, Marigny will, to quote The Kid, get whatever she wants.



& this is how Sister Lucy handles the same illness. Her kingdom for a thumb.


& she's not going to let it get away again!

It's pics like this that make fighting Bu$hCo worth the pain & aggravation.



Watch this video clip from British teevee. Then ask yourself what kind of plan Bu$hCo has to stop the violence. The U.S. soldiers, for whatever reason, just allow, & cheer on, sectarian violence. How are they being trained? Who's doing the training? The clip is via The Raw Story.


America Is In A Bad Place

Because I said so in no way to lead a household, much less a country. What a fool.
"He's tried this two times — it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' "

Surging On

In Iraq.
A suicide car bomber struck a mostly Shiite neighborhood Thursday in central Baghdad, killing 26 people, hours after the prime minister promised the coming U.S.-Iraq security sweep in the capital would pursue militants wherever they were hiding.

Asshole

Justice was a drowning victim in Bu$Co v. Gore. & Scalia is wrong. & what else is wrong is how the audience at Iona College laughed along with Scalia. What is wrong with these people. They must enjoy all the dead in Iraq, the loss of our civil liberties at home, & the dead & unreconstructed in New Orleans.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

20,000

Hey, hey, this old blog just recorded 20,000 hits. I set a goal of 10,000 for my first year, which I met last April. I had hoped to repeat that. Well, the second 10,000 came a few months early. Thanks so much to my loyal four readers, I couldn't have done it without you. I've done close to 3,000 posts so far. It is fun, actually. Now, onward to 30,000. Thanks again.

Page A13

This ought to be front page news. Bits & pieces:
...Iran -- which enjoys diplomatic representation and billions of dollars in trade with major European countries -- is lumped together with al-Qaeda....
....
Bush is referring to attacks nearly a quarter-century ago on a U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks when the United States intervened in Lebanon's civil war by shelling Hezbollah strongholds.
....
But his description of the actions of "the enemy" tried to tie together a series of diplomatic and military setbacks that had virtually no connection to one another, from an attack on a Sunni mosque in Iraq to the assassination of Maronite Lebanese political figure.
....
In fact, many of the countries that Bush considers "moderate" -- such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- are autocratic dictatorships rated among the worst of the "not free" nations by the nonpartisan Freedom House. Their Freedom House ratings are virtually indistinguishable from Cuba, Belarus and Burma, which Bush last night listed as nations in desperate need of freedom.

Go read it all, it's good. & it ought to be on the front page, above the fold.

Abandoning Ship


Better late than never, but where was Hagel 4 years ago?
I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan. I happen to know that Pentagon planners were on their way to Central Com over the weekend -- they haven't even Team B'ed this plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives.... We'd better be damned sure what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more lives into that grinder.... and I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide any more, none of us."

Jumping Toads Almighty

Is there anyone in America more deserving of the adjective fucktard than Joe Lieberman? No one, not one single person. Here's a bit from his "questioning" of Gen. Petraeus, apparently the new savior of Bu$hCo's Iraq.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) asked Army Lt. Gen. David H . Petraeus during his confirmation hearing yesterday if Senate resolutions condemning White House Iraq policy "would give the enemy some comfort."

Petraeus agreed they would, saying, "That's correct, sir."

Well, I'm a traitor, but I'm in good company, 60 plus % of Americans are traitors, according to Joe. Fucktard might be putting to fine a face on the moron from CT.

SOTU #5

OK,OK no more upchucking.

The Boston Globe:
But on the issue most responsible for the erosion of his power, the war in Iraq, President Bush came looking not for advice and counsel but for a rubber stamp for his decision to escalate US involvement with more than 20,000 troops.
....
Describing the war's current downward spiral, Bush said, "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in." It is also exactly the fight that many outside his narrow circle of advisers were predicting before the war began.
The Strib.

But if last night's speech was designed to change the national subject -- to make voters forget the catastrophe in Iraq, to overlook Bush's string of disastrous judgment errors, to forgive his administration's record of arrogance and secrecy -- it's too late for that. Last November voters asked for a change in national leadership, and little the president said Tuesday night suggested that the right sort of change will start in the White House.

Obviously Bu$hCo humbly didn't want to mention his great victory in New Orleans.
New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina's strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush's attention on the year's biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

In the president's State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.

By contrast, in the days ahead of the president's address, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia compared the U.S. money being spent on Iraqi reconstruction with the fraction committed to the Gulf Coast rebuilding. And, chosen to give the Democratic response to Bush on Tuesday, Webb brought up the continuing struggle of Katrina victims right away, listing ''restoring the vitality of New Orleans'' just behind education and health care among his party's most pressing priorities, according to the text of his speech distributed in advance.

My emphasis. Hearing Sen. Webb immediately bring up New Orleans made the effort of wathing the SOTU wort it. That's what y'all call leadership.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

SOTU #4


It's over & Olberman just said "...strong for wood chips." I'm underwhelmed, so not to disappoint y'all:




& now I'm going to take a piss.

SOTU #3

Ah, yes, support the troops, blah, blah, blah - there's a theme here:

SOTU #2

Sadly, I wasn't halfway through. 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 -& so:

SOTU

So, I'm watching. Halfway through &

Here's A Head's Up

Just like the moon landing, Bu$hCo tapes his SOTU speech. I did not know that.

Stoopid Conservatives

Via Conservative Truths:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2006 the average rate of High School Graduates across the United States in 2004 was 85.2%. 12 out of 31 Conservative States had a lower than average rate of High School Graduates (39% of Conservative States) versus 2 out of 20 Liberal States that had a lower than average rate of High School Graduates (10% of Liberal States). The lowest rate of High School Graduates in the country is found in Texas with 78.3%. The highest rate of High School Graduates in the country is found in Minnesota with 92.3%.

Via Crooks & Liars.

http://www.neatorama.com/images/2006-02/get-a-brain-morans.jpg

Amur Tiger Time

Sad edition.


[Normally closed during the winter, the Magnetic Hill Zoo in Moncton, Canada, opened its doors to allow visitors to say goodbye to Tomar, the Siberian tiger who has been the face of the zoo for 20 years. Tomar is suffering from kidney failure and isn't expected to live much longer.]

Via Dependable Renegade.

Grandpa Says

Be real, talk & blog for choice.

Pro-Choice Posters

http://backspace.com/notes/images/prochoice.jpg

Monday, January 22, 2007

24

Interesting facts about the star of this torture teevee drama.
It's especially unfortunate to see Kiefer Sutherland play the world's most popular torturer -- because his father, Donald Sutherland, has been a prominent antiwar activist since Vietnam days and starred in some great films critiquing fascist politics, including MASH and Bertolucci's 1900 -- and also because Kiefer's grandfather, Tommy Douglas, was Canada's first socialist premier, and was recently voted "the greatest Canadian of all time" -- because he introduced universal public health care to Canada.

My emphasis. & a hat tip to RLK for The Tyee referral.

Hee Hee

A new low. People are getting smarter.
Mr. Bush’s overall approval rating has fallen to just 28 percent, a new low, while more than twice as many (64 percent) disapprove of the way he's handling his job.

& tomorrow is his State of Denial, er, Union Speech. Git yer shot glasses clean.

More Big News, Thumb Edition





Lucy, of The Minnesota Twins, found her thumb. Mother is reportedly ecstatic. No reports on Father's reaction.

Slow Day

Today started with some jointing of white pine boards over at The SideKick's. Had some coffee & conversation at the coffee shop whose name shall not be repeated here, since the demented, but hot, owner refuses to provide WiFi for the patrons. I then drove home & used a new clamp/tool guide to cut to size the tops of the drop-leaf tables I'm making. While Mrs. coldH2O probably won't read this, I am going to confess, nonetheless, to using the kitchen counter as my workbench. I will report that the clamp/tool guide worked well, as did the finish cut blade that I bought for my circular saw. The circular saw has no relation to the circular arguments Bu$hCo uses to justify everything. On the way home, I heard the news today, oh boy, another Bu$hCo shill, Tony Blow, er, Tony Snow, says that the insurgents in Iraq killed a bunch of people because the media reports news. I guess no media, no war, no HIV/AIDS, no racism, no nothing. Oh, & some old guy gets visited by the Secret Service for writing a letter to the editor. This happened in America. Feeling safer yet? That's my day, we'll see how the evening unfolds, or folds, as the case may be.


http://www.artchive.com/artchive/g/goya/two_old_men_dtl.jpg

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Department of Duh

Stem cells could actually help cure people.
-- The National Institutes of Health official overseeing the implementation of President Bush's embryonic stem cell policy has suggested that the controversial program is delaying cures, an unusually blunt assessment for an executive branch official.

In prepared Senate testimony, Story Landis, director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and interim chair of the agency's stem cell task force, closely mirrored previous testimony from other NIH officials, who have for years been careful not to criticize the Bush policy directly, even though that policy has infuriated many scientists for the limits it places on embryo cell work.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Just Great

Bu$hCo's war of choice, i.e., a war we didn't need, claimed TWENTY more American troops.
At least 20 American service personnel were killed in military operations Saturday in one of the deadliest days for U.S. forces since the

Iraq war began, and authorities also announced two U.S. combat deaths from the previous day
Oh, & he sleeps "...a lot better than people would assume." What an asshole.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Finally

The work last November is beginning to pay off.

More Dead

As a boy in northern Wisco a long time ago, California Dreamin' opened up the imagination to really big waves & girls on towels at the beach. Denny Doherty R.I.P.


The image “http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/luv1another/images/denny.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

& while I enjoyed Barney Miller, it was in the Mel Brooks' films that I really enjoyed Ron Carey R.I.P.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/706/14549barneylevitt.jpg

Thursday, January 18, 2007

ReThug Corruption

They just can't let go of all the wonderful benefits of selling their votes.
A dispute with Republicans derailed ethics and lobbying legislation Democrats had hoped would mark their takeover of the Senate.

UPDATE:

Texas Justice

Stinks.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Good Kids

130 doing the right thing.
About 130 youths spent a day off from school in hopes of convincing state legislators to provide funding for family planning programs, which would include sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment, and a Healthy Youth Act that would ensure medically accurate sex education in schools.

Just Great

This tick-tock has nothing to do with waiting to have babies.
The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday -- symbolizing the annihilation of civilization and adding the perils of global warming for the first time.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Big News

Marigny rolled over all by herself! Yes, it deserves an exclamation point. You'll want to visit The Twins for pics of unbelievable cuteness. Hint: more hat blogging.

Not Working

Iraq still swimming in blood.
An explosion outside a Baghdad university as students were heading home for the day killed at least 65 people on Tuesday, in the deadliest of several attacks on predominantly Shiite areas. The attack came on a day the United Nations said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died last year in sectarian violence.

Attacks in Baghdad -- the university explosion, blasts at a marketplace for used motorcycles and a drive-by shooting -- came as at least 109 people were killed or found dead nationwide in what appeared to be a final spasm of violence ahead of an imminent security operation by the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to secure the capital.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Jeez Louise

Looks like the goofball Judge Eaton of Ashland, WI, has some friends over in Wolverine Land.
In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.
Yet, what's most interesting is that the MI Attorney General, who successfully appealed a lower court ruling, had this little issue.
In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.

Happy MLK Day

I took the day off, went to town to buy some dog food, borrowed a router, came home & did a little woodworking in the basement, after, of course, herding the three horses back into their paddock. The fourth horse, Gabriel, has to good sense to stay inside, where there is easy water. I actually finished the work that I borrowed the router for, & it looks good. My router, by the way, is in the shop, so I must thank The SideKick for lending me one of his tools. Digby has a good piece on conservatives & how they have dealt with Martin Luther King, Jr., over the years. Note what that old, dead man of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, Alzheimer's President, had to say:
Another, even more prominent conservative said it was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."

That was Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, arguing that King had it coming. King was the man who taught people they could choose which laws they'd break--in his soaring exegesis on St. Thomas Aquinas from that Birmingham jail in 1963: "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. ... Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."
In the same post, Digby quotes Rick Perlstein & it's a good piece of thinking.
I have come to realize that conservatism's single most identifiable characteristic is its fear (of progress, the other --- everything.) And nothing scared conservatives more than the great progressive Martin Luther King, who faced them down peacefully with grim determination and awesome courage. Why, if African Americans could overcome, then what was to stop anybody from believing that "liberty and justice for all" applied to them too. Thanks, Reverend King for making it so.

Ethics Smethics

Via TPM Muckraker.
The Interior Department's internal watchdog says top officials at the agency knew about problems costing taxpayers as much as $10 billion in revenue, but tried to hide the problem from the public, according to Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Tollefson.

How Low

Can the world-wide right go?
On a recent evening, Marcos Suarez celebrated his first birthday with a single candle on a cake from the family he never knew existed until months ago.

Suarez, 31, is the latest of the "recovered grandchilden," as Argentines call them: the youngest victims of the "Dirty War" that the country's military waged against leftist opponents from the mid-1970s until 1983.

As many as 500 infants, according to relatives and witnesses -- some abducted with their parents, others born to pregnant activists in clandestine torture centers -- were never returned to their next of kin. In a calculated scheme to raise the children of leftists with conservative values, the babies were secretly given away, mostly to military couples or sympathizers.

There appears to be similarities to how the right responds to anyone who challenges there messianic belief that only they have the ability to rule others. Of course, the right in America will claim that they never took/take children from their parents. It doesn't take a lot of googling to find this:
He argues that through the boarding schools, reformers, educators, and federal agents waged cultural, psychological, and intellectual warfare on Native students as part of a concerted effort to turn Indians into "Americans." School administrators and teachers cut children's hair; changed their dress, their diets, and their names; introduced them to unfamiliar conceptions of space and time; and subjected them to militaristic regimentation and discipline.
For those of my loyal four readers who are interested, here's a brief summary of the training that the Argentine military, among many other Latin American rightists, received in the United States at The School of Assassins, or The School of Dictators, take your pick. In either event, it's enough to want a normal person to take a shower & scrub themselves. Still, the collective grime is hard to remove.
After Argentina's return to democracy, Viola was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for criminal responsibility for human rights violations during Argentina's so-called "dirty-war against subversion" in the 1970s. 8 Viola was succeeded by Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri, another School graduate, who ruled from December 1981 until June 1982. Galtieri led Argentina during the unsuccessful war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.

Another Bu$hCo Success Story

This country is being run by sons-of-bitches. & here's a corporation that tried to do the right thing.
Ten days after Hurricane Katrina tore through town, the Oreck Corporation reopened the storm-damaged plant where it assembled its widely advertised vacuum cleaners. It hauled in generators to make electricity, imported trailers to house its workers and was hailed as a local hero for putting people back to work so fast.

But now, 16 months later, Oreck — which had employed almost 500 people at the factory — is throwing in the towel and moving its manufacturing to Tennessee. The company says it cannot get enough insurance to cover its plant here, and cannot hire enough skilled workers to replace those who never returned after the storm, mostly because they had nowhere to live.

My emphasis.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Mary Landrieu, Mary Landrieu

Sen. Landrieu, are you happy & proud of your support for Lieberman? He sure is helping you know, isn't he? When will you wake up?
14. Lieberman's office announced this week that despite his election-year rhetoric, he would not use his new post as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to investigate the Bush administration's bungling of Hurricane Katrina. Newsweek reported:

Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration's handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.

[...]

But now that he chairs the homeland panel -- and is in a position to subpoena the records -- Lieberman has decided not to pursue the material, according to Leslie Phillips, the senator's chief committee spokeswoman. "The senator now intends to focus his attention on the future security of the American people and other matters and does not expect to revisit the White House's role in Katrina," she told NEWSWEEK.

[...]

Asked whether Lieberman's new stand might feed complaints that he has become too close to the White House, Phillips responded: "The senator is an independent Democrat and answers only to the people who elected him to office and to his own conscience."

Last year, Lieberman said he could not give "high marks to the Executive branch for its response to our investigation. The problems begin at the White House, where there has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation we have a responsibility to do. ... They have opposed efforts to interview their personnel. And they have hindered our ability to obtain information from other federal agencies regarding White House actions in response to Katrina. ... I hope the Committee will continue to pursue all these unanswered questions asked of the Executive branch until we have the information to answer the questions that must be answered."

Now, Lieberman won't use his new subpoena power to seek those answers. What has changed? Why does he no longer believe the committee has a "responsibility" to conduct a "thorough investigation"? Or was Lieberman simply grandstanding last year in an attempt to mollify Democratic voters?

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu campaigned for Lieberman last October, saying, "I do believe that Sen. Lieberman's record in the Senate justifies my support of him, not only what he's done for Connecticut, but what he's done for Louisiana, what he's done for the nation." Did Lieberman discuss his decision not to pursue the Katrina investigation with Landrieu?


Via Media Matters.

Feeling Safer Yet?

Apparently, the pursuit of justice doesn't include non-corporate people,illegally held for years without charges. These ReThugs have only one goal - fascism. Sure it's a loaded word, but goddamnit, the word fits these power mad bastards.

So Far

Things are going swimmingly. I thought this was supposed to be an Iraqi plan for dealing with the insurgency. Get it - "surge" vs. "insurgency."
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen over the objections of U.S. and Iraqi military commanders, officials from both governments said.

Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar.

The appointment is highly significant because it is Maliki's first public move after President Bush's announcement that he was sending more troops to Iraq. The prime mission of those troops is to reduce violence in Baghdad, much of which is blamed on sectarian fighters.

Friday, January 12, 2007

I Never Knew

It goes to show that living up in northern Wisco has really, really stunted my reproductive knowledge. & I thought it was the damned tofu they put in the salads at the local coffee house. I'd link to the coffee house, but the demented, but quite hot, owner won't provide WiFi for the patrons.

Texas Is For Dumbasses

This figures. After all, this is the state that gave us, not only the hated Cowboys (remember the Ice Bowl, boys?) & the stoooopid Bu$hCo.

Strange

This was listed under state news in Rhinelander, WI's daily paper.

death of manDogs help La Crosse students learn to read

Feingold Is Working

Go here to co-sponsor Sen. Russ Feingold's petition to get the troops out of Iraq. It's a good thing.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Ha

Hadn't thought of this, but it's true. Via TPM.
"George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war."

My emphasis.

Well,That...

...didn't work out like Dick "Dick" Cheney promised me it would.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted following the President's speech finds broad and strong opposition to his call to send about 21,500 more troops to Iraq: 61 percent oppose the force increase, with 52 percent "strongly" opposing the build-up. Thirty-six percent support the additional troops; only one-quarter of the public is strongly supportive.
I need my mommy. Oh, wait, I don't like my mommy.
[In] December, during a visit to his parents' home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.

Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn't get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too."
& my dad, too. Such a grownup man. Feeling safer yet?

Cheap Shot

I actually watched part of Bu$hCo's bullshit speech last night & then I took a crap. It will surprise no one that the crap was way more satisfying.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Of Course



Tonight Bu$hCo will announce, once again, that he is going to do something right. &, of course, it will be wrong. Anyone with at least one functioning set of synapses knows that this troop escalation will do nothing to stop this failed war of choice. This is tactics, not strategy. Bu$hCo is only trying desperately to save his crappy Yale legacy. Mike Lupica today:
This isn't some politician talking, one like Cheney, who set world records for draft deferments during Vietnam and now wants to fight the whole world. This isn't some war-loving television or radio yahoo who has never served a day of active duty in his life. This is an American soldier who believed the men who sent him there but no longer believes enough in those same people to let them send him back.
....
Finally, he is expected to talk about sending more over there, sending more young Americans to get their asses shot off as a way of covering his own.
You go sportswriters.

& Dan Froomkin also is in the tactics not strategy camp.
As Washington journalists debate whether to call President Bush's plan to send 20,000 more American troops into Iraq a "surge" or an "escalation," they are letting the White House get away with a much more momentous semantic scam.

The White House would have you believe that Bush tonight will be announcing a new strategy. But from all indications, all Bush will be talking about -- yet again -- is changing tactics.
....
They don't want American soldiers held hostage to sectarian violence and the Iraqis' inability to form themselves into a peaceful, Western-style democracy. They want the troops to start coming home. Their preferred strategy is to make it clear to the Iraqis that they'll soon be on their own -- and that they have to solve their problems themselves.
....
1) It's not just, as The Washington Post points out today, that Bush is breaking with his generals; it's that he seems to me to be channeling Vice President Cheney. Unwilling to change course, Bush has apparently adopted Cheney's overheated arguments that failure would set off a domino effect of geo-political disasters.2) The White House simply cannot answer the seminal question: Why should we think things will be different this time?
He's right, of course. Bu$hCo will keep killing people, both Iraqis & Americans, not to mention other coalition of the coerced. & he will keep doing it because he's a big, fucking baby. Someone who wants to get his way no matter what. This isn't courage or resolve, it's monumental stupidity. My granddaughters, the cutest babies in the history of the world, will be paying for this mistake long after I'm adding ash nutrients to some tag alders on the banks of the White River.

More Abramoff

More crime.

Who's Not Greedy?

Way to help the old folks, Bu$hCo.
"I haven't paid it yet," she said. We probably will be stuck with it. They may get $10 a month."

Speaking Of Transparency

Good for the faculty of SMU. They, too, have detected the bullshit that is Bu$hCo.
Intimates of President Bush have singled out Southern Methodist University as the likely site of his presidential library, but faculty members, complaining of being bypassed, are raising sharp questions about the school’s identification with his presidency.

In a meeting Tuesday, faculty members complained of a lack of consultation over the emerging agreement and all but demanded answers from the university’s president, R. Gerald Turner, on the relationship that would develop between the university and the library.

“There’s been a lack of transparency from the beginning,” said Tony Pederson of the journalism faculty, urging the university’s administration “to be more forthcoming with detailed information.”

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Transparency, Bullshit

Here's something from March, 2001:
You can't turn around these days without encountering the Bush administration's favorite buzzword: transparency.

Bush told a reporters' roundtable last week that "there needs to be rule of law, strong accounting procedures, honest and transparent government."
....
And often the administration's assertions of transparency are most earnest in the areas where it is most parsimonious with the facts....
....
To the extent the Bush administration is transparent, it is mostly in the old sense of the word: It is transparently interested in reversing the Clinton-era policies that shifted the tax burden toward wealthier Americans; transparently eager to reward business donors who gave most generously; transparently more conservative than the presidency described by that pleasant, moderate-seeming fellow who ran last fall.

Now, we all know that Bu$hCo's administration is one of the least transparent in American history. Here is one example:
"The Bush Administration has systematically limited disclosure of government information and records while expanding its authority to operate in secret. Taken together, the Administration’s actions represent an unparalleled assault on the principle of open [AND DEMOCRATIC] government."

It come from a report by Congressman Henry Waxman.

Here's another:
In Dean's new book, he calls the Bush administration the most secretive in recent history -- even more so than Nixon's -- in its use of stonewalling, withholding of documents and intimidation of the news media.

& here is an incident that would bed completely amazing if there weren't so many other examples. This involved a "vaccine court."
But the DOJ (technically, the "defense") has other plans. On November 3rd, the Department wrote to Hastings saying it "would oppose public access to the courtroom and public broadcast of the trial," because such an arrangement. "would pose security and privacy concerns" for those in attendance.

Exactly whose privacy are they trying to protect? It can't be the parents, because they don't want privacy. The only party fretting about privacy is the DOJ itself, and presumably, the vaccine makers. (As for "security" concerns, isn't that why we have court officers?).

Now, this is all leading up to a recent decision to keep all logs of White House visitors secret. Actually, it wasn't so recent, it was last spring, but it was only revealed recently because of a filing in a federal court. &, surprise, surprise, this photo of Bu$hCo & jailed criminal Jack Abramoff was published today at the excellent First Draft blog. I believe that more & more of these photos will appear, but Bu$hCo won't acknowledge them, citing the need for secrecy, 9/11,9/11,9/11, you know.

Idiot Of The First Degree

Joe Lieberman is such a dick. It's no longer surprises me, sadly, when he makes completely dumbass statements. The people of CT got taken for a big ride. The good news is that he is turning into Mr. Irrelevancy. More here. & here.
Lieberman:…that there be some kind of attempt to resolve this pivotal moment with a compromise among factions in American politics and in the American Congress rather than doing what is right and has the highest prospect of succeeding in Iraq—in other words this moment cries out for the kind of courageous leadership that does what can succeed and win in Iraq—not what will command the largest number of political supporters in Congress….we need to support the President as he goes forward, hopefully with exactly that kind of new initiative in Iraq.

Via Crooks & Liars.

Monday, January 08, 2007

The Kids Are Alright

& very, very, very cute. Go here for more cuteness.

Lucy




Lucy




Lounging Lucy

Notes From New Orleans' Bloggers

January 8, 2007 Edition.

Dangerblond.
I don’t have the solution for anyone except myself, and myself does not feel like leaving the compound right now. I do have one small suggestion for the chief and the mayor, however. Perhaps the most creative thing your officers can do right now is to pay more attention to areas where people are being gunned down and less attention to pretty girls driving 5 miles over the speed limit Uptown and legally parked cars in the Warehouse District.

From a Humid City.
Our very freedom is at risk by this kind of thinking, Mister Riley. Our very lives. Better you lose your job then another child loses a mother, another husband, his wife. Do your job, or let us find someone who can. We're not going to lockdown.
*NOTE: Mister Riley is NOLA's Chief of Police.

From Your Right Hand Thief. Serious snark & way inside Blogtopia. Yes, yes, it was invented by skippy, the damned bush kangaroo.
You heard me. I believe the media is exaggerating the crime problem in New Orleans because they dislike Mayor Ray Nagin, and because they're still bitter over his re-election victory this summer. The local media have some sinister obsession with making the mayor look bad. After the natural disaster that no one predicted, they have pointedly avoided doing any reporting on the newly painted schools, or other signs of recovery in New Orleans. They've just focused on the alleged "murder problem" in the city, and other negative stories.

In fact, I'm not even sure the local media is doing their own reporting. Today, on a noisy street I overheard two liberals talking about some T-P reporter named "Dank Fonze". So I checked the Times Picayune's staff database and... guess what? There's absolutely no record of a Dank Fonze anywhere!

Until the paper produces a Dank Fonze (or whomever goes by that name), we should assume that there really is no violent crime problem in New Orleans. We should trust our leaders before we trust the media. And our leaders have the right crime strategy, and they have enough police officers to do the job, and we are winning the war on violent crime. But, the media wants us to lose this Recovery, so they will stab us in the back by making up stories attributed to fictional reporters. We must resist their efforts. Our resolve must remain undiminished, our essential fluids must remain pure.

That's the biggest problem I see in New Orleans right now: the media.

From G-Bitch.
But this problem we have has been brewing for a very long time, ignored, brushed aside, devalued by our “leaders” because it didn’t affect them, didn’t lose them any votes, didn’t cause anyone to doubt their abilities as far as they knew or were concerned. Our economy has deteriorated in the past 30+ years into a banana republic (absent a colonizer) with a wide bottom of tourism-related, service and retail jobs and a thinner but impenetrable top crust of Haves. Housing patterns show the truth–that the have-nots are concentrated in areas that are starved of the resources needed to thrive. And though there may be no real trickle-down effect, there is a seepage of rot, one that affects every neighborhood and even the Haves eventually. The public schools have sucked for at least 40 years. (This hurts the have-nots and what middle class Orleans parish has been able to cling to and perpetuates a low-wage economy.)

That's all for today, folks.

Here Bluegill

The Kid calls & reminds me of this
A type of fish so common that practically every American kid who ever dropped a fishing line and a bobber into a pond has probably caught one is being enlisted in the fight against terrorism.

Maybe NYC could have used a few in the Hudson River. Oh, never mind, it's above water level. It's seems they need a canary or a million canaries, or something.

NOTE: For those among my loyal four readers, our pet bluegill has recovered enough to eat some wax worms & small earthworms. He still sports an impressive chin, however. It makes him looks quite manly, if in fact he's male. I'm not too good at sexing fish. Quiet, y'all, before I call the vice squad.

Bill Moyers Speaks

Hat tip to RLK. Moyers has some good things to say in this piece in the new Jan. 22, 2007 issue of The Nation.

Here is the real political story, the one most politicians won't even acknowledge: the reality of the anonymous, disquieting daily struggle of ordinary people, including the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans but also young workers and elders and parents, families and communities, searching for dignity and fairness against long odds in a cruel market world.

Everywhere you turn you'll find people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there's a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream. So let me say what I think up front: The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people.
....
he problem with this--and still a major problem today--is that the purported ideological cease-fire ended only a few years later. But the Democrats never re-armed, and they kept pinning all their hopes on economic growth, which by its very nature is valueless and cannot alone provide answers to social and moral questions that arise in the face of resurgent crisis. While "practical management of a modern economy" had a kind of surrogate legitimacy as long as it worked, when it no longer worked, the nation faced a paralyzing moral void in deciding how the burdens should be borne. Well-organized conservative forces, firing on all ideological pistons, rushed to fill this void with a story corporate America wanted us to hear. Inspired by bumper-sticker abstractions of Milton Friedman's ideas, propelled by cascades of cash from corporate chieftans like Coors and Koch and "Neutron" Jack Welch, fortified by the pious prescriptions of fundamentalist political preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the conservative armies marched on Washington. And they succeeded brilliantly.

& so do I. Speak that is. We must now continue the "surge" we began in November 2006 & keep telling the story of how Bu$hCo & his ReThug minions are really hurting America. As long as we continue to show the inequality that is inherit in our present economic situation, as long as we continue to show the brutality of Bu$hCo's war of choice, as long as we continue to show how decent, progressive people live & behave in a democracy, we will prevail.

Too Much Study

This is like doing one more study on whether or not humans are causing global warming.

Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study.

The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available, while rates for people at the very top continued to decline.

We're getting hosed while the rich get richer by doing nothing more than writing checks to the ReThugs & the dumbass members of the Democratic Party.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Hulings Scholar Reappears

I received an email today from the American Politics Journal, email edition. Here are a few paragraphs:

Two days before the August 8 Connecticut primary, Corinne Boggs “Cokie” Roberts reflected on ABC’s c“This Week” that it would be "a disaster for the Democratic Party" if Joseph Lieberman were to lose that primary election to Ned Lamont. "I think”, she said, “ that ... pushing the party to the left, which is what's likely to happen, is pushing the party to the position from which it traditionally loses ... presidential elections.”

I suspect that Ms. Roberts was less concerned about the future of the Democratic Party than she was about the seating arrangement at Steve and Cokie Roberts’ New Years Eve gala. After all, Joe and Hadassah are such fine folks, and DC High Society simply would not be the same without them.
....

Read closely both on and between the lines of Washington (so-called) “journalism,” and you will find evidence of an unelected “shadow-government”of comfortable, self-appointed and self-satisfied DC elites, composed of lobbyists, pundits, publishers, diplomats, military, and, of course, politicians. This is the Washington “snobocracy.” It decides, through its “establishment” media, what news, information and opinion are worthy of the public’s attention. And it determines if a politician’s life in the nation’s Capital will be comfortable and productive or an unremitting misery, as Bill and Hillary Clinton were to discover.
....
Thanks to the 2006 election, the snobocracy may be losing its grip on Washington. But it remains a significant player in our politics. For despite the clear message from the voters that it is past time for progressive reform and renewal, the snobocracy is pulling hard to the center. Again, just read and watch the mainstream media. The Democrats, inside and outside of Washington, must resist this pull persistently and forcefully.
Emphasis added.

The author: Ernie Partridge, late of Northland College. You can find out more here. His position, when he wasn't falling asleep in class, an eccentricity not fully appreciated by his colleagues, was once independent of the rest of the full time faculty. Now because of money problems, they give it to one of the faculty. That's too bad, since new blood is something Northland College could use. This year, Northland College gave the professorhip to a woman that is, frankly, an embarrassment. These highly educated, highly paid (relative to the far north of Wisco) apparently think that someone with an accent is an intellectual. It reminds me of this episode of Seinfeld, only not nearly as funny. It's too bad about Northland College, it had an opportunity & maybe, just maybe, it won't have to be like Iraq, although a thinking woman might not agree with me.

Full disclosure: I'm a grad-u-ate of Northland College.