N.C. Judge Declines Protection for Diebold

RALEIGH, N.C. - One of the nation's leading suppliers of electronic voting machines may decide against selling new equipment in North Carolina after a judge declined Monday to protect it from criminal prosecution should it fail to disclose software code as required by state law.

Sea Levels and Stuff

Wonder what these people did, or these, when the sea came to swallow their cities?

We know what the good folk of New Orleans, Louisiana did. They starved and dehydrated trapped on their roof tops. They died from treatable disease, though even under normal conditions such death is increasingly common in Amerikkka. They whirled away in the rushing waters to drown.

Or they simply drowned while waiting, like the old people awaiting federally coordinated rescue from national guard troops, troops who were unavailable because they were themselves busy dying in Iraq in the BushCon, greed driven, preemptive, illegal invasion and occupation for oil and power.

So, awaiting a rescue that never came, the old folks drowned inside nursing homes while Brownie emailed about his wardrobe and ate a real meal, one to sustain a workin' man, and Bush played Night Ranger records on his dude ranch, because he isn't smart enough to fiddle, and Chertoff hissed while trimming his goatee.

Of course, regarding NOLA, the racist reports blaring across the telescreen night after night, the racist misrepresentation of actions there, further dulled the dim response of rescuers, who were afraid of being killed by looting, shooting, pillaging, savage, southern po-dark folk, who were really just people trying to survive.

Though I'm convinced hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and other energetic expressions of nature's opinion played a part in many coastal mass drownings, I'm even more convinced previous abrupt increases in sea level may have been helped along by rapidly melting polar ice caps, but not ones liquefied by the waste of human over consumption of petrochemicals, like ours are being, as we become the methane planet.

The environment altering dependence on and over consumption of petrochemicals that contributed to the unusually active season of enormous hurricanes in the gulf will bring the would to it's knees sooner rather than later, yet little is being done to tap energy from alternate sources because the capitalist market place doesn't work that way.

Oil companies have the bucks, bought the white house, the congress, wars of choice and make policy on what to do about the decline in avaialbity of cheap energy. Heat from war, from fossil fuel consumption, from greed, turn up the greenhouse effect and accelerate the other environmental processes and events that are likely to pound us back into an ice age or drown us.

Much has already been lost to the maw of the sea. The earth does, after all, have a primarily fluid surface. It is, no doubt, our point of origin, or at least the soup we cooked in, if we, say, came from outer space on a comet, as aggressive, snarling, little microbes marauding the universe at the behest of the true overmind, DNA, then evolved slowly into the fine, environment destroying primates we are today.

Maybe the sea simply wishes us back, though I know the remaining whales and dolphins must be mighty nervous about our presence.

Did the ubiquitous flood myth emerge from a sudden rise in sea levels, one that wiped out coastal cities in cultures that had not yet invented writing? The story of the flood is told in mythologies from all around the world, a ubiquity that alone serves as confirmation to lunk headed, sexually suspicious, suppressed Christians that the jealous, angry Phallus god invented the world 7000 years ago, had Adam walk around with Sauropods and Raptors and Eve on a leash, mind you, then wiped out his invention by flood, in typical father god overkill, shortly there after.

How will we mythologize the drowning of New York? Or Hong Kong? Or all around the Mediterranean? If we allow Pat Robertson to be our story teller, or myth maker, it will be a story of punishment for sodomy and racial mixing, a story that includes assassination and instructions for a proper place for women.

With so many people enabled to participate in such a narrative of mass cultural experience, since we are a literate, technologically sophisticated, "advanced" society that can write and film and videotape, and since we know it's coming, how will we tell it? Will we pack it with truth or will we lace it with lies like the ones we told about the presidency of Ronald RayGun when he died?

Who has control of the story?

How could the wide spread natural events of the past be spun by Judeo-christian culture into a confused tale of Noah and his ark and his sons and pairs of animals, when the average reader doesn't even realize there are two tales woven into one there, when the average reader can't tell a raven froma dove, and the average religious Amerikkkan thinks these events literally occurred?

It is a result of who got control of the telling.

But now all our stories are run through the machine of a vast corporate media with a right wing agenda, a media that has repeatedly failed to tell the truth, find the truth, check the fact, ask the question, report the story; a tampered with media that still has the capacity to reach and influence more people than at any other time in history.

We are falling through the Winston Smith's memory hole.

How are we mythologizing the drowning of New Orleans? Who even thinks about that anymore? Does anyone talk about it in terms of ethnic cleansing, Halliburton's no bid contracts, suppressing wages, toxic quagmire, global warming, etc.?

When we tell the tale of the drowning of New Orleans will it include the simple truth that the republican party destroyed the federal emergency management agency by subsuming it under the do nothing department of homeland security, then appointed a blobby little titmouse, Michael Brown, to run FEMA, and a shady, sibilant snake, Michael Chertoff, to run DHS, when running DHS means nothing more than a job handing out pots of government money to Bush friends while doing absolutely nothing to secure the nation, because nothing can be done, since it is bad policy that brings terrorism upon it.

Will our mythic version of NOLA include the republican idea of making the federal government so small you can drown it in a bathtub, ala patriarchal felon, Grover Norquist, and bloating the military so big, we can't pay for it? Since messianic George Bush claims god told him to invade Iraq, will he hear god's message in Katrina, saying, "George, you're a no good, do nothing, mindless piece of trash and truly a son of a bitch! GET OUT!"?

Our telling, the one that becomes part of our national history/myth, needs to include at least these simple truths: A parasitic government, such as the one the republicans desire and strive for, is a danger to us all, our dependence on petrochemicals is delusional folly and we need to manage our behavior so as to live within the constraints of our environment if we are to survive.

BushCo. Gulag Update

More Gifts to Big Pharma

Eli Lilly Security Bill

[...]Everyone in D.C., it seems, is utterly baffled as to how an ugly little provision shielding pharmaceutical behemoth Eli Lilly from billions in lawsuits filed by the parents of autistic children made its way, in the 12th hour, into, of all things, the 475-page Homeland Security bill. [...]

Mission Accomplished? As of Monday, Nov. 14, the total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq was 2,106

Cunningham's Gift List

Nagin

who was republican prior to running for NOLA mayor, gets an ear full.

Katrina leaves elderly evacuees displaced, disconnected

News that's Poorly Covered

Wonder why?

Big Brother Down Under

Repiglikkkan Score Card

GPS-linked boxes hold cars to speed limit

Big Brother hits the road and is headed to the United States! Oh whoops, he's already here

Miami Police Will Trample Your Civil Rights At Will

If the Bush administration had done anything at all to lessen the threat of terrorism, my reaction to this news might be different. But the Bush administration has done nothing to protect us and a helluva lot to increase the risk of terrorist attacks, no, guarantee more terrorist attacks, which will surely be even more spectacular and lethal than 9/11.

This is nothing but a shout out from the new Amerikkkan police state. Armed thugs, because Amerikkkan police are, for the most part, an ignorant, poorly trained bunch of legally sanctioned gang members, shaking down people at random in order to ramp up the fear fear fear Bush needs to keep his fascist policies in play.

Gay Purge

I don't know where you could find any more "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" than within the power hierarchy of the catholic church. These men who forego intimate contact with women, live in groups of males and worship a phallus figure they call father sound pretty damn homosexual to me.
Me thinks the "former" Nazi new Pope doth protest too much.


an excerpt from the article

Contrary to some media reports that focused on the Vatican's banning of "sexually active" gay men from the seminaries (anyone--straight or gay--who enters the seminary must be celibate) and stories that zeroed in on "transitory" gays (another way of speaking about basically straight men), the document has a far simpler and more wide-ranging goal: the banning of any man who understands himself as gay. The document explicitly bars those who have "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies."

Frank Rich

Fascism then and now

[...] When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.
[...]

The Failure of Liberal Journalism on Abu Ghraib

{...]
But with Alberto Gonzales confirmed and Charles Graner convicted,2 the liberal strategy of treating Abu Ghraib as simply an infraction of law is ripe to be discredited. The Gonzales confirmation especially shows the futility of reading Abu Ghraib as a narrative about the subversion of law rather than one about the corruption of political culture to which the law has long ago become irrelevant.
[...]

Edwards

Too bad we let a vapid, vacant eyed, dough boy closet case like Karl Rove pick the democratic candidate last year.

Paul Krugman

..on the need for national health insurance.

Supreme Court rejects FBI linguist's appeal

Another big fat coverup.

Cool Idea

{...}
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.
{...}

Here's a Stupid Plan

That's right! Let's tax them thar Hybrid cars so the moron squad will keep right on buying gas guzzling Ford Expeditions. Bush has busted the budget. The money has to come from somewhere.

Canada

Stephen Harper, the American Canadian.

Klan Rally Held

Don't let the costume change fool you.

Great Stuff from Internet Weekly

Impeach PAC!

The Formerly Great Writ

[...}

Goodbye, habeas corpus. Hello, executive detention.
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Monday, Nov. 28, 2005, at 4:27 PM ET


Habeas Padilla

Tucked into the renewal of the Patriot Act, which Congress will reconsider in December, is an unrelated provision that would make it harder for American prisoners to challenge their convictions in federal court. Congress may also soon vote to limit the rights of foreign detainees in Guantanamo Bay to apply to federal court.

[...]

Made In Mexico

Really Juicy Stuff Part Two

Really Juicy Stuff

The Abramoff file! The emails are on line! Hot damn!

"Confessions of an Innocent Man: Torture and Survival in a Saudi Prison

Transcript, Podcast or Streaming video. Sampson is not to be missed. He is articulate, intelligent, moving and he compares Bush to Hitler in this segment

From My Friend Carrie

Who knows a monkey when she sees one.

Short Attention Span

Antipoverty funding loses momentum.

Another State that Will Always Vote GOP!

[...}
The purchase comes as the state approaches a major political season that has races for governor, U-S Senate and dozens of other state and local offices.
Some critics, however, are wary of the reliability of the technology and the fact it offers no paper trail, to verify its accuracy.
The federal money comes in response to the 2000 presidential election, which wasn't decided for weeks as paper ballots were examined by hand and votes were recounted.
[...]

More Dead People

"Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions."

Rummy's Al-jazeera Outburst

More on the leak that exposed the neocon obsession with Al-Jazeera.

Notes From The Class War

Europe Protests Amerikkkan Criminal Activity

Europe protests CIA activity on its soil
Outrage in many countries triggers parliamentary inquiries and a handful of criminal prosecutions.

One Down, Hundreds to Go.

A role model for Delay, Frist, Skantorum, Hastert and other GOP felons

Congressman Resigns After Admitting He Took Bribes
Representative Randy Cunningham of California resigned from Congress today after admitting to a federal judge that he had taken $2.4 million in bribes from a military contractor.

Mr. Cunningham, 63, made a brief and tearful announcement to a group of reporters outside a federal courthouse in San Diego after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery. He admitted to taking money from a military contractor in exchange for his supporting the contractor's efforts to secure Defense Department contracts. The eight-term Republican congressman, one of the most highly decorated fighter pilots of the Vietnam War, also pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004.

"The truth is I broke the law," Mr. Cunningham, and "disgraced my family."

"I forfeited my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions," and, he added, his voice breaking, "most importantly, the trust of my friends and family."

"I can't undo what I have done but I can atone," he told reporters.

Hot Crossed Infallible Pope Buns on a Rolled Paper Stick

When I look at religion I see mostly deceit, delusion, hatred of women, intolerance of difference, obsession with control and suspicion and desecration of human connection. It is appalling. It is the opposite of what it should be, or what I think it should be.

I cringe at religion's negative preoccupation with sex. As an outsider to religious organizations it is rather glaring to me that this obsession with controlling sexual behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with spirituality, other than keeping people from it, keeping people from the very real sense of connection which is present in a close sexual relationship. The institution wants to own that, that feeling and the right to it, among other things, so they wail and carp and carry on, or stone or burn you, and make rules about who can fuck who instead of addressing real problems that cause immeasurable suffering.

It makes me furious.

They're squandering the good intentions and energy of people who commit to their philosophies by perverting everything in to that narrow stream of concerns.

The catholic fixation on whether homosexuality is inborn or chosen would be laughable if it didn't hurt so many people. What if it is both? What if almost everyone is a little bit of both categories and a only a very small group at either end of the continuum is rigidly one way or the other? That seems to fit reality better.
And what possible difference can it make anyway? The church complaining about sexuality is like BushCo complaining about liberal attack dogs. It is a diversion from the truth.

My gut tells me any real future Catholicism has lies in socialist South America. The American church appears to be being slowly subsumed by the right wing world view that is anything but "love your neighbor" and mostly about privilege for god's elect.

More Video of Amerikkka and Britain Bringing Democracy to the Middle East

The Million Dollar Question: Are "Conservatives Simply Stupid and Mean or are they CRAZY too?

Local Wild Life

Possible Solutions to Global Warming

Sailing on the Citizenship!

Yeah, let's abuse immigrants instead of dealing with our innumerable Bush accelerated problems.
Illegal my ass. They come here and work their asses off. They enrich our culture. Besides, we stole their land. The immigration rules are complete corrupt nonsense anyway.

I live in the dark ages.


"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

I apparently absorbed the wrong parts of that pro American brainscrubbing I got in elementary school, because I know America is an open door, a melting pot, a place of refuge and opportunity for all, a sanctuary, a beacon of freedom and hope, a golden moment in history.

Oh yeah, my country is breaking my heart.

Conservative Crack Up

No, Sir. No conservative affiliated with Bush has any decency. None at all.

Help Wanted: Academic Economists, Pro-Bush

Tee Hee!
Finding rubber stamps must be getting a lot harder. Who wants to sign on to complete failure?


One little excerpt

"Bush's reputation in at least the academic community is about as low as you can imagine," said William A. Niskanen, who was a member of the council during President Ronald Reagan's first term and is now chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group. "A lot of people would not be willing to give up a good tenured position for a position in the White House."

Dutch Remind Washington: 'Torture is a Criminal Offense'

Global Warming Fuels Disease World Wide

Earth’s warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030.

Abramoff

Papers Please

I'd refuse to show ID.
You can send this woman a letter of support at deb@papersplease.org and read letters to her at http://www.papersplease.org/davis/mail.html

The Power of Nightmares (a video, about an hour's worth, in 3 parts)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Home Style Ethnic Cleansing

Yeah, About Time.

NIMH Offers Grants to Study SSRI relation to Suicidality_FDA to Examine SSRI- Suicide in Adults

Mon, 14 Nov 2005

A fifteen year struggle by critics of the drug-centered treatment paradigm in psychiatry is being indirectly validated both by the FDA and the National Institute of Mental Health who are addressing the issue of SSRI and suicide publicly.

The FDA is planning a year long study of the evidence of SSRI antidepressants and the risk of suicide in adults. The first advisory committee hearing of the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee is scheduled for December 8-9. See: http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/advisory/SSRI200507.htm

From Military Times

Bush is destroying the army.

Hugo News

Dimwit Priorities as Usual

Illinois: Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region

Will even genetically modified soy beans will grow in our new Illinois, hot climate?

From No Space at the Table

[...]
The Bush tax cuts did not produce new jobs. In 2003, the President's Council on Economic Advisers promised 5.5 million new jobs by 2004, but only 2.6 million jobs were actually created. The jobs created failed to even match the 4.1 million new jobs expected in a normally functioning economy, let alone one supposedly supercharged by tax cuts. Yet that hasn't stopped conservative forecasters from chanting the "tax cuts create jobs" mantra in 2005.

The quality of jobs, measured by income, health insurance and retirement benefits, has also declined appreciably since the 2001 tax cuts. Between 2000 and 2004, inflation-adjusted family income declined, and the number of U.S. workers covered by employer-provided retirement benefits and health insurance contracted.

African-American and Latino families have seen their economic security deteriorate even faster than white families. Despite the president's statement that tax cuts would create jobs for all who want them, the racial economic divide has widened. African-American unemployment remains about twice as high as that of white workers. And the earnings gap between white workers and workers of color has grown even steeper since the 2001 tax cuts.

One of many reasons that tax cuts are a shaky formula for increasing jobs is that tax cuts mean less government revenue and therefore fewer public-sector jobs. Some tax revenues are spent hiring government workers (direct job creation), as well as purchasing goods and services from private businesses (indirect job creation). Tax cuts may eventually stimulate investment that may generate some new jobs, but less government revenue will eliminate jobs at the same time, offsetting any positive job growth.

Tax cuts are an unsound prescription for job creation and economic good health, and more and more people recognize that relentless tax cutting, far from creating new jobs, has instead created a staggering deficit that threatens our children. Asked in an April 2004 CNN poll to choose between the 2003 tax cuts and a job creation program, 76 percent of respondents chose jobs; 50 percent chose deficit reduction over tax cuts; and 60 percent said they had not benefited from tax cuts.
[...]

Abramoff, Tom's Pocketwatch

Statement by The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe Concerning Mr. Jack Abramoff

Ohio congressman in spotlight in Abramoff probe

Abramoff Probe May Threaten Leading Republicans as It Expands

John Bolton will Receive ZOA Defender of Israel Award

Too bad he's not in jail for tampering with the 2000 election that brought us, with the help of the totally reprehensible supreme court, the worst administration this country has ever had.

HARDSHIP INDICATORS POINT TO A DIFFICULT HOLIDAY SEASON

If the definition of poverty were revised to make sense, a hell of a lot more people would be deemed as living in poverty. I'll have to write my senators (chronic disappointment Barack Obama and kick the repiglikkkans asses to hell Dick Durbin) and ask why those numbers are so ridiculous.
A family of 3 that makes over 15,000 a year is not considered to live in poverty?

Let's tell the truth about Amerikkka. It is a third world country, and counting.

(an excerpt)

A variety of measures suggest that tens of millions of American families will confront significant hardships this holiday season, with many unable to meet their basic food, health, and shelter needs. Government data show that:

Poverty has now risen for four straight years; 37 million people were poor in 2004.
Food insecurity and hunger have trended upward since 1999. More than one in six households with children experienced hunger or risk of hunger in 2004.
The number of people lacking health insurance reached an all-time recorded high in 2004.
During the last two years, the number of jobs has increased modestly but wages have fallen, with the downward trend in wages being especially marked for low-wage workers. Similarly, other data show that high-income households are gaining the most from the recovery, and that the already wide gaps between rich and poor are becoming still greater.
11.6 million low-income households pay more than half of their income for housing, up by 23 percent in a four-year period. Further, home heating prices are projected to increase significantly this winter. High housing and heating costs make it difficult for millions of low-income families and senior citizens to heat their homes, pay their rent, and still afford other necessities.
Hundreds of thousands of Hurricane victims continue to face difficult situations. One of every four Hurricane Katrina evacuees remains unemployed.
The national policy response to these trends has been inadequate in some respects, and misdirected in others. The federal government has stepped in with substantial aid to many victims of the hurricane, but its efforts have been far from sufficient in such basic areas as providing health care coverage and appropriate housing alternatives. Congress, moreover, has not yet acted to provide additional low-income energy assistance to help households facing rising heating bills.

Most troubling of all, the House voted last week to extract a variety of cuts in aid to the poor that will deepen poverty and increase hardship, even as both the House and the Senate are moving to enact new tax cuts of primary benefit to high-income people. The budget policies under consideration would not only fail to respond to the troubling trends outlined above, but would worsen many of those problems.

These issues are discussed in more detail below. The paper ends with some of the information broken out on a state-by-state basis.

The tables on the site are extremely interesting. Makes you wonder how it is people in those decimated states like Texas and Oklahoma support the idiot.

The Real Thanksgiving

At least the Germans pay reparations.
an excerpt

Much of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a feast was allowed to exist in the American imagination pretty much untouched until 1970, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. That is when Frank B. James, president of the Federated Eastern Indian League, prepared a speech for a Plymouth banquet that exposed the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of the graves of the Wampanoags. He wrote:

"We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people."

But white Massachusetts officials told him he could not deliver such a speech and offered to write him another. Instead, James declined to speak, and on Thanksgiving Day hundreds of Indians from around the country came to protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning, a day to mark the losses Native Americans suffered as the early settlers prospered. This true story of "Thanksgiving" is what whites did not want Mr. James to tell.

What Really Happened in Plymouth in 1621?

The Man Who Would Be King

Governor Bush opens largest faith-based prison

Master Thief Bremer

Cash transfer to Kurds raises questions about Bremer era

[...]ERBIL, Iraq — The $100 bills were all new. They came wrapped in plastic and loaded on wooden pallets . Altogether, the money weighed 15 tons, enough to fill three U.S. military helicopters. It totaled $1.4 billion.

In a little-known operation during the final days of the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, American military helicopters flew the shipment of cash to Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest city. [...]

Ramifications of Eliminating the Mortgage Tax Deduction

Everybody's Talking At Me. I Don't Hear a Thing....

Russian Parliament Condemns US Use of Phosphorous Bombs in Iraq

UN convinced US hiding truth about Guantanamo

Allies warn US over CIA's secret jails

BMD Focus: Report blasts BMD program

The hallmark of the Dick Cheney Administration is its Illegitimacy.

This Brownie Must be Laced with Meth or Something

Brown Starts Disaster Consulting Business In Colorado

Yeah, I'd hire him, sure.

Brown told the News: "I think people are curious: 'My gosh, what was it like? The media just really beat you up. You made mistakes. I don't want to be in that situation. How do I avoid that?' "

Chavez's cheap oil for US poor angers Washington Elitist Pigs

Another clear marker of the ruling party agenda: Squash the Poor.

An excerpt
Joe Kennedy, the chairman of Citizens Energy, one of the organisations that will distribute the oil, said the deal highlighted the failure of oil companies in the US and the Government to step in to help.

"Our government has made billions of dollars just this year on the royalty payments the oil companies pay to the Government," he said. But when it is a question of poor Americans, "what do we hear from Washington? Sorry boys. There's no money in the till."

To promote his dream, Mr Chavez has offered cheap oil and refineries to his neighbours and pledged financial support for regional development programs.

All the while he has positioned himself as a rival to Washington, accusing the Bush Administration of plotting a coup against him, and predicting the imminent demise of American capitalism.

The US on Wednesday threatened to block a record-breaking arms deal under which Spain would sell ships and aircraft to Venezuela, claiming that the €1.3 billion ($2 billion) arms deal with Mr Chavez could destabilise the region.

The deal, due to be signed in Caracas on Monday, would be a huge boost to Spain's ailing shipyard industry and to the rest of its defence industry.

US Clergy face prison after protesting use of torture

This story shines a momentary white hot spot on the Bush administration's razing of the wall between church and state, showing it as nothing more than utterly opportunistic manipulation of the dumbed down, cross bearing, Faux drooling public.

All that Jesus chatter from BushCons is certainly not about a philosophy of peace and love, but then so few Christians value that pussy ass stuff at all. Just look at the Christian reconstructionists, Pat Robertson, Dubya and my head case, fundie neighbors to see a few examples of what they really value.

On the whole, Christians are the most blood thirsty, self righteous, delusional bastards I know, with a few gentle exceptions. They're much more fierce and unforgiving than the Muslims, whom they want to exterminate by any means necessary, because it is hard to fuel your enormous, gas guzzling Chevy suburban in which you drive around your 12 rage filled, pathologically horny, hostile children, without cheap middle eastern oil stolen from the Arab poor (and still have money to tithe to Jesus). Amen..

Internet Under Attack by Fascists

[...]
"The FCC has distorted an already dubious law designed for telephone services in order to reach Internet providers and private networks," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "They have plainly overreached their authority in requiring internet providers to design systems that make surveillance of the public easier and we are confident that the courts will agree. But in the meantime the FCC deadline has not been moved and no one knows what CALEA compliance means on the Internet. The Commission refused to say, the FBI has been playing coy, and the rest of us just don't know. The result is a nonsensical deadline that forces companies to begin compliance without knowing what is required of them, or whether CALEA even applies to them, all happening in the shadow of a strong claim that the FCC does not even have authority to do this at all. The FCC needs to call a timeout until it knows what it wants, and seriously reconsider whether it has the authority to demand it." {...}

Falluja Video

Preparing for Mid Term Elections

Construction and Maintenance

U.S. Air Force Awards Contract to Bechtel

Bechtel has won a contract from the U.S. Air Force to provide engineering, construction, and support services to the Defense Department and other federal agencies on missions around the world.

The work, which falls under the Air Force Contract Augmentation Program, may include general services, disaster response and recovery, military operations not involving combat, and anti-terrorist operations. Bechtel is one of six companies selected to participate in the 10-year, $10 billion program.

Mark Moford's Scenes from a Bush Thanksgiving

Ah yes, it is that time again. The smell of roasting turkey and cigar smoke and Polo cologne, perfume like florid gasoline. Copious forced laughter that sounds like geese mating in a broom closet. It is Thanksgiving dinner at the Bush White House, where the guests mingle as though their genitals were being squeezed by manic elves, as if they were all coated in vanilla pudding being licked off by Pat Robertson. Which, truth be told, some of them seem to enjoy. A lot.

They await the appearance of the bird in the cozy, heavily paneled White House drawing room with the grand chandelier sparkling there since the Truman administration, the rest of the space engorged with stuffy furniture Laura chose herself and which she thinks is manly and presidential but which actually looks like it was bought at a Jersey consignment store run by Ethan Allen's stoned brother.

Barbara rules. Owns the house, despite how she hasn't lived here in over 13 years. Laura can only look at her in numb awe, her own stiff skirt pleats appearing humble and small in comparison to Barb's massive teal dress ensemble, so epic and balloon-like it would seem to envelope all it comes near, like a giant ocean algae bloom, a massive amoeba, a cloud of righteous know-it-allness that makes easy mockery of Laura's little beige blouse of meek sexless humility. Barb is a force of nature, commanding the staff and chatting up the various heads of state and smiling at everyone with that glassy omnivorous stare. They all hate her.

George Sr. notices this, of course, from his usual place back beside the old bookcase that hasn't been perused in five years, sips his gin fizz and chuckles softly at the scene, thinkin' about golf, thinkin' about how long ago it all seems since his reign of tepid ineptitude, but thinkin', also, about how history will be much kinder to him now that his son has run the country into a blood-drenched wall. He-he-he. He'll drink to that.

It's the thing no one mentions, but which hangs over the room like a pall. Junior's current miserable poll numbers now mean that he and his father share the honor of being two of the four most unpopular presidents in modern history, right alongside Carter and Nixon. But Bush 41 does not care. He gets to hang with Clinton now. He is grandfatherly and forgettable and almost invisible. In other words, his stature has improved considerably, in relation to his son. Damn this gin is good. Too bad Junior can't have some. Looks like he could use it.

George Jr. is perturbed. He is sulky and pouty and has to force a smirky grin at the guests as they enter the banquet room, pretending as if he really wanted them all there, all these betrayers and backstabbers and people he thought he knew but who turn out, instead, to be involved in whole big bunches of illegal and traitorous stuff he has no clue about. They are all a bunch of goddamn boogerheads, he thinks.

He forces a smile. No one is willing to hold his blinky little gaze for more than three seconds. He wants to scream. He wants to run away. He wants a beer. He wants 10 beers. He grabs a fistful of baseball-shaped hors d'oeuvres (Gul-dang, I love baseball, he thinks). Barb shoots him a look: Sit up straight, stop pouting or else, use a napkin. He sips his mineral water, sullenly, chats with McClellan while scanning the room for Condi, though his eyes first find Rove, slithering around as usual.

Rove works the room, shakes hands, squeezing a little too hard to remind everyone who "the architect" really is. Everyone understands, even as they furtively wipe their hands on their pants after he touches them. Rove grabs fistfuls of baby shrimp and shoves them into his mouth when he thinks no one's looking, swallows without chewing. He smells like baby aspirin and old bacon.

Karl sneaks furtive glances at Barb. He is awed by her natural power, her girth, her effortless cunning. That teal makes her look so ... so ... seaworthy. He wants her. Badly. She knows it. They have a secret thing -- it is matronly and sweaty and creepy as hell and takes place every other Sunday in a Ritz-Carlton just off the Beltway.

Rummy knows all about it. He and Dick stand near the bar and take huge swigs of scotch and puffs from thick Cuban cigars and speak in low, mean tones out the sides of their mouths, occasionally bursting into dark laughter that sounds like a brick being dragged over a cheese grater. Rummy says something about the Karl/Barb flesh-fest and wonders, a little too loudly, if Oedipus would have felt differently about his mother if she had spanked him. Cheney grunts, retorts with a joke about how pleasurable it must be to hold a lit cigarette near the open eyeball of a terrified prisoner in Guantanamo and demand Osama's cell phone number. Ha.

Dick glances over at Lynne, who is, of course, eyeing one of the Latina servants with open-mouthed hunger. Dick hasn't seen Lynne naked in years. He realizes this is a very good thing. Something to be thankful for, certainly. But Lynne is happy. Her life is full of joyous bridge tournaments and bashing of gay rights and copious lesbian fantasies. She is nothing like poor, lost Condi.

Condi is lonely. So, so lonely, sitting over in the far corner, all by herself, nursing her one glass of white wine. No one really talks to her anymore except Dubya and a maybe few brusque words from Rummy, who she suspects is always imagining her cleaning his guns and polishing his boots and calling him "master." Suddenly, her heart jumps. She sees Dubya looking at her from across the room. She smiles that demonic, dominatrix-y smile that always creeps out the Asian press. He does that thing with his thin little lips, that little gesture only she understands. Her body is instantly warmed. Oh their special bond, a dark secret. It is her breath, her raison d'être. It keeps her alive.

Sam Alito stops by, darts in and out, stealing bites, patting everyone on the back, runs up and gives Dubya a big hug, which embarrasses Dubya and makes Cheney look at him even more disdainfully. Sam is laughing too loudly. He smells of tequila and bad ideas. Laura, however, giggles and looks at him coyly. Her legs quiver. She is wearing way too much White Diamonds and her hair hasn't moved since 2003. No one cares.

Meanwhile, Jenna and Barbara Jr. sneak tequila shots in the Rose Garden and flirt with the Secret Service for, like, the millionth time, to no effect. Jenna is so, like, buzzed. She adjusts her bra strap, again. Then her thong. Damn but she hates these formal things. That Alito guy keeps coming out, begging for shots. They don't want to go back into that miserable, dank banquet room. Barbara Jr. stares vacantly into the near distance. Why couldn't life be more like it is on "The West Wing"? That show, like, totally ruled.

The banquet room reeks and coils and sighs. It is full of bleak energy and missed opportunities, spiritual paranoia and repressed desire and dishonest laughter. The turkey comes out dry. There is not enough pie for Dubya. Rumsfeld slurps his scotch, drunkenly. Dick eyes the dark thigh meat. Condi has to pee. There is little to be thankful for, inside this room.

Outside, however, among the nation's awakening throngs, gratitude and hope are beginning to swell and grow anew. Only three years left. It's long but not that long. Every person in that gloomy room will be gone. History. Nothing left but an ugly stain, oily residue, scar tissue. The room will be refreshed. The turkey will be moist. There will be more cranberry sauce. This dark, warmongering chapter will finally end. Pie all around.

It is not, the world realizes, too early to be thankful for that.

Why We're There

Up to $US194 billion ($263 billion) in Iraqi oil revenues are going to multinational oil companies under long-term contracts, and not to the Iraqi people, a social and environmental group said.

In a report, the group known as Platform said that oil multinationals would be paid between $US74 billion and $US194 billion with rates of return of between 42 per cent and 162 per cent under proposed production-sharing agreements, or PSAs.

"The form of contracts being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option available," Platform researcher Greg Muttitt said.

"Iraq's oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people not foreign oil companies."

Muttitt added: "Iraq's institutions are new and weak. Experience in other countries shows that oil companies generally get the upper hand in PSA negotiations with governments.

"The companies will inevitably use Iraq's current instability to push for highly advantageous terms and lock Iraq to those terms for decades."

The report, titled Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth, said the majority of Iraqis were against the large-scale involvement of foreign companies in the post-Saddam era.

"Iraqi public opinion is strongly opposed to handing control over oil development to foreign companies," it said.

"But with the active involvement of the US and British governments a group of powerful Iraqi politicians and technocrats is pushing for a system of long-term contracts with foreign oil companies which will be beyond the reach of Iraqi courts, public scrutiny or democratic control."

Under PSAs, foreign companies provide capital investment, including drilling and the construction of infrastructure, and a proportion of oil extracted is allocated to the companies.

But Platform's report alleged that financing oil development could be done instead though government budgetary expenditure, using future oil flows as collateral to borrow money, or using international oil companies through shorter-term and less lucrative contracts.

Louise Richards, chief executive of aid charity War on Want, said: "People have increasingly come to realise that the Iraq war was about oil, profits and plunder."

"Iraq's oil profits, far from being used to alleviate some of the suffering the Iraqi people now face, are well within the sights of the oil multinationals."

Fucking Over New Orleanians for Fun and Profit

{...}three months later, only 15 percent or so of residents have returned. Most people can't come home. As The Times recently reported, half the houses in New Orleans are still not reconnected to the city sewer system and as many still lack natural gas for heating and cooking, 40 percent have no electricity and a quarter of the city is without drinkable water.{...}

Under "God"

Mother Jones has finally done a story about the Christian Reconstruction Movement, a theocratic nightmare I've been yelling about for years. FINALLY someone is making the connection between this pack of braying, totalitarian jackasses and the software we use to vote, as well as the destruction of our republic by a protestant elite that wishes to place women in obscurity, execute homosexuals and send those they deem unfit to slavery. Though their to do list is much, much longer and all of it is purely undemocratic and utterly evil, devil inspired mental illness.

The piece mentions that this "movement" is invisible to the public and the media at large.

Ah gee and shucks too!

How could that have happened when the Oval Office Nit Wit even quotes them occasionally? You'd think the media doesn't believe it is their job to ask questions of the government, or anyone else, or is afraid to ask because they think they will be punished.

We need to take back our media. All the media conglomerates need to be broken up, toot sweet. Hey, the repiglikkkans did it with the phone company.

Read this one carefully, then call you representation to complain about these GIGANTIC DELUSIONAL PATRIARCHAL FREAK DADDIES.

Though the article doesn't mention this, this bunch has been able to introduce several pieces of legislation in the senate and the house, (though none was voted into law) which means they have more representation in congress than you do. One of their signatures is stopping "judicial activism", which means removing the authority of courts to balance and check a heavy handed executive branch. Sound familiar?

An excerpt

... The Old Testament—with its 600 or so Mosaic laws—is the inflexible guide for the society DeMar and other Reconstructionists envision. Government posts would be reserved for the righteous, as long as they are male. There would be thousands of executions a year, with stoning a preferred method because it would turn the deaths into “community projects,” as movement theologian North has noted. Sinners in line for the death penalty would include women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses). DeMar told me that among Reconstructionists he is considered something of a liberal, because he’d execute gays only if they were caught indulging in sodomy. “I’m happy to just drive them back into the closet,” he said.(...)

This Governor Wants to be Your Next President

After all, he's done such a bang up job running the state of Florida.

The Overthrow of Haiti by the US

Limbaugh Has a Foul Odor

I had no idea idiocy had a smell.

Space Craft Land on Asteroid!

KInda cool, if not for the drive to colonize space for such bad purposes.

Padilla

and this in Mother Jones also.

States Rights

Venezuela sending cheap oil to Massachusetts

QUINCY, Massachusetts (AP) -- Thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents will receive discounted home heating oil this winter under an agreement signed Tuesday with Venezuela, whose government is a political adversary of the Bush administration.

Citgo Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, will supply oil at 40 percent below market prices.

It will be distributed by two nonprofit organizations, Citizens Energy Corp. and the Massachusetts Energy Consumers Alliance.

The agreement gives President Hugo Chavez's government standing as a provider of heating assistance to poor U.S. residents at a time when U.S. oil companies have been reluctant to do so and Congress has failed to expand aid in response to rising oil prices.{...}

Government to the Highest Bidder

Limbaugh, Carlson Make False Claims (as usual)

Hannity again falsely claimed that Reagan's tax cuts "doubled revenue"

{...} evidence suggests that the Reagan tax cuts were not the cause of the revenue increases that did occur during the 1980s. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has documented, citing figures from OMB, "Income tax receipts grew noticeably more slowly than usual in the 1980s, after the large cuts in individual and corporate income tax rates in 1981." By contrast, "income tax collections grew much more rapidly in the 1990s," when "marginal income tax rates at the top of the income spectrum were raised," CBPP noted.

House Agrees to $3,100 Pay Raise for 2006

Faux Free Press

Fox News is refusing to air an ad critical of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, citing its lawyers' contention that the spot is factually incorrect.

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Paneley

Proof of the Lies keeps coming

Stats And Stuff!

Diebold's TSx equipment

Texas Supreme Court rules the state must find a new way to fund schools by June 1

Or there were be no schools. Property taxes declared illegal.

More Rendon, The Man Who Sold the War

an excerpt

Rendon is one of the most influential of the private contractors in Washington who are increasingly taking over jobs long reserved for highly trained CIA employees. In recent years, spies-for-hire have begun to replace regional desk officers, who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the agency's twenty-four-hour crisis center; analysts, who sift through reams of intelligence data; and even counterintelligence officers in the field, who oversee meetings between agents and their recruited spies. According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.

The Constitution

More Proof

Ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush was advised that U.S. intelligence found no credible connection linking the attacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, or evidence suggesting linkage between Saddam and the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to a published report.{...}

6 Degress of Adnan Koshoggi

You can't make this kind of shit up. It must be hard for the sci-fi writers to compete with these world gnomes.

Adnan Khashoggi

Why was Richard Perle meeting with him?

The Enduring JFK Mystery

from the editor's note before the article

Ultimately, of course, this loss of a true history is corrosive to the concept of a democratic republic, and it has been one of our goals as a publication to flesh out the facts of those failed investigations.

Blair Talked Dumb Ass, Psychopath out of Bombing al-Jazeera

Senate Republicans Kill Two Bills To Help Veterans

Liberal

"If by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a liberal, then I'm proud to say I'm a liberal."
– John F. Kennedy, Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party nomination (14 September 1960)

Pentagon Document Described White Phosphorus As ‘Chemical Weapon’

a little excerpt

{...} To downplay the political impact of revelations that U.S. forces used deadly white phosphorus rounds against Iraqi insurgents in Falluja last year, Pentagon officials have insisted that phosphorus munitions are legal since they aren’t technically “chemical weapons.”

The media have helped them. For instance, the New York Times ran a piece today on the phosphorus controversy. On at least three occasions, the Times emphasizes that the phosphorus rounds are “incendiary muntions” that have been “incorrectly called chemical weapons.”

But the distinction is a minor one, and arguably political in nature. A formerly classified 1995 Pentagon intelligence document titled “Possible Use of Phosphorous Chemical” describes the use of white phosphorus by Saddam Hussein on Kurdish fighters:

IRAQ HAS POSSIBLY EMPLOYED PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST THE KURDISH POPULATION IN AREAS ALONG THE IRAQI-TURKISH-IRANIAN BORDERS. […]

Chavez Says Bush is 'Insane, Genocidal, and Crazy'

Germany to sell Israel two more subs at major discount

JUST OBSCENE.

According to the magazine reports, the outgoing government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder acceded to the Israeli government's requests, and even agreed to pay about a third of the cost of the submarines. Construction of the submarines, which will take place at the shipyards in Kiel, will cost around 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion), of which a third will be financed by the German government.
{...}
Two of the three submarines, built to Israeli specifications, were given to Israel gratis following the Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War after it turned out that German companies had aided Saddam Hussein's weapons program.
{...}
According to foreign media reports, the growing concern over Iran acquiring nuclear weapons has led Israel to develop nuclear "second-strike capability," and submarines, which cannot be detected and targeted, constitute an effective means to that end. That conclusion, according to foreign media reports, was also drawn from the fact that the torpedo hatches on the Dolphin submarines supplied to Israel have been substantially widened - which ostensibly indicate they are intended for launching nuclear missiles.

I don't especially believe Iran is building nuclear weapons for use against Israel or the United States. I do believe the United States is trying to make that case as part of the continued plan to execute the quest for American imperial power as spelled out in the Project for a New American Century. I do believe the United States is building nuclear weapons, so called "bunker busters" it thinks are deployable, and no administration has ever shown a higher likelihood of launching a nuclear war than this one with its gaggle of hyper-aggressive, arrogant, narcissistic, lying dumbasses.

I also view Israel is a terrorist state. And I know the United States is exactly that. And I am sick to death of AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY BEING SCULPTED TO SUIT THE NEEDS OF ISRAEL, the Weapons and aerospace industry and other business concerns. IT IS BAD FOR US AND BAD FOR THE WORLD. Adhering to crazy policies formed decades ago when they demonstrably do not work is INSANE.

Why not do something to enhance our energy independence rather than piss away our resources propping up this outmoded method, this of plopping Israel down in the middle of oil rich Arab nations to keep the Arab governments unstable so we can empower their biggest crooks and take their oil on the cheap?

No Excuse

Bob Graham Lays it Out

Lobbyists and the New World Order

To say lobbyists have influence is to miss the point of what is occurring in the US. Lobbyists have far more than influence. They have determination of what laws are made and which ones are enforced. Further, lobbyists determine who will hold office, and, in many cases, for how long.

People in power positions in the federal government are, almost without exception, business men from a "community" of international business. That isn't mere coincidence. Big business, through lobbyists, campaign finance, questionable voting apparatus and domination of media, is setting policy for everything from environment to defense. In fact, I cannot think of an example in which business is not determining the outcome of public life.

The idea behind the American system is the exact opposite. It was designed to give individuals the legal basis, through the constitution, to never be beholden to or downtrodden by a corporation or king or pope.

Of course, the individuals for whom it defined this legal status were white men who wore powdered wigs and raped those they enslaved, but their social descendents were smart enough to figure out that the constitution is a living document, just like English is a living language, and reach out to include others, after much agitating, sacrifice and fighting by those others.

When you hear lip smacking repiglikkkans paying homage to the constitution and strict construction, never forget you are witnessing theater. This party, far more than the dimocraps, though they are guilty too, has structured their existence around taking corporate money in return for policy and legislative favors. They even have organizations that are geared to do this kind of work, and nothing else. They don't give a damn about the constitution.

Because of them you have pharmaceutical companies writing drug laws, telecom companies writing FCC rules, credit card companies writing bankruptcy legislation, oil companies writing environmental legislation and 54 million dollars given to Washington by the oil industry since 2001 sure as hell played a part in the billions of dollars of profit they just pocketed, immediately before the heads of that industry collectively refused to give sworn testimony to congress.

Those are a tiny handful of publicly noticed examples from notorious industries. It goes on and on.

Under NAFTA, written by business, sported by Bush The Elder and signed by Repiglikkkan Lite, Clinton, we are not even sovereign.
A corporation has the right to sue you and win, under that nasty NAFTA treaty law,
for interfering with their business as they perceive it, even if you are acting legally under the laws of your municipality, state or nation.

Globalization, something of which NAFTA is a a part, is bad for everyone except the people who make the 9000 dollars an hour from it. It is bad for workers and the environment and consumers. But we have it anyway, precisely because business is
writing the rules.

This is not "we the people." This government is not for, by or of the people. This is a corporate oligarchy, at best.

If anything, fascists like those who make up BushCo. wish to wipe out the cumulative knowledge of our nation creating ancestors in very much the way George Orwell described in 1984. The past was deemed irrelevant in that story, and there is an effort being made in that direction right now in the US. Ranting on about the bible and Jesus and mosaic law and strict constitutional construction is smoke, not reliance on ancestors or traditional rules of governance. Dick Cheney, a truly despicable, amoral man, making rounds of media appearances right now to lie about the invasion and occupation of Iraq is the modern memory hole where the truth is disposed when it conflicts with the desires of the rulers.

All of this could be brought to a halt if we had tax payer financed elections. We could purge the lobbyists from our government. A different kind of person might be moved to enter politics. The United States might live up to the myth it has created about itself.

But the lobbyists and PACS have to go.

Real Food!

Thanksgiving at Gitmo

Nike Corporate Jet

The Nike Corporate Gulfstream jet had a little trouble landing today. I didn't want them to crash and die, but I was hoping they were scared enough to pee their pants. They have such bad business practices. Maybe a near death experience would make them reconsider.

These Appetizers Cause Food Poisoning

John Rendon

You can stream this, read it or listen to it as radio.

Corn on the Cob

Ariel "Adolph Hitler" Sharon Jettisons Party He Formed

You don't fool me, Ari, you war criminal.

Curveball Says

THE MANIPULATOR

Ahmad Chalabi pushed a tainted case for war. Can he survive the occupation?
by JANE MAYER
Issue of 2004-06-07
Posted 2004-05-29

On October 7, 1998, the Iraq Liberation Act which had been drafted by Trent Lott an other Republicans, passed in Congress almost unanimously. Chalabi, Brooke, and their allies in Congress crafted the legislation together. The act calling for “regime change” in Iraq was radical, yet it created remarkably little controversy, because Chalabi had once again shrewdly pitched the removal of Saddam as project by and for Iraqis, requiring minimal air support from the U.S. At this time, Congress also passed bills giving overt support to ninety-seven million dollars to the I.N.C

click title link for entire article.

The Relative Who Drinks Too Much and Starts A Fight EVERY YEAR

White Bread with Benocol

"Ethnic" Dish

Fish Fertilizer "Indians" gave to "pilgrims"

Home Style Mashed Potatoes (With Lumps)

WalMart Pumpkin Pie from a Box (made in China)

Stuffing with Celery, No Oysters

Turkey and Giblets

Iraq's New Army Looks a Good Deal Like the Old One

Why disband it in the first place?
One begins to wonder if Rummy has hardening of the arteries to his brain, and if Richard Meyers has a brain (a heart, a home or any courage).

Certainly the flying monkeys are everywhere.

Katrina work deals go to inside players

Don't forget, Nagin was a repiglikkkan until he decided to run for mayor. Then he became a democrat.

Chavez

Hugo Chavez has committed a crime.
He has used the profit from Venezuela's oil to enhance the lives of all the people who live in Venezuela.

The radical right wants to kill him for this.

This is America people.
It is in serious decline and right wing policy from both parties is why.

Jean Schmidt

Typical GOP representation up to typical GOP tricks. Question the loyalty of any one who disagrees with your piss ignorant plan for world domination. Call 'em a chicken, even though you are a member of the chicken hawk party.

Hey, speaking of 5 deferment chicken hawks, wasn't Cheney praising John Murtha in public last year? Of course, that man will say anything. Obviously, since he said, I don't know how many times and ways and on how many television"news" programs, Saddam was behind 9/11.

Well, the times they are a changin'. Schmidt got booed in Congress. The public wants the troops home and Moron got trapped in a room with a reporter in China. Before he went mountain biking. The Dim is always on vacation.
Maybe one of the dems will throw a bucket of dirty cleaning water on Schmidt this week. Hope some splashes on the other repiglikkkans.

Darwin

Just in case any fundies bump into my blog.
Of course they might putrefy before they could ever click the link.

ACLU Challenges Tax Break for Bibles

Churches next! Go for it!

Dear Santy Clause, Please Send Tom Delay to Prison

More on the LYING

Check Out the Last Sentence

Yeah, But it's So Much Harder to Embezzle

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - One of the nation's largest home lenders offered 1,500 housing units for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency has so far failed to put families into any of them, a Democratic congressman said Friday.

Responding to concerns raised Friday by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., mortgage lender Fannie Mae confirmed it offered the housing units - rent-free for up to 18 months - to FEMA two months ago.

Click the title for the rest

South Korea Flips Off Smirking Chimp

How Dim Is This Man?

Almost as dim as he is hypocritical.

I'm going to Get sued by Falwell!

And I already put myself on Bill O'Reality(Challenged) enemies list.
Busy Busy.

That's Our Dim Wit!

Locked doors thwart Bush's bid to duck question.

Katrina: Many dead undiscovered

Yes, of course. It was important to the Norquist, Cheney, Rove strategy that the bodies not be counted while the nation was freaking out over the lack of federal response and preparedness. The real numbers could give BushCo a bad name.

This is similar to the system applied to photographs of coffins returning from Iraq.

Chief Felon at it Again

Cheney Sidesteps Travel Disclosure Rules
Unlike the rest of the White House, Cheney doesn't make his outside travel public

WASHINGTON, November 16, 2005 — Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff have been unilaterally exempting themselves from long-standing travel disclosure rules followed by the rest of the executive branch, including the Office of the President, the Center for Public Integrity has discovered.

Cheney's office also appears to have stuck taxpayers with untold millions in travel costs rather than accepting trip sponsors' funds that the rules would require to be disclosed.

It's not as if those in Cheney's office don't indulge in the type of junkets that are routinely funded by private sources. Instead of accepting reimbursement for such trips like other government travelers, it appears that his office labels them "official travel." As a result, however, the public is kept largely unaware of where he and his staff are traveling, with whom they are meeting with and how much it costs, even though tax dollars are covering the bill.

Dick Cheney's Diary

Dear Diary
Need to get off a memo to brilliant military strategist, Richard QUAGMeyers about this. And to Al GUNzales too.

Blooding
Slicing the muslim open, either somewhere on the face or near a major vein.


"Cleansing the Soul"
To cleanse a muslim before punishment, have them drink heated or scalding materials, like scalding water, fire brands, coals, and even soaps.

The Ducking Stool
Strap Muslims into a seat which hangs from the end of a teeter-totter type contraption. Dunk into a river or pond. Not only can temperature of the water kill the victims, but leave underwater for as long as 5 minutes (or more).

The Garotte
At first, garottes were an upright post with a hole bored through them. The victim would stand or sit on a seat in front of the post, and a rope was looped around his or her neck. The rope ends were pulled through the hole in the post, and the executioner would pull on both ends of the cord, slowly strangling the victim. The CIA decided to get creative with it, and has added a spike that will be driven into the neck of the Arab as they are being strangled, parting the vertebrae. A knife can be used instead of the spike when just no other torture method would do.

The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg
The Maiden has now become a staple in every movie torture-room made. It is a coffin-shaped container that stands upright and closes firmly. On the inside of the door are long, thick spikes. Muslims or Latin American socialists are put inside, standing up, and the door is slammed on their bodies, driving the spikes through. The talons are not designed to kill outright, however, so they can enjoy their new home for several days before they died.

Knotting
This form of torture is specific to women. It involves tying a stick into a woman's hair and twisting it tighter and tighter. When the Marine's arms get tired he can hand off the task to friends while either holding the victim down or just watching. Not only will the hair be ripped out completely but the scalp will often be torn open, exposing the skull-cap. Only women with thick or long hair are chosen for this torture.

Mastectomy
In the good old days witch craft women, on the orders of GOD, had their breasts torn off with red- or white-hot clamps. The most famous case is that of Anna Pappenheimer. After already being tortured with the strappado, Anna was stripped, her flesh torn off with red-hot pincers, and her breasts cut off. The bloody breasts were then forced into her mouth and then into the mouths of her two grown sons.

The Oven
. The oven at Neisse, in Silesia, was a forerunner of the ovens used in Nazi concentration camps. The difference was that in the concentration camps, the victims were killed before they were roasted. In mid-17th-century Silesia, more than two thousand girls and women were cooked during a nine-year period. This number includes two babies. Halliburton is building a large, new one in Fallujah.

The Pear
The pear has more than one way to be used, with the most popular being orally. The pear is also used in the rectum and in the vagina, along with the chemical light. The pear is "expanded by force of the screw to the maximum aperture of their segments. The inside of the cavity in question is irremediably mutilated, nearly always fatally so. The pointed prongs at the end of the segments serve better to rip into the throat" or "the intestines." When applied vaginally, the spikes tore apart the cervix. The vaginal use is devised for women who are found guilty of sexual union with the Devil or his familiars.

Pressing
Pressing is both a death sentence and a means of drawing out confessions. Adopted as a judicial measure during the 14th century, pressing reached its peak during the reign of Henry IV.

The Rack
The Muslim is tied across a board by his ankles and wrists. Rollers at either end of the board are turned, pulling the body in opposite directions until dislocation of every joint occurred. Basically a slow, mechanical version of drawing and quartering.

The Strappado
The strappado is one of the easiest and, therefore, one of the most common torture techniques. All it takes is a rafter and a rope. The Muslim's hands are tied behind their back. One end of the rope is attached to the wrist and the other is thrown across the rafter. Then the muslim is repeatedly hauled to the roof and dropped so their arms and shoulders will dislocatete. A variant involves attaching weights to the feet of the victim as they are being dropped. This results in a harder jerk at the bottom and more bone dislocation and pain.

Strangulation
Strangulation is used either on its own or as the precursor to burning at the stake. Because being burnt alive evokes sympathy from the crowds, victims are generally dispatched of before being consigned to the flames.

Spidering
This form of torture is similar to the masectomy. The spider is a sharp iron fork that is used to mangle breasts. Again, this is a torture pretty much exclusive to women.

Thrawing
A technique wherein the Muslim's head iss tied with ropes and jerked from side to side.

Thumbscrews
Also known as pinniewinks, these tools do the same thing that boots did, except on the fingers and toes, crushing them at the root of the nail until the blood spurted out. In 1629 a woman in Prossneck, Germany, was left in the thumbscrews from 10 AM to 1 PM while the torturer and other court officials went out to lunch.

The Turcas
A turcas is used to tear out fingernails. In 1590-1591 John Fian was subjected to this and other tortures in Scotland. After his nails were ripped out, needles were driven into the quicks.

Walking
This is a "mild" form of torture used mainly in by those pussies in England. This involves making the victim walk until the are so tired they pass out and have blisters on their feet.

Water Torture
This one took inspiration to dream up. Water torture involves forcing great quantities of water, sometimes boiling, down the throat of the victim, along with a long knotted cloth. The cloth is then jerked out, which does a real number on the muslim's insides. A variation includes only feeding the victim salted foods and briny water.

The Wheel
What fun! Strap a muslim to a wheel, crush his bones with an iron bar, and hoist him up so the crowd can watch! Now, now, don't be sloppy and pierce the skin; it's so much better for him to be bleeding internally, because if no one sees any blood no one can be really sorry for him. Ooh, and for even more fun, we can put the wheel over the fire to cook the strapped in man for a bit, or we can put it on a bed of nails for our own little version of the Iron Maiden. Then, to be chairitable, we could bang his chest with the bar a few times so he can die faster!

Whipping
This is a mild, common form of torture, good in a pinch. The muslim is horse-whipped until his back is in ribbons. The whip is used on all parts of the body. When the muslim passes out they are revived and the whipping continues. This form of torture is generally a prelude to worse things.

Dick

Courtesy of my Good Pal Carrie

Who is invariably on the compassionate side in every political issue.

What Would Galileo Say?

George Coyne better watch his back. The rabid, frothing, foaming, snake dancing, protestant American, fundamentalist, (was that redundant?)Bush loving right will roast him alive in an iron maiden.


Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation camouflaged in scientific language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.

In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.

"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."

Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent.

"God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity," he wrote. "He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves."

The Vatican Observatory, which Coyne heads, is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world. It is based in the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome.

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI waded indirectly into the evolution debate by saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.

Questions about the Vatican's position on evolution were raised in July by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

In a New York Times column, Schoenborn seemed to back intelligent design and dismissed a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis." Schoenborn said the late pope's statement was "rather vague and unimportant."

Hard to Believe We've Come this Far

The news just keeps getting weirder and sadder and more scary every day. It may be because head cases are running the American Military corporation. Or maybe it is because there are so many liars in the news telling so many lies.
The Repiglikkkans say one thing when they mean another, do nothing or do too much. Their too much can be invasion and occupation or simple election rigging. It can be destroying infrastructure or destroying representative government. They keep saying freedom, democracy, peace, prosperity while they continue to act to suppress or obliterate all those things.

Texas GOP agrees to Stop Some "Campaign" Practices

Party to make changes in way it spends corporate money in return for "deferred prosecution".

By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, November 18, 2005
The Republican Party of Texas avoided prosecution Thursday by agreeing to stop using corporate money for some political activity.

Although party officials denied criminal wrongdoing, they signed an agreement with Travis County Attorney David Escamilla as he was preparing to present to a Travis County grand jury the results of his 18-month investigation into the GOP's 2002 campaign activities.

Stonewalling

Woodward

Before I almost broke my remote control hurrying to turn pathological liar and world class bully Donald Rumsfeld off of CNN, I saw that Larry "Useless" King will soon be giving air time to self intoxicated, narcissistic horse's ass Bob Woodward. (Woodward is almost as drunk on unbridled narcissism as Judas Miller.)
Well Done Bobbo! Without meaning to looks like you've prolonged the painful to the repiglikkkans national-security-leak-for-political-gain investigation.

New Disclosure Could Prolong Inquiry on Leak

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - The disclosure that a current or former Bush administration official told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post more than two years ago that the wife of a prominent administration critic worked for the C.I.A. threatened Wednesday to prolong a politically damaging leak investigation that the White House had hoped would soon be contained.
The revelation left the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, grappling with an unexpected new twist - one that he had not uncovered in an exhaustive inquiry - and gave lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff and the only official charged with a crime, fresh evidence to support his defense.

Mr. Woodward's account of his surprise testimony to Mr. Fitzgerald - reported by The Post in Wednesday's issue and elaborated on in a first-person statement - now makes it apparent that he was the first journalist known to have learned the C.I.A. identity of Valerie Wilson, whose husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has sharply criticized the administration's rationale for war with Iraq.

He says that he was told in mid-June 2003 that Ms. Wilson worked as a C.I.A. weapons analyst, by an official who made an offhand reference that did not appear to indicate her identity was classified or secret.

Mr. Woodward said he provided sworn testimony to Mr. Fitzgerald on Monday, only after his original source went to the prosecutor to disclose their two-year-old conversation. But because Mr. Woodward said that source had still not authorized him to disclose his or her name, he set off a frantic new round of guessing about who that source might be and a wave of public denials by spokesmen for possible suspects.

A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; the former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet; and his deputy, John E. McLaughlin.

A bechtel contract

Kenneth Porky PiG Tomlinson

Independent media with diverse viewpoint, a cornerstone of democracy.

Broadcast ex-chief sent 'bragging' e-mail to Rove.

And he looks like Porky Pig! Or Rush Limbaugh. Or Doughboy Rove. Same difference really.

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's former chief e-mailed White House strategist Karl Rove, "bragging" about a push for conservative programming on U.S. public television, the CPB's inspector general said on Thursday.

Kenneth Tomlinson, who resigned as CPB's chairman this month, told Rove of his work to balance the liberal PBS program "Now with Bill Moyers," with a conservative show, "The Journal Editorial Report," Inspector General Kenneth Konz said in a telephone interview.

More Gop Money Management Tips

Love those penis metaphors.

Japan's `soft power' has led the way for decades in the region, but China and India are likely to be the real giants in the future as the US moves out into the cold
By Joseph Nye

Thursday, Nov 17, 2005,Page 9

President George W. Bush is in Asia to attend the APEC summit in South Korea, but he should pay attention to another Asian summit to which he was not invited. Next month Malaysia will host an East Asian meeting that deliberately excludes the US. According to many close observers, the US' attractiveness is declining in the region where the allure, or "soft power," of others has increased.

Asian countries have impressive potential resources for soft power. The arts, fashion, and cuisine of Asia's ancient cultures have had a strong impact on other parts of the world for centuries, but Asia went through a period of relative decline as it lagged behind the industrial revolution in the West, and this undermined its influence.

Pelosi for President

DEMOCRATS PROPOSE PLAN FOR BROADBAND IN EVERY HOME
Five-Year Program Would Provide Cheap, Universal High-Speed Internet Access
November 15, 2005
QwikFIND ID: AAR13V
By Ira Teinowitz
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- House Democrats today proposed an "innovation agenda" that includes as one of its platforms affordable broadband access in every home within five years.

Photo: AP
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said one goal of the plan is to 'put all Americans ... no more than a keystroke or mouse click away from jobs and opportunities.'
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today said the agenda is needed to keep the country the "most competitive and innovative nation in the world."
"Universal broadband will propel advanced Internet applications, such as distance learning, health IT, video-on-demand and voice over IP," the California Democrat said in a speech today at the National Press Club.
'A click away from jobs'
It "will put all Americans, no matter where they live, no more than a keystroke or a mouse click away from the jobs and opportunity broadband both creates and supports," Ms. Pelosi said.
The party's plan calls for creating a national broadband policy, promoting broadband to rural and underserved communities, and encouraging additional ways to access broadband through wireless and power line connections.
"Democrats will ensure that the U.S. has the world's most advanced telecommunications infrastructure to bridge the digital divide so that every American has access to affordable broadband Internet service and communications technology," Ms. Pelosi said.
Other initiatives
The "innovation agenda" also calls for educating 100,000 new scientists within four years; doubling funding for scientific research over five years; making America energy independent within 10 years; and improving the environment for small businesses.
Ms. Pelosi said Democrats view their agenda as drawing bipartisan support. "This is not about a Democratic agenda. We want Republicans to join us," she said.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., in a statement said it was the GOP that had been supporting a high-tech agenda that encourages innovation, while Democrats had supported higher taxes, litigation and regulation.