Mission Accomplished, Bush Bushed, McCain: Bush III, John Hagee, Religious Right Power, Hillary/Limbaugh 08 & Screw the troops, Love the Contractors.

Remember that? That was five years ago. We had just won the war in Iraq.

You remember. The troops would be home soon. We were rebuilding Iraq's infraructure. We were on the verge of uncovering those dreaded WMDs.

George Bush and the neocons were military geniuses. A good time was had by all.

Now five years later most people are starting to figure out that the whole Bush Presidency has been seven years of unadulterated BS. It's been a sham, propped up by right wing propaganda.

By Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON, May 1—President Bush’s made-for-television address
tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a
six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with
his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military
realities that drove Mr. Bush’s advisors to create the moment.

By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt

BAGHDAD, May 2—The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United
States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink
the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior
allied officials said today.

By David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON, May 2—In his speech, Mr. Bush argued that the invasion and
liberation of Iraq were part of the American response to the attacks of Sept.
11. He called the tumultuous period since those attacks ‘‘19 months that changed
the world,’’ and said Mr. Hussein’s defeat was a defeat for al-Qaeda and other
terrorists as well.

I just didn't want to let the fifth year anniversary of the end of the Iraq War go by unmentioned.

Apparently, someone mentioned to Bush that the price of gas is getting a mite high and that maybe he ought to say something to ease their fears. He did.

Bush, reaching back to the earliest days of his administration, resurrected GOP demands for new drilling in the Alaska wilderness, fewer
restrictions on oil refineries and other measures aimed at lowering fuel prices
through higher production.

"If there was a magic wand to wave," Bush said, "I'd be waving it, of
course. . . . But there is no magic wand to wave right now. It took us a while
to get to this fix."

He's right about one thing, it took us a while to get in this mess. I estimate about seven and a half years.

Do you know who's fault it is? Congress. If the Congress would just do it's job, things would be great. And that's got to be the truth, because we all know that Bush wouldn't tell a fib.

But the president had something else up his sleeve. He used his appearance
before the White House press corps to perform one of the oldest tricks in the
book: blaming Congress. He faulted lawmakers 16 times in his opening statement
alone.

And he got petulent with Martha Raddatz at the press conference.

THE PRESIDENT: No, you can’t. This is the second follow-up. You usually get
one follow-up, and I was nice enough to give you one. I didn’t give anybody on
this side a follow-up, and now you are trying to take a second follow-up.

Q Can I just say —

THE PRESIDENT: They just cut off your mic. You can’t, no.

It looks like the most vacationed president in history needs a rest. I know his doing a little down time in a federal pen would do wonders for me.

How would his hoped for successor, John McCain, handle things? Well, he would pretty much follow the party line and crap on the American people to help out Big Business.

Today Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver what his handlers are hyping as
a major address on health care. McCain’s plan is a dangerous fraud.

He wants voters to think he is going after health care cost inflation.
In reality, he wants to dismantle the employer-provided system that now covers
over 60 percent (or about 158 million) of non-elderly Americans, forcing
millions of us who now get fairly decent health insurance on the job to instead
buy whatever they can find on the individual market controlled by unregulated
and predatory insurance companies. And he would drive health care costs upward,
not downward.

And McCain is starting to have other problems. Instead of a maverick, he's starting to look like a dyed in the wool Republican.

Yet, racism for electoral gain obviously did not go away with Helms' retirement
from politics. And neither has Republican timidity in doing anything to control
the extreme elements in the party--or their base if you will. So once again,
just as other conservatives sat idly by and claimed Jesse was just being Jesse,
now John McCain throws his hands
up in the air as if there is nothing he can do when a racist ad is run by
the North Carolina GOP against Barack Obama:

Oh yeah, McCain's got a preacher too. You just don't hear much about him. But he sounds like a really nice guy. Crazy as hell, but a really nice guy.

America is also collectively cursed for specific reasons, such as legalized
abortion and a Supreme Court decision against sectarian Bible classes in public
schools but also, more generally, for rebelling against God. As a consequence of
America's disobedience and rebellion, according to McCain-endorser John Hagee,
God's has cursed America and that curse has caused American military defeats, in
Korea and Vietnam, plagues such as AIDS and social blights like violent crime.
God's curse on America has also led "hundreds of thousands" to secretly
sacrifice children to the devil.

Hundreds of thousands of children sacrificed to the devil? I didn't know you could do that. By the time you find out these things, you're already stuck with two teenagers. Damn.

Speaking of damn. The Religious Right is going all out to turn church services into Republican rallies. But I guess something has to be done to stop us evil liberals and our sick philosophy of peace and prosperity for everyone.

"I think that's the case," Cureton replied. "The pastors need to speak
clearly about it. I'll tell you we are working with the Alliance Defense Fund on
a series of sermons this fall for pastors to preach, so that they educate their
people on the issues.

"We're gonna be talking about the value of life, the value of family
and the value of freedom, basically talking about abortion and stem-cell
research," he continued, "and then also about the gay agenda and then finally
about our Christian heritage and how it's being stripped from every corner of
society. And then finally we're gonna be doing a candidate comparison message
that is going to ask pastors to cross the line."

Just like Jesus said.

Quick primary update thing. It's just more of Rush urging Republicans to get out and vote for Hillary.

More from the Howey-Gauge
poll in Indiana: "The Democratic primary is going to be decided by
non-Democrats. To be determined is which group -- Republicans or independents --
are going to decide this race.

"The poll shows that self-identified Republicans favor Sen. Hillary
Clinton, 50% to 44%, while independents favor Sen. Barack Obama, 54% to
38%.

Among Republicans, there "appears to be two kinds of Republicans: the
'Obamacans' as the Illinois senator likes to call them -- earnest Republicans
deeply disappointed in their own party's performance on the budget, economy,
social issues and the Iraq War -- and the Rush Limbaugh Republicans who are
planning to crossover to vote for Sen. Clinton because they perceive her to be
the weakest rival to U.S. Sen. John McCain in the November election."

And finally the military. It's not enough that troops are told to pull four or five tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, but then they are treated like second class citizens. By the Military!

With all the money from this country's wealth that goes to the military budget, you'd think that they would at least have decent quarters when theydid get to come home for a few minutes.

Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining barracks throughout
the Army, told reporters at the Pentagon that most inspections were done last
weekend but he had not seen final results.

Part of the reason may be because the military has to subsidize defense contractors screw-ups.

Now get this, the Marines need amphibious tanks, obvously. So General Dynamics builds the tank. But the tank kinda don't work, at all. I mean it sucks at everything that it's supposed to be able to do.

So what does the military do?

- Due to the problems raised in the tests, the Pentagon
gave contractor General Dynamics another $143 million for
a redesign and estimated that another $700 million to $800 million was
needed to do another “system development and demonstration” test.

- Due to the budget increase, the Pentagon now says it will buy only
593 vehicles for $13.2 billion compared to the original estimate that it would
buy 1,025 EFVs for $8.4 billion.

The tanks don't work, so we give them even more money and then we buy a lot less tanks for a lot more money.

We're being taken by the defense contractors and the officers who want to go to work for them.

At least it's not Monday.

Later

Corporate Media, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, Cable News Sucks, Helen Thomas is Da Man and Falling Dollar.

A lazy Sunday and not really wanting to do anything, nothing good on television, so I watched a little of what is now euphemistically referred to as the news.

I got to see a lot Hillary and Bill, but I don't remember seeing McCain. That's not surprising, since McCain is corporate media's choice for president and you don't want to mess with a winning formula. McCain is spending most of his time opposing his own positions and generally just not looking real bright.

McCain employs the media to cement his “maverick/independent” image. The Tim
Russert/Chris Matthews “We are his base,” as Matthews said, school of corporate
punditry will extol his manifest virtues until November. He received a standing
ovation for a speech he recently gave at the Newspaper Publishers Convention.
The Democratic nominee will face a mainstream media that consistently interprets
or ignores events to favor McCain. His gaffes or temper tantrums will be glossed
over. The media doesn’t actively “dislike” Obama as much as it did Al Gore. It
dislikes Hillary but hopes to keep the Democratic race going as long as
possible. But there is little doubt the Democratic nominee will have to defeat
both McCain and the media in the fall.

I didn't really see much of Obama, but I saw a hell of a lot of his preacher.

The corporate media loved Barack, way back when it looked like Hillary was a sure thing. They needed a nomination race to talk about. And what would get more ratings than a historic contest between a black man and a white woman?

But things didn't quite go the way that was expected. Barack Obama started beating Hillary, big time. In fact, it would just about take a miracle for Hillary to beat Barack. But you wouldn't know that by listening to the corporate media. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is the exception. But the rest of the corporate media is doing their best to provide Hillary with that miracle. Simply because, running against Hillary, McCain has his best shot at winning.

In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama
campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that
Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies
have been promoting for the past six weeks.

The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from
Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York
Times.

For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to
keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown.

Just an example of how stupid it is to get your political information from the corporate media, the plan is working.

After losing Pennsylvania and a difficult month of scandals, Barack Obama's
double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton has dropped to 7 points in the latest
NEWSWEEK Poll.

I'm not the only one who has noticed the abysmal performance of the corporate media vs the Internet. There's an excellent article in the NYT by Elizabeth Edwards, yeah that would be John's wife, about this very subject. She is one smart woman.

But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is
cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes
of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are
accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.

The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their
responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about
the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they
do not have access to the Internet.

News is different from other programming on television or other content in
print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is
essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering
is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information
about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we
had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

Hell's bells, Hillary's even teaming up with the Right to either try to further her nomination chances, which are practically nil, or else to damage Obama to the point that he can't win in November. I got burnt out on Hillary when she voted to let the idiot Bush invade Iraq and she's done nothing since to change my mind.

Last week was officially the moment that the race for the Democratic
nomination slipped through the looking glass into surrealism. Here is a brief
list of those people who are now actively supporting Hillary Clinton’s
candidacy: Pat Buchanan, a charming man slightly to the right of Genghis Khan;
Rush Limbaugh, the most voluble and incendiary of right-wing talk-show hosts;
Richard Mellon Scaife, the media mogul who financed the virulently antiClinton
crusades of the 1990s; and, if you read between the lines, even Karl Rove, the
“architect” of the past decade or so of Republican dominance in electoral
politics.

Am I hallucinating? I promise you I’m not. The merging of the forces
that once persecuted the Clintons with the Clinton campaign itself has been a
wonder to behold. Some on the once solidly anti-Clinton right have even been
directly urging people to register as Democrats to vote for her.

A person who so firmly believes that she would be the president that this country needs to lead it through it current crises, should be able to manage something much simpler, like her own campaign. Right?

WASHINGTON — Despite Hillary Clinton's big win in Pennsylvania last week,
the story of her campaign is often one of mismanagement and missed
opportunities, and it raises questions about how she'd organize and run the
White House.

"There's a certain style to the campaign, and it shows what we might
expect in a Clinton presidency: a lot of viewpoints and a messiness," said James
McCann, a political science professor at Purdue University in Indiana.

Whether that's a good or bad trait is in the eye of the analyst. McCann
called it "policymaking through trial and error," similar to how Bill Clinton
ran his administration, which to many was a big success.

But her campaign tumbled from riches to rags to rebounds — and now to
hanging on for dear life. It wasn't supposed to be that way.

And McCain, he went through Hell serving his country in Nam, now he's playing Hell with his country trying to become president.

The North Carolina Republican Party is running an ad showing Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" sermon. McCain says he's doing everything in his power to put a stop to it. If you're silly enough to believe that, you just might be a Republican.

On the campaign trail yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he’ll “do
everything” in his power and bring “every
pressure to bear” in order to stop the North Carolina Republican party from
running an
attack ad featuring Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But
the chairwoman of the North Carolina GOP, Linda Daves, told NPR
yesterday that McCain has not done all he could. According to Daves, she
hasn’t even spoken to McCain:

While McCain want us to believe that he's a real tiger when it comes to terrorism, if it's right wing terrorism, he's more of a fluffy little kitten.

As John McCain continues using guilt-by-association tactics to falsely
portray his political opponent as a radical terrorist sympathizer, it's worth
remembering that McCain himself has a little terrorism problem of his own.

McCain's terrorism problem dates back to the early 1990s, when he sided
with right-wing domestic terrorists and voted against tough new legislation
cracking down on a wave of anti-choice domestic terrorism targeting women who
visited abortion clinics, their doctors, and clinic staff.

In both 1993 and 1994,

McCain voted against the anti-terrorism measure. On each occasion, McCain was
one of thirty radical anti-choice Senators to oppose the bill Fortunately,
despite McCain's opposition, it passed the Senate by a 69-30 margin.

John McCain took a "poverty tour" in Alabama, telling the folks a lot of stuff that sounded real good to them. But the stuff he didn't tell them about is what John McCain is really about. From Down with Tyranny.

There's not only McCain's support for making Bush's tax cuts permanent. Most
outrageous is McCain's plan to cut the corporate income tax rate, from 35
percent to 25 percent. What you won't read in today's coverage of McCain's
proposal is that, according to a 2004 Government Accountability Office study,
61% of American corporations, including 39% of large companies, paid no
corporate income taxes between 1996 and 2000. Last year, corporations shouldered
just 14.4% of the total US tax burden, compared with about 50% in 1940. And
McCain wants to give these corporations a break?

Really it was just pretty sickening watching the news today. These guys either think we're stupid or else they're clueless. The daytime cable news is even worse. It looks like they hire a bunch of ex-cheerleaders that have very little idea of what they're reading. Not all of them, but most of them.

I'll take Helen Thomas anytime. I'd love to sit around and drink a couple of beers with Helen and just shoot the breeze. I'd even buy.

...Q You're denying, in this room, that we torture and we have
tortured?

MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.

Helen then turned in her seat, looked at her colleagues, shook her head
in disgust, and asked sadly: "Where is everybody? For God's sakes!"

Well, if I can still afford to buy a couple of beers.







Have a good Monday,

Later

Rush Limbaugh & Joseph Goebbels: Lies, Propaganda and Riots. Tony Zirkle's Blast to the Past.

Well, it's just obvious isn't it?

The Minister of Propaganda for the Nazis and the Minister of Propaganda for the Republicans and people just eat this crap up.

Hitler's been dead a long time, but there are still plenty of nuts in this country who see him as a hero. An Indiana Republican running for the GOP Congressional nomination, Tony Zirkle, even campaigned, he called it witnessing for Jesus, at a Hitler birthday party.

The Republican party does not really appreciate it when one of their own might give us the idea that Republicans embrace a modern Fascist ideology.

Mr. Zirkel has a few outdated views on race relations, too.

The Republican party chairman for St. Joseph County sharply denounced Tony Zirkle’s suggestion that the United States should debate segregating by race.

While a lot of people on the right might sympathize with Zirkle's notions, they sure don't want the rest of us to think that they do. And not all on the right think like that.

OK, now everyone knows Rush Limbaugh, even the Right's starting to call him an entertainer. But Rush is much more than just an entertainer. He has 14 million listeners out there who rank him right below Jesus.

First I want to give you a couple of quotes from Goebbels.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually
come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the
State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military
consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use
all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the
lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Sounds familiar doesn't it. We've seen the success of the above statement way too many times. Anything from the Bush Administration or Fox News pretty much follows Dr. Goebbels philosophy.

You'll have to get a kick out of this one. Liberal thinking is the enemy.

Our first task in this ministry will be to win the whole people for the new
state. We want to replace liberal thinking with a sense
of community that includes the whole people."

So thinking for yourself is, to a right winger, subversive.

I think that we all can agree that Limbaugh and Goebbels are in general agreement on these things.

Now Rush is wanting to start a riot in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.

He explained on-air: "Riots in Denver at the Democrat Convention would see to it
we don't elect Democrats," Limbaugh said. "And that's the best damn thing (that)
could happen for this country as far as anything I can think."

He's now trying to pass it off as a dream, which he mentions. But I believe, "That's the objective here.", is the key statement in his little tirade.

Here it is, judge for yourself.

Now I know that the Right revises history instead of studying it. So I want to leave them with a little snippet from the Nurnburg trials.

[MR. JUSTICE JACKSON continues his cross examination of State Secretary Paul Koerner]

Q. Did he have any idea who had started them?

A. It had been said that Goebbels had instigated these riots.

Q. Did he know that the Gestapo and S.S. also participated?

A . I do not know. As far as I know the S.S. did not participate.

Q. Did the Gestapo?

A. No, I do not know this either.

Q. So he went to Hitler to complain about Goebbels instigating these riots, is that the fact?

A. Yes, that is correct.

If there are riots in Denver, which I doubt, we'll damned sure know who was instigating them.

Hope you're having a good weekend.

I know that we call it Nuremberg, but I was stationed there for a year and it's Nurnberg.

Later

Women Worth Less, Child Health Care, EPA Scientists Under Duress, Abstinence, Bush Makes Terrorists, Prison Nation, Vet Suicide & 6 Flags Over Baghdad

The Senate Republicans and Big Business have teamed up once again to protect us from domestic terrorism.



The conservative Supreme court thought that it had the matter well in hand when it ruled last year against these terrorists bringing down then country by flooding the courts with lawsuits.





But those damned, terrorist loving Democrats were showing their terrorist sympathies, by trying to overturn the Supreme Court ruling. All three presidential candidates rushed back to Washington for this vote. Barack and Hillary naturally voted to overturn the ruling. John McCain proved his conservative, he-man, Republican bona fides by standing with the Supreme Court and voting no to domestic terrorism. Without 60 votes, the president could and would veto this terrorist backed bill.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked
legislation to reverse a Supreme Court ruling that makes it tougher for
workers
to sue for pay discrimination.

Democratic presidential
rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton interrupted their campaigns to return to the
Senate to vote for the bill. The measure would lift tight time restraints to
file claims that could expire before workers realize they were treated
unfairly.

On a 56-42 vote, mostly Democratic supporters of the bill
fell
short of the needed 60 in the 100-member Senate to clear a Republican
procedural
hurdle and move toward passage of the bill approved earlier by
the House of
Representatives.

How many times have I heard, "Thank God for President Bush"? It's an understandable statement. He lays his life on the line, everyday, to protect us, the people. As we've seen above the Bush Administration stands steadfastly against loony, liberal ideas like equal pay for equal work. Of course it's OK for women to think that they have equal rights, but as all good conservatives know, it's just like gay marriage, it would destroy the country if they actually had equal rights.



President Bush is even willing to break the law when it comes to protecting real Americans, those in the top 2 or 3 per cent income bracket.

The Bush administration has no plans to rescind controversial guidelines
restricting enrollment in a popular children's health-care program, despite a
recent legal finding that they were administered illegally.

The long-running debate over SCHIP highlights the sharp differences between
the White House and a Democratic Congress over Washington's role in providing
health care. With medical costs skyrocketing and employers dropping more and
more coverage benefits, many lawmakers are pushing to expand that role into
higher income brackets. The Bush administration has fought that push, claiming
such expansions nibble away at private insurance markets.

In limbo are tens-of-thousands of kids whose health coverage hinges on
their eligibility for the state-federal program.

We are lucky to live in a country whose leader has the cojones to let children die in order to protect the profits of insurance companies. Thank God for President Bush.



Right now in this country we have a bunch of loony toon "scientists" complaining about the Bush Administration forcing them to, what they term as "to skew their findings". What a Joke. God, himself, talks to President Bush regularly and advises him about what to do. Who are you going to believe, some left leaning "scientists" or God Almighty?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency scientists
say they have been pressured by superiors to skew their findings, according to a
survey released Wednesday by an advocacy group.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said more than half of the nearly
1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire
reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their
work.

Naturally, the Godless Democrats are siding with the "scientists". Can you imagine the temerity of these Democrats trying to turn our Bible based country into one based instead on logic and reason? What's the matter with these people?

Update: In a letter to EPA chief Stephen Johnson today, House oversight
committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) warned Johnson that he can expect some questions about this when he testifies before the committee in May.
That letter is below.


Update: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), calling the report "a scathing
indictment of the Bush administration's repeated efforts to twist, misuse, and
ignore scientific facts in favor of special interests" has also let it be known
that the Senate environmental committee will be digging in on this.

George W. Bush, the right man at the right time. If it wasn't for President Bush this country would be awash in babies and sexually transmitted diseases. We all know that under the Democrats, the government was handing out condoms and teaching kinky sex to kindergarten children. But the man picked by God to lead this country put a stop to that. Abstinence is the answer. And the president sets the example for the nation.



To the best of our knowledge the only confirmed time that George W. Bush had intercourse with a woman was the conception of Jenna and Barbara. After that he was able to use all his energy to save the country from liberals, terrorists and scientists. He even made abstinence the law of the land. And what a difference it has made.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain
from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or
delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress on Wednesday.

The Bush administration, however, voiced continuing support for such
programs during a hearing before a House of Representatives panel even as many
Democrats called for cutting off federal money for so-called abstinence-only
instruction.

"Vast sums of federal monies continue to be directed toward these
programs. And, in fact, there is evidence to suggest that some of these programs
are even harmful and have negative consequences by not providing adequate
information for those teens who do become sexually active," Dr. Margaret Blythe
of the American Academy of Pediatrics told the committee.

We probably would no longer have a country if it wasn't for the keen insight of President Bush in the never ending War on Terrorism. Of course the Bush haters make outrageous claims that the president's War on Terrorism is actually creating even more terrorists. You would have to be a liberal or some other aberration to believe that.

The US "war on terror" has backfired, strengthening extremists in
Afghanistan and Somalia and turning them into legitimate political actors in the
eyes of their local populations, a thinktank said today.

"The lack of strategic acumen present in the 'war on terror' in Somalia and
Afghanistan is in fact enabling the spread of the insurgencies present
throughout both countries," said Norine MacDonald QC, the council president.

"The US is the common denominator in both countries – instead of
containing the extremist elements in Somalia and Afghanistan, US policies have
facilitated the expansion of territory that al-Shabab and the Taliban have
psychological control over."

It's hard to believe that a man with so much compassion could have a stern side. But like a good, conservative, authoritarin, father, he understands the necessity of tough love.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it
has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads
the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now
entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are
locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would
rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are
kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say
they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison
sentences.

While we are right in the middle of a noble war against terrorism, the Democrats are at it again. This time they are blowing all out of proportion a simple mathematic error by the Veterans Administration Director of Mental Health.

In the wake of a CBS News report
that revealed the Department of Veterans Affairs deliberately withheld critical
information about the true suicide risk among veterans, Sens. Patty Murray,
D-Wash., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, today both called for the resignation of
Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s top official for mental health.

For months, CBS News has been trying to obtain veteran suicide and
attempted suicide data from the VA. Earlier this year, the agency provided CBS
News with data that showed there were a total of 790 suicide attempts in all of
2007 by veterans who were under the VA's care.

To demand a good man's resignation, just because they happened to get hold of a memo that show the numbers to be a tiny bit different, shows just how low the Democrats will go to make the Bush Administration look bad.

Shh!

Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1000 suicide
attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities.

No doubt those suicide rates will go down once the troops can go to Baghdad for a little R and R at the new amusement park that's planned to be built next to the Green Zone.

When you are building an amusement park in downtown Baghdad, those risks
come with the territory.

Mr Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for
private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad
Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that
will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is
being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland. “The people need this kind
of positive influence. It’s going to have a huge psychological impact,” Mr
Werner said.

Thank God for January 20, 2009.

Later

John McCain Flip-Flopping Mad, Hillary Needs a Miracle, Electronic Bush, Recruit a Felon, Young Voters, Bernie Sanders and Bill O'Reilly Dickhead.

What can you do with John McCain? First, you have to admire what he went through in Nam. Second, you have to admire some of his stands against his party on some tough issues.

However, now John McCain, once branded as a maverick, seems to have found a home up the back side of the extreme right wing.

He's been caught in too many changes of position and just making statements that are flat out wrong.

– McCain has said waterboarding “should
never be condoned in the U.S.” but voted
against a bill banning the CIA from using torture, specifically including
waterboarding.

– McCain says he is “a
consistent supporter of educational benefits” for the military but has
indicated he will not support the bipartisan 21st Century GI Bill.

– On at least three occasions, McCain baselessly
claimed Iran is training Al Qaeda in Iraq but argued the error was an isolated
slip of the tongue.

– McCain falsely suggested that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a “sect
of Shi’ites.”

– McCain falsely claimed Moktada al-Sadr “declared the
cease-fire” after recent fighting in Basra and has said he is both a “major
player” in Iraq and that his influence “has been on
the wane for a long time.”

– Economists and nonpartisan analysts have said recently that the
numbers in McCain’s economic plan simply “don’t add
up.”

– McCain has made the elimination of earmarks a cornerstone of his
presidential campaign but he can’t name any he
would eliminate.

– In a matter of one day, McCain said Americans are both “better off”
and “not better off” than they were before
President Bush took office.

Of course, the media not paying much attention to John McCain right now. The Barack & Hillery show is much more exciting than watching poor John McCain clarify his opposing positions on the same issue.

But as the Sunday's WaPo's lead story shows that John McCain is pretty exciting himself.

In 1994, McCain tried to stop a primary challenge to the state's Republican
governor, J. Fife Symington III, by telephoning his opponent, Barbara Barrett,
the well-heeled spouse of a telecommunications executive, and warning of
unspecified "consequences" should she reject his advice to drop out of the race.
Barrett stayed in. At that year's state Republican convention, McCain confronted
Sandra Dowling, the Maricopa County school superintendent and, according to
witnesses, angrily accused her of helping to persuade Barrett to enter the
race.

"You better get [Barrett] out or I'll destroy you," a witness claims
that McCain shouted at her. Dowling responded that if McCain couldn't respect
her right to support whomever she chose, that he "should get the hell out of the
Senate." McCain shouted an obscenity at her, and Dowling howled one back.

Just what we need, another Republican president with little imagination and a lot of ego and temper.

It's kinda odd that the media spends so much time pretending that there is actually a race going on between Barack and Hillary. Of course, that spin will keep ratings higher than admitting that Hillary needs one of Pat Robertson's miracles to win the nomination.

April 21 (Bloomberg) -- To overtake Barack Obama in the
nationwide popular vote, Hillary Clinton needs a
bigger win in tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary than she has had in any major
contest so far. And that's just for starters.

After more than 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses, Obama, the
Illinois senator, leads Clinton by more than 800,000 votes. Even if the New York
senator wins by more than 20 percentage points tomorrow -- a landslide few
experts expect -- she would still have a hard time catching him.

Clinton needs ``blowout numbers,'' says Peter Fenn, a
Democratic consultant who isn't affiliated with either campaign. ``The wheels
would have to come off the Obama bus, and the engine would have to blow.''

Today will tell us a lot.

But what about November? Can we expect the same screwed up ballot counting that we've grown accustomed to in the last few elections? Thanks to the White House, probably.

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) said the bill he sponsored, House
Bill 5036, the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act, would help
make the nation's elections more accurate and secure by helping states move to
paper ballots over touch-screen electronic machines.

On Tuesday, the bill, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, went down
to defeat in the House 239-178, with 223 Democrats in favor and 176 Republican
opposed, after the White House sent out a statement opposing the measure. The statement said the
administration "strongly opposes" the bill because it would "create a new
program that is largely redundant with existing law, and therefore unnecessary,
to reimburse States for the costs of making last-minute changes to their voting
systems by Election Day 2008."

I don't think McCain has a chance in November, even with the help of the crap electronic voting machines. I predict a blow out.

It looks like this country is finally doing something to help convicted felons make it in society after they've served their time. Put them in the Army. You know, the military needs a complete overhaul. But this ain't the answer.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Army and Marine Corps are allowing convicted felons
to serve in increasing numbers, newly released Department of Defense statistics
show.

Recruits were allowed to enlist after having been convicted of crimes
including assault, burglary, drug possession and making terrorist threats.

Since we have privately owned prisons now, it don't seem that far-fetched that they could just start selling their inmates to the military. If the Republicans stay in power, Blackwater's going to be the real military anyway and the inmates can do the dirty work for them. Cheap.

There's good news, though. The next generation is paying attention and they're voting.

Young people see themselves having as much of an impact on the outcome of
the presidential campaign as any other age group. Thirty six percent said they
thought their age group would have as much influence on the election as older
voters while 31 percent said they would have more influence. Thirty one percent
said they thought their age group would have less. And 75 percent said this
election will be the most important or one of the most important in their
lifetimes.

Eighty four percent of those under 30 said they are paying some or a lot of
attention to the campaign and 77 percent described it as interesting, compared
to 21 percent who said it was dull.

Maybe they can do a better job of controlling their politicians than my generation did. And I sure hope that they won't be as susceptible to the crap put out by the Right Wing Propaganda Machine.

Here's a Buzzflash interview with Senator Bernie Sanders. I like the hell out of Bernie. Read the interview and you will too. The man knows what he's talking about.

Senator Sanders: The answer is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Clearly
one of the serious problems we have in our nation is not just in George Bush
being the worst president in the modern history of the United States, but it is
a corporate media which consistently deflects attention from the reality of
American life. The middle class has been in decline for decades now, and it's
manifested in a transformation of the economy from a General Motors economy of
good wages, strong union, good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy of low wages, no
benefits, and vehemently anti-union. That's the transformation of the American
economy. The corporate media has virtually ignored that.

Year after year since Bush has been President, they have told us
how "robust" the economy has been. That is totally absurd. There is no question
that the corporate media were stenographers for Bush's getting us into the war
in Iraq. The media have propped up Bush and not acknowledged that this is
perhaps the worst President in American history.

Clearly if we are going to move this country in a new direction, we
need to take on the corporate media. We need a very strong growth in the
progressive media, which is why the work of BuzzFlash and other progressive
websites is so enormously important -- enormously important, and I'm not just
saying it to flatter you. That's also why I'm on the Thom Hartmann show -
because it's desperately important that we get out a vision of American which
reflects the reality of ordinary people.

Why aren't all politicians like that?

Here's a story about what it's like to appear on Bill O'Reilly's show and not kiss his dumb ass.

Apparently O'Reilly does not like being called "the pot." He exploded,
repeatedly called me an "S.O.B." and assured me that he would cut my accusation
from the interview when the show aired. He also said I would "never ever" be on
his show again. At this point, I wasn't sure whether to take that as a threat or
a promise.

And finally, the latest joke from my e-mail.

Free Tickets

I have 4 extra tickets for the Robbie Knievel event at the State Fair Grounds next weekend if anybody wants them. He's going to attempt to jump 500 Democrats with a bull dozer.

There are people who find that funny as hell, you know. And no doubt, there are people trying to really get tickets for it.

Have a good Tuesday.

Later.

Hillary's Blames Us, Hillary's Right Wing Connections, Hillary's ill Use of Chelsea, GOP Switch for Obama, Iraq Still a Mess & General Deceit.

I've honestly wanted to avoid the internecine warfare going on right now in the Democrat party.

I picked my candidate quite awhile ago and by all indications he's going to win. So I decided, why add to the rancor.

But here I am adding to it.

It's not because Hillary's blaming MoveOn.org and the activist base of what is supposed to be her own party for her poor performance in the primaries.

Which in itself is an incredibly stupid move for such an incredibly intelligent woman.

The calls for her resignation will treble by the end of this weekend. With
every new sign of her contempt for the very voters she wants to step on in her
ascent to the presidency, it ought to be clear that these voters are voting for
their own silencing and negation when they vote for Clinton. It ought to be
clear that they are voting against the very beliefs that make the Democratic
Party the greatest party in the world. If Clinton isn’t proud of that tradition,
then she shouldn’t be running as a Democrat. If Clinton isn’t proud of the
Democratic base, then the Democratic base in Pennsylvania ought to leave it up
to the Republicans to win Clinton the primary nomination.

Clinton ought to know that the Democratic base doesn’t
split...not these days. In the last several years, the Democratic base has grown
strong together, united by the disparagements of the right wing, which for too
long and too often mocked and taunted “Northeast liberals.” We grew stronger
together, and we stood strongly together when we all shared in the victories of
2006. All of us, united as a party in a way we had grown unaccustomed to.

It's not like the Clinton campaign is actually fooling very many folks. After eight years of politics Karl Rove style, it's starting to get obvious, as well as old.

And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to
destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove -- George W. Bush's master of
the dark arts -- destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics
just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American
politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has
reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.

That's what is being tested this week. It may be the most important
vote in America until the final one, in November.

Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways never witnessed in a
primary campaign.

I'm not even writing this because Hillary's seems to be getting cozy with the same right wing that did it's best to destroy her family. Although, I do find that kinda sick.

(CNN) – Hillary Clinton's campaign is pointing to its Pennsylvania primary
endorsement Sunday morning by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - the latest in a
stunning series of recent rapprochements with previous conservative media
foes.

The Tribune-Review is owned and published by conservative Richard Mellon
Scaife — a frequent critic of the Clintons who helped fund The Arkansas Project,
a series of exhaustive investigations into former President Bill Clinton.

The New York senator famously built a relationship with former critic
Rupert Murdoch, whose New York Post frequently blasted both Clintons. The
Australian-born media baron even hosted a fundraiser for her during her second
Senate run.

But over the past few months, her presidential campaign has taken its
apparent embrace of former media adversaries to a new level, sending reporters
articles that praise Clinton and attack Barack Obama drawn from conservative
outlets including the National Review and the American Spectator, and quotes
from Republican pundits like Ed Rollins and Grover Norquist.

And former President Bill Clinton made an appearance on talker Rush
Limbaugh's show the day of the Texas and Ohio primaries - contests in which the
conservative radio host had urged listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton as a
means of sabotaging the Democratic nominating process.

This, in the long run, is probably a good thing. There is going to be a fight in the Democrat party over the direction that the party is going to take anyway, so this will be a good way to get the lines drawn and see who wins. The Democrats are going to have to be either a progressive party or Republican lites. Blue Dogs, watch out.

Hillary's win at any cost campaign is bad enough, but what makes me so dead set against her is the way that she is exploiting her daughter, who I think is just an all around good person, to pressure delegates. Bill and Hillary should be ashamed to put their daughter in that position. They should be ashamed to put the delegates in the position to have to explain to Chelsea why they think her mother doesn't deserve to be president.

WASHINGTON — Nancy Larson’s most difficult conversation was, by far, the
one with Chelsea Clinton.


“It was just heartbreaking,” said Mrs. Larson, a Democratic
National Committee member from Minnesota and, more to the point, a
superdelegate who had initially pledged herself to Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton. This was last Saturday, after the former first daughter
learned that Mrs. Larson would be shifting her allegiance to Senator Barack
Obama.

“She is a delightful young woman who loves her mother very much,” Mrs.
Larson said. “She was really pushing me. She kept asking me why I was doing
this. She just kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ ”

I think that I can answer the "why".

A lot of folks are sick and tired of George W. Bush and the extreme Right, even Republicans and the right wing smear of Hillary still sticks in a lot of people's minds. McCain's positioning himself to be a bush clone and that leaves one choice. Fortunately, this choice is quite impressive. Here's a couple of examples of what's happening around the country.

What's happening in Bucks mirrors trends throughout Pennsylvania, where the
state Democratic Party has added a remarkable 300,000 voters since January.
Nearly half of these Democrats, according to the state board of elections, are
new or previously unregistered voters lured by the excitement of the
Clinton-Obama race. The other half are former Republicans and independents who
switched to vote in the Democratic primary, mostly for Obama. Before the March
24 registration deadline (only registered Democrats may vote in the April 22
primary), the Obama campaign made an all-out effort to convert disaffected
Republicans, otherwise known as "Obamicans."

And if it's happening even here in Oklahoma, I'd be willing to bet that it's got to be nation wide.

Oklahoma-based journalist Richard L. Fricker was surprised when chatting
with his Republican niece to find that she wasn’t happy with John McCain and was
open to voting for Barack Obama -- but was hostile toward Hillary Clinton, a
pattern that the latest Washington
Post poll also has detected.

She and her husband embraced Republicanism a decade ago, during the sordid
scandals of the Clinton years and her ties to the GOP grew stronger during the
early stages of George W. Bush’s presidency amid the patriotism around 9/11 and
the “war on terror.”

Today, however, they are planning to vote for Barack Obama, if given
the chance.

Meanwhile, as I sit here and bitch about Hillary, we have American troops putting their lives on the line for no reason in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, April 20 -- Heavy fighting broke out in Baghdad on Sunday following a
particularly deadly night in the eastern part of the city. The clashes came a
day after Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened to wage an open war against U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces.

Yeah, Moqtada's pretty upset and I think that's he's holding the strong hand in this game.

A full-blown uprising by Sadr's Mahdi Army militia would be a major setback to the security
improvements in Iraq over the past year, credited largely to his cease-fire order
last summer. The Mahdi Army, which waged two bloody rebellions against U.S.
troops in 2004, has shown in the past how quickly it can gather thousands of
fighters.

"Do you want a third uprising?" Sadr said in the statement.

The smart answer would be no.

In yesterday's post I had the NYT's article on the military analysts that the media are using to give us the low down on Iraq. It's basically a scam to to put make up on a pig by ex-military officers who also have financial intrests with defense contractors. What a racket. Here's more on that.

NEW YORK The front-page David Barstow epic in today's New York Times on how
the Pentagon, starting in 2002, assembled a crew of retired military officers to
disseminate propaganda via all-too-willing network and cable news outlets is
drawing wide attention (see other story). Barstow aptly refers to this as "a
kind of media trojan horse."

Even if it confirms what many have already sensed the details are truly
damning and shocking -- more Orwell than oh, well. And it continues up to the
present day, with the revelation that Gen. Petraeus met with members of this
propaganda group just two weeks ago (he had met with them previously, as well).
"Anything we can do to help," one analyst described this most recent meeting.

The entire lengthy article, and special interactive and original source
features, are posted at www.nytimes.com. But a few angles:

Check out the link for the angles. It's a good read. A sorry situation, but a good read.

Once again I'll leave you with what passes for humor on the right. Remember that this is put out by the crowd that elected George W. Bush. I may be a country boy, but I know irony when I see it.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Obama is a 'post turtle'."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you just want to help the dumb ass get down."

Sure sounds like the Bush presidency to me.

It's Monday and you know the money you make this week won't buy as much as it did last week. You have my admiration.

Later.

Bush and McCain Liars Inept & Crazy as Hell, Iraq Sinking Fast, Expert Military Analysts Fraud, The Hell With Kids and a Little More Right Wing Humor.

Homeland security has been a big deal since 2001. Well it's been a big deal for the Bush Administration and the Republican party. In fact, it seemed even more important than even the Constitution. Importance of that magnitude has to be taken seriously. Right?

Before you answer, remember that we are dealing with the Bush Administration and the Right Wing Propaganda Machine.

But if you're one of those folks who's been thanking God that the nation's security has been in the hands of real he-man Republicans, instead of us wimpy liberals, here's the report card from the GAO.

Here is the title of a report from the Government
Accountability Office on combating terrorism released today:


The
United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist
Threat and
Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal
Areas.

That is not some line buried in the report. That is the title. Wow.

This GAO report may be the most damning condemnation of the Bush
administration's counter-terrorism efforts. The report goes on to say that
the
Bush administration has failed to develop any plan to address the Al Qaeda
threat.
Worse, the report finds that Al Qaeda is now able to attack the United
States and
represents the "most serious" threat to this country.

No comprehensive
plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA
has been
developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating
Terrorism
(2003), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated
by
congressional legislation (2007). Furthermore, Congress created the National
Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC) in 2004
specifically to develop comprehensive
plans to combat terrorism. However,
neither the National Security Council (NSC),
NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have
developed a comprehensive plan
that includes all elements of national
power—diplomatic, military, intelligence,
development assistance, economic,
and law enforcement support—called for by the
various national security
strategies and Congress.

Feel kinda stupid yet?

Don't feel too bad. They have some success stories. Most of them are like this.

April 18, 2008 -- A 74-year-old Holocaust survivor on her way to Rockland
County to
visit her family for Passover was arrested at a Florida airport for
shoving
a cop, authorities said yesterday.

But the 5-foot-1 granny said she was
manhandled by security.

Damned terrorists!

But it looks like granny is only the tip of the iceberg.

According to Newt Gingrich the whole left wing of the Democrat party are terrorist "admirers". And we all know that a good family values Republican wouldn't lie. Except maybe to his wife about his affairs.

Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News Friday night, former House
Speaker Newt
Gingrich told the conservative pundit that "the left wing of
the Democratic
Party, frankly, kind of admires American terrorists."
Gingrich then went on to
say that "they don't mind at all that Farrakhan is
anti-semitic. They
shrug off
Jeremiah Wright."

But even worse is that the next president might just be a dupe for the terrorists themselves. This information comes from the headquarters of John McCain, the man who wants to carry on the Bush legacy.

(CNN) — John McCain’s campaign sent supporters a fundraising e-mail Friday
that claims Hamas approves of Democrat Barack Obama’s foreign policy
vision, and
is hoping for his victory this fall.

“Barack Obama's foreign policy
plans have even won him praise from
Hamas leaders,” writes McCain deputy campaign
manager Christian Ferry. “Ahmed
Yousef, chief political adviser to the Hamas Prime Minister said,
‘We like Mr.
Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a
vision to change
America.’”

Change America! Just when things are going so well. They must be mad.

You'd have to be crazy to want to change things now. For the tenth time we see the war in Iraq is winding down and victory is just around the corner.

A 48-page report written by a former aide to Donald Rumsfeld and issued by
the Pentagon's premier military educational institute has called the Iraq
war a
"major debacle" whose outcome is "in doubt."

"Measured in
blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the
status of a major war
and a major debacle," the report's opening line reads. "As
of fall 2007,
this conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over
28,000
wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead."

Published by
the National Defense Institute's National Institute for
Strategic
Studies, a Defense Department research center, the report does not
reflect
the official views of the Pentagon or the Defense Department. But it
delivers a scathing indictment from the key educational arm of the US Armed
Forces.

Despite a few early setbacks, the Iraqis are starting to love us, just like Cheney said they would. And a man of Cheney's vast military experience should know what he's talking about.

Although that comment was not explained, it clearly implied that al-Maliki
was
deliberately undermining the U.S. objective of eliminating the Mahdi Army by
using U.S. and British troops.

Bush administration suspicions of al-Maliki's intentions could
not have
been eased by the fact that a delegation of pro-government parties
traveled to
Iran to ask the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) to
negotiate a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army. That ploy move, which did result
in a
tenuous ceasefire, raised the possibility that al-Maliki intended from the
beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement
that
would prevent the deployment of U.S. and British troops to fight the
Mahdi Army
during the summer.

The Shiite south has become the most anti-occupation region in the country.
The British polling firm ORB, which has been doing opinion surveys in Iraq
since
2005, found in March that 69 percent of respondents in the south
believed
security would improve if foreign troops were withdrawn, and only
10 percent
believed it would get worse.

We also have proof of how well things are going in Iraq from all those military analysts that the mainstream media trots out for their "expert" analysis.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon
information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate
favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an
examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began
with the buildup to the Iraq
war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and
military
allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the
analysts have
ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies
they are asked to
assess on air.

I'd suggest that instead of retired generals, the media use E-4's and E-5's for some real honest analysis on the situation in Iraq. They might not be able to give the big picture, but all the little pictures would give us a better understanding of the war in Iraq.



The most wealthy in this country really owe George W. Bush a lot. The man is willing to break the law and let American children suffer and die to protect their tax breaks.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it
restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of
middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable,
lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.

I'll leave you with a little right wing "humor" that I got in an e-mail. Just to show you the kind of idiots that will be running the show if we give up.

In response to a number of complaints that FOX News doesn't show enough Black
and Hispanic people on the network, FOX has announced that they will now air
'America's Most Wanted' TWICE a week

Hope yours has been a good weekend.

Later.

Democrat Debate Debacle, Bush Thinks We're Stupid, McCain May Be, Diplomats Say No, Afghanistan Undermanned, Hedge Fund Fun & Right Wing Smears Obama.

Yeah, it looks like today's blog is going to mostly about clowns. Not the funny, ha ha clowns, the dangerous, WTF kind.

I guess the best place to start is with the Democrat debate, held in Philadelphia last night.

ABC put on the show and Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos provided the entertainment.

In what should have been a serious debate on the issues, Gibson and Stephanopoulos turned it into a Fox News watcher's wet dream.

Here's what a couple of real journalists had to say about the clowns from ABC.

Will Bunch of Attytood and the Philadelphia Daily News.

An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos

Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,

It's hard to know where to begin with this, less than an hour after you
signed off from your Democratic presidential debate here in my hometown of
Philadelphia, a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg
Mitchell has already called, quite accurately, "a
shameful night for the U.S. media." It's hard because -- like many other
Americans -- I am still angry at what I just witnesses, so angry that it's hard
to even type accurately because my hands are shaking. Look, I know that "media
criticism" -- especially when it's one journalist speaking to another -- tends
to be a genteel, colleagial thing, but there's no genteel way to say
this.

With
your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial
wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing
falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the
real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession
of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who
do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us
the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so
badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election,
in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters,
and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one
of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had
watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was
no way to promote democracy.

Be sure to read all of Will Bunch's letter.

And Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.

Clinton-Obama Debate: ABC Decides Top Issues Facing Americans Are Gaffes, Flag Pins and '60s Radicals

NEW YORK In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a
major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George
Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the
overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for
their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter"
gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing
a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

The media thinks we're all stupid. At best, they're only half right.

Oh, and George W. Bush thinks we're stupid too. Being, at best, half right far exceeds expectations for Bush though.

After his latest shenanigans, I've come to the conclusion that George Bush is
the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass
destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped
Saddam's "programmes" for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be
another lie).

Now he's gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and
"mission accomplished" and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead
the 21st century into a "shining age of human liberty", George Bush told us this
week that "thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of
success".

John McCain either thinks we're stupid or else he's trying prove that he is.

Take his position on the new G.I. Bill.

Just a few days ago, appearing on ABC’s “The View,” John McCain talked
about the importance of increasing the size of the U.S. military. To entice more
volunteers, he said, the government should focus on
incentives: “[O]ne of the things we ought to do is provide [the troops with]
significant educational benefits in return for serving.”

Naturally, then, McCain indicated a few days later that he’ll withhold
support for a bipartisan measure to renew and expand the GI Bill for a new
generation of veterans.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential
nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would
greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.

John McCain crapping on the troops. Something just doesn't seem right about that, does it?

What really seals the deal is McCain's plan to help out the working class, by cutting corporate income tax and a repeal of the alternative minimum tax. 93% of those benefiting from the repeal of the AMT make $200,000 or more. And since clowns are supposed to be funny, he wants to drop the federal tax on gasoline, for a few months, as a sop to the actual working class. A measure that would actually do more harm than good.

Sen. John McCain yesterday offered sweeping rhetoric about the
economic plight of working-class Americans, promising immediate assistance even
as he spelled out a tax and spending agenda whose benefits are aimed squarely at
spurring corporate growth.

In a speech billed as the most comprehensive
summary of McCain's economic vision to date, the candidate proposed to eliminate
the alternative minimum tax, slash corporate income tax rates and offer a grab
bag of other business breaks. His most direct proposal for relief to
working-class voters was a call to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the
summer driving season.

"The effect," he told an audience at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, "will be an immediate economic stimulus, taking a
few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer or
trucker stops to fill up."

Poor John's so out of touch that he thinks that we can afford to fill up.

The State Department sure enough has a clown running it. It seems that the State Department is having a hard time finding diplomats to staff it's offices in Iraq. Duh!

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press has learned that the State
Department is warning diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year
and will soon identify prime candidates for upcoming vacancies in Baghdad and
outlying provinces.

A cable sent to all foreign service officers says the department is
facing a looming crisis to fill about 300 jobs that will come open in 2009 in
Iraq and that it may not get enough qualified volunteers. If it doesn't, the
department will begin selecting diplomats for compulsory duty.

Needless to say, the diplomats were none too happy. And some made their feelings known. The Secretary of State responded.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that she had been
personally offended by the critical comments of some diplomats who questioned
the ethics of sending people against their will to a war zone. One diplomat,
during an October session held at the State Department to explain the policy to
employees, called the forced assignments a "potential death sentence" to loud
applause.

"I was deeply offended myself, and deeply sorry that these people who
had self-selected into this town hall went out of their way, to my view, cast a
very bad light on the foreign service," Rice told a House panel.

Fortunately, as Baldric would say, I have a cunning plan. Since the diplomats are needed for 2009 and the entire Bush Administration will be jobless and we know how much Republicans abhor public assistance, we can gainfully employ them all as diplomats in Iraq. I think that would make us all happy.

This is not funny, but I can assure you that there is a clown neck deep is it. Violence in Afghanistan is growing. The commander wants more troops, with good reason. Just 7,000 and he would be happy. Guess what? The cupboard is bare.

WASHINGTON – While America's attention remains focused on Iraq, violence is
escalating in Afghanistan, worrying senior U.S. defense officials and commanders
who are struggling to find some 7,000 more American and European troops to
combat resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida forces.

And just what are these troops fighting for? Well, partly for folks whose cupboards are anything but bare. Hedge fund managers.

Hedge fund managers, those masters of a secretive, sometimes volatile
financial universe, are making money on a scale that once seemed unimaginable,
even in Wall Street’s rarefied realms.

Their unprecedented and growing affluence underscores the gaping inequality
between the millions of Americans facing stagnating wages and rising home
foreclosures and an agile financial elite that seems to thrive in good times and
bad. Such profits may also prompt more calls for regulation of the
industry.

Since 1913, the United States witnessed only one other year of such unequal wealth distribution — 1928, the year before the stock market crashed, according to Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Such inequality is likely to impede an economic recovery, he said.

Here's a bunch of big time clowns. Their current gig is trying to make Barack Obama out to be a Marxist for the Right Wing Propaganda Machine. They know their job and they do it well. But it looks like people would catch on since they're all using the same words. And that's not a coincidence.

Yesterday, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol claimed
that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) now-infamous “bitter”
remarks were Marxist in nature. On Fox News’s Hannity And Colmes last night,
former Bush adviser Karl Rove echoed Kristol’s over-the-top characterization,
saying “it
was almost Marxian“:

Even before Obama’s poorly worded comments last week, many on the right have
been making a concerted effort to cast Obama as a socialist
and a Marxist.
For months
now, right-wing talker Glenn Beck, who also hosts a show on CNN Headline News,
has been referring to Obama as a “socialist“:

On Fox News Radio yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said that it was “a
good question” to ask if Obama is “a Marxist,” though he said he would
“hesitate” to call him one himself.

UPDATE: As Newshounds notes,
Fox News’s Brit Hume and Charles Krauthammer made similar charges on Fox’s
Special Report last night. Watch it:

At least these clowns don't think their listeners are stupid. They know it.

But that's at the high end of the Right Wing Propaganda Machine, for the Conservative Intellectual, if you will. I know it's an oxymoron. They also have a very effective low end (cheap) method of getting their message across to the super gullible.

I received an e-mail the other day. It's all over the right wing blogosphere now, just Google in '' What a Black Columnist has to say about Obama " and you'll see I speak the truth. I'm not going to post the whole thing, you can find that here, but here is the last part of it.

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA?? I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet...do it!

It's sick and what's worse is that it's sad that there are people in this country that are so

apathetic and uninformed who will believe it.

Have a good Thursday.

Later