Hypocrite-in-Chief, Bush Propaganda, Bush Terror, Cheney: World Savior, Eugene Robison, Administration Lies and The Nuts Running the Country.

Our piously, hypocritical, joke of a president, gave a speech to the U.N. yesterday. It was the usual crock of Bush crap and while he seems to be pretty good at fooling politically ignorant Americans, I doubt if very many, if any, at the U.N. took him seriously. They have experience what he says, usually isn't what he does.

And we should be worried.

For instance,

Striking a more conciliatory tone than in previous addresses on the subject,
Bush said Tuesday that the United States has no objections to Iran achieving a
"truly peaceful nuclear power program" and told the Iranians that he looks
forward "to the day when you can live in freedom, and America and Iran can be
good friends and close partners in the cause of peace."

Yet, while he's telling the world this is what he wants, this is what he's doing,

Just now on CNN, Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, “We are conducting
military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming.”

Gardiner, who taught at the U.S. Army’s National War College, has previously
suggested that U.S. forces were already on the ground in Iran. Today he
added several additional new points:

1) The House Committee on Emerging Threats recently called on State and
Defense Department officials to testify on whether U.S. forces were in Iran. The
officials didn’t come to the hearing.

2) “We have learned from Time
magazine today that some U.S. naval forces had been alerted for deployment.
That is a major step.”

3) “The plan has gone to the White House. That’s not normal planning.
When the plan goes to the White House, that means we’ve gone to a different
state.”

My personal favorite line from his speech sounds like he was talking about his own administration:

"This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of
terror."

Such as,

TORONTO - The United States "very likely" sent a Canadian software engineer to
Syria, where he was tortured, based on the false accusation by Canadian
authorities that he was suspected of links to al-Qaida, according to a new
government report.

And this country is currently spending billions to outsource torture to private contractors.

The thousands of mercenary security contractors employed in the Bush
administration's "War on Terror" are billed to American taxpayers, but they've
handed Osama Bin Laden his greatest victories -- public relations coups that
have transformed him from just another face in a crowd of radical clerics to a
hero of millions in the global South (posters of Bin Laden have been spotted in
largely Catholic Latin America during protests against George W. Bush).

The internet hums with viral videos of British contractors opening fire on
civilian vehicles in Iraq as part of a bloody game, stories about CIA
contractors killing prisoners in Afghanistan, veterans of Apartheid-era South
African and Latin American death squads discovered among contractors' staffs and
notoriously shady Russian arms dealers working for occupation authorities. One
Special Forces operator told Amnesty International that some contractors are in
it just because they "really want to kill somebody and they can do it easier
there ... [not] everybody is like that, but a dangerously high element."

The White House propaganda campaign is getting out of control and just plain weird. They have five-time draft dodger and the great white hunter of caged animals and old men, out there saying that the fate of the world depends on the Bush Administration's being able to torture, get rid of due process and spy on the American public. And there are people out there that are stupid enough to believe it.

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney cast the global war on terror on
Tuesday as a "war of nerves," borrowing a phrase Harry Truman used to describe
the Cold War. Cheney asserted that the hopes of the civilized world depend on a
U.S. victory.

"We are not going to let down our guard," Cheney told a convention of
automobile dealers. He said President Bush "will not relent in the effort to
track the enemies of the United States with every legitimate tool at his
command."

He defended the administration's warrantless wiretapping and detainee
programs, both subject to criticism from Democrats and some members of his own
Republican party.

Eugene Robinson's essay on torture and the Hypoctite-in-Chief is right on the money.

I wish I could turn to cheerier matters, but I just can't get past this
torture issue -- the fact that George W. Bush, the president of the United
States of America, persists in demanding that Congress give him the right to
torture anyone he considers a "high-value" terrorist suspect. The president of
the United States. Interrogation by torture. This just can't be happening.

It is not possible for our elected representatives to hold any sort of
honorable "debate" over torture. Bush says he is waging a "struggle for
civilization," but civilized nations do not debate slavery or genocide, and they
don't debate torture, either. This spectacle insults and dishonors every
American.

I just pretty much think that the Bush Administration lies about everything. If someone can prove me wrong, please do.

Remember all those NYC, 9/11 heros that Bush used as props in a photo-op, after he finally summoned the courage to go to NYC after 9/11? The Bush Administration lied to them.

In her first report for 60 Minutes,
Katie Couric examines the health effects and fallout from the toxic dust inhaled
by first responders at Ground Zero. She reports that nearly 25% of the FDNY is
suffering from respiratory problems that can be directly linked to Ground Zero
and that Bush administration officials changed the EPA press releases to sound
more "reassuring" Couric requested an interview with Mayor Giuliani. He
declined!

If there's anyone in this country that pays taxes and watchs television, the Bush Administration lied to you.

Local ownership is good news for local communities, according to the study.
But this was bad news for Powell. The findings openly challenged his
assertions that "commonly owned television stations are more likely to carry
local news than other stations." Thus instructions came down from "senior
managers" to destroy "every last piece" of the study.

The second study,
which just came to light today, found that the Telecommunications Act of 1996
led to the drastic decline in the number of radio station owners while the
actual number of commercial stations in the U.S. increased—a strong indicator
that a handful of companies were hoarding local radio airwaves.

This study, too, was buried during Powell's rocky tenure.

If you saw a complete fool on an aircraft carrier, underneath a mission accomplished sign, saying that the major combat in Iraq is over. The Bush Administration lied to you, too.

The U.S. military is unlikely to reduce forces in Iraq before next spring
because the current contingent of more than 140,000 troops is battling sectarian
violence that could prove "fatal" to the country if not arrested, the top
American commander for the Middle East said yesterday.

"This level will probably have to be sustained through the spring" amid
aggressive operations to stabilize Baghdad, said Army Gen. John P. Abizaid,
chief of the U.S. Central Command. "I do believe that the secular tensions, if
left unchecked, could be fatal to Iraq . . . and the center of the problem is
Baghdad. It's the main effort," he told defense reporters.

But there are extenuating circumstances for all this lying. The Bush Administration is comprised of mostly no-brained, right-wing ideologues. And as we all know, to these folks, lying's not wrong, it's a lifestyle. Media Transparency provides us with an alphabetical list.

Since the selection of Republican George W. Bush as president by the US
Supreme Court, the people of the sponsored conservative movement, holed up in
think tanks, universities, and sponsored media institutions across the country
have appeared like Jackals at a fresh kill to pounce on our bloodied democracy
and are now populating the new administration. Media Transparency is seeking to
document this transition from privately sponsored, tax-exempt,
government-in-waiting to actual government.

How the Right Lost Iraq, Terror Parasites, Iraq, Afghanistan, Baghdad Moat, Iran, The Pope, Electon Trouble, GOP Feud and George W. Christ.

A lot of us knew that the invasion of Iraq was a stupid thing to do before we even went into Iraq. Not the main reason, but one of the reasons, was that George Bush didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand the seriousness of the undertaking or the ability to manage the country after we defeated it's military.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post brings us proof that Bush and his administration were incompetent to the extreme and were more interested in party affiliaton than ability and knowledge in the reconstruction efforts. Efforts may be too strong a word.

Read the whole article, it's a rare insight into right-wing, fantasyland principles applied to the real world.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the
opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted
all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics,
development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to
Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic
politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the
president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the
U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade
.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition
Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004,
lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in
finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's
stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a
recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were
tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a
background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and
the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort
to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest
errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their
time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which
sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among
the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the
reconstruction effort.

It's no wonder that Iraq is the mess it is today, considering the types of looney toons that the White House put in charge over there.

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's
headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a
campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were
standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi
Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of
clothing.

"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over
lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."

The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest
levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally
recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made
a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

So it shouldn't come as any surprise that the Bush Administration's war on terror and our so-called national security is being run the same way.

WASHINGTON — At the National Counterterrorism Center — the agency created
two years ago to prevent another attack like Sept. 11 — more than half of the
employees are not U.S. government analysts or terrorism experts. Instead, they
are outside contractors.

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., senior officials say it is routine for
career officers to look around the table during meetings on secret operations
and be surrounded by so-called green-badgers — nonagency employees who carry
special-colored IDs.

As far as I'm concerned, all the fear mongering by the President and the Republicans is designed to use your tax money to subsidize an army of parasites.

There are 33,890 companies with federal homeland security contracts. Seven years
ago -- after some decades of terrorism kicked off with the Olympics in 1972 --
there were only nine. Since 2001, $130 billion worth of contracts have been
handed out by the same thundering, blundering pen pushers who mismanaged the
hurricanes Katrina and Rita to these merchants of fear.

An industry that makes so much money has to have an army of lobbyists, with
only one incentive: to increase the real fear of the threat to America and to
our hearths, and augment fears for our mortality and eternity. Our recovering
economy is based on fear of the unimaginable becoming the inevitable.

The field is crowded today. There are now some 550 lobbying firms
registered for homeland security, compared with two in 2001. One of the new
leading consultants is former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who while in
office said his department had unearthed more than 1,000 terrorist cells in the
United States and warned in May 2004 that 90 percent of the arrangements for a
major attack on our country had been made by al-Qaida. Today, he leads the
Ashcroft Group.

And to support these parasites, we reduce funding of renewable energy.

Out at the Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River, a new turbine is being tested
that generates more electricity, but won't kill so many fish - thanks to
research dollars from Uncle Sam.

Down in California's Long Valley, on the Sierra Nevada range, federal
researchers are working to boost efficiency of geothermal energy, which uses the
earth's natural heat to generate power.

But renewable energy advocates may have to kiss goodbye those and other
research projects. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is quitting the hydropower
and geothermal power research business - if Congress will let it.

Declaring them "mature technologies" that need no further funding, the
Bush administration in its FY 2007 budget request eliminates hydropower and
geothermal research, venerable programs with roots in the energy crises of the
1970s.

And with Bush's corporate-backed, faith-based attitude toward the environment, we can funnel even more money to the terror parasites by gutting the EPA.

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency intends to close labs, cut
its cadre of upper-level scientists and reduce regulatory oversight, according
to an internal agency document.

In a memo dated June 8, a top agency official outlined "a set of
proposed disinvestments, innovations, efficiencies and consolidations" for the
upcoming 2008 fiscal budget.

"The decisions we make will be critical, difficult and will have
long-term consequences," EPA Chief Financial Officer Lyons Gray wrote.

And just what are we getting out of all these billions of dollars spent on the "War on Terror"? According to Harry Reid, not a single thing.

Five years after September 11, not a single terrorist has been brought to
justice under the President's flawed policy. There is a bipartisan process
underway in the United States Senate to fix the failed Bush Administration
system that was struck down by the Supreme Court. Instead of picking fights with
Colin Powell, John McCain, and other military experts, President Bush should
change course, do what the American people expect, and finally give them the
real security they deserve.

Well, surely after the hundreds of billions spent, combined with the brilliant leadership of the War President, things must be going great in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Sept. 17 -- A wave of seven suicide car bombs and explosions rocked the
oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Sunday, killing at least 26 people and wounding 85
others, police said.

The string of attacks in Kirkuk came as police in Baghdad reported the
discovery of 24 bullet-riddled corpses that had been dumped in various parts of
the capital. Armed men also assassinated Muhammad Shihab al-Dulaimi, an official
with the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni political bloc in parliament,
while he was driving his car in the capital's Mansoor district, said Brig. Gen.
Fadhil Abdul Muhsin of the Interior Ministry.

In Fallujah, a volatile city in the Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold of
western Anbar province, two suicide car bombs exploded within minutes as the
drivers tried to ram into a U.S. military base, killing at least three Iraqi
police officers and wounding five others, police Capt. Ammar Yasser Halbousy
said.

"All the talk and rumors that you may hear about alliances or new
initiatives to wipe out al-Qaeda by the tribes in Anbar is all pure nonsense,"
Sheik Faraj Khalid Essawi said. "We wish that we could build a strong tribal
alliance against al-Qaeda to defeat them and reestablish security in our area
and rebuild the dignity and the stature of the tribal sheiks. But frankly, we
are unable to stand up to or to confront al-Qaeda because even the American army
itself has not succeed in defeating it."

Also Sunday, the U.S. military announced that a sailor assigned to the
1st Marine Logistics Group died Saturday from combat injuries in Anbar
province.

But the bad news from Iraq hasn't fazed our War President. The Iraqis have came up with the ingenious plan to dig a trench around Baghdad. President Bush is giddy with delight over the new plan, saying "The enemy is changing tactics, and we're adapting. And so they [U.S. and Iraqi security officials] have got a plan now, they've adapted. The enemy moves; we'll help the Iraqis move. So they're building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices, for example."

If there's anyone reading this that's as dumb as our War President, a trench is a innie and a berm is an outtie.

BAGHDAD, Sept. 15 — The Iraqi government plans to seal off Baghdad within weeks
by ringing it with a series of trenches and setting up dozens of traffic
checkpoints to control movement in and out of the violent city of seven million
people, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Friday.

What about our other front in the War on Terror? We don't hear much about Afghanistan anymore, so things must be getting better over there? Yeah right. The Bush magic works everywhere in the world.

BRUSSELS -- More than a week after NATO's top leaders publicly demanded
reinforcements for their embattled mission in southern Afghanistan, only one
member of the 26-nation alliance has offered more troops, raising questions
about NATO's largest military operation ever outside of Europe and the goal of
expanding its global reach.

The plea for more soldiers and equipment to fight resurgent Taliban
insurgents comes as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's forces are
suffering the highest casualty rates of the nearly five-year-long conflict in
Afghanistan, and as European governments are feeling stretched by the demands
for troops there and in Iraq, Lebanon, the Balkans and in several African
countries.

Since the news from Iraq and Afghanistan is such a drag on our usually happy-go-lucky Commander-in-Chief, he figures that the third times the charm and now he wants a war with Iran in the worst way. The Europeans are doing their best to disabuse him of this notion.

NEW YORK, Sept. 17 -- European efforts to get Iran and the United States
around the same negotiating table are at an advanced yet sensitive stage, with a
small number of remaining differences to be tackled this week when world leaders
gather at the United Nations, according to several American, Iranian and
European officials involved.

President Bush plans to make Iran a centerpiece of his speech Tuesday
before the U.N. General Assembly, explaining to the annual meeting of presidents
and prime ministers why he regards the Tehran government as a grave threat yet
is willing to support negotiations to ease those concerns.

The Pope and Bush have a lot in common, neither should be allowed to speak without handlers and a pause button. Pope Benedict XVI is setting new records at backtracking after making an incredibly dumb statement the other day.

Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday that he is "deeply sorry" about the
reaction in some countries to a recent speech in which he quoted a 14th-century
Byzantine emperor as saying that the prophet Muhammad brought "only evil and
inhuman" things to the world.

The pope said that the quotation from Manuel II Palaeologus does not
reflect his personal views, and that his speech last Tuesday at Germany's
University of Regensburg was intended to invite inter-religious dialogue "with
great mutual respect."

Back in the States. What would ever possess a state to spend good money on bad electronic voting machines? There's got to be something shady going on and it looks like we're going to have more screwed-up elections because of it. Canada's got the right idea on voting.

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections
since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could
trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day
debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic
voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology
for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the
federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that
led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based
electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and
other steps to refine the administration of elections.

But there is good news. There are actually some Republicans that don't get off on torture. And this is causing a schism between those Republicans that have gone completely over the edge and those that have only gotten to the brink.

Congressional Republicans had carefully orchestrated the finale of the
legislative year to be a showdown with Democrats over which party is best
equipped to keep the country safe, a handpicked fight on traditional Republican
turf.

But the high-stakes standoff between President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over military tribunals could ruin that
legislative strategy, political analysts and strategists say. Instead of
fighting Democrats, Republicans find themselves in the middle of an intraparty
struggle between an embattled president and two of the most respected figures in
their party, McCain and his ally on the issue, former secretary of state Colin
L. Powell.

And talking about over the edge, the latest from those Religious Right whackjobs, making children worship a picture of President Bush. Onward Christian soldiers!

Sept. 17, 2006 — An in-your-face documentary out this weekend is
raising eyebrows, raising hackles and raising questions about evangelizing to
young people.

Speaking in tongues, weeping for salvation, praying for an end to
abortion and worshipping a picture of President Bush — these are some of the
activities at Pastor Becky Fischer's Bible camp in North Dakota, "Kids on Fire,"
subject of the provocative new documentary, "Jesus Camp."

"I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel
as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places," Fisher said.
"Because, excuse me, we have the truth."

It's Monday, what do you expect?

Just ran across this, keeping with the crappy Monday theme, if you're relying on a 401K plan to retire on, good luck.

As opposed to Social Security, which you can count on, we can figure that
one-third or more of the people relying on 401(k)s are in for a disappointment.
It won't be there for them, at least not enough to live on.

No worries: Penniless pensioners can live with their children, if
they have any, or apply to a faith-based charity or take a job at Wal-Mart.
While they cope with the day-to-day crises, these same people may draw
satisfaction from knowing that they took responsibility for themselves.

Giving Credit to Some Republicans, Democrats: Lost and Confused and The News You Aren't Getting.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Four Republicans on the Senate's Armed Services Committee joined Democrats and voted down President Bush's proposals to let detainees be tortured and not allow them to see the information regarding their cases.

The four Republicans are John McCain (AZ), John W. Warner (Va.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Susan Collins (ME).

Along with all the Democrats in the Senate, there should be enough Republican support to keep this disaster from happening.

A Senate committee rebuffed the personal entreaties of President Bush yesterday,
rejecting his proposed strategies for interrogating and trying enemy combatants
and approving alternative legislation that he has strenuously opposed.

The bipartisan vote sets up a legislative showdown on an issue that GOP
strategists had hoped would unite their party and serve as a cudgel against
Democrats in the Nov. 7 elections. Instead, Bush and congressional Republican
leaders are at loggerheads with a dissident group led by Sen. John McCain (R),
who says the president's approach would jeopardize the safety of U.S. troops and
intelligence operatives.

45 Democrat Congressmen joined Republicans in passing a bill to make us think that they are actually doing something about lobby reform. This bill is a smoke screen to keep from coming up with any real lobby reform.

The House voted yesterday to shed more light on narrow-interest tax and spending
legislation called earmarks, an incremental step toward openness that ended the
prospect for a more sweeping overhaul of federal lobbying laws this year.

"This bill represents the death of lobby reform," said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), a former chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee.

Obey called the measure a "trivial pursuit," saying it would do little to
alter federal spending while blocking a serious updating of federal ethics laws.
"The majority has labored long and produced a mouse," Obey added, "or a fig leaf
at best."

Democratic leaders complained about the earmarks change yesterday. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) called it "shameful" and "a
sham." She said that the measure would not end the abuse of the earmarking
process and was filled with loopholes that would still permit anonymous projects
to be inserted into law without public scrutiny.

Here's the 45 Democrats that think you're too stupid to know what's going on.

Brian Baird, John Barrow, Melissa Bean, Dan Boren, Leonard Boswell, Sherrod Brown, Ben Cardin, Jim Cooper, Henry Cuellar, Lincoln Davis, Artur Davis, Susan Davis, Peter DeFazio, Lloyd Doggett, Chet Edwards, Anna Eshoo, Bob Filner, Harold Ford, Bart Gordon, Jane Harman, Chris Van Hollen, Rush Holt, Darlene Hooley, Steve Israel, William Jefferson, Ron Kind, James Langevin, Stephen Lynch, Carolyn Maloney, Jim Matheson, Carolyn McCarthy, Mike McIntyre, Martin Meehan, Charles Melancon, Juanita Millender-McDonald, Earl Pomeroy, John Salazar, Brad Sherman, John Spratt, John Tanner, Ellen Tauscher, Gene Taylor, John Tierney, Maxine Waters, David Wu

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post shows us that, it's not just that Democrats can't stay on message, they can't even find a message. The Republican are trying to hand us Capitol Hill and we can't even figure out how to take it. This is starting to get embarrassing.

Among the party's campaign slogans this year: "Culture of Corruption," "Culture
of Cronyism," "Do-Nothing Congress," "Rubber-Stamp Congress," "Together, We Can Do Better,"
"Together, America Can Do Better" and, most recently, "Six for '06".

For those keeping score at home, Democrats arrived at "New Direction"
yesterday by downgrading one of the "Six for '06" issues (health care) and
upgrading three others (honesty, civility and fiscal discipline), for a total of
eight items on the contents page.

And here's the first four on the list of the ten big news stories you aren't hearing.

1. The Feds and the Media Muddy the Debate Over Internet Freedom
The Supreme Court ruled that giant cable companies aren't required to share their wires with other Internet service providers. The issue was misleadingly framed as an argument over regulation, when it's really a case of the Federal Communications Commission and Congress talking about giving cable and telephone companies the freedom to control supply and content - a decision that could have them playing favorites and forcing consumers to pay to get information and services that currently are free.

2. Halliburton Charged With Selling Nuclear Technology to Iran
Halliburton, the notorious U.S. energy company, sold key nuclear-reactor components to a private Iranian oil company called Oriental Oil Kish as recently as 2005, using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent U.S. sanctions. The story is particularly juicy because Vice President Dick Cheney, who now claims to want to stop Iran from getting nukes, was president of Halliburton in the mid-1990s, at which time he may have advocated business dealings with Iran, in violation of U.S. law.

3. World Oceans in Extreme Danger
Governments deny global warming is happening as they rush to map the ocean floor in the hopes of claiming rights to oil, gas, gold, diamonds, copper, zinc and the planet's last pristine fishing grounds. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2005 found "the first clear evidence that the world ocean is growing warmer," including the discovery "that the top half-mile of the ocean has warmed dramatically in the past 40 years as the result of humaninduced greenhouse gases."

4. Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the United States
As hunger and homelessness rise in the United States, the Bush administration plans to get rid of a data source that supports this embarrassing reality, a survey that's been used to improve state and federal programs for retired and low-income Americans.
In 2003, the Bush Administration tried to whack the Bureau of Labor Statistics report on mass layoffs and in 2004 and 2005 attempted to drop the bureau's questions on the hiring and firing of women from its employment data.

Ann Richards, Geneva Conventions, Republicans and National Security, Chertoff's Insane, Iran Lies, Iraq, Afghanistan, Army Shortfalls and Campus Humor

Ann Richards

1933-2006

Great American, Great Texan and Great Lady

We're going to miss Ann, she was one of the few Democrats with a working set of testicles. Ann didn't back down or roll over for anyone. A lot of us fell in love with her during her keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. This country is in dire need of more Democrats like Ann Richards.

And now to the other end of the spectrum.

Colin Powell is coming out against White House sponsored legislation to efforts to redefine a key provision of the Geneva Conventions. As proof of the White House wanting to redefine the Geneva Conventions, I offer you this:

The White House later denied that it was attempting to redefine the Geneva
Conventions provision, insisting instead that it simply wants to spell out in
U.S. law what is prohibited under the treaty and what is not.

From experience we should know that if the White House says it's not, it is.

Here's a link to the letter that Powell sent to McCain in an attempt to prevent Bush from taking us to third world, rogue nation status.

Republican leaders in congress are hard at work to try to do away with our Constitutional rights. Of course, they're telling us it's a matter of national security. And way too many of us are too uninformed not to believe them.

Congress's Republican leadership yesterday threw its weight behind two of
President Bush's most controversial national security programs, warrantless
wiretapping and extrajudicial military tribunals.

The Republicans are so interested in national security that they beat down a Democratic attempt to put some teeth into national security legislation.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday rejected a Democratic attempt to attach dozens
of national security programs to legislation intended to protect seaports.

Three sorry excuses for Democrats voted with the Republicans and against the American people, Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Surely there are some real Democrats in these states that could run for the Senate.

Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security done his part by making nonsensical arguments about falling into a terrorist plot to bankrupt us with national security. Yeah, like the Iraq War and Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy haven't already done that.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, seems
determined to outdo his commander in chief in ratcheting up fears of Al Qaeda
whenever he wants to score political points. This week, he raised the specter
that if the government starts too many expensive antiterrorism programs it could
further a plot by Osama bin Laden to “drive us crazy, into bankruptcy” through
overspending on homeland defense.

It was particularly ironic that Mr. Chertoff spun this
theory while he was fighting off a measure, up for a vote today, that would help
protect our ports against the threat that he himself deems most worrisome — a
nuclear explosion within our borders — without government spending.

In testifying before a Senate committee on Tuesday, Mr.
Chertoff flailed away at straw men of his own concoction. He warned darkly about
the dangers of trying to protect the country from “every conceivable threat” —
an idea no one has ever espoused. The issue has always been the need to set
priorities, and in that respect, Mr. Chertoff’s department has become a
laughingstock. It compiled one list of possible targets that included a petting
zoo and a popcorn factory while the government provided only a pittance for our
vulnerable subways.

Here's proof that Chertoff may actually be insane.

When it comes to prioritizing our antiterrorism spending, it’s
hard to understand what Mr. Chertoff dislikes about a measure, introduced by
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, that would require that all cargo
containers headed for the United States be scanned at foreign ports to search
for a possible nuclear weapon. Mr. Chertoff, after all, put a nuclear bomb at
the top of his list of things to worry about, followed by a biological or
serious radiological attack. He also agreed that eventually, every container
should be screened abroad for radioactive material before it can be loaded into
a ship headed for this country.

But he balked at doing it now on the flimsy grounds that
some ports might not have enough room to install scanning devices without
slowing the flow of traffic and that some foreign

governments might not cooperate.

But when you get down to the meat of the problem and it shouldn't be a surprise, Republicans are more interested in corporate profits than national security.

When it comes to homeland security, the Bush administration has repeatedly
allowed corporate profits to trump safety. That seems to be the problem here,
just as it has been when it came to the chemical industry’s resistance to
reforms that would help protect against toxic disasters if terrorists ever
attacked their plants. Right now, a port security bill is pending in the Senate
that would establish three pilot programs overseas to test the feasibility of
scanning all containers. But Mr. Schumer is surely right that delay is dangerous
and unnecessary. Virtually all containers destined for the United States should
be scanned for nuclear or radiological weapons within the next four years. It is
not enough to scan the containers after their arrival here, the current
administration policy. That could be too late.

And since protecting corporate profit over the American public leaves plenty of time on their hands, Republicans are once again concocting lies in order to try to get us into yet another war with no purpose.

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the
Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent
House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document
"outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims

.

The Bush Administration, the Republicans and some Democrats are so out of touch with reality that they want to start another war. Don't they have any idea of how the wars they've already started are going? These guys couldn't run a sno-cone stand, let alone a war.

As with all the other White House and Congress led endeavors, things in Iraq and Afghanistan are going from worse to worser.

The threat of a new front opening in Afghanistan's worsening insurgency comes as
NATO commanders try to persuade member states to send more soldiers and air
support immediately to battle the Taliban resurgence.

AlterNet provides us with a list of Bush's accomplishments in Iraq yesterday. The whole list is here.

BAGHDAD - A total of 60 unidentified bodies were found with
gunshot wounds in the head and most of them showed signs of torture in various
parts of Baghdad over the past day, an Interior Ministry official and police
sources said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb targeting police guards at an
electricity substation in the Zayouna district of eastern Baghdad killed eight
people and wounded 19, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb which
blasted his vehicle late on Tuesday south of Baghdad, the military said in a
statement.

BAGHDAD - A bomb in a parked car in central Baghdad killed
14 people, including two policemen, and wounded 57. It targeted police vehicles
near the traffic police headquarters during the morning rush hour, police
sources said.

BAGHDAD - Two bystanders were killed and two wounded when
gunmen in four cars tried and failed to kidnap the owner of a currency exchange
shop in the Harthiya district of Baghdad, police said. The businessman was not
harmed.

And to top it all off, Iraq has bled the U.S. Army white. I don't understand what these fools think they can use in another war.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Army's combat readiness has fallen to
levels not seen since the Vietnam War, undercutting its ability to sustain
deployments in
Iraq and Afghanistan
or to respond to conflicts elsewhere, opposition Democrats warned in a
report.

The report attributed the slide to critical shortfalls in
equipment, which have made it more difficult for units back home to train with
the tanks, armored vehicles and other weapons it will fight with.

And finally the University of Virginia student newspaper has found out that humor is relevant. But, of all places, universities should be places for the free exchanges of different viewpoints. Besides the First Amendment is on their side.

Two cartoons that ran in a University of Virginia student
newspaper recently have sparked thousands of e-mails to the school and the paper
with complaints that they are offensive and blasphemous.

Third-year student Grant Woolard drew the comics for the
Cavalier Daily, one of which is called "Christ on a Cartesian Coordinate Plane,"
with a drawing of the X and Y axes over his figure on the cross. The other, "A
Nativity Ob-scene," is of Joseph and the Virgin Mary talking about a bumpy rash
she has, with her saying, "I swear, it was immaculately transmitted!"

The GOP Really, Really Wants to Know What You Think, Iraq: Staying the Course, China: Taking Our Place and Air Force Wants to Test it's Weapons on You

The Republicans have long said that they want to get government out of people's lives. But Republicans say a lot of things that aren't true.

Today Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to rein in Bush's wiretapping of the American people.

Score one more for the folks who don't believe in our Constitution.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in
President Bush's domestic wiretapping program Wednesday amid a sustained White
House campaign to give the administration broad authority to monitor,
interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.

We finally have some of that good news out of Iraq. In order to prove that our security crackdown in Baghdad is really working, those military geniuses at the Pentagon and the White House have come up with an effective and simple solution to reduce civilian casualties. You're gonna love this. They have decided to no longer count as casualties anyone killed by bombs, or mortars, or rockets, or suicide attacks. This new, brilliant strategy has cut the civilian casualty figures in half. And you thought spending most of our budget on the military was a waste.

BAGHDAD -- The American military did not count people killed by bombs,
mortars, rockets or other mass attacks, including suicide bombings, when it
reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders in the Baghdad area last
month, the U.S. command said Monday.

The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed
by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S.
officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital Aug. 7
had more than halved the city's murder rate.

Victory in Iraq is just around the corner, now that we have the capital under control. Just yesterday, there were only 100 civilians murdered, a sure sign that Bush's democratization of the Middle East is on track and moving forward at an astounding pace. Latest estimates show that we may be able to start bringing troops home as soon as 2050. Stay the course!

BAGHDAD, Sept. 13 -- Nearly 100 people were killed or found dead in a series of
bloody incidents throughout the Iraqi capital over the past 24 hours,
authorities said.
At least 62 unidentified bullet-riddled corpses--all
bearing signs of torture--have been found throughout the city since Tuesday
night, said Brig. Gen. Abdullah Mahmood of the Interior Ministry

.

Just one more sign of how well our Iraq plans are working out is the good-natured, horseplay now taking place between the citizens of Baghdad and the authorities. George Bush is truly a leader with great vision.

BAGHDAD, Sept. 12 -- As an angry crowd gathered Tuesday morning, the young
man stepped out of a gray Mercedes poised for battle. Across Abu Nawas Street,
his tin-roofed shop lay crumpled like a run-over trash can. He knew whom to
blame.
He glared at some policemen and said: "Today, I'm going to kill one
of you. You will never stop until I kill one of you."

"Stop," a policeman yelled as the man got back in his car and sped away.
Another policeman fired a shot in his direction. Moments later, white pickup
trucks brimming with men in blue police uniforms and black bulletproof vests
sped up the street and screeched to a halt in front of a small kiosk. Some wore
black
masks.
They jumped out and began firing AK-47 assault rifles. Bullets flew toward
the sky and down the street, sending dozens of bystanders, including women and
children, scrambling for cover. The gunfire reached a jackhammer pitch

.

George Bush, not only a great war president, but also a man that can bring unity to a troubled region. How lucky we are.

And it's not just Iraq that is benefiting from our President's great vision. Our friends in China, who already practice a great form of media control have decided to copy the type of media control that we have used so successfully in Iraq.

BEIJING, Sept. 12 -- Journalism and human rights groups on Tuesday blasted
China's efforts to further control the distribution of news and financial
information by foreign news agencies, saying revised regulations showed that the
government was tightening censorship.

And thanks to the progressive leadership of Bush and the Republican congress, Americans are more and more being spared the drudgery of working in dirty factories. Thanks to them, more and more Americans are being employed in clean, air-conditioned Wal-Mart stores. How lucky can we get.

Pity the poor Chinese who now have to do these jobs.

And in case of a major war, the Pentagon can now just go down the street to Wal-Mart to buy all the armaments that we are no longer able to produce. And the best thing is all the money we'll save, because Wal-Mart will be getting them from China real cheap. And if they don't work, we can bring them back. What a county!

SHANGHAI -- Hunched over clattering machinery, the 170 workers at a factory here
churn out gleaming pistons for auto engines by the crateful, driven by surging
demand from abroad. To hear managers at Shanghai Datong Automotive Industrial
Co. tell it, their success overseas is due to efficiency and rock-bottom costs.
"Our technology is good, our wages are low and materials are abundant," said Jin
Zhangfu, the plant's manufacturing supervisor.

But in the American heartland towns where auto parts makers are struggling to
survive, an entirely different explanation -- China's cheap currency -- is
proffered for the competitiveness of companies such as Shanghai Datong. Such
complaints are expected to get high-level attention in coming days as the
Bush
administration's new Treasury secretary visits Asia.

And should anyone be foolish enough not to realize just how lucky we are, the Secretary of the Air Force has a plan.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should
be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on
the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

November's coming. Let's get these jerks outta there.

William Kristol and Rich Lowry: Pussies and War, Ford Blows It, Iraq Civil War and Bush and the CDC.

Once again the Washington Post turns it's editorial pages over to right-wing weenies without a shread of military experience to advocate more war. Or in this case, if it's not working, do more of it.

This time it's two big time, chickenhawk, conservative editors, William Kristol and Rich Lowry. They think we need more troops in Iraq. Sorry, but that ship sailed in 2003.

The bottom line is this: More U.S. troops in Iraq would improve our chances of
winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment. This means the ability to
succeed in Iraq is, to some significant degree, within our control. The
president should therefore order a substantial surge in overall troop levels in
Iraq, with the additional forces focused on securing Baghdad.

It's time these conservative blowhards put their asses where their mouths are, enlist and show us "cut and run" liberals how it's done.

The big republican pseudo economic boom is having results in Norfold, VA. Ford Motor Company is shutting down it's Norfolk plant. Between most folks having to try to scrape by a living and Ford's playing the SUV game when the rest of the world wanted high mileage, 30,000 American workers get screwed.

As part of its turnaround plan, Ford Motor Co. announced earlier this year that it would close the
plant in 2008, along with six other big assembly sites around the country, to
help it eliminate 30,000 jobs. As bad as the situation appeared then, it has
steadily turned worse: Ford lost $1.4 billion in the first half of the year. On
Thursday, Ford's board of directors is expected to vote on a new turnaround
plan, which could include hastening the plant closings and cutting more jobs.
Chairman William C. Ford Jr. has said that everything is on the table. He
himself stepped aside last week as chief executive, handing day-to-day
management to an industry outsider.

It's civil war in Iraq and it's our choice whether we let Iraq have it's own civil war or whether we want to be right in the big middle of it. Thanks to the idiot Bush we no longer have a secular counterbalance in the Middle East. As sorry as Saddam was, he served a useful purpose. Now at least a large segment of Iraq will become another fundementalist controlled country.

First, "there will be a civil war," said the aide, Mustafa Yaqoubi, as his three
young children wandered in and out of the room. The rising violence and
rivalries under the American occupation make a shaking-out all but inevitable
once foreign forces go, Yaqoubi said. "I expect it."

"No matter the number of people who would lose their lives, it is better than
now," he added. "It would be better than the Americans staying."

When the tumult ends, the Sadr aide said, Iraq's Shiite majority will finally be
able to claim its due, long resisted by the Americans -- freedom to usher in a
Shiite religious government that Yaqoubi said would be moderate and perhaps
comparable in some ways to Iran's. The bespectacled, bearded cleric's mild tone
buffered his talk of the blood that would have to be spilled to achieve this
goal. No matter when the Americans withdraw, "the first year of transition, it
will be worse," Yaqoubi warned. "After that, it will gradually improve."

Here's a little heads-up for all those folks out there thanking their particular deity for George Bush keeping them safe from all sorts of imagined boogie men.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is losing top people in protest of the Bush Administration's blatant disregard of all things sensible and scientific.

Their concerns, expressed in a rare joint letter to current CDC Director Julie
Gerberding, come amid growing staff complaints about whether her strategic
shifts in the agency's focus are putting public health at risk, according to
interviews with current and former CDC officials and documents obtained by The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Be back soon

I will be back as soon as i get updated and broadband

Bush News Conference, Health Care, Iran, Fart Jokes, Welfare, Conrad Burns, Bill Kristol, Clean Air, Cuba and American Taliban.

Idiots say the darnest things. After years of trying to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 disaster, Ol' Simple has a news conference.

In Monday's news conference Bush shows how hard it is to keep up with all that misinformation and accidentally let's the truth slip out.

The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started
the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were ...

Q: What did Iraqi have to do with that?

Bush: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.

Bush: Nothing. Except for it's part of __ and nobody's ever suggested in
this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a __ Iraq
__ the lesson of September the 11th is: Take threats before they fully
materialize, Ken.

Another statement from that news conference that caught my attention was:

We reject the killing of innocents to achieve a radical and violent agenda.

Apparently, the killing of innocents is fine as long as you're trying to achieve a "noble cause".

After the news conference, Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, decided that Bush was on another planet. I like Robinson.

Here's another line from the president's news conference: "What's very
interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the
violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to
stop the advance of democracy."

Now, whatever you think about George Bush's intellect, he knows full well
that the Hamas government in Gaza was democratically elected. He also knows full
well that Hezbollah participates in the democratically elected government of
Lebanon, or what's left of Lebanon. And so he has to know full well that
U.S.-backed Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon -- even if you believe they
were justified -- had the impact of crippling, if not crushing, two nascent
democracies of the kind the Bush administration wants to cultivate throughout
the Middle East.

Bush is setting his sights on health care. My advice, don't get sick.

The initiative underscores Bush's belief that the nation's health-care system
would be more efficient if consumers could shop for the best care at the best
price, administration officials say. "The fact is, if you have excellent
information about quality, about service and about price, people make good
decisions," Bush said during a roundtable here to discuss the initiative.

If you believe that, check this out.

Iran wants to talk, Bush wants sanctions. Being the pampered, effete, rich, boy that he is and used to getting his way all his life, I'll bet he won't talk.

Iran offered yesterday to enter into immediate and "serious" negotiations on a
broad range of issues with the Bush administration and its European allies but
refused to abide by a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend work at its
nuclear facilities by the end of the month.

It seems our President also loves fart jokes. Talk about arrested development.

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up
with him, and now we're learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes.
A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid
around women, always worried about his behavior. But he's still a funny, earthy
guy who, for example, can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a
few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about
getting people to gas about that.

Speaking of noxious gas, The Heritage Foundation is now saying that Bill Clinton was right on welfare reform. Of course that means he was wrong.

As a conservative analyst who spent much of the 1990s working against most of
Bill Clinton's agenda -- including even some aspects of his welfare reform
proposals -- it pains me to say this.
Bill Clinton was right.

If Republicans would just stick to waving the flag and thumping the Bible, instead of opening their mouths, they'd still look stupid, but not as stupid. Senator Conrad Burns of Montana show us why.

A new video released this week by his Democratic challenger, Jon Tester,
shows Burns, 71, joking to a crowd in June about how a "nice little Guatemalan
man" fixing up his house might be an illegal immigrant. "Could I see your green
card?" Burns tells the crowd he asked the man. "And Hugo, says, 'No.' I said,
'Oh, gosh.' "

One week after the green-card crack, Burns recounted in a debate how after
watching an interview on television of an illegal immigrant headed to Virginia
for work, "I told my roofer, you better go out and get your help, or you won't
get my house roofed."

But we all know that God made illegals to save Republicans a few bucks.

And why are so many of these wealthy, draft-dodging, neo-con, wimps so anxious to start another war? Bill Kristol showing how clueless he is.

KRISTOL: I think we could be in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner
than people expect. I don’t think this is an issue that’s going to wait two and
a half years until President Bush leaves the presidency. I think he will decide
at some point next year — in 2007 — he’ll have to make some very tough decisions
about what the U.S. and the world can tolerate in terms of this regime – this
apocalyptic, messianic regime — which has made clear that it would use — would
feel free to use weapons if it had them, that has very deep ties with terrorist
groups, what we could accept in terms of their nuclear program.

Israel seems to be doing it's best to keep things stirred up. With friends like this, Kristol might get what he wants.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 22 -- The Israeli government's plan to dismantle some Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and redraw the country's borders is being shelved
at least temporarily, a casualty of the war in Lebanon, government officials said.

The plan, which propelled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to victory in March
elections and was warmly endorsed by President Bush as a way of solving Israel's
conflict with the Palestinians, is no longer a top priority, Olmert told his
ministers last weekend, according to one of his advisers.

Score one for the bad guys. Rupert Murdoch and our whore Congress screws us again. I guess I'll have to start going back outside to turn my antenna. A few years ago, local television station owners, read conclomerates, pumped a lot of money into Congress to keep satellite companies from showing any network coverage other than the locals. It's kinda like Congress passing a law saying that, if the town you live in has a newspaper, it would be illegal to read any other paper. All in all, it's just damned unAmerican.

Hundreds of thousands of Dish Network subscribers could lose access to shows on
traditional television networks as early as today after a Supreme Court
justice's decision yesterday that brings an end to lawsuits that have been tied
up in court for more than eight years.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas yesterday let stand a May ruling
by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that ordered EchoStar
Communications Corp., the parent company of Dish Network, to stop transmitting
network programming to 800,000 subscribers -- those who live in mostly rural
areas too far to receive local stations with regular antennas.

But there's good news. Score one for the good guys, Bush and the polluters finally lose one.

Americans who live in areas with substandard air won another important round
last week in the tortured legal battle to force power companies, other
industrial polluters and the Bush administration itself to obey the Clean Air
Act. In a unanimous decision, a federal appeals court in Chicago upheld a
controversial provision of the act that requires older plants to install modern
pollution controls whenever they undergo physical or operational changes that
increase harmful
emissions.
The provision, known as New Source Review, has been critical to the efforts
of New York and other Northeastern states to reduce air pollution from
Midwestern power plants. But industry hates it, and the administration has spent
the last five years trying to get rid of it. This effort seemed very close to
success until the courts intervened, delivering two rebuffs in less than half a
year.

Say what you want about Cuba. But they are leading the way to a petroleum free future.

Cuba switched "the nation's agriculture from high input, fossil fuel-dependent
farming, to low input, self-reliant farming...farmers used new environmental
technologies offered as the result of scientific development--technologies such
as biopesticides and biofertilizers. Biopesticides developed the use of microbes
and natural enemies to combat pests, along with resistant plant varieties, crop
rotation, and cover cropping to suppress weeds. Biofertilizers were developed
using earthworms, compost, natural rock phosphate, animal manure and green
manures, and the integration of grazing animals. To replace tractors, there was
a return to animal traction."

And finally, who's keeping an eye on the enemy within? Certainly not Bush and the Republicans, who rely on their votes. But AlterNet is.

Two really devilish guys materialized in Toccoa, Ga., last month to harangue
600 true believers on the gospel of a thoroughly theocratic America. Along with
lesser lights of the religious far right who spoke at American Vision's
"Worldview Super Conference 2006," Herb Titus and Gary North called for nothing
short of the overthrow of the United States of America.

Hosting the "Creation to Revelation... Connecting the Dots" event was a
Powder Springs, Ga., publishing house, American Vision, whose pontiff is Gary
DeMar. The outfit touts the antebellum South as a righteous society and favors
the reintroduction of some forms of slavery (it's sanctioned in the Bible,
Reconstructionists say) -- which may explain the blindingly monochrome audience
at the gathering

At the heart of what was taught by a succession of speakers:

Six-day, "young earth" creationism is the only acceptable doctrine for
Christians. Even "intelligent design" or "old earth" creationism are compromises
with evil secularism.


Public education is satanic and must be destroyed.

The First Amendment was intended to keep the federal government from
imposing a national religion, but states should be free to foster a religious
creed. (Several states did that during the colonial period and the nation's
early days, a model the Reconstructionists want to emulate.)

The Founding
Fathers intended to protect only the liberties of the established
ultra-conservative denominations of that time. Expanding the list to include
"liberal" Protestant denominations, much less Catholics, Jews and (gasp!)
atheists, is a corruption of the Founders' intent.

Well, at least Tuesdays are usually better than Mondays.

Bush's New Secrets, Gulag Bush, Blame Mexicans, Chuck Hagel, Ted Stevens, Religious Right Pin-Up Girl Ann Coulter and Ned Lamont.

In the latest installment of I've Got A Secret staring G. W. Bush, our neurotic, paranoid hero, in a lame effort at convincing the American people that he is protecting us, has classified Cold War missile data that has been in the public domain for years. It's a laugh-riot and it's playing all over the country, right now.

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information
that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the
numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold
War.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable
secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons,"
wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " .
. . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that
have never been classified before."

Co-starring Bryan Wilkes, as a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, who provides the twisted logic for this lighthearted farce.

"It's not our call to do missile data," Wilkes said. "There's no question that
current classified nuclear weapons data was out there that we had to take back,"
he added. "And in today's environment, where there is a great deal of concern
about rogue nations or terrorist groups getting access to nuclear weapons, this
makes a lot of sense."

Tomorrow's episode will be about how our lovable hero dumps on his friends by using his secrets for his own political benefit, despite the consequences.

Anti-terror police in Britain have made an angry request to their US
counterparts asking them to stop leaking details of this month's suspected bomb
plot over fears that it could jeopardise the chances of a successful prosecution
and hamper the gathering of evidence.

The British security services, MI5 and MI6, are understood to be dismayed
that a number of sensitive details surrounding the alleged plot - including an
FBI estimate that as many as 50 people were involved - were leaked to the
media.

Immediately following will be an encore episode about those who run afoul of our affable protagonist.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia -- On Jan. 18, 2002, six men suspected of plotting to
attack the U.S. Embassy were seized here by U.S. troops and flown to Cuba, where
they became some of the first arrivals at the Pentagon's new prison at
Guantanamo Bay.

The seizure was ordered by senior U.S. officials in defiance of rulings by
top courts in Bosnia that the men were entitled to their freedom and could not
be deported. Today, more than four years later, the six remain locked up at
Guantanamo, even though the original allegations about the embassy attack have
been discredited and dropped, records show.

Stay tuned, the show's been a runaway hit for five and a half years, but has been in a recent ratings slump, is promising something big for sweeps week. And be sure to keep an eye out for the show's spin-off, Don't Hate Us, Hate the Mexicans, starring the I Want to be Your Candidate Players.

It is a counterintuitive strategy: The way to win a swing district is not
with a campaign aimed at swing voters. Instead, the goal is to motivate
conservatives with anti-illegal-immigration appeals, hoping they overcome their
disenchantment with GOP policies in Washington.

Of course, Republicans also hope to snare independents and even some
wayward Democrats with the immigration issue. But they plan to do it with hot
words -- not with the cool centrism that is more typical in districts where both
parties have run competitively.

Later this year the GOP network will debut two new made for TV movies. The first will be, Voice in the Wilderness, starring Chuck Hagel as a sane man who wakes up in asylum where the patients are in charge.

Hagel asked: "Where is the fiscal responsibility of the party I joined in '68?
Where is the international engagement of the party I joined _ fair, free trade,
individual responsibility, not building a bigger government, but building a
smaller government?"

The second, titled simply "Tubes", stars Ted Stevens as a deluded Alaskan who believes that he can become rich by selling his tubal information relay system to the telecommunications giants.

Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens, the powerful Commerce Committee chair, is trying to line up votes for his "Advanced
Telecommunications and Opportunities Reform Act." It was Stevens who called
the Internet a "series of
tubes" as he tried to explain his bill. Now the subject of well-honed
satirical jabs from The Daily Show, as well as dozens of independently made videos, Stevens is
hunkering down to get his bill passed by the Senate when it reconvenes in
September.

The RRN, Religious Right Network, will soon have the premier of it's new mini-series, Darwin and Hitler: A Love Story. It stars Ann Coulter in dual roles. Early word is, it will be hotter than Hell.

An upcoming television special produced by a Christian broadcaster that features
conservative pundit Ann Coulter blames Charles Darwin for Adolf Hitler, RAW STORY has learned.

The only offering from the RDN, Real Democrat Network, is Like Moths to a Flame, it stars Ned Lamont along with many bit players on loan from the DLC network. The title says it all.

But since Aug. 8, when he defeated the 18-year incumbent by about 10,000 votes,
Lamont has discovered a lot of new friends _ especially those within the
Democratic establishment who originally backed Lieberman.

Hope your Monday don't suck.

GOP Scum, Conservatives Play Catch-up, Dems catch up, UN-Israel-Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gun Fun and Who Would Jesus Kill?

It's makes it easy to be a proud liberal when I see things like this.

As many as 61,000 military widows whose husbands died of causes relating to
their military service lose out on thousands of dollars a year in survivor
benefits because of a law that dates from the 1970’s.

Widows and
retirees have spent decades trying to persuade Congress to change the law, which
hits hardest at the widows of lower-ranking service members and is referred to
by many critics as the “widow’s tax.’’

The Senate passed such a change
last year and again this year as part of the military authorization bill. But
House Republican leaders oppose the change because of its steep price tag,
nearly $9 billion over 10 years, Senate legislative aides from both parties say.
A change was not in the military bill that passed the House, but lawmakers who
support the change are hoping to make it part of the bill’s final version, which
is now being worked on by a bipartisan Congressional committee.

The scum on the right will stoop to any low in order to protect the tax cuts of the rich whose butts they love to lick. After five years of failure under Bush and the Republicans, just how big of a cold-hearted dumbass do you have to be to keep voting GOP.

Even the less bright among us are starting to see that Bush is just a load of crap in a silk suit.

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George
Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad."
For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS
BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe
Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And
his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents
have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league
by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

Yeah, after just five and a half wasted years, even the slow on the uptake conservatives are starting to conceptualize the obvious.

The GOP had their chance and blew it spectacularly. But then rolling over for big business, futher enriching the already rich and starting an endless war based on lies, does tend to wear thin after a while. And let's not forget those supposed Democrats that went right along with them. The GOP screwed up so badly that now the fundraising gap is starting to close. Democracy works, but it requires participation. Something the Democrtatic Party needs to learn.

The traditional fundraising advantage held by incumbent lawmakers -- which
Republicans have regarded as a safety wall in their effort to keep control of
Congress -- has eroded in many closely contested House races, as many Democratic
challengers prove competitive in the race for cash.

In a year of bad
omens for the GOP, the latest batch of disclosure forms filed with the Federal
Election Commission offers one more: Incumbency no longer means that embattled
Republican representatives can expect to overwhelm weakly funded Democratic
challengers with massive spending on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts.

The pendulum seems to be swinging back slowly to the side of sanity, but we are going to have one Hell of a mess to clean up.

It's much easier to start a war than to end one. You'd think that was common knowledge. It's not surprising that a sheltered dimwit from Texas might not know this, it's incredibly surprising that Israel would not. But Israel might have figured that they could use Bush's obsession with Iran to their own benefit. Although, it's hard to understand how a further degradation of U. S. power and credibility would be beneficial in the long run.

The Bush administration was informed in advance and gave the "green light" to
Israel's military strikes against Hizbollah ­ with plans drawn up months
before two Israeli soldiers were seized ­it has been claimed.

The US
reportedly considered Israel's actions as a necessary prerequisite for a
possible strike against Iran. A report by a leading investigative reporter says
that earlier this summer Israeli officials visited Washington to brief the
government on its plan to respond to any Hizbollah provocation and to "find out
how much the US would bear".

With a cease-fire in effect, Israel is playing fast and loose and neither the UN or Lebanon is impressed.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is "deeply concerned"
about Israel's commando raid Saturday in eastern Lebanon, which he said violated
the cease-fire resolution concerning Israel and Hezbollah, his spokesman said in
a written statement.

BEIRUT, Aug. 19 -- Helicopter-borne Israeli
commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley early Saturday,
setting off a fierce gun battle. Lebanon called the attack a "flagrant
violation" of a fragile six-day-old cease-fire and threatened to halt troop
deployments in protest.

Israel has every right to defend itself, any country does, but only fools use war as anything other than a last resort.

While I'm on the subject of fools and war, let's check in on our fool and his wars.

You remember Iraq, the country that the Bush Administration put on a media blitz to convince the sheep in this country that we were in imminent danger of being attacked by Iraq, with everything from anthrax to nuclear weapons? Then we learned that that was lies. The country that worked hand in hand with Osama to bring down the WTC. And once again found out we'd been lied to. You know, the country that we're going to present as a model of democracy for the Middle East. It's where most of our military are currently performing target duty for anyone with an AK-47, RPG or homemade bomb. Well it looks likes the Bush magic is working as well over there as it is here.

Civil war? Oh no, not according to Bush. Could this be more Bush lies? What do you think?

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed,
the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like
devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall.
The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only
Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with
instability, turmoil and war

.

Even our number one allies have caught on to this.

So are figures for the overall number of attacks on coalition forces, and the
statistics for American military deaths could be worse if not for some recent
improvements in armoured protection. With luck, money and the right kind of
international help, Lebanon can be put back together again. But can Iraq? That
is the stark question which faces both Iraqis and their occupiers. The people of
Baghdad note every day the ominous signs of descent into communal violence. One
week the gunmen go after bakers, forcing those of the "wrong" sect to close up
and leave, and murdering them and their workers if they do not. The next, they
turn to newspaper and magazine stalls, demanding that the "wrong" titles be
removed from sale. Again, death is often the price for disobedience. In the
mixed areas of the city, families are packing to move to safer areas, a process
which has not yet become a full-scale exodus but which certainly could become
one. Even in solidly Shia or Sunni areas, there are conflicts between different
factions and movements, as was illustrated this week when aggrieved tribesmen
attacked the city council headquarters in Basra, British troops hovering
uneasily on the edge of the fight. The grim pattern of intimidation, fear,
flight, murder and massacre is taking shape in all those parts of Iraq where the
communities are, or were, mingled. If this is not civil war, it is moving
sharply in that direction. Two wars, a war of Iraqis against Iraqis and a war of
Iraqis against Americans, threaten to blur into one in a way which could be
beyond anybody's ability, Iraqi or American, to manage or control.

Bush has worked his magic with gasoline in Iraq. Even though it sits on the third largest oil reserves on the planet, they're having to import oil! At the pumps gas is only 64 cents a gallon, but there's hardly any gas at the pumps. It's almost five bucks a gallon on the black market.

Even though Iraq has the world's third-largest proven oil reserves, it is forced
to depend on imports because of an acute shortage of refined products such as
gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas. Sabotage of pipelines by insurgents,
corruption and aging refineries have been blamed.

A gallon of gasoline
now sells on the black market in Baghdad for about $4.92, although its official
price is $0.64. Lines of cars at many Baghdad fuel stations stretch several
miles, and drivers sometime wait overnight to fill their cars.

And remember how Bush tried to mask his lies with more lies about bringing democracy to the Middle East? Well, maybe not anymore.

The last three paragraphs of this story revealed that “senior administration
officials . . . are considering alternatives other than democracy,” according to
a military expert who was just briefed at the White House.

Even a country that we needed to go into, but overstayed our welcome, is showing the fingerprints of the War President's military strategery.

KABUL, Insurgents killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded six others in clashes
Saturday during an upsurge in violence across the country. Two Afghan soldiers
also were killed.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded
during operations in the Pech district of the eastern province of Konar, said
Col. Tom Collins, a U.S. military spokesman. U.S. troops in that area are
hunting for Taliban fighters and insurgents linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network in remote mountains hugging the Pakistani border.

In the
southern province of Uruzgan, one U.S. soldier and two Afghan soldiers were
killed and three Americans were wounded in a four-hour clash with more than 100
insurgents, according to a NATO statement

.

Thank goodness we live in America where there's not a bunch of nuts running around with automatic weapons. Uh, wait a minute, hold that.

The Knob Creek machine gun shoot in Kentucky attracts thousands of neo-Nazis and other extremists. But the orgy of firepower helps everyone get along just fine.

And for the short on change, fun-loving, uber-Christian that wants to pop a few caps at anyone who's not pale enough or religious enough, a new video game brought to you by those pillars of compassion of the Religious Right, Who Would Jesus Kill?. That's not really it's name, but it should be.

The object of the game is to recruit the members of New York's remaining
"neutral" population to the side of God during a seven-year reign of the
Antichrist. Players have to win over the remaining agnostics and unbelievers of
New York City or kill them -- either before or after they are pulled to the
forces of evil.

Enjoy your Sunday.