Gov. Perdue to Iraq critics: ‘Keep your mouth shut.’ This morning, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) was a guest on the radio show of former Education Secretary Bill Bennett on WKGA in Atlanta. He lashed out at the Republicans who have been criticizing President Bush on the Iraq war, stating that “until you’ve got a better idea, keep your mouth shut.” He added, “The president did not choose war. The president chose to protect the United States of America, and he did.” (Listen to the audio HERE.)
The Next Enron Scandal Isaiah J. Poole and Rick Perlstein May 11, 2007
The Enron scandal is rearing its ugly head again, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has to decide with whom it will stand: Will it be with small investors who depend on the honest advice of financial advisors or with bankers who, thanks to a recent federal court decision, have a license to facilitate fraud?
That stunning Fifth Circuit ruling is before the Supreme Court, which has to decide whether it will review the case. How the SEC weighs in could influence the justices, who will have their own choice to make between a conservative ideology that brooks virtually no boundaries for rampant corporate greed and the values of basic farness, honesty and justice.
At issue are the sham transactions that kept billions of dollars of Enron debt off the books and, for a while, artificially propped up the stock price. They were engineered by banks, but by a 2 to 1 vote the appeals panel said that investors could not sue the banks for being the enablers in the Enron fraud.
The SEC was created to protect investors from fraudulent behavior. But under current chairman Christopher Cox, its vigilance in that role is in doubt. Cox is an archconservative former House member from California accused in one profile of helping to “shape the regulatory environment in which Enron scandals ultimately flourished.” As an eager supporter of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” in the 1990s, Cox actively fought against such regulatory efforts as a ban on undercover financial relationships between firms and their supposed-to-be independent auditors. At the top of his agenda at the SEC has been undoing the Sarbanes-Oxley law, under the excuse that its reporting and accountability standards are too onerous for small businesses.
But Cox also has to face the simple moral force of people such as Buddy Schwartz, a former blue-collar Hershey Foods mechanic who came to Washington this week to tell his story at a Washington news conference, along with several other Enron victims.
Schwartz worked overtime to send his children through college and have enough left over for a comfortable retirement. To manage the retirement money, Schwartz turned to his son, who worked as an investment advisor for Merrill Lynch. His son’s bosses at Merrill Lynch convinced him that Enron was a no-miss buy. Trusting that advice meant that his son “lost a good portion” of his father’s retirement savings. But Schwartz is not mad at his son. “Merrill Lynch and all these banks and Enron conspired together to steal money in the same way a common thief would break into my house and steal money,” Schwartz said.
The media, business elites and the Washington establishment are behaving as if Enron is a closed book. CEO Ken Lay is literally dead and buried; finance chief Andy Fastow and the other malefactors have been punished; Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, has dissolved. Blares the cover of the latest Fortune: "Business Is Back! Profits Are Boffo. Stocks Are On Fire...And the Rogues Are Behind Bars." The system is working, right?
Conservatives ‘Declare War’ on House GOP Over Appointment of Scandal-Plagued Calvert On Wednesday, House conservatives appointed Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) to replace embattled Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) on the House Appropriations Committee. ThinkProgress noted the irony in this appointment, as Calvert has been scandal-plagued for years, using earmarks to make millions of dollars in personal profits.
Yesterday, Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) publicly spoke out against Calvert’s appointment:
I care a lot about the House of Representatives, I care a lot about our members and once someone is ethically challenged and gets in trouble it effects all of us. … I appreciate the high ethical standards that [Boehner] has set … but I believe the bar was lowered today when our conference chose to vote Ken Calvert onto the Appropriations Committee.
Prominent members of the conservative blogosphere are echoing LaHood’s disgust with Calvert’s history. RedState proclaims today, “We must fight the House GOP and we must fight today”:
Today, I declare war on the Republican leadership of the United States House of Representatives. We must scalp one member. That member’s name is Ken Calvert. … This is the man House Republicans chose to replace John Doolittle. They just don’t get it. So now I declare war. Who is with me?
Ethics watchdog files complaint against Sen. Martinez Nick Juliano Published: Friday May 11, 2007
government watchdog group has called on the Federal Election Commission to fine Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., nearly $800,000 because the group says Martinez failed to collect required information about nearly half the contributors to his 2004 campaign and took hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive contributions.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal advocacy group, highlighted an FEC audit of Martinez's campaign released last month that found he failed to disclose the occupation of 46 percent of his contributors. Martinez also failed to provide any information related to $320,000 worth of contributions. CREW filed a formal complaint with the FEC based on these and other alleged fundraising transgressiions.
“The violations committed by Martinez for Senate are unprecedented in both size and scope.” CREW'S Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a news release. “Basically, Mel Martinez broke the law in order to win an election.”
Democrats send cease and desist demand to conservative website and XM Radio over alleged Dean remarks John Byrne Published: Friday May 11, 2007
The Democratic National Committee filed two cease-and-desist letters Thursday with a conservative website and XM Radio regarding comments they alleged were made by DNC Chairman Howard Dean.
As a DNC-imposed noon deadline passed today, the allegedly inflamatory comments had not been removed from the Web. A party spokeswoman, Stacie Paxton, said she was not sure what the Democrats' next step would be.
The website FreeRepublic.com, citing an XM radio show, said Thursday that "Dean called Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius early, around 5 am, one morning after the tornado had destroyed the town of Greensburg, Kansas and discussed with her what to say about the tornado and how to blame the war in Iraq and the Bush administration on a slow response to the aftermath."
According to Democrats, the conversation never occurred.
By early Friday afternoon, the cease and desist letter was posted on a FreeRepublic thread that had garnered more than 250 comments disparaging the Democrats. The Quinn & Rose Show homepage also was still alleging the Dean-Sebelius conversation took place.
The letters issued by the party's lawyer, Joseph E. Sandler, were sent to James Robinson of FreeRepublic and Dara Altman, the Executive Vice President of XM Satellite Radio.
"The statement made by Mr. Quinn, repeated on FreeRepublic.com is demonstrably, uneqivocably and absolutely false," Sandler wrote. "Governor Dean had no such conversation with Governor Sebelius, ever."
FreeRepublic also alleged that "Gov. Sebelius, called Senator Sam Brownback's office only to learn he wasn't there but then called him on his cell phone and reached him while he was in his car were she confessed to him that she had been instructed by her party leadership, (more specifically, Howard Dean) on how to politicize the tornado's destruction of Greensburg and attack the White House and the Iraq war for a seemingly slow response.
"She reassured the Senator that her allegations didn't blame him or Pat Roberts, also a Kansas Senator, for the lack of immediate response," the poster added.
Governor Sebelius issued the following statement in reply: "I am outraged that the Quinn & Rose show has aired a report suggesting that my efforts to highlight the need to replace National Guard equipment lost in Iraq are inspired by anything other than my responsibilities as commander-in-chief of the Kansas National Guard. The accusation that I received a call from anyone, encouraging me to take on this issue following the devastating tornado in Greensburg, is one-hundred-percent false -- period.
US officials fear 'imminent' attack on Americans in Germany, though some express skepticism RAW STORY Published: Friday May 11, 2007
CNN BREAKING NEWS / RUSH TRANSCRIPT: "Terrorists have been discovered in the advanced planning stages of an attack in Germany on US personnel, military personnel, and/or tourists," CNN reported live on air Friday afternoon.
A CNN anchor said they were able to confirm the information with "senior federal officials," though acknowledged that "other intelligence officials said that this threat lacked a little 'in specifics in terms of timing.'"
ABC News has a special photo gallery on the terror threat.
"Officials said that there has been operation planning going on about this for some time," CNN said. "They are not sure that all the people or everything they needed to conduct this operation were in place.
"The US State Dept. sent a message Apr. 20 warning on Germany," CNN said.
ABC News reported about the threat earlier this week and has posted an update today here. When reported earlier this week, RAW STORY led with ABC's report; ABC also used the headline "imminent."
"The information behind the threat is very real," a senior U.S. official told ABC.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble told reporters, "The danger level is high. We are part of the global threat by Islamist terrorism."
By Jared Bernstein | bio Let me apologize in advance.
You log onto TPM for an intellectual caffeine jolt, and instead, encounter some bean counter with unsettling news about the economy. So if you want to click elsewhere, no harm, no foul.
Still with me? What are you, some kind of masochist?
Actually, I’m not here simply to report that storm clouds are gathering, though I’ll do that in a moment. What’s equally interesting is what this portends for people and politics.
First, among my dismal economist brothers and sisters, I tend to be somewhat upbeat—no Cassandra, me. So I hope I have some street cred when I tell you that there are at least three ominous signals about where we’re headed, economy-wise.
#1: First quarter gross domestic product came in at an already low 1.3%. That’s well below the rate we need to generate enough economic activity to keep jobs and incomes growing. But since that report came out, we have new information that will almost surely lead us to revise that measure down, including an unexpectedly large increase in the trade deficit and slumping retail sales (more on that later). Merrill-Lynch thinks first quarter GDP we be revised down to 0.7%, a mere crawl.
#2: We’ve discussed April’s lousy job growth numbers, and in that write-up I worried that weak job and income growth would restrain consumption growth, the one component of GDP that’s been consistently strong, well…
#3: Now we’ve got a couple of retail sales reports, reflecting that, as the NYT put it this AM: “rising gas prices and the flagging housing market are starting to weight on American consumers.” Some have tried to downplay April’s retail sales because of weather or holiday effects (Easter came in early this year, so people bought more jelly beans in March), but average March and April together gets you to a similar place regarding diminished consumer activity. As analysts and Moody’s economy.com wrote: “The 1.8% average for the two months is the weakest since November 2004 and is indicative of additional restraint from rising gasoline prices, weakening housing markets, deteriorating credit quality, and the onset of slowing growth in nominal labor income.”
One might note that sales at high-end Saks bucked the trend and were up big in April, and I suppose you could wonder how far the frothy stock market or the spending of hedge fund managers will get you right now.
My guess is: not too far. That wealth is highly concentrated and if the vast majority of families are starting to feel as squeezed as I think they are, it’s hard for me to see where the economy’s stimulus is going to come from moving forward. That’s one reason I was disappointed to see the Federal Reserve not take notice of these recent developments in their last statement on interest rate policy.
Commander: No threat to Fort Dix "We analyzed the information available from a number of different sources and felt there was no immediate or direct threat that warranted a drastic change in our security posture," Anderson said of the situation at Robins.
Daily Show: President Bush Defines “Success” in Iraq By: SilentPatriot @ 10:03 AM - PDT Jon Stewart uses the President's own words to answer the most pressing question of our time: What will a successful Iraq look like?
Download (2075) | Play (2702) Download (821) | Play (1515)
and how backstabber extraordinary George Stephanopoulos got it all started - and boy, do I remember that one ---
"Back in the day all it took to turn the entire media establishment upside down with impeachment talk was George Stephanopoulos "raising the prospect" and a bunch of gossipy gasbags twittering about it on TV for the Washington Post to immediately started polling like mad. Today, it makes the polling director "madder and madder" to even be asked about the question and a rule has been set forth that it takes a call from Democratic members of congress or a "serious" presidential candidate for him to even broach the question.
Back in 1998, Clinton had roughly the same amount of time left in office as Bush does today and yet, as Schecter points out, had a job approval rating more than twice as high as Bush's right now. ..."
I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny. - Fr. Miguel d'Escoto
Aaawwww.... member JA comes to the aid of the beltway club, bashes Radar, scolds net readers for b.e.l.i.e.v.i.n.g, and .... eeeeks ... makes stuff up?
" I don't remember him calling Broder "the voice of the people," but if he did, it was said with a pleasantly arch tone, neither serious nor sarcastic. ..."
BREAKING: 4 US Reps for Cheney Impeachment Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-05-11 18:01. Impeachment By Matthew Cardinale, Atlanta Progressive News
Me?It took me about a month to figure how to link..Let me look around for some of the sites that helped me.Where's SJ when you need him??Just kidding.I'll find something. :)
A Legislative Plan To End The War In Iraq Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-05-11 18:16. Activism | Elections www.gravel08.us
WHO: Former United States Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel. WHAT: The Senator offers a plan to create a constitutional confrontation between the US congress and the President, adjudicated by the American people. WHEN: Monday May 14, 2007 at 9:30 AM EST. WHERE: National Press Club, Edward R. Murrow Room, 529 14th Street NW, Washington DC 20045
(lets hear it JA, the ball is in your beltway court and you are so good at sobbing the story ....)
---- "Dear Jonathan,
The last thing I had in mind when I wrote that profile of Mike Gravel at the Columbia rally was getting into a Web tiff with you. I've read and enjoyed many of your columns. So when you called me out as a "bad reporter" in your HuffPo screed, it would have been traumatic if I wasn't sure my reporting from that day was bulletproof. Fortunately, it is.
It's kind of funny, isn't it, all this hubbub over one little remark? But reporter Tom Edsall did say that David Broder is the "voice of the people," and he did say it as I reported. In the conversation I documented, in fact, Gravel was accusing Broder of not believing in popular democracy. He referred to the Iraq war ...
read on http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/05/an-open-letter-to-jonathan-alter.php
Friday, April 20, 2007 Catching Up [snip] The new blog will roll out within three weeks, maybe earlier. It will allow for sub blogs or diaries. [snip] Posted by SEDER at 9:10 AM ---------------------------------- [checks calendar... pouts]
Sunshine Jim, "every site i went to today having probs, my ADSL connect was flaky too for a bit. May 11, 2007 8:19 PM --------------------------------- --A Joke Stolen From Steven Wright--
"My nephew has HDADD. High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention. But when he does its unbelievable."
"Libertarianism is something that informs people's politics. We believe in free minds. We believe in free thinking. We believe in free speech. And, we believe in free markets." - Nick Gillespie
This week on Bill Moyers Journal (check local listings)
Can the Rev. Pat Robertson make Biblical law the law of the land? Bill Moyers Journal takes a look at Regent University, Robertson's Christian leadership institution, which has seen some 150 students move into the Bush Administration since 2001.
Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of the libertarian magazine Reason, discusses the impact of the religious right in Washington today.
Historian Marilyn Young reacts to Charlie Rose's recent interview with Condeleeza Rice and offers perspective on the official view versus the reality on the ground. She is co-editor of the new book Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past.
Coulter cleared of charges after FBI calls. “Conservative pundit Ann Coulter has been cleared of allegations that she falsified her Palm Beach County voter’s registration and voted illegally — this, after a high-level FBI agent made unsolicited phone calls to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to vouch for Coulter.”
CBS VP On Batiste: ‘The Viewer Might Have The Feeling Everything He Says Is Anti-Bush’ As ThinkProgress has reported, CBS has terminated Gen. John Batiste’s consulting contract with the network over his appearance in a VoteVets ad. CBS News’ blog sought comment from Linda Mason, CBS News Vice President, Standards and Special Projects. Here’s what Mason said about Batiste:
“When we hire someone as a consultant, we want them to share their expertise with our viewers,” she said. “By putting himself front and center in an anti-Bush ad, the viewer might have the feeling everything he says is anti-Bush. And that doesn’t seem like an analytical approach to the issues we want to discuss.”
Mason’s concern is hypocritical. CBS hasn’t shown a similar level of apprehension for being painted “pro-Bush” when former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace appears on its programming. Nor has it been concerned when its military analyst Michael O’Hanlon advocated in favor of Bush’s Iraq policy.
Mason belittles Batiste’s opposition to Bush’s Iraq policy, suggesting it is not “an analytical approach.” In fact, Batiste’s opposition stems from his personal experience and involvement in the execution of the Iraq war (Batiste commanded the Army’s First Infantry Division in 2004 and 2005). And he has not allowed partisanship to influence his “analytical approach.” Newsweek reports:
Batiste says he remains a “diehard Republican” and has no intention of wading directly into the presidential campaign a la McClellan and MacArthur. He took part in the VoteVets.org campaign, he says, because it’s a “nonpartisan group.”
“I’ve had nothing but absolute support” from colleagues inside the military, Batiste said. “No one has objected.” No one — until CBS found out that he wasn’t a full-fledged supporter of Bush’s war policy.
Non-competitive federal contracts skyrocket under Bush. $145 billion in federal contracts were awarded without competitive bidding in fiscal 2005, more than double the $67 billion in fiscal 2000. Yet at the same time, “[f]ailures of oversight into contracting procedures have made it possible for fraud, cronyism, and corruption to become prevalent in government,” according to a new report by Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly.
The report will be released on Monday at an event featuring Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). If you live in the Washington, DC, area, RSVP for the event HERE.
Snowe: ‘Things have not markedly improved’ in Iraq. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) this week “announced legislation that will require troop redeployment if the Iraqi government has not met specific benchmarks.” Snowe, who just returned from Iraq, told CBS News yesterday, “Based on my recent trip, I can tell you, things have not markedly improved.” Watch the report:
Snowe’s impressions were at sharp odds with those of Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), a Bush ally and war supporter who also toured Iraq:
Bond, whom GOP lawmakers put in front of cameras yesterday after the weekly caucus lunch, described the situation as stable in Iraq and said he was encouraged that the military surge was working. In Ramadi, he described walking around with just a small security force and said that local authorities have reported a boost in those joining the police and military. And overall, he saw positive changes in the nation.
“Obviously this is very early,” he said, “but the signs are extremely positive.”
Man in the mask returns to change world with new coalition and his own sexy novel
In a rare interview, Zapatista rebel chief Marcos warns US efforts to secure its southern border are pushing his poor compatriots over the edge
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City Saturday May 12, 2007 The Guardian
A bead of sweat is visible through the eyehole of his famous black balaclava. Latin America's most celebrated living rebel must be feeling the heat, but a glass of water would mean taking off the mask and that is out of the question. He makes do with a puff on his pipe, and a subject that is close to his heart.
"My new book's coming out in June," Subcomandante Marcos announces with relish during the first interview he has given to a British paper in years. "There's no politics in the text this time. Just sex. Pure pornography."
Article continues There has been a literary component to Marcos's revolutionary persona ever since he led the ragtag Zapatista indigenous army out of the jungle in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on New Year's Day 1994. It began with lyrical communiques on Mayan Indian rights, passed through a stage of barbed sarcasm and scatological put-downs, and recently included a crime novel featuring a rebel detective.
Fundraising
Now even his erotic imagination has been harnessed to the Zapatista cause as a fundraiser. "I'm sure it will sell if we put a lot of Xs on the cover."
Still, Marcos says that his next writing project will be a work of political theory analysing the forces he believes are pushing Mexico towards social upheaval. From dispossessed indigenous communities powerless to stop dams and agribusiness destroying their lands, to street vendors evicted from the capital's kerbs to make way for the retail magnates, he says the country's poor and exploited are close to their limit.
The former orthodox Marxist-Leninist turned anti-globalisation guru, who is not himself indigenous, predicts that the subconscious power of the year 2010 - the 200th anniversary of the war of independence and the 100th of Mexico's revolution - will ignite a fuse laid by American efforts to secure the bilateral border, leaving millions unable to escape to jobs in the north. "Mexico will turn into a pressure cooker," he says. "And, believe me, it will explode."
Marcos says that Mexico's politicians, the media, and even earnest leftwing academics are oblivious to the radicalisation he sees bubbling just under the surface. He points out that they also had no idea that the reputedly docile indigenous population in Chiapas was on the point of armed revolt 13 years ago. Not that the Zapatista rebellion fitted the traditional mould of macho Latin American armed struggle, or Marcos ever looked or sounded like rebel leaders elsewhere. Even the "sub" in his title - designed to imply an improbable subordination to a council of indigenous commanders - subverted the concept of military discipline employed in most other guerrilla armies.
"We left the jungle to die," Marcos recalls, remembering how poorly armed his fighters were. "It sounds dramatic I know, but that's the way it was."
The Zapatistas were beaten back by the Mexican army within days, but not before triggering a wave of sympathy across the country and the world that forced the government to call a ceasefire, as well as agree to peace negotiations that would eventually crumble.
In less than two weeks the Chiapas Indians became an international cause celebre and their mysterious mask-wearing, pipe-smoking, and poetry-spouting leader emerged as the closest approximation yet to the romance of the martyred Che Guevara. They have hardly done any fighting since then.
Powerful persona
Sitting in a sweltering back room of a Mexico City internet cafe, Marcos admits that the message in those early years would sometimes get lost in the fascination his persona inspired. He even confesses to occasionally letting celebrity go to his head. "But there was always the acerbic humour there to say 'tone it down, remember you are a myth, you do not really exist'."
Still, the subcomandante does always seem to be looking over his shoulder at himself, which is perhaps one explanation for his periods of near total silence. The longest came in 2001, shortly after the so-called Zapatour in which the Marcos bandwagon travelled the country accompanied by hundreds of international sympathisers and a police escort.
Elections had just ended 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico and the Zapatistas had decided to test the new democracy with the demand for an indigenous bill of rights. When parliament ignored the pressure, the rebels returned to the jungle and concentrated on putting indigenous self-government into practice, with or without constitutional sanction. Marcos disappeared from view, emerging four years later with a new concern to build alliances beyond the indigenous movement.
"This is the last battle of the Zapatistas," he says of the strategy, which relies on the government deciding not to reactivate old arrest warrants for fear of sparking more sympathy for Zapatista. "If we don't win it we will face complete defeat."
The subcomandante's specific aim in his current low-key tour of the country is to consolidate the broad and loose collection of marginal left groups known as The Other Campaign. Marcos hopes this rather chaotic mix of everybody from radical transvestites to Marxist trade unionists will eventually play a leading role in channelling the discontent he is sure will soon be raging into an unarmed civilian movement organised around the principle of respect for difference.
"We think that what is going to happen here will have no 'ism' to describe it." His voice becomes wistful. "It will be so new, beautiful and terrible that it will make the world turn to look at this country in a completely different way."
Ballot box
Such talk could be seen as contrary, perhaps, at a time when the left has taken power in much of Latin America through the ballot box, but Marcos is unimpressed by elections he views as primarily a mechanism for ping-ponging power within the elite. So while he gives Evo Morales in Bolivia a nod of approval for his links to a radical indigenous movement, he describes Hugo Chávez in Venezuela as "disconcerting", and brands Brazil's President Lula and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega as traitors.
Mexico's politicians on both left and right receive nothing but his scorn. Is it easier to claim the moral high ground when your face is hidden?
Marcos acknowledges that the mask helps, although he stresses it is also a burden. It can be itchy and uncomfortable, and it is so intertwined with his revolutionary persona that to take it off in public even for a few seconds would be the end of the subcomandante.
"The mask will come off when a subcomandante Marcos is no longer necessary," he says. "I hope it's soon so that I can finally become a fireman like I've always wanted. Firemen get the prettiest girls."
Faced with the collapse of the American dream at home and the decline of their global empire abroad, American liberals have dumped the 1960s-era radicalism of their youth and become complicit in a complex game of bait-and-switch, selling the world a vision of liberal democracy that is, in reality, a failed system on the verge of social and economic collapse.
In the tradition of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Marshall, a Sundance Award-winning director and co-founder of Guerrilla News Network, hits the road and travels from the front lines of the Iraq war, through the wasteland of the former Communist Eastern bloc, into a coke-dusted sex party of Britain's intellectual elite, and into the minds of America's most influential liberal figures.
Marshall finds America's most powerful liberals, all part of the same baby boomer generation that has dominated US political life since their voices broke in the 1960s, pushing a new form of "liberal interventionism" that threatens to use force to bring political freedom to oppressed people. But is the democracy they are exporting to the world really what they say it is? Or have liberals buckled under the pressure of America's declining fortunes and taken on the role of good cop to the conservatives' bad?
Featuring interviews with Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, David Horowitz, Lewis Lapham, John Avlon, The Economist's John Micklethwait, Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger, and best-selling authors Thomas Friedman, Paul Berman, and John Perkins.
So much, then, for the legacy of May ‘68. It was, in fact, liquidated long ago. Sarkozy isn’t inheriting a socialist state any more than Royal would have sought to create one, had she won last Sunday’s election. France does, however, retain elements of the welfare state. As Tony Judt commented in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago: “The dysfunctional French social model, we are frequently assured, has failed. In that case there is much to be said for failure. French infants have a better chance of survival than American ones. The French live longer than Americans and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are better educated and have first-rate public transportation. The gap between rich and poor is narrower than in the US or Britain, and there are fewer poor people.”
Much of this may no longer hold true once Sarkozy has had his way, but there can be little question that his campaign benefited enormously from the incoherence of the competing vision. Royal was unable to offer voters much more than a vague, unexciting continuity. It wasn’t entirely her fault: the fractious Socialist Party was never solidly behind her, and some socialist voters decided that a dose of Sarkozisme was likelier to reinvigorate the left than a bout of Royalisme. However, the risk is that five or 10 years of Sarkozy could drastically alter the shape of French politics, paving the way for a situation analogous to that of Britain, where the Thatcherite legacy found the ideal host in New Labour. M. Ali
Nirvana is not happy music for me, either, but it is extremely nostalgic. I'm not exactly in a great mood, and those four songs kinda fit my mood a bit.
Carlyle Group to sell shares to public By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Business Writer Sat May 12, 2:09 AM ET
Private-equity firm the Carlyle Group LP will for the first time sell shares to the public in one of its investment funds, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.
After a planned initial public offering of stock in June or July, the Carlyle Capital Corp. Ltd. fund, could have up to $1 billion to invest, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The fund, which will focus on mortgage-backed securities, has already raised private capital.
Carlyle plans to list the fund on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.
The Washington-based firm is following several other private-equity groups in entering the public markets.
Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts Co. offered shares in a real estate fund it manages in 2005, while Blackstone Group LP said in March that it would seek to raise $4 billion in an IPO of the private equity firm itself. Fortress Investment Group LLC was the first private equity firm to go public when it raised $643.3 million in an IPO.
Typically, private-equity funds return to investors the capital they put in, plus profits, after a preset period of time. However, by selling shares in the funds, these firms are able to manage the capital indefinitely.
The Carlyle Group currently manages $56 billion in 48 different funds, according to its Web site, investing in everything from aerospace and defense to energy and infrastructure.
US Commander: Not enough troops in north Iraq, pleas for more The commander of US forces in northern Iraq said he did not have enough troops to bring stability, sharpening the debate in America about the effectiveness of George Bush's war plan.
Cheney to seek Iraq help in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan by Olivier Knox 2 hours, 33 minutes ago
US Vice President Dick Cheney heads to Saudi Arabia Saturday to seek its aid in Iraq, two months after close US ally King Abdullah slammed the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of that war-torn land.
Over the weekend, Cheney was also to visit Egypt and Jordan to wrap up a week-long Middle East visit aimed at getting Washington's friends to help pull Iraq's minority Sunni Muslims into the country's fragile political process.
The vice president's diplomatic mission also meant to win US allies' help in curbing the influence of a rising Iran, amid talk that the Islamic republic and Saudi Arabia may be in the early skirmishes of a proxy war in Iraq.
Some US officials and analysts worry that sectarian violence there may be fed by support for Iraq's Sunnis from predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and backing for the Shiite majority from majority Shiite Iran.
"I dont think its a proxy war at this stage. Thats not the way I perceive it," Cheney told Fox News television in an interview Thursday. "I dont think thats the case yet."
The US vice president also hoped to use his considerable influence in Saudi Arabia -- forged during the 1991 Gulf War and his oil industry dealings -- to smooth over relations badly strained by sectarian violence in Iraq.
In late March, tensions boiled over when Saudi King Abdullah opened an annual Arab summit in Riyadh with a speech denouncing the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq and warning that "ugly sectarianism threatens civil war."
The king also refused to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with a Riyadh-based Arab diplomat saying it was because the monarch believed Maliki had deepened the sectarian divide in his country.
A top Cheney aide, briefing reporters Monday, said Riyadh's other actions -- including significant Iraqi debt forgiveness -- spoke just as loud as that diplomatic snub.
"I think on the whole, Saudi leadership is a very good thing, given the strength and enduring nature of our relationship with the Saudis and the amount of work and cooperation we've done over the years," the aide said.
Iraq parliament petition presses for withdrawal of US troops A majority of Iraq’s parliament has signed a petition for a legislative timetable governing a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, several parliamentarians said today.
Bush aides berate back at GOP members Top Bush administration officials lashed out at a pair of House Republicans at the White House yesterday after details about a contentious meeting between President Bush and GOP legislators were leaked to the media earlier this week.
CNN announces Bush 'resigns' CNN International's CNN Today program, airing at midnight Eastern, led with the graphic 'Bush Resigns.' Of course, they meant 'Blair Resigns.' Freudian slip?
Novak: Stars aligned against the GOP in 2008 “All the stars are aligned against the Republicans in 2008,” Bob Novak told the assembled masses at the Americans for Tax Reform’s Wednesday meeting, causing a subtle gasp to leak out of the conservative faithful.
Selling secrets for personal perks. A new indictment has been filed against the former #3 official at the CIA, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo. Via Atrios:
According to the new indictment, Foggo provided [his friend, defense contractor Brent] Wilkes with “sensitive, internal information related to our national security,” including classified information, to help him prepare proposals for providing undercover flights for the CIA under the guise of a civil aviation company and armored vehicles for agency operations. Foggo allegedly then pushed his CIA colleagues to hire Wilkes’ companies without disclosing their longstanding friendship.
[…]
Prosecutors say that in return, Wilkes offered to hire Foggo after he retired from government service. In the meantime, he allegedly treated his friend to a Scottish golf trip during which they racked up a $44,000 hotel bill at the luxurious Pitcastle Estate.
well its senior prom day, lotsa running around to do before the boy goes out tonight. have a good one everyone.
i caught a piece of real time last night, and it had an interesting point. some neocon lackey (frank luntz?) was basically saying how they have mastered the use of words and simplistic phrases to keep the dems up against the ropes all the time, because we are so afraid to insult or speak harshly or think that they have a valid criticism. what i think it means is that liberals and progressives need to grow a pair and take on a damn the torpedos, full speed ahead. so what if we make fun of mitt romneys superstitions...
May 12, 2007 Billions in Oil Missing in Iraq, U.S. Study Says By JAMES GLANZ Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.
Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.
The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.
The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.
Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the United States goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.
The draft report, expected to be released within the next week, was prepared by the United States Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts, and was provided to The New York Times by a separate government office that received a review copy. The accountability office declined to provide a copy or to discuss the draft.
Paul Anderson, a spokesman for the office, said only that “we don’t discuss draft reports.”
But a State Department official who works on energy issues said that there were several possible explanations for the discrepancy, including the loss of oil through sabotage of pipelines and inaccurate reporting of production in southern Iraq, where engineers may not properly account for water that is pumped along with oil in the fields there.
“It could also be theft,” the official said, with suspicion falling primarily on Shiite militias in the south. “Crude oil is not as lucrative in the region as refined products, but we’re not ruling that out either.”
5 GIs dead, 3 missing after Iraq attack 40 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - An attack on a unit of U.S.-led forces patrolling outside the Iraqi capital before dawn left five soldiers dead and three missing, the military said.
The attack on the patrol of seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter soldier occurred near Mahmoudiya, in a Sunni insurgent stronghold about 20 miles south of Baghdad, the military said.
Troops were searching for the three missing soldiers, the military said.
Calvert Caught In The Act With Prostitute, Lied, Attempted To Run From Police Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), recently appointed by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to the House Appropriations Committee, has a history of ethics violations that is stirring up battle cries even from his own conservative base. His ethics violations also extend into attempts to dodge the law and lie to the public about his behavior.
In 1993, Calvert was caught by police with a prostitute in a parked car in California. Subsequently, Calvert repeatedly attempted to cover up the incident for nearly a year, publicly denying that it ever occurred.
But a year later, a court order forced the release of the police report, which revealed how Calvert was clearly caught in the act and attempted to run from the police. From the police report:
I observed a male subject in the driver seat…As I made my way to the driver door, a female immediately sat up straight in the front passenger seat. It appeared as if her head was originally laying in the driver’s lap. … I noticed that the male subject was placing his penis into his unzipped dress slacks, and was trying to hide it with his untucked dress shirt.
As the male subject covered up crotch area with his left hand and shirt, he started his vehicle and placed it into drive and proceeded to leave. I ordered him three times to turn off the vehicle, and he finally stopped and complied…The male identified himself as Kenneth Stanton Calvert.
That wasn’t all Calvert tried to cover up. “We’re just talking, that’s all. Nothing else,” he nervously explained to the police as he “continued to cover his unzipped pants with his hand.”
Calvert has since held onto his Congressional seat but only through smear tactics. Representing a conservative district, he put out “campaign literature implying that his Democratic opponent was gay” after the prostitution incident and was subsequently re-elected.
I wonder if Rove had the details of hookergate to blackmail politicians and thats why(another reason)they've done whatever he has wanted for the past 6yrs? Oh Rove what this criminal has gotten away with! Our govenment really is one big ass mafia. A sad state in these times indeed. THis shit has got to stop and people have had enough. Enough already!
The Real Deal on Sarkozy's victory: According to [America's mainstream media] perspective, the French social safety net is anachronistic. And so it goes, in a repetitive narrative that is tiresome and politically misinformed. Hard won rights and adjustments managed by thoughtful policy makers in Paris over the past 10 years, such as the 35 hour week are bad! No explanation as to the reason the 35 hour week was introduced to keep people in work, for one thing. Long holidays are a disgrace for Protestant work-a-holics writing against hard-won victories for working people in France. No doubt, if someone argued that drinking French wine could be shown to cause socialism, that would get a run as well.
Where do US commentators get off providing half-informed analysis of the election results? The short answer is that they are pathologically opposed to social justice policies.
Watching France 24, on C-SPAN during the French election analysis on Sunday, May 6, a Bloomberg correspondent on the panel launched a diatribe against one of his fellow panelists who had explained the complex relationship between various elements of the French Left.
"Wake up and smell the coffee, people," this Neanderthal bleated. He continued that leftist political parties are irrelevant and have been for 20 years in every other country in the world and so it went....
The facts on the ground are of course, dramatically different. French politics and the French Left is a highly fragmented, even nuanced beast. It cannot be reduced to the Tweedledum and Tweedledee model preferred by limited-attention-span commentators in the US. Nor can it be reduced to the econometric madness of simplistic business school positivism some countries do have social policies!
We ciould include film makers and articts, but the point stands on the academic intellectual community alone who have made a monumental contribution to creative and critical thought. Has any other country offered such a diversity of perspectives for progressive knowledge production and improved governance?
Could it be that the real agenda of the US mainstream media is to deny and destroy the contributions that French intellectuals have made to democratic theory and practice? Could the loud cheers in favor of Sarkozy's election really be masking the endless efforts of the right to roll back taken-for-granted progressive policies? In this case, destroy the generation of 1968, in much the same way that Vice-President Dick Chaney and Former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld wanted a victory in Iraq to undo the liberalism they associated with the US loss in the Vietnam War.
Sarkozy claimed during the election campaign that the the heritage of 1968 should be "liquidated," as much as for its success in reform as for what ("The Economist," May 12) claimed Sarkozy said was their "moral and intellectual relativism."
Perhaps some solace can be taken from the substantial youth vote for Socialist candidate Segolene Royal. Alternatively, US commentators like Cohen failed to note that Sarkozy pickup up the votes of the racist Jean-Marie Le Pen. (Marcus Breem)
...(I refer those who rear back at the words "imaginary crisis" to my last column on this topic, where I emphasize that there is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution.) The world's best known hysteric and self promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear industry and the coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oakridge National Lab. White House "task forces" on climate change in the Clinton-Gore years were always well freighted by Gore and his adviser John Holdren with nukers like John Papay of Bechtel.
As a denizen of Washington since his diaper years Gore has always understood that threat inflation is the surest tool to plump up budgets and rabblerouse the voters. By the mid Nineties he positioned himself at the head of a strategic and tactical alliance formed around "the challenge of climate change", which had now stepped forward to take Communism's place in the threatosphere essential to all political life. Indeed, it was in the New Republic, a tireless publicist of the Soviet menace in the late 70s and Reagan 80s, that Gore announced in 1989 that the war on warming couldn't be won without a renewal in spiritual values... Alexander Cockburn
No matter what liberals may think, it's no crime to be dumb and unaware in this world. Otherwise most of this country would be in prison. So when I saw Big Larry mowing his lawn yesterday, probably for the last time, I just waved and pretended that everything was hunky dory. Both of us knew everybody in town saw that foreclosure bock ad on the back of the paper. We have come to watch for them of late, like the obits, to see if anyone we know has been axed by fate. But sometimes you show a working man respect by giving the A-OK sign---a sign that, bad as it may be now my brother, you'll be back to fight again for the feudalistic delusions and promises America has ever offered to working class suckers like us, because there has never been any other choice. There have just been the good times and the bad times allowed us, according to the American financial syndicate's needs at the time.
Sure, they may kick a lot of Republicans asses out of office next election. Big friggin deal! For my people, the same feudalist deal is on the table as ever: work hard, kill when you are told to, trust your betters, and everything will be all right. Plenty of highly politicized leftists and their meeker kin, the last hopeful Democrats, came up as hard as anyone I've described here. The Democratic Party definitely doesn't want them showing up like bikers at a cocktail party and talking real populism. Because there ain't no big money campaign contributions behind populism.
Look at it this way: Black America suffered lynchings, police dogs and fire bombings just to shit on the same toilet seats as white Americans like you and me, and ultimately waste their lives in front of computer monitors next to us on the same electronic plantation of the gulag global economy swallowing America and the rest of the world.
And so, still I ask (and who am I to ask anything?): Are there any progressives or leftists willing to come out here into the hinterlands and offer the first step. True populist hope? Spell it out in "see-spot-run" language? Talk about our bad teeth and why our elderly parents are rotting in pisshole nursing homes owned by ex-car dealers and attended by imported Asian physicians who barely speak English? Or the dynamics of hopelessness that drive the meth epidemic out here?
It will take an entire lifetime of commitment amid a crumbling world. And it will continue to crumble around us even as we work. There will be not one ounce of glory or acknowledgement or public reward. But it lies there before us, the first fearful and questioning stone on the pathway to the liberation of mankind.
True populist politics could give us a quarter turn in the right direction. Genuine socialism could put us on the approximate path to justice. Eco-politics cannot save us from the inevitable, but at lest it can teach us to deal with our limitations as a species upon this earth. But one begins the journey at the start if the path, not the promised land at its end.
Can we quit talking and start walking? Joe Bageant
Mark in Methcouver, WA: "I am reminded of the blood letting in the Nixon regime when Tricky Dick was trying to throw others to the wolves in a vain effort to save his own butt. Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales will be out towards the end of June. (Between the 20th and 30th.)"
[Alexander] Cockburn has been accused by some of anti-Semitism, although he strongly denies these allegations, calling them a means to cover up Israel's bad behavior. One of these charges has come from Alan Dershowitz, a long-time nemesis of Cockburn. In November of 2005, Dershowitz wrote a letter to the National Catholic Reporter calling Cockburn's Counterpunch.org web site "anti-Semitic," ] in response to a review of Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah by Counterpunch contributor Neve Gordon. Cockburn had previously accused Dershowitz of various charges including plagiarism in 2003,[ and of supporting torture in an exchange one month prior to Dershowitz' accusation. Both Cockburn and Dershowitz have denied their respective charges. Another accusation has come from Steven Plaut, a subject of his own controversy, and who was recently found liable in an Israeli court for charges of defamation arising from similar accusations against Cockburn's colleague Neve Brown. In a 2005 article titled, "Counterpunch’s Self-Hating Jews" Plaut compared Cockburn with David Irving, a convicted Holocaust denier, for having praised Israeli musician and Counterpunch contributor Gilad Atzmon[ whom Plaut also calls anti-Semitic. Plaut went on to suggest that Atzmon and Cockburn would like to destroy Israel,
Meanwhile, Hillary and Obama, Biden and McCain all shake the hands of pharmaceutical, Citibank, and energy lobbyists, totally unaware that Big Larry, who simply trusted that the government was being ran by better men than he, had his house go into foreclosure last week. The announcement was among an ever increasing number of others in big outlined boxes on the back page of the local paper.
on May 12, 2007 @ 11:03 AM an anonymous drone demands that i //Grow up!//
fair comment if it had context...
the blog is an empty shell without shell, connie, toni, waits, cat chew, crank, s.j., dada, bridge, edna, cee cee, bobby, mmrules, blah, oh and catharine, too
all that's left are nameless assholes (faceless ad hoc cognomens and the mumphrey's of the world)
and yet seder has not spent a half hour to communicate with us
we just opened the local market so i was down there helping out all morning. ended up hanging out with the local K of C, handing out free brekkers. was fun real fun buncha guys and the sausage lady was a hoot!
USS JOHN C. STENNIS, At Sea, - Vice President Dick Cheney visited the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) while underway in the Arabian Gulf to meet with more than 5,000 Sailors and Marines, May 11.
== the white house always says the carriers are in the Persian Gulf
USS John C. Stennis Strike Group Commander Rear Admiral Kevin Quinn greets Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, left, upon their arrival, Friday, May 11, 2007, to the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf. White House photo by David Bohrer
BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 5/11/2007 12:00PM EXCLUSIVE: FBI AGENT WHO INTERCEDED IN ANN COULTER VOTER FRAUD CASE ALLEGED TO BE HER FORMER BOYFRIEND! Palm Beach Paper Says FBI Agent Attempted to Clear GOP Pundit, BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger Said to be Reason for Fraudulent Info Given on FLVoter Registration Form, Driver's License! Conservative Coulter Critic Borchers Responds; Says Her '98-'99 Boyfriend Has Been 'Her Personal FBI Resource for Her Own Purposes'... Will the MSM report this??Doubt It!
National Intelligence Director knocks down Hoekstra. In an op-ed in the WSJ this week, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee Peter Hoekstra mocked efforts by the committee to commission a National Intelligence Estimate on the effects of global warming. As ThinkProgress noted, a host of military experts have recommended such studies. And now, so has the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. In a letter to Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), he writes:
I believe it’s entirely appropriate for the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to prepare an assessment on the geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.
In honor of RWiley, from answers.com: ------ Spotlight: Nonsensical poems he wrote 'bout owls and cats in a boat. Unique was his humor, it spread like a rumor that Lear was a clever ol' goat!
Today is Limerick Day, celebrating the birth of Edward Lear on May 12, 1812. The artist and writer of nonsense verse who popularized limericks, Lear wrote 212 nonsense poems. His widely known Book of Nonsense was first published in 1846.
Quote: "How pleasant to know Mr. Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough."
A ROCKET carrying the ashes of Scotty from Star Trek is stranded on top of a remote mountain range in New Mexico... ------------------ (Sort of a posthumous carabiner vacation...)
Cremated Remains of 200 Lost in Mountains After Trip to Space By Leonard David Special Correspondent, SPACE.com posted: 10 May 2007 10:53 am ET ---------------------------------- ...failed to urn their wings. ------ ...the engines couldn't take the strain. ------ For the record, these are my jokes, but I'm not the only rude bastard having too much fun. I've read some pretty good one-liners on various sites, and the news is still young.
(Not mine, but a goody even though it references the wrong actor): "The search is arduous because they can't see DeForest for the trees.")
NBC: FBI investigating Gov. Gibbons (R-NV). NBC News reports that former congressman and current Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) is being investigated by the FBI for potentially receiving “a fancy vacation and perhaps other lucrative benefits” from defense contractor Warren Trepp in exchange for “multi-million-dollar government contracts.”
Sources close to the investigation say a key focus is a lavish week-long Caribbean cruise in March 2005 by Gibbons, his wife and son, and Trepp, who paid for almost everything. In photos obtained by NBC News, Gibbons is seen hamming it up — kicking back with a drink and posing with his wife, Dawn, Trepp and Trepp’s other guests.
Software designer Dennis Montgomery was also on that cruise with Gibbons. He estimates the trip cost “probably $20,000 a person,” claiming he saw the invoice. Montgomery says his former business partner Trepp chartered a 727 to fly guests from Nevada to Florida and back and picked up the tab for penthouse rooms, private meals and expensive wines.
In an exclusive interview with NBC, Montgomery — who’s now at war with his former partner — makes an explosive charge. He says that near the end of the cruise, he saw Trepp pass money to the congressman.
Gen. Batiste speaks out in a New York Times profile: “In the Army, you communicate up the chain of command, and I communicated vehemently with my senior commanders while I was in Iraq,” he said. Of his departure from the Army, he said: “It was the toughest decision of my life. I paced my quarters for days. I didn’t sleep for nights. But I was not willing to compromise my principles for one more minute.”
Governors say war has gutted Guard As wildfires, floods and tornadoes batter the nation, the readiness of the National Guard to deal with those disasters, as well as potential terrorist assaults, is so depleted by deployments to foreign wars and equipment shortfalls that Congress is considering moves to curtail the president's powers over the Guard.
Ret. Gen: Iraq straining National Guard The National Guard isn't as strong as it should be because of the war in Iraq and American communities will suffer as a result, retired Air Force Gen. Melvyn Montano said Saturday.
Military sees parents as big recruiting barrier The biggest obstacle for U.S. military recruiters is not finding young Americans willing to enlist in wartime, it's dealing with their parents, according to the Pentagon. Like other Pentagon officials, Sherlock said parents and adults that recruiters call "influencers" are a tough hurdle to clear, but their influence can be checked.
Bush begs for more time as Republican revolt gathers pace
...US concerns over the planned parliamentary holiday were conveyed by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, during meetings with Mr al-Maliki in Baghdad on Wednesday. But by yesterday even that relatively simple request — to scale back or cancel the recess — had been rejected by many Iraqi politicians. One called Mr Cheney’s demand “embarrassing”, and said that it undermined Iraqi sovereignty... ---------------------------------- Dr. Frankencheney has created a monster...and the monster ain't signin' no stinkin' neocontract.
Limbaugh Sign Vandalized, City Official Says “It Looks Great” By: Logan Murphy @ 3:35 PM - PDT
From TRex at Firedoglake:
In a town so tough that most murders get just a few paragraphs in the paper, somebody called The Sun about 8 a.m. yesterday with a tip about a vandalized billboard.
By noon, the story was all over the Internet, Rush Limbaugh was kicking off his national radio show with it, and City Hall was fielding calls from as far away as California. By 5 p.m., the story had become one of the three most popular individual articles in the history of the paper's Web site, with nearly 200,000 page views.
There's a reason the story had legs. The paint-splattered billboard featured Limbaugh's mug. And the tipster was a spokesman for a city agency - the one responsible for cleaning up graffiti - who let it be known that he was no "dittohead."
"It looks like they took globs of paint and threw it on his face," Robert Murrow of the Department of Public Works told The Sun. "It looks great. It did my heart good." (via Romenesko) Read more…
K Street Vs. The Middle Class By: Nicole Belle @ 12:34 PM - PDT I'll let you guess which side Washington seems to be on. David Sirota has been compiling information of the recent wheelings and dealings that once again, hurt the citizens:
Another long day as the reverberations continue to intensify after yesterday's press conference announcing a secret "free" trade deal between a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration. In the interest of brevity, I have compiled the major news of the day, including new revelations about who is supporting the deal and who is opposing it, though remember - it is difficult to make any hard and fast conclusions because Democratic leaders and the White House continue to keep the details of the deal completely secret. That said, a look at who is supporting the deal and who is opposing it provides some key insights into what this deal is really all about. Already, the New York Times has reported that at least half of all House Democrats may immediately oppose the deal because it seems to fly in the face of the Election 2006 mandate against lobbyist-written trade policy. And now, a day after the announcement, the battle lines are being drawn.
For reference, Public Citizen is calling for the public immediately contact Congress asking lawmakers to reject the deal, on the basis of what we already know about it. The organization has created a website for this purpose here.
Read full article here
Matt Stoller has more:
Here's what concerns me. There was a big press conference on Thursday designed to create a certain type of message around the trade pact. The Democrats won labor and environmental standards, but corporate America is happy as well. You can see the reporting coming out with this messaging. The problem is that the details of the deal are still secret. I have talked to Congressman Michaud's office, to the USBIC, and to various trade groups, and none of them have seen the specifics of the deal.
This is extremely problematic and dishonest of the people negotiating and announcing the details. Pelosi, Rangel, Baucus, Bush, and the New Democrats knew that they could generate a huge raft of headlines on the trade deal without actually revealing the meat of the deal, so they did so. This is pretty much how the war in Iraq was sold, how the Bankruptcy bill was sold, and how NAFTA was sold.
More on Wilkerson’s Impeachment Call By: SilentPatriot @ 11:26 AM - PDT Logan wrote about this yesterday, but I wanted to chime in with some crucial context and background. As Colin Powell's right-hand-man during Bush's first term, Colonel Wilkerson is in a position to know intimate details of the "high crimes" he speaks of. This should be front page news around the country. Why it's not eludes me.
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Now some background: Wilkerson testified before the Democratic Policy Committee — the only Congressional body that conducted Executive oversight before the November takeover — back in June 2006, and revealed some startling information about how the administration "cooked the books on intelligence" vis a vis the Office of Special Plans.
In October 2005, Wilkerson delivered a scathing 90 minute speech before the New America Foundation that detailed how the manipulation worked. (VIDEO) In February 2006, he conducted an interview with PBS's NOW and expounded even further on the OSP and how a secret cabal hijacked the intelligence process and sold us a bogus war.
In my opinion, this secretive body is at the very heart of the scandal that is the Iraq War; that's where Doug Feith and the other DoD neocons manipulated intelligence "produced alternative intelligence assessments." The whole story about how we were misled into war has never adequately been told. If the OSP is thoroughly investigated as Wilkerson is pushing for, the flood gates will open and expose all the lies and manipulation. This should be priority #1 for Democratic oversight.
For another example of just how badly the intelligence was manipulated, see this "60 Minutes" clip from last year where European CIA Chief Tyler Drumheller recounts how top Iraqi officials were telling the CIA that Saddam had no WMD, and how this crucial source was entirely ignored by the Bush administration.
The Democratic Daily: Ouch! The L.A. Times reported on Friday that “Retail sales slumped 2.4% compared with April 2006, slipping to $52.6 billion in the most wretched year-over-year showing by major retailers since the International Council of Shopping Centers began tracking the data in 1970.”
530 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 530 Newer› Newest»Gov. Perdue to Iraq critics: ‘Keep your mouth shut.’ This morning, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) was a guest on the radio show of former Education Secretary Bill Bennett on WKGA in Atlanta. He lashed out at the Republicans who have been criticizing President Bush on the Iraq war, stating that “until you’ve got a better idea, keep your mouth shut.” He added, “The president did not choose war. The president chose to protect the United States of America, and he did.” (Listen to the audio HERE.)
I don't have to listen, reading is bad enough
The Next Enron Scandal
Isaiah J. Poole and Rick Perlstein
May 11, 2007
The Enron scandal is rearing its ugly head again, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has to decide with whom it will stand: Will it be with small investors who depend on the honest advice of financial advisors or with bankers who, thanks to a recent federal court decision, have a license to facilitate fraud?
That stunning Fifth Circuit ruling is before the Supreme Court, which has to decide whether it will review the case. How the SEC weighs in could influence the justices, who will have their own choice to make between a conservative ideology that brooks virtually no boundaries for rampant corporate greed and the values of basic farness, honesty and justice.
At issue are the sham transactions that kept billions of dollars of Enron debt off the books and, for a while, artificially propped up the stock price. They were engineered by banks, but by a 2 to 1 vote the appeals panel said that investors could not sue the banks for being the enablers in the Enron fraud.
The SEC was created to protect investors from fraudulent behavior. But under current chairman Christopher Cox, its vigilance in that role is in doubt. Cox is an archconservative former House member from California accused in one profile of helping to “shape the regulatory environment in which Enron scandals ultimately flourished.” As an eager supporter of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” in the 1990s, Cox actively fought against such regulatory efforts as a ban on undercover financial relationships between firms and their supposed-to-be independent auditors. At the top of his agenda at the SEC has been undoing the Sarbanes-Oxley law, under the excuse that its reporting and accountability standards are too onerous for small businesses.
But Cox also has to face the simple moral force of people such as Buddy Schwartz, a former blue-collar Hershey Foods mechanic who came to Washington this week to tell his story at a Washington news conference, along with several other Enron victims.
Schwartz worked overtime to send his children through college and have enough left over for a comfortable retirement. To manage the retirement money, Schwartz turned to his son, who worked as an investment advisor for Merrill Lynch. His son’s bosses at Merrill Lynch convinced him that Enron was a no-miss buy. Trusting that advice meant that his son “lost a good portion” of his father’s retirement savings. But Schwartz is not mad at his son. “Merrill Lynch and all these banks and Enron conspired together to steal money in the same way a common thief would break into my house and steal money,” Schwartz said.
The media, business elites and the Washington establishment are behaving as if Enron is a closed book. CEO Ken Lay is literally dead and buried; finance chief Andy Fastow and the other malefactors have been punished; Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, has dissolved. Blares the cover of the latest Fortune: "Business Is Back! Profits Are Boffo. Stocks Are On Fire...And the Rogues Are Behind Bars." The system is working, right?
More here
Conservatives ‘Declare War’ on House GOP Over Appointment of Scandal-Plagued Calvert
On Wednesday, House conservatives appointed Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) to replace embattled Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) on the House Appropriations Committee. ThinkProgress noted the irony in this appointment, as Calvert has been scandal-plagued for years, using earmarks to make millions of dollars in personal profits.
Yesterday, Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) publicly spoke out against Calvert’s appointment:
I care a lot about the House of Representatives, I care a lot about our members and once someone is ethically challenged and gets in trouble it effects all of us. … I appreciate the high ethical standards that [Boehner] has set … but I believe the bar was lowered today when our conference chose to vote Ken Calvert onto the Appropriations Committee.
Prominent members of the conservative blogosphere are echoing LaHood’s disgust with Calvert’s history. RedState proclaims today, “We must fight the House GOP and we must fight today”:
Today, I declare war on the Republican leadership of the United States House of Representatives. We must scalp one member. That member’s name is Ken Calvert. … This is the man House Republicans chose to replace John Doolittle. They just don’t get it. So now I declare war. Who is with me?
More here
Ethics watchdog files complaint against Sen. Martinez Nick Juliano
Published: Friday May 11, 2007
government watchdog group has called on the Federal Election Commission to fine Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., nearly $800,000 because the group says Martinez failed to collect required information about nearly half the contributors to his 2004 campaign and took hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive contributions.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal advocacy group, highlighted an FEC audit of Martinez's campaign released last month that found he failed to disclose the occupation of 46 percent of his contributors. Martinez also failed to provide any information related to $320,000 worth of contributions. CREW filed a formal complaint with the FEC based on these and other alleged fundraising transgressiions.
“The violations committed by Martinez for Senate are unprecedented in both size and scope.” CREW'S Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a news release. “Basically, Mel Martinez broke the law in order to win an election.”
LINK
Did FBI help clear Ann Coulter?
'Unsolicited' calls made to sheriff's office to vouch for pundit in fraud case.
LINK
Democrats send cease and desist demand to conservative website and XM Radio over alleged Dean remarks John Byrne
Published: Friday May 11, 2007
The Democratic National Committee filed two cease-and-desist letters Thursday with a conservative website and XM Radio regarding comments they alleged were made by DNC Chairman Howard Dean.
As a DNC-imposed noon deadline passed today, the allegedly inflamatory comments had not been removed from the Web. A party spokeswoman, Stacie Paxton, said she was not sure what the Democrats' next step would be.
The website FreeRepublic.com, citing an XM radio show, said Thursday that "Dean called Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius early, around 5 am, one morning after the tornado had destroyed the town of Greensburg, Kansas and discussed with her what to say about the tornado and how to blame the war in Iraq and the Bush administration on a slow response to the aftermath."
According to Democrats, the conversation never occurred.
By early Friday afternoon, the cease and desist letter was posted on a FreeRepublic thread that had garnered more than 250 comments disparaging the Democrats. The Quinn & Rose Show homepage also was still alleging the Dean-Sebelius conversation took place.
The letters issued by the party's lawyer, Joseph E. Sandler, were sent to James Robinson of FreeRepublic and Dara Altman, the Executive Vice President of XM Satellite Radio.
"The statement made by Mr. Quinn, repeated on FreeRepublic.com is demonstrably, uneqivocably and absolutely false," Sandler wrote. "Governor Dean had no such conversation with Governor Sebelius, ever."
FreeRepublic also alleged that "Gov. Sebelius, called Senator Sam Brownback's office only to learn he wasn't there but then called him on his cell phone and reached him while he was in his car were she confessed to him that she had been instructed by her party leadership, (more specifically, Howard Dean) on how to politicize the tornado's destruction of Greensburg and attack the White House and the Iraq war for a seemingly slow response.
"She reassured the Senator that her allegations didn't blame him or Pat Roberts, also a Kansas Senator, for the lack of immediate response," the poster added.
Governor Sebelius issued the following statement in reply: "I am outraged that the Quinn & Rose show has aired a report suggesting that my efforts to highlight the need to replace National Guard equipment lost in Iraq are inspired by anything other than my responsibilities as commander-in-chief of the Kansas National Guard. The accusation that I received a call from anyone, encouraging me to take on this issue following the devastating tornado in Greensburg, is one-hundred-percent false -- period.
LINK
US officials fear 'imminent' attack on Americans in Germany, though some express skepticism RAW STORY
Published: Friday May 11, 2007
CNN BREAKING NEWS / RUSH TRANSCRIPT: "Terrorists have been discovered in the advanced planning stages of an attack in Germany on US personnel, military personnel, and/or tourists," CNN reported live on air Friday afternoon.
A CNN anchor said they were able to confirm the information with "senior federal officials," though acknowledged that "other intelligence officials said that this threat lacked a little 'in specifics in terms of timing.'"
ABC News has a special photo gallery on the terror threat.
"Officials said that there has been operation planning going on about this for some time," CNN said. "They are not sure that all the people or everything they needed to conduct this operation were in place.
"The US State Dept. sent a message Apr. 20 warning on Germany," CNN said.
ABC News reported about the threat earlier this week and has posted an update today here. When reported earlier this week, RAW STORY led with ABC's report; ABC also used the headline "imminent."
"The information behind the threat is very real," a senior U.S. official told ABC.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble told reporters, "The danger level is high. We are part of the global threat by Islamist terrorism."
DEVELOPING...
LINK
"NEWS CONSUMER" said...
Police Investigate Gunshot Victims in the Bronx
"NEWS CONSUMER" said...
Off-duty NYPD officer charged with murder of girlfriend
Uh-Oh
By Jared Bernstein | bio
Let me apologize in advance.
You log onto TPM for an intellectual caffeine jolt, and instead, encounter some bean counter with unsettling news about the economy. So if you want to click elsewhere, no harm, no foul.
Still with me? What are you, some kind of masochist?
Actually, I’m not here simply to report that storm clouds are gathering, though I’ll do that in a moment. What’s equally interesting is what this portends for people and politics.
First, among my dismal economist brothers and sisters, I tend to be somewhat upbeat—no Cassandra, me. So I hope I have some street cred when I tell you that there are at least three ominous signals about where we’re headed, economy-wise.
#1: First quarter gross domestic product came in at an already low 1.3%. That’s well below the rate we need to generate enough economic activity to keep jobs and incomes growing. But since that report came out, we have new information that will almost surely lead us to revise that measure down, including an unexpectedly large increase in the trade deficit and slumping retail sales (more on that later). Merrill-Lynch thinks first quarter GDP we be revised down to 0.7%, a mere crawl.
#2: We’ve discussed April’s lousy job growth numbers, and in that write-up I worried that weak job and income growth would restrain consumption growth, the one component of GDP that’s been consistently strong, well…
#3: Now we’ve got a couple of retail sales reports, reflecting that, as the NYT put it this AM: “rising gas prices and the flagging housing market are starting to weight on American consumers.” Some have tried to downplay April’s retail sales because of weather or holiday effects (Easter came in early this year, so people bought more jelly beans in March), but average March and April together gets you to a similar place regarding diminished consumer activity. As analysts and Moody’s economy.com wrote: “The 1.8% average for the two months is the weakest since November 2004 and is indicative of additional restraint from rising gasoline prices, weakening housing markets, deteriorating credit quality, and the onset of slowing growth in nominal labor income.”
One might note that sales at high-end Saks bucked the trend and were up big in April, and I suppose you could wonder how far the frothy stock market or the spending of hedge fund managers will get you right now.
My guess is: not too far. That wealth is highly concentrated and if the vast majority of families are starting to feel as squeezed as I think they are, it’s hard for me to see where the economy’s stimulus is going to come from moving forward. That’s one reason I was disappointed to see the Federal Reserve not take notice of these recent developments in their last statement on interest rate policy.
LINK
its friday, yall
Political Cartoons:
The Queen
Subpoena Envy
It's Friday ya bastids!!
Richard Perle lays into George Tenet on Post OpEd page (appropriate venue). Like a cage match between See No Evil and Evil.
-- Josh Marshall
LINK
Commander: No
threat to Fort Dix
"We analyzed the information available from a number of different sources and felt there was no immediate or direct threat that warranted a drastic change in our security posture," Anderson said of the situation at Robins.
LINK
Bonus Quote of the Day
"We didn't get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party."
-- Vice President Dick Cheney, in a Fox News interview.
LINK
Daily Show: President Bush Defines “Success” in Iraq
By: SilentPatriot @ 10:03 AM - PDT Jon Stewart uses the President's own words to answer the most pressing question of our time: What will a successful Iraq look like?
Download (2075) | Play (2702) Download (821) | Play (1515)
LINK
Still miss Sam...no, still not over this unspeakable blow yet....
jesus, toni
if i see one more toni-article i'm going to throw up
give yourself a rest
Starting Monday. :(
So who can I stream from 9-12?
Please don't say Stephanie Miller. Anyone else, any real liberal. Please Post
//throw up// was harsh
just saying... don't burn out, toni
♥
[ok, back to sipping coffee]
Cartoon
Those were the days ...
don't miss this must read digby post
about impeachment 1997 and impeachment 2007
and how backstabber extraordinary George Stephanopoulos got it all started - and boy, do I remember that one
---
"Back in the day all it took to turn the entire media establishment upside down with impeachment talk was George Stephanopoulos "raising the prospect" and a bunch of gossipy gasbags twittering about it on TV for the Washington Post to immediately started polling like mad. Today, it makes the polling director "madder and madder" to even be asked about the question and a rule has been set forth that it takes a call from Democratic members of congress or a "serious" presidential candidate for him to even broach the question.
Back in 1998, Clinton had roughly the same amount of time left in office as Bush does today and yet, as Schecter points out, had a job approval rating more than twice as high as Bush's right now. ..."
read on
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
1,2,3,4: Stop the Iraq War!
5,6,7,8: Organize to Smash the State!
End Corporate Capitalism.
Scenes from the empire.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/05/scenes-from-empire.html
I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny. - Fr. Miguel d'Escoto
I miss Leonard! Where did he go?
Is he still handsome?
//about impeachment 1997 and impeachment 2007//
in the abscence of right-wing trolls, i'll give the rationale...
we weren't at war then, bridge...
and while we're on the subject, how 'bout the cost of edwards' haircut
and is obama b. really white
hmmm... does the b. stand for "bin laden"
(tweet-tweet) ~♪
[ok, back to sipping coffee]
Aaawwww.... member JA comes to the aid of the beltway club, bashes Radar, scolds net readers for b.e.l.i.e.v.i.n.g, and .... eeeeks ... makes stuff up?
" I don't remember him calling Broder "the voice of the people," but if he did, it was said with a pleasantly arch tone, neither serious nor sarcastic. ..."
Jonathan Alter's sob story
------
"How Radar Sideswiped Me and Tom Edsall"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-alter/how-radar-sideswip_b_48165.html
shell's last post
//Oh sorry..didnt read..yes you're here...ok..we'll see if he has questions off the bat when he gets here...I'm going to ask if he has a dad...//
May 10, 2007 6:07 PM
very suspicious
(can someone contact her & find out if she's ok)
BREAKING: 4 US Reps for Cheney Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-05-11 18:01. Impeachment
By Matthew Cardinale, Atlanta Progressive News
Link!
" Edsall blinks and looks perplexed. "David Broder is the voice of the people," he replies matter-of-factly."
nice brouhaha going on
in case you missed it - check GG's article and Radar's online interview
---------
Glenn Greenwald's
All you need to know about the Beltway journalist mind
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/09/broder/index.html
attention: mmrules
show bridge how to do the link thing
: )
Air-ono:Why?Scroll up the posts you'll see I've already posted them with links. ^
:)
Me?It took me about a month to figure how to link..Let me look around for some of the sites that helped me.Where's SJ when you need him??Just kidding.I'll find something. :)
//Just kidding//
so was i
: )
shelly skips town
air-ono said...
//Just kidding//
so was i
: )
You were??Ya Bastid!!I just went throught all me notes.Ready to post.Then site went down...... :)
//Ya Bastid//
ya gotta be a bastard
: )
bbl
* * * * * * *
A Legislative Plan To End The War In Iraq
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-05-11 18:16. Activism | Elections
www.gravel08.us
WHO: Former United States Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel.
WHAT: The Senator offers a plan to create a constitutional confrontation between the US congress and the President, adjudicated by the American people.
WHEN: Monday May 14, 2007 at 9:30 AM EST.
WHERE: National Press Club, Edward R. Murrow Room, 529 14th Street NW, Washington DC 20045
Radar's
Jebediah Reed response to Jonathan Alter
(lets hear it JA, the ball is in your beltway court and you are so good at sobbing the story ....)
----
"Dear Jonathan,
The last thing I had in mind when I wrote that profile of Mike Gravel at the Columbia rally was getting into a Web tiff with you. I've read and enjoyed many of your columns. So when you called me out as a "bad reporter" in your HuffPo screed, it would have been traumatic if I wasn't sure my reporting from that day was bulletproof. Fortunately, it is.
It's kind of funny, isn't it, all this hubbub over one little remark? But reporter Tom Edsall did say that David Broder is the "voice of the people," and he did say it as I reported. In the conversation I documented, in fact, Gravel was accusing Broder of not believing in popular democracy. He referred to the Iraq war ...
read on
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/05/an-open-letter-to-jonathan-alter.php
air-ono said...
//Ya Bastid//
ya gotta be a bastard
: )
bbl
Just Canceled my Bon Scott fan club membership. :)
Wow! That last post was a tour de force.
This is it. I am totally stressed out.
I can't tell you how often I wrote that last most important post ;-) so please don't ignore
site and other stuff went down every time I posted it .... sigh
must check on Velvet and take nap now
I can't possibly learn how to make lovely links now - but will do so later in June :)
byebye
5/11/2007
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Swear Off Alcohol Forever:
Link
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Down Four Valium With a Bottle of Gin:
Link
Friday, April 20, 2007
Catching Up
[snip]
The new blog will roll out within three weeks, maybe earlier.
It will allow for sub blogs or diaries.
[snip]
Posted by SEDER at 9:10 AM
----------------------------------
[checks calendar... pouts]
Hmmm?
every site i went to today having probs, my ADSL connect was flaky too for a bit.
eya catchoo!
it's that quasi- hiatus he has,
it;s like flu, the mumps, a migraine headache, allergies and being pregnant all at the same time, and he's a guy.
Hiya, Jim!
I shudder to think what this place would be like if he had a full-blown case of hiatus.
Where's the megaphone?
Yo! SEDER!!!
Hiatus interruptus time!!!
ROFL!
his old lady has that boy so busy his heads spinning like a top.
Sunshine Jim, "every site i went to today having probs, my ADSL connect was flaky too for a bit.
May 11, 2007 8:19 PM
---------------------------------
--A Joke Stolen From Steven Wright--
"My nephew has HDADD. High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention. But when he does its unbelievable."
I have another 7 minutes of whining and complaining to do,
but I think I'll knock off early.
"...we are here on Earth to fart around,
and don't let anybody tell you any different."
~~~Kurt Vonnegut
Later :)
eya crnkr
"no matter how cynical i get i just can't keep up"
lily tomlin
Back in a bit,
neighbor needs some assistance.
A physician's take on "SICKO"....
-conbo
NEWSLETTER - Friday, May 11, 2007
"Libertarianism is something that informs people's politics. We believe in free minds.
We believe in free thinking. We believe in free speech. And, we believe in free markets."
- Nick Gillespie
This week on Bill Moyers Journal (check local listings)
Can the Rev. Pat Robertson make Biblical law the law of the land? Bill Moyers Journal takes a look at Regent University, Robertson's Christian leadership institution, which has seen some 150 students move into the Bush Administration since 2001.
Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of the libertarian magazine Reason, discusses the impact of the religious right in Washington today.
Historian Marilyn Young reacts to Charlie Rose's recent interview with Condeleeza Rice and offers perspective on the official view versus the reality on the ground. She is co-editor of the new book Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past.
Bill Moyers on the true human cost of war.
goodun #
Coulter cleared of charges after FBI calls. “Conservative pundit Ann Coulter has been cleared of allegations that she falsified her Palm Beach County voter’s registration and voted illegally — this, after a high-level FBI agent made unsolicited phone calls to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to vouch for Coulter.”
LINK
CBS VP On Batiste: ‘The Viewer Might Have The Feeling Everything He Says Is Anti-Bush’
As ThinkProgress has reported, CBS has terminated Gen. John Batiste’s consulting contract with the network over his appearance in a VoteVets ad. CBS News’ blog sought comment from Linda Mason, CBS News Vice President, Standards and Special Projects. Here’s what Mason said about Batiste:
“When we hire someone as a consultant, we want them to share their expertise with our viewers,” she said. “By putting himself front and center in an anti-Bush ad, the viewer might have the feeling everything he says is anti-Bush. And that doesn’t seem like an analytical approach to the issues we want to discuss.”
Mason’s concern is hypocritical. CBS hasn’t shown a similar level of apprehension for being painted “pro-Bush” when former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace appears on its programming. Nor has it been concerned when its military analyst Michael O’Hanlon advocated in favor of Bush’s Iraq policy.
Mason belittles Batiste’s opposition to Bush’s Iraq policy, suggesting it is not “an analytical approach.” In fact, Batiste’s opposition stems from his personal experience and involvement in the execution of the Iraq war (Batiste commanded the Army’s First Infantry Division in 2004 and 2005). And he has not allowed partisanship to influence his “analytical approach.” Newsweek reports:
Batiste says he remains a “diehard Republican” and has no intention of wading directly into the presidential campaign a la McClellan and MacArthur. He took part in the VoteVets.org campaign, he says, because it’s a “nonpartisan group.”
“I’ve had nothing but absolute support” from colleagues inside the military, Batiste said. “No one has objected.” No one — until CBS found out that he wasn’t a full-fledged supporter of Bush’s war policy.
UPDATE: Kagro X has more.
LINK
Non-competitive federal contracts skyrocket under Bush. $145 billion in federal contracts were awarded without competitive bidding in fiscal 2005, more than double the $67 billion in fiscal 2000. Yet at the same time, “[f]ailures of oversight into contracting procedures have made it possible for fraud, cronyism, and corruption to become prevalent in government,” according to a new report by Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly.
The report will be released on Monday at an event featuring Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). If you live in the Washington, DC, area, RSVP for the event HERE.
LINK
Snowe: ‘Things have not markedly improved’ in Iraq. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) this week “announced legislation that will require troop redeployment if the Iraqi government has not met specific benchmarks.” Snowe, who just returned from Iraq, told CBS News yesterday, “Based on my recent trip, I can tell you, things have not markedly improved.” Watch the report:
Snowe’s impressions were at sharp odds with those of Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), a Bush ally and war supporter who also toured Iraq:
Bond, whom GOP lawmakers put in front of cameras yesterday after the weekly caucus lunch, described the situation as stable in Iraq and said he was encouraged that the military surge was working. In Ramadi, he described walking around with just a small security force and said that local authorities have reported a boost in those joining the police and military. And overall, he saw positive changes in the nation.
“Obviously this is very early,” he said, “but the signs are extremely positive.”
LINK
reading some excellent articles in vancouvers common ground magazine.
a good freebie that shows up in the library
so i imagine everyone elses line in to the blog is fubar?
sure a slow ass evening if not!
all i can say is it's a beautiful night here!
perfect drive in weather if we had any drive ins left.
had the older hood kids in. they're workin there butts off, jobs and cars and other pursuits.
love watching em grow up. had a good yak, they have great senses of humor.
told em that might be the best thing they have going for themselves.
BBQing tonight.
first of the year!
mmm! just about done.
well back to a good read.
Hunter S Thompson, "The Fear and Loathing Letters"
Man in the mask returns to change world with new coalition and his own sexy novel
In a rare interview, Zapatista rebel chief Marcos warns US efforts to secure its southern border are pushing his poor compatriots over the edge
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Saturday May 12, 2007
The Guardian
A bead of sweat is visible through the eyehole of his famous black balaclava. Latin America's most celebrated living rebel must be feeling the heat, but a glass of water would mean taking off the mask and that is out of the question. He makes do with a puff on his pipe, and a subject that is close to his heart.
"My new book's coming out in June," Subcomandante Marcos announces with relish during the first interview he has given to a British paper in years. "There's no politics in the text this time. Just sex. Pure pornography."
Article continues
There has been a literary component to Marcos's revolutionary persona ever since he led the ragtag Zapatista indigenous army out of the jungle in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on New Year's Day 1994. It began with lyrical communiques on Mayan Indian rights, passed through a stage of barbed sarcasm and scatological put-downs, and recently included a crime novel featuring a rebel detective.
Fundraising
Now even his erotic imagination has been harnessed to the Zapatista cause as a fundraiser. "I'm sure it will sell if we put a lot of Xs on the cover."
Still, Marcos says that his next writing project will be a work of political theory analysing the forces he believes are pushing Mexico towards social upheaval. From dispossessed indigenous communities powerless to stop dams and agribusiness destroying their lands, to street vendors evicted from the capital's kerbs to make way for the retail magnates, he says the country's poor and exploited are close to their limit.
The former orthodox Marxist-Leninist turned anti-globalisation guru, who is not himself indigenous, predicts that the subconscious power of the year 2010 - the 200th anniversary of the war of independence and the 100th of Mexico's revolution - will ignite a fuse laid by American efforts to secure the bilateral border, leaving millions unable to escape to jobs in the north. "Mexico will turn into a pressure cooker," he says. "And, believe me, it will explode."
Marcos says that Mexico's politicians, the media, and even earnest leftwing academics are oblivious to the radicalisation he sees bubbling just under the surface. He points out that they also had no idea that the reputedly docile indigenous population in Chiapas was on the point of armed revolt 13 years ago. Not that the Zapatista rebellion fitted the traditional mould of macho Latin American armed struggle, or Marcos ever looked or sounded like rebel leaders elsewhere. Even the "sub" in his title - designed to imply an improbable subordination to a council of indigenous commanders - subverted the concept of military discipline employed in most other guerrilla armies.
"We left the jungle to die," Marcos recalls, remembering how poorly armed his fighters were. "It sounds dramatic I know, but that's the way it was."
The Zapatistas were beaten back by the Mexican army within days, but not before triggering a wave of sympathy across the country and the world that forced the government to call a ceasefire, as well as agree to peace negotiations that would eventually crumble.
In less than two weeks the Chiapas Indians became an international cause celebre and their mysterious mask-wearing, pipe-smoking, and poetry-spouting leader emerged as the closest approximation yet to the romance of the martyred Che Guevara. They have hardly done any fighting since then.
Powerful persona
Sitting in a sweltering back room of a Mexico City internet cafe, Marcos admits that the message in those early years would sometimes get lost in the fascination his persona inspired. He even confesses to occasionally letting celebrity go to his head. "But there was always the acerbic humour there to say 'tone it down, remember you are a myth, you do not really exist'."
It is certainly a durable myth, which has survived despite the world's attention shifting to more dramatic conflicts and the government's revelation that the man behind the mask is a former philosophy lecturer called Rafael Sebastián Guillén.
Still, the subcomandante does always seem to be looking over his shoulder at himself, which is perhaps one explanation for his periods of near total silence. The longest came in 2001, shortly after the so-called Zapatour in which the Marcos bandwagon travelled the country accompanied by hundreds of international sympathisers and a police escort.
Elections had just ended 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico and the Zapatistas had decided to test the new democracy with the demand for an indigenous bill of rights. When parliament ignored the pressure, the rebels returned to the jungle and concentrated on putting indigenous self-government into practice, with or without constitutional sanction. Marcos disappeared from view, emerging four years later with a new concern to build alliances beyond the indigenous movement.
"This is the last battle of the Zapatistas," he says of the strategy, which relies on the government deciding not to reactivate old arrest warrants for fear of sparking more sympathy for Zapatista. "If we don't win it we will face complete defeat."
The subcomandante's specific aim in his current low-key tour of the country is to consolidate the broad and loose collection of marginal left groups known as The Other Campaign. Marcos hopes this rather chaotic mix of everybody from radical transvestites to Marxist trade unionists will eventually play a leading role in channelling the discontent he is sure will soon be raging into an unarmed civilian movement organised around the principle of respect for difference.
"We think that what is going to happen here will have no 'ism' to describe it." His voice becomes wistful. "It will be so new, beautiful and terrible that it will make the world turn to look at this country in a completely different way."
Ballot box
Such talk could be seen as contrary, perhaps, at a time when the left has taken power in much of Latin America through the ballot box, but Marcos is unimpressed by elections he views as primarily a mechanism for ping-ponging power within the elite. So while he gives Evo Morales in Bolivia a nod of approval for his links to a radical indigenous movement, he describes Hugo Chávez in Venezuela as "disconcerting", and brands Brazil's President Lula and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega as traitors.
Mexico's politicians on both left and right receive nothing but his scorn. Is it easier to claim the moral high ground when your face is hidden?
Marcos acknowledges that the mask helps, although he stresses it is also a burden. It can be itchy and uncomfortable, and it is so intertwined with his revolutionary persona that to take it off in public even for a few seconds would be the end of the subcomandante.
"The mask will come off when a subcomandante Marcos is no longer necessary," he says. "I hope it's soon so that I can finally become a fireman like I've always wanted. Firemen get the prettiest girls."
G'night.
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
Faced with the collapse of the American dream at home and the decline of their global empire abroad, American liberals have dumped the 1960s-era radicalism of their youth and become complicit in a complex game of bait-and-switch, selling the world a vision of liberal democracy that is, in reality, a failed system on the verge of social and economic collapse.
In the tradition of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Marshall, a Sundance Award-winning director and co-founder of Guerrilla News Network, hits the road and travels from the front lines of the Iraq war, through the wasteland of the former Communist Eastern bloc, into a coke-dusted sex party of Britain's intellectual elite, and into the minds of America's most influential liberal figures.
Marshall finds America's most powerful liberals, all part of the same baby boomer generation that has dominated US political life since their voices broke in the 1960s, pushing a new form of "liberal interventionism" that threatens to use force to bring political freedom to oppressed people. But is the democracy they are exporting to the world really what they say it is? Or have liberals buckled under the pressure of America's declining fortunes and taken on the role of good cop to the conservatives' bad?
Featuring interviews with Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, David Horowitz, Lewis Lapham, John Avlon, The Economist's John Micklethwait, Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger, and best-selling authors Thomas Friedman, Paul Berman, and John Perkins.
Among the more prominent leaders of the abortive revolution of ‘68 was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who now represents Germany’s Greens in the European Parliament. He recently advised Sarkozy’s presidential rival Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, to back away from left-wing policies. “If she tries to play it on the traditionally socialist card, she will lose,” he predicted, “because France has veered right.”
So much, then, for the legacy of May ‘68. It was, in fact, liquidated long ago. Sarkozy isn’t inheriting a socialist state any more than Royal would have sought to create one, had she won last Sunday’s election. France does, however, retain elements of the welfare state. As Tony Judt commented in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago: “The dysfunctional French social model, we are frequently assured, has failed. In that case there is much to be said for failure. French infants have a better chance of survival than American ones. The French live longer than Americans and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are better educated and have first-rate public transportation. The gap between rich and poor is narrower than in the US or Britain, and there are fewer poor people.”
Much of this may no longer hold true once Sarkozy has had his way, but there can be little question that his campaign benefited enormously from the incoherence of the competing vision. Royal was unable to offer voters much more than a vague, unexciting continuity. It wasn’t entirely her fault: the fractious Socialist Party was never solidly behind her, and some socialist voters decided that a dose of Sarkozisme was likelier to reinvigorate the left than a bout of Royalisme. However, the risk is that five or 10 years of Sarkozy could drastically alter the shape of French politics, paving the way for a situation analogous to that of Britain, where the Thatcherite legacy found the ideal host in New Labour.
M. Ali
Democrats attack single-payer healthcare:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ccr05082007.html
Man...i fear for my son's
kids
how in the hell are they going to make a song for
'No War With Planet Y4stRk?'
-conbo
lordy Dada, I know you can do this!!!
Put down the dungeon's N dragons book and get to work
You are talented...
-conbo
Make an anti war song!!!!!
I am serious
I think
I lost serious a long time ago
-conbo
lots of things ryme with baghdad as well
Fad
Rad
Tad
Lad
ect
a whole world of opportunities...
-conbo
See a lot up there
But don't be scared.
Who needs action
When you got words?
Plateau (Live), Nirvana and The Meat Puppets
Lake Of Fire (Live), Nivana and The Meat Puppets
Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Live), Nirvana (Lead Belly cover, sort of)
WFC!!!!
:)
at least we can put wav.files down
-conbo
The House Of The Rising Sun, The Animals
Hi, #.
What's that last bit mean?
Nirvana
man I cannot listen to Nirvana unless I am very happy
he was so not happy
-conbo
What last bit?
-conbo
??????
am dense 2nite
Gallis Pole, Lead Belly
Weird. Apparently Zep's Gallows Pole is an adaptation of this.
Gallows Pole, Led Zeppelin
"at least we can put wav.files down"
That part.
Nirvana is not happy music for me, either, but it is extremely nostalgic. I'm not exactly in a great mood, and those four songs kinda fit my mood a bit.
wav
that used to mean music files..
right? i thought anyway
who knows
Don't be shy
A is for Allah by Yusuf Islam
heh
i have no music files
just you tube
-conbo
Ah. Yeah, me being obtuse. No, .wavs are different than mp3s, but I should've gotten that.
---
Kurt being happy again:
I Hate Myself And Want To Die, Nirvana (Into/Outro by Beavis and Butthead)
cat stevens
sorry
my favorite musician EVER
just so happy and optimistic
even when things sucked
-conbo
did you hear about Courtneuy Love selling his stuff on e-bay
fucked up
-conbo
Pennyroyal Tea, Nirvana
Courtney Love is a goddam succubus. That woman irritates the shit outta me.
---
My ex really liked Cat Stevens.
Morning Has Broken, Cat Stevens
oh!
im sorry
did not know that
-conbo
Moonshadow, Cat Stevens
Wild World, Cat Stevens
my ex liked Nirvana
hahahaha!
not kidding
well off to bed am I
too late and stuff to do
-conbo
Don't worry about it, it's not a sore spot.
---
Bummer, Iwas gonna subject everyone to some awful Christian Metal I listened to as a kid. No dice, though.
Morning All1
G'night, #.
---
Dumb, Nirvana
---
Guess I'm done, too.
Later
Hi/bye, toniD.
Just heading in for the night.
See ya later.
Later! Sleep well
Carlyle Group to sell shares to public By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Business Writer
Sat May 12, 2:09 AM ET
Private-equity firm the Carlyle Group LP will for the first time sell shares to the public in one of its investment funds, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.
After a planned initial public offering of stock in June or July, the Carlyle Capital Corp. Ltd. fund, could have up to $1 billion to invest, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The fund, which will focus on mortgage-backed securities, has already raised private capital.
Carlyle plans to list the fund on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.
The Washington-based firm is following several other private-equity groups in entering the public markets.
Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts Co. offered shares in a real estate fund it manages in 2005, while Blackstone Group LP said in March that it would seek to raise $4 billion in an IPO of the private equity firm itself. Fortress Investment Group LLC was the first private equity firm to go public when it raised $643.3 million in an IPO.
Typically, private-equity funds return to investors the capital they put in, plus profits, after a preset period of time. However, by selling shares in the funds, these firms are able to manage the capital indefinitely.
The Carlyle Group currently manages $56 billion in 48 different funds, according to its Web site, investing in everything from aerospace and defense to energy and infrastructure.
LINK
US Commander: Not enough troops in north Iraq, pleas for more
The commander of US forces in northern Iraq said he did not have enough troops to bring stability, sharpening the debate in America about the effectiveness of George Bush's war plan.
LINK
Cheney to seek Iraq help in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan by Olivier Knox
2 hours, 33 minutes ago
US Vice President Dick Cheney heads to Saudi Arabia Saturday to seek its aid in Iraq, two months after close US ally King Abdullah slammed the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of that war-torn land.
Over the weekend, Cheney was also to visit Egypt and Jordan to wrap up a week-long Middle East visit aimed at getting Washington's friends to help pull Iraq's minority Sunni Muslims into the country's fragile political process.
The vice president's diplomatic mission also meant to win US allies' help in curbing the influence of a rising Iran, amid talk that the Islamic republic and Saudi Arabia may be in the early skirmishes of a proxy war in Iraq.
Some US officials and analysts worry that sectarian violence there may be fed by support for Iraq's Sunnis from predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and backing for the Shiite majority from majority Shiite Iran.
"I dont think its a proxy war at this stage. Thats not the way I perceive it," Cheney told Fox News television in an interview Thursday. "I dont think thats the case yet."
The US vice president also hoped to use his considerable influence in Saudi Arabia -- forged during the 1991 Gulf War and his oil industry dealings -- to smooth over relations badly strained by sectarian violence in Iraq.
In late March, tensions boiled over when Saudi King Abdullah opened an annual Arab summit in Riyadh with a speech denouncing the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq and warning that "ugly sectarianism threatens civil war."
The king also refused to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with a Riyadh-based Arab diplomat saying it was because the monarch believed Maliki had deepened the sectarian divide in his country.
A top Cheney aide, briefing reporters Monday, said Riyadh's other actions -- including significant Iraqi debt forgiveness -- spoke just as loud as that diplomatic snub.
"I think on the whole, Saudi leadership is a very good thing, given the strength and enduring nature of our relationship with the Saudis and the amount of work and cooperation we've done over the years," the aide said.
LINK
Iraq parliament petition presses for withdrawal of US troops
A majority of Iraq’s parliament has signed a petition for a legislative timetable governing a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, several parliamentarians said today.
LINK
Bush aides berate
back at GOP members
Top Bush administration officials lashed out at a pair of House Republicans at the White House yesterday after details about a contentious meeting between President Bush and GOP legislators were leaked to the media earlier this week.
LINK
CNN announces
Bush 'resigns'
CNN International's CNN Today program, airing at midnight Eastern, led with the graphic 'Bush Resigns.' Of course, they meant 'Blair Resigns.' Freudian slip?
LINK
Novak: Stars aligned
against the GOP in 2008
“All the stars are aligned against the Republicans in 2008,” Bob Novak told the assembled masses at the Americans for Tax Reform’s Wednesday meeting, causing a subtle gasp to leak out of the conservative faithful.
LINK
Monica Goodling, Supreme Partisan
Selling secrets for personal perks. A new indictment has been filed against the former #3 official at the CIA, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo. Via Atrios:
According to the new indictment, Foggo provided [his friend, defense contractor Brent] Wilkes with “sensitive, internal information related to our national security,” including classified information, to help him prepare proposals for providing undercover flights for the CIA under the guise of a civil aviation company and armored vehicles for agency operations. Foggo allegedly then pushed his CIA colleagues to hire Wilkes’ companies without disclosing their longstanding friendship.
[…]
Prosecutors say that in return, Wilkes offered to hire Foggo after he retired from government service. In the meantime, he allegedly treated his friend to a Scottish golf trip during which they racked up a $44,000 hotel bill at the luxurious Pitcastle Estate.
LINK
Comrade Karl
Freudian slip?
wishful thinking.
i see where darth cheney was in the mid east creating another pretext for which to attack iran with; keeping the sea lanes open.
must be part of a bigger plan, eh?
well its senior prom day, lotsa running around to do before the boy goes out tonight. have a good one everyone.
i caught a piece of real time last night, and it had an interesting point. some neocon lackey (frank luntz?) was basically saying how they have mastered the use of words and simplistic phrases to keep the dems up against the ropes all the time, because we are so afraid to insult or speak harshly or think that they have a valid criticism. what i think it means is that liberals and progressives need to grow a pair and take on a damn the torpedos, full speed ahead. so what if we make fun of mitt romneys superstitions...
just in from cnn:
-- Five U.S. soldiers have been killed and three others are missing after an attack 12 miles west of Mahmoudiya, Iraq, the U.S. military says.
just another day in bushworld.
Morning Blah 3.
Have a great time today. Lots of prom pictures!
I'm off to work soon.
Wish I could sleep in today!!
May 12, 2007
Billions in Oil Missing in Iraq, U.S. Study Says
By JAMES GLANZ
Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.
Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.
The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.
The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.
Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the United States goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.
The draft report, expected to be released within the next week, was prepared by the United States Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts, and was provided to The New York Times by a separate government office that received a review copy. The accountability office declined to provide a copy or to discuss the draft.
Paul Anderson, a spokesman for the office, said only that “we don’t discuss draft reports.”
But a State Department official who works on energy issues said that there were several possible explanations for the discrepancy, including the loss of oil through sabotage of pipelines and inaccurate reporting of production in southern Iraq, where engineers may not properly account for water that is pumped along with oil in the fields there.
“It could also be theft,” the official said, with suspicion falling primarily on Shiite militias in the south. “Crude oil is not as lucrative in the region as refined products, but we’re not ruling that out either.”
LINK
5 GIs dead, 3 missing after Iraq attack 40 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - An attack on a unit of U.S.-led forces patrolling outside the Iraqi capital before dawn left five soldiers dead and three missing, the military said.
The attack on the patrol of seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter soldier occurred near Mahmoudiya, in a Sunni insurgent stronghold about 20 miles south of Baghdad, the military said.
Troops were searching for the three missing soldiers, the military said.
LINK
if i'm not mistaken, shell should like this
?
(wherever she is)
(the blog is naked without her)
Art & Politics
Calvert Caught In The Act With Prostitute, Lied, Attempted To Run From Police
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), recently appointed by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to the House Appropriations Committee, has a history of ethics violations that is stirring up battle cries even from his own conservative base. His ethics violations also extend into attempts to dodge the law and lie to the public about his behavior.
In 1993, Calvert was caught by police with a prostitute in a parked car in California. Subsequently, Calvert repeatedly attempted to cover up the incident for nearly a year, publicly denying that it ever occurred.
But a year later, a court order forced the release of the police report, which revealed how Calvert was clearly caught in the act and attempted to run from the police. From the police report:
I observed a male subject in the driver seat…As I made my way to the driver door, a female immediately sat up straight in the front passenger seat. It appeared as if her head was originally laying in the driver’s lap. … I noticed that the male subject was placing his penis into his unzipped dress slacks, and was trying to hide it with his untucked dress shirt.
As the male subject covered up crotch area with his left hand and shirt, he started his vehicle and placed it into drive and proceeded to leave. I ordered him three times to turn off the vehicle, and he finally stopped and complied…The male identified himself as Kenneth Stanton Calvert.
That wasn’t all Calvert tried to cover up. “We’re just talking, that’s all. Nothing else,” he nervously explained to the police as he “continued to cover his unzipped pants with his hand.”
Calvert has since held onto his Congressional seat but only through smear tactics. Representing a conservative district, he put out “campaign literature implying that his Democratic opponent was gay” after the prostitution incident and was subsequently re-elected.
Read the full police report HERE.
Another one!!!
Much later Sederites!!
air-ono said...
if i'm not mistaken, shell should like this
?
(wherever she is)
(the blog is naked without her)
May 12, 2007 9:06 AM
Grow up!
it's naked with her or without her.
Can someone look at this website and tell me what you see? I need to determine if this is screwed up. It should be a website. I'm seeing an ftp index.
http://www.carriagetoursofmemphis.com/
i get an ftp index, too
I wonder if Rove had the details of hookergate to blackmail politicians and thats why(another reason)they've done whatever he has wanted for the past 6yrs? Oh Rove what this criminal has gotten away with! Our govenment really is one big ass mafia. A sad state in these times indeed. THis shit has got to stop and people have had enough. Enough already!
I'd Just Like To Say Hello To My Uncle!
The Real Deal on Sarkozy's victory:
According to [America's mainstream media] perspective, the French social safety net is anachronistic. And so it goes, in a repetitive narrative that is tiresome and politically misinformed. Hard won rights and adjustments managed by thoughtful policy makers in Paris over the past 10 years, such as the 35 hour week are bad! No explanation as to the reason the 35 hour week was introduced to keep people in work, for one thing. Long holidays are a disgrace for Protestant work-a-holics writing against hard-won victories for working people in France. No doubt, if someone argued that drinking French wine could be shown to cause socialism, that would get a run as well.
Where do US commentators get off providing half-informed analysis of the election results? The short answer is that they are pathologically opposed to social justice policies.
Watching France 24, on C-SPAN during the French election analysis on Sunday, May 6, a Bloomberg correspondent on the panel launched a diatribe against one of his fellow panelists who had explained the complex relationship between various elements of the French Left.
"Wake up and smell the coffee, people," this Neanderthal bleated. He continued that leftist political parties are irrelevant and have been for 20 years in every other country in the world and so it went....
The facts on the ground are of course, dramatically different. French politics and the French Left is a highly fragmented, even nuanced beast. It cannot be reduced to the Tweedledum and Tweedledee model preferred by limited-attention-span commentators in the US. Nor can it be reduced to the econometric madness of simplistic business school positivism some countries do have social policies!
For millions of people around the world, the French left has operated since World War 2, as the academic and creative gold standard. The French left has produced the riches of a deep and abiding intellectual inquiry, manifested since the Revolution(s) (whether Marat Sade or even Karl Marx writing on the Paris Commune), and in recent years by the work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Claude Levi Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Simone de Beauvoir, Fernand Braudel, André Malraux, Jean-François Lyotard, Felix Guattari, Giles Delleuze, Guy Debord, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Baudrillard (too few women).
We ciould include film makers and articts, but the point stands on the academic intellectual community alone who have made a monumental contribution to creative and critical thought. Has any other country offered such a diversity of perspectives for progressive knowledge production and improved governance?
Could it be that the real agenda of the US mainstream media is to deny and destroy the contributions that French intellectuals have made to democratic theory and practice? Could the loud cheers in favor of Sarkozy's election really be masking the endless efforts of the right to roll back taken-for-granted progressive policies? In this case, destroy the generation of 1968, in much the same way that Vice-President Dick Chaney and Former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld wanted a victory in Iraq to undo the liberalism they associated with the US loss in the Vietnam War.
Sarkozy claimed during the election campaign that the the heritage of 1968 should be "liquidated," as much as for its success in reform as for what ("The Economist," May 12) claimed Sarkozy said was their "moral and intellectual relativism."
Perhaps some solace can be taken from the substantial youth vote for Socialist candidate Segolene Royal. Alternatively, US commentators like Cohen failed to note that Sarkozy pickup up the votes of the racist Jean-Marie Le Pen.
(Marcus Breem)
...(I refer those who rear back at the words "imaginary crisis" to my last column on this topic, where I emphasize that there is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution.)
The world's best known hysteric and self promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear industry and the coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oakridge National Lab. White House "task forces" on climate change in the Clinton-Gore years were always well freighted by Gore and his adviser John Holdren with nukers like John Papay of Bechtel.
As a denizen of Washington since his diaper years Gore has always understood that threat inflation is the surest tool to plump up budgets and rabblerouse the voters. By the mid Nineties he positioned himself at the head of a strategic and tactical alliance formed around "the challenge of climate change", which had now stepped forward to take Communism's place in the threatosphere essential to all political life. Indeed, it was in the New Republic, a tireless publicist of the Soviet menace in the late 70s and Reagan 80s, that Gore announced in 1989 that the war on warming couldn't be won without a renewal in spiritual values...
Alexander Cockburn
The Real Question Isn't Why Olmert Started the War in Haste, But Why He Started It At All
Exercise in Escapism
By URI AVNERY
Rise Above Politics
No matter what liberals may think, it's no crime to be dumb and unaware in this world. Otherwise most of this country would be in prison. So when I saw Big Larry mowing his lawn yesterday, probably for the last time, I just waved and pretended that everything was hunky dory. Both of us knew everybody in town saw that foreclosure bock ad on the back of the paper. We have come to watch for them of late, like the obits, to see if anyone we know has been axed by fate. But sometimes you show a working man respect by giving the A-OK sign---a sign that, bad as it may be now my brother, you'll be back to fight again for the feudalistic delusions and promises America has ever offered to working class suckers like us, because there has never been any other choice. There have just been the good times and the bad times allowed us, according to the American financial syndicate's needs at the time.
Sure, they may kick a lot of Republicans asses out of office next election. Big friggin deal! For my people, the same feudalist deal is on the table as ever: work hard, kill when you are told to, trust your betters, and everything will be all right. Plenty of highly politicized leftists and their meeker kin, the last hopeful Democrats, came up as hard as anyone I've described here. The Democratic Party definitely doesn't want them showing up like bikers at a cocktail party and talking real populism. Because there ain't no big money campaign contributions behind populism.
Look at it this way: Black America suffered lynchings, police dogs and fire bombings just to shit on the same toilet seats as white Americans like you and me, and ultimately waste their lives in front of computer monitors next to us on the same electronic plantation of the gulag global economy swallowing America and the rest of the world.
And so, still I ask (and who am I to ask anything?): Are there any progressives or leftists willing to come out here into the hinterlands and offer the first step. True populist hope? Spell it out in "see-spot-run" language? Talk about our bad teeth and why our elderly parents are rotting in pisshole nursing homes owned by ex-car dealers and attended by imported Asian physicians who barely speak English? Or the dynamics of hopelessness that drive the meth epidemic out here?
It will take an entire lifetime of commitment amid a crumbling world. And it will continue to crumble around us even as we work. There will be not one ounce of glory or acknowledgement or public reward. But it lies there before us, the first fearful and questioning stone on the pathway to the liberation of mankind.
True populist politics could give us a quarter turn in the right direction. Genuine socialism could put us on the approximate path to justice. Eco-politics cannot save us from the inevitable, but at lest it can teach us to deal with our limitations as a species upon this earth. But one begins the journey at the start if the path, not the promised land at its end.
Can we quit talking and start walking?
Joe Bageant
Mark in Methcouver, WA: "I am reminded of the blood letting in the Nixon regime when Tricky
Dick was trying to throw others to the wolves in a vain effort to save his own butt. Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales will be out towards the end of June. (Between the 20th and 30th.)"
Allegations of anti-Semitism
[Alexander] Cockburn has been accused by some of anti-Semitism, although he strongly denies these allegations, calling them a means to cover up Israel's bad behavior.
One of these charges has come from Alan Dershowitz, a long-time nemesis of Cockburn. In November of 2005, Dershowitz wrote a letter to the National Catholic Reporter calling Cockburn's Counterpunch.org web site "anti-Semitic," ] in response to a review of Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah by Counterpunch contributor Neve Gordon. Cockburn had previously accused Dershowitz of various charges including plagiarism in 2003,[ and of supporting torture in an exchange one month prior to Dershowitz' accusation. Both Cockburn and Dershowitz have denied their respective charges.
Another accusation has come from Steven Plaut, a subject of his own controversy, and who was recently found liable in an Israeli court for charges of defamation arising from similar accusations against Cockburn's colleague Neve Brown. In a 2005 article titled, "Counterpunch’s Self-Hating Jews" Plaut compared Cockburn with David Irving, a convicted Holocaust denier, for having praised Israeli musician and Counterpunch contributor Gilad Atzmon[ whom Plaut also calls anti-Semitic. Plaut went on to suggest that Atzmon and Cockburn would like to destroy Israel,
Meanwhile, Hillary and Obama, Biden and McCain all shake the hands of pharmaceutical, Citibank, and energy lobbyists, totally unaware that Big Larry, who simply trusted that the government was being ran by better men than he, had his house go into foreclosure last week. The announcement was among an ever increasing number of others in big outlined boxes on the back page of the local paper.
If your thing happens to be banging skinny chicks, better do as much of it as you can as soon as you can.
Skinny chicks are becoming a thing of the past, at least in the United States of America.
Recent studies show that American women are acquiring the avoirdupois at a rate that far out weighs...so to speak...their male counterparts.
In America, the Pursuit of Lardass has become a female persuasion.
So if you believe that the closer to the bone, the sweeter is the meat...
time is running out for you.
If American men want to continue to get laid, the fat chicks are going to have the last laugh!
on May 12, 2007 @ 11:03 AM an anonymous drone demands that i //Grow up!//
fair comment if it had context...
the blog is an empty shell without shell, connie, toni, waits, cat chew, crank, s.j., dada, bridge, edna, cee cee, bobby, mmrules, blah, oh and catharine, too
all that's left are nameless assholes
(faceless ad hoc cognomens and the mumphrey's of the world)
and yet seder has not spent a half hour to communicate with us
DAMN!!!
and especially star vox
: )
eya AO
no sweat.
probably a
coupla reasons
for it to be slow.
web certainly has been
fubar lately, maybe that's it?
we just opened the local market so i was down there helping out all morning. ended up hanging out with the local K of C, handing out free brekkers. was fun real fun buncha guys and the sausage lady was a hoot!
actually i was hoping everyone was out working in the garden and generally enjoying the superb spring weather we're having!
hi guys and girls
slow u say?
==
By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Mark Logico, USS John C. Stennis Public Affairs
http://www.cvn74.navy.mil/home.html
USS JOHN C. STENNIS, At Sea, - Vice President Dick Cheney visited the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) while underway in the Arabian Gulf to meet with more than 5,000 Sailors and Marines, May 11.
==
the white house always says the carriers are in the Persian Gulf
Big big difference.
the beautiful work of David Bohrer
USS John C. Stennis Strike Group Commander Rear Admiral Kevin Quinn greets Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, left, upon their arrival, Friday, May 11, 2007, to the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf. White House photo by David Bohrer
==
Admiral Kevin Quinn [hehehe]
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) Lyrics
Artist(Band):Bob Dylan
everyone is still here ao
remember the 'looser' thread connie posted
weeks ago?
Sam has a heart for keeping this place open : )
I had a head start on the chaos.
Lost air amer. then got it back in nova m
been flux since then
so many questions why
Saturday night meat!
Hot...tender...well marbled
Ready for serving!
BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 5/11/2007 12:00PM
EXCLUSIVE: FBI AGENT WHO INTERCEDED IN ANN COULTER VOTER FRAUD CASE ALLEGED TO BE HER FORMER BOYFRIEND!
Palm Beach Paper Says FBI Agent Attempted to Clear GOP Pundit, BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger Said to be Reason for Fraudulent Info Given on FLVoter Registration Form, Driver's License!
Conservative Coulter Critic Borchers Responds; Says Her '98-'99 Boyfriend Has Been 'Her Personal FBI Resource for Her Own Purposes'...
Will the MSM report this??Doubt It!
Link
POX AIR ONOROUS!
brad blog version of colter story
I WAS REFERRING TO NOXIOUS FREAKS,
such as...
oh, there's one
//faceless ad hoc cognomens said//
hi, fucko
Evening all!
Anyone here?
National Intelligence Director knocks down Hoekstra. In an op-ed in the WSJ this week, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee Peter Hoekstra mocked efforts by the committee to commission a National Intelligence Estimate on the effects of global warming. As ThinkProgress noted, a host of military experts have recommended such studies. And now, so has the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. In a letter to Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), he writes:
I believe it’s entirely appropriate for the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to prepare an assessment on the geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.
LINK
eya jbenet
got the hood kids visiting
loading ipods,yakking about downtown hangouts,
fun, they're getting around, reminds me what being 18 was all about.
In honor of RWiley, from answers.com:
------
Spotlight: Nonsensical poems he wrote
'bout owls and cats in a boat.
Unique was his humor,
it spread like a rumor
that Lear was a clever ol' goat!
Today is Limerick Day, celebrating the birth of Edward Lear on May 12, 1812. The artist and writer of nonsense verse who popularized limericks, Lear wrote 212 nonsense poems. His widely known Book of Nonsense was first published in 1846.
Quote: "How pleasant to know Mr. Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough."
Campaign aide to Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) indicted for voter fraud in North Carolina.
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=738322007
Stray rocket beams Scotty's ashes off course
A ROCKET carrying the ashes of Scotty from Star Trek is stranded on top of a remote mountain range in New Mexico...
------------------
(Sort of a posthumous carabiner vacation...)
Cremated Remains of 200 Lost in Mountains After Trip to Space
By Leonard David
Special Correspondent, SPACE.com
posted: 10 May 2007
10:53 am ET
----------------------------------
...failed to urn their wings.
------
...the engines couldn't take the strain.
------
For the record, these are my jokes, but I'm not the only rude bastard having too much fun. I've read some pretty good one-liners on various sites, and the news is still young.
(Not mine, but a goody even though it references the wrong actor): "The search is arduous because they can't see DeForest for the trees.")
Scotty: "Aye, Captain. We've boldly gone to where no ma---hey, this is New Mexico!"
NBC: FBI investigating Gov. Gibbons (R-NV). NBC News reports that former congressman and current Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) is being investigated by the FBI for potentially receiving “a fancy vacation and perhaps other lucrative benefits” from defense contractor Warren Trepp in exchange for “multi-million-dollar government contracts.”
Sources close to the investigation say a key focus is a lavish week-long Caribbean cruise in March 2005 by Gibbons, his wife and son, and Trepp, who paid for almost everything. In photos obtained by NBC News, Gibbons is seen hamming it up — kicking back with a drink and posing with his wife, Dawn, Trepp and Trepp’s other guests.
Software designer Dennis Montgomery was also on that cruise with Gibbons. He estimates the trip cost “probably $20,000 a person,” claiming he saw the invoice. Montgomery says his former business partner Trepp chartered a 727 to fly guests from Nevada to Florida and back and picked up the tab for penthouse rooms, private meals and expensive wines.
In an exclusive interview with NBC, Montgomery — who’s now at war with his former partner — makes an explosive charge. He says that near the end of the cruise, he saw Trepp pass money to the congressman.
Watch NBC’s extensive report:
LINK
Gen. Batiste speaks out in a New York Times profile: “In the Army, you communicate up the chain of command, and I communicated vehemently with my senior commanders while I was in Iraq,” he said. Of his departure from the Army, he said: “It was the toughest decision of my life. I paced my quarters for days. I didn’t sleep for nights. But I was not willing to compromise my principles for one more minute.”
LINK
Governors say
war has gutted Guard
As wildfires, floods and tornadoes batter the nation, the readiness of the National Guard to deal with those disasters, as well as potential terrorist assaults, is so depleted by deployments to foreign wars and equipment shortfalls that Congress is considering moves to curtail the president's powers over the Guard.
LINK
Ret. Gen: Iraq
straining National Guard
The National Guard isn't as strong as it should be because of the war in Iraq and American communities will suffer as a result, retired Air Force Gen. Melvyn Montano said Saturday.
LINK
Military sees parents as
big recruiting barrier
The biggest obstacle for U.S. military recruiters is not finding young Americans willing to enlist in wartime, it's dealing with their parents, according to the Pentagon. Like other Pentagon officials, Sherlock said parents and adults that recruiters call "influencers" are a tough hurdle to clear, but their influence can be checked.
LINK
a limerick's always handy
and sometimes sweeter than candy
for teasing a bud
or hustling a hug
the results are often dandy!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1774533.ece
Bush begs for more time as Republican revolt gathers pace
...US concerns over the planned parliamentary holiday were conveyed by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, during meetings with Mr al-Maliki in Baghdad on Wednesday. But by yesterday even that relatively simple request — to scale back or cancel the recess — had been rejected by many Iraqi politicians. One called Mr Cheney’s demand “embarrassing”, and said that it undermined Iraqi sovereignty...
----------------------------------
Dr. Frankencheney has created a monster...and the monster ain't signin' no stinkin' neocontract.
Hey Folks
my humble apologies to j.benet
your absense from the m.v.b. (most valuable blogger) list was an oversight by the department of the chosen few
for i will judge thee as god judges thee
l’accusé: fishgrease (except for the 'first' video -- that was cool), mucky, e.b., meg, dr, cathy, kevin, chubby (he could have made an effort to escape to an internet cafe), gg, fat tony, jenise, god, pokey magee, a 3-headed goat, laura "fucked in the arse by president" bush (no relation to laura bush, the president's wife)...
anyway, those not on the list who have not contributed to the blog of exiles will be cast into the vat of undesirable interlopers
yours,
the succulent prig
(& available for bukkake)
ono
altogether now
HOWDY! BOB!
: )
altogether now
HOWDY! CRANK-BAIT!!
: (
bob, um, would you like to frolic with me
*tee-hee*
(naked)
hee!
eya B3!
whassupp?
Same old, My SSD hearing is coming up on the 22nd. :/
I am nervous...........
Going to have a meeting with my lawyers next week.
the hood kids just saw my music stash for the first time.
they'll resurface in a while.
give me a coupla hours
to hang out witchoos )
squeal like a hog, bob
this ain't kansas...
(welcome to west virginia)
lawyers and shrinks o my!
i'm absolutely convinced they're paying you by the word AO.
quit abusing that kid and give me a hundred limericks NOW!
you rude aussie slime!
my lawyer is a hog
my shrink is a hog
and i wear hog shoes...
but i ain't no hog
(i jest smell like one on account of all the hogs & footwear in my life)
i'll be moseying along, sunny
in farv minutes...
to listen to my beloved aussie rules foos-ball
on dee ray-dee-oh
gawd toni!
yer totally shameless!
plugging yer blug in front of these innocents!
http://abramoffjournal.blogspot.com/
in all seriousness, bob
all the best my brother
: )
you're our little brother
OK snorky, win big!
(kangaroo boffing a soccerball smilie here)
OK, porky
ya
a shameless dudette!
thanks ao .. sounds cool sj
[watching basketball]
Limbaugh Sign Vandalized, City Official Says “It Looks Great”
By: Logan Murphy @ 3:35 PM - PDT
From TRex at Firedoglake:
In a town so tough that most murders get just a few paragraphs in the paper, somebody called The Sun about 8 a.m. yesterday with a tip about a vandalized billboard.
By noon, the story was all over the Internet, Rush Limbaugh was kicking off his national radio show with it, and City Hall was fielding calls from as far away as California. By 5 p.m., the story had become one of the three most popular individual articles in the history of the paper's Web site, with nearly 200,000 page views.
There's a reason the story had legs. The paint-splattered billboard featured Limbaugh's mug. And the tipster was a spokesman for a city agency - the one responsible for cleaning up graffiti - who let it be known that he was no "dittohead."
"It looks like they took globs of paint and threw it on his face," Robert Murrow of the Department of Public Works told The Sun. "It looks great. It did my heart good." (via Romenesko) Read more…
Photo of billboard here
air-ono said...
she ain't got no scruples, s.j.
she's an embarrassment to the greek race of pods
Asta!!
Qualified eighth for the 2007 Indy 500 at 224.076 mph.
K Street Vs. The Middle Class
By: Nicole Belle @ 12:34 PM - PDT I'll let you guess which side Washington seems to be on. David Sirota has been compiling information of the recent wheelings and dealings that once again, hurt the citizens:
Another long day as the reverberations continue to intensify after yesterday's press conference announcing a secret "free" trade deal between a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration. In the interest of brevity, I have compiled the major news of the day, including new revelations about who is supporting the deal and who is opposing it, though remember - it is difficult to make any hard and fast conclusions because Democratic leaders and the White House continue to keep the details of the deal completely secret. That said, a look at who is supporting the deal and who is opposing it provides some key insights into what this deal is really all about. Already, the New York Times has reported that at least half of all House Democrats may immediately oppose the deal because it seems to fly in the face of the Election 2006 mandate against lobbyist-written trade policy. And now, a day after the announcement, the battle lines are being drawn.
For reference, Public Citizen is calling for the public immediately contact Congress asking lawmakers to reject the deal, on the basis of what we already know about it. The organization has created a website for this purpose here.
Read full article here
Matt Stoller has more:
Here's what concerns me. There was a big press conference on Thursday designed to create a certain type of message around the trade pact. The Democrats won labor and environmental standards, but corporate America is happy as well. You can see the reporting coming out with this messaging. The problem is that the details of the deal are still secret. I have talked to Congressman Michaud's office, to the USBIC, and to various trade groups, and none of them have seen the specifics of the deal.
This is extremely problematic and dishonest of the people negotiating and announcing the details. Pelosi, Rangel, Baucus, Bush, and the New Democrats knew that they could generate a huge raft of headlines on the trade deal without actually revealing the meat of the deal, so they did so. This is pretty much how the war in Iraq was sold, how the Bankruptcy bill was sold, and how NAFTA was sold.
This is not good!!
More on Wilkerson’s Impeachment Call
By: SilentPatriot @ 11:26 AM - PDT Logan wrote about this yesterday, but I wanted to chime in with some crucial context and background. As Colin Powell's right-hand-man during Bush's first term, Colonel Wilkerson is in a position to know intimate details of the "high crimes" he speaks of. This should be front page news around the country. Why it's not eludes me.
Download (1849) | Play (1791) Download (835) | Play (1182)
Now some background: Wilkerson testified before the Democratic Policy Committee — the only Congressional body that conducted Executive oversight before the November takeover — back in June 2006, and revealed some startling information about how the administration "cooked the books on intelligence" vis a vis the Office of Special Plans.
In October 2005, Wilkerson delivered a scathing 90 minute speech before the New America Foundation that detailed how the manipulation worked. (VIDEO) In February 2006, he conducted an interview with PBS's NOW and expounded even further on the OSP and how a secret cabal hijacked the intelligence process and sold us a bogus war.
In my opinion, this secretive body is at the very heart of the scandal that is the Iraq War; that's where Doug Feith and the other DoD neocons manipulated intelligence "produced alternative intelligence assessments." The whole story about how we were misled into war has never adequately been told. If the OSP is thoroughly investigated as Wilkerson is pushing for, the flood gates will open and expose all the lies and manipulation. This should be priority #1 for Democratic oversight.
For another example of just how badly the intelligence was manipulated, see this "60 Minutes" clip from last year where European CIA Chief Tyler Drumheller recounts how top Iraqi officials were telling the CIA that Saddam had no WMD, and how this crucial source was entirely ignored by the Bush administration.
LINK
The Democratic Daily: Ouch! The L.A. Times reported on Friday that “Retail sales slumped 2.4% compared with April 2006, slipping to $52.6 billion in the most wretched year-over-year showing by major retailers since the International Council of Shopping Centers began tracking the data in 1970.”
LINK
Bob Geiger's Saturday Cartoons...
Ouch: Mary Cheney's book selling for just seven cents
Mau Mau!
"Qualified eighth for the 2007 Indy 500 at 224.076 mph."
HOLY HOOTERS BATMAN!
WTG Danica!
Tanks T!
"toniD said...
Bob Geiger's Saturday Cartoons...
May 12, 2007 10:30 PM"
"Walt Handelsman of Newsday has been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning!!!"
and well deserved too!
Bear on the loose:
http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/05112007news138645.cfm
ok sj, what's a brekker?
poor bear!
wonder if he was having a hard time finding some grub in his normal turf?
following a td lead I find
Over at the National Review, Byron York is trying to undercut John Edwards' credentials as a populist.
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