Bush's War in Iraq

Between 23,000 and 26,000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed so far
1,786 American soldiers killed so far
12,762 American soldiers wounded so far
$184,347,327,466 (borrowed mostly from China) and spent so far

Honk if you've had enough of this chickenhawk's personal grudges, greed, dishonesty and disregard for human decency.

Fifteen Crappy Democrats

Here are the names and numbers of 15 Bushwhore Democrats who voted for CAFTA, which will result in further damage the American economy, allow for more international child labor abuses and encourage more American jobs to be outsourced and tax deferred.
Most cell phones give free to nearly free weekend rates, so call these losers today, leave a message and give 'em hell.
We need Bush Democrats about as much as Karl Rove needs the home addresses of all CIA agents.

Melissa Bean, Illinois (8th District): 202-225-3711
Jim Cooper, Tennessee (5th District): 202-225-4311
Norm Dicks, Washington (6th District): 202-225-5916
Henry Cuellar, Texas (28th District): 202-225-1640
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas (15th District): (202) 225-2531
William Jefferson, Louisiana (2nd District): (202) 225-6636
Jim Matheson, Utah (2nd District): (202) 225-3011
Gregory Meeks, New York (6th District): 202-225-3461
Dennis Moore, Kansas (3rd District): (202) 225-2865
Jim Moran, Virginia (8th District): (202) 225-4376
Solomon Ortiz, Texas (27th District): 202-225-7742
Ike Skelton, Missouri (4th District): 202-225-2876
Vic Snyder, Arkansas (2nd District): 202-225-2506
John Tanner, Tennessee (8th District): (202) 225-4714
Edolphus Towns, New York (10th District: (202) 225-5936

Summertime and the Livin' is Greasy
or
Blog Salad, with Crab

I have had it with summer and have started to wear long sleeves again, even though the weather is still hot in Sauna Antonio. I push the sleeves up, no big deal.

My kitten Nick is now a huge semi cat, with kittynuts big enough for the vet to get a grip on and empty out. He's not spraying yet, but he keeps busting moves on my grown cat James, who at 16 pounds is twice Nick's weight. I am certain Nick's aggression is hormonal...but not for long.

CNN is on and they are talking about kids with attention deficit disorder, aka ADD. Yeah? Well, how is it they can stare at an X-Box screen for nine hours at a time, pausing only for food and juice boxes? I'm just happy Dr. Tom Cruise is on the job, educating the medical community on ADD pharmacology. Sheesh, he's turned into the classic, belligerent little know-it-all now that he's past 40.

I had a bad hair coloring mishap earlier this week. The front was reddish brown and the back was brown, making my head look like a bit like customized Mini Cooper. I had to correct it yesterday, now it's medium brown with reddish highlights.

Gas prices continue to be annoyingly high, but from what I gather Texas isn't getting shafted as hard as the Blue States. At $2.24 a gallon, prices are still higher than they've ever been in history, and I don't give a damn about the fuzzy calculations of the Bush zombies who claim gas was higher back in the Carter era, when they factor in wind velocity, the GNP, fossilized dinosaur droppings and the average vehicle's trunk space. Stupid shits.

I see Bill Frist has started to distance himself from the sinking BushRove ship by endorsing stem cell research. Oh good, I can't wait to see how the Bushies start to discredit him as a raving lunatic with gay tendencies and a hatred for Jesus. Those ghouls eat their own- only not fast enough, if you ask me.

Has anyone noticed how often Karl Rove's first impression of Dubya has been described by the media lately?
Seems Rove was dispatched by Bush 41 to meet 43's train and give him a set of keys. Rove describes his first sight of Dubya: "He was all swagger, and totally cool with his cowboy boots, tight Levi's and leather bomber jacket. He ooozed charisma."
Since I do happen to be queer with plenty of gay street cred, I can say with all certainty that Rove described quite obviously an immediate crush on Bush- and I mean an, "I wanted to suck his dick" type-crush, not like the platonic crushes most lesbians have on Ann Richards.
Imagine where we'd be today if Rove had the courage back then to just say, "Hey man, I'll give you an 8-ball of coke if you'll let me blow you."
We could have avoided all their internalized homophobia and compensatory global aggression if Rove would have just copped to being a submissive bottom back then.

Has anyone seen the new Comedy Central show, "The Mind of Carlos Mencia"? He showed a photo of Dick Cheney sitting on a porch with his legs apart. Seems Dick has a basket that extended about halfway to his left knee. I thought well-endowed guys didn't need to be so war-oriented. Maybe the heart meds have rendered him impotent. His wife did write that lesbian soft porn book, after all, so maybe Dick is compensating for having a big, inoperable tool.

Speaking of inoperable tools, I see GOP gay hooker Jeff Gannon has all but disappeared from the political horizon. I'll bet his fees have gone up now that his closeted GOP clientele risk more by being seen with him. What a delicious risk that must be. So naughty, so wrong, but so exciting!

The results of Bush's annual physical exam will be made available to CNN and other media soon. I'll bet he'll feel better once they remove that malignant, 260-pound Rovarian cyst.

The GOP Nails Itself Again


By Joe Conason
The New York Observer
07.28.05


Republicans ready to slime Fitzgerald
For GOP, the best defense remains a good offense

Under the harsh but savvy tutelage of Karl Rove, Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated their adherence to a venerable cliché: In politics, as in sports and warfare, the best defense is always a good offense -- and the more offensive, the better. It's an effective strategy, as John Kerry and many other hapless victims have learned, and at this point also a highly predictable one.

Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the White House exposure of C.I.A. operative Valerie Wilson. Indeed, the preparations for that assault began months ago in the editorial columns of The Wall Street Journal, which has tarred Mr. Fitzgerald as a "loose cannon" and an "unguided missile."

Evidently Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, will lead the next foray against the special prosecutor. This week the Senator's press office announced his plan to hold hearings on the Fitzgerald probe. That means interfering with an "ongoing investigation," as the White House press secretary might say, but such considerations won't deter the highly partisan Kansan.

Of course, it was Mr. Rove's aggressively partisan style that first sparked the scandal now threatening to ruin him, back when he and other Bush administration officials "outed" Ms. Wilson in an attempt to discredit her dissenting husband during the summer of 2003. Had they not decided to leak classified information for partisan purposes, there would be no grand jury pondering indictments today.

Such ironies won't discourage the Rove Republicans from pursuing the scorched-earth strategy that has served them so well, however. Nor will those politicians and pundits pause to consider how odd their complaints about an overreaching special prosecutor will sound, emanating from once-fervent supporters of former independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his Whitewater legal jihad.

From their perspective, it's all part of the same cynical game. If Mr. Starr was subject to sharp criticism, then Mr. Fitzgerald should be a legitimate target, too. They won't remember how they once decried Mr. Starr's critics for "obstructing justice."

Defenders of the Bush White House have every right to whine about the Fitzgerald probe and the habitual excess of special counsels, no matter how lustily they once cheered the Starr inquisition. But while they'll ignore the obvious differences, with characteristic hypocrisy, that doesn't mean we have to.

The most telling contrast can be found in the matters under investigation. Mr. Starr spent tens of millions of dollars trying to prove wrongdoing by the Clintons in a defunct, money-losing land development that ended several years before they entered the White House. Somehow the Republicans -- and certain news organizations -- became convinced that those meaningless events raised questions of great national urgency.

Mr. Fitzgerald isn't looking into musty real-estate deals. He is investigating the alleged misuse of classified information by White House officials to silence a critic, and their apparent cover-up of that potentially very serious crime. Those obscure real-estate dealings in rural Arkansas probably didn't compromise national security, while the exposure of a C.I.A. official and her corporate cover may well have done so.

There is no partisan issue here. Mr. Fitzgerald is a Republican appointee, named by a Republican Justice Department to investigate alleged misconduct in a Republican administration, at the urging of a Republican President and his C.I.A. director. Mr. Starr was a Republican, appointed by a Republican-dominated judicial panel to investigate alleged misconduct by a Democratic President and his aides.

Mr. Fitzgerald is not only a Republican; he is also a highly competent prosecutor. Mr. Starr had no experience as a prosecutor, yet he was selected to replace another highly competent Republican prosecutor, Robert Fiske, who was deemed insufficiently eager to indict the Clintons for nonexistent crimes.

Mr. Fitzgerald has no known conflicts of interest in pursuing potential crimes committed by White House aides (unless it's a conflict to embarrass the President who appointed him to his current post as U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois). When Mr. Starr was appointed, he was burdened by several conflicts with the Clinton administration, including civil lawsuits where he had taken the side of President Clinton's opponents.

Finally, there's an issue of investigative duration. If Mr. Fitzgerald seeks to extend the term of the grand jury sitting in Washington, which expires next October, Republicans will instantly complain that this has all dragged on long enough and must be wrapped up forthwith.

Actually, the special counsel has pursued the Wilson leak for well under two years. The Whitewater investigation continued fruitlessly for five years, continually changing from one topic and target to another, and should have concluded long before its theme shifted from savings-and-loan shenanigans to sexual indiscretions.

If only they were candid, the Rove Republicans would say that was then, this is now -- and ethical consistency is strictly for losers.

The AFA: America's Feckless Assclowns?

Call or write Johnson & Johnson and tell them they did the right thing!
Below is the insulting e-mail the AFA's head hatemonger is passing around the Internet.
Please call J&J, then send this to anyone you know who will contact them, praise them and tell them to stand up to hatemongers.
I called the Chairman's secretary direct. She's a very nice woman who welcomed my remarks graciously, especially when I reminded her that gay people have tons of discretionary income they'll be more likely now to spend on J&J products.

Now, read this and get pissed off!


Forwarded message from AFA Action Alert
-----
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:05:00 -0500
From: AFA Action Alert
Reply-To: contact@afa.net
Subject: You will not believe this ad by Johnson & Johnson

You will not believe this ad by Johnson & Johnson

Dear Friend of the Family,

*Johnson & Johnson has placed an ad for its Tylenol PM product in the July 19 issue of "The Advocate," the nation's leading homosexual magazine.

The ad shows two shirtless men in bed side by side. The text over one reads: "His backache is keeping him up." Over the other: "His boyfriend's backache is keeping him up."

Click here to see a copy of the ad. (Be warned, it is offensive)
http://www.afa.net/petitions/images/tylenolpm.jpg

You probably aren't aware that Johnson & Johnson is also a charter advertiser on the homosexual network LOGO. Thanks to Johnson & Johnson's committment to financially support homosexuality, it is only a short time before this premiere homosexual-based network will become a part of your local cable package (if it isn't already). While Johnson & Johnson voluntarily helps get the network off the ground, you will be forced to pay for it as part of your regular cable bill.

Johnson & Johnson says they will ignore emails from OneMillionMoms.com, so your personal involvement is needed today!

Please take time to call Johnson & Johnson. Their toll-free number is 1-800-962-5357, option 5 (you may be on hold for a minute or two). Their corporate phone number is 732-524-0400 with little or no waiting time.

Tell them to stop their financial support of homosexual networks and magazines. Please be kind, but firm, when you call.

Tylenol PM is sold under Johnson & Johnson's subsidiary, McNeilnConsumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals.

Please take action now, then forward this critical issue message to your friends and family.

Johnson & Johnson
Chairman William C. Weldon
One Johnson & Johnson Plaza
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08933
Phone: 732-524-0400
Fax: 732-524-3300
Online comment form:
http://www.tylenol.com/vcrc/email/tyemailform.jhtml?id=email [2]

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon, Chairman
American Family Association

P.S. Please forward this email to at least one friend.

An Editorial from the Los Angeles Times
(Can you dig it?)

Operation Coverup

Scandals metastasize. That is the pattern since Watergate. What starts out looking like a small, isolated incident gradually reveals itself to be part of a larger abuse of power. Meanwhile, an unraveling coverup adds new elements. Is that happening now with the scandal over White House leaks of the identity of a CIA agent?

Some folks say that as we learn more, the scandal is getting smaller, not larger. Valerie Plame was a CIA functionary commuting openly to agency headquarters, not a spy working behind enemy lines. The law against revealing the identities of intelligence agents is complicated and probably wasn't broken in this case. And the story line gets muddier: Journalists may have revealed Plame's identity to White House honchos.

We don't buy it. However they came to learn about this juicy factoid, people in the Bush administration misused an intelligence secret to discredit a critic of its Iraq policy. And outing Plame, whether illegal or not, did harm to our national security. Plame may work in Langley, Va., but she worked with others who work in more dangerous locales. You only need to imagine how Republicans would have treated such a leak in the Clinton administration to dismiss their protestations that it's all no big deal.

It's a good bet that there has already been some lying under oath. One theory about the puzzling tenacity and ferocity of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald — why he is sending journalists to jail for refusing to provide information he already has about an activity that probably wasn't even a crime by people other than the ones he is persecuting — is that he's switched his attention from the leak itself to perjury by White House officials who were asked about it earlier in the investigation.

Perjury is your classic coverup method, and still is used when other methods have failed. Advances in the science of spin since Watergate, however, have made a high-risk, Nixon-style coverup unnecessary in many situations.

President Bush says he won't publicly comment about the Plame case while the investigation continues. But the reason the investigation continues is partly his fault. He should have determined early on who leaked Plame's CIA identity to members of the press, and dealt with it.

Why didn't Bush two years ago just ask Karl Rove and a few others in the administration whether they had leaked Plame's identity to Bob Novak and the others? Why doesn't he ask Rove now? Is it because he knows the answer? Or because he doesn't want to have to fire Rove?

As a precaution against such a catastrophe, Bush now says he will fire anyone found to have broken the law by outing an undercover intelligence operative. Previously he had said he would fire anyone who outs an intelligence officer, period.

The coverup, in short, is going well.

More, More, More
A 12-hour gap reminds me a lot of the 18-minute gap in the tapes that Nixon's secretary erased.



Plame Scandal Widens
By Matthew Roths
July 25, 2005
The Valerie Plame scandal is engulfing the White House.
With the grand jury empaneled until October, we may yet see indictments come down on Karl Rove and on Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby.
But they aren’t the only ones implicated in the scandal.
As Frank Rich noted in Sunday’s New York Times, our old friend Alberto Gonzales also has left his fingerprints sloppily around.
At the time this scandal broke, Gonzales was White House Counsel. The Justice Department kindly notified him that it was investigating this leak, and Gonzales passed word on to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.
This was around 8:00 p.m. on September 29, 2003, and Gonzales asked the Justice Department for permission not to notify the rest of the White House staff until the next morning, permission which he got.
This could have allowed Rove or Libby or anyone else involved the time to destroy incriminating documents or get their stories coordinated.
On Face the Nation Sunday, Gonzales tried to make light of what Rich calls the 12-hour gap. “Most of the staff had gone home,” Gonzales said. “No one knew about the investigation.”
But what if Andy Card gave them a heads-up?
It’s increasingly difficult and embarrassing for the Bush White House to deal with this scandal.
Bush’s top aide and Cheney’s top aide are directly implicated.
Gonzales himself looks bad, at the very least.
Card may have been a player.
Press Secretary Scott McClellan either lied to the press or was lied to by Rove and Libby.
And what role Bush himself had in the whole thing, as his aides were apparently discussing the Plame matter on Air Force one, has yet to be revealed, though Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has interviewed the President.
The water is getting neck high in the White House.

http://progressive.org/?q=mag_wx072505

Shuffle off to the Buffalo News
Here's a nice piece that keeps Rovegate on the front burner, where it belongs...

CIA's Tenet was 'furious' over leak, Schumer says
By DOUGLAS TURNER
News Washington Bureau Chief
7/23/2005

WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., revealed Friday that two years ago he discussed the blown cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame with then CIA director George Tenet and that Tenet "was furious."
Tenet promptly called the Justice Department to demand an investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak, Schumer said at a hearing held by House and Senate Democrats.
Novak revealed Plame's identity in July 2003 in a column in which he said she played a key role in having her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sent to Niger to investigate reports that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to buy materials for a nuclear weapon there.
The Democratic panel heard from five former CIA operatives who said the disclosure of Plame's classified identity was a breach of the law that forbids government officials from revealing the identity of an undercover intelligence officer and a violation of trust that has harmed America's intelligence-gathering capabilities.
"What is important now is not who wins or loses the political battle or who may or may not be indicted," said Jim Marcinkowski, a central intelligence agent in the 1980s.
"Rather, it is a question of how we will go about protecting the citizens of this country in a very dangerous world. The undisputed fact is that we have irreparably damaged our capability to collect human intelligence and thereby significantly diminished our capability to protect the American people."
Another former CIA operative, Larry Johnson, said "we must put to bed the lie that (Plame) was not undercover. For starters, if she had not been undercover, then the CIA would not have referred the matter to the Justice Department."
Johnson said that "despite the repeated claims of representatives for the Republican National Committee, the Wilsons' neighbors did not know where Valerie really worked until Novak's op-ed appeared."
Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., said Bush is "affirmatively" required by several presidential directives to discipline any official in his administration who had a role in leaking classified information.
Bush cannot wait for an indictment and trial to determine whether leakers committed a crime, Waxman said. Presidential directives mandate he discipline all who had a role.
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper has revealed that Bush's deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., had told him that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Rove has not disputed that he told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the agency but has said through his lawyer that he did not mention her by name.
Bush, who once said he would discipline anyone who leaked the information, now says he will wait to see who is convicted in the investigation run by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, said at worst the leak is treason and at best, an abuse of power.

Survivor I

For those of us who missed the debut of Survivor, cable channel OLN, the outdoor network/channel/whatever is showing it three times a night, Monday through Thursday.
In Central time, it comes on at 6, 9 and midnight.
I didn't catch on until the end of Season One, so it's been nice to see how it all began.
The first castaways had all sorts of goodies with them, pots and pans, machetes, plates, lotions, soap, fabrics, wood, tools, fishing stuff, etc.
Hell, I could have survived with all that gear.
Will you be watching it, even though we all know Richard Hatch won?

Perjury and Obstruction of Justice

Seems Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is now eyeing Karl Rove and Scooter Libby's conflicting accounts about the Plame leak. Someone lied, maybe both lied.
For those of us worried that Rove's actions didn't meet the high standards of a treasonable act, perjury and obstruction are still enough for indictments, and they'll do in a pinch.
Good for Mr. Fitzgerald!
This story is not a flash in the pan. Finally, the Bush administration's smarmy maneuvering has caught up with them.
Rove shouldn't stock up any office supplies. He'll be leaving by October.
Hear me now, believe me later!

Suggestions For the White House to Get the Media's Focus Off Rovegate

1. Have Saudi buddies bomb the London metro
2. Have Saudi buddies bomb some other, smaller targets in London a week later
3. Nominate a white, conservative Catholic guy to fill a woman's shoes on the SCOTUS
4. Pay some bride-to-be to run away to Vegas on a bus, then blame it on a Mexican dude
5. Find another comatose Christian vegetable to save
6. Pay off Michael Jackson's debts in exchange for him speaking at the next NAMBLA Convention, telling pedophiles how he got by with it
7. Give Tom Cruise more reasons to attack the American Psychiatric Association
8. Send Courtney Love a kilo of crack, then get her a gig on Surreal Life
9. Find O.J. Simpson a new blonde chick to marry, and send him some crank as a wedding gift
10. Have some African dudes push Condoleezza Rice's homeboys around
11. Extend Happy Hour at the Bush twins' favorite DC watering hole
12. Show video of Laura Bush's puppy Mrs. Beasley getting spayed
13. Get George H.W. or Barbara Bush senior to fake a huge heart attack
14. Have Dick Cheney fake a heart attack
15. Have the mother who's searching for her daughter in Aruba turn up missing

Typical Bush Administration Efficiency

I went to the National Sex Offender Public Registry (http://www.nsopr.gov/) to see what our new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has created to help us identify sex offenders in our areas.
The site provided me with this helpful message when I pressed the, "using this search" button:

Web Site Not Responding
The web site you have requested may be experiencing technical difficulties due to a busy or broken server.

Gee, and it probably only cost us taxpayers $150 million or so to create.
Thanks, Alberto. Way to go, payaso.

Hey, Ya Queer Hoser! Marry Me, eh?

Canada's Senate approved gay marriage today, once again proving that Canada has become America and America has become Right-wing Jesus Land.
They were right about Iraq, they know how to brew good beer and they had the sense to ship Jim Carey, Tom Green and Celine Dionne to their backwards southern neighbors.
Now they've proven their Senate is smarter than ours.
All they need to do now to gain total North American Domination is develop a car that runs on GOP hubris and hot air.

P.S. Karl Rove is STILL a traitor who needs to be fired.

The Rove Scandal, in a Nutshell:

"Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes."

-Matthew Cooper
Newsweek Magazine



Game, set, match.
Anything else is just bullshit.

Another Concise Editorial:
What She Said


Rove should have been fired long ago for masterminding deceptions on Iraq

LINDA MCQUAIG
The Toronto Star

Journalists — like people in other lines of work — love to puff up their own importance. And since journalists have access to lots of newspaper space, they have ample opportunity to sell this storyline to the public.

And so, in recent weeks, the American media have been celebrating their commitment to journalistic principles and lauding the heroism of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for going to jail rather than revealing a source.

This is nonsense. The jailing of Miller isn't a story about press freedom. It's a story about how the Bush administration shamelessly attempts to manipulate the "free press" and largely succeeds.

The real hero isn't Miller; it's Joseph Wilson. The former U.S. ambassador was sent by the CIA to Africa in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger — a claim that was central to the White House justification for its invasion of Iraq.

After an investigative trip to Africa, Wilson reported back that the claim was bogus.

But the White House was determined to invade Iraq anyway and so continued to publicly make the claim, including in George Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. Appalled, Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times blowing the whistle on the administration's deceitfulness.

The White House responded by trying to discredit Wilson.

Top White House operative Karl Rove, speaking to a journalist at Time magazine and probably to others, suggested that Wilson lacked credibility and that he'd been selected for the Africa trip by his wife, who worked undercover for the CIA. In so doing, Rove effectively identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, raising the possibility that Rove broke a law against exposing undercover agents.

Miller also spoke to a White House official about Wilson's wife, although she didn't write about it. Previously, Miller was best known for writing hair-raising — and grossly inaccurate, anonymously sourced — accounts of Saddam's weaponry, bolstering the administration's case for war.

When a legal investigation was launched into the exposing of Wilson's wife, Miller, apparently keen to preserve her White House connections, refused to reveal whom she'd talked to and was sent to jail.

It's hard to see this as a journalistic triumph.

Surely protecting sources is about protecting people who take risks in order to get important information out to the public, not about protecting powerful officials who try to smear whistle-blowers and use the press to keep the public in the dark about crucially important matters — like the fabrication of the case for war.

Rove should have been fired long ago for masterminding deceptions on Iraq, but now more than ever.

And if journalists are willing to sacrifice themselves to defend a journalistic principle, they should skip the jail-time histrionics and just do their jobs properly. They could start with exposing the administration's deceit about Iraq, instead of leaving all the heavy lifting to Wilson.

Fahrenheit 9-11

I watched "Fahrenheit 9-11" on Showtime last night after not having seen it for several months, and was pleased to note that even Michael Moore's more outlandish claims have come to bear.
Nothing has changed with the crooked Bush administration. In fact, things have gotten worse.
I watched it with two friends who hadn't seen it before. They were outraged at the clips of our smug, smirking president showing the world at large what a tool he is.
Watch it again if you can.
It's amazing to see just how criminal these Bush people are, and even more amazing to see how gullible people can be, to allow them to stay out of prison, much less in office.
Bush is owned by the Saudis.
That's why Bin Laden's still free, and why he'll stay free.
Bush has done nothing to protect us from more terrorist attacks. September 11 was the moneymaking opportunity of a lifetime for Bush, Cheney and the rest of those lying opportunists.
The movie connects the dots.
See it again if you can.

From the New York Times Editorials:

Karl Rove's America
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 15, 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.
But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.
Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.
Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.
A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.
But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.
Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.
And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.
But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.
Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.
Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

More on How the Right Lies to Protect Their Treasonous Crony
From TomPaine.common sense


Saving Karl Rove
Paul Waldman
July 14, 2005

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow with Media Matters for America and a senior contributor to The Gadflyer.

Every administration has its share of scandals to deal with, and every one handles them in a slightly different way (of course, it helps if your party controls both houses of Congress, so there will be no pesky Congressional investigations to deal with). But the Bush administration’s furious effort to save Karl Rove and justify the outing of a covert CIA operative is a remarkable case study in misdirection, a campaign whose scaffolding of spin is plain for all to see.

Listen to the party hacks and conservative pundits and you can hear an endlessly repeated version of the talking points issued by the Republican National Committee. ( You can see them here, courtesy of Raw Story).

When we unpack its elements we can see not only the state of the art in political damage control but the tools that allow the Republicans to come out on top again and again when controversy rears its ugly head.

Step 1: It’s not really about us, it’s about them.

This is one of the fundamental divides between the two parties today, something Republicans understand and Democrats don’t: If the controversy is about you, you lose; if it’s about your opponent, you win. So when Democrats responded to Karl Rove’s slander about their response to 9/11 by saying that they supported the war in Afghanistan, they were making the mistake of arguing about whether they were or weren’t a bunch of wimps. Every time one of these controversies erupts, the Republicans always make it about Democrats: Who they are, what they’ve said and what they’ve done.

So now when Republicans talk about Rove, we hear the phrases “angry left” and “smear campaign” repeated over and over, as they argue that this is all a tempest in a teapot being drummed up by those mean liberals. Apparently, Democrats are angry that national security would be compromised to punish a Bush administration opponent—go figure.

But the real target of the spin effort is Joe Wilson. As the Republicans understand, if they can get everyone to talk about whether Wilson should have been sent to Niger, whether he should have contributed to the Kerry campaign, or whether a Republican Senate report did or did not contradict him, pretty soon no one will be talking about Karl Rove anymore. Which brings us to…

Step 2: Lie through your teeth.

Republicans have argued that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent (she was), and some have even suggested that Iraq really might have been seeking uranium from Niger, something even the Bush administration has admitted is false. But much of their arguments centers on the utterly phony claim that Karl Rove was trying to stop Matthew Cooper from writing about Wilson because Wilson had claimed that Vice President Cheney sent him to Niger. Wilson never said any such thing; he said that the vice president’s office asked the CIA to investigate the uranium claim, and the CIA asked him to take part in that investigation. Spinner after Republican spinner has lied about this, trying to paint Rove’s outing of Plame as “discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise,” as RNC chairman Ken Mehlman put it.

Step 3: Argue the semantics, or, it depends on what the meaning of “identify” is.

More than once, Karl Rove has denied being the leaker. But when we look at his past comments, we see an attention to semantic detail that is reminiscent of no one so much as our last president. “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name,” he said. In other words, I did not have naming relations with that woman.

Others are echoing this line. “There’s no evidence at all that he ever used her name,” said Newt Gingrich. And even some reporters seem to be accepting this as a reasonable defense. David Sanger of The New York Times reported that the fact that Rove revealed Plame’s identity but not her name “could save his job” if President Bush decides it allows him to worm out of his pledge to fire the leaker.

In fact, the statute in question makes it illegal not to reveal an agent’s name, but “any information identifying such covert agent.” But whether Rove can be convicted in a court of law is a relatively minor point; he revealed the identity of a covert CIA operative for the purpose of a political vendetta. He may be able to avoid jail time if he didn’t know she was undercover, but his actions were no less deplorable or harmful to American national security.

A year ago, President Bush was asked whether he would fire anyone who leaked Plame’s name; Bush responded, “Yes”; Scott McClellan has said the same thing more than once. But on Monday, Fox News’ Carl Cameron, who surely must be the administration’s favorite reporter, tried to give the president some wiggle room by claiming that Bush “never actually said the word ‘fired,’ but that is what some reporters and Democrats seem to expect.”

This is all beginning to sound familiar.

Step 4: It’s all partisan politics.

When Richard Clarke revealed that the Bush White House virtually ignored the issue of terrorism in the months leading up to 9/11, the White House decided to attack the messenger and paint him as a partisan Democrat in the hopes that doing so would convince the press to report the story as just one more partisan squabble. The effort was largely successful, and the same template is being applied here.

“The Democrats are engaging in blatant partisan political attacks,” said Ken Mehlman. “They're just playing partisan politics,” said Dennis Hastert’s spokesperson. The press will dutifully play along by reporting the conflict in he said/she said, style, giving all claims—even blatantly false ones—equal weight, lest they be accused of “bias.” The public, seeing yet one more case of partisan bickering, lines up with whichever party they have more sympathy for, and the substance of the wrongdoing begins to fade away. As The Christian Science Monitor wrote, “At this highly partisan time, much of the public will likely glaze over at the appearance of yet another bout of wrangling in Washington on an issue that does not directly affect them.” The public may well glaze over—but only if the press plays their part in Republican spin.

Politics By Other Means

Reporters have long gazed in wonderment at Rove, passing on even his most transparent attempts at shaping news coverage as cleverly discovered insights into the White House’s closely guarded strategies. But is it possible that the “Boy Genius” who bestrides our political world like a colossus could have been so utterly stupid as to compromise national security for no reason other than punishing someone who had the temerity to criticize the administration? Apparently so.

As Ron Suskind wrote two years ago, “In conversation with scores of people who know him, the assessment ultimately is the same: For Karl Rove, it’s all and only about winning. The rest—vision, ideology, good government, ideas to bind a nation, reasonable dissent, collegiality, mutual respect—is for later.” James Moore and Wayne Slater, authors of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential came to the same conclusion. “He seemed to be driven by a roaring internal engine to control every disagreement, rule every dispute, and dominate every contest,” they wrote. “In everything he did, Karl Rove wanted to win.”

And winning alone has never seemed enough for Rove. The opponent must not simply be defeated but utterly destroyed, both personally and professionally. Suskind reports waiting outside Rove’s door in the White House for an interview, and hearing Rove issue a tirade about a political operative who had displeased him. “We will fuck him,” Rove said, “Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”

As Joshua Green recently reported in The Atlantic Monthly , a campaign Rove ran for an Alabama judicial candidate featured a whisper campaign spreading rumors that the opponent was a pedophile. “What Rove does,” said one campaign consultant who had opposed Rove, “is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship.”

Rove tried to do something similar to Joe Wilson, but in the process he endangered national security—a fact no amount of spin will conceal. As George H.W. Bush once said, “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

Bush Clamming Up?

See? This is how they do it.
A scandal arises, they refuse to speak about it, and hope it fades away.
Bush owes us an explanation about Karl Rove, and he needs to tell us what he plans to do about having a traitor in the White House.
Call or write your senators and the media and tell them Bush's silence won't work this time.
Let's not let them get away with this.

You Can't Have It Both Ways, You Pudgy Pinnochio Faggot

White House Press Pimp Scotty "I Blew Jeff Gannon" McClellan has reached a new low in ham-handed spin doctoring.
Yesterday, when the media was demanding to know what the White House reaction was to Bush's brain Karl Rove turning out to be a treasonous rat, McClellan said the White House didn't want to comment while the investigation was still ongoing.
Reporters reminded him that he'd commented plenty in the past--that Karl Rove was not the leaker, and such an integrity filled human being, he'd never do such a thing, ad nauseam.
After his 30th refusal yesterday to comment on the Rove scandal, a reporter said something to the effect that, two years ago, Bush said he'd fire anyone on his staff who leaked the CIA agent's identity, and the public has a right to know what Bush intends to do.

Scotty, looking red faced, bloodshot eyed and decidedly porkier than usual, haughtily replied, "There will be a time to answer that question, but this is not the time."

Who the fuck says it's not the time?
Who does this punk faggot piglet think he is, lecturing the media like they're naughty school children?
Claiming a quasi gag order is in effect is bullshit--Mc Clellan has spoken plenty on the case before Rove turned out to be the traitor. Now we are supposed to accept that he can't talk about it?

These clowns have gotten away with manipulating the media for nearly six years.
We didn't raise hell when Bush campaigned to carefully screened fans who signed oaths of allegiance and bought tickets just to see him in person and listen to his ridiculous stump speeches.
We didn't raise hell when a born-in-America UP photographer of Indian descent was denied access to photograph the idiot on the campaign trail.
We didn't raise hell when Bush set the record for holding the fewest press conferences in modern history.
We didn't raise hell when the GOP planted a phony faggot hooker representing a fraudulent GOP news organization in those scarce press conferences to waste precious time lobbing Bush softball questions.

But damn it, enough is enough.
It's not a privilege to ask what the president's reaction is to having a traitor on his staff, he fucking owes us an explanation.

He's been totally unaccountable in virtually every aspect of his presidency.
The arrogant little dictator needs to be dethroned and sent back to his shithole dirt farm in Crawford.
And he can take Turd Blossom with him, if he manages to keep his fat traitor ass out of prison.

He Did It. It Was Treason.

No matter how those conniving liars and spin doctors in the Bush administration want to depict it, Karl Rove leaked the identity of a CIA operative to the media, that's a treasonous felony, and he needs to pay.
If he is allowed to get by with it because the system of checks and balances within the federal government has been dismantled, Bush and his band of criminals will go down in history as the most disgraceful, corrupt administration America has ever endured.
If Karl Rove is not removed as Bush's chief advisor, we will all know for certain that a treasonous criminal at-large is calling the shots in the White House.
If the House and Senate allow this type of political corruption to continue, they are no better than the immoral, arrogant executive branch who think our laws don't apply to them.

If you love America, don't allow this treasonous act to go unpunished.
Please contact your legislators and voice your demands that justice be swift and sure.
Don't let Karl Rove piss on the American flag.

Who Thought of This?

IHOP is running a bizarre ad, where everyone is walking around on stilts and a woman cries, "I'm so high!"
Then one of the carnival geeks asks where everyone is going and someone says, "It's the funnel cake carnival at IHOP!"
Then the camera pans over a big pile of funnel cake with a fruity glop on top.
Who thought to use carnival geeks to sell food?
I mean, I get the funnel cake and carnival connection, but why would anyone want to eat funnel cake with fruity glop at IHOP in lieu of just a normal breakfast?
I think the most telling part of the ad was the woman saying she was 'so high.'
She must have also been the copywriter for the ad, because a person would have to be high on some killer weed to crave a trip to IHOP'S gloppy funnel cake carnival.
Friends, please don't go to the IHOP funnel cake carnival. Funnel cake is not really a food sane people should consider as a suitable meal.
If they don't sell any, they'll stop offering it on the menu and pull the ads.
And it better be soon.
I'm starting to develop an adverse glucose reaction just picturing myself at an IHOP full of carnies eating fried dough, dipped in sugar, then doused with a sticky sweet pile of goo.

So Embarrassing

Every time George W. Bush speaks without a script, I feel embarrassed to have someone that simple-minded and inarticulate representing our nation.
It's even worse when I know the whole world is listening.
Yesterday when he spoke of the terrorist attack on London from the G8 Summit, he reminded me of an old Chatty Cathy doll- programmed to speak 8 or 10 pat phrases, and intellectually unable to answer any questions or make any extemporaneous statements.
Let's pray they bust his puppetmaster Karl Rove soon, then they can stuff the dummy in a trunk and let Laura or the twins run things for the rest of this abysmal term.
They couldn't fuck it up any worse than W.

Pandering to the Desperate, Unemployed and Insecure

Oh, God.
The Army's new recruiting campaign includes some TV spots that are carefully designed to appeal to people who'll eat cat turds if you wrap them in American flags and tell them the nutrients in the shit will make them seem less like aimless losers.

In one, a blue collar-type father tells his uniformed son, "There were two things you did when you got off the train I never saw you do, at least not at the same time."
"What's that, Dad?"
"You shook my hand and then you looked me square in the eye. Where'd that come from?"
The son gives him a proud, knowing, yet modest smile.
The Army evidentally taught him what his father could not. How splendid for the son to have risked his ass in Iraq in order to learn invaluable job skills like hand shaking and eye contact.
Is the kid a Collie, or what?

Yes, folks, with the meager promise to parents that junior will come back from the war with the maturity to start respecting his father, the Army is banking on the same morons who reelected Bush to drink more of the grape Koolade and encourage their kids to enlist and go to Iraq.
How stupid do they think people are? Oh wait- the people who reelected Bush *are* stupid.

In another Army recruitment ad, a nice looking young Caucasian lad is telling his skeptical mother that he's joining the reserves, not the Army.
He tells her he's joining because the reserves will train him for a good paying career, "...and they'll train me around here until I'm needed."
The mother nods approvingly and asks him to "tell her more."

Please.
A segment on "60 Minutes" last Sunday described Bush's increasingly desperate backdoor draft, where ready-reservists like a tiny, 55-year-old female with physical disabilities who went off active duty 20+ years ago was forced to fight like hell not to be reactivated and shipped to the front lines in Iraq.
In the ad, the kid saying he wouldn't be deployed until he was needed implied that he wouldn't be shipped off the nanosecond his training in the exciting field of grenade launching was complete.
If Rumsfeld's henchmen in the DoD are trying to force the reactivation of tiny old WACS with disabilities to fill their woefully depleted troop-count, why would anyone think they'd let a strong young stud, new in the reserves, sit around stateside and earn while he learns?
How stupid are these people?
Oh, right. They still think Iraq was connected to the Saudi Terrorist attack on 9/11 because Bush told us so, and he has his very own flight suit.

In another ad, a young black man is politely implying that his mother's reticence about him enlisting in the Army is basically her, trying to keep him a codependent, emasculated mama's boy without any plans for his life.
He says, "It's time for me to become a man."
Then she smiles at him, nods approvingly at his lofty goal, and says, "Okay, tell me more."
Then he says he's thinking of becoming an engineer.
Yeah, right.
When an unskilled minority enlists for this boondoggle of a fucked-up mess Bush created, I somehow doubt the drill sergeant sits with the new recruit and discusses which civilian university will accept his GED and offer him the best undergraduate engineering program, as soon as possible.

If anyone falls for these ham-handed attempts to lure more hapless human targets for the ever-increasing throng of insurgents to shoot and car bomb, it just goes to illustrate how dimwitted this latest round of recruits will be.

The DoD ought to be honest and run an ad campaign that would attract the right kind of troops to sacrifice to Bush's version of the Viet Nam war. Imagine this ad:

Deep voiced announcer:
"Dude, how'd would like to smoke all the free crack and weed you want, without getting busted by The Man? Join the mofo Army and we'll hook you up with all the rock and bud you want, plus we'll pay you so you can have the funds to get you some prime Iraqi pussy when you be's off duty."

Headline, superimposed over GI smoking crack from a glass pipe:

"Operation Freedom Krunk--
Smoke crack, fuck hos, kill some rag-head motherfuckers with the free guns and ammo we give you."


Now THAT would be an honest ad that would attract the right kind of soldier for a Commander in Chief like Bush.

Happy 4th of July

It's too hot to go outside so I've entertained myself all day by watching "The Surreal Life" on VH1.
It's a reality show about a bunch of has-been celebrities who share a home for a few weeks while they experience various cheesy adventures designed to bring out the borderline personality disorder in each of them.
Let's say you're the booking agent for the show. Which has-beens would you like to see stuck in the same house together? Pick six to eight, from any walk of celebrity life.

It WAS Karl Rove!!!


NEW YORK:
"Now that Time Inc. has turned over
to federal court, presumably revealing who its
reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the
Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on
the name of that source, and what might happen to him
or her. Tonight, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group
political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC
political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it
is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl
Rove..."

If this turns out to be true, Rove is guilty of treason and a felony by means of the Dept. of Homeland Security laws protecting CIA operatives.

Git a rope.