Bush did a kind of before - and - after thing yesterday, first visiting West Point:
...then on his return to the White House hanging out briefly with two marines who were blown up in Ramadi. They look pleased as punch to be smooched by President Inappropriate Invasion of Personal Space, giving his special healing kiss:
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Just a day after fellow bathroom goblin Bob "Twenty Dollar" Allen failed yet again in his own absurd quest to expunge all hints of gayness from his police record, the original Idaho toilet troll Larry Craig lost his most recent appeal. Craig was arrested for trying to pick up a cop in a Minneapolis airport men's room, blah blah blah, and ever since he has been trying to convince legal authorities that he just has a "wide stance" when he urinates in a very heterosexual manner in public restrooms.
After he pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge in 2007, Larry Craig changed his mind and said he wanted to withdraw his plea. A judge said no. So then he asked a three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals to review his request, and that panel also said no. So now, just like Bob Allen is doing in Florida, Craig is toying with the idea of elevating his case to the state Supreme Court, where he will attract even more attention to the fact that he once tried to have sex with a man in a bathroom.
Larry Craig loses appeal in airport sex sting case [AP]
But Larry's not gay.
Traditionally, an outgoing senator who has been elected or appointed to a higher office is granted great deference by the governor who appoints his successor. If the outgoing senator wants candidate X to be appointed for the remainder of his term of office, the governor usually appoints candidate X.
Not Governor Blagojevich of Illinois though. Obama recommended his successor to Blagojevich - then Blagojevich tried to shake him down for bribes. Obama refused to be bribed. Blagojevich called Obama a motherfucker for refusing to give Blagojevich a bribe.
Now, here's the thing about Chicago-style politics. You don't ever, *ever* try to stick up someone who has the goods on you. And you are damned tootin' right that Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had the goods on Blagojevich. Speculation is that Blagojevich got narced on by Rahm The Knife because the shakedown attempt pissed Rahm off, thus the arrest of Blagojevich.
Ah yes, Chicago politics. The gift that keeps on giving.
Rod Blagojevich, what the hell is psychologically wrong with you?
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2008/12/rod-blagojevich-what-hell-is-wrong-with.html
In other news, "How the Right Learned to Love Fitzgerald": http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/bagging-blagojevich-or-how-right-learned-
Josh Marshall: I think Blagojevich's best defense is probably going to be an insanity defense based on the evidence of his idea that he was setting himself up to run for president by appointing himself to serve out Obama's senate term.
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George Bush plans to let the EPA rule against cleaning up perchlorate from Americans' drinking water, even though its toxic effects are well documented.
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Over at WorldNetDaily, Pat Boone compares Prop 8 protesters to the terrorists in Mumbai.
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Former general and former drug czar and present Pentagon propagandist Barry McCaffrey, you'll recall, was the subject of a recent evisceration by the New York Times.
If you don't recall, follow the links in the Columbia Journalism Review article by Charles Kaiser from which the excerpt below comes.
It turns out that McCaffrey is the living embodiment of all the worst aspects of entrenched Washington corruption — a man who shares with scores of other retired officers a huge financial interest in having America conduct its wars for as long as possible.House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank recently announced that he wants to cut the Pentagon's budget by twenty-five percent — or approximately $150 billion a year. Sadly, because of the entrenched position of McCaffrey and hundreds of others like him, there is almost no chance at all that president-elect Obama will do anything to curb the military-industrial threat about which President Dwight Eisenhower first warned us in his farewell address forty-eight years ago. With the willing complicity of NBC News, that threat just keeps on getting stronger and stronger, every year.
But the Times's recent evisceration of the sleazy war flack wasn't total. To it must be added Sy Hersh's account of how McCaffrey's role in Bush War I, the Gulf War, was not that of a conquering hero but rather a bloodthirsty, glory-seeking butcher who needlessly massacred hundreds if not thousands of fleeing and helpless Iraqi troops — during a ceasefire.
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Some days you just can't make this stuff up
Immigration & Customs Enforcement official arrested for hiring illegal aliens to clean her house.
Wow. So this lady, Lorraine Henderson, was in charge of keeping illegal aliens out of America. Except the ones she wanted in America because she needed a cheap housekeeper, apparently. And don't say that she didn't know that her housecleaner was an illegal alien, because she's on tape threatening her housekeeper with deportation if she doesn't do a good job of cleaning the house... color me suprised. Well, not so much. Corrupt Bush Administration official? Dude! That's like saying "macaroni and cheese"... you'd be surprised if you didn't find the word "corrupt" near the words "Bush Administration official"!
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The Defacto President
For the rest of our history, even if America survives well into the next millennium, the image of George W. Bush's twisted, grotesque smirk will be an eternal reminder of this generation's jaw-dropping naivete involving politics and affairs of state. The fact that this half-witted little guttersnipe was elected twice to the most powerful office in the world defies credulity. And considering the gravitas of the two men he was able to defeat, his tenure as president is all-the-more embarrassing. It is akin to Jascha Heifetz and Itzhak Perlman losing to Jack Benny on the American Idol violin competition.
http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/defacto-president.html
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While we continue to pour money into Iraq and Afghanistan, our own people are starving
The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) Calls on President-Elect Obama and Congress to Make Ending Hunger a Priority
Washington, D.C. - The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) today pressed the new Administration and Congress to quickly implement policies that will effectively and decisively reduce hunger in America, just as the U.S. Department of Agriculture released new data showing that more than 36.2 million Americans struggled against hunger in 2007, compared to 35.5 million in 2006 and 33.2 million in 2000. The number of people in the worst-off category – the hungriest Americans – rose by forty percent since 2000, from 8.5 million to 11.9 million.
"During the campaign, President-elect Barack Obama committed to ending childhood hunger in this country by 2015," said FRAC President Jim Weill. "Polling data show that Americans overwhelmingly agree that ending hunger should be a top priority for the nation. While this is a time of growing hunger and economic distress around the nation, there are important opportunities ahead that can significantly boost our nation's investment in the fight against hunger and help the President-elect meet this important goal." continued
Bad news. The UN paints a bleak picture for the hungry in the rest of the world as well. The goal was to halve hunger in the world by 2015 and now they say that that goal is ever more elusive. 40 million more people were plunged into chronic hunger this year. The story is here.
Let's try to do our part and contribute to food drives not only during the holiday season but all year long. We can't count on the powers that be to solve this.
Arthur Blessit
Evangelist
Dear Mr. Blessit,
I'll just come right out and say it. Your plan to put a cross into orbit is misguided. By your own admission, no one will be able to see it. What purpose does that serve? What is the value of a cross that can't be seen?
I want you to do something. Please go outside on Christmas Eve, the night before one of our holiest holidays, and look at the moon. Do you know what you'll see? It won't be a cross; it'll be a crescent moon, the symbol of Islam. Everyone in the Northern Hemisphere will see it. How can an invisible cross beat that?
Forget about your puny dream of launching a little girly-cross into orbit. Your plan needs to be much more ambitious if you're going to upstage the Muslims. Think big; launch a project to sculpt the moon into a giant cross.
Yes, I know it sounds too expensive to carry out, and that'd be true if you limited your approach to the use of secular technology. But you're an evangelist, damn it. You can cut a lot of the cost by employing the many faith-based technologies we've acquired from the pure research being conducted in the field of creation science.
Think about it. If God can create man out of a wad of clay and woman out of a rib, He can build a space station, an arsenal of sculpting nukes, and the spacecraft to transport it all out of a really big pile of dirt. The only thing needed beyond that is a whole crapload of faith.
And thanks to the good people behind Clean Coal, we can find both a big pile of dirt and a concentration of faith in the same place, the national mountain top removal clean coal mining and Christian soul-saving paradise that stretches across parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. There's lots of dirt there--they've filled whole valleys with mine tailings--and there's even more God-fearing conservative evangelicals. It's the perfect place for a faith and creation based space program.
I'm sure the clean coal people would be happy to donate their former mountain tops to the project. Their environmental strategies have always been faith-based. And Lord knows, the locals will jump at the chance to prove creation science's validity. All they need is someone to lead them in prayer. You're obviously that guy.
There you have it, a plan for a project that boldly announces to the universe that Earth is a Christian planet. now, get 'er done.
Heterosexually yours,
Gen. JC Christian, patriot
U.S. Special Forces troops killed six Afghan policemen and a civilian yesterday in what military officials are calling a "tragic case of mistaken identity." The Americans were fighting militants near a checkpoint in Qalat, a city in southern Afghanistan. The policemen apparently mistook the Americans for the Taliban and began to fire on them. A U.S. helicopter then fired on the policemen's position. Thirteen others were wounded in the fight. As the BBC notes, "[S]o-called friendly fire incidents between US or NATO and Afghan forces happen frequently."
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Bank Of America Gives In To Republic Windows And Doors WorkersWow. Chalk one up for the good guys. http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/12/9/1715/72455
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I don't know how these people can live with themselves:
Military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles that were known to better protect forces from what proved to be the conflict's deadliest weapon, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says.
The Pentagon "was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," says the 72-page report....
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The scene above is from a Pentecostal church in Detroit, where workers are rightfully concerned about their economic future. The religious approach, however, seems to be to put a couple of big ol' dinosaur SUVs (at least they're hybrids in this case) on stage, streak people's foreheads with oil, and pray for a big bailout.
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The White House is sending a two-page memo to Cabinet members "and other high-ranking officials" with official talking points meant to bolster President Bush's legacy. The memo, obtained by the L.A. Times, is called "Speech Topper on the Bush Record" and looks at Bush's presidency through distinctly rose-colored glasses:
Titled "Speech Topper on the Bush Record," the talking points state that Bush "kept the American people safe" after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained "the honor and the dignity of his office."
The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success.
It mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his presidency: the collapse of the housing market and major financial services companies, the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
In a section on the economy, speakers are invited to say that Bush cut taxes after 2001, setting the stage for years of job growth.
As for the current economic crisis, the memo says that Bush "responded with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown."
The document is otherwise silent on the recession, which claimed 533,000 jobs in November, the highest number in 34 years.
The sins of omission notwithstanding, the whole mendacious, slimy trick claiming the Busheviks "kept the country safe" since 9/11 omits the point that the Bushies were in charge on that day.
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Sen.- elect Mark Begich (D-AK), who beat Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) in a week-long contested race in November, said he doesn't believe it is "appropriate" to send the 85-year-old Stevens to jail. Stevens, who was convicted on corruption charges in October, asked for a new trial on Friday. (AP/Roll Call)
If he wasn't too old to commit the crime, he's not too old to do the time. That's what I think.
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Wingnuts continue to have a problem with reality.
Here's Karl Rove on Bill O'Lielly yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Gx__i7Gt0&eurl=http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/09/rove-oreilly-economy/
O'REILLY: All right, so you are agreeing with me then that there is a conscious effort on the part of The New York Times and other liberal media to basically paint as drastic a picture as possible, so that when Barack Obama takes office that anything is better than what we have now?
ROVE: Yes.
That's right. The media made it all up. We didn't actually see the stock market plunge, the bailouts of gargantuan financial firms was unnecessary, automakers are doing just peachy, and the economy didn't lose over 500,000 jobs in November alone. It's all a conspiracy.
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AIG offered cash awards to another 38 executives in a retention program with payments of as much as $4 million: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKIvmgvNl6zA&refer=home
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Happy Anniversary!
On this day eight years ago, Chimpy McStagger subverted the US Constitution with the help of his father and the US Supreme Court and staged a silent coup d' état, installing the idiot boy as the king.
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