Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning.
He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.
To everyone's amazement, all of the color ran from Bush's face.
Then he collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost whimpering.
Finally, he composed himself and asked Rumsfeld, "Just exactly how many is a brazillion?"
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Ken Lay Lives and Blogs!
Well it seems Mr. Lay has survived his sudden death and crossed over to the Blogosphere...
TIVO ALERT: Richardson on Sunday's Meet the Press
Governor Bill Richardson will be a guest on Sunday's Meet the Press to discuss North Korea this Sunday Morning (consult local listings). Governor Richardson has had extensive diplomatic experience in dealing with North Korea and bringing them to the table for peace talks. Yet another stellar reason for the Democratic Party to nominate him for President in 2008....
For more on Richardson and N. Korea...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec05/nkorea_10-24.html
Bush Sought Domestic Call Records Pre-9/11
Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.
The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.
``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.''
The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists.
``The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause `exceptionally grave harm to national security' and would violate both civil and criminal statutes,'' AT&T spokesman Dave Pacholczyk said in an e-mail.
U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller and NSA spokesman Don Weber declined to comment.
Pioneer Groundbreaker
The NSA initiative, code-named ``Pioneer Groundbreaker,'' asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed. That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.
The NSA says on its Web site that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to ``modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.'' The plan, which included the privatization of its ``non-mission related'' systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.
Mayer said the Pioneer project is ``a different component'' of that initiative.
Mayer and Afran said an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee.
Stop Suit
On June 9, U.S. District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel in New York stopped the lawsuit from moving forward while the Federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Washington rules on a U.S. request to assign all related telephone records lawsuits to a single judge.
Robert Varettoni, a spokesman for Verizon, said he was unaware of the allegations against AT&T and declined to comment.
Earlier this week, he issued a statement on behalf of the company that Verizon had not been asked by the NSA to provide customer phone records from either its hard-wired or wireless networks. Verizon also said that it couldn't confirm or deny ``whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program.''
Mayer's lawsuit was filed following a May 11 USA Today report that the U.S. government was using the NSA to monitor domestic telephone calls. Earlier today, USA Today said it couldn't confirm its contention that BellSouth or Verizon had contracts with the NSA to provide a database of domestic customer phone call records.
Jeff Battcher, a spokesman for Atlanta-based BellSouth, said that vindicated the company.
``We never turned over any records to the NSA,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``We've been clear all along that they've never contacted us. Nobody in our company has ever had any contact with the NSA.''
The case is McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc., 06cv3650, in the Southern District of New York.
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.
The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.
``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.''
The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists.
``The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause `exceptionally grave harm to national security' and would violate both civil and criminal statutes,'' AT&T spokesman Dave Pacholczyk said in an e-mail.
U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller and NSA spokesman Don Weber declined to comment.
Pioneer Groundbreaker
The NSA initiative, code-named ``Pioneer Groundbreaker,'' asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed. That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.
The NSA says on its Web site that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to ``modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.'' The plan, which included the privatization of its ``non-mission related'' systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.
Mayer said the Pioneer project is ``a different component'' of that initiative.
Mayer and Afran said an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee.
Stop Suit
On June 9, U.S. District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel in New York stopped the lawsuit from moving forward while the Federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Washington rules on a U.S. request to assign all related telephone records lawsuits to a single judge.
Robert Varettoni, a spokesman for Verizon, said he was unaware of the allegations against AT&T and declined to comment.
Earlier this week, he issued a statement on behalf of the company that Verizon had not been asked by the NSA to provide customer phone records from either its hard-wired or wireless networks. Verizon also said that it couldn't confirm or deny ``whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program.''
Mayer's lawsuit was filed following a May 11 USA Today report that the U.S. government was using the NSA to monitor domestic telephone calls. Earlier today, USA Today said it couldn't confirm its contention that BellSouth or Verizon had contracts with the NSA to provide a database of domestic customer phone call records.
Jeff Battcher, a spokesman for Atlanta-based BellSouth, said that vindicated the company.
``We never turned over any records to the NSA,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``We've been clear all along that they've never contacted us. Nobody in our company has ever had any contact with the NSA.''
The case is McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc., 06cv3650, in the Southern District of New York.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Ken Lay Dead at age 64
Just one week before he was due to be sentenced Ken Lay dies in Colorado of an apparent massive heart attack. Skeptics and conspiracy theorists alike were quick to question the truthfulness of the heart attack story and are calling for an autopsy. One, a victim of the Enron scam, who wished to remain anonymous was quoted as saying, "Everyone knows the guy didn't even have a heart!"
Sentencing will continue as scheduled, Las Vegas oddsmakers calling it an even bet whether Lay is sentenced to minimum security "country club" hell, or federal "pound me in the ass" hell.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
A Republican Worth Listening to....
The Honorable Rep. Ron Paul
Republican from Texas
Finally, a Republican who isn't so caught up in partisanship and self interets. Read and enjoy....
Monday, July 03, 2006
Britons tire of cruel, vulgar US: poll
The beautiful part of this poll is the fact that just one percent of those polled believe Bush is a great leader, proving once again that every village needs an idiot...
US judge faces year in jail for getting pumped up at murder trials
Apparently a judge in Oklahoma (deviant capitol of the world I am sure) couldn't keep his hands off his penis pump during trials...gives new meaning to "All rise..."
Big Mess O' Potamia: Al-Zarqawi's Speed Dial
The Bush Administration has repeatedly denounced critics of the war by citing the big success story, that of the instillation of a new government. It would seem, however, that we may be vesting our faith in the wrong hands....
This morning's email exchange between me and mi amigo Scott...
Scott wrote:
Remember, if you will, the stories about the Democratic insiders who, after Sept. 11, told reporters they were relieved that George Bush was the president and not Al Gore -- not, as it happened, because they thought Bush would do a better job, but because they realized (quite correctly) that Republicans would never have rallied around Gore the way that Democrats were willing to get behind Bush in a time of grave national crisis. That they would, more than likely, have tried to seize political advantage from it by the same kind of absurdist machinations that drove Clinton's impeachment. Strangely enough, many conservative organs touted this news story as "proof" they had done the right thing, and that Bush was the right man for the job.In fact, it has been a longstanding contention of mine that if Sept. 11 had occurred on Al Gore's watch, Congress would have long ago convened impeachment hearings that would have been a classic Fox News show trial. Dan Burton would have been out in his back yard flying model airplanes into watermelons, and Ken Starr would have found reasons to issue a detailed 9,000 page report on Tipper and Al's sex life, which armchair psychiatrists like Charles Krauthammer, William Safire and Andrew Sullivan would have pronounced as the deep psychological root of the Sept. 11 attacks. At the end of the impeachment process, the Scalia Five would have issued a ruling allowing Congress to name a Republican as Gore's replacement.
I wrote:
You are so right. It astounds me, the shameful maneuverings that today's Republicans are willing to go through, and the laughable justifications for such contortionism. I ask Charles often, "Do you really think that a blow job was worth impeachment, but Bush should continue his Presidency?" To which he always replies, "Clinton commited perjury, rule of law, people go to jail for 10 years for perjury, blah blah blah..." Now I still maintain that perjury is a stretch for what Clinton did, and that he was an idiot for doing what he did to begin with, but that notwithstanding you can't make a sheep step back, put DOWN the Kool-aid for a minute (oh that tasty, tasty Kool-Aid) and reason this through. They can't see the bigger issues, the implications for our nation. Bill Clinton's behavior was reckless and destructive, but his circle of destruction was fairly limited in scope, he only really hurt himself, his family, and Monica Lewinsky. It was Ken Starr who took Clinton's behavior and used it as a weapon against our nation, raising the moral outcry and bringing impeachment charges that ultimately divided the nation into two factions: the first being normal, rational people who perhaps, perhaps not, have made a few sexual missteps in their lives, but know that there is a difference between personal and public misdoings, and the second being haughty, self-righteous pinheads who probably and sadly have never made any sexual missteps, in their own eyes anyway, and view personal indescretion as a major character flaw. These people won't be happy until Jesus Christ is President, but are quite pleased that he has sent an ambassador in his absence.
Scott wrote:
Remember, if you will, the stories about the Democratic insiders who, after Sept. 11, told reporters they were relieved that George Bush was the president and not Al Gore -- not, as it happened, because they thought Bush would do a better job, but because they realized (quite correctly) that Republicans would never have rallied around Gore the way that Democrats were willing to get behind Bush in a time of grave national crisis. That they would, more than likely, have tried to seize political advantage from it by the same kind of absurdist machinations that drove Clinton's impeachment. Strangely enough, many conservative organs touted this news story as "proof" they had done the right thing, and that Bush was the right man for the job.In fact, it has been a longstanding contention of mine that if Sept. 11 had occurred on Al Gore's watch, Congress would have long ago convened impeachment hearings that would have been a classic Fox News show trial. Dan Burton would have been out in his back yard flying model airplanes into watermelons, and Ken Starr would have found reasons to issue a detailed 9,000 page report on Tipper and Al's sex life, which armchair psychiatrists like Charles Krauthammer, William Safire and Andrew Sullivan would have pronounced as the deep psychological root of the Sept. 11 attacks. At the end of the impeachment process, the Scalia Five would have issued a ruling allowing Congress to name a Republican as Gore's replacement.
I wrote:
You are so right. It astounds me, the shameful maneuverings that today's Republicans are willing to go through, and the laughable justifications for such contortionism. I ask Charles often, "Do you really think that a blow job was worth impeachment, but Bush should continue his Presidency?" To which he always replies, "Clinton commited perjury, rule of law, people go to jail for 10 years for perjury, blah blah blah..." Now I still maintain that perjury is a stretch for what Clinton did, and that he was an idiot for doing what he did to begin with, but that notwithstanding you can't make a sheep step back, put DOWN the Kool-aid for a minute (oh that tasty, tasty Kool-Aid) and reason this through. They can't see the bigger issues, the implications for our nation. Bill Clinton's behavior was reckless and destructive, but his circle of destruction was fairly limited in scope, he only really hurt himself, his family, and Monica Lewinsky. It was Ken Starr who took Clinton's behavior and used it as a weapon against our nation, raising the moral outcry and bringing impeachment charges that ultimately divided the nation into two factions: the first being normal, rational people who perhaps, perhaps not, have made a few sexual missteps in their lives, but know that there is a difference between personal and public misdoings, and the second being haughty, self-righteous pinheads who probably and sadly have never made any sexual missteps, in their own eyes anyway, and view personal indescretion as a major character flaw. These people won't be happy until Jesus Christ is President, but are quite pleased that he has sent an ambassador in his absence.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
The Greatest Thing I Have Read Online
The Political and the Personal by Dave Neiwert
This is so good I couldn't help myself. Stroll on over to Orcinus to check out the best blog I have ever seen. I was going to post something ELSE of his but this is just the best, most eloquent writing I have seen in ages! You will want to run out and buy all Dave Neiwert's books, and I am sure he would appreciate it if we all did just that.
This is so good I couldn't help myself. Stroll on over to Orcinus to check out the best blog I have ever seen. I was going to post something ELSE of his but this is just the best, most eloquent writing I have seen in ages! You will want to run out and buy all Dave Neiwert's books, and I am sure he would appreciate it if we all did just that.
Koizumi Tours Graceland, Michael and Lisa Marie Together Again
From left: Bush, Koizumi, Lisa Marie Presley, and Michael JacksonIsn't it great that these kids reconciled...makes you feel all warm and fuzzy all over.
what??? you mean that's Priscilla? YIIIIIIIKES!
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