The Great Keith Olbermann

I don't like to just cut and paste other people's thoughts, words, or work. First it is lazy. Second it is someone else's. In this case, the great Keith Olbermann. But these words are worth reading by everyone. So I cut, and paste, with apologies and appreciation to Mr. Olbermann...

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier - a speech against slavery.

The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair and smashed its metal point across the senator's head.

Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold blows to Sumner's head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only because his cane finally broke.

Others will cite John Brown's attack on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.

In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner - but when voters in Brooks' district started sending him new canes.

Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.

There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.

There is no line this president has not crossed - nor will not cross - to keep one political party in power.

He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears - some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.

Sen. John Kerry called him out Monday.

He did it two years too late.

He had been too cordial - just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000, just as millions of us have been too cordial ever since.

Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education - that "if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you can get stuck in Iraq."

The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

That phrase - "appearing to be too stupid" - is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

Because there are only three possibilities here.

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not "make the most of it," who do not "study hard," who do not "do their homework," and who do not "make an effort to be smart" might still just be stupid, but honest.

No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops or even on the nation itself.

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the first two options are in some way conflated.

That it is both politically convenient for you and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn't about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you.

So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans' deliberate distortions.

Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?

This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, "look like just a comma."

This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.

This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm's way.

This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.

This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of "plan" after barely two months.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue.

And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.

We will not receive them, of course.

This president never apologizes.

Not to the troops.

Not to the people.

Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.

In calling him a "stuffed suit," Sen. Kerry was wrong about the press secretary.

Mr. Snow's words and conduct, falsely earnest and earnestly false, suggest he is not "stuffed," he is inflated.

And in leaving him out of the equation, Sen. Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Sen. John McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.

He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.

Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry's head came in a context even more disturbing.

Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.

He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how "many of them have lost limbs."

He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.

Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.

And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.

And to continue this slander as late as this morning - as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.

Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats - one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.

That was beneath the senator from Arizona.

And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured out of a desperation and a futility as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Sen. Sumner.

This is our beloved country now as you have redefined it, Mr. Bush.

Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran in defense of military personnel whom that decorated veteran did not insult.

Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party's advertisements against Harold Ford.

Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness - and the bipartisanship - of Michael J. Fox. Yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.

Oh, and sir, don't forget to drag your own wife into it.

"It's always easy," she said of Mr. Fox's commercials - and she used this phrase twice - "to manipulate people's feelings."

Where on earth might the first lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?

From your endless manipulation of people's feelings about terrorism?

"However they put it," you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq, "their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses."

No manipulation of feelings there.

No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.

No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn't; no subtle smile as the first lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox's back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.

Winning in Iraq, sir.

Winning in America, sir.

There we have chaos - joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias, and the Americans have been ordered out by the prime minister of Iraq … and our secretary of defense doesn't even know about it!

And here we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing - a code of deceit that somehow permits a president to say, "If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one."

Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.

Instead of "declare victory and get out" we now have "declare victory and stay indefinitely."

And also here - we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition.

True domestic terror:

Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.

Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.

A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published "national security information" that was openly available on the Internet.

One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.

And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator's supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent - and the rage - of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner.

Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.

You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI's case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.

No, you did not.

And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry's rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

All you have to do sir, is hand out enough new canes.

I'm Keith Olbermann. Good night, and good luck.
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"Hands" Coulter Could Face Criminal Charges

An investigation has begun into the voting activities of Ann Coulter, to determine if she knowingly voted in the wrong pricinct. Coulter is refusing to comply with the investigation. It is said she could get 5 years in prison if convicted. It seems a stretch, but who among us wouldn't welcome the silence?

Also, could she be faced with solitary confinement? I would think being forced to be her cellmate could constitute cruel and inhuman punishment. Of course, if we sent her to one of Cheney's secret prisons it might slide under the torture rules.

On second thought, that is just going too hard on Al-Qaeda.

The Macaca Mafia

The George Allen v. Jim Webb celebrity grudgematch has already generated more interest than a Paris Hilton sex tape. This week's highlights...

George Allen has highlighted passages from Jim Webb's fictional novels in an attempt to portray Webb as a moral degenerate. This is silly. It is like assuming Stephen King is a murderer, Anne Rice a vampire, or Lynn Cheney a lesbian.

Webb is responding by reading reviews of his novels at campaign stumps. This is an interesting way of staying on message. Vote for me, critics LOVE my work.

Oh and Allen's staff, responding to a heckler asking, "Why did you spit on your first wife?" politely showed him the door. The poor man must have been quite drunk, because he kept falling down, and these gentlemen had a heck of a time holding him up. I think it must be hard to support a staggering body with a chokehold. Luckily cameras caught the whole thing...

To watch the video click HERE

This is a particularily nasty race, and as we come down to the final few days it will be one to watch closely, because you never know when one of them gets fed up and just sends his goons to take the other out.

My money is on Webb to win the race, but in a fight on Allen, because he has thugs to do the work for him.

RED HERRING ALERT: Six days to go...

...and we have another controversy. This time the White House is demonizing John Kerry again. Some democrats say this guy is the gift that keeps on giving. Others are rooting him on.

First Kerry, speaking to college students, made a gaffe when he said something to the effect of "stay in school, work hard, get good grades or you end up in Iraq." He has since said he botched a joke, that he was going to say "you end up like Bush and get us into Iraq." Frankly neither version is particularly funny or relevant, after all there is no draft. When Kerry was a young man it was true that if you didn't get good grades and into college you were probably headed for a jungle in Vietnam or a mad dash over the Canadian border. Today, not so much. But granted, an argument could be made that if you get good grades, get scholarships, and get into a good college then the merciless recruiters won't look so tempting when they come to buy your soul for the whopping sum of $20,000. Also, Bush DID go to college, and achieved a level of mediocrity rarely seen in the transcripts of future presidents.

That notwithstanding, Kerry blew a joke. Bush is blowing a war, and I was pleased that Kerry came back swinging, refusing to apologize to the right, making no excuses, and demanding an apology for the troops from Bush and Cheney. John Kerry is no more responsible for the failure of this war than you or I am, that blame rests squarely on the shoulders of this chickenhawkish administration.

What the republicans are trying to do is spin this to their advantage (I know! I was shocked too!) by making it look like WORDS are the reason we are failing in Iraq. They want us to believe that John Kerry, like John Murtha and Max Cleland before him, is a coward and hates America. They want you to forget that John Kerry, like John Murtha and Max Cleland before him, is a war HERO, who served his country voluntarily in a time of war, saw combat and was injured. They want you to forget that this brave man came home and fought again, this time for the truth, to end a war and save American lives. They want you to forget that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, P.J. O'Rourke, John Ashcroft, Alan Keyes, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Pat Buchanan, George Will, Bill Bennett, Dan Quayle, Phil Gramm, Tom Delay, Dick Armey, and Dennis Hastert are just a few of the notable republicans who shirked their patriotic duty to go over to Vietnam and fight the bad fight. They want you to forget that on that list are several people who gleefully got us into this war, they want us to forget that they are unwilling to send their kids to fight it, they want us to forget that OUR kids are the ones going over, and dying, this month 100 of them.

They want you to remember that John Kerry, and by extension all liberals, HATE America, hate our troops, and want to give in to Al Qaeda. They want you to repeat this mantra all the way to the polls. They want to hold onto power, because they have too much at stake to lose.

Don't let them fool you, and don't let them fool anyone you know. It is critical that the democrats win this one, not for the party, but for America.

The Jerk Factor: What To Do When Your Candidate is a Nimrod

A friend of mine came to me recently, in a quandry about how to vote in her congressional race. She is an avowed liberal, just like me, and is desperate to see the house return to the hands of the democrats, but really emphatically dislikes the candidate the party has nominated on many levels. The race is a close one. She has asked me for some advice. Does she vote for this person she feels is terribly unqualified and ruthless? Or does she vote for the republican, who just rubber stamps whatever Bush puts forth? She is really disinclined to skip over that race, and would never miss an election, believe me. I have seen her get out of the hospital earlier than her doctors would have liked just to get to the polls...she is no shirker of civic duty. I could tell she was pretty troubled, and wanted to help her make a choice and feel better about it. I hope this helps!

Sometimes we are faced with a choice in politics that is pretty unsavory either way you go. I think this is a problem more often for republicans than democrats, because I have heard them over the years talk about voting for the lesser of two evils a lot more frequently than democrats, and, let's face some facts here, republicans have less appealing personalities, are more likely to be at the least jerks, and many times outright criminals. It has to be hard to be faced with the choices conservatives face in the voting booth. We on the left have much to be grateful for. Occasionally, however, we find a jerk in our midst. Normally the vetting process prevents them from making it onto a general election ballot, but every now in then one inexplicably comes through and we are forced to make a choice. Here is where I think we can learn a few lessons from our friends on the right.

Republicans have learned that sometimes issues are greater than personalities, and that to further their own agendas they must vote for people that they would much rather not. Just look at the re-election of Bush, whether there was vote tampering or not, Republicans toed the line, despite some pretty pathetic approval ratings, because they believed that the issues were more important than the personality. Republicans nail us time and again on the issues because they know how to push their agenda despite their jerk handicap.

This has to be true for us, too. Truthfully, on the issues, Americans tend to identify more closely with democrats, especially domestic issues. We need to be vigilant, vote the issues and overlook the personality, at least in the general election. It is just too important. So, my friend, vote democrat in this race, and know that there will be another primary election in 18 months.

Limbaugh's Pitiful Attempt to Backpeddle

Yesterday I called my conservative Mother-in-Law to give her a little trouble about her hero and his meanspirited at best, cruel is more like it, attack on Michael J. Fox. Of course, she defended Rush, after all he is a cuddly, lovable, sweet prankster. Predictably she said that his remarks were taken out of context, that she had listened to the whole show and he wasn't attacking Fox but rather praising him for his courage (yeah, this woman has had some advanced spin and denial training).

The conversation degenerated, I said something to the effect of Rush being a hillbilly heroin addict and criminal picking on a man with a terrible disease. Gwen defended him again saying he had a medical problem and those were prescription drugs. I never had to use my housekeeper to purchase my prescription drugs on the street, but then I don't have a housekeeper or a need for oxycontin. When she said he wasn't a criminal I told her that innocent people don't cop a plea, and she said he didn't! Oh the lies! I told her he plead guilty to charges, she said that he did that to protect himself from the expense of defending himself against the charges and that he was innocent, and the DA couldn't make the case. She said that pleading guity doesn't mean a conviction. Ok, she is a nice lady but not exactly Matlock.

So I decided to go to Rush Limbaugh's website and get his story on the scandal and this is what I found:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102506/content/america_s_anchorman.guest.html

Not exactly a stirring mea culpa. More like a "You people just twist my words, and attack my character, you whining liberal pinkos! Get over it!"

Poor Rush.

Nevada Governor's Race Gets Fugly

Republican Congressman (why is it that this label is now associated with the lowest in conduct and behavior?) and gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons can't seem to make it to the finish line without tripping over his own feet.

Last week he was accused of assaulting a woman in a parking lot.

This week THIS hit the news....

Best of luck in the private sector Mr. Gibbons.

Headlines and Commentary

Ok I have been up for three hours and I am finally getting to the business of reading the morning headlines and drinking my first cup of coffee. The coffee is very delicious, a bold "Thunderbolt" blend from Rio Grande Roasters, in my great big GOOD MORNING mug with three yellow packets and some milk. MMMMM. As usual the headlines range from pretty hilarious to pretty sad. Let's get going!

CNN:

White House Denies Dramatic Iraq Policy Shift Yeah right, Bush is denying using the "Stay the Course" line, and relabelling "Cut and Run" to "Walk and Talk." This wonk wonders if Bush has picked up some writers from The Daily Show. Seriously, though, it has got to be hard to be selling this disaster of a war to the public...and this is just putting a different shade of lipstick on the same old pig. I don't envy them. I do laugh at them.

Opponent Denies Knocking Sen. Clinton's Looks This guy has a lot of nerve. True, the 70's were not Hillary's best decade, truth be told they weren't kind to many. I would kill to see a picture of this old coot in 70's fashion. I will say though that Hillary's current look, while not bad at all, looks a little like Shirley Jones from the Partridge Family, but it works for her.

USA TODAY:

Officer struck by Bush's cousin dies Yep, ole Johnny Walker (I promise I didn't make that one up!) hits a cop and the cop dies, but he didn't get tested for DUI. I wonder how many other people could get away with that.

New York Times:

General May Increase U.S. Troop Levels in Baghdad See, this is where the electorate gets confused. Stay the course, timed withdrawl, more troops, less troops, cut and run, walk and talk...who knows what is real anymore?

PC problems have slowed down the blog process today, plus one sick kid and one just making a mess, but I will be back with the "Naptime Report".

Bill Richardson on Real Time with Bill Maher Video Link

Click here to watch the full interview!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdTDR4IZSMQ

Changes to Liberaltruthsayer

Good morning my friends. I have made a change to LTS and wanted to let you know about it and why.

I have enabled comment moderation on my blog. I have done this because I have had a particularily nasty troll hounding me for months. Initially I thought I would just keep his comments up because he was particularily ill informed and barely literate, and frankly I enjoyed making fun of him. Lately his comments have taken a very bad turn, and I don't like where this is going.

I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause any of you, but I refuse to let this person continue to insult me and my other posters. I welcome political discourse, I embrace other opinions, but personal attacks do not belong here.

lts

UN: 914,000 Have Fled Homes in Iraq

Yep, things are going well. Remarkably well.

We are bringing Iraq freedom.

Freedom from the burden of homeownership.

Freedom from the shackles of life.

Freedom from dignity.

Freedom from wealth.

Freedom from oil.

Don't tell me that this is about fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, and don't tell me that Sadaam was a monster. He may have been a monster, but what we are doing is an abomination.

Of course, the right will say these numbers are meaningless. They will say, just like they did with the figure of 655,000 Iraqi's killed that came out last week that the numbers were fabricated. Interestingly the only thing proven to be fabricated was the evidence to support this invasion of a soveriegn nation and the ruthless killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands.

I play Scrabble online, at a marvelous site, www.isc.ro. It is just the coolest place to play if you are a WordFreak. Well our nice little community came unglued today. I was playing and not paying attention to the chatter in the main lobby when someone private messaged me, "Can you believe she enlisted???" Well there went my game. I immediately lost all interest in beating my friend in England and turned to the lobby and demanded an explanation...it is a young girl from Texas, who was training to be a dog groomer. Her father, another Scrabbler and helper on the site, is a military man, and this young girl was following in his footsteps.

I got really angry. I asked her why she was so willing to throw her young life away for a lie, for a bullshit war against a people that had never attacked us, for Bush's lies. I caught a lot of flack. I didn't care. Suddenly I was willing to be gagged in the forum. I was challenging them to gag me. Politics are forbidden from discussion, and swearing too, and I was at both with a fury. I told the girl that I am a patriot and I am against the war, and she told me that you can't be both, and if I didn't like the war I should maybe move to Mexico!

This is where I lost it. I told her that if she felt the need to defend this country with her life she should first learn something about it, like the fundamental principle that dissention is not apatriotic. She said that I should stop listenting to the lies of the media, they are not reporting how good we are doing in Iraq and how they are so glad we are occupying them. I felt like the world had shifted on its axis.

How in the hell do these kids get these ideas? From their friendly recruiters. Rah Rah! We rock! Might makes right!

I wanted to shake her. I wanted to shake her father. I wanted to strangle a few people, too.

It doesn't make any sense to me anymore.

MUST SEE TV!

Tonight on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"... Governor Richardson!!!! Check your local listings!

What it really comes down to on election day...

What the republicans want you to think they are afraid of when you go to the polls...





What the republicans are REALLY afraid of...

Be a REAL patriot...Vote Democrat on November 7th.

Bring out the Boogeyman!

Be prepared, be very scared...here he comes!

The desperate cowards on the right will unleash a brand new attack ad, aimed directly at terrorizing you. They are dragging out the boogeyman and waving him in your face, and telling you that a vote for Democrats is a vote for Osama.

Don't you believe it for a minute.

Lets' show the republicans that we won't take their fearmongering anymore. Shame on them.

Kim So Sorry

Oops...my bad!

Guilty Pleasure: Continual F-Bomb Fallout

This morning I find myself feeling just a little (very little) bit guilty for taking so much pleasure in the fact that political gangrene is devouring the republicans limb by limb. I find myself chuckling as I write this, and alternately doubling over, knowing I should try to remain a little dignified and somber at the impending death of the beast, but I just can't help myself.

Heather Wilson is toast. Gone. No MAS. Some years ago investigative journalist Larry Barker of KOAT-TV revealed in an interview with Heather Wilson allegations that she had removed a family file (at the time she was head of the Children, Youth and Family Division) that was embarrassing, and Heather denied it, quickly abandoned the interview and while leaving was caught stealing Larry Barker's own file! (I would direct you to YouTube at this point to watch this hilarious video snippet for yourselves but KOAT has just asked YouTube to remove it because of "copyright infringement" (wink wink). I have seen it, and as funny as the caught in the act theft was, the confrontation between Barker and Wilson and ensuing admission of guilt is even funnier. Well the file has hit the fan peeps, and let me tell you, I thought it would probably not amount to too much, perhaps a report of a family disturbance gone bad, something that you could understand a loving wife wanting to keep private, but it is WAY bad.

The report was made by a teenage boy living in Hogares, a youth group home, and who was being represented by Heather's husband, a lawyer. Apparently Hone, aka Mr. Wilson, invited the kid over for pizza and a "movie" and grabbed his ass when the kid got up. Now Hone tried to play it off saying he was reaching for another slice of pizza, but the kid swears he wasn't keeping it in his pants.

Now this in itself would be bad enough, but combine it with the fact that Heather was on the page board and though the debate is raging about who knew what and when about Foley (oh yeah and probably some other reps...more to come!) was up to and why they didn't do anything about it, it looks worse. It looks worse still that she took fistfuls of cash from Foley. My prediction? Heather will take a page from the Republican handbook and enter "rehab".

Add that to the fact that Patsy Madrid is lapping her in the polls, and I have one thing to say to Heather Wilson...enjoy that pension, girlfriend, and good luck in the private sector!

Back to the dying beast...

So apparently, there is a lot of finger pointing in the ongoing F-Bomb Hearings, and it looks like while the republicans keep having to amputate limbs of the beast to keep the gangrene from spreading, the head of the beast, Hastert, may be a necessary sacrifice.

I have also heard from well placed sources that there is a new page scandal just about to break, and it involves an Illinois congressperson and a teenage girl. More as the news hits.

Frankly, I know from experience not to get my hopes up, after all we know how rigged the machines are, we know that the republicans will do anything to retain power, and we know that the democrats have a terrible reputation of just putting on the pink tutu's and refusing to engage in fisticuffs, but I find it difficult to imagine a scenario where these guys can find redemption and save themselves in time for the election.

Morning Must Read

This Morning Must Read comes to us from Scott...

OUR RIGGED ELECTIONS (PART II)
The GOP Playbook: How to Steal the Vote

Excerpt:

From the start, George W. Bush has pointedly refused to ask that we make any national sacrifice to help us win the "war on terror." Soon after 9/11 he urged us not to curb our appetites in any way, although to do so would have made much sense, and makes sense now. After all, it's oil, in part, that U.S. troops are fighting for, and oil that indirectly pays for all the guns and bombs now blowing those troops, and countless others, to shreds. The patriotic thing would therefore be to lessen our national dependency on fossil fuels, by driving less (or not at all), and turning off the air conditioners, by buying fewer disposables, and otherwise deferring to the greater good. Bush, however, will have none of that, asserting that the best thing we can do to help win this war is just go shopping.

Yet in one respect it's not exactly right to say that our president has asked nothing of us. Since 9/11, Bush has made astonishing demands on all his fellow citizens, asking us to swallow more baloney than the U.S. government has ever fed the people of this country. He and his team have asked us to believe that 9/11 came as a complete surprise, that Saddam Hussein was part of it, and that Iraq would soon be lobbing atom bombs, poison gas, and lethal pathogens at Tel Aviv and Disney World. They also asked us to believe that the Iraqi people would bestrew our troops with flowers, then that the "mission" had been "accomplished," then that those friendly natives had been overrun by "foreign terrorists" intent on wrecking the "democracy" that we were there to build. And now Bush asks us to believe that things aren't half as bad in Iraq (not to mention Afghanistan), as they appear, and that his team can win this war.

That most Americans do not believe a word of it, and therefore will not vote Republican, attests to the diffusive power of truth, which in this country still resonates despite the efforts of both government and media to bury it. Bush's big lies have prevailed not just because his regime has so doggedly promoted them. For too long, those howlers also had the benefit of a compliant press that simply echoed them.

But the truth about Iraq could not be spun away as more and more Americans encountered it, traumatically, in their own lives, and as the word spread ever further through the Internet and other unofficial channels—an arduous process of enlightenment that the press has only recently begun to help along. (The Democrats have mostly sat there mute.) And so the White House's claims about Iraq—and about 9/11, Afghanistan, Katrina, the economy, the public schools, the global climate and the GOP's respect for "family values"—strike millions of Americans as utter hooey.

MORE.....

Good stuff!

Smart Words from a Smart Man...

The real menace to American kids

We demonize Mark Foley but ignore the industries medicating children and making them fat, and even open our schools to people trying to kill them -- military recruiters.

By Bill Maher

Oct. 13, 2006 | If you think the worst thing Congress doesn't protect young people from is Mark Foley, wake up and smell the burning planet. The ice caps are cracking, the coral reefs are bleaching, and we're losing two species an hour. The birds have bird flu, the cows have mad cow, and our poisoned groundwater has turned spinach into a side dish of mass destruction. Our schools are shooting galleries, our beaches are cancer wards, and under George W. Bush -- for the first time in 45 years -- our country's infant mortality rate actually went up.

Read the labels on your food. It turns out the healthiest thing you can put in your body is Mark Foley's penis. He was probably the first fruit those pages ever came into contact with that wasn't drenched in pesticide.

But that's America for you -- a red herring culture, always scared of the wrong things. The fact is, there are a lot of creepy middle-aged men out there lusting for your kids. They work for MTV, the pharmaceutical industry, McDonald's, Marlboro and K Street. And recently, there's been a rash of strangers making their way onto school campuses and targeting our children for death. They're called military recruiters.

More young Americans were crippled in Iraq last month than in any month in the past three years. And the scandal is that Mark Foley wants to show them a good time before they go? When will our closeted gay congressmen learn? Our boys aren't for pleasure. They're for cannon fodder. They shouldn't be another notch on your bedpost. They should be a comma in Bush's war. If I hear a zipper, it had better be on a body bag.

Why aren't Democrats and the media hammering away every day about who we're supposed to be fighting for over there and what the plan is. Yes, Mark Foley was wrong to ask teenagers how long their penises were -- but at least someone on Capitol Hill was asking questions. We're the predators. Because we have an entire economy built on asking young people what they want, making the cheapest, sleaziest form of it they'll accept, and selling it to them until they choke on it and die.

You know who's grabbing your kids at too young an age? Merck, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, by convincing you they're depressed, hyperactive or suffering from attention-deficit disorder and so they must all get medicated. The drug dealers hooking your kids aren't in South America, they're in the halls of Congress handing out campaign donations to your congressmen. Mark Foley says he never slept with those kids, and I believe him, because American children are so hopped up on pills I doubt any of them could get it up.

From 1995 to 2002, the number of children prescribed antipsychotic drugs increased by over 400 percent. Either our children are going insane -- which we might look on as a problem -- or, more likely, we have, for profit, created a nation of little junkies. So stop already with the righteous moral indignation about predators -- this whole country is trying to get inside your kid's pants because that's where he keeps the money Daddy gave him to stay out of his hair.

I don't care if Mark Foley had been asking boys to describe their penises because I have some sad news for you: Your kid is so larded out on Cheetos and Yoo-hoo, he can't even see his penis. We live in a country where the ultimate consumer is an obese 16-year-old hooked up at one end to a Big Gulp and at the other to a PlayStation. So many of our kids today are fat drug addicts, it's almost as if Rush Limbaugh had puppies.

In conclusion, we can pretend that the biggest threat to "our children" is some creep on the Internet, or we can admit it's Mom and Dad. When your son can't find France on a map, or touch his toes with his hands, or understand that the ads on TV are lying -- including the one in which the Marine turns into Lancelot -- then the person fucking him is you.

-- By Bill Maher

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No Bush Left Behind

This BUSINESS WEEK article paints a lovely picture of the No Child Left Behind Act's most notable beneficiaries...

There is this guy...

Neil Bush, brother of the BOGUS POTUS

And THIS guy

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia

And my personal favorite white collar criminal...

Michael "Bilkin'" Milken
(you may not recognize him outside of his orange jumpsuit)

You simply must READ THIS ARTICLE, it's the SCAM of the century!