Nobody Could Have Predicted...

Do you suppose the workers at ground zero think that having the EPA tell them the air was safe to breathe when it was full of toxins and asbestos was an "err on the side of life?"

I heard someone say the other day, "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims." See, you learn something new everyday. Today, I learned that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were Muslims.

With the polls dropping, watch out!

Trust is a lot like virginity.

Just asking? And why does it appear Fox and Bush are the same height in this picture. This attention to image projection is getting scarier day by day.

I apologize for the graphic nature of this post but I felt it necessary.

Caption 2

Caption 1

Propaganda Backdrops: Yet Another Form

Seriously, she has positioned herself so that the emblem will be in the frame and she is not centered on the doorway like one would expect. It's as though every single thing is choreographed in some shape or form to control the image projected.

The Salt Peter Principle in Action

,... in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life” GWB

Except when:

You’re giving a cursory review of the cases of prisoners about to be put to death. Fifteen minutes ought to be about right even if they’re a minor, retarded, got lousy legal representation, or might be innocent.

You’re deciding whether to drop a couple of 500 # pounds in a residential area of Baghdad in order to kill one man.

You’re deciding whether to warn workers at “ground zero” about the toxic danger posed by the air or to tell them it is safe to get the “markets” opened faster.

You’re deciding whether to warn American homeowners about the potentially dangerous asbestos insulation in their homes or to protect companies like Halliburton from paying tort damages.

You’re deciding to deploy American soldiers into combat even though they have not received the “best training and best equipment” available.

You’re deciding whether to use cluster bombs in civilian areas and depleted uranium munitions on a country that did not attack us.

You’re writing or rewriting the rules about toxic emissions, including mercury.

You're deciding whether the federal government should intervene when your largest campaign contributor is jeopardizing the lives of California citizens by manipulating the energy market. Imagine if this had been done to Florida and the likely response.

You’re considering the OSHA rules about worker safety.

It's not politically expedient.

You start a war!

Remember when the news seeped through the liberal media filter that many of our troops had been deployed without the state of the art body armor and that as a result, there were more fatalities and serious injuries than there would have been with the better equipment. Remember how the republican members of Congress demanded immediate action to provide for the troops and how President Bush made special efforts to see that the problem was rectified including interrupting his vacation schedule. Yeah, me neither!

You Don't Even Have to be a PayPal Member to Contribute...

Have a overwhelming consensus of internationally recognized scientists determine that she should be kept alive

Fly her into Dover AFB under the cover of darkness

Implicate Schiavo in the Valerie Plame scandal

Have Sibel Edmonds claim that Schiavo is jeopardizing national security

A large donation to TRMPAC

A large donation to Tom Delay’s legal defense fund

Claim that Mark Schiavo is a gay male prostitute with unprecedented access to Jeb Bush

Show that Schiavo is part of Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear arms sales force

Put the information in a Presidential Daily Brief

OTHER THOUGHTS:

I wonder if after the Senate finishes with their hearings on steroid abuse in baseball, they’ll take up the issue of pain medication abuse, doctor shopping and money laundering by radio talk-show personalities. You know, a lot of high school students out there may be contemplating a career as a right-wing gas bag and it sends a terrible message that you have to be law-breaking drug addict in order to succeed.

Tom Delay personally attacked Mark Schiavo claiming Schiavo had not acted in the best interest of his wife and intimated that Mark Schiavo was not the kind of person who deserved to make decisions concerning the fate of his wife. Schiavo, taking a play from Delay’s playbook, accused Delay’s comments as being a politically motivated, partisan attack.

Special sessions of Congress and the Senate to draft “emergency” legislation. The President cuts short his vacation to return to Washington to sign the bill to save the life of one woman in Florida. If we had this kind of response to all the warnings about potential al Queda attacks in the summer of 2001, the twin towers might still be standing.

If only they had as much real concern for these Americans as they have pretextual concern for Terri Schiavo.

What the crowd requires is mediocrity of the highest order.  

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Dr. Samuel Johnson

When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.

Senator Roscoe Conkling

THE SALT PETER PRINCIPLE

Seems an appropriate time to retread some of my previous work.

March 15 

Many commentators are concerned about the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Are we becoming a society that actually produces nothing but really good weaponry? What all these naysayers fail to realize is that some manufacturing jobs are quite secure. Of course, these jobs are manufacturing the "news" which is probably considered an "intangible asset."

Vindication: A man brutally rapes a woman. The woman becomes pregnant as a result. She has the child. The child grows up to be a great humanitarian and philanthropist. Does that vindicate the rapist?

Saturday Night Live: The program aired on March 12, 2005 was the single, worst SNL I have ever seen. Either the writers have totally lost it, or the content is being censored. Even the News Update segment, which usually redeems the weaker parts of the show, totally sucked. Too much Martha and Michael. Like other parts of the MSM, including Leno, Letterman, Kimmel and O’Brien, not a single joke or reference to Jeff Gannon. IMHO, There’s a conspiracy of silence on this scandal!

Note: You don't have to be a Paypal Member to donate and any contributions to my efforts would be appreciated.

Karen Hughes is returning to the scene of the crime(s). White House cites need for an infusion of testosterone.

"There is difference of opinion, and I've got mine," Bush said. "I'm going to continue traveling our country until it becomes abundantly clear to the American people we have a problem."

No Matter the Subject... 

There's No Way That Late Night Silence is a Coincidence! 

Convenient suicides outnumber convenient small plane crashes.

As part of the shared sacrifice in the war on terror, Americans who went shopping in response to 9/11 at the request of George W. Bush, but did so on easy credit, may now be allowed to give up their houses thanks to the millionaires who populate the House and Senate. Fiscal responsibility has to start somewhere...

Like cutting down trees to save the forests, taking money out of the Social Security system to solve a long-term, structural deficit, only makes sense to people with their heads up their ass.

George W. Bush is spending so much time out of Washington D. C. to promote his dismantling of the Social Security system, it makes one wonder what sort of dire warnings have been in the latest Presidential Daily Briefs.


With President Clinton entering the hospital for surgery, Jay Leno took the opportunity to tell at least 4 trite Clinton-sex jokes and then bashed Hillary by saying that upon seeing her, Clinton thought he woke up in hell. This is the same Jay Leno who has not told a single joke about Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert, but relishes in the Michael Jackson media circus. Are the late-night "comedians" under orders not to do Jeff/Jim jokes?

Lebanon Democracy Domino refuses to fall: May suffer same fate as Communism Domino of the 1960's

What's Next: Bork Gets Nominated For Supreme Court 

Boldly and Steadfastly Protecting America from Those Fascists at the AARP 

Caption Contest: Enter Your Caption Under Comments 

The accounts of the circumstance surrounding the wounding of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena differ between the Pentagon's account and that of a surviving eye-witness, Giulian Sgrena. I'm not sure who to believe, especially after the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman fabrications. Can we believe anything that these people say? The danger with lying in the first place is that people may not trust you're telling the truth when you actually are. Trust, once lost, is extremely difficult to restore.

Some times, things just don’t make sense. The explanations emanating from the White House flack-swatter Scott McClellan and former flack-swatter Ari Fleischer, about Jim/Jeff’s access to the White House fall into this category. Naturally, instead of confronting the real issue, they’re trying to frame this as not wanting to enter that slippery slope of determining who is or who isn’t a journalist. The only way for Jim/Jeff’s miraculous amount of access to be reasonably understood, one has to conclude that someone in the White House wanted him there. The imprecise corollary to this conclusion is that when someone is not wanted there, they’re usually not. Or, if access cannot be entirely denied, then access in name only is granted or some form of punishment is doled out. Just ask Helen Thomas

So, when I read about Custer Battles, a company that did not exist till shortly before the invasion of Iraq, but still managed to be awarded critical contracts in Iraq, including security for the Baghdad airport and the distribution of new currency, the parallels to the Talon News immediately came to mind. Here’s a company that did not even exist until a few months before the Iraqi invasion yet they are awarded contracts worth millions of dollars despite no previous experience in the critical areas in which they would be deployed. And just like the now famous “question” to Bush at the press conference, the excessive profiteering brings their shenanigans to light when they were not satisfied with the guaranteed profit built into their contracts.

In the fall of 2002, the two founded Custer Battles as a security firm. Within months, President George W. Bush would order U.S. troops into Iraq. Custer Battles was among the first contractors into Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein and, by the end of June 2003, had managed to win the contract to provide security for Baghdad's airport, a contract Custer told investigators was the first time the company had provided actual security for a site.

It seems also, that the owners of Custer Battles have someone with influence in the White House just like Jeff Gannon must have had and significant GOP party affiliations just like Bobby Eberle of Talon News and GOPUSA.

Custer is a former Army Ranger who had worked for Arlington, Va.-based defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. Battles ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Republican in Rhode Island in 2002 and, according to the record of Custer's interview with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, is a former Central Intelligence Agency case officer who was -- according to Custer -- "very active in the Republican Party and speaks to individuals he knows at the White House almost daily."

So here we have two companies with close political ties to the current administration. Both are given favorable treatment in areas which usually require demonstrated experience, and in which, they are both significantly deficient. Both overreach, one in partisan hackery and the other in war profiteering.

For critics of the Bush administration's handling of postwar Iraq, Custer Battles has become something of a symbol of contractor excess during the 14-month period that the Coalition Provisional Authority governed Iraq. The company was able to secure tens of millions of dollars' worth of security and logistical contracts from the CPA -- despite the fact that it didn't even exist until just months before the invasion of Iraq.

So, by what process was Custer Battles awarded the contracts in Iraq. Did they win a bid or was this another no-bid situation like that of Halliburton. Remember, the reasoning behind the no-bid contracts for Halliburton was that they had the required expertise to provide the services needed, even though this proved to be questionable.

When do you call it treason? Companies which seek to increase their profits in the supply of goods and services to the war effort by purposefully overcharging take limited resources away from that war effort. They jeopardize the safety of our troops to fatten their own bottom line. This practice is despicable and those individuals within the corporation responsible for these decisions should be prosecuted for crimes against the people of the United States.

Law.com

Bush Administration and RNC Lie About Privatization Plans for Social Security for Political Gain Back in October

Just like the invasion of Iraq, Bush's plans to FUBAR social security were in the works for a long time even though such plans were denied. Now, using taxpayer money, Bush is out peddling his prevarications to friendly, hand-picked audiences nation wide.

Nobody Could Have Predicted Feb. 14, 2005

Any suggestion that Alan Greenspan's support for George W. Bush's fiscal policies is a reflection of his desire to protect the journalism career of his wife Andrea Mitchell, who happens to be 20 years his junior, is absolutely absurd.

Again quoting the president without attribution. 

Free speech actually is not free. The price for you to have free speech; you have to allow those with conflicting viewpoints the opportunity to express them.

The Supreme Court has ruled several times on government restrictions on free speech. There are time, place and manner restrictions. There's a prohibition against inciting immediate violent conduct. The case law is quite extensive and generally carries safeguards to prevent government overreaching. However, one important restriction the court has failed to address is often overlooked.

I am not one who usually advocates further restrictions on free speech. However, I think that when a safety issue exists, speech should in fact be limited. Therefore, I am proposing a federal law that would prohibit making disparaging remarks about beef in a crowded theater. It should be no trouble to get the Texans on board for this proposal although the liberal elite "coasters" may be difficult to persuade. Hopefully, my grassroots effort will be embraced by the public with the added benefit of helping me out financially.

Bush Demands Syria Withdraw From Lebanon

Syria Demands U.S. Withdraw From Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Somoa, Antiqua, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Curacao, Denmar, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, Diego Garcia, Indonesia, Italy, Johnston Atoll, Kosovo, Krygystan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, Pureto Rico, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Tajikistan, Turkey, United Arab Republic, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Virgin Islands, and Wake Island

In our own neighborhood, we are cooperating closely with Canada and Mexico, and working to realize the vision of a fully democratic hemisphere, bound by common values and free trade.

We also must realize that America and all free nations are facing a generational struggle against a new and deadly ideology of hatred that we cannot ignore. We need to do much more to confront hateful propaganda, dispel dangerous myths, and get out the truth. We will increase our exchanges with the rest of the world. And Americans should make a serious effort to understand other cultures and learn foreign languages. Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue. And America must remain open to visitors and workers and students from around the world, without compromising our security standards. If our public diplomacy efforts are to succeed, we cannot close ourselves off from the world. And if I am confirmed, public diplomacy will be a top priority for me and for the professionals I lead.

Senate Confirmation Hearing Jan. 18, 2005


Secretary of State Has Hissy Fit: Shows What Happens When the "Adults Are In Charge"

If homophobes had their way during WWII, there’s a good chance that the war in the European theatre would have turned out much differently and hundreds or perhaps thousands more members of the “greatest generation” would not have returned home alive. In fact, the war in Europe might have been lost.

One cannot rewrite history, unless you're a member of the Bush administration trying to cover your incompetent, lying ass. However, one should consider what would have happened if Alan Turing had not been working for the British government in its efforts to break the German codes.

Alan Turing was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century and is often considered the inventor of the computer. Turing was instrumental in unlocking the secrets of the Enigma Machine which the Germans used to send coded messages. These encrypting machines were used throughout the German military including field commanders, ships at sea and the highly effective U-boat wolf packs. Breaking this code was critical in the Allied war effort and Alan Turing’s contribution cannot be diminished. Alan Turing was also a homosexual.

Certainly, without the German codes, the war would have been more protracted and more lives lost on both sides.

Now, when we are in need of translators, homosexuality is a disqualifier for this important work. Would we really prefer that an important message, perhaps of an impending attack, not be translated in time to prevent the attack?