A True Hero of 9/11 -- "I'm Ready for my Medal Mr. President"

The NY Times, a recent target of uber Josh for its flatulant Kerik coverage, finally reveals a golden nugget (buried naturally) of just how heroic Kerik was in the wake of 9/11.

It was, to Bernie Kerik -- designated hero of 9/11 -- a chance for some prime pooty-tang. Behold the hero:

Mr. Kerik has had to answer questions about...his use of an apartment, donated as a resting spot for police officers at ground zero, where he conducted an affair with his book publisher, according to someone who discussed the relationship with him.

So Kerik was HOARDING a donated apartment for the use of all police officers to rest to use as a place to shag super-hypocritical sex-kitten Judith Regan and another woman all while married!

I imagine the Freepers are ready with the "not as bad as Clinton" card right?

I think that Bush might as well go ahead and nominate Andrew Dice Clay for DHS -- I'm pretty sure the latter could use a job.

Ah, Heroes of the Fatherland

"Thanks for fucking up! But hey, you supported me."


"Thanks for fucking up! Oh, and I get to rub against you. Let's see, this should work just like Laura and Condi's bra...so we will be here a while."


"Thanks for fucking up! Cannot think of a single thing you were wrong about."


Dick Cheney looks askew at Hastert after the latter closed down the Congressional Buffet line.


Bush's first and last meeting with his designee for Secretary of HHS. Don't know his name? Don't worry, you won't need to.


"Well, if I was being completely honest, I'd say I should be facing jail time for helping get the nation into a disastrous war by what the folks I'm sleeping with tell me. But that's just me, and of course, complete honesty is a foreign concept to me -- as opposed to fallatio."


Departing UN Ambassador John Danforth is caught contemplating what "spending more time with my family" actually means...that he will be spending more time with his family.


Hey, when am I getting one of those?

I'm Not a Democrat because of Who the DNC Chair Is

And for the love of all that is holy I would hope no one else is either.

BUT C'MON!

Tim Roemer?

Yet another leader for whom the MONEY is more important than the MESSAGE.

Let me tell our establishment loving friends something...If the MESSAGE is strong enough the MONEY follows.

Oh that FOX

The creators of such great reality shows as "The Tiniest Groom"; "America's Wackiest Pedophiles"; and "My Big Fat Obnoxious Cable News Talk Show Host" have come up with another winner.

The show, which will air as a 90-minute special on January 3, centres on an adopted woman, keen to find the identity of her parents, particularly her father. In a glitzy studio setting, she is presented with eight possible fathers - one of which is her real dad - and must eliminate seven of them through Q&A and other means.

If after three elimination rounds she correctly identifies her true father she gets $100k; if one of the seven fake dads gets through to the final round, the imposter gets to keep the purse.

Gee, thanks Rupert.

A Policy of Having Bad Apples

It is now impossible for the Bush Administration to deny that prisoner abuse and torture is not part of a well-known and tolerated practice of the Administration. Naturally, this imputes the entire nation, which means that YOU and I are tarred with this administration's mendacity.

From the AP:

Newly released U.S. Navy documents portray a series of abuse cases stretching beyond Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison where photos surfaced this year of U.S. troops forcing prisoners — often naked — to pose in humiliating positions.

The files released Tuesday document a crush of abuse allegations, most from the early months of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, including U.S. Marines forcing Iraqi juveniles to kneel while troops discharge a weapon in a mock execution and the use of an electric shock on a prisoner.

The approximately 10,000 files include investigation reports from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and witness interviews.

All names have been blacked out in the documents, which were released after a federal court ordered the government to comply with a Freedom of Information Act petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), the Center for Constitutional Rights and other organizations.

"This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

Congratulations for treating these folks like untermenschen George.

Following a Long Line of History

Many "WHITE" American leaders seem to think the words "I'm sorry" are too much to say in regard to keeping a race in slavery and forced migration nearly a century and a half after its end or crimes against the continent's original inhabitants (pretty much true in the entire Western Hemisphere); the Japanese still refuse to acknowledge the "Rape of Nanking" or various other crimes; virtually all former colonial powers refuse to admit the negative consequences of their actions.

So, when Bush refuses to admit error -- even patently disastrous and real time ones -- he is following a long tradition.

For the most recent example, it is appropriate that a guy with a psedonym so close to a person involved intimately in the refusal point out the perpetuation of historical denials:

Turkey will not apologise for Armenian genocide

TURKEY has reacted angrily to a demand by France that it accept responsibility for a “genocide” against Armenians nearly 80 years ago, which is thought to have influenced the Nazi Holocaust.

Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister insisted that Turkey must officially recognise the 1915 genocide before it joins the European Union.

Historians believe that Turkish authorities orchestrated the killing of 1.5 million Armenian Christians, who were indigenous inhabitants of Turkey, in a brutal attempt to make an ethnically pure nation. However, the Turkish Government has always said that only a small number were killed in spontaneous acts of violence.

M Barnier said: “In the course of the accession negotiations, France will ask for a recognition of the tragedy at the outset of the 20th century. When the time comes, Turkey should face up to the requirement of remembrance. The European project itself is founded on reconciliation.”

He said that recognition should not be a precondition for membership talks with Turkey, a step to be decided by EU leaders on Thursday. However, he insisted that Turkey recognise the genocide during the membership talks, which are expected to last ten years: “We have ten years to ask it. the Turks have ten years to think about their response.”

He later referred to it as a genocide, the first time the French Government has used that word, having previously preferred tragedy. Many parliaments in Europe have called on Turkey to recognise the slaughter, which is marked by monuments in many European cities.

However, a Turkish government spokesman said: “There was no such genocide, so there is no question of recognising a genocide that did not happen.”

One Turkish official said: “They are just trying to make us angry. It is their last chance to cause trouble against us.”

Yes, poor turkish official, picked on for not admitting the murders and cover ups of their predecessors.

Sickening.

Unbelievable

I'll mention it in picture captions above, but really what the hell, three Presidential Medals of Freedom to a triumvirate of the biggest fuckups of the whole Iraq debacle. Were Rummy, Wolfowitz and Feith too busy fucking something else up to attend? Jeebus.

The East Room is the largest in the White House, and it serves as a stage for some of the mansion's most scripted events: diplomatic receptions, state funerals, prime-time news conferences.

Yesterday, it provided a platform for another kind of drama; a latter-day version of "A Christmas Carol," freely adapted from 19th-century London to 21st-century Washington.

On stage were three ghosts of the Bush administration's past: former CIA Director George Tenet, retired Army General Tommy Franks and Jerry Bremer, head of the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq after the U.S. invasion.

The metal dangling from their necks wasn't chains, as in the original Dickens story, but a newly minted Medal of Freedom presented to each by President George W. Bush for their service to him and the nation.

And the audience was full of other embodiments of Bush's Washington - past, present and future.

The past was represented by Colin Powell, the outgoing secretary of state, who fought and lost so many foreign policy battles with his neocon adversaries during the past four years.

The present was there in the person of Powell's great antagonist, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who is holding on to his job for the moment in the administration's mid-course shakeout.

As for the future, there was Condi Rice, currently Bush's national security adviser, who is about to replace Powell at the top of the State Department heap.

As symbols of the quality Bush prizes most, Rumsfeld and Rice will do nicely. Both compiled records during Bush's first term that were long on loyalty but, according to their many critics, rather less conspicuous on achievement.

...

Then there were the awardees up on stage: Franks, who won his wars in Kabul and Baghdad and then was lucky or smart enough to retire before Iraq went sour; Bremer, who smartly saluted his superiors in Washington throughout his 14-month tenure and only later let it slip that he'd thought they were all wet about how many troops were needed; and Tenet, who assured Bush that proving Iraq had weapons of mass destruction would be a "slam dunk."

Li'l Scottie had to field questions about it all later, but silly-ass captioning is my thing, the gaggle requires a stronger stomach than mine and I'll leave that to Holden at First Draft.

Oh by the way, the Bush Administration?

Fuckers.

Batting Practice

From Holden at First Draft via Portal Pulpit comes this picture that for lack of a better expression (those are wasted on the pictures themselves) is to captioning, what an 80 mile an hour fastball down the middle of the plate is to "flaxseed-oiled" Barry Bonds:



Let's see, 90 Seconds what I can come up with:

GO!

"Ambidextrous George, able to be pitcher and catcher simultaneously"

"Mission Accomplished, I'll SAY!"

"Triple Sexpresso"

"It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of that giant-assed ship behind me"

"Now THIS is a Man-Date!"

"When I said I wanted blow, that is not what I meant"

"Now this is the kind of Mr. Salty YOU can choke on"

"The Insurgents...are in my pants"


Whew, feel the burn.

Go ahead and add your own.

UPDATE: A commenter at First Draft with the unique name of "anonymous" had one I wish I had thought of, because it is so good and obvious I'm ashamed I missed it.

"Need some wood?"

My snark deposit sloshes toward thee.

This is my hour! (or four)

Well, it's December 14th.

As many blog readers know, Attaturk gets up early and spreads what passes as blogging.

Today he woke up ex-tree early, got his posting out of the way and went to a 24/7 store that he normally would NEVER patronize because he had to get himself the "Geek Man-Childs gift for 2004".

And now as the work day draws to a close, whatever else the rest of you are doing... Hey you! "anonymous blogger at IP address 152.342.335" I see you with your pants down around your ankles, knock it off...sorry about that. Know that tonight Atta J. Turk will be watching ROTK-EE.

Just a little window into my sad little world.

Hey, "IP address 63.486.234" that's not a woman you are doing that to -- maybe you already know that.

Rawk and Rowl Hall of Fame Class 2005

Here it is folks, the 2005 class for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

U2
Percy Sledge
The O'Jays
The Pretenders
Buddy Guy

Seymour Stein will be inducted also.

Prepare for music nerd rant...

While acknowledging that the Hall of Fame is silly and not well organized to consider music... what are the requirements beyond 25 years from first record and success? I have to wonder about some fo the list... The Pretenders???? I love the debut album and some sundry other stuff, but they wouldn't even be on a list of nominees, if I were in charge.

The Pretendres have a pretty thin resume. It is not that a band can't be an all-time great with a small body of work -- for example, The Sex Pistols belong due to extreme historical significance alone -- but a great debut album, only one other undisputedly good album (Learning To Crawl) and otherwise a lot of filler, slack, and inconsistency -- though at some point they just became disposable -- doesn't cut it as belonging in a hall of fame.

Where are the nominations for The Hollies, Nick Lowe, Squeeze, The Monkees, Yes, among other influential artists? (serious or not The Monkees were influential, did write and play some of their own stuff after that first record, made an avant garde film -- Head -- hell Mike Nesmith was one of the first musicians who took video seriously). If you had to think about influence on music and related culture, who has had greater influence: The Pretenders or The Monkees?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is on its way to being that which casual music fans will treat as the definitive word on the history of rock and roll. And because of that, it's certainly reasonable for the more knowledgable music fans to become concerned about who's being inducted and who's not. We might not be able to do anything about it, but we can still be pissed at the way rock history is being re-written.

Can we all agree that the Rock and Roll Museum is fast becoming a complete sham? The Hall of Fame Foundation in new York City is totally separate from the Cleveland-based "living museum." In fact, the Foundation is in the same building as Rolling Stone magazine (and yeah, Jann Wenner -- the owner and publisher of Rolling Stone -- is involved heavily with the Foundation). I wonder if they collude?

The Nominating Committee basically has a mandate to place as many Warner-Elektra-Atlantic (WEA, the Warner conglomerate) artists in the Hall, for the purposes of selling records and pushing their artists, pure and simple. This is why we see artists like the J. Geils Band and Percy Sledge on the list of possible inductees not to mention people like Wenner and Seymore Stein of Sire Records being inducted as well (Sire is another part of the WEA family). Bidness is bidness.

Basically, as I see it, the sole purpose of the Hall of fame is for music industry bigwigs (most of them involved with the Warner-
Elektra-Atlantic record companies or Rolling Stone Magazine) to get together once a year for a large party where they charge
something like $1,000 for a seat at a table at the induction
ceremony that only other industry bigwigs can afford and they
watch performances by living legends/whoever's still alive (and
whoever is willing to perform a few songs live) and they get VH1
to pay for the whole thing so they have broadcast rights.

The rest of the year, the Foundation is supposed to disperse the money they have to artists in need of financial help, but a mere fraction of the money actually was spent on the artists, the majority of the money went straight into the Foundation's pockets... millions. Sounds like the hall does pretty well for itself.

Rant off.

Attacking Journalists

In 1996 San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb broke the contra-cocaine story and was tarred and feathered by the right and nut-wing and their allies in the major news media. Now we have an apparent suicide which is far more than a personal tragedy. This is a reminder of the creeping conservative correctness that Bush and Cheney co. helped create in the past (ok, maybe more directly by Cheney than Bush) and enjoy with impunity today.

Isn't Bush as candidate the one who called a reporter an "ass hole" for not following the script during the 2000 election? Yup. Lots of respect for the press from that would be oligopolist (hey, he can't do it alone).

Consider that the Bush white house is the most secretive and manipulative than any recent president -- even more than their beloved patron saint Ronny -- and we have a recipe for massive disaster. Its not just that we are on a fool's errand in Iraq, the reporting will not even mention that it is a fool's errand (don't want to lose a privileged embeddedness or white house access).

The major news media did not rally to Webb's defense, as they should have. Instead the media themselves played an active role in attacking and destroying Webb's career in the 1990s when he tried to break through the maze of cover-up of this horrible scandal. The bitter disgusting irony is that even when the CIA and the government admitted its institutional guilt in drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan contras, the nation's leading commentators, newspapers, and media continued an insistent attack on Webb. The issuing of denials or blaming low level CIA operatives took the place of serious consideration of Webb and his reporting.

That's right, even after it was admitted as fact, the idiotmedia refused to acknowledge that Webb was right and continued to castigate and eventually destroy him; looks like they got their wish. Fuckers.

Another must read: Its about the Oil Stooopid

So, what happens when we run out of oil? What will the machinery of imperialism do then? More of the same. We are only in Iraq for the food, right? Gosh, God forbid that we run out of coffee, chocolate, or soda, there will be rioting in the streets.

File under No Big Surprise

Well, well, it appears that the religious right and nut-wing is now going to begin pushing their agenda on the states. Wait a minute!? Haven't they already been doing this? Sorry to post the entire piece here but it bears reading. Can you say, "lets organize and mobilize!" See, I knew you could.

December 13, 2004
Christian Conservatives Turn to Statehouses
By NEELA BANERJEE
New York Times

Energized by electoral victories last month that they say reflect wide support for more traditional social values, conservative Christian advocates across the country are pushing ahead state and local initiatives on thorny issues, including same-sex marriage, public education and abortion.

"I think people are becoming emboldened," said Michael D. Bowman, director of state legislative relations at Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian advocacy group based in Washington. "On legislative efforts, they're getting more gutsy, and on certain issues, they may introduce legislation that they normally may not have done."

It is on the state level "where most family issues are decided," Mr. Bowman said. And it is there that local advocacy groups hope to build quickly on the momentum from the election when legislatures convene in the new year.

In Texas, conservative Christians are backing an amendment to prevent human cloning, a measure that would also block the kind of cloning used in embryonic stem-cell research. In Georgia, advocacy groups hope to win approval this year of two measures limiting abortion, after redistricting helped Republicans take control of the state legislature. In Kansas, conservatives have won a majority on the State Board of Education, which is expected to introduce changes this spring to the high school science curriculum challenging the theory of evolution. And in Maryland, some black churches have joined with a white Republican state delegate to push for a ban on same-sex marriage.

"People were mobilized during the election and they're still mobilized," said Judy Smith, Kansas state director for Concerned Women for America, which is working to put a measure on the ballot in 2006 to amend the Kansas Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. "We would be stupid not to act now. This is exactly what we had hoped for."

Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood cautioned that despite surveys of voters leaving the polls showing that President Bush was supported by 80 percent of those who listed "moral values" as their top concern, conservative Christians might not have gotten the mandate they say they have.

"It's important to underscore that there are large portions of the country that believe in gay rights and in a woman's right to choose," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

While Christian conservatives say the most promising legislative and policy efforts are in states that went for Mr. Bush, they are also optimistic about ballot issues they are championing in traditionally Democratic states like Maryland. While Senator John Kerry won Oregon and Michigan, those states also passed amendments banning same-sex marriage, said Kristin Smith, legislative coordinator for state and local affairs at the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group in Washington.

Conservative Christians were active on some of these issues a year ago but largely switched their focus to getting out the vote in the months before the presidential election.

The legislative changes most conservative Christians seek are likely to be incremental - a tightening of parental notification on abortion, for example - mainly because legislators themselves tend to move cautiously, Mr. Bowman said. While the agenda varies from state to state and in some cases is still emerging, the initiatives generally have to do with abortion rights, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, sex education and the teaching of evolution.

Christian conservatives on the national level, like Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council, say that they have provided guidance but that the local initiatives are largely homegrown.

One state where liberals and conservatives expect a bold step is South Dakota, where conservatives were instrumental in unseating the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle. Last year, the State Legislature passed a bill banning abortions, except when a woman's life is in danger or she might suffer irreparable harm.

The bill was vetoed by Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, because of imprecise language, liberal and conservative advocates said. The wording was changed accordingly, and the bill will probably be reintroduced and signed this time by the governor, they said. Kate Looby, the state director for Planned Parenthood, said conservatives might feel more confident this time because they expect Mr. Bush to appoint Supreme Court justices who will eventually overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion.

"If Kerry had won, there would not be the momentum there for this bill," said Rob Regier, executive director of the South Dakota Family Policy Council, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, a national evangelical Protestant group.

Electoral victories at the state level have prompted Christian conservatives in many states to renew the fight for causes that had stalled earlier. In Georgia, redistricting helped give Republicans control of the State House of Representatives, said Patricia Chivers, director of government relations for Georgia Right to Life. With the State Senate and the governor's office already controlled by Republicans, the change in the House has given Ms. Chivers new confidence that the state can pass two anti-abortion bills that she said had languished in the House under the Democrats.

One bill requires a woman to wait 24 hours after asking for an abortion, when she is offered information on alternatives, risks and pictures of fetal development, and another requires minors who want an abortion to be accompanied by their parents or guardians. Now, other adults can escort minors.

In Kansas, conservatives now hold 6 of the 10 seats on the State Board of Education. All of them favor teaching theories that compete with or criticize evolution, said Jack Krebs, a member of the State Science Standards Writing Committee and vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

In 1999, the Kansas board voted to erase any mention of evolution from the state science curriculum, opening the door for the teaching of creationism. That was reversed in 2001, after three board members who supported the move were defeated in a Republican primary. Kathy Martin, a newly elected member of the board who favors teaching alternatives to evolution, said the board would probably take a different route this time, like introducing the teaching of "intelligent design," a theory that holds that the development of the universe and earth was guided at each step by an "intelligent agent."

Liberal advocacy groups say they plan to fight many of these efforts. But Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said that beyond filing legal challenges, liberals needed to appropriate the language of morality from Christian conservatives to capture the popular imagination.

"Lawsuits are about telling stories, and we need to talk about why we picked this case and why it's important," he said. "For instance, we need to ask, where is the morality when a partner of 20 years is denied hospital access because a state doesn't believe in gay marriage? Where is the morality in forcing a teenage girl into a back-alley abortion?"

Conservative state officials, like Ms. Martin in Kansas, say they are responding to an increasingly vocal constituency that has already made up its mind about moral issues and wants to shape public policy.

State Representative Cynthia Davis of Missouri prefiled two bills for the next session of the Legislature that she said "reflect what people want." One would remove the state's requirement that all forms of contraception and their potential health effects be taught in schools, leaving the focus on abstinence. Another would require publishers that sell biology textbooks to Missouri to include at least one chapter with alternative theories to evolution.

"These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent, and I'd be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn't feel they were the right solutions to these problems," Ms. Davis said.

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

More Bobo

From today, this is all you really need to read:

As the first pseudo-event of the second term, this gabfest is meant to give President Bush a chance to show his more deliberative, bipartisan and intellectual side - to really let his inner Cornel West out for a spree.

Nuff said.

Freedom isn't Free You Know

Riverbend's latest missive from Baghdad tells us that things have gone from bad to worse for the Iraqi people that we liberated from the world's last known Walter Matthau impersonator. Electricity is on even less, and naturally, in a nation awash with oil, gasoline is scarce and getting scarcer:

Oh don't get me wrong- the governmental people have gasoline (they have special gas stations where there aren't all these annoying people, rubbing their hands with cold and cursing the Americans to the skies)... The Americans have gasoline. The militias get gasoline. It's the people who don't have it. We can sometimes get black-market gasoline but the liter costs around 1250 Iraqi Dinars which is almost $1- compare this to the old price of around 5 cents. It costs almost 50,000 Iraqi Dinars to fill up the generator so that it works for a few hours and then the cost isn't so much the problem as just getting decent gasoline is. So we have to do without electricity most of the day.

She doesn't mention it, but I have it on good authority that while it is now prohibitive to drive, the Bush Administration has sent all sorts of ribbon-magnets to Iraq so at least they can decorate their cars with those bitchin' yellow "Support the Troops" symbols that only REAL patriots have.

That'll quiet things down.

So anyhoo, How about one Last Bernie Kerik joke?

In a final indignity, Bernard Kerik is informed that the "mustache ride" industry is losing popularity.

Because We Acted...

Here's the latest news out of one of those places that is safer because we acted.

An al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew up his vehicle Monday near cars waiting to enter the Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim government, killing 13 Iraqis on the anniversary of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s capture.

How safe have things gotten in Saferbecauseweacted?

But the uprising has escalated and the number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces risen steadily. About 550 U.S. soldiers died in the first year after the invasion was launched; almost 750 troops have died in the nine months that followed.
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq group claimed credit for Monday's deadly attack in central Baghdad, where a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives-packed car near a checkpoint leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, killing 13 Iraqis and wounding 15. No U.S. troops were injured.

A U.S. soldier with the 1st Corps Support Command was killed and another wounded Monday in a vehicle accident near a military base in Balad, 50 miles north of the capital. It was unclear what caused the accident.

Seven Marines died in action Sunday in the volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad, the deadliest day for the Marines since eight of their service members were killed by a car bomb Oct. 30 outside Fallujah.

The deaths brought to nearly 1,300 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.

It was unclear where in Anbar the Marines were killed, but the province includes the turbulent cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Fallujah witnessed a bloody weeklong offensive last month to uproot extremist Islamic militants. Fifty-four Americans were among the hundreds who died in the battle, in which U.S. and Iraqi forces retook the city from insurgents and radical Islamic clerics who had ruled it since Marines lifted a three-week siege in April.

After last month's campaign, U.S. commanders claimed they had broken the insurgency's back in the mainly Sunni Muslim areas of western Iraq, and that they would start phasing in Iraqi security forces to take over. But fighting has persisted

Remember what Chairman George Tse Bush said just a few months back? Cue dream sequence visual effects.

To overcome the dangers of our time, America is also taking a new approach in the world. We're determined to challenge new threats, not ignore them, or simply wait for future tragedy. We're helping to build a hopeful future in hopeless places, instead of allowing troubled regions to remain in despair and explode in violence. Our goal is a lasting, democratic peace, in which free nations are free from the threat of sudden terror. Our strategy for peace has three commitments: First, we are defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy. We will confront them overseas so we do not have to confront them here at home. (Applause.) We are destroying the leadership of terrorist networks in sudden raids, disrupting their planning and financing, and keeping them on the run. Month by month, we are shrinking the space in which they can freely operate, by denying them territory and the support of governments.

Oh, I almost forgot, he added:

Third, we are extending the peace by supporting the rise of democracy, and the hope and progress that democracy brings, as the alternative to hatred and terror in the broader Middle East. In democratic and successful societies, men and women do not swear allegiance to malcontents and murderers; they turn their hearts and labor to building better lives. And democratic governments do not shelter terrorist camps or attack their neighbors. When justice and democracy advance, so does the hope of lasting peace.

We have followed this strategy -- defending the peace, protecting the peace and extending the peace -- for nearly three years. We have been focused and patient, firm and consistent. And the results are all now clear to see.

Blah, blah, blah. And may Jeebus H. Christ bless this great land...

You know, if it weren't so damn tragic, if so many had not died or been horribly disfigured in pursuing his reckless crusade and grand strategy to prove himself and rule the world, it would almost be funny. The disconnect between fact and reality with this disgrace of a president is now well beyond rescue. And it is not funny.

Fucker.


This is what it looks like in Saferbecauseweacted:

Suffering a complete inability to express his feelings, Kerik demonstrates them the only way he knows how:

As a mime stuck in a glass room.

Microphones and Pretty Women Prove too Much for Kerik

See, Judith taught me if you hold it more towards the tip and grab it in this manner...

Blind Justice

In general, the poor, especially African-American Poor feel like the system is stacked against them. Gee, wonder why?
Well here is a good example of why that feeling is justified:

A judge who wore blackface makeup, handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit at a Halloween party will be suspended for six months, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The justices voted 5-2 to suspend Judge Timothy Ellender for a year without pay for dishonoring his position, but to defer half of that penalty. Ellender will lose more than $50,000 in pay, one judge noted.

Ellender, who is white, testified the costumes worn by him and his wife — she was dressed as a policewoman — were meant only as a joke to show he was her prisoner. The party's host, Ellender's brother-in-law, was dressed as Buckwheat.

The justices agreed Ellender did not mean to insult blacks. Nevertheless, they ordered him to take a sociology course "which will assist him in achieving a greater understanding of racial sensitivity."

Okay, I realize I don't know all the facts here, and I applaud the court's ultimate ruling, but going to party in "full minstrel" where your brother in law, who is hosting, is dressed as Buckwheat sure strikes me as having the burden of proof to show the judge did not mean to insult African-Americans.

Speaking of Writers that get paid for Shite

Let me just explain it this way:

It turns out to be fairly important whether Kaus was or wasn't not having sexual relations with an ungulate, Slate Magazines glamorous mascot, "Gates", who then bleated until Mickey got himself a job. It's hard to otherwise explain Kaus's gross inflictions upon the semi-literate world. (Lord knows I've tried!)

Somebody didn't get their Invitation...

David Brooks, not as bad as usual, but still bad. Apparently, coming as close as ranting (as opposed to blathering) as he can get over not being asked to the Bush Chimponomics Summit.

"...you have to remember that Republicans have a different relationship to ideas than Democrats. When Democrats open their mouths, they try to say something interesting. If the true thing is obvious and boring, the liberal person will go off and say something original, even if it is completely idiotic. This is how deconstructionism got started."

Are you calling yourself a liberal, Mr. "Natalist"?

"Republicans are less concerned with displaying their own cleverness. When they actually stumble upon an idea, they are so delighted they regurgitate it over and over again. Where others might favor elaboration, Republicans favor repetition."

As in...FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH?

I'll say this much, Bobo almost wrote a "big-boy" editorial today, as opposed to the high school yearbook stuff he's been putting out pretty consistently.

Digging Deep at the Newshour

Where does the Newshour go when it needs to dig into the Kerik story that broke big in this article from the New York Daily News?

Why Elisabeth Bumiller, of course, who was nowhere near it other than the typical by-line crap regarding nanny taxes.

Mr. Kerik's housekeeper situation was only the latest question to be revealed about the nominee. A series of critical news reports about questionable actions had begun to surface about Mr. Kerik, threatening to turn his Senate confirmation into a lengthy embarrassment for the administration. The reports looked at Mr. Kerik's use of city personnel while in office, potential conflicts between his business life and the role of the Homeland Security Department, and events growing out of his personal financial difficulties several years ago.

Today, while the Daily News blows the story wide-open, what did the Times write about? The strain this has all placed on the Preznit's relationship with Giuliani. Can Bumiller be the best the Times has for the job? She exemplifies the problem with what has become the Bob Woodward style of insider journalism. Don't want to piss-off anyone you know.

I'd just like to add

When we call the Bush gang "Fuckers" we mean it as a slam.

Obviously, with Bernie Kerik that term has more than one meaning.

I have now sent this email off to Judith Regan at Harper Collins.

"Dear Ms. Regan,

Apparently you enjoy the feeling of sleeping with a man who looks like a giant penis. Especially a married one. I think it's nifty that you, publisher and defender of so many right-wing moralists with deep character flaws, are able to engage in your own very special brand of hypocrisy.

Kudo's to you.

Oh, and, of course, since we are dealing with Bernie Kerik I must ask you, does the carpet match the lack of drapes?

Yours in Baal,

Atta J. Turk"

Forced to Watch

Every fucking member of the 101st keyboarders, but most specifically Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rice, Cheney, Gonzales, Ashcroft, etc. etc. Every goddamned one of them should be forced to view the pictures linked to by KOS at his blog community right now.

We heard about the miracle of kevlar -- but the miracle of kevlar only preserves life, it doesn't mean war isn't still a beastly, savage, disgusting business that is the lowest and most base of human conditions.

And THEY brought this fucking shit on.

Just think, someday these soldiers may be mocked as being poor soldiers by the likes of Man Coulter.

Champollion is right, but just not broad enough in his description.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKERS!

Automatically Loses all future Arguments

Check out this article, for what could only be described as a poorly placed photograph of Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar.

But his statements are notable:

Ghazi Yawar, the interim Iraqi President, has given warning that instability could spawn an "Iraqi Hitler" if his country's citizens continue to feel humiliated and despondent like the Germans after their defeat in the First World War.

In a series of media interviews on a trip to London, Iraq's political figurehead also criticised Washington for its disastrous decision to dismantle Iraq's security forces after its invasion last year - which paved the way for a breakdown of law and order.

"We could have screened people out instead of screening them in and this could have saved us a lot of hassle and problems," Mr Yawar told the BBC.

Mr Yawar's criticisms of Pentagon policy in Iraq came a year to the day after the capture of Saddam Hussein created a short-lived euphoria among the US coalition and its civilian administrators.

Well, Yawar may want to note what a single violent act spawned here.

Attaturk is a First Class Attention Whore

Who likes nothing more than an "attaboy" and a pat on the head. Therefore, I points out to your that the time for submitting Koufax Award nominations is now at Wampum.

DeDurkheim and Champollion are modest sorts who take pride in the knowledge of a job well done. For them it is all about the journey you take in getting there. That is recognition enough.

But not me. I want my pathetic existence validated by the awarding of non-monetary web award.

Just saying.

So Who's Up Next for DHS?

Holy Joe?

Apeshit Asa?

Tinitus Townshend?

B-1 Bob?

Pantsless Newt?

Dear Leaders Stick Together

Hey, I'm back.

Whooped-de-shit!

A quick note upon Atrios' link wherein a Bush Administration Official says the following:

A senior U.S. official said on Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is a ``rational’’ leader who would be able to transform his impoverished Stalinist state once he resolves the nuclear standoff with the international community.

``Many accusations that he (Kim Jong-il) is some sort of crazy person are not correct,’’ U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said in an exclusive interview with The Korea Times at his office in the State Department. He said Kim’s leadership is one that is unique and rational.

Well, they do share the same tailor.


They do deserve each other, of course. It's just that I don't appreciate being a slave to their whims.

Waiting for the cultural revolution....

Giuliani and Kerik: Masters of the Universe

Via Steve Gillard, apparently these people think they can get away with just about anything. I would add: then tell you to fuck-off.

Hubris is not a strong enough word for these guys. They deserve each other.

Are the Confederates coming?

Now that the southern regions of this country seem to control our political future we have to ask what will be the long-term consequences to our civic and personal culture?

Do we think anyone who once was a "commander in chief" of a group called The Sons of Confederate Veterans automatically qualifies as an extremist? Maybe so.


Is this symbol racist? It does use the rebel flag which is incendiary for some.


I wonder what exactly he sold that was antisemetic? Other than a dangerously romantic view of the so-called second American revolution, love of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Less, and the confederate flag, does this group pose a serious threat to American democracy? Of course, maybe Chimpy's references to the Dred Scott decision has some connections to neo-confederate groups such as this.

From The New York Times, national briefs, Saturday, Dec. 11, 2004:

SOUTH CAROLINA: OFFICIAL SEEKS TO VOID APPOINTMENT The state superintendent
of education, Inez Moore Tenenbaum, has asked the Anderson County legislative delegation to reverse its appointment to the State Board of Education last week of Ron Wilson, a former commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The Southern Poverty Law Center said Mr. Wilson had sold anti-Semitic books and led an effort to purge moderates and appoint extremists to leading positions in his organization, which is composed of male descendants of Confederate soldiers. The appointment was made on a 4-to-3 vote. There was no reply to a message left for Mr. Wilson at his business in Easley.

Christmas Bush

Thank God I am back on the Christian beat, that Hannukah and Kwanzaa stuff was killing me.

The '08 Presidential Race is just around the Corner. What is the single best indicator?

Steroids. Here is what our Johnny on the spot press has to say about the straight-talking McCain's recent statements on steroids in baseball:

Amid revelations about baseball's biggest names, McCain has threatened to push legislation early next year if Major League Baseball and the players do not clean up their act. McCain long has advocated harsher penalties for athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs.

The three-term senator from Arizona has earned a reputation as a go-to lawmaker, tackling campaign finance, the war on Iraq, federal spending and climate change.

It's little wonder that his foray into the baseball scandal has revived Republican speculation about McCain and the 2008 presidential race.

Yep, if there is one thing I care about in deciding who I think is a front-runner in the presidential race, it is straight talk on steroids. Am I missing something? Is this issue burning up the blogs anywhere on the political spectrum?

You know, I could buy it if it was statements on issues like paying taxes on nannies, failing to claim gifts on government disclosure forms, mob connections, sex from staffers, lying to the white house about background, but steroid use among multi-millionaire professional atheletes? WTF?

Serenity Now!

Both Attaturk and I have been putting some content up on the Social Security debacle lately. We have Krugman publishing two, count 'em two columns on the issue last week, while he is on sebbatical writing a textbook.

Yesterday Attaturk posted something from Joe Scarborough (I admit that I read only what was posted here on our blog and didn't link directly to what old Joe posted wherever as I can't stand the guy and think he is completely full of shit) which basically said this whole Soscurdy (why can't they, anyone, pronounce "social security" when talking about it?) thing is going to cost us a lot of money. Well I suppose he gets some credit for stating the obvious.

On Sunday I stumbled across another well written article on the issue that I will excerpt here liberally for our readers that are not registered with the Times and don't want to fuss with the whole getting on the database thing. In short, Edmund L. Andrews wrote about the problems with the bill of goods being sold to people by Soscurdy's chief actuary.

Under the current system, investment returns from Social Security are "abysmal," Mr. Bush said in one recent speech, because the trust fund is allowed to hold only low-yielding Treasury bonds.

Letting working people invest some of their Social Security money in the stock market would allow them to earn higher returns, giving them more money at retirement than they would have if they let the government do everything for them, the logic goes.

It sounds like a no-lose proposition. According to the Social Security Administration, Treasury bonds can be expected to yield a real annual rate of return of about 3 percent. Equities, by contrast, can be expected to earn 6.5 percent.

That assumption is crucial to arguments that personal accounts can reduce Social Security's long-term shortfall - which the government estimates to be at least $3.5 trillion. Most of the proposals to overhaul Social Security call for steep reductions in future benefits that would be offset by the higher returns people would presumably earn on their investments.

Stephen Goss, the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, has endorsed the assumption of higher returns. In evaluating the major proposals for putting some payroll taxes into personal investment accounts, Mr. Goss estimated that even people who hedged their risk by mixing stocks and bonds could expect an average return of 4.45 percent.

But that logic is as flawed as a perpetual motion machine. If it were true, the government could erase Social Security's entire projected deficit by selling bonds at 3 percent and buying stocks that yield 7 percent.

Why doesn't the government do just that? Because higher returns are inseparable from higher risk. No risk, no reward. And if the goal is to enhance security, if people are to have a solid reason to expect a particular level of wealth at retirement, the risks have to be relatively low.

What's the problem with this logic? Lets just say it apparently comes from the minds of people taking a little too much ecstasy. I thought there were warning labels with that stuff. Great for all night raves, bad for cerebrating actuaries. That doesn't stop Stephen Goss.

But many analysts contend that it is even more misleading to suggest that people should have complete confidence in their ability to earn above-average returns with no risk whatsoever.

Surprisingly, the Social Security Administration actually goes further than that. In addition to relying on the premise that equities will yield higher returns than Treasury bonds, Mr. Goss of the Social Security Administration suggested that returns in the future might be even higher than those of the past.

"A consensus is forming among economists that equity pricing as indicated by price-earnings ratios may be somewhat higher in the long-term future than in the long-term past," wrote Mr. Goss.

"This is consistent with broader access to equity markets and the belief that equities may be viewed as somewhat less 'risky' in the future than in the past," he added.

If investment funds or stockbrokers made that kind of claim, they would probably be breaking the law.

Making promises you can't keep has never stopped the crooks in this administration. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it gets worse. This week there is a two-day economic conference to discuss this issue and it will be interesting to see how the issue is handled. Let me go out on a limb and suggest we'll get dishonest demagoguery.

Let Freedom Reign!

Rumsfeld last week:

"If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up," he said. "And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."

Tonight:

Seven U.S. Marines were killed in two separate incidents in Iraq's Anbar province, a vast region encompassing the battleground cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the military said Monday.

There is only one word that fits this picture and quote:

Fucker.

Picking Up a Little Slack

Attaturk is going to be preoccupied a bit the next couple of days. I can attest that he'll actually be working. He has asked Dedurkheim and me to take up a little slack. Keeping up with Attaturk's production (particularly early in the morning) will be tough but I've got a jump as I write this at about 10 p.m. Sunday night, a good bit of rojo in the belly, offsetting the large volume of caffeine I've processed today. We'll try to get a jump in the a.m. as well, though I'm betting on a late jump based on how I feel now.

Documentary Recommendation

If you live close enough to a place to see documentaries do so.

Attaturk doesn't live in a massive American City, but he does live in a sizeable one, which to his surprise is actually learning that it can profitably be hip (within reason of course, the Midwest tolerates "hipness" but not flamboyance). In any case, within my town there are actually now seven, yes, seven screens that actually show "Art House" films. This means that a couple of them are usually devoted to documentaries.

And it has been a great year for those.

One, which I saw last night, caused me to laugh and cringe at the same time -- mostly over people's ability to just mindlessly consume information which is at its core morally outrageous. Explaining the success of FoxNews undoubtedly.

The film is "The Yes Men", a documentary about some satirical protesters, who essentially consistently pull-one-over on seminars and conferences who think, mistakenly that they represent the World Trade Organization, 180% from reality.

They make presentations to groups who think they represent the WTO. At the core of their presentations are incredibly amoral messages, given in a matter-of-fact tone. The seminar audiences just sits there and absorb it, never thinking, though it is clear that the presentation is the embodiment of evil in a smoothe package.

Just see it if you can. It is not a great film, but it is a meaningful, funny, and ultimately disturbing one.

I fear the Rapture is already here

Because I agree with Joe Scarborough:

And guess what these politicians who have already straddled you with an $8 trillion debt plan to do as soon as Congress gets back in session?

No, guess. Really. You'll love this.

They plan to plunge America into debt by $2 trillion more dollars!

You see, they've got this really cool plan to privatize parts of Social Security that usually make free market conservatives like myself giddy. We start talking about the invisible hand and the power of market forces.

Only problem is that this plan to get government off our backs costs a cool $2 trillion in transition fees.

And— let me see if you are following me here— who pays for that?

That's right. YOU!

But that's not the biggest problem with this $2 trillion Social Security plan. What bothers me the most is the fact that everybody in Washington knows that allowing Americans to invest parts of their Social Security payments in the stock market will produce some winners. But capitalism also always produces losers, and we all know that there will be millions of Americans who will make stupid investments in the coming years. (See Enron, etoys, Pets.com, Worldcom)

So what will happen when they retire and start complaining to their local congressman and TV camera crews about how they're about to be thrown out in the streets because of the dumb investments they made with their Social Security payments years ago?

Congress will pass the "Save Our Stupid Seniors Investment Relief Act of 2025," thereby guaranteeing that all Americans will have all Social Security payments restored in full.

That will require that you take your third job in the Chinese high tech factory just so you can pay even more taxes to Washington.

It's a bright future, brought to you by a gang in Washington who really couldn't care less about what happens to the world they pass on to their children and grandchildren.

...

P.P.S. Here's something you don't hear me say every day. Read Paul Krugman's column on this subject today. He comes to the same conclusion that I do: Congress will borrow $2 trillion today to privatize Social Security and then borrow trillions more to cover American's poor investments in the future. Here's the link to his column.

I've been pinching myself to see if I am awake, because normally agreeing with hatchet-faced boy would cause me considerable consternation.

By the way, I'm enjoying the pinching.

The Freedom March of Folly

An American Newspaper, and an influential one at that, describes just how much better we have make Clusterfuckistan. Here, within the pages of the Washington Post, is a description of the wonderful world the Bush Administration has created for them by their actions.

A bullet had burrowed a gash across Abdel-Hassan's scalp. His left arm was twisted at an angle impossible in life. Blood soaked his gray shirt; his dark blue pants were still a shade darker. With practiced routine, and barely a word, nurses rolled his corpse into the emergency room, where his name was recorded as the day's first entry in the tattered register of patients.

"Arrived deceased," it read.

"This is the grimmest shift," Luai Rubaie, a physician at the hospital, said as he settled into work. "You haven't seen anything. It's just the beginning."

He shook his head, as if uttering what was self-evident. "Day and night," he said.

Rubaie, a stocky man with a gentle face, displayed both the detachment of a physician and the anguish of a man whose country seems cursed by far too frequent deaths. Figures on civilians killed in the relentless violence in Baghdad and other restive regions are hard to come by, however. A report last month in Lancet, a British medical journal, said that at least 100,000 Iraqis may have been killed since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. A research group called Iraq Body Count put the number at a fraction of that -- probably 14,600 to 16,800.

The numbers vary widely for a reason: lack of information. The Lancet study based its numbers on a survey of 33 neighborhoods in Iraq; Iraq Body Count relies on media reports. For months, an authoritative account was provided by the Iraqi Health Ministry, but it quit publicizing the toll in the fall. It reported 3,853 civilians killed from April 5 to Oct. 5.

Rubaie knows the numbers only at Yarmouk, one of Baghdad's largest hospitals, located in a neighborhood with its own share of kidnappings, shootings, car bombings and armed clashes. He sees maybe 100 cases a day, twice as many as before the invasion in March 2003. Back then, he estimated, one in 1,000 was a victim of gunfire. Now half the cases are the consequence of the city's strife.

"It's a museeba," Rubaie said -- a disaster.

There is much more, the day to day life of physicians appreciate the killing fields of Baghdad our President's policies have unleashed and failed to control through hubris and lack of planning.

Bobo is Such an Idiot (Redux)

Thanks to Attaturk for establishing a good theme for the day, so here's my two pennies.

This is how Bobo starts off:

Before we get lost in the policy details, let's be clear about what this Social Security reform debate is really about. It's about the market. People who instinctively trust the markets support the Bush reform ideas, and people who are suspicious oppose them.

You know, from my perspective, it isn't that I don't trust markets. I trust them so far. I just don't have blind faith in them and know that the stock market can lose money as well as it can make money, or as Krugman said yesterday:

For it is now apparent that the Bush administration's privatization proposal will amount to the same thing: borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope.

BoBo makes me want to scream when he adds that people who disfavor Bush's prescription as "Popul[ist]", "Antibusiness", and "Michael Moore-ism" which will leave liberals deeper in the hole. In other words, we have to debate not whether to have private accounts but only to what extent, otherwise we doom ourselves to be further marginalized in the process.

Lets remind Bobo, with teeth tightly clenched, instead of calling him names, what his colleague said yesterday:

Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all.

Now dueling experts:

BoBo:

The White House is heading toward a reform plan that would tie the benefit levels to prices rather than wages, which is a serious benefit cut. It would then use the power of the markets to compensate retirees for those cuts and to create a reserve fund to make the system solvent.

The government would essentially borrow at 2 percent in real terms, invest that money through regulated private accounts in the market and get a return, based on conservative historical averages, of about 4.6 percent. Those returns would, over time, cover the $11 trillion in liabilities that threaten to bring down the system.

The right-honorable Professor:

How, then, can privatizers claim that they could secure the future of Social Security without raising taxes or reducing the incomes of future retirees? By assuming that workers would invest most of their accounts in stocks, that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.

We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren't), but let's cut to the chase: in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That's because the government would, in effect, confiscate workers' gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers' benefits.

Bobo:

People who think the markets are a rigged game, or who think financial profits are just paper profits, won't like this approach. But the fact is that over the next decade - whether we are talking about pensions, health care or even schools - the central argument is not going to be over whether to apply market competition to these problems. It's going to be over how to structure competition to produce the most dynamic results.

And finally, the very good economist from Princeton:

First, financial markets would, correctly, treat the reality of huge deficits today as a much more important indicator of the government's fiscal health than the mere promise that government could save money by cutting benefits in the distant future.

After all, a government bond is a legally binding promise to pay, while a benefits formula that supposedly cuts costs 40 years from now is nothing more than a suggestion to future Congresses. Social Security rules aren't immutable: in the past, Congress has changed things like the retirement age and the tax treatment of benefits. If a privatization plan passed in 2005 called for steep benefit cuts in 2045, what are the odds that those cuts would really happen?

Second, a system of personal accounts, even though it would mainly be an indirect way for the government to speculate in the stock market, would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street's point of view that's a benefit, not a cost.

There is, by the way, a precedent for Bush-style privatization. One major reason for Argentina's rapid debt buildup in the 1990's was a pension reform involving a switch to individual accounts - a switch that President Carlos Menem, like President Bush, decided to finance with borrowing rather than taxes. So Mr. Bush intends to emulate a plan that helped set the stage for Argentina's economic crisis.

If Mr. Bush were to say in plain English that his plan to solve our fiscal problems is to borrow trillions, put the money into stocks and hope for the best, everyone would denounce that plan as the height of irresponsibility. The fact that this plan has an elaborate disguise, one that would add considerably to its costs, makes it worse.

So we're right back where we started, the pasty faced putz BoBo, sorry I slipped on the name-calling, wringing his hands about how the Republicans have it right and the Democrats better get in the game or get left behind. It seems the first real battle is being joined. Let's hope that our leadership in Congress adheres to the professor's view rather than BoBo's or we're in real trouble.

The Little Falafel Boy

Bill O'Reilly, apparently this is the year he saved Christmas.

From Atrios, via Media Matters:

That's why nobody sticks up for Christmas except me. Did Peter Jennings stick up for Christmas last night? I don't believe he did. How about Brian Williams, did he? Did Rather stick up for Christmas? How about Jim Lehrer -- did he? Did Larry King -- hello -- I love Christmas -- did he? No.

Yes, I sure do miss all those Christmas ads on the television, the radio, the internet, etc. Bill may be pissed off that due to recent events he will not be able to call up Andrea Mackris and tell her, "I'm wearing mistletoe underwear".

I'm defending my white Christmas
Just like the ones I've always known.
Where my vibrators glisten,
And my employees listen
To tales about my new dildos.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With tonight's talking points I state.
May your days be free of fairies and Right.
And may all Bill's Christmases be white.

So many possibilities.

Thersites has many proposed titles at his site with comments on lyrics if you are into that sort of thing.

I try to keep my inner Weird Al to a minimum.

Bobo and I reach common ground

While managing to write a column today that avoids mentioning a racist eugenicist in a benevolent manner, Bobo once again pushes the false pablum of White House talking points about social security.

Look, Brooksie, I'm sorry that we "democrats" are not so into ponzi schemes, where the complicated and risky fix is applied to a situation that requires no extravagent solution to something terribly complicated or risky.

However, there is a point of common ground in your column upon which both you and I can agree.

"I may be a complete idiot..."

Carry on.

Kerik preemptively Spends time with Family

Resigns as Homeland Security Chief before he even becomes Homeland Security Chief.

The rest of Kerik's family, want to spend more time alone.

In naming a replacement, perhaps Bush should consider Alberto Gonzoles' step-son as he seems to need a job. The lad seems qualified to modify our national warning system into -- limp, mildly aroused, or fully erect.

The Social Security Debacle

Attaturk excerpted from Krugman's column below, and as one commenter says, Krugman is spot on. What I'm worried about is the slippery slope we're on having earlier bought into the discussion about the social security liquidity problem.

The question is whether respected economists like Krugman and honest politicians will be able to influence the debate enough to prevent a stampede. Given that some idiots in the press talk about social security as if it is already out of money, this is going to be quite a challenge.

The Second in a Random Series of Weekly Pointless Questions

This was Bush just the other day:

The concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is, we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment. And if I were a soldier overseas, wanting to defend my country, I'd want to ask the secretary of defense the same question.

If it is a good thing to ask the SecDef tough questions why, then, does Bush not welcome tough questions from the press?

Things I have Learned from ESPN Commercials...

1. Young men from the South can apparently call their father "Daddy" and it is not considered icky.

2. "Second place is just the first loser."

3. He did not mean to wreck him, he just meant to rattle his cage a little.

4. If you are a NASCAR Legend, it is okay to look like a 1970s gay porn star right up until the 21st Century.

Thank you world wide leader.

Boo-yah.

On the Third Night We Have the Airing of the Grievances

Uhhhh, Mr. president, that's a menorah, not a Festivus Pole.

Bush Prays Under His Breath For Rapture Ready Holy Land at Menorah Lighting

Bush led the nation in a menorah lighting Thursday night. At the ceremony Bush said:

"Today, many Americans are sacrificing to bring freedom and hope to the oppressed," Bush said before three candles were lighted on a 4-foot sterling silver candelabrum. "In this holiday season, we pray for the safety of our troops, for the success of their mission and for their speedy return home."

Just as a reminder that we are all props in Bush's game of world power, domination, and the impending Rapture, I take this moment to make a public service announcement.

Several months back the Village Voice published an article about an e-mail that made its way out of the enclave known as the White House. Trouble is, the e-mail wasn't supposed to get a public airing becasue it proved the extent of cooperation that exists between the administration and fundamentalist groups.

It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter . Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

***

Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any proposal that will not result in what it calls a "one-state solution" in Israel.
***
While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush's speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics—a point of pride for Upton. "We're in constant contact with the White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings. . . . I was there about two weeks ago . . . At that time we met with the president."
***
Kim Johnson doesn't call it converting Jews to Christianity. She calls it "Circumcision of the Heart"—a spiritual circumcision Jews must undergo because, she writes in paraphrase of Jerhemiah, chapter 9, "God will destroy all the uncircumcised nations along with the House of Israel, because the House of Israel is uncircumcised in the heart . . . [I]t is through the Gospel . . . that men's hearts are circumcised."
Apostolics believe that only 144,000 Jews who have not, prior to the Second Coming of Christ, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah will be saved in the end times. Though even for those who do not believe in this literal interpretation of the Bible—or for anyone who lives in Israel, or who cares about Israel, or whose security might be affected by a widespread conflagration in the Middle East, which is everyone—the scriptural prophecies of the Christian Zionists should be the least of their worries.

Blumenthal wrote on a similar issue back in 2003.

Before his 2000 campaign, Bush confided to a leader of the religious right: "I feel like God wants me to run for president ... I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen."

Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter, tells colleagues that on September 20 2001, after Bush delivered his speech to the Congress declaring a war on terror, he called Gerson to thank him for writing it. "God wants you here," Gerson says he told the president. And he says that Bush replied: "God wants us here."

Just a reminder of what is going on inside this administration.

An Offer for Secretary Rumsfeld

At the risk of whoring out our services and losing our readers, we here at the Rising Hegemon have decided to help Secretary Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld out of a pickle with regard to the defense department's problems with poor equipment for the troops in Iraq.

What we have decided is to start our own biddness.

We call it: Slappy & Stiffy's Scrap. We will begin immediate negotiations with the defense department to be the U.S. military's number one provider of scrap metal so that the soldiers can attach faux armor platting to their vehicles.

We will provide the metal at cost. No, make that at a healthy markup but, for our friends in defense we will sell the scarp far cheaper than Halliburton or other regular defense department contractors. So, its a cost savings! Surely that would be a type of physics that all the military can get behind!

I would imagine that our pitch would sound something like this:

Tired of having your fighting military men and women scuttling around refuse dumps for scrap metal? Tired of soldiers who complain that they do not have the basic equipment and protections to do an unclear and fuzzily planned military excursion through thousands of insurgents and potential terrorists? Then buy the best scrap metal that 275 million dollars can get you with Slappy & Stiffy's Scrap!

We promise extensive planning on where we will get the scrap metal, how it will eventually be delivered to the war zone, and how it might even be placed on military vehicles, Hummers, or even shorts. We will work with only the best metallurgists available on the Internet. And that's a lot.

We promise remarkable levels of planning, discussion, and dialog on the scrap. Stop wasting time (and valuable soldier's lives, 'cause hey you need them to fight this whole insurgency thing, are we right?) and call Slappy & Stiffy's Scrap today for all of your metal needs.

No checks please.

Because 22,384 Progressive Blogs doing so isn't enough...

Let me sing the praises of Paul Krugman, the anti-Bobo. Actual analysis, expertise in the field in which he writes, actually writes a new column rather than filling in the blanks, and certainly hasn't gone out of the way to praise an advocate of "white eugenics".

Krugman is waging war against the right-wing mantra of the need for MASSIVE, EXTENSIVE, REVOLUTIONARY, EMERGENCY, SUPER FANTASTIC, TWICE THE TASTE-HALF THE CALORIES, BETTER THAN THE MISSIONARY POSITION, RAPTURE-INDUCING, LOW CARB, CHARMIN SOFT, social security reform. Massive reform that is completely unnecessary -- and of course, reform from the same folks that would have never wanted social security in the first place.

The National Association of Securities Dealers," The Wall Street Journal reports, "is investigating whether some brokerage houses are inappropriately pushing individuals to borrow large sums on their houses to invest in the stock market." Can we persuade the association to investigate would-be privatizers of Social Security?

For it is now apparent that the Bush administration's privatization proposal will amount to the same thing: borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope.

...

This would sharply increase the government's debt. Never mind, privatization advocates say: in the long run, they claim, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees' benefits. Financial markets won't believe this claim, as I'll explain in a minute, but let's temporarily grant the point.

Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all.

How, then, can privatizers claim that they could secure the future of Social Security without raising taxes or reducing the incomes of future retirees? By assuming that workers would invest most of their accounts in stocks, that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.

We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren't), but let's cut to the chase: in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That's because the government would, in effect, confiscate workers' gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers' benefits.

There is more. Go read.

Two Things that Are Incompatible -- Traditional Allies and "Bush Charm Offensive"

Well, I guess they're agin us...

US Secretary of State Colin Powell's "charm offensive" in Europe bore little fruit on Thursday. NATO officials dashed US hopes the alliance would significantly boost contributions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the first day of his trip to Europe, what many are calling a "charm offensive" to sooth over tense transatlantic relations, US Secretary of State Colin Powell received disappointing news. Despite US hopes European members of the alliance would contribute to a larger officer training facility in Iraq and expand peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan, he came up empty-handed.

At Thursday's meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer hailed the decision on the part of certain members of the alliance, including Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland, to send more staff to an existing training facility in Baghdad, thereby boosting the total number from 60 to 300.

But that contribution falls well below US expectations, and prompted an angry outburst from Powell at a press conference. He specifically took issue with certain NATO members' decision to prevent staff seconded to the alliance from taking part in military training missions in Iraq, namely Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, and Spain.

"When it comes time to perform a mission, it seems to us to be quite awkward for suddenly members of that international staff to say they are unable to go," he said, claiming such actions undermine the credibility and cohesion of NATO.

It would be funny, except, of course, it's not.

Georgie's Sphincter is starting to Spasm as Cheney's arm is removed

He's finally getting that physical.

A preview:

Sharon wins Major Vote, Bigger Buffet Table

From Reuters:

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) won a crucial Likud party vote on Thursday that will let him bring opposition Labour into his shattered coalition and power forward a plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip (news - web sites).

Averting a likely snap election, the rightist Likud's Central Committee reversed an earlier decision by voting 62 to 38 percent to allow talks on a unity government.

It was a blow for hardline party rebels, who oppose giving up the Gaza Strip or any land captured in the 1967 war, and tried to prevent an alliance with pro-withdrawal Labour as a way to stop it.

How can you tell how fucked up it is in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

When the man who oversaw Sabra & Shitilla is opposed from within his party by "hardlinders"!

Friday Miscellaneous Lifeform Blogging

How much would it suck to be 85 feet long and still not get any publicity? Furthermore, while its nice that you have some protections, you are now so endangered that even at 85 feet longer it's hard to find somebody to tickle fins with.

I salute thee, Finback Whale, though the Blue Whale gets more attention, and the Sperm Whale better publicity, we know you're solid.


Finback Whale

Just Getting A Headstart

I figured I might as well get started writing the opening of my opus, THE DECLINE & SCRATCHED BALLS OF THE BUSHICAN EMPIRE, using a good source to save time:

It was an ancient tradition, that when the Capitol was founded by one of the Roman kings Republican Donors, the god Terminus Bush (who presided over boundaries, and was represented, according to the fashion of that age, by a large stone) alone, among all the inferior deities people, refused to yield his place to Jupiter anyone of them bastards, even poppy himself. A favorable inference was drawn from his obstinacy, which was interpreted by the augurs as a sure presage that the boundaries of the Roman 'murican power would never recede. During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment. But though Terminus Bush had resisted the Majesty of Jupiter all the rest of the bastards, he submitted to the authority of the emperor Hadrian nobody, fuckin' nobody.

The resignation of all the eastern conquests of Trajan Eye-Rack was the first measure of his reign. He restored to the Parthians Eye-Rackeys the election of an independent sovereign some guy; withdrew the Roman garrisons 'murican soldiers from the provinces of Armenia peace and security, Mesopotamia bitches!, and "Ass"yria; and, in compliance with the precept of Augustus fuck Daddy, once more established the Euphrates no fucking end as to the frontier of the empire.

Bill O'Reilly, Fal-awful

Fresh from communicating his, um, active fantasy life, Bill O'Reilly feels the need to reveal that soft and cuddly anti-semetic side.

O'Reilly likes Jews, as long as they are not all "jewey" and stuff:

On his December 9 radio show, in response to a Jewish caller who explained that he "Christmas caroled [as a child] and it didn't bother me because I knew I was Jewish," O'Reilly declared: "You know, 99 percent of Jewish Americans are just like you. You know, and that's why the shame of this Anti-Defamation League -- they're just nuts." He added that Barbara Streisand, who is Jewish, sings Christmas carols well:

O'REILLY: And, here's the capper. Who's got one of the biggest-selling Christmas albums in history? Barbara Streisand! Barbara Streisand has made gazillions singing Christmas songs. And she sings 'em really well.

O'Reilly blasted Media Matters and the ADL throughout the December 9 radio broadcast:

O'REILLY: You have a defamation pipeline that starts in the Internet. So, every day The Radio Factor's on the air, we have these creeps -- and they really are the most vile, despicable human beings in the country -- who listen to every word of the program. And then they try to feed stuff out to the mainstream media to discredit me. I mean that's what they do every single day of the year, they do this. So, last Friday we had a caller. We were talkin' about the Christmas being discussed in schools and in the public arena -- and I'm gonna play you the call in a moment.

So, one of these far left websites taped it and they sent it to the Anti-Defamation League, which is an extremist group that finds offense in pretty much everything. Abraham Foxman is the national director. These are the people who accused anybody of liking The Passion of the Christ as anti-Semitic.

[...]

So, well you're gettin' the game here. You criticize anybody, you challenge anybody, then you are a bigot. And that's the -- that's why nobody does it. That's why nobody sticks up for Christmas except me. Did Peter Jennings stick up for Christmas last night? I don't believe he did. How about Brian Williams, did he? Did Rather stick up for Christmas? How about Jim Lehrer -- did he? Did Larry King -- hello -- I love Christmas -- did he? No.

All right. And the reason they don't is because of this. So, we are not intimidated. We know how dishonest and disgraceful the defamation pipeline is. And now we wanna hear from you. 1-877-9NO-SPIN. And believe me, I'm not portraying myself as a victim here. I am not doing that. I am attacking these people for being the worst element in American society.

Lemme repeat that. The left-wing websites who are responsible for all of this kind of stuff, and the journalists in the newspapers who print it without any context -- are the worst element -- non-criminal element in the country. The worst. All right? They undermine freedom of speech. They undermine all fair play. They are despicable, vile human beings -- ankle biters. So, I'm no victim 'cause I got a forum and I can give it right back to 'em.

President Nelson Muntz

Before he even starts his second term, Bush is breaking the campaign promises he made as recently as 37 days ago. He promised to work toward reducing the deficit to 1.6% of GDP. If anybody thought about it (i.e. a few million Kerry voters) they knew this was a lie. But Bush is not even trying.


From EPINET:

The bar on the left shows the 2004 deficit of 3.6% noted above. The middle bar shows the 1.6% target for 2009, well under the 2.2% average deficit for the past 40 years, which is reflected in the horizontal line.

In the bar on the right we see the consequences of actual policy decisions to date. The bottom blue region of the bar represents the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "baseline" deficit in 2009 under tax and spending policies in force as of September 2004. This grossly understates future deficits because CBO assumes what no one expects to happen: that scheduled "sunsets" of tax cuts passed since 2001 will actually occur. The impact of making all such tax cuts permanent, including measures to forestall increases in the Alternative Minimum Tax, is reflected in the purple segment of the bar on the right of the figure.

After the November elections, Congress reconvened to finish its work on appropriations for fiscal year 2005 (which began in October). News reports suggested that the final legislation imposed a significant slowdown in spending growth. It is true that domestic spending was reduced, but reports of overall spending restraint were exaggerated. In the summer of 2004 Congress enacted increases in defense spending that completely offset the austerity in domestic programs. In addition, Congress routinely takes a second bite of the spending apple in the spring by passing "supplemental appropriations," and the White House has already signaled that it will propose a supplemental that will have substantial additional defense spending.

The net impact of FY2005 budget decisions thus far is to increase projected outlays in 2009 by $9 billion (including debt service). This is reflected in the light blue region of the bar on the right. Supplemental appropriations in the spring could add to this amount. (Whether the supplementals continue at present levels will depend on the future of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Finally, Congress passed widely criticized corporate tax cuts that reduce the apparent cost of the bill through a host of scheduled phase-outs that may never come to pass. Putting this additional cost aside because its magnitude is uncertain, the projected fiscal 2009 deficit as a result of policies enacted by the Congress and approved by the President will be 3.4% of GDP.

In short, the actual fiscal policies enacted by Congress and approved by the President deliver less spending restraint than they promise, and no fiscal restraint whatsoever. The administration's decisions point to a deficit in 2009 comparable to the one for 2004, and one that is more than twice what President Bush proposed last February. In recent months, the president and Congress have again shown their commitments to lower taxes and to higher security spending. As pressure to narrow the deficit increases in future years, the damage to worthwhile domestic spending programs could be substantial.

HA! HA!

Asleep at the Switch

Pressed today to comment on the angry reception Rumsfeld received yesterday in Kuwait, Bush had the following to say:

The concerns expressed are being addressed, and that is, we expect our troops to have the best possible equipment. And if I were a soldier overseas, wanting to defend my country, I'd want to ask the secretary of defense the same question.

If you had asked the question, the troops would not have had to do it for you. Asshole.

Then he added:

He told reporters in an Oval Office event that he has been telling military families that "we're doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones in a mission which is vital and important.

You suppose they're buying it?

Sometimes life is too easy...

I like captioning challenges.

Attaturk is in the middle of the ever busy -- "hey, I actually gotta work?" season, but nonetheless occasionally something cries out and the public, okay, one guy has a very special request...

Someone help me out. Attaturk? Holden?


"I got Cheney's hand up my ass, who's up yours?"

Thank You.

Good night.

Drive Safely.

Ten Commandment Madness

Atrios linked to the story earlier today as did Attaturk below. The brief filed with the Supreme Court highlights all the reasons why it is ok to display a blatantly religious symbol in /on a public building (via SCOTUSblog).

According to the brief,

Indeed, it is widely recognized as a matter of historical fact that the Ten Commandments has served over time as a basis for our national law.*** [A]t least to the extent that the Commandments established ethical or moral principles, they were expressions of universal standards of behavior common to all western societies. It was agreed that these moral standards, as influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition, have played a large role in the development of the common law and have formed a part of the moral background for the adoption of the national constitution.

Check out the footnote that accopmanies the citation which I have ommitted. Why does one get the sneaking suspicion that the "Judeo" part of the equation is simply window dressing? So just in case you didn't know, this is a *Christian* nation.