Monkeyfister

If you haven't seen it, here it is. Yes, the whole movie. I don't know how long it will stay up. Just click the thumbnails to play each part. ***Share It With Someone Who HASN'T Seen It Yet!***




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It's one of those rare moments when you have an epiphany and say to yourself "Oh! What?! No kidding?!" and then you kick off your Google box and start looking for more.

This couple is Bush's most important tool; Communications.

Let's take the husband first and drag him out onto the dancefloor. Kevin, born in Charlotte, NC. has a B.A. from UNC Chapel Hill, a Masters in Public Policy from Duke (Raleigh) and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law. He's a member of the Florida Bar, the Washington DC Bar and he's a member of the Federal Communications Bar. Pretty smart cookie, you think? Let's put it in a more terrifying way: He's smarter than Ralph Reed because he still has a job and he's not taken any bribe money from Jack Abramoff.

So where does he work and how is he connected to the Bush Administration? He's the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. According to Wikipedia, he's worked for many years at a lobbying firm Wiley Rein & Fielding who represents the "baby" Bell companies, Gannett, Viacom/CBS among others. Now, please pay attention to the fact that he's represented BellSouth, Southern Bell and the other "baby" Bells...it'll be important to remember.

In a current fight, Mr. Martin has the United Radio Operators mad at him for his pushing something called "Broadband Power Lines" or BPL. (BPL is an imaginary idea that states power lines can be used to carry a broadband signal, which makes all of rural America and Canada a huge market place.) Martin said today about BPL:

In his prepared remarks, the chairman described BPL as a "potentially significant player due to power lines' ubiquitous reach, allowing it to more easily provide broadband to rural areas."

American Radio Relay League fired back and called Martin's comments "specious" at best.

Martin has a bit of a problem from now on: most people call them "Democrats". Since Martin has captained his enormous FCC ship virtually unchecked by Congress, he's apparently made a few enemies with not only the Democrats, but a few Republicans as well. The WaPo published this last Friday (1/26/07):

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, a Republican with close ties to the Bush administration, will be the focus of Democrats' criticisms. But some industry analysts think those lawmakers may try to find an ally in Commissioner Robert M. McDowell, another young Republican loyalist with a reputation for intelligence and political ambition. The two have clashed on at least three significant issues in the past several months, creating what some see as a rift that could be ripe for exploitation.

"McDowell has been critical of Kevin Martin on a number of occasions," said industry analyst Blair Levin. Although both men are conservative Republicans, Levin said, their independence is partly explained by their different political bases -- Martin's in the Bush administration, McDowell's in Congress.

The most interesting part about Martin has been his involvement with Net Neutrality, a bill that the GOP controlled Congress couldn't finish and get passed because of the sheer weight of greed and corruption that the bill dragged with it. Martin, in Dec 29, saw his bill finally go up in smoke for a very long time. The bill has been abandoned with little hopes on getting it revived in a Democratically controlled Congress. Dick McMichael wrote today:

AT&T agreed to continue Net Neutrality for two years in exchange for the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of its merger with Bell South. Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told the committee that action does not mean the same Net Neutrality conditions would be placed on others. So that leaves Net Neutrality still up in the air.

Wait... What did he say?!? Isn't there a conflict of interests here? And, even if Mr. McMichael was clueless about this issue; the fact that AT&T; has agreed to continue Net Neutrality for two years, doesn't that imply that AT&T is blackmailing the United States?

Now it's Mrs Pathetic's turn on the dance-floor. Doesn't want to dance? Drag her out on the floor anyway. Cathie Martin is a former Harvard professor and she decides which television talking-head shows the Bush Admin team should appear on.

Cathie's had a pretty rough week as well. Cathie had her notes displayed on the wall as she explained that Tim Russert of Meet The Press was her favorite forum for her "team". Dana Milbank's piece "Memo to Tim Russert, Dick Cheney Thinks He Controls You" piece on Brad Delong's Semi-Daily Journal:

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president... Cathie Martin... on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

Last week, she had to explain to the court of the Scooter Libby trial that she was the one who informed Libby about Plame's identity while on a flight with the Vice President's entourage. Libby, immediately afterward, trotted on up to to Dick's chair and had a short chat and the deal to ruin Plame and Ambassador Wilson's life was settled. The goddess over at FireDogLake carried this:

There was a very interesting new tidbit about the July 12, 2003, flight on Air Force II, on which Scooter Libby and Cathie Martin (Cheney's then press secretary), seated at the back of the plane, discussed some questions that Matt Cooper of Time had for the Vice President about issues of credibility on Iraq. Libby then went to the front of the plane and discussed these issues privately with Cheney, and returned to talk with Cathie Martin with Cheney's handwritten notes on how the Vice President wanted Libby — not Martin — to respond to the press inquiries. That Cheney was directly involved in crafting specific messaging that he then directed his Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor to disseminate to the press is, to say the least, quite unusual and interesting. (And the mechanics in how the discussion occurred are very specific and new details.)

Chosen by Mary Maitlin hereself, Cathie's testimony had to be painful; she's very close friends to both Libby and Cheney. I almost felt sorry for her embarrassment for a moment, but then I realized it was nothing more than a bit of flatulence.

AmericaBlog painted a two dimensional picture with Ms. Martin by pointing to something called "The Insight". AmericaBlog looks at these two "communications tools" like they were a "duet" in a super-sized Right Wing Smear Machine. The Insight is explained as:

On the end of the right wing smear machine is "The Insight" -- a publication owned by Reverend Moon's cult, the Unification Church. Today's NY Times looks at that "publication" and its ability to spread false stories throughout the right wing smear machine. The Times examines how the Moonie-owned publication was able to spread the fake story about Obama's grade school. The last paragraph really sums up how the right wingers work...

The original source of Obama's elementary education being investigated by Senator Clinton's camp came from Reverend Moon's Insight webpage. Other right wing news sources like The Drudge Report picks up these fantasies and turns them into reality where national media like CNN, ABC, CNN and anybody else picks them up and turns these fantasies into truth.
(Hrmm, the last time I thought anything about Sun Myong Moon was that weird meeting in the Dirksen Senate Building where tons of Republicans (and allegedly a few Democrats) were present and confused when Moon and his wife appeard wearing regal maroon robes and being crowned as "The Second Coming".)

I have to disagree with AmericaBlog; this isn't simply "a Duet" of smearing between Cathie Martin and Moon's "The Insight". That would be simplistic, and dare I say "Pathetic". It's a three dimensional model of a communications machine that covers the three primary areas of spin: Domestically (Kevin Martin, FCC), Personally (Cathie Martin) and Factually (The Insight). Admitedly it's a great story and it's got great teeth in it too.

Everyday this presidential administration appears to be more and more of nothing but a puppet-show. The puppet-master is really a novice and his puppets are entertaining us Americans with knotted strings and broken and chipped characters like Mr and Mrs Pathetic.

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EnK

More posts later.




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He needs to send twice as many Troops, and he is seriously underfunding it.

The CBO has put together the actual personnel and budgetary numbers for Bush's Surge!™ Plan... Seems he forgot to include the Military Support Units when he told us about his little plan, and even left them out of budgeting (do we need to doubt a Surge!™ in Halliburton contracts?). Not only that, but, he's only asking for $US3 Billion, when a minimum of $US9 Billion will be needed...

The administration's estimate of approximately 21,000 extra troops only counts combat units, according to the analysis, and because combat units require support forces, the actual number of additional troops who will be in Iraq will likely exceed 35,000.

From the analysis (you can read it here ):

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000.

---

The analysis, which estimated the cost of the president's plan "from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment," was sent to House Committee on the Budget Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) today.

Dear Senate,

I know you all work really, really hard to pass that super-cool Non-Binding Iraq Resolution just the other day and all, and please don't think me ungrateful, but, ummm, it's time to make that Iraq Resolution binding...




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Labels: CBO, George W Bush and the Troops, Iraq, Surge, War Escalation

My favorite evil bastard, Henry Kissinger, went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, to tell them what each of them wanted to hear-- literally-- and in as few words as possible.

via WaPo

"I am convinced, but I cannot base it on any necessary evidence right now," Kissinger told the senators, "that the president will want to move toward a bipartisan consensus" to stabilize Iraq through diplomacy.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was suspicious of such assurances. "Is there any place that you're familiar with where the administration has articulated this strategy?" he asked.

"I don't know any place where the administration has articulated this particular strategy," the octogenarian diplomat admitted. But he added: "From my acquaintances with some of the people, I think it is possible that they will come to this strategy."

Obama asked Kissinger if "you are suggesting that they have some secret strategy that we have not been made privy to."

"I would be disappointed and surprised," he reiterated, "if they did not accept some of the elements of what has been discussed here."

For Kissinger, the floating of a phantom plan for Iraq provided a deft way out of a tricky situation. Like James Baker, who went before the committee Tuesday, Kissinger was inclined to defend Bush's Iraq policy. But Bush had left the two men, both former Republican secretaries of state, with little ammunition.

It went on and on like that. When Henry the K. goes into this rhetorical mode, it is usually safe to assume that he's totally lying, stalling, and obfuscating. We've got history on our side on this score, and the Committee obviously was on to him.

George W. Bush ain't got shit, save for a Surge, and a yen to attack Iran, and somehow save his ruined legacy.

My worry is that George's big, secret plan to stop the Civil War in Iraq involves turning Iraq into the battle ground for a new war with Iran. I guess we'll find out soon enough.



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I added the following four News Sites to the sidebar:

Unreported News
McClatchy News
The Politico
Consortium News



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Robert Perry seldom gets it wrong, and typically, doesn't go out for hyperbole. So, I tend to listen when he writes something like this:

via Consortium News

Military and intelligence sources continue to tell me that preparations are advancing for a war with Iran starting possibly as early as mid-to-late February. The sources offer some differences of opinion over whether Bush might cite a provocation from Iran or whether Israel will take the lead in launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But there is growing alarm among military and intelligence experts that Bush already has decided to attack and simply is waiting for a second aircraft carrier strike force to arrive in the region – and for a propaganda blitz to stir up some pro-war sentiment at home.

One well-informed U.S. military source called me in a fury after consulting with Pentagon associates and discovering how far along the war preparations are. He said the plans call for extensive aerial attacks on Iran, including use of powerful bunker-busting ordnance.

Another source with a pipeline into Israeli thinking said the Iran war plan has expanded over the past several weeks. Earlier thinking had been that Israeli warplanes would hit Iranian nuclear targets with U.S. forces in reserve in case of Iranian retaliation, but now the strategy anticipates a major U.S. military follow-up to an Israeli attack, the source said.

Both sources used the same word “crazy” in describing the plan to expand the war to Iran. The two sources, like others I have interviewed, said that attacking Iran could touch off a regional – and possibly global – conflagration.

Very much worth the read.

UPDATE: Scout Prime has put together more pieces of the Bush Plan...



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Labels: George W Bush, Iran

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Labels: Molly Ivins

I think Miss Molly would have appreciated this post following her.




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Labels: Bush Family Values, Greg Palast

An Obit I never wanted to ever post. Be at Peace, Miss Molly. We will surely miss you. We will miss you.


via AP

AUSTIN, Texas -- Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment and referred to President Bush as "Shrub," died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 62.

David Pasztor, managing editor of the Texas Observer, confirmed her death.

The writer, who made a living poking fun at Texas politicians, whether they were in her home base of Austin or the White House, revealed in early 2006 that she was being treated for breast cancer for the third time.

More than 400 newspapers subscribed to her nationally syndicated column, which combined strong liberal views and populist-toned humor. Ivins' illness did not seem to hurt her ability to deliver biting one-liners.

The Last Graph of Her Final Article

From, Stand Up Against the Surge”--

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

Damn it.


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Labels: Molly Ivins

One Pissed-Off Veteran

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067

Total coalition forces dead: 253
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1963
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1414
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1363
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

He also reminds us that it has been 978 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.


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3...2...1...Full Ignition...


Full story: via Boing Boing



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Labels: Sea Launch

Via Hoffmainia, we get a DoD report from last week, about five American troops. Hoff begs to differ, and I agree with him that Ahmadenijad isn't quite that crazy, and has a few major items to address on his Domestic Plate, before full-out provoking the big, ugly war with America. One might say that this would be rushing the script a bit-- there is much more conflict and drama to be wrung out of this brinkmanship novel

Today, via Holden's Obsession With The Gaggle, we note that Tony Snow and the White House, are backing away from an Iranian connection, saying, "I'm not getting into that sort of speculation. I'd send you off to the Department of Defense for any readout they're going to give."

Personally, I wouldn't doubt their Iranian-ness, if any of this story is even true, but I really doubt that Ahmadenijad ordered them there, or knows anything about them. IF they were there, they were there all on their own. My guess is that there will be a mumbled denial from the DOD, recorded in a Saturday, A19 sidebar item. No one will notice the denial, and the Limbaughs of the Wingosphere will continue to reference it as a reason to "glass" Iran. My opinion, based on what we know right now.

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I didn't read much of his work, but, he was legendary. His books are everywhere from the elite booksellers to the grocery store. He will be missed.

via Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sidney Sheldon, an Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter who went on to become one of the world's most prolific novelists, died in California on Tuesday at the age of 89, a publicist said.

Sheldon died of complications from pneumonia at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, near his Palm Springs home, said Sean Rossall, publicist at Warren Cowan and Associates.

Sheldon became an American icon in the 1970s with novels like "The Other Side of Midnight" and "Bloodline," bestsellers spun out of international intrigue and the sexual liberation of the era. Strong women were often the main characters.

He published 18 novels and sold 300 million copies, making him a paperback stand staple for decades. Translations into 71 languages in 180 countries won him a listing in "The Guinness Book of Records" as "the world's most translated author."

And Henry Kissinger is still alive.


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Did he wear his "Holy" socks specifically for this mosque visit? Ummm... I don't make a pittance of what he makes, and all of my socks are in good condition.

via The Guardian

As president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz is clearly not short of a buck or two. So is he just too time-poor to get down to his local mall and invest in a new pair of socks? Known for his sharp suits and hawkish views, he was snapped revealing his inner slob during a visit to the Selimiye mosque in Edirne, western Turkey.

He knew he was going to a mosque. He knew pictures would be taken. Are these his "Holy" socks?



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Labels: Paul Wolfowitz

We're nearly done with our comparisons. Today, we discuss Equality and Merit.


via The Late Steve Kangas

Summary

In an unrestricted meritocracy, the strongest keep accumulating power until the weak are eliminated. In an equal society, the equal distribution of rewards causes excellence to fall, because there is no reward for trying harder. The compromise between these two extremes is a moderated meritocracy, where the most talented continue to be the most rewarded, but a percentage of their resources is redistributed back to the middle class, to keep them competitive and in the game. This keeps the talent pool as healthy as possible, from which even greater talent is drawn. It also unlocks the fullest potential of society.

---

Argument

One of the longest running debates in human history is that of merit vs. equality. Which one a society values most will determine which kind of social structure it adopts. A meritocracy is a system which gives the greatest rewards to those with the most merit or success; to achieve this type of society, the rules must be relaxed or even eliminated. An egalitarian society is a system which rewards people equally, regardless of their performance; to achieve this sort of society, the number of rules must be increased.

For our purposes, it is actually more useful to divide societies into three types: unrestricted meritocracies, moderated meritocracies, and egalitarian societies.

Do yourself a favor, and save these Kangas posts to your hard drive.


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Labels: Steve Kangas

Big Dick is 66.*

Obviously, evil is a preservative.





















* I know, a day late-- I was too sore to post yesterday.

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Labels: Dick "dick" Cheney, Dick Cheney

Kunstler gets down in detail about suburban sprawl, the society that spawned Martha Stewart, Housing prices, and our cul-de-sac future...

via Clusterfuck Nation

By the 1980s, America had been converted, with monstrous efficiency, into what I have called a geography of nowhere, a panorama of identical highway strips, malls, big box warehouses, fried food out-parcels, and free parking wastelands -- all serving the endless new subdivision pods of single family houses. The ultimate result was a landscape full of places no longer worth caring about.

The program was carried out ruthlessly by big corporations and their hand-maidens, the road-builders, the house-builders, and the brotherhood of traffic engineers, but it was fully supported by the public at large and their elected local officials on the planning and zoning boards. It was both an "emergent" economic ecology -- a systemic response to decades of cheap oil and favorable geopolitics -- and a consciously mapped-out attempt to create a kind of Utopia, in this case a suburban Utopia of Happy Motoring. Whatever it was, nothing like it had ever been seen before.

It had many consequences but one of the worst was the impoverishment of public space. From the social point-of-view, it turned out that housing pods and highway strips lined with strip malls were a poor substitute for main street towns or walkable neighborhoods. Under the insane dictates of single-use zoning, each individual was trapped in a car for hours each day, often in vexing traffic with other isolated individuals, and also often in the company of little children with a low tolerance to being trapped and vexed.

---

The whole racket floundered when several things changed or went awry. One was the sheer saturation of markets. Sooner or later, everybody who might possibly buy a house, got a house. The racket had had the perverse effect of stealing demand from the future by making house-buyers of those who were not really ready to buy -- e.g. very young adults with no savings or people with bad credit records. And not every immigrant from Bangladesh, El Salvador, or the Central African Republic could be positioned as a house buyer -- even under the now nearly nonexistent lending standards.

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Labels: James Kunstler, Suburban Sprawl

Millions to go hungry. Water scarcity will be wide-ranging. Mass-Migrations will be legion in America... But, King George Will Banish Global Warming through deregulation of the Corporations... Our brilliant King!

via Reuters

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising temperatures will leave millions more people hungry by 2080 and cause critical water shortages in China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States, according to a new global climate report.

By the end of the century, climate change will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people as temperatures rise by 2 to 3 Celsius (3.6 to 4.8 Fahrenheit), a leaked draft of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said.

The report, due for release in April but detailed in The Age newspaper, said an additional 200 million to 600 million people across the world would face food shortages in another 70 years, while coastal flooding would hit another 7 million homes.

"The message is that every region of the earth will have exposure," Dr Graeme Pearman, who helped draft the report, told Reuters on Tuesday.

"If you look at China, like Australia they will lose significant rainfall in their agricultural areas," said Pearman, the former climate director of Australia's top science body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Africa and poor countries such as Bangladesh would be most affected because they were least able to cope with greater coastal damage and drought, said Pearman.

Big troubles on the horizon.


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Labels: Global Warming

Supreme Writ by Executive Order:

via NYT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, “This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable.”

Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations.

Yep. Declare "KING," and unleash the dogs of unrestrained, unregulated Corporatism...... We've Been Here Before.

Paul Weller warned us 20 years ago, back when Reagan deigned to be King. Watch the Money Go 'Round.




UPDATE: Attaturk Has An Interesting Analysis, with an historical twist. Are George and Dick the reincarnations of the Romanovs?

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Labels: Corporatists, George W. Bush, Slave Nation, Unregulated Industry

Niiiiice...



I hurt all over, still.
Moving. very. s l o w l y.



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Labels: Steely Dan

Sadly NO! tears up Mr. Preston with the same hilarity with which they ripped up Ms. Malkin, yesterday... Too much, too much!

STEP ONE: Be shamed into going to Iraq. Fair enough.

STEP TWO: Actually go to Iraq. This is a creditable advance. None of the WingNet Nancy Drews that came before you ever got past Step One. (Michael Fumento has a different racket going.)

STEP THREE: Go to one of the mosques in the AP story that you’re trying to debunk. Excellent! This is way better than I would have thought, even though the mosque you went to was firebombed and had a hole from an RPG in its dome. But never mind that, let’s keep rollin’ along.

STEP FOUR: Don’t go to any of the other mosques in the AP story. Whoops. This is a bit of a setback. Still, keep moving forward … plenty of time to turn it around.

Oh... and there's lots of fun links, and all kinds of funny truths to be had there...

Youch! Four days in the 'raq, and all they gots ta show for it, is a whole lotta nuttin'? They've EARNED this slap-down.


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Labels: Brian Preston, Sadly NO

This really tops it. Cheney saying we "will lose stature" if we pull out of Iraq. (he can't be that out of touch). That is exactly what they will do.. tell Americans, once they start to notice our decline, that the dems pulling out of Iraq is *why we lost stature*, (it's the dems fault and not their own idiotic, inhumane policies).. Then below.. looks like the Dems are getting some spine,.. then I read further and realize.. Bushco has everyone in congress arguing over the troop levels while they get to continue for a while longer and possibly start a war in Iran, or have an attack here or whatever else keeps them in power... Oh well at least this is progress. Hey, Jane Fonda felt like she could get out and protest now!

via Yahoo News

-Cheney:
----
He cautioned against the phased withdrawal backed by Democrats, saying Iraq would collapse into chaos and the United States would lose stature in the world.

"All of a sudden, the United States, which is the bulwark of security in that part of world, would I think no longer -- could no longer be counted on by our friends and allies that have put so much into this struggle," he said.
----
(AS IF he has been in his bunker all this time)

-Biden: (here we go..)
----
It's not the American people or the United States Congress who are emboldening the enemy," he told Fox News.

"It's the failed policy of this president, going to war without a strategy, going to war prematurely, going to war without enough troops, going to war without enough equipment and lastly, now sending 17,500 people in the middle of a city of 6.5 million people with bullseyes on their back with no plan," he added.
-----
-(But then we'll waste all the time arguing over troop levels, while they are being shipped out. Well at least maybe they can do something before the 97,000 others are sent...)
-----
"I think we should be stronger and clearer about benchmarks," the senator said on NBC, adding his support for a regional conference that includes Iran and Syria.

"We need to go over and over and over the issue of, is this new troop level enough to make a difference. Because I think, clearly, we have been wrong in the past about the adequacy of troop levels," he said.


-But then Cheney was probably worried about Halliburton and Bechtel, and not our allies really. Those are Cheney's friends and allies.

LINK

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Labels: Dick "dick" Cheney

Lambert may be onto something worth further delving, regarding Warrantless Wiretapping, and a Possibly Ratfucked FISA Judge

Go have a look.

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Labels: FISA, George W Bush, Warrantless Search and Seizure

It seems troubles, anger and hatred follow him where'er he goes.

Digby has the story...

UPDATE: And a WHOLE lot more.


Saint Stephen with a rose
In and out of the garden he goes
Country garland in the wind and the rain
Wherever he goes the people all complain-- "St. Stephen"
-- The Grateful Dead






yep, everyone always smells a foul plant.



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Labels: DoD, Iraq, Joshua Sparling, PFC Joshua Sparling, Plant