Whoa. I just watched the Flash short, “NotYourSoldier” produced by The Ruckus Society. You need to stop what you’re doing and watch it too. Then email it to all your friends, especially those of enlistment age. This thing kicks Bush ass and makes a case that will not be denied. Check it out!
Tom DeLay messed with Texas big time by placing party above…well everything, according to columnist Patricia Kilday Hart in the Dallas Morning News.
Redistricting Republicans into virtually every office has left the state with few ranking members, and now that DeLay himself has been forced from office under a cloud of scandal, Texans are crying in their Lone Stars.
…the Texas delegation underwent dramatic change after the 2004 elections, which were based on the Republican-friendly map Mr. DeLay forced through the state’s Legislature…In that election, Texas lost 85 years of seniority and three powerful ranking members of Congress.
“The Texas delegation went from the most powerful to one of the weaker large state delegations, really as a result of [Mr.] DeLay’s efforts,” says Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic research operation…
DeLay’s timing of his cut and run couldn’t be worse, Hart adds.
With Mr. DeLay’s retirement, Texas enters what one state official calls “uncharted territory,” with a delegation now claiming only one committee chairman and no leadership position — perhaps the state’s worst portfolio since the Great Depression. What’s more, this decline in stature coincides with President Bush’s lame-duck phase — and Mr. Bush’s precipitous decline in the polls.
…And then there’s also the question of what happens if the Republican Party loses its majority. “If the Democrats regain control of the Congress, the Texas delegation will be without a single chair or a single ranking member,” Mr. Angle notes.
Yes indeedy. “Democrats regain control of Congress.” Has a real ring to it, doesn’t it?
West Points cadets heard a quick, empty commencement address from Pres. Bush Saturday.
“The war began on my watch — but it’s going to end on your watch,” he said during a brief appearance…before returning to Camp David outside Washington, D.C., for the weekend.
Hold the bus to the holiday retreat, George. I’m not sure if you’re talking about kids now or the ones you let die in your stead in Vietnam.
“…Thirty-four times since your class arrived, you have observed a moment of silence in Washington Hall to honor a former cadet fallen in the war on terror…We will honor the memory of these brave souls,” [Bush said.] We will finish the task for which they gave their lives. We will complete the mission.”
“We,” of course, meaning, “you guys.”
When I hear Bush talk about “the war,” “the mission,” etc., my thoughts go to something that’s been bothering me since I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks ago. Punching buttons, I paused on the Lex and Terry Show, syndicated from nearby Jacksonville, which proudly defines its appeal as “male humor.”
Callers competed in a contest called, “The Mental Challenge,” which I gathered required one listener to identify which of several others was, in fact, mentally challenged and which were merely uninformed dolts. After a series of “duh” queries about sports and American Idol, the hosts asked an amazing question:
Who are we at war with?
One player answered “Afghanistan.” Another said “Arabs.” The third began to answer several times and finally said he didn’t know. Lex and Terry never supplied the correct answer.
Listening in the car, I was like the third contestant. I started to say, “insurgents” but they weren’t even in the picture when we launched this errand. So I switched to “terrorists,” but if that’s the case, why are we in Iraq instead of wherever it is terrorists come from? Saddem Hussein? No, we took him out but we’re still there. I finally concluded that like that third guy, I don’t know who we’re at war with.
I suspect no one — including our leaders — does. Yet they keep sending more West Point cadets, and National Guard dads and moms, and kids whose lives are just starting, to be killed or maimed. And we keep permitting them to.
Columnist Rick Casey tells us why we should note the passing of Lloyd Bentsen.
I didn’t serve with Lloyd Bentsen. I didn’t know Lloyd Bentsen. Lloyd Bentsen was not a friend of mine.
But I think I can safely say to all of today’s Texas politicians: Sirs, you are no Lloyd Bentsen…
Unlike so many of the chicken hawks now in power, Bentsen eagerly signed up to go to war, immediately after finishing law school…
He was a true moderate, liberal on some social issues, and a fiscal conservative. As President Bill Clinton’s secretary of the treasury, he was a key player in balancing the budget…
He carried himself with a courtliness that was both respectful and commanded respect (although he showed, in his vice-presidential debate against Dan Quayle, that he was quite capable of going for the jugular).
It’s impossible to imagine Bentsen saying to a TV reporter who had asked an uncomfortable question, as Rick Perry did after he thought the taping had ended, “Adios, mofo.”
Casey also notes that Bentsen maintained bipartisan friendships and even voters, serving as he did in the pre-DeLay/Rove era. If nothing else, thinking of Bentsen reminds us what it was like before lockstep partisanship turned Republicans into yammering clones led by cynical, greedy louts.
Dear Lord: First, thank you for all your blessings upon me and my family and friends. But can I ask you something? Why are you always giving the inside scoop to rightwing ministers like Pat Robertson and the Rev. O’Neal Dozier? You told Pat about hurricanes and now you’re tipping Jeb crony Rev. Dozier about Charlie Crist.
Lord, you know I live in Florida. I’d appreciate a little direct communication from time to time too. That’s all I’m saying. Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:
A reverend who introduced Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during a breakfast with other pastors Monday said the Lord came to him in a dream two years ago and told him Crist would be the state’s next governor.
The Rev. O’Neal Dozier said that before the dream he did not know Crist, nor had Crist made known his plans to run for governor.
“The Lord Jesus spoke to me and he said ‘There’s something I want you to know,'” said Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach. “‘Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.'”…
“It’s the most amazing thing anyone’s every told me,” Crist said. “It’s beyond overwhelming, but the reverend has a very strong faith in his heart and he’s a good man. I’m very grateful for his help and his support and his belief.”
Gov. Jeb Bush, who appointed Dozier to a group that nominates judges in South Florida, didn’t directly respond to the remark, but praised Dozier.
“Far be it from me to judge about people’s faiths and what occurs because of it,” Bush said.
As you know, God, none of this has prevented some of your people from speculating that Crist will be undone once he’s exposed as a homosexual who, according to people like Rev. Dozier, you have condemned to hell. It also hasn’t stopped rightwingers who think Crist is too liberal from putting up cheesy anonymous web sites ridiculing him, like SorryCharlie.com
Mystified at how the presidents of the United States and Exxon/Mobil can continue to poo-poo global warming in the face of conclusive evidence?
Well let’s think about this. For what would these greedy bastards be willing to throw away the planet? That’s right — money, money, and more money. The Week:
With average temperatures in the Arctic rising twice as fast as elsewhere in the world, climate scientists predict the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by the summer of 2050…
The melting of the ice could shut down the Gulf Stream and wreak havoc with the world’s coasts and climate. It would spell potential disaster for traditional Arctic communities, for ecosystems, and for plant and animal species—polar bears would drown or starve, and the species could become extinct.
That sounds awful. But wait, there’s an upside. Or should I say, an angle?
The melting ice cap represents a colossal commercial opportunity. Russian icebreakers are already preparing to take tourists to the Pole for $30,000 each this summer, and the thaw could open up some highly lucrative shipping routes. A northeast sea route, north of Siberia, would allow shipping to sail from Europe to northeast Asia, cutting the journey by a third; and the fabled Northwest Passage through Canada’s Arctic archipelago could be open to shipping in a few decades, cutting the journey from Europe to East Asia (now routed through the Panama Canal) by 4,000 miles. The greatest profits, however, are likely to be found under the ice.
Hmmm…and what could they be?
Oil and natural gas. A quarter of the world’s untapped fossil fuels (including 375 billion barrels of oil) are thought to lie under the Arctic, and will become accessible as the ice melts. Industry experts now talk of a “black gold rush,” as companies such as BP Amoco, Statoil of Norway, and the Russian giant Gasprom all race to tap already discovered reservoirs in the region. The Arctic, says Moscow-based energy analyst Christopher Weafer, “is the next energy frontier.”
Oh, this is just too depressing. The writers go on to explain the standing whereby countries that border the North Pole — including us — will stake claims to all that treasure. Everyone has until 2009 to call dibs with the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
People in Florida scratched their damp, sweaty heads in the fall of 2004 after four hurricanes in six weeks left much of the state without hot coffee in the morning, light before sunup or after sundown, or fuel for cars — the only source of charged cell phones, air conditioning and radio news.
People, that is, except in Dade County.
Miami was spared in 2004, although a year later God made an honest county of it by sending both Katrina and Rita. So how come FEMA’s intrepid director Michael Brown awarded so much aid to Dade County in 2004? That’s what one Florida newspaper wanted to know. South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
Newly released e-mails of former FEMA Director Michael Brown show top federal officials scrambling to explain millions in disaster aid going to Miami-Dade County residents for a 2004 hurricane that missed the county and coaching Brown “not to appear defensive”…
“We need you calm cool and collected,” former FEMA chief of staff Patrick Rhode wrote in 2004 after the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had awarded more than $21 million in Miami-Dade for Hurricane Frances, the Labor Day weekend storm that struck 100 miles away. “We need our best spokesperson … to combat these issues in a diplomatic way to wave the flag for the admin -“
The 29 pages of emails were released this week only after a direct order from U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra on behalf of the Sun-Sentinel. In an amazing feat of foreshadowing, FEMA staffers kick around various strategies for covering up glaring malfeasance. Left out is any indication of why the agency actually gave so much money to Miami. Was it because South Florida is a gushing fountain of funding for Republican candidates across the nation? Or was it just because FEMA was totally and completely inept? Tough call.
“Should we say the density in population in Miami-Dade versus the other affected counties (just sheer numbers) to somewhat explain the disparity in funding,” [FEMA Press Aide LeaAnne] McBride wrote to seven FEMA officials. “However, FYI — the reporter and those she contacted have driven around looking for physical damages to justify the funding and that will not be seen because those type of damages just did not occur in Miami-Dade.”
The email makes crystal clear that whatever else was going on, politics was the biggest determining factor in FEMA staff’s decisions. McBride’s advice to Brown shows just how caught up in election year issues they were.
In another e-mail, McBride wrote Brown, “Be cautious not to appear defensive or show that the ridiculous questions get under your skin when you’re at the press conf today [Sun-Sentinal Reporter] Megan [O’Matz] will show up. Just don’t want your expressions to give away your exasperation with this non-issue the way that the President’s did in the first debate.”
No indeed. Brown could have done a lot worse than the blinking, lip-twitching, murder-on-his-tiny-mind-revealing the president was doing. Still, one wonders. The email shows an agency whose soul was long ago sold. More unsettling is the thought that we are still at the mercy of shallow cynics more concerned with CYA than with actually helping people like us.
After 16 months of “political gridlock,” the House Ethics Committee finally got the vital missing piece it needed in order to begin investigating Bob Ney and other Republicans involved with both Jack Abramoff and Inmate Duke Cunningham: a dirty Democrat.
The committee waited to investigate U.S. Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who has “stink” written all over him until — praise Jesus! — they uncovered equally fetid Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). CNN:
The simultaneous investigations of Ney and Jefferson give a bipartisan tone at a time when Democrats are trying to make a campaign issue out of Republican misconduct.
The committee of five Republicans and five Democrats had been in a partisan deadlock since the beginning of last year. The House GOP leadership removed two GOP members of the committee and the Republican chairman after they had admonished DeLay for his conduct. Since then, the committee has fought over committee rules and staffing, and failed to get a sixth vote to begin any investigation.
Members of the committee added that they would have investigated Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) if he had just been patient and waited for a defiled Democrat like the rest of them. Instead, he opted not to face the voters this fall, denying the glacial Ethics Squad potentially their biggest prize.
“But for his imminent resignation from the Congress … we would have recommended to our colleagues on the committee the formation of an investigative subcommittee to conduct a formal inquiry into those allegations,” [committee members] Berman and Hastings said.
Well darn. Who would have thought letting nearly a year and a half go by without acting would have consequences? But then again, Jefferson was worth waiting for. Now Republicans everywhere can hold him up as living proof that we are just as bad as they are. I mean, a 434 to 1 ratio pretty well speaks for itself, don’t you think?
Chuck Klosterman wrote a great piece for ESPN Magazine about why Barry Bonds matters. We’ll save his five reasons on that subject for another day, but his summation of the post-Clinton years is dead-on. The essay was excerpted in The Week magazine.
In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election, and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act as if that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings, and everybody cried for two months. And then Enron went bankrupt, and the U.S. started acting like a rogue state, and The Simple Life premiered, and we re-elected the same president we never really elected in the first place. Later, there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and three Oscars for an especially bad movie called Crash…
If it’s the era of anything, it’s the Era of Predictable Disillusionment: a half-decade in which many long-standing fears about how America works (and what America has come to represent) were gradually — and then suddenly — hammered into the collective consciousness of just about everyone, including all the people who hadn’t been paying attention to begin with.
Right. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, nor does it provide exemption from being strapped in a seat on the Rove-conceived roller coaster of division and made-up strife we no longer even recognize as such.
Instead, we routinely take ardent stands on things previously of only passing interest to us, like stem cell research, gay people holding weddings, husbands unplugging wives from life support, and citizenship for Mexican workers. We debate absurd “solutions” to illusionary “problems” like putting a fence around the lower 48. Meanwhile, we either don’t notice or claim not to care when cameras are erected on every highway exit ramp and bridge, and better records of our cell phone calls are provided to the government than to us.
As Paris Hilton herself said, if caviar wasn’t expensive, no one would eat it. I’d rather think they’re putting something in the water than think we are just this easy to play.
Talk about your memorable debuts. New Whitehouse SpokesTool Tony Snow blew it so big today that I would not be surprised if his were the shortest reign as press secretary in our nation’s history.
Tony was so unnerved by Helen Thomas’ relentless follow-up ala the Steve Colbert video at the White House correspondent’s dinner, that he worked the phrase “tar baby” into his answer for Martha Radditz. Amazing. Watch it yourself at CrooksandLiars.
And if today was any indication, we are in for an even worse time with Tony that with Scottie or Ari. First he says he won’t comment on the USA Today story on phone calls, then he goes on to hold forth at length about it. Next he quotes poll numbers that show dumbass Americans are unconcerned and follows that up by saying the president ignores polls. I don’t know about you but I’m already tired.
What if you planned a Kentucky MAGA event and only heard crickets? Previously, announcing Freedom Fest turned on the money spigots. Kid Rock was planned as headliner, But organizer Eric Deters was a whiner: The […]
