Smafty Mac: Fighting the kakistocracy!!!

FCC ALERT

FOX news and penetration!
Rated XXX



Maybe they only care about seeing breasts, never you mind the giant penis stuffing the poor girl!

Send an E-mail to the FCC and make sure those pinkos at FOX get what's coming to them!!!!!


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I will review Fahrenheit 9/11, I recieved a copy through the grapevine so I didn't have to wait.

Watching it twice to catch what I didn't catch before.
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Krugman: Must read

The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.

The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.

Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.

What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.

The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold."

Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.

If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that "the level of casualties is secondary" because "we are a warlike people" and "we love war."

Rightwingers who read this blog, please remember.

Every bad thing we allow to happen to the Iraqi people will come back to haunt us!
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A real poll question proves voters know the diffrence between John Kerry and Dubya

In a new poll released today, a majority of voters supporting Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) for president agreed with the statement, “He is not George Bush.”

The poll results seem to indicate that Mr. Kerry’s status as someone who is not President Bush is pivotal to his appeal among those who support him. Of those surveyed, 98 percent said they believed that John Kerry was not George Bush, with a scant 2 percent answering “Don’t know.”


Asked to name the issue that concerned them most, 9 percent of Kerry voters named “improving the economy,” 12 percent named “fighting terrorism,” and a whopping 79percent named “electing someone who is not George Bush.”

“With weeks to go until our convention, it’s significant that so many voters already believe that John Kerry is not George Bush,” said Kerry strategist Bob Shrum. “Once our ad buys get underway, we expect the number of people believing John Kerry is not George Bush will only increase.”


Perhaps in response to the poll results, the Bush campaign today responded with a series of ads intended to plant seeds of doubt in the voters’ minds about whether or not John Kerry is, in fact, not George Bush.

How pathetic, this is what they are polling?

Americans aren't that stupid, why not ask them to identify a picture of a cat and a dog that makes about as much sense!
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Are we getting ready to organize another troop deployment to Iraq?

For the first time since Operation Desert Storm, the Army plans to announce this week an involuntary mobilization of thousands of troops from the Individual Ready Reserve; various press outlets are planning to report.

The move, which Army officials say is likely to involve notifying roughly 6,500 soldiers about a possible deployment, is meant to fill holes in active and reserve units preparing to go to Iraq and Afghanistan this fall and early next year.

Pentagon officials have said for weeks that tapping from the Individual Ready Reserve was in the works. The Army's plan is being explained this week on Capitol Hill in advance of the announcement, expected on Wednesday, defense officials said.

So if Iraq was given back to the Iraqis, why are we still there?

Doesn't it read funny that we are still sending troops, building bases, and privatizing the hell out of everything if we truly were giving Iraq back to the Iraqis?

We need to get the Neo-CONS out and keep Kerry Liberal!

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Knock me over with a feather, Billions missing from Iraqi oil revenue

A Christian charity has accused the coalition authority in Iraq of failing to account for up to $20bn (nearly £11bn) of oil revenues which should have been spent on relief and reconstruction projects.

At the same time, the Liberal Democrats are demanding an investigation into the way the US-led administration in Baghdad has handled Iraq's oil revenues. The coalition is obliged to pay all oil revenues into the Development Fund for Iraq, but according to Liberal Democrat figures, the fund could be short by as much as $3.7bn.

Sir Menzies Campbell, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, said yesterday: "This apparent discrepancy requires full investigation".

Christian Aid , in a report today, claims that the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority, which hands over power to an interim administration in Iraq this week, is in flagrant breach of the UN security council resolution which gave it control of the country's oil revenues.

Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, stated that the money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people and independently audited, but an auditor was appointed only in April.

The charity quoted an unnamed UN diplomat as saying: "We only have the total amounts and movements in and out of the development fund. We have absolutely no knowledge of what purposes they are for and if these are consistent with the security council resolution."

Last October, Christian Aid revealed that $4bn of oil revenues were unaccounted for, but although procedures have been tightened up, the charity said, "we still do not know exactly how Iraq's money has been earned, which companies have won the contracts that it has been spent on, or whether this spending was in the interests of the Iraqi people."

According to the coalition's latest figures, the development fund has received $10.7bn. Yet it also admits that $12.5bn has been generated since June 2003.

Gee, really suprising!
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Iraq turn over today, Bremer relieved he lost his sh*t job!

Control of Iraq has been handed to a sovereign government after a surprise announcement that the transfer was being brought forward to today.

The transer of power from the US-led coalition was supposed to happen on June 30.

But Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said the deteriorating security situation in the country was one of the reasons why the date had been brought forward.

It was feared guerillas would stage a major attack to derail the process.

The offiicial handover took place at a ceremony in Baghdad.

"This is a historical day," said Prime Minister Iyad Allawi at the ceremony.

"We feel we are capable of controlling the security situation."

US governor Paul Bremer said: "You have said, and we agreed, that you are ready for sovereignty," Bremer said in the ceremony. I will leave Iraq confident in its future."

Let's see how the puppet government gets toppled!
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Poor Nader, The Greens reject him!

The Green Party nominated Texas attorney David Cobb as its candidate for president, rejecting Ralph Nader's efforts to secure the party's formal endorsement and likely access to the ballot in key states like Wisconsin and California.



Nader, the party's candidate in 1996 and 2000, had told Green officials months ago he would not accept the party's nomination for president, preferring to build a coalition of third-party groups and independents rather than running under one banner.

Still, he openly courted their formal endorsement as a means to get on the ballot in the 22 states and Washington, D.C., where the party has a ballot line.

But 408 delegates voted for Cobb on the second ballot Saturday to give him the nomination.

This blocks him out of many states, if I were him I would stop running already...maybe "run" a spot in the Kerry administration.
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Fahrenheit 9/11 tops US box office!

"Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's assault on President Bush, took in $8.2 million to $8.4 million in its first day, positioning it as the weekend's No. 1 film, its distributors said Saturday.

Based on Friday's numbers, "Fahrenheit 9/11" was on track for an opening weekend that would surpass the $21.6 million total gross of Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," his 2002 film that earned him an Academy Award for best documentary.

"Bowling for Columbine" holds the record for highest domestic gross among documentaries, excluding concert films and movies made for huge-screen IMAX theaters.

Friday grosses for "Fahrenheit 9/11" ran about $1.5 million ahead of its closest competitor, the Wayans brothers comedy "White Chicks." The performance of "Fahrenheit 9/11" was even more remarkable considering it played in just 868 theaters, fewer than a third the number for "White Chicks."

868 theaters, in my area only one theater is playing the movie and it's been sold out every night, Unless I get lucky I won't see it for a week or two!

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Fridays O'Franken Factor is Jammed pack!

Bill Clinton, Michael Moore, Ron Reagan Jr.

Click here for The O'Franken Factor
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Zell Miller to speak at the GOP convention, yeah we didn't see that one coming!

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak at the Republican National Convention later this summer, a congressional aide said Friday.

 

Miller drew a sharp rebuke from the dean of the state's congressional delegation, Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who called the senator's decision "a shame and a disgrace."



According to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Miller will give his address on Wednesday night of the four-day convention in New York that begins Aug. 30. The Bush-Cheney campaign was expected to make an announcement Monday, the aide said.



The speech by Miller, a former two-term governor, comes 12 years after he delivered the keynote address for Bill Clinton (news - web sites) at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, also held in New York.



Miller, who is retiring in January, has voted with Republicans more often than his own party and has been a key sponsor of many of Bush's top legislative priorities, including the Republican's tax cuts and education plan.



In May, Miller spoke at the Georgia Republican convention and criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as an "out-of-touch, ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" whose foreign and domestic policies would seriously weaken the country.



"I'm afraid that my old Democratic 'ties that bind' have become unraveled," Miller said.

Retire already ya southern fried nut!
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Cheney uses a bad word, note: Cheney is Evil, not a pretend Christian like others out there!

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was on the receiving end of Cheney's ire, confirmed that the Vice President used profanity during Tuesday's class photo.

A spokesman for Cheney confirmed there was a "frank exchange of views."

Using profanity on the Senate floor while the Senate is session is against the rules. But the Senate was technically not in session at the time and the normal rules did not apply, a Senate official said.

The story, which was recounted by several sources, goes like this:

Cheney, who as president of the Senate was present for the picture day, turned to Leahy and scolded the senator over his recent criticism of the vice president for Halliburton's alleged war profiteering.

Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton, and Democrats have suggested that while serving in the Bush administration he helped win lucrative contracts for his former firm, including a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq.

Cheney's office has said repeatedly that the vice president has no role in government contracting and has severed all financial ties with the Texas-based oil services conglomerate.

Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. He resigned when he became George Bush's running mate.

Responding to Cheney's comment, Leahy reminded him of an earlier statement the vice president had made about him. Cheney then replied with profanity.

Well, Dick ....Right back at you pal!

Fuck You
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Sample some of Al Gore's recent speech!

When we Americans first began, our biggest danger was clearly in view: we knew from the bitter experience with King George III that the most serious threat to democracy is usually the accumulation of too much power in the hands of an executive, whether he be a king or a president. Our ingrained American distrust of concentrated power has very little to do with the character or persona of the individual who wields that power. It is the power itself that must be constrained, checked, dispersed and carefully balanced, in order to ensure the survival of freedom. In addition, our founders taught us that public fear is the most dangerous enemy of democracy because under the right circumstances it can trigger the temptation of those who govern themselves to surrender that power to someone who promises strength and offers safety, security and freedom from fear.

It is an extraordinary blessing to live in a nation so carefully designed to protect individual liberty and safeguard self-governance and free communication. But if George Washington could see the current state of his generation's handiwork and assess the quality of our generation's stewardship at the beginning of this 21st century, what do you suppose he would think about the proposition that our current president claims the unilateral right to arrest and imprison American citizens indefinitely without giving them the right to see a lawyer or inform their families of their whereabouts, and without the necessity of even charging them with any crime. All that is necessary, according to our new president is that he -- the president -- label any citizen an "unlawful enemy combatant," and that will be sufficient to justify taking away that citizen's liberty -- even for the rest of his life, if the president so chooses. And there is no appeal.

What would Thomas Jefferson think of the curious and discredited argument from our Justice Department that the president may authorize what plainly amounts to the torture of prisoners -- and that any law or treaty which attempts to constrain his treatment of prisoners in time of war is itself a violation of the constitution our founders put together.


What would Benjamin Franklin think of President Bush's assertion that he has the inherent power -- even without a declaration of war by the Congress -- to launch an invasion of any nation on Earth, at any time he chooses, for any reason he wishes, even if that nation poses no imminent threat to the United States.

How long would it take James Madison to dispose of our current president's recent claim, in Department of Justice legal opinions, that he is no longer subject to the rule of law so long as he is acting in his role as commander in chief.

I think it is safe to say that our founders would be genuinely concerned about these recent developments in American democracy and that they would feel that we are now facing a clear and present danger that has the potential to threaten the future of the American experiment.

Shouldn't we be equally concerned? And shouldn't we ask ourselves how we have come to this point?

Even though we are now attuned to orange alerts and the potential for terrorist attacks, our founders would almost certainly caution us that the biggest threat to the future of the America we love is still the endemic challenge that democracies have always faced whenever they have appeared in history -- a challenge rooted in the inherent difficulty of self-governance and the vulnerability to fear that is part of human nature. Again, specifically, the biggest threat to America is that we Americans will acquiesce in the slow and steady accumulation of too much power in the hands of one person.

Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent -- that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.

Want more, Click on the Link!
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The King of peace, recently crowned by the Senators.

Did I mention he is an ex-felon?
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Bush interview in the Plame affair, how many times he said "Good" still up in the air!

President Bush met for an hour on Thursday with a U.S. attorney probing the Bush administration's alleged leak of the identity of a CIA (news - web sites) operative, the White House announced.



Spokesman Scott McClellan also said Bush had retained an attorney, Jim Sharp, to represent him in all matters involving the case.



"No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States," McClellan said.



A federal grand jury is probing whether someone in the Bush administration illegally leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, a charge the White House has denied.



An array of administration officials have been questioned as part of the investigation, including Vice President Dick Cheney

Was the President under oath or did he learn from the Clinton example and avoid it so he won't get caught in a lie?
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Do you Still have any doubts about a biased FEC?

Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC)today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel.

At the same time, a Republican-allied 527 soft-money group is preparing to file a complaint against Moore’s film with the FEC for violating campaign-finance law.

In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FEC’s agenda for today’s meeting, the agency’s general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.


The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election.

The proscription is broadly defined. Section 100.29 of the federal election regulations defines restricted corporate-funded ads as those that identify a candidate by his “name, nickname, photograph or drawing” or make it “otherwise apparent through an unambiguous reference.”

Any thing to protect the BUsh Cabal, why do we let these guys get away with it?

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Clinton's "my Life" setting records!

Bill Clinton's memoir "My Life" set a record for first day non-fiction sales with 400,000 copies bought in the United States, the former president's publisher said Wednesday.



With Clinton's 957-page tome selling so well on its first day, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said it has ordered another 725,000 copies from printers in addition to an initial print run of 1.5 million copies.

"This is a record-breaking number for a work of non-fiction," said Sonny Mehta, president of the Knopf Publishing Group, adding that sales were "exceedingly strong" in other countries too.

In addition to the book sales, Knopf said Clinton racked up first day audiobook sales of 35,000.

GOP heads start popping in ....3....2......1... POW

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On CNN this morning you might have caught a Reporter carrying a large pickle over her shoulder, why?

Clinton said something about being a pickle and CNN just freaked out!

What did it mean, who or what is a pickle? What could he be refering to?

Gena Mo just turned into the Carrot Top of journalism what kind of story is that, honestly????
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R rating stands for Moore's new film.

Michael Moore and his distributors lost their appeal Tuesday to lower the R rating for "Fahrenheit 9/11," his scathing assault on President Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.



Lions Gate Films and IFC Films, the movie's distributors, said an appeals board for the Motion Picture Association of America rejected their request to reduce the rating to PG-13.

The R rating prohibits those 17 and younger from seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" without an adult.

The movie, which won the top honor at last month's Cannes Film Festival, was rated R for "violent and disturbing images and for language." The movie's images include an Iraqi man tossing a dead baby into a truckload of bodies, Iraqis burned by napalm and a public beheading in Saudi Arabia.

Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films, had argued to the appeals board that 15- and 16-year-olds should be free to see the film on their own because they could end up in military service in Iraq in the next few years.

"I hope the R rating doesn't have a large impact on the box office," Ortenberg said. "I've spoken with many parents, including some on the appeals board, who absolutely said they are going to take their children to see the film. We'll just have to hope the teenagers we're encouraging to see this picture find their way in through parents or adult guardians."

IFC Entertainment President Jonathan Sehring disagreed with the MPAA's ruling, adding: "But we do respect the process and appreciate that the MPAA listened with open minds to our appeal."

"As anyone who has read a paper, watched TV, surfed the web or chatted by a water cooler this week can attest, the interest in `Fahrenheit 9/11' has grown to mammoth proportions," Sehring went on. "It is a shame that `Fahrenheit 9/11' will become inaccessible to a segment of the American population to whom this film has a great deal of relevance."

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Rocket fuel in California milk, is this a new drink?

A study says children and pregnant women who drink milk from some California cows could be at risk from a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel.

The Environmental Working Group's research says they may be exposed to unsafe levels of perchlorate, which has been linked to thyroid damage. For fetuses, infants and children, disruptions in thyroid hormone levels can cause lowered IQ, mental retardation, loss of hearing and speech, and motor skill deficits.

The group found the rocket fuel chemical in almost every sample tested -- 31 out of 32 samples purchased from grocery stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The average level of perchlorate in the samples was 1.3 parts per billion -- just above the Environmental Protection Agency's currently recommended safe dose of 1 parts per billion.

The study comes as state and federal regulators prepare new standards to regulate the chemical. Perchlorate has been found in the Colorado River, which is a major drinking water source for Southern California and Arizona. The perchlorate ingested by cows in their water and feed is passed along in milk. Researchers are divided about its effects and what exposure levels are safe.

"Our findings are not a call for California mothers to stop drinking milk or stop giving it to their children," said Bill Walker, of the Environmental Working Group. "They do show that the state must set a drinking water standard that fully protects public health."

Michael Marsh, of the Western United Dairymen, which represents California's dairy industry, says the state's milk is safe.

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Kerry gets endorsed by eggheads

Democrat John Kerry picked up the endorsement on Monday of 48 Nobel Prize-winning scientists who attacked President Bush for "comprising our future" by shortchanging scientific research.

"The Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important to our collective welfare," the 48 scientists, who have won Nobels in chemistry, physics and medicine dating back to 1967, said in an open letter released by the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign.

The scientists, who included 2003 chemistry winners Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon, accused the Bush administration of undermining America's future by reducing funding for science and turning away scientific talent with restrictive immigration policies.

"John Kerry will change all this," they said. "John Kerry will restore science to its appropriate place in government."

Kerry, on his first public campaign visit to Colorado, told supporters at a rainy rally in a downtown Denver park that the United States was losing its scientific lead over other nations. He promised to put the country once again "at the forefront of scientific discovery."

Bush belongs to the Jesus will save us, burn the planet we won't need it after we reach paradise crowd.

It's just reason #9823465463219878790098 to vote BUsh out!
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Republicans keep hiding the war dead!

The U.S. Senate on Monday backed the Bush administration's ban on media coverage of the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers being received at Dover Air Base, despite complaints that the policy was an attempt to mask the rising death toll in Iraq ( news -web sites ).



Republicans who control a Senate majority defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to make the Pentagon ( news -web sites ) write new rules to allow media coverage of the return of the remains of soldiers to the United States.

The Pentagon has barred coverage of the return of remains flown from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to Dover Air Base in Delaware since the 1991 Gulf War ( news -web sites ) under former President George H.W. Bush.

The Clinton administration made exceptions, but President Bush ( news -web sites ) reimposed the ban when the Pentagon issued a directive on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

As a result, "The over 830 service men and women who died in Iraq passed through a politically imposed void hiding the truth," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said in floor debate on the issue last week.

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What's your opinion on his quote from Bill O'Reilly?

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.

Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.
[...]
They're just people who are primitive.

Bill, how would you feel if China invaded Long Island?
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The 60 minutes interview was surprisingly very bland, I watched it and saw a very cold, remorseless person.

The cemetery visit, the Starr affair, it doesn't seem that he is really sorry for lying under oath. If he didn't lie about that damn affair those 200 FBI agents wouldn't have been assigned to the case against him and Clinton could have focused on UBL.

That bothered me, regardless of the fact that the Right wing "Conspiracy" did exist, my personal belief is he is playing the victim disregarding the fact he had his part in the fiasco. His dual persona is dead on; people who live that kind of life operate in very different worlds in which they live. In his head he can make exceptions for his behavior without regard for the people in his life.

The interview didn't get me interested in the book; it did get me interested in reviewing the case against President Clinton. I want to see how the rightwing tried to pass off that travesty of justice to the American people.

Clinton is a very complex; he isn't just "Bubba" or "Slick Willy" he is a victim of his own weakness and master of his strength.

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Value of Gitmo prisoners "Overstated", again we knew all of this two years ago!

For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists — "the worst of a very bad lot," Vice President Dick Cheney has called them.

The officials say information gleaned from the detainees has exposed terrorist cells, thwarted planned attacks and revealed vital intelligence about Al Qaeda. The secrets they hold and the threats they pose justify holding them indefinitely without charge, Bush administration officials have said.

But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

While some Guantánamo intelligence has aided terrorism investigations, none of of it has enabled intelligence or law-enforcement services to foil imminent attacks, the officials said. Compared with the higher-profile Qaeda operatives held elsewhere by the C.I.A., the Guantánamo detainees have provided only a trickle of intelligence with current value, the officials said. Because nearly all of that intelligence is classified, most of the officials would discuss it only on the condition of anonymity.

"When you have the overall mosaic of all the intelligence picked up all over the world, Guantánamo provided a very small piece of that mosaic," said a senior American official who has reviewed the intelligence in detail. "It's been helpful and valuable in certain areas. Was it the mother lode of intelligence? No."

In September 2002, eight months after the detainees began to arrive in Cuba, a top-secret study by the Central Intelligence Agency raised questions about their significance, suggesting that many of the accused terrorists appeared to be low-level recruits who went to Afghanistan to support the Taliban or even innocent men swept up in the chaos of the war, current and former officials who read the assessment said.

Nearly two years later, military officials said, the evidence against many of the detainees is still so sparse that investigators have been able to deliver cases for military prosecution against only 15 of the suspects, 6 of whom have already been designated as eligible for trial by President Bush . Investigators are now preparing 35 to 40 other cases for the military tribunals, those officials said.

The Bush doctrine has been an utter failure, The Afghan conflict hasn't been completed, Iraq is tipping towards civil war between the Kurds and Sunnis, so what do we have to show for it?

MORE instability, MORE violence, and MORE Arab anger towards the US.

George Bush is making every American look like that racist redneck who uses firehoses on children. He needs to go.


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Half way through thoughts....

The Arafat kiss made me laugh a little, the Cemetery scene raised my eyebrow a bit. Next is Hillary finds out Bill had some Lewnisky
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Here on the West coast 60 Minutes has Bill Clinton!

will posst my thoughts on the interview.
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Blogger was down again, sorry about that!
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Bush grabbed power while stepping on the backs of black voters. Computerized voting machines while ensure we lose the democracy.

n the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.

This year, it could get worse.

These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.

How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.

While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.

Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."

By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white- majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.

In other words, in the white county, make a mistake and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake, your ballot is tossed.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission looked into the smelly pile of spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855 ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53 percent were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter.

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9/11 commission to DICK Cheney: Put up or shut up!

The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.

"Probably," Mr. Cheney replied.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either.

"We just don't know," Mr. Cheney said.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton made the requests in separate interviews with The New York Times as the White House continued to question the findings of a staff report the commission released on Wednesday and to take exception to the way the report was characterized in news accounts. The report found that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and the terrorist network.

That finding appeared to undermine one of the main justifications cited by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for invading Iraq and toppling Mr. Hussein.

Mr. Cheney has also continued to cite a disputed report that Mohamed Atta, a ringleader of the hijacking plot, met in April, 2001, in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, raising the possibility of a direct tie between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks, a tie that the commission's staff report found no evidence to support.

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A current offical, albeit "Anonymous" is releasing a bitter condemnation of the Bush administration!

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.

In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.

This is some real good action, and reflective of the current government not just diplomats, but current officals are calling them crooks. This administration is cannot be left in power, there aren't words in this language that stresses my point.
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A current offical, albeit "Anonymous" is releasing a bitter condemnation of the Bush administration!

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.

In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.

This is some real good action, and reflective of the current government not just diplomats, but current officals are calling them crooks. This administration is cannot be left in power, there aren't words in this language that stresses my point.
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Diplomats against Bush

The Bush administration does not understand the world and remains unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership, a group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders charged yesterday.

"Our security has been weakened," the former ambassadors and four-star commanders said in a statement read to a crowded Washington news conference. "Never in the 2 1/4 centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted."

The statement fit onto a single page, but the sharp public criticism of President Bush was striking, coming from a bipartisan group of respected former officials united in anger about U.S. policy. The commentary emerges as public doubts about the Iraq invasion and Bush's handling of national security have risen.

The new group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, believes Bush should be defeated in November if the United States hopes to rebuild its credibility and strengthen valuable foreign alliances.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking later in the day to al-Jazeera, rejected the criticism as a political act. He said the signers, most of whom he knows personally, "made it clear what they wish to see -- they wish to see President Bush not reelected."

"I do not believe that will be the judgment of the American people," Powell added.

"I disagree that the United States is so isolated, as they say," he told the Qatar-based satellite television network. "I mean, the president has gone to the United Nations repeatedly in order to gain the support of the international community. We are in Iraq with many other nations that are contributing troops. Are we isolated from the Brits, from the Poles, from the Romanians, from the Bulgarians, from the Danes, from the Norwegians?"

This is Unheard of in Washington.

They people in the know say Bush and his polices are bad for America!
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Hostage beheaded

An al-Qaida group said Friday it killed American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr, posting an Internet message that showed photographs of a beheaded body that appeared to be his.

The statement was posted on a Web site where the group frequently makes announcements. Also posted were three still photos showing a head that appeared to be Johnson's.

The message, in the name of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, appeared as a 72-hour deadline set by the group on Tuesday ended.

"In answer to what we promised ... to kill the hostage Paul Marshall (Johnson) after the period is over ... the infidel got his fair treatment," the statement said.

(AP) Paul M. Johnson Jr. is shown in this undated family photo released by his son Paul Johnson III, in...
Full Image
"Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles," the statement said.

Johnson, who worked on Apache helicopter systems for Lockheed Martin, was kidnapped last weekend by militants who threatened to kill him by Friday if the kingdom did not release its al-Qaida prisoners. The Saudi government rejected the demands.

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Go visit the New Take back the Media

It looks all nice and perdy!


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HA!
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Iraq justified because of "Numerous Contacts".....Um, didn't both parties (Iraq and Al-Qaida) say they wouldn't and then didn't work with each other?

President George W. Bush said ``numerous contacts'' between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network justified the U.S.-led war on Saddam Hussein's regime.

``There was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al- Qaeda,'' Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. ``This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda.''

A panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reported yesterday that meetings or contacts between the former Iraqi dictator and al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden didn't lead to a collaborative relationship. There's ``no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States,'' the panel said.

``Saddam Hussein was a threat,'' Bush said when asked about the report. ``He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy of the United States of America, just like al- Qaeda. He was a threat because he had terrorist connections.''

``The world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power,'' the president said.

Really, what proof do you have that he was a threat?
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Smafty's Jam this week just happens to be from the Pixies!

Buy these songs!!!

Song: Monkey Gone to Heaven
Album: Wave of Mutilation - Best of Pixies
Artist: Pixies




If man is five, than the Devil is six, than God must be seven....this monkey is going to Heaven!


Song: Debaser
Album: Wave of Mutilation - Best of Pixies
Artist: Pixies





Download and listen to the music that started the revolution! Remember without the Pixies there would be no Nirvana or Radiohead, hell even Weezer wouldn't exist!
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Senate backs Bush on more Nuclear weapons

The United States Senate on Tuesday backed the Bush administration's plan to study a new generation of low-yield and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, rejecting concerns that the research could spur an arms race.

Voting 55-42, the Senate defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to slash US$36.6 million ($59.4 million) to study so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons that would be used to destroy underground facilities as well as smaller nuclear arms with half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The administration has said it has no plans to build such weapons, but wants to keep the door open to their development to deal with emerging threats. It successfully pushed Congress last year to repeal a 10-year-old ban on researching low-yield weapons of less than 5 kilotons.

Democrats said just considering the new weapons takes nuclear warfare out of the realm of the unthinkable and encourages adversaries of the United States to develop such weapons.

"The spectre of nuclear war looms even larger with the ominous statements of senior officials in the Bush administration that they in fact consider these new weapons more 'useable',' said Senator Edward Kennedy.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the smaller weapons still would kill or injure hundreds of thousands of people and leave vast areas uninhabitable for years to come.

But Republican Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado said it would be irresponsible "for us to bury our head in the sand" and not consider these weapons to confront terrorism and threats from rogue nations.

The vote came as the Senate debated a bill to authorise US$422 billion in defence programmes for next year and an additional US$25 billion to fund operations in Iraq.

The version of the bill the House of Representatives passed last month contained the weapons research money. But lawmakers will continue to tangle over the issue in bills they will consider later this summer to fund nuclear weapons programmes.

Why do we need more Nukes????

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Ed. Note: Blogger screwed up so here is my repost!

Thomas Paine

"These are the times that try men's souls." This simple quotation from Thomas Paine's The Crisis not only describes the beginnings of the American Revolution, but also the life of Paine himself. Throughout most of his life, he was a failure, living off the gratitude and generosity of others, but his writings helped inspire a nation. He communicated the ideas of the Revolution to common farmers as easily as to intellectuals, creating prose that stirred the hearts of the fledgling United States. He had a grand vision for society: he was staunchly anti-slavery, and he was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization and social security for the poor and elderly. But his radical views on religion would destroy his success, and by the end of his life, only a handful of people attended his funeral.

Brief Biography
On a January day in 1737, Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England. His father, a corseter, had grand visions for his son, but by the age of 12, Thomas had failed out of school. The young Paine began apprenticing for his father, but again, he failed. So, now age 19, Paine went to sea. This adventure didn't last too long, and by 1768 he found himself as an excise (tax) officer in England. Thomas didn't exactly excel at the role, getting discharged from his post twice in four years, but as an inkling of what was to come, he published The Case of the Officers of Excise (1772), arguing for a pay raise for officers. In 1774, by happenstance, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who helped him emigrate to Philadelphia.

His career turned to journalism while in Philadelphia, and suddenly, Thomas Paine became very important. In 1776, he published Common Sense , a strong defense of American Independence from England. He joined the Continental Army and wasn't a success as a soldier, but he produced The Crisis (1776-83), which helped inspire the Army. This pamphlet was so popular that as a percentage of the population, it was read by more people than today watch the Superbowl.

But, instead of continuing to help the Revolutionary cause, he returned to Europe and pursued other ventures, including working on a smokeless candle and an iron bridge. In 1791-92, he wrote The Rights of Man in response to criticism of the French Revolution. This work caused Paine to be labeled an outlaw in England for his anti-monarchist views. He would have been arrested, but he fled for France to join the National Convention.

By 1793, he was imprisoned in France for not endorsing the execution of Louis XVI. During his imprisonment, he wrote and distributed the first part of what was to become his most famous work at the time, the deist-atheist text, The Age of Reason (1794-96). He was freed in 1794 (narrowly escaping execution) thanks to the efforts of James Monroe, then U.S. Minister to France. Paine remained in France until 1802 when he returned to America on an invitation from Thomas Jefferson. Paine discovered that his contributions to the American Revolution had been all but eradicated due to his religious views. Derided by the public and abandoned by his friends, he died in 1809 in New York City, a drunk and a pauper. The whereabouts of his remains are unknown today.

If half of the politicans had half the guts this guy did, America would be VERY diffrent!
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Cheney's underground bunker

Top White House officials expressed anger after TIME magazine detailed the location of Vice President Dick Cheney's secret bunker, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

In new editions, TIME revealed "Site R," an underground bunker on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border where the Vice President spent much of his time in 2001.

TIME wrote: "Deep under Raven Rock Mountain, Site R is a secret world of five buildings, each three stories tall, computer filled caverns and a subterranean water reservoir. It is just 7 miles from Camp David."

Raven Rock Mountain is easily found using basic geographical maps.

One White House officials fumed Monday night: "TIME magazine would have revealed secret the location of Anne Frank, if they knew it.

Anne Frank was an innocent little girl, I would never say TIME magazine would revel her location to the Nazis. Cheney should hide in his Spiderhole for a few months.
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I got into an argument about Drudge, I called him a right wing hack and my buddy said he wasn't

Take a look at this picture and decide




So when Drudge has an unflattering photo taken should we call him "Drudge the gay cowboy?"
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Cheney's office involved in contracts, no Sh*t metter is offically broken

Vice President Dick Cheney's staff was involved from the very start of the decision-making process that ended with Houston's Halliburton Co. being awarded a multibillion-dollar contract to perform work in Iraq, a key Democratic lawmaker said Sunday.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, was briefed in October 2002 on a proposal to assign Halliburton the task of drawing up a secret plan for putting out oil-well fires and rebuilding Iraq infrastructure in the event of war in Iraq, said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., whose staff was briefed last week by Pentagon officials.

The following March, Halliburton -- without facing competition from any other bidders -- was awarded the contract to implement that plan.

At other critical junctures in the decision-making chain, political appointees insisted on hiring Halliburton, despite the objections of career employees at the Pentagon, Waxman said.

"For months, Vice President Cheney has been saying that his office was not consulted before the award of the Halliburton contracts, but that does not appear to be true," Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement released Sunday.

Waxman, insisting lawmakers are not "getting straight answers from the White House," called for an independent congressional investigation.

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Sibel Edmonds speaks, and you should listen!

Gagged by Ashcroft: Sibel Edmond's story still untold

Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who was fired in 2002 after complaining about bureau incompetence, stood with Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg outside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., Monday morning to denounce government secrecy.

The impetus for the gathering was supposed to have been a hearing before U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton on whether Edmonds would be allowed to testify in a lawsuit filed by families of 9/11 victims who accused members of the Saudi royal family of financing the attacks. Attorney General John Ashcroft has sought to block Edmonds' testimony as a danger to national security. The judge canceled the hearing without explanation, but Edmonds and Ellsberg went ahead with their news conference.

Age has softened Ellsberg's voice, but he is still angry. The former Defense Department official who leaked the Pentagon Papers recounted his history with Richard Nixon's attorney general, the late John Mitchell, who authorized the "dirty tricks" campaign that, among other excesses, resulted in a break-in of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to look for dirt on the war critic.

Ellsberg said he could not trust Attorney General John Ashcroft to expose the flaws of federal law enforcement. "So I rely on her judgment," he said, gesturing to Edmonds, a petite Turkish-American woman in a black suit with her dark brown hair swept up in a loose bun.

Edmonds told the gathered reporters and activists that Ashcroft is "worried about the truth, because truth will bring about accountability." Fluent in Farsi, Arabic and Turkish, she became an American citizen ten years ago. "I took a citizenship oath … to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Edmonds said to applause.

Word!
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Bush sending the older soilders to die

One of the first casualties this month in Iraq was New Jersey National Guardsman Frank Carvill, who was 51 when he died in an attack on his convoy in Baghdad.

The oven-strength heat of Iraq apparently felled Louisiana National Guardsman Floyd Knighten, who collapsed last August as he traveled in a convoy. He was 54.

Illinois National Guardsman William Chaney succumbed May 18 to complications following surgery for an internal infection 10 days after he took ill in Iraq. He was 59.

In Iraq - contrary to the famous contention of World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur - old soldiers do die.

Since the start of the war, 10 U.S. troops aged 50 or older have died on duty in Iraq and environs. Add in deaths of those 40 and older and the toll climbs to 61.

They represent a tiny fraction of the 827 American war fatalities overall. By far, it is the young who are doing most of the dying. For instance, those 21 and younger account for about 1 in 3 combat deaths. In contrast, just 7 percent of the dead are 40 or older.

But senior soldiers were significantly more likely to die of medical causes than the rest of the U.S. force. Sixty percent of the soldiers over 50 who died did so due to either heart attacks, brain aneurysms or other ailments. In contrast, just 4 percent of all the war dead have perished for medical reasons.

That surprised John Allen Williams, a military sociology expert at Loyola College of Chicago.

"It may be the older you are the more susceptible you are to stresses," Williams said.

The older casualties also have been disproportionately members of the National Guard or reserves, with 7 of the 10 being "part-time" soldiers. Of all war deaths, more than 82 percent have been active-duty troops.

The number of older casualties, and the percentage that are auxiliary forces, are both likely to increase now that citizen-soldiers are being deployed in greater numbers to the region. After a mass rotation of forces in and out of Iraq, National Guard and Reserve troops are on track to comprise nearly 40 percent of the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

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If I hear "He clears brush on his ranch" as a reason to vote for President, I will puke!

Why does that matter? It shows he works, he gets his hands dirty, does Kerry?

C'mon, half of the migrant workers where I live "Clear brush", should they be President?

I clear brush should I run for President?
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Gen. Sanchez gave the green light to freely use interrogation methods!

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.

The U.S. policy, details of which have not been previously disclosed, was approved in early September, shortly after an Army general sent from Washington completed his inspection of the Abu Ghraib prison and then returned to brief Pentagon officials on his ideas for using military police there to help implement the new high-pressure methods.

Unnamed officials at the Florida headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, which has overall military responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the 32 interrogation tactics approved by Sanchez in September, including the more severe methods that he had said could be used at any time in Abu Ghraib with the consent of the interrogation officer in charge.

As a result, Sanchez decided Oct. 12 to remove several items on the list and to require that prison officials obtain his direct approval for the remaining high-pressure methods. Among the tactics apparently dropped were those that would take away prisoners' religious items; control their exposure to light; inflict "pride and ego down," which means attacking detainees' sense of pride or worth; and allow interrogators to pretend falsely to be from a country that deals severely with detainees.

The Bush admin wanted the unrest to stop and they thought torture was the way to do it!!!

Silly Neocons, you fuc*ed us with the Arab world for the next fifty years!
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So anyways I'm changing the channel and I see a monkey drinking some flavored malt drink, yes a monkey drinkin' booze!

Not so suprising, it was on Dennis Miller!

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My sister is in town and we're going to hang out, more than likely a "little" drinking will be involved but never fear
As Rumsfeld would say "I don't do hang-overs". My sister and I will have the drinking contest of 2004 and she will win, leaving me wasted and defeated.
If you don't hear from me I'm either passed out or drinkin till Monday!

Have a great night, and a better tomorrow!


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Hate Mail!

Well it was bound to happen so here is why I did what I did.

Wingnuts out there, listen up, Ronald Reagan was just a man. He was not a deity nor a prophet, he was just a man. Have you ever wondered why Nancy doesn't want her husband on the dime or on Mt. Rushmore? Maybe if you paid attention a little more you might know why, he didn't want to be idolized. He was a humble man, a humble man with many faults yes but still down to earth. To rename the Pentagon wouldn't have sat well with him, or the removing Hamilton from the $10, he viewed it as a job and he wanted to do well! Reagan was just like other Presidents he had faults, he did some pretty good things along with some very bad things, that is the measure of a man ALL OF HIS ACTIONS, not just the ones you put on display.

If you still have a problem, I can't help you!
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Smafty's Jam

Song: Sunday Morning
Album: No Doubt: The Singles 1992-2003
Artist: No Doubt





Simple, road trip song!
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Ray Charles dead at 73

Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as "What'd I Say" and ballads like "Georgia on My Mind," died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 73.

Charles died at his Beverly Hills home surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney.

Charles last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark.

Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, Charles spent his life shattering any notion of musical boundaries and defying easy definition. A gifted pianist and saxophonist, he dabbled in country, jazz, big band and blues, and put his stamp on it all with a deep, warm voice roughened by heartbreak from a hardscrabble childhood in the segregated South.

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Let's keep it like this through November, maybe even jump it up to 57 or 64


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French actress acts like southern GOP

The Paris court sentenced Bardot, 69, for remarks in her book "A Scream in the Silence," an outspoken attack on gays, immigrants and the jobless that shocked France last year.



In the book, she laments the "Islamization of France" and the "underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam."



"Mme. Bardot presents Muslims as barbaric and cruel invaders, responsible for terrorist acts and eager to dominate the French to the extent of wanting to exterminate them," the court said.



France's 5-million-member Muslim community is the largest in Europe.



Bardot, who was not present for the verdict, denied the charges in a tearful court appearance last month, saying her book did not target Islam or people from North Africa.



She told the court France was going through a period of decadence and said she opposed interracial marriage.



"I was born in 1934, at that time interracial marriage wasn't approved of," she said.



"There are many new languages in the new Europe. Mediocrity is taking over from beauty and splendor. There are many people who are filthy, badly dressed and badly shaven."

From that last line it's apperent she has never been to Paris before, plenty of them are unshaven, badly dress, and in need of baths and most of them are white!

As for the Jobless rate in France, they need to get them working they make more at home than they do working, that kind of system does make Caddy queens. Seriously, they pay artists welfare to sit on their ass and do nothing but paint sometimes (and they demonstration to demand more in '98)

She is a racist, I feel sorry for her!
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I will post later today my trip to the Emergency room and the bill I'm stuck with!

I am just fine by the way so don't worry!

My observations and feelings while I was there should at least amuse you, Getting my blood drawn should habe you in tears!

Will post news as well!
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The Eggheads attack Bush, compare his deceptive tactics to the Soviets!

STANDING UP�for science--or stepping on it?
Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.

In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. It begins, "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences.... The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."

Doubters of that judgment should read the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that accompanies the statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making" (available at www.ucsusa.org). Among the affronts that it details: The administration misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.

Let us offer more examples of our own. The Department of Health and Human Services deleted information from its Web sites that runs contrary to the president's preference for "abstinence only" sex education programs. The Office of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from "hostile nations" to be published in the U.S., so some scientific journals will no longer consider submissions from them. The Office of Management and Budget has proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on environmental and health regulations--in effect, industry scientists would get to approve what research is conducted by the EPA.


None of those criticisms fazes the president, though. Less than two weeks after the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates of human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council on Bioethics with individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it.

Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS report because that organization often tilts left--never mind that some of those signatories are conservatives. They may brush off this magazine's reproofs the same way, as well as the regular salvos launched by California Representative Henry A. Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee [see Insights] and maybe even Arizona Senator John McCain's scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible to ignore that this White House disdains research that inconveniences it.

Bush and the Commies are close cousins, so don't be suprised!
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Kerry has class

Aboard his plane as he flew to California from Washington, Mr. Kerry told reporters he admired Mr. Reagan's political skills and liked him personally. "He was a very likeable guy," Mr. Kerry said.



Mr. Kerry said Mr. Reagan "was, as he's been written about, sort of arm's distance from a lot of the stuff" on which he worked with the White House. He said as a senator he mainly dealt with Mr. Reagan's chiefs of staff and cabinet members.



But, he added pointedly: "I had quite a few meetings with him. I met with Reagan a lot more than I've met with this president."



Mr. Kerry recalled one long meeting at the White House in 1985 when he was a freshman senator who had just returned from a trip to Nicaragua and a meeting with the Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Mr. Kerry brought Mr. Reagan an offer from Mr. Ortega to call a cease-fire if the United States halted aid to the Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras.



Mr. Reagan rejected the offer. "Well, he wasn't thrilled with the proposal because it was contrary to what they wanted to do," Mr. Kerry said. "I might add that the proposal, ultimately, was the foundation for the Nobel Peace Prize that Oscar Arias won."



President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica won the Nobel in 1987 as the driving force behind a Central American peace plan that barred outside aid to guerrillas and their use of foreign territory.



Mr. Kerry played down his role, when asked whether he was an author of the proposal he had relayed to Mr. Reagan, saying it was merely an "early, rustic" version of what became the Arias plan.



Mr. Kerry said he had been impressed by Mr. Reagan as early as 1964, when he was a Yale student and Mr. Reagan gave a televised speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater's candidacy. The speech "was better than anything else you heard from the campaign," he said. "It had a very strong impact. I remember it distinctly."



Mr. Kerry, who came to Los Angeles to see his daughter Alexandra, 30, graduate from the American Film Institute on Wednesday, briefly paid his respects to Mr. Reagan at the presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., Tuesday afternoon. Momentarily cutting through a cordon of mourners, he saluted Mr. Reagan's coffin with his hand over his heart, bowed his head, crossed himself, saluted again and left - all in the space of a minute.

This is what you do when you have class, not make a huge sceen for the TV cameras just say your respects and not steal the thunder of the event.





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Big government Reagan, Krugman explains

We're also sure to hear that Mr. Reagan presided over an unmatched economic boom. Again, not true: the economy grew slightly faster under President Clinton, and, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the after-tax income of a typical family, adjusted for inflation, rose more than twice as much from 1992 to 2000 as it did from 1980 to 1988.

But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.


Look for "Reagan Tax increases" when the right or left talk about him this week.

# posted by Smafty : 2:24 PM

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Tampa Bay wins Stanley Cup

Ruslan Fedotenko scored two goals as the Lightning won the Stanley Cup on Monday night, ending the championship dreams of the injury-battered Flames with a 2-1 victory in Game 7.


``Better is a tough word when you win by one goal in seven games,'' said Lightning centre Brad Richards , who was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.


``It could have gone either way. Basically, we might have won one more battle, made one more big save. Obviously, we scored one more goal. But when two teams go to one goal in seven games, that's how it should be.''





The Lightning, with the first Cup win in their 12-year history, had to fight off a late Calgary charge before a sellout crowd of 22,717 at the St. Pete Times Forum.


Calgary's Craig Conroy scored at 9:21 of the final period, but the Lightning held on, barely, with Nikolai Khabibulin making some amazing saves - including an eye-popping stop on Jordan Leopold with the net wide open. Somehow, Khabibulin stuck out his pad to block the puck.

The Sharks will get you guys next year!
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Senators looking to ease ban on stem cell research

Fifty-eight senators are asking President Bush to relax federal restrictions on stem cell research, and several said Monday that the late President Reagan's Alzheimer's disease underscored a need to expand the research using human embryos.



The senators' letter to Bush was sent Friday, before Reagan died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said: "This issue is especially poignant given President Reagan's passing. Embryonic stem cell research might hold the key to a cure for Alzheimer's and other terrible diseases."

Last month, Nancy Reagan appeared at a fund-raising dinner in Los Angeles to promote stem cell research.

"We would very much like to work with you to modify the current embryonic stem cell policy so that it provides this area of research the greatest opportunity to lead to the treatments and cures for which we are all hoping," the senators wrote Bush.

The letter was signed by 43 Democrats, the Senate's one independent and 14 Republicans, among them conservatives who oppose abortion. In April, 206 House members sent a similar letter to Bush.

Stem cells typically are taken from days-old human embryos and then grown in a laboratory into lines or colonies. Because the embryos are destroyed when the cells are extracted, the process is opposed by some conservatives who link it to abortion.

So these embryos are usually just thrown away anyways, why not use them to treat MS, help people get out of their wheelchairs.

Why waste it?
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Krugman, must read

The time has come, in my judgment, to consider a budgetary strategy that is consistent with a pre-emptive smoothing of the glide path to zero federal debt or, more realistically, to the level of federal debt that is an effective irreducible minimum.'' Translation: Go ahead and cut taxes.

With those words, delivered in Senate testimony on Jan. 25, 2001, Alan Greenspan -- revered during the 1990's as the nonpartisan architect of America's prosperity -- inserted himself decisively into politics, on the side of George W. Bush. The chairman of the Federal Reserve didn't specifically endorse Bush's plans, but his words were exactly what Bush needed. Before Greenspan's testimony, many political observers questioned whether the victor in a disputed election could get an enormous, controversial tax cut through Congress. After Greenspan spoke, much of the resistance collapsed.

Yet in retrospect we know that Greenspan's ''judgment'' -- that tax cuts were needed to prevent excessive budget surpluses -- was a misjudgment of Rumsfeldian proportions. In fact, the United States is headed for a budget deficit of more than $400 billion this year, more than half of it a result of tax cuts passed since Greenspan gave Bush his support.

Greenspan is still a figure of enormous prestige and power; he is to economic policy what J. Edgar Hoover once was to law enforcement. After 17 years as Fed chairman, Greenspan has become an icon, and it's hard to imagine America without him; indeed, last month the president nominated him for a fifth term. Yet his reputation is not what it once was. At the height of the boom, he was the monetary maestro whose advice was sought on many aspects of economic policy. Now his record as a monetary leader has been called into question, and his judgment on fiscal policy has been proved disastrously wrong. Worse, he seems to have abandoned the long tradition that places the Fed above the political fray.

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Sorry for the lack of postings over the weekend, busy doing heavy duty yard work (I might have to redo my entire backyard) so my days are pretty full, my bad!

When I find the guy who laid the concrete, wired and plumbed my home I will beat him within an inch of his life!

Will post later today!
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Texas Republicans are fucking insane!

Delegates adopted a plank that strongly supports the war in Iraq. Another plank re-emphasizes long-standing conservative antipathy toward the United Nations by calling for the United States to rescind its membership in the U.N. and physically evict the U.N., which is headquartered in New York, from U.S. soil.

An anti-big-government attitude pervades the document with various planks calling for reduced spending, tax cuts and abolition of the Internal Revenue Service. The platform proposes replacing the federal income tax with a national retail sales tax.

The document also includes a plank calling for new restrictions on lawsuits brought over exposure to asbestos.

The platform also calls for repeal of the hate crimes law, repeal of the minimum wage, opposes the provision of reproductive health services, including condoms, in public schools and proposes the death penalty as a punishment option for rape.

WHAT????

Repeal the minimum wage, abolish the income tax, and physically evict the UN from the US after we drop out of course.

I'm finding it very difficult to express how I feel about this BS, stupid, ignorant bastards.

Example by abolishing the minimum wage an Austin employer lowers his wages from $8.52 to $4.37, which lowers your monthly income from a gross of $1363.20 to poverty level gross of $699.20. Under the national retail tax or tax plans like the Flat tax fail to inform you that those rates are not FLAT or at a lower rate than what you're paying now. Under the Texas Republican plan the retail tax will be very large, as high as 30% Let's do the math shall we!


PS2 costs $199.99 + 30%= $259.98

WOW, that's insane but that was a luxury item, what about Milk or hamburger meat, salad mix, most people's list when going to the store.

Under the Republican plan you will pay: $6.48 for two gallons of milk
Under the Republican plan you will pay: $3.25 for a bag of mixed salad
Under the Republican plan you will pay: $3.88 for a carton of OJ
Under the Republican plan you will pay: $9.00 for a seven-pound chicken at $.99 a pound.

Four items from your list will cost you $22.61 under the Texas Republican plan

Those four items here in California will cost you $17.41 and we have a high tax rate.

This of course doesn't cover rent, utilities, car & insurance payments all of which doesn't change under their plan, you pay the same rates with possible increases in the future and under no plan do they restrict employers from drastic wage decreases.

Now our Republican friends will be out there saying "Well you get what you want, hammering the rich with this kind of tax" and it's true it would hammer the rich...if they weren't rich that is. They have the money to spend, hence the progressive rate. Under the Texas Republican plan your tiny $699.20 will be devoured by Republican supported sales tax. Now a CEO who cut wages in Austin is very unlikely to get a pay cut, so his $1,000,000 salary is just that, $1 Million dollars.

He can afford to spend more than the $22 bucks because of the money he has to burn...can you afford it?

You save nothing, you pay more under the Republican plan their answer to "Big government" is to fight it with "Big Business", still slaves just different masters.

I personally couldn't stand a 30% tax rate on Guinness, might make me stop drinking...might.

I'm still shocked this is their idea of proper government, they hate you, they want Serfs not citizens!

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Ronal Reagan passes at 93

Ronald Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was "morning again in America," died Saturday after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer's disease, a family friend said. He was 93.

He died at his home in California, according to the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The White House was told his health had taken a turn for the worse in the last several days.

Five years after leaving office, the nation's 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's, an incurable illness that destroys brain cells. He said he had begun "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."

Politics aside, hold a moment of thought for his family.

Reagan was the Uber conservative; he was the supply sider from California, the B actor who enchanted America.
This might surprise many on the left but I admired the guy, I believed he was a good guy mainly because he was a family friend.

My Grandfather was on governor duty while a state trooper here in California and during his time he protected Reagan and Brown. My grandfather idolized him; Reagan could do no wrong. When I was five we lived with my grandparents during my fathers career change my Grandfather would tell us stories about what he did at work and they were almost always violent and ugly, to be a cop in the sixties wasn't easy. His stories of Reagan were quite interesting.


According to my grandfather Reagan was a warm genuine person, often Reagan would come downstairs and just gab with the troopers for an hour or two, Nancy always had fresh coffee and doughnuts or cookies waiting for them, that is something many governors do however it wasn't unusual to see Reagan waiting to speak with his guards, always jovial and engaged, Regan knew the names of his children always asked about them. The genuine aspect of the Reagan persona was cemented with my grandfather then and there. I also believe my grand father had a crush on Nancy, the way he'd talk about her in her "little red bikini" grossed me out at five and grosses me out at almost 25.

One of my grandfathers most prized possessions was his autographed Reagan photo, he was a fan because they developed a friendship and respect foe each other.

The same cannot be said of Jerry Brown, there are things I know are true and not Republican spin that if I write them down in this blog I will be sued for Libel, and trying to track down witnesses is not how I want to spend my summer so they stay in my head, for now. Let me just say Jerry Brown was an awful governor, can't say anymore.

With Ronald Reagan's death, it reminds me of my grandfathers’ death in 2002. I associate Reagan with my grandfather for the obvious reasons stated above. Having to relive the death of loved ones sucks, having to dwell on that aspect again opens the old wounds of mourning his death. I have plenty of Reagan jokes I've done over the years, because they were easy and I had a million of them. Despite our differences on the issues I respected the man. One of the issues that ripped me out of the Republican Party in 2000 was Karl Rove trying to make George W. Bush into the new Regan, just a regular guy with a big job, they both own ranches. With the stories of Reagan swelling in my head, I looked at Dubya and saw some elitist wannabe Cowboy trying to gain votes, who bought a ranch during his campaign, one which his aids and Rove called the "Reagan Ranch", what I saw in George W. Bush was a fake, a fake populist, a fake "regular guy". So with a touch of irony Reagan helped me leave the Republican Party.

FOX News is already calling Reagan the man who defeated the Soviet Union, even though it fell after he left office and the Soviets and Americans alike who know the real history of the cold war agreed that EVERY PRESIDENT (including Carter) helped to bring down the "Evil Empire" and his Tax cuts jump started America when bipartisan economists say it actually hurt the economy and the American people. Be respectful but hold their feet to the fire or else it will translate to Dubya and we don't want that.

Good night Roland Reagan.

Ronald Reagan
1911-2004

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Military families who've lost loved ones need your help!

Go to Intrepidmuseum.org and show them not only do we support the troops, we support their families.
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This should be a very interesting read, I had my problems with Clinton, however his book sounds good!


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Creed broke up! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Thank Jesus for this bit of hope!
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Pass this photo & Quote around, send it to your friends and family

6/2/04
President Bush: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.

2/8/04
President Bush: They're not going to develop that. And the reason I can say that is because I'm very aware of this basic law they're writing. They're not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion.

Hey Dubya, who's that felon to the far left of you?

So when you said "I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion", that didn't involve an "extensive conversation" with Chalabi?


This "President" is a damn joke!




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