Bush wastes $200m more in Iraq on corporate cronies

This is just great. And the company gets to keep the money even though they didn't do the job. We can arrest innocent Americans and throw them in detention without a lawyer, but we can't hold corporate America responsible when we give them $200 million and they don't finish the job.

George Bush's America. Get used to it. Read the rest of this post...

The first heterosexual is at it again

What would John McCain and Jerry Falwell think?

(Hat tip to Peanut) Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Any last minute news? Read the rest of this post...

Update on Canadian bombing

Not terrorism. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Ugh, have to do my taxes tomorrow. Read the rest of this post...

Does John McCain think the anti-Christ is going to "of course" be a "Jew"?

Just asking. Another great Falwell quote:

“[The Antichrist] will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ. Of course he’ll be Jewish.”

Jerry Falwell's address to a group of pastors at a conference in Kingsport, Tenn., on Jan. 14, 1999, Close Encounters with the Religious Right, (Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York) 2000, pp. 117-118

Read the rest of this post...

McCain now embraces Jerry Falwell, says Falwell is no longer an agent of intolerance

McCain is an anti-gay far-right conservative. For four years McCain's been pretending to be Mr. Moderate to woo the country for his eventual presidential run, and now that he's seriously thinking of running for president, he's moving back to the far-right where he belongs.

Potential presidential candidate John McCain says he longer considers evangelist Jerry Falwell to be one of the "agents of intolerance" that he criticized during a previous White House run.

(ThinkProgress has the transcript and video of McCain sucking up to Falwell.)

Jerry Falwell is no longer an agent of intolerance? That's news. Wow, tell us Mr. McCain, exactly when was it that Falwell stopped being an agent of intolerance? Was it when, just days after the September 11 attacks, Falwell blamed gays and lesbians, and pro-choice Americans, and the ACLU for the September 11 attacks? Yeah, that was a great moment in tolerance.

Or was it a year later in October 2002 when Jerry Falwell said that Mohammed was a terrorist?

"I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I read enough of the history of his life written by both Muslims and - non-Muslims, (to know) that he was a – a violent man, a man of war."

Or was it in March of 2006 when Falwell told Jews they're going to hell?

I'm just curious, Mr. McCain, when exactly was it that Jerry Falwell stopped being an agent of intolerance? Perhaps it was about the time you decided to run for president.

McCain is as morally corrupt as any other politician. If he wins the presidency, every single person you hate in the Bush administration is going to get yet another four years. Four more years of war, of outrageous spending, of cuts to education and Medicare and Medicaid, of attempts to ban all abortions, of bashing gays in the US Constitution, four more years of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson being given the keys to the White House.

Four more years of Republicans shoving their social and economic and warmongering experiments down our throats, and watching the country sink lower and lower into the abyss.

John McCain is no longer an agent of tolerance. The myth of John McCain as a moderate is dead. Read the rest of this post...

Explosion in Canadian coffee shop

They're saying it was "a device," not an accident. Read the rest of this post...

Ohio GOP Coin scandal keeps on giving

Hat tip to Josh Marshall for finding the latest on the Ohio GOP's coin-gate scandal. There's a national angle which is being exposed by the Toledo Blade:

Last week, Greg Weinman, the Mint’s senior counsel and ethics official, told The Blade that the Treasury Department’s inspector general had opened an investigation into Mr. Noe’s role as a member and chairman of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the Treasury secretary on themes and designs for coins and congressional gold medals.

In May, 2003, the White House and House Speaker Dennis Hastert recommended that Mr. Noe get a seat on the influential 11-member committee. Treasury Secretary John Snow appointed Mr. Noe, less than six months after the Toledo-area coin dealer expressed interest in joining a Mint committee to Henrietta Fore, then director of the Mint.

“I have always had interest in getting more involved on the national level,” Mr. Noe wrote to Ms. Fore.

Mr. Noe’s appointment and eventual chairmanship of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee enabled him to expand his reach into the federal government, according to more than 2,700 pages of e-mails and other committee records released last week by the Mint to The Blade. The newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the public records in June, 2005.

GOP = corruption. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Off to tape Politics TV. Read the rest of this post...

NYT's Adam Nagourney is ticked at me

I should have never written that hit piece about his girlfriend. More from Adam's personal blog. Read the rest of this post...

McCain's gay problem

Anyone got the transcript yet from today's Meet the Press? I understand that McCain is trying to split the pink baby in half. He's against the anti-gay constitutional amendment... unless it's needed, then he's for it.

Is that kind of like being opposed to racism or anti-semitism... unless it's helpful? Read the rest of this post...

Republican Senators use McCarthyite tactics to chill dissent in US

Is this what the Republican party really stands for? It is what the Republican leadership stands for. Do it voters?

I guess according to these guys we should have never pulled out of Vietnam since, after all, that would be admitting defeat, being a quitter, and giving comfort to our enemies.

So, does the Republican party think we should have stayed in Vietnam? Read the rest of this post...

President Butthead

The Washington Post does a profile on your President, the man who has your life in his hands:

As he takes to the road to salvage his presidency, Bush is letting down his guard and playing up his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image. Where he spent last year in rehearsed forums with select supporters, these days he is more frequently throwing aside the script and opening himself to questions from audiences that are not prescreened. These sessions have put a sometimes playful, sometimes awkward side back on display after years of trying to keep it under control to appear more presidential.

Call it the let-Bush-be-Bush strategy. The result is a looser president, less serious at times, even at times when humor might seem out of place. Aides used to dread such settings, worried about gaffes or the way Bush might come across in spontaneous exchanges. But with his poll numbers somewhere south of the border, they concluded that Bush handles back-and-forth better than he once did -- and that they have little left to lose.

"It shows the range of his personality, the humor," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. He said the White House has worked to put Bush out in public more, noting that he has had news conferences twice as often in his second term as in his first. "In a couple different ways, we've expanded his exposure," Bartlett said.

That whole "average Joe" thing worked on the campaign trail, but Bush is the President and we're in trouble. The traditional media loves this whole Bush as funny man schtick. They eat it up.

Americans want a smart, strong leader. We don't have one. Bush has screwed up both domestic and foreign policy. That's why his approval ratings are tanking. We're not safer and having a funny guy as President doesn't help anyone. But that's apparently the new White House strategy. Be afraid. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Line-up

How does Joe Biden get booked so often? And, will Russert actually ask McCain any hard questions? Here' the full line-up:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY...: Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Philip Mudd , deputy director of the FBI's National Security Branch.

THIS WEEK ...: Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and George Allen (R-Va.) and Jimmy Rollins , Philadelphia Phillies shortstop.

FACE THE NATION....:Senator Richard Durbin(D-Ill.) and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.).

MEET THE PRESS...: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and retired Gen. Anthony C. Zinni , former head of the U.S. Central Command.

LATE EDITION...: Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.); Mexico President Vicente Fox ; Ali Asghar Soltanieh , Iran's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency; and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari

Read the rest of this post...

Another "surprise" visit to Iraq

Every time a major U.S. official visits Iraq, the media trumpets it as a big "surprise":

The top U.S and British diplomats made a surprise trip to Iraq on Sunday to prod the country's struggling leaders to end nearly four months of wrangling and form a new government.

"We're going to urge that the negotiations be wrapped up," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew overnight to the Iraqi capital for meetings with the current interim government and ethnic and religious power brokers.

This "surprise" visit story is way, way past it's prime. They have to pay "surprise" visits because Iraq is a disaster. It's does amaze me that the traditional media still falls for this. Read the rest of this post...

McDonald's tomato pickers protest low wages

Good for them. Maybe next we will see people protesting the revolting taste of the garbage that they sell, not to mention the cardboard-like tomatoes that are so popular these days. Read the rest of this post...

Blair the conservative, again

I have to hand it to Blair for remaining in charge of the Labour Party for so long with moves like this. I know that the party had been in political Siberia for years before he arrived but just what does it take to finally get bounced? The guy must have photos or something incriminating on enough MPs to hang in there because between Iraq, 1984/Big Brother policies and now his trashing of environmental policies, he sounds a lot like a Tory.

Tony Blair personally frustrated measures to cut Britain's emissions of the pollution that causes global warming, despite repeatedly calling for action, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

The revelation comes as new official statistics show that Britain's carbon dioxide emissions - the main cause of global warming - have risen for the third year in a row. This means that emissions have risen, by 2 per cent, instead of falling since Mr Blair came to power nine years ago.

Read the rest of this post...

Iran may launch worldwide terrorist attacks if the US attacks

Well isn't that special. George Bush will be responsible for terrorist attacks worldwide. And you know, with Iraq I wasn't convinced Saddam would respond with terrorism (or had the capacity to). With Iran, I fear it's a certainty.

This is the kind of dangerous escalation an incompetent president does. Congress needs to step in and put a brake on this man before it's too late. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Until Chris wakes up in Paris.... Read the rest of this post...

Just went to see "V for Vendetta"

My review? Wow.

I'm going to have to really think about this one before writing much more, I only just got back. But the negative reviews of this movie are just crazy. I can't even believe the movie got made, let alone distributed, in George Bush's America. It's a stinging indictment of Bush, Blair and the world they've created and still will create. And the movie, well, kind of endorses terrorism as the means for overthrowing the totalitarian government those leaders have created, and the crowd is on the terrorists' side.

That's a simplistic way of putting it. But I will say this, before I head to bed (time change tonight, ugh). Anyone who says this movie is NOT about current events, is not about Bush and Blair and the state of the world today, well, they're nuts. Read the rest of this post...