Just a note to let you know that Goper’s Lament (Hard To Be A Republican) was downloaded over 1000 times over night, since 8pm NY time. The best one day total since I posted it on Jan 28.

Many thanks to Jane and FDL.

Namaste.

Since 11pm NY Time…wowsers.

Subway Serenade — it was great stuff. Happy we could send traffic your way. :)

Fitz ‘em, Ned !

Repeat on Imus: do you have any regrets about supporting this war?

J-Lie: I don’t…

A man who cannot find his inner humility.

Yeah thanks for that helarious little diddy Christy.

Hannity/Coulter = troglodytes
Powerline Posters = bloglodytes

I figure I personally have paid about $3,000 on the war by the time FY2007 comes about.

And I haven’t even gotten a T-Shirt!

If this was public television, I’d get a Garrison Keiller travel mug dammit!

Meanwhile, the GOP always has something for the market place — like bath products

Sharkbabe = fdldyke

In case we haven’t figured out Rover’s plan by now, Donkey Rising cites Alter’s article in Newsweek.

Time for us to also ramp up on the false meme that Iraq is a losing issue for Dems. Murtha’s letter pretty much says it. AMPLIFY what Murtha says. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat . . .

I was just talking about this to my husband yesterday when I heard that Bush wants another $110 billion. Just think how great our schools could be with that kind of money, and all the public services we could have.

We could have had National Healthcare system for that money. (sigh)

Steve Clark

We really need national healthcare.

Thanks Christy, in addition to the cost of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan
Oil Rises to Record in New York, London on Attacks in Nigeria

Where oh where is the US Congress that will ultimately say, only because it has to: Not. One. Penny. More.

Beyond our lifetimes, whaddya bet.

This post should be in every Dem’s talking points.

So the next question is what % of the ‘robust” US economy is dependent on this military spending?

Would or growth be 1% or would we be in a recession?

Does the administration have to keep the war going to win elections? People vote their pocketbooks, so is it a stretch to claim that Bush needs the military spending to keep the economy afloat to keep voters happy?

I would hope that some economist out there would be able to determine the % of economic growth that is based on war spending.

OfT: “Maybe someone should ask the email’s author — Elizabeth J. Shipp, NARAL’s Political Director — at 202-973-4210. We assume she knows.”

202-973-4210 returns a “not-in-service” message. If anyone has a working number, I’m going to ask Beth Shipp, what’s up?

oh, that whole “we’re gonna follow the geneva conventions” article (gosh, when was that? oh, yesterday). Well, (quaint), today… not so much…

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07.....r=homepage

Christy,

thanks for the books link - still awaiting my regist. e mail, but

everyone,

hopefully one of the items you can send is an I Tunes card - they can probably be purchased on line @ Itunes site, but you can usually find them now at convienence stores and Target (my college kids love getting them in their care packages)

RevDeb at 6:04 am
Thanks. That should be required reading.

“…the party out of the White House doesn’t need a detailed strategy for ending a war, just a general sense of direction….If you believe the Iraq war is a success, vote Republican. If you believe it is a failure, vote Democratic.” - Alter

“The Republicans are now totally united in a failed policy” - Biden

That’s a staggering amount of money.

a reminder for Lieberman: Connecticut-built nuclear submarines aren’t of much use in the Tigris or the Euphrates …

i just sent this entire post to someone who has me on their wingnut mailing list.

thanks christy.

Organic George at 17: I’m pretty sure war spending is not that significant a part of the national economy, but I agree it would be good to have a definitive statement from an actual economist.

Eisenhower used to compare the costs of military weapons to the costs of things that would benefit society as a whole. “The cost of one of these bombers would buy 11 public schools, or 3 fully equipped hospitals, or a million bushels of grain” (paraphrased). It would be a breath of fresh air to have leaders who understand the threat of the military machine to our own society. The history of the United States in the second half of the 20th century is the history of the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Ooop *ilson, stand by to repel trolls.

Have you ever taken a sTROLL through the woods?

This administration should ask their rich cronies for part of their tax cut money back instead of putting our childrens futures more into debt. What a putz!

This book action stuff is tailor made for Roots Project groups. It could have been written into 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right, our adopted Roots Project Field Manual.

Just think of the tax cut the R’s could give to their donors with all that money.

Here’s a link (from april ‘06) that shows more of what could have been done w/ war money. Granted, most these alternatives have no social value but it helps to put things into perspective.

With 250 billion dollars the United States could have purchased…

–note: linked page OK but some pages on site may be NSFW.

The entire renewable energy research budget— One day in Iraq.

But does Matt take on the “the President is always right” bit? LOL Yesterday rawstory had the exchange up between the virgin sacrifice and Leahy.

OT - my horseshoer isn’t here yet, but the Yoo stuff from below is one of the many things (Haynes, the flocking of the *doves* to carry his veil, Cinderellalike, etc.)

Without even going into why Yoo is so wrong about Hamdan, no one has ever really addressed the issues raised by the Beaver Memo (I feel like I’m in an Animal House sequel even typing that)about the UCMJ itself and how it is being violated. The UCMJ is ALSO something the court said Mr. CIC has to follow.

Early info, like the Beaver memo, made clear that the actions being undertaken by military interrogators and advocated for future use by military interrogators, were “per se” violations of the UCMJ and U.S. statutes. But, in “wouldn’t Yoo know it” fashion, the memo went on to conclude that per se violations of the UCMJ were, you know, like legal and ok and stuff. See discussions of the Beaver memorandum here http://balkin.blogspot.com/200.....-ucmj.html and here http://www.newyorker.com/fact/.....227fa_fact

The memo’s conclusion that per se violations of the UCMJ were nonetheless “legal” seemingly depended on a conclusion that interrogators could be given prophylactic protection by getting immunity from higher ups. See, the Administration does support the use of prophylactics - they just associate theirs with for and violence rather than hot fun in the old tow. Anyway, keep that concept straight (immunity, not the other thought you had).

Hi Joe. I want you to waterboard and smack around Bill for a bit, maybe strip him and shave his genitals while making him crawl around on the end of a leash and bark like a dog. It’s illegal. So I am giving you prior immunity to break the law. I’m also off to see if this will work with my kids’s speeding ticket.

Interestingly, Beaver opined that immunity only had to come from some vaguely refereneced “higher ups” and not from the President or any prosecutorial branch - the concept of illegal orders, being, again, like, you know, something that doesn’t matter if the illegal order is from a higher up — like, you know, the guy who gave you the order.

I’m sure there is a reason why this “pre-immunity” to violate the law from a “higher up” approach would not simply be conspiracy. I’m sure because the proponent of this argument got kudos for creativity and a promotion in Haynes office. From the New Yorker piece:

[Beaver] acknowledged that American military personnel at Guantánamo, as everywhere else in the world, were bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which characterizes “cruelty,” “maltreatment,” “threats,” and “assault” as felonies. Beaver reasoned, however, that U.S. soldiers preparing to violate these laws in their interrogations might be able to obtain “permission, or immunity” from higher authorities “in advance.”

The senior Defense Department official designated to speak for the Administration acknowledged that Beaver’s legal argument was inventive. “Normally, you grant immunity after the fact, to someone who has already committed a crime, in exchange for an order to get that person to testify,” he said. “I don’t know whether we’ve ever faced the question of immunity in advance before.” Nevertheless, the official praised Beaver “for trying to think outside the box. I would credit Diane as raising that as a way to think about it.” (Beaver was later promoted to the staff of the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, [THAT WOULD BE HAYNES OFFICE], where she specializes in detainee issues.)(emphasis added)

Goldsmith, Comey, Philbin, Thompson - they are so right. Right right right - four rights at least. Approval of torture tactics and requiring violations of Common Article 3 over the military’s objections are only some of the things that Haynes was doing as General Counsel. Promoting young talent that manages to turn conspiracy to violate the law and subsequent violations into a newer version of a Farside cartoon: conspire to violate law + violate law [then the reverse of a miracle happens] =legal behavior — we NEED judges that approve of and promote that kind of thinking. I think even the Gambinos would be happy to set up trust funds to provide for the promotion of that kind of talent.

OT as usual, but — here’s a very funny video of
the Bush Pilot, the tiny German man who runs the machine
we all know as the POTUS

http://video.google.com/videop.....0154749704

apologies to those who’ve seen it; if you haven’t and need a good chuckle, check it out…

we are in the last throes of 20th century, oil-based capitolism. the spending and “mismanagement” (8 billion and counting) are part and parcel of the oilagarchs cashing in every chip they got.

The immediate question on any Democrat’s lips (or journalist’s, if we actually had any) whenever a Republican talks about how “we can’t afford” something, should be “why can we afford $2 billion a week in Iraq, but not that? Do you actually believe another day of the occupation is more valuable to the country?”

WaPo, 3/30/06:

The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding New Orleans’s levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10 billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region.

There “may not be enough money.” Five weeks in Iraq. You do the math.

I was listening to Mike Malloy last night and he said that the cost of the Iraq War Crime to date could have eliminated global hunger.

There must be 50 Ways to Dump the Dubya

Who is paying for Israel was venture, 3 guesses…

11 mill an hour would even cover my vet bill.

The whole thing is such a mess, its going to be harder and harder to find people who aren’t tools who want to take on the legislative tasks. I’m amazed at the people Howie highlights.

(I feel like I’m in an Animal House sequel even typing that)
LMAO

Thanks Mary, hard to believe all those Church-going wingnuts can separate the authority to “torture” they write about so glibly from Sunday worship.

Hope that horse-shoe guy comes.

How many days in Iraq to squander a social security fix (if one is really needed)?

Iraq is not enough there’s Iran, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, why not Lebanon among the multitudes.

Fidel Castro born August 13, 1926 approaches his 80th birthday and is the world’s longest-serving leader. Sure to get some screaming Miami’s uppity (the illegal immigrants with a free pass) but Cuba’s relatively high Human Development Index aside from the never ending US. sponsored trade embargo puts perspective on a government that in many ways has succeeded in spite of all odds. George Bush intensifies US pressure for regime change in Cuba, $80m recommended for a ”democracy fund” to step up opposition to Castro. “What’s most important is that they admit to a secret plan to overthrow another government,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba.....7,00.html.
Enough is never enough, our fat self-righteous entitled imperialist fingers up the ass of every country on the planet, well we know best don’t we.

The Granma has a summary of the Mexico election:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/20.....xico1.html

a reminder for Lieberman: Connecticut-built nuclear submarines aren’t of much use in the Tigris or the Euphrates …

Ehhh…maybe I shouldn’t mention this but many-a-year-ago I attended the consecration of a nuke sub in Connectucut. The USS Pittsburgh.

I won’t explain why.

But the sub was pretty damn cool.

.

(Christy needs to visit Pittsburgh 19 August.)

.

they have nuke subs on the Monongahela?

Spork — we may be coming up on Saturday, actually, to pick up a chair we purchased. You interested in grabbing some coffee or something?

they have nuke subs on the Monongahela?

At the Point, actually.

.

Christy -

Sounds cool.

[ openly posted Email address deleted. Blogmistresses already have it ]

Spork, you might want to spell your e-mail address phonetically like
“at hotmail dot com” so you don’t wind up on the NSA’s to do list.

let’s not forget this companion piece
(java, takes a second to load - oh, and Warning! it’s almost as ugly as Attaturk’s photoshop of naked Jonah & Grover in the hot tub - almost

http://www.toptips.com/debtclock.html

Owww, my head always hurts like the rest of you when I see this kind of data. Are there any cost/benefit analysis types in here? How would you operationalize the benefits of this misadventure?

And the twisted logic of the administration is truly mind bending. How can you say another 911 didn’t happen because we are doing these things. Just proving the absence of something because of something we did is logically impossible. Like, “I didn’t have an accident because I practice defensive driving” can only be shown using massive amounts of statistics and showing a set of probabilities. No single event can be predicted based on the body of statistics. Yeech, eck.

Oh, this is always depressing - when you’re confronted with the wonderous “might have been” had you only not done the really stupid thing.
It’s literally heartache, to know how we could have made schools and libraries magnificent, or deployed bone fide anti-terrorist maneuvers, or made the country far more energy independent. or… or… and on and on.
Imagine what the world could be like if there were no dollars flowing like a torrent to intolerent regimes in the Middle East. Imagine if after 9/11 GWB had said that we were going to bear any burden, mobilize our wonderous science and technology resources, become energy (or carbon) independent (a la going to the moon) by the end of the decade, and in one swoop such all the oxygen out of fundamentalist islam AND make the planet more safe from climate change AND promote education and change and real social development in countries presently addicted to petrodollars.

How inspiring that would have been. Instead…we were told to go shopping. And Iraq was conflated with Al Qaeda, and many of our Democrats were too stupid to see through the thin veil of lies, or too afraid of Karl Rove, or too craven, or actually believed that Saddam was a threat (duh).

The post mentions how we have to elect Dem’s, but we had Dems and they caved. I’m all for big tents, and helping red staters who’ll vote for Harry Reid as MajLeader and caucus with us and all, but us blue staters (I’m in WA, so’s kinda purple dependon on the scale of your map) need to hold our employees=senators and reps, feet to the fire. It’s so frustrating here to hear from dems across the spectrum how we have to “get behind Maria) (blech!) when we haven’t even had a primary yet. And she still doesn’t cop to the fact that she was WRONG on Iraq and that her decision has harmed our nation and corrupted so many good things here.

I’m going to be posting a profile on her challenger, Hong Tran, over at DownWithTyranny soon (disclosure - I’m not paid/associated/in orbit of any campaign - just an interested voter). check it out coming this weekend (hopefully)

“so you don’t wind up on the NSA’s to do list.”

as if this crowd isn’t already well documented in the NSA archives - ain’t that right, you stunted dick traitorous dweebs ?!?!

Please do not insult your government employees ! It’s just a paycheck —

And just when you thought things were already getting weird enough in CT’s Senate race. Yes, Urban did come out last night to throw her hat into the ring, BUT check this morning’s news:

Senate Hopeful Nudged To Quit
Schlesinger’s Gambling Alias Troubles Governor, GOP State Chairman
July 13, 2006
By MARK PAZNIOKAS, Courant Staff Writer

Gov. M. Jodi Rell and GOP State Chairman George Gallo publicly urged fellow Republican Alan Schlesinger to reconsider his candidacy for U.S. Senate after learning Wednesday that he gambled at the Foxwoods Resorts Casino under an assumed name while an elected official in the 1990s.

Schlesinger said Rell and Gallo were overreacting to an innocent act: giving a fake name to obtain a Foxwoods “wampum card” that rewards casino patrons with meals, rooms and merchandise based on how much they gamble.

More here:

http://www.courant.com/news/po.....s-breaking

Perhaps the Repub party knew this was coming and went looking for a substitute.

Time for another comic-relief break!

Tampa Trib: Harris Campaign Losing More Staff [the meatiest of these]

Orlando Sentinel: More bolt from Harris camp

St. Pete Times: Harris loses staffer, deflects rumors

Miami Herald: Another staff member leaves Harris campaign

Betcha Soros could “off the cuff” some info on what these $$ could be doing.

I gotta go get that book.

OT, sorry, but a fantastic article in (of all places!) the Wall Street Journal, debunking that hack Larry Summers on women in science.

I may actually have to resume blogging to discuss this article. It’s not just about women in science that this applies; it’s about EVERYTHING, from business to blogging.

NSA Supv,

so called govt employees can kiss this patriot’s behind !

(that better be you, *ilson *g*)

T @ 50 says:

Spork, you might want to spell your e-mail address phonetically like
“at hotmail dot com” so you don’t wind up on the NSA’s to do list.

That Hotmail addy was set up for blogs *and* as a spam-catcher.

I wish I got more wingnut spam (only Ken Melman writes me…[sob]).

Pasty…where are you!!?!

.

How much of the money, per hour, goes to Haliburton and the Carlyle Group? Revenge first sent troops to Iraq. Money flowing to certain groups keeps them there. Your children die so that future generations of Bushes and Cheneys don’t have to work.

Here is a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The annual infrastructure report card for 2005. Gives the American infrastructure a “D”.

http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index.cfm

Don’t be mean cbl. I mean, if you were NSA, wouldn’t you be bummed to draw FDL as your gig? There’s all kinds of murder, mayhem, porn, etc. and they get FDL. Where training in Pashtun and Farsi doesn’t help them decipher trexing and tweety and EPU and rvl.

I think darkblack, Jane and Christy at least make an effort to make sure they get some entertainment. For example, when that NSA “Gee, our blackbudget ran low so we had to sell this stinking recipe book” Recipe Book comes out, there are going to be some very familiar looking recipes.

It takes a true patriot to solicit okra recipes for NSA.

Dang, the board ate my post.

Important news on the CT Senate race. Last night Urban did announce she would run, BUT this morning brought even stranger news:

Senate Hopeful Nudged To Quit
Schlesinger’s Gambling Alias Troubles Governor, GOP State Chairman

Gov. M. Jodi Rell and GOP State Chairman George Gallo publicly urged fellow Republican Alan Schlesinger to reconsider his candidacy for U.S. Senate after learning Wednesday that he gambled at the Foxwoods Resorts Casino under an assumed name while an elected official in the 1990s.

Schlesinger said Rell and Gallo were overreacting to an innocent act: giving a fake name to obtain a Foxwoods “wampum card” that rewards casino patrons with meals, rooms and merchandise based on how much they gamble.

More here:

http://www.courant.com/news/po.....s-breaking

I wonder if the Repubs saw this coming and Urban is their substitute.

OT: Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is on C-SPAN 3 right now. JAG witnesses.

Mind what you say about the divine pod, MIZ MARY!

Plamologists,

I read Eric Altermans excellent piece about that fucking creep Novak, at the huffingtonpost. In the comments section proudmoonbat placed this shortcut
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/index.php
to an interesting/infuriating perspective about what maybe going on behind the scene. Christy, Jane, maybe you could read it and share your thoughts.

oh gawd Mary, I sooo needed that, first spew in days !

Email fron Ken Mehlman? we’ve all heard talk, gossip, rumor and speculation about KennyBoi — are his private Emails worksafe or have you described to him what you are wearing?

Okay, this is getting disheartening. My posts are being devoured by the board. In case I’m doing something wrong, I’m not linking to anything.

Go look at the Hartford Courant. The Repub candidate for CT is being asked by the Governor to step aside.

Urban did announce she was running last night. Are the two connected…me thinks so.

SharonW - I think if you do more than one link, you get held for a bit until a moderator can check it out. Also, sometimes weird things/words activate the spam filter.

speaking of patriot’s behinds - Arlen Specter has just announced his ass covering compromise w/ WH on NSA

The trouble with these wonderful “might have beens” is that none of them would have been funded if there wasn’t a war in Iraq.

It’s typical of the crazy Dems that they think the country should dive deeply in debt to buy such pork laden programs as noted in your posting. Hand outs to the dregs of society too, I’ll bet!

Luckily, with an infallible Republican President, the country carefully spends its money cleverly fighting a war over there, so we don’t have to fight it over here. It’s hard to understand why so many people are so willfully blind as to the obvious benefits of such a plan.

cbl at 54 — Hey, I have friends who work at the NSA who are not only nice people, but good human beings who just want to protect their country. Don’t blame this Administration and a few bad apples on the whole agency — they do amazing work. (I’d tell you about it, but then I’d have to kill you. *g*)

whoopie– Specter says a deal has been made with the WH wrt NSA, I’ll hold my breath.

US Navy moves apache ship out of Haifa– it was practicing with the Israeli Navy.

CNN: Specter says WH will likely accept legislation submitting NSA program to FISA court review (apparently he’s negoshed something) . . . developing

A small, unarmed USN ship in Haifa harbor has been ordered to get the hell outta there and has sailed.

criminy, lotus!

Nu? What I said, angie (slower than anybody else typing with ALL their fingers)?

Good morning everyone. I’ve just discovered that I’m out of caffeine. How did that happen? Thank God Peet’s is only a block away.

Christy, thank you for keeping this front and center. This is just one element of the shame, but it’s so staggering to imagine how this money could have all gone to rebuild NO or to help secure our public transportation systems or to buy supplies for teachers or to provide better healthcare for those not covered…..Geeze how much does this amount to for every man, woman, and child in the country?

I think it’s necessary to mention that the spending on the war is by off-budget supplemental appropriation–that means it goes straight to debt (how much borrowed from SS trust fund v. how much goes to Treasury notes, I don’t know).

Therefore, any suggestions about what this money could buy, however useful, simply would be added to the national debt. The real problem is not just this war spending, but the combination of greatly increased budgeted appropriations for the DoD, combined with egregiously large tax cuts.

Many people are not aware that (through the machinations of Carlucci and Cheney when they were Secs. of Defense) many defense-related items are hidden in other portions of the discretionary budget. A couple of economists found that the Bureau of Economic Analysis does a line item-by-line item review of the budget and the amount of defense spending in the total discretionary budget is a staggering 68%. That’s one of the reasons why DoD auditing is nearly impossible–defense spending is squirrelled away in places and departments people wouldn’t normally look:

http://www.tompaine.com/print/.....efense.php

Stopping the war stops funneling money into the debt machine, but it doesn’t free up money for other purposes–unless one accepts adding to debt to obtain those purposes.

The real answer is fair taxes on corporations and genuinely progressive individual taxation, and a defense budget that accurately reflects the needs of defending our territory, our homes and families, rather than securing high profitability for US multinational oil companies and routes of petroleum transportation. The exact same thing happened during the Reagan-Bush years, and the debt soared then, too.

The most pernicious aspect of this (and I believe an intentional side effect) is that as the national debt rises, so does the interest on the debt, which will probably exceed an annual rate of $350 billion by the end of this fiscal year. That’s money that comes right out of the discretionary budget and can’t be used for anything else. That’s how the Bushies plan to starve out social spending. That may be why the war goes on–it adds to the debt, which adds to the cumulative interest paid.

Have a look at the TomPaine article linked above and prepare to be shocked.

Jest that we reported the same thing at the same time, lotus.

It would have been cheaper to pay the Bush/Cheney mob and their corporate syndicate off and stay out of Iraq, howa bout we say 5 mill. an hour and you’s guys stay out of politics!

These numbers are proof that the Iraq mess is actually the world’s largest home remodelling effort.

It has gone way over budget, taken far longer than it should have, used more contractors “than anyone could have imagined,” messed up the entire neighborhood and ticked off the neighbors, all because the homeowner didn’t have a clear objective for the work to be done, didn’t hold the contractors accountable for their expenses, and didn’t bother with the municipal codes that tell you how to do things properly without making a dangerous mess out of the project.

It’s an image than any home remodeller could understand! Try that in a campaign commercial . . .

Great minds, ange, what kinna tellya. *g*

Prober -
Not going to happen.

You can begin reading immanitize’s smackdown at 26.
http://www.firedoglake.com/200...../#comments

Email fron Ken Mehlman? we’ve all heard talk, gossip, rumor and speculation about KennyBoi — are his private Emails worksafe or have you described to him what you are wearing?

Look, all’s I’m sayin’ is Ken Mehlman e-mails me.

I don’t know the status of his closet.

But I imagine that it’s roomy.

.

Oh God, if I had a nickel every time Spectator cuts a deal with the White House, I could buy a dress.

They also have a great recipe book, Christy.

43 pages of Hush Puppy variations.

meta,

a Badgley-Mishka or Vera Wang !

Billions being wasted, Mideast blowing up, and what’s CNN’s burning question of the day?

“Do you prefer male actors with:

(a) six-pack abs; or
(b) a little flab?”

Tough work, staying relevant.

the contributions from the NSA lawyers are great fudge recipes …

CNN: Specter says WH will likely accept legislation submitting NSA program to FISA court review (apparently he’s negoshed something)

Sorry for the blogwhore but this is Snarlin’ Arlen.

.

The US has been dangerously uninvolved in the Palestine/Israeli conflict over the past few years acc. to Richard Murphy, fmr ambassador on CNN.

well, yuppers.

Can I just say that Kagan has said twice now that the situation is “distracting” the preznit from his visit with Merkel……………so sorry for him when the world he helped ruin gets in the way of his schmoozing with his new gal, eh?

Swoosh at 91 — Good lord, that’s appalling. Sadly, not surprising, but appalling nonetheless. Nothing like one-stop shopping for infotainment, I suppose. SIGH

…Next up, Britney’s husband wears manpris in public…

Dow down 104, at 10,908, on oil prices.

gotta go, (great job, crap hours !)

thanks for the am pick me up - y’all are better than caffeine - miss y’all so much

Run on back ASAP, cbl — we miss you when you’re away!

there’s no telling [Ken Starr: Oh yes there is!] what mischief the Big Dog and Monica could have really gotten into if Big Bill hadn’t been distracted by the Middle East …

cbl, we are so on the same page.

While we’re on the topic of money, can some kind soul explain to me wht it means if a congressman - in this case Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) - lists as an expenditure a check for $14,530 to the NRCC Incumbent Fund designated as Transfer of Excess Funds?

Thanks lots.

*ilson @ 89

The NSA lawyers make good Smoothies, too, and they’re supposed to be pretty good at grilling.

fuckin’ a.
Is the whole Middle East about to blow?
How long will Syria and Iran sit on the sidelines here?

At the moment I’m worried more about the Right’s attempt to politicize the troops.

Wow. A couple of weeks of Iraq expenditure would pay for the entire replacement of the Seattle highway viaduct that is about to collapse in an earthquake, burying it in a tunnel and completely transforming the waterfront of the city. A couple weeks more would enable a regional rail system, so that we could get cars off the highways, improving traffic and fighting global warming. If only…

Like I needed more reason to want us out now.

Worst. President. Ever.

I think my shoer has stood me up. When even the men you pay stand you up, the day is not starting well.

Specter is worthless. I think they are probably very torn right now over at the Prism House.

On the one hand, they know they are shot soooooo dead in the water on this program — if it ever gets through. But they really like that state secrets argument and they think they can milk the deference angle to the hilt.

OTOH, if they lose state secrets, not only do they lose their illegal unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program, but the state secrets ace in the hole gets a bullet.

OTOH, if they win then state secrets can be used for all kinds of things and maybe to even get around some of the Hamdan decision.

Decidering decidering decidering.

Plus they have or are going to renew the now CLEARLY (Moschella should have ferrets attached to his fingers for sending that letter) illegal program, and even an OLC opinion is not going to be much support anymore.

But if they get Specter to give them some wishy washy legislation and amnestitize all prior behavior, plus amnestitize under lingering telecom stats; they think they can duck some of it.

Hayden and Alexander should be ashamed for putting so many people on the felon line for so long instead of demanding a legislation and a warrant review process after the first couple of months. Feckless felonious fraudulent f. . . uh, it’s not recipe day is it?

Here’s my suggestion of a book to send a soldier, or to send anyone, for that matter. War is a force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Click through to Amazon and make a few pennies for the good Firedoglake folks. The book explains better than anything I’ve ever read the psychology (or psychosis) which besets Bush and his ilk (ilk = Lieberman).

“When we allow mythic reality to rule, as it almost always does in war, then there is only one solution–force. In mythic war we fight absolutes. We must vanquish darkness. It is imperative and inevitable for civilization, for the free world, that good triumph, just as Islamic militants see us as infidels whose existence corrupts the pure Islamic society they hope to build.
But the goal we seek when we embrace myth is impossible to achieve. War never creates the security or the harmony we desire, especially the harmony we briefly attain during wartime. And campaigns, such as the one in Afghanistan, become starting points for further conflicts, especially as we find we are unable to root out terrorism or maintain the kind of solidarity that comes in the days just after a terrorist attack.
The chief institutions that disseminate the myth are the press and the state. The press has been culpable since the telegraph made possible the modern war correspondent. And starting with the Crimean War, when the first dispatches were fed by newly minted war correspondents in real time, nearly every reporter has seen his or her mission as sustaining civilian and army morale. The advent of photography and film did little to alter the incentive to boost morale, for the lie in war is almost always the lie of omission. The Blunders and senseless slaughter by our generals, the execution of prisoners and innocents, and the horror of wounds are rarely disclosed, at least during a mythic war, to the public. Only when the myth is punctured, as it eventually was in Vietnam, does the press begin to report in a sensory rather than a mythic manner. But even then it is reacting to a public that has a changed perception of war. The press usually does not lead.”

The copyright date for this book is 2002, which predates the nasty Iraq mess. Predate it? It predicts it. Hedges bases his analysis on his experiences as a war correspondent. Had I known about this book I would have sent a copy to my nephew before he enlisted in the Air Force. I don’t know if it would have changed his mind, but I don’t think he could have read it and been left unchanged by it.

I’m not a good code writer and the preview thing seems not to be working. Apologies if this looks awful.