What a pic!!!

Morning, Attaturk!

Divesting one’s hypocrisy. What might the statute of limitations be on hypocrisy … I mean, given the Republican media double standard factored in?

Zed…the zed is dead…oh shit, jest missed!!

YO

Timmeh said (and you know you can always trust him):

Yeah, you can always trust him to be DICK CHENEY’s BUTT-BOY and faithful carrier of the administration talking-points!

*disclaimer for above comment:

PLEASE Consult your doctor and ask him if you are healthy enough for sexual activity; do not engage a Butt-boy if you suffer from high blood pressure, or have a history of stroke or blood clots….

1,843 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON…

Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Yo Firepups, rise and shine, it’s daylight in the swamp and the geese are flyin’…if I gotta work you folks ken at least getcher sorry butts up and give me a hand here.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WE’RE ALL GUNNA END UP IN THE SAME PLACE SO OUR DIFFERENCES DON’T REALLY MATTER THATMUSCH NOW DO THEY?!!

Sup Norske;

I was trying to get the image of Cheney’s butt-boy releasing santorum outta my head.

Good morning, pups, and thanks ever so for that image, Jacqrat! Today it’s La Collins and Kristof. La Collins has “A Victory Plan for Hillary,” and she says if Hillary Clinton wants to continue, there’s $11 million that says she has paid for the right to go the distance. But is it hopeless? Not entirely. Recently The Daily Howler picked one of her columns apart. Their dissection is worth reading. Mr. Kristof writes about “The Terrified Monks,” and says when President Bush visits China for the Olympics, he should strongly encourage serious negotiations between Beijing and the Dalai Lama.

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got chocolate croissants from the bakery. They also had some gorgeous looking peach turnovers. I could’t decide between the two, so I got both. Why have temptation around if you don’t give in to it now and then?! Have a great day.

And now, brought to you from the Department of Way Too Little, Way Too Late, we have some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall. That thud you just heard was me falling off my chair, and ROFL.

lol, Way Too Little, Way Too Late, indeed!

The way corporations operate it is rather hard to invest in socially responsible enterprises. These corporations are about making money, not ethical behavior or socially beneficial activities. Even the most benign are trashing the environment in their everyday business practices as SOP.

But there are some corporations which do consider such things in their business model and make efforts to “behave” and reduce their environmental footprint (so to speak). You can even find investment counselors who specialize in these types of investments.

If you want a clean conscience don’t invest in capitalist profit driven companies who care only about the bottom line. Invest in companies which have a positive social purpose and respect for the environment.

“There’s no question that the results in these special elections portend ominously for House Republicans, but they will have little impact on the presidential election campaign,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain.

Yep just keep doing what you are doing McBullshit and you can go back to barbecuing full time.

Morning all. I am still doing whoopee jumps after the Edwards speech last evening. Damn I miss him on the stump.

Whoopee jumps here too. Here’s a tiny nugget from the NYT article on Edwards’ endorsement:

he told aides that he would consider the role of vice president, and favored the position of attorney general

Emphasis, and crossed fingers, mine.

Republicans, of course, don’t believe in such things and so they only act in the self interest, so socially responsible behavior or thinking is not part of their universe.

damn. sorry to go all OT and about an outrage this early in the thread, but i am pissed.

U.S. Has Detained 2,500 Juveniles as Enemy Combatants
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 15, 2008; Page A11

The United States has detained approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush administration with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Although 2,400 of the juveniles were captured in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, only 500 are still held in detention facilities in that country. The administration’s report, which was made public yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union, says that most of the detained Iraqi youths were “engaging in anti-coalition activity.“

my bolds

beyond all the multitude of ways this is depraved evil, can someone please explain to me how the fuck anyone, even this administration, could claim someone (let alone a child) is an illegal enemy combatant for “engaging in anti-coalition activity.” WTF? it’s illegal to fight against an occupying force? i thought the bullshit invention of “illegal enemy combatant” was reserved for afghanistan?

children!!!!

morning Attaturk and pups
love the pic — I suspect McCain’s hugged many a beer bottle
(and many a porcelain bowl)

Cindy McCain had quite the diversified portfolio, how much insider information went into the choice of investments since her husband’s been in Washington? Beyond investing in Sudanese oil?

Is it insider trading if Senators or Representatives use their information for financial gain?
I don’t think it is. I’ll have to look around to find out.

It’s hard to type and stuff chocolate croissants in my mouth at the same time.

One news cycle IYAR
One week past the public’s level of boredom IYAD

chocolate croissants?

If true Edwards sees that we need some adults in DC in key roles and he’s not a spoil sport only wanting the top spot. That is encouraging. When is Hill gonna think about the nation instead of herself?

Marion!

Or peach turnovers if you prefer… I hit the bakery yesterday, and couldn’t decide. Can you?

mmm
I may have to learn to bake
I have been fruitlessly seeking a good peach pie in Chicago for 2 or 3 years now.

no, i can’t. may i please have a half of each?

imPeach turnovers!?!?

Oh, It’s easy for me to choose - anything with fruit baked into it is alwys my first choice. Good morning Marion ..good morning, everyone. It’s chilly and raining in Upstate NY this morning. And, the Washington Times is calling on its editorial page for Miss Cindy to release her tax returns…

*This* House would not reject a peach turnover

the Washington Times is calling on its editorial page for Miss Cindy to release her tax returns…

The irony - it tickles

Morning all :)
Dugggggg :)

Selise, I made a suggestion in the comments the other day that it would be nice to have a place to just talk about what’s going on in Congress. That way, if it wasn’t being addressed by FDL or Marcy, we would feel free to talk about it w/o going OT. I don’t know if Jane or Christy saw it, but I thought it would be an appropriate addition for FDL. What do you think?

(((QuakerGirl)))

((((((Yang)))))) has crossed the Rainbow Bridge, her struggle with diabetes and Cushing’s Disease now over. She was 14 years and 3 weeks old. Yang, I love you very, very much.

I don’t believe in doing things by half… Take a whole one of each and do what I did — give in to temptation!

(((SouthernDragon))) So sorry about Yang. I’ve got Sweet Pea who gets 2 shots of insulin a day and is off to see the vet this afternoon. Hugs, lots and lots of hugs for you…

all we’d need is one of the mods to add a something appropriate to the news box and we could use the comments thread to that….

i’d participate if others are interested.

7:30 am - Chuck Conner, Deputy Agriculture Secretary
8:00 am - Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), Agriculture Committee Chairman

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) today issued the following statement in response to the House’s passage of the farm bill conference report – the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. The measure now goes to the Senate. Harkin is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and the Senate-House conference committee on the new farm bill.

8:30 am - Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) 9th District, Appropriations Committee, Member

the House of Representatives will consider the emergency supplemental bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pressing domestic needs. more at link

9:00 am - Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Armed Services Committee Ranking Member

McHugh Statement for Armed Services Committee Markup of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009
Today, the House Armed Services Committee marked up the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, which authorizes budget authority for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the national security programs within the Department of Energy. Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), Ranking Republican on the Military Personnel Subcommittee, released the following opening statement. more…

9:30 am - Newspaper Articles & Viewer Calls

Ask Washington Journal guests a question
Call-In Numbers:
Support Democrats-(202) 737-0002
Support Republicans-(202) 737-0001
Support Independents-(202) 628-0205
Outside U.S.-(202) 628-0184
Email- journal@c-span.org

As would I.

((SouthernDragon and Yang))

That’s what I thought. Barely need a diary, just a place to live blog. I think it’s a perfect fit for FDL. Do you have the ear of any of the hosts?

Congressional oversight and the live bloging of floor activity is one of the great cornerstones of FDL, imho.

Oh SouthernDragon, so sorry to hear that. Hope you can take comfort in the comfort you gave her — what a beautiful calico!

(((SouthernDragon & Yang)))

I love waking up to Attaturk’s humor & sarcasm! What a combo! Love the picture too. LOL

…And if it’s ever the topic of one of the main sites, they can close comments in the ‘live blogging’ site and direct them elsewhere.

solai, send you idea to- firedoglake [at] gmail [dot] com

Can anybody find any quotes from McCain calling on Teresa Heinz Kerry to release her tax returns doring the 2004 election? I seem to remember that was a point of contention for a while.

no more than anyone else. you might want to email christy. but asking the mods seems ok to me too (what do i know, but i’m sure they would run it by RBG)

Awwww, how cute. George Bush receiving a very warm welcome by the Israelis this morning as if he was their War Crime Sugar Daddy or something.

Oversight of the executive branch is the duty of Congress.
Oversight of Congress is the duty of every Citizen.

I have a question concerning our “strategic oil reserve” and the release of same;

how does that get distributed, is it simply added to the open market for bid?

that would be another rediculous gift to the oil concerns so please tell me that’s not what’s going to happen

yup!

1,843 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Raven:

If yer out there this AM, have ya heard from the kiddo yet? Any chance a gettin’ one of the hall monitors here at the studyhall ta give us his e-mail address?

I’m missin’ me some kiddo and I think this site is poorer for his (and Lahoma’s) absence.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WE’RE ALL IN THIS TAGETHER, LIKE IT ER NOT!!

if there really is interest, i could post a daily hearings list on T, W and Th as well as the weekly (the daily list is MUCH easier than the weekly)

Here’s one article you might find interesting:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200804180007

I’ve posted that notion but no reply.

norske - i’m with you, except for the bit about the email addy. those aren’t every supposed to be shared. :(

Thanks, Kay. Reading it now.

Well, as far as I’m concerned, the American people have already paid for this oil. Not sure how it gets distributed though.

prolly in the jets he’s planning on sending to bomb Iran

absolutely correct, so how are we gonna make sure they don’t give our stuff away to the oil concerns?

LOL Oh yes, that’s one way the warmongers like to distribute the oil! Spit.

live now GWB on CSPAN 2 in the Knesset

Kay, I’m not sure I was joking

Okay, going to work. Have a great day everyone.

Attaturk thanks again for a great post to start the day out with! ;-)

I’ve been watching it. It’s almost like Hitler has arrived to talk to the Nazis. It’s truly scary to watch. Gave myself the chills it did!

If Cindy has standard investment advisors and investment strategy, she has a mega-boatload of assets beyond her holdings in the beer distributorship and her real estate. In a typical portfolio, individual mutual funds would represent no more that a couple percent of the total. Two million dollars in just two mutual funds makes me think that the assets outside the distributorship and real estate are in the 50-100 million dollar range, if not twice that.

I half expect Bush to say “New World Order” and “We’ll bomb America so we can bomb Iran to protect you once again, Great Israelis! Together we will prosper and control the planet together! *clicking jackboots together*”.

Again, scary.

Would like to see a coordinated, concerted effort from the blogosphere to pick off, take down, neuter, de-legitimatize the corporate media bloviators one at a time, starting with Russert. Broder is taking on a diminished capacity at the WaPo, so that’s somewhat of a start. Begin with those that try and pass themselves off as “objective”. Roger Simon of Politico, Cokie Roberts, Mara Liasson, Brian Williams also come to mind. It’s a long list but have to start somewhere. Until the corporate media is exposed and rendered irrelevant the citizenry is in peril.

How could I have forgotten Charlie Gibson???

more Attaturk upstairs

Because he’s eminently forgettable?

Zed ain’t dead.

Proof upstairs.

Even Mika. Doesn’t her brother work for McCain? Shouldn’t that disquaulify her as an objective commentator? And then there’s Norah, who was given a bridal?/baby? shower by Mary Matlin.

doesn’t her dad advise obama?

{{{{ Love to you and sorrow for your loss. }}}}

There all of the investment property class and see the world the same way as their corporate bosses and the congressional shills.

It’s a class thing and they don’t need coaching to know what best for those with dough. When you have wealth or are trying to acquire it or protect it you tow the republican line.

The wealthy who don’t are philanthropic and live modestly and try to use their wealth to help others. The phones give to charity as a tax write off (probably 95% of them do this).

The struggle in America is all about class and race and how the resources are owned, controlled, shared, used and so forth.

The media bobbleheads are in it for themselves so what would you expect?

This is nepotism on steriods. The media from print to broadcast has completely tanked and failed in this country.

But that’s because it is a business and profit driven. Truth, justice and journalism are only words. It’s the money that matters.

You probably aren’t going to like this then. They can sell it, by offering it for competitive bi., The last time they did so, shortly after Katrina, seven Companies bid on the offering. They also have the option of executing a trade in kind, receiving repayment later.

Releasing Crude Oil From the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

BINGO!!! But then I thought the U.S. didn’t have class. Biggest canard ever perpetrated on the people. When the people finally wake up to the scam the rich, primarily white corporate bloviators who want nothing more than to protect their own selfish interests had better seek assylum in Paraguay along with the Bush family.

Like Scarlett, Miss Cindy will think about that tomorrow.
Or, she could give up golf.

that serves us no purpose what so ever then, it puts money in the pockets of the wealthy

what we need to do is release those assets for american consumption only and since we’ve already payed for it we should pay only the price of distribution with a fair mark up so the local distributers can enjoy some profit at as well

Why do they need to share some profit?

Why must every transaction include PROFIT?

Who gets the profit? Not the workers who might be distributing the oil, but shareholders who do NOTHING and in this case deserve nothing.

The right likes to tie the notion of profit to risking their capital and so they should be able to benefit from this risk taking.

In the case you are citing about taking the reserves and introducing them to americans… who have already paid for this oil INCLUDING profit to the oil companies at the time of sale… why should they be entitled to MORE profit when there is little of any risk involved?

Blue,

Class struggle is the elephant in the room that few wish to notice or speak about. Well Marx did, but he’s not around anymore.

American capitalism is sold as a system where you are rewarded for hard work in proportion to your effort, smarts and entrepreneurial skills. Clearly this leaves out a lot of people who cannot play. Worker don’t have the opportunity to be entrepreneurial, and at best can be productive hard workers and agitate for better wages and working conditions and this goes against capital’s need and desires to maximize profits.

Second, everyone cannot get ahead, because to be ahead, others must be left behind. Those are the underclass / workers / slackers / leeches that are either not spoken about or when they are they are disdained as drags on the system. Fine to exploit them for profit, but convenient to blame everything on them as well.

Third, when you expose capitalism as the classist and racist economic system it is, with all its equities it’s impossible to square that with “democracy” which purports to value people “equally” in terms of rights and opportunities.

America has a huge intellectual disconnect between the economic class system of free enterprise / free market capitalism and democracy. Since people don’t care to have their heads spin, they simply don’t want to face these blaring contradictions.

Re Marion @ 13 - I’m a former federal prosecutor who voted for John Edwards even after he suspended his campaign. Edwards is admirable on many counts. He is a poor choice as Attorney General.

Edwards has, as far as I know, no federal criminal experience, either as prosecutor or defense attorney. Senator Obama apparently has none, either. Federal criminal law is not the only business of the U.S. Department of Justice. But it is DOJ’s main business, and it is different from anything that Edwards knows.

Experience in civil litigation is not enough. For nearly a decade I did civil enforcement litigation. It never occurred to me until I moved into federal criminal law that many of the civil violations with which my former office dealt were also federal felonies. Federal criminal law is a different world. We need an AG who is not starting from scratch with it.

Even state criminal law experience is not enough. Janet Reno had been a distinguished state prosecutor and did a lot of good as AG. Among some in DOJ, after the lethal fiasco at Waco, however, it was understood that part of why Reno failed to insist on a non-violent solution was her inexperience in dealing with the FBI.

So, assuming an Obama victory, we could have both our chief executive and his chief enforcement attorney with no federal criminal law experience.

Federal criminal law is a massive subject. An AG who must be briefed from scratch on every criminal law issue is on shaky ground.

The DOJ is also in great need of reform. Yet it is now larded with neocon permanent employees who may try to sabotage reform efforts. Edwards has apparently NO experience with the highly specialized world that is DOJ.

We need an AG who knows what s/he’s doing from Day 1.