Thursday, August 31, 2006

Quote of the Day

If you have not seen Keith Olbermann's commentary regarding Donald Rumsfeld last night - you must.

Olbermann ended with a particularly apt quote from another great journalist not afraid to speak his mind:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,
We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be
driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history
and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;
Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to
defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."


Edward R. Murrow 1954

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Who's More Delusional?


Is it John Mark Karr, who thinks he accidentally killed JonBenet Ramsey despite negative DNA tests, and witnesses who insist he was 600 miles away at the time of the murder?

Or is it the President of the United States, who gave the following answer (with my emphasis) to the first question asked by Brian Williams in an “exclusive” interview from the streets of New Orleans?
I will tell you this, that when it's all said and done, the people down here know that I stood in Jackson Square, and I said we're gonna help you, and we delivered.
Tough call, huh? The really scary thing is that after watching Bush and listening to him say the words, Karr doesn’t even seem the more delusional of the two, based on the sheer "creepiness" factor!



Sandwiched between several more questions regarding Iraq and Katrina and a lengthy discussion of his “eclectic” reading habits, Williams asked him pointedly about his legacy as President. Bush was able to reach the following conclusion.
Eventually my standing in history will be judged by people 30 or 40 years from now. I read three histories of George Washington last year. The first President of the United States is still being analyzed by historians, which oughtta say to this president and future president: "Do what you think is right and eventually historians will figure out whether it made sense or not."
In other words, Bush can and should do anything he damned well pleases, because historians won’t be able to determine his true legacy until after he’s dead!

Right, Mr. Bush. Whatever you say. And historians might eventually conclude that Jeffrey Dahmer should have been the next Emeril Lagasse!

As his popularity plummets, Bush now seems reduced to a strategy of running out the clock, while retaining a few (retarded) supporters and a (false) shred of dignity.

With his proclamation that “We won’t leave Iraq as long as I’m the President,” he clearly has adopted this stalling strategy with regard to his Presidency. Now, it seems with his recent comments, that he has adopted a similar strategy with his entire life!

Frankly, either Mr. Bush is one of the most delusional human beings ever to walk the planet, or he’s a manipulative opportunist who has taken to heart his recent reading of Albert Camus, and really doesn’t share his fundamentalist supporters’ belief in the afterlife. In other words, if he can just hold off his legacy long enough that he doesn’t have to live with it, he’s home free!

But personally, I just think that he is so deluded he thinks there are multiple “Shakespeares!”

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Who's More Pathetic?


I have long despised Rita Cosby as the chief example of everything that is wrong with TV news. This photo is disturbing in many ways. It deserves a caption that I am too disgusted to come up with at the moment. So have at it.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Photo of the Day

Dick Cheney gives away the answer to his favorite game of "One of these things is not like the other".

The Case of the Undercover Pork Lover!

For those of you who love a good mystery, but aren’t ready to wade back into the “Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?” pool, now that we know John Mark Karr didn’t do it, here’s something that might be more interesting.

Conservative and liberal bloggers are pooling their efforts in order to identify, by process of elimination, the identity of the senator, or senators, who have placed an anonymous hold on a bill that would create a searchable public database of all government contracts.

TPM has the best tally so far, in which the original pool of 100 senators has been whittled down to 42 remaining candidates (at last check.) All I can say is the last man or woman standing is going to look like quite the coward, and will undoubtedly be forced to field a question or two about what he or she has to hide!

In fact, that senator might be wise to abandon his or her political party to run as an independent, or call someone “macaca,” just to change the subject!

I don’t know who it’s going to be, but if I get the first draft pick in my annual Political Pork Fantasy League, I’m going with Ted “Series of Tubes, formerly known as the Bridge to Nowhere Man” Stevens!

Thursday, August 24, 2006

White House: Study Proves No Global Warming!

President Bush today announced the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark has released a study which he suggests conclusively proves that global warming is just a hoax.

The study reports the following:
The genitals of polar bears in east Greenland are apparently dwindling in size.
(snip)
Scientists report this shrinkage could, in the worst case scenario, endanger polar bears there and elsewhere by spoiling their love lives and causing their numbers to peter out.
Said Bush:
Everyone has seen the episode of Seinfeld which sets forth the true cause of shrinkage. If polar bear genitals are shrinking, then clearly the Arctic is getting colder, not warmer! The shrinking icecap must be related to something other than global warming – like a lack of oil pipelines holding it together!
Bush then announced that he will ask the Congress to appropriate $1.6 billion so that he can enlist Haliburton to provide neoprene bikinis and oysters to the Arctic polar bears in order to aid in the reconstruction of their love lives.

(also at Daily Kos)

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

My New Connection With George Bush!

As you may have noticed, my blogging frequency has declined significantly in the last week. This is because I have found it more difficult to write now that I know of a common characteristic that I share with the President.

Last weekend, during a short bike ride, I made the stupid decision, despite clear evidence that should have been more than enough to dissuade me, to ride directly over a pothole.

I was sure it was only going to be a small bump in the road, on the way to achieving my mission of getting to the gym in time for an afternoon swim.

I was wrong!

When I hit the hole, I bounced forward on the bike and was unable to regain control. Moving at about 20 miles an hour, I flew over the handlebars and skidded to a stop on the pavement, leaving several feet of skin along the way.

All in all, I’m not too bad off. A couple of large abrasions on the knee and elbow, a gash on the palm of one hand, and a few minor dings here and there. My right shoulder was jammed to the point where I’ve been instructed by my doctor to do a Hitler salute several times a day to make sure it doesn’t become frozen.

But I’m going to be back on the bike soon . . . because if I don’t "stay the course" and "complete the mission" of riding “over there,” I will only "embolden" the pavement and it’s going to follow me "over here."

Wait, I'm looking out my window and I can see that there is pavement right outside my house.

Code Red! Code Red!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Question.

Yes, Joe Scarborough, and thanks for asking! The answer is YES!

Anyone who tries to make a credible argument to the contrary is, at this point in the accumulated weight of the evidence, merely spitting into the wind.

Sure there are still a few who try to argue that Bush is just playing dumb in order to create plausible deniability against accusations of devious criminal intent. But if that were true, he would only need to seem so dumb. If he were smart enough to know better, he would certainly stop short of seeming criminally and dangerously ignorant!

No, every time he opens his mouth, Bush falls deeper into his own spider hole of shame, where his legacy will be the scorn and ridicule of future generations who will have to pay the price for his blundering negligence.

So to answer the question once more Mr. Scarborough - yes, yes, a thousand times, YES!!!!

Monday, August 14, 2006

GOP: The Party of Meaningless, Made-Up Words!


In my mind, the absurdity of the Republican Party can be summed up in two words that have recently made their way into every set of conservative talking points since Connecticut voters ousted Bush kisser, Joe Lieberman, in favor of Iraq war critic, Ned Lamont.

These words are: “Defeatocrats” and “Islamofascists.”

I’ve already covered the ridiculous “Defeatocrat” label unleashed on the Democrats by, as I now choose to call them, the “Retard-licans,” so I’m going to focus here on the word “Islamofascist,” or the variation, “Islamic Fascism.”

George Bush has used it several times, including a recent press conference. In a recent column, Cal Thomas used variations of the word 5 times, and even found room to increase the revulsion factor by expanding it to “Islamofascist plague.” Likewise, other conservative pundits seem to be racing to prove they can use the new GOP “word-of-the-day” in a sentence!

I’m not an historian, so I won’t bother trying to pick apart the historical reasons for why the use of this word is ridiculous (although Newsweek covers some of them here). I’ll just cite the definition of Fascism in Webster’s Dictionary.
Fascism: A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
The radical Islamic factions currently promoting violence toward the West are decentralized and anarchic, not autocratic and regimented. There is no dictatorial leader -unless you believe that somehow Osama bin Laden is controlling everything from a cave in Northern Pakistan next to his dialysis machine - using a satellite phone the size of Maxwell Smart’s shoe!

That’s what the GOP would like us to believe! The Bush Administration wanted a reason for war from the day they first stepped into the White House. When their “War on Terror” after 9/11 turned out to be as unwinnable as the “War on Drugs,” and no longer served as an acceptable justification for pursuing their goals in the Middle East, they needed a new reason to continue. Enter “Islamofascism”, and calls for their followers to see actions in the Middle East as “World War III,” even though the current insurgency seems to have less to do with “Fascism” than does Bush’s “Unitary Executive” theory. Generally, Republicans know that people associate the term “Fascism” with Hitler, the holocaust, and the circumstances of a “just war.” So they use it, over and over and over!

But they are just words. Stupid, misleading, meaningless words!

“Defeatocrat” and “Islamofascist” make no more sense than a liberal campaign urging Americans to: Vote Democratic in November to stop the dreaded Bush the Ripper from continuing his rampant serial conservacide spree! (actually, that kind of makes more sense!)

All in all, they are nothing more than made-up words - another extension of the ongoing campaign of Republican viral fear marketing known as:

Sheiks on a Plane!

(hat tip to Mike Malloy who apparently beat me to the use of this phrase)

Friday, August 11, 2006

This is David Brooks' Party of the Middle?

Ever since it became clear that the American public has soured on the right wing nutjobs currently running our country, conservative pundits like David Brooks have been trying to change the political dialog from one of “conservative versus liberal” into one of “centrist versus liberal”.

This article describes the ruse rise of a new, supposedly non-partisan, party characterized by John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

Yes - this John McCain?



And this Joe Lieberman?



When McCain and Lieberman are willing to give Russ Feingold or John Conyers a big hug in public, I might consider them bipartisan.

Until then, they are (as Digby has said) just two more eunuchs in the Bush political harem!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Trash Can Alert level Raised!

So as I'm watching the breathless media spread rumor and speculation about the foiled airplane bomb attacks, I couldn't help but wonder.

If the "Islamo Facists" were going to carry highly volatile liquids aboard the planes, how exactly is taking them away before boarding and throwing them in a big garbage bin the solution?

Just asking.

Yes, Please DO Make Your Choice!


This image, taken from the GOP website, is apparently the best argument they can come up with for why voters should stick with the party who brought us Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Terry Schaivo, record gas prices, staggering national debt; and failed to catch Bin Laden, recognize the potential for global warming, or act on warnings that might have stopped 9/11!

But Michael Moore is fat, and Howard Dean makes funny faces when he speaks!

Just ask Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman!

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The World According to Mehlman

The GOP didn’t take long to try to somehow spin Ned Lamont’s win over Joe Lieberman into a Republican talking point. During a campaign appearance in Ohio for Mike DeWine, Ken Mehlman gave it his best shot.

Yesterday we saw something happen somewhere else that is directly relevant to the choice the people of Ohio will make on November 7.

Why is this relevant in Ohio?

Because right here, the Democratic Party has chosen to nominate for Senate a leading proponent of the isolationist, defeatist, blame America first philosophy.

Sherrod Brown (DeWine's opponent) is Ohio's answer to Ned Lamont.

It reflects an unfortunate embrace of isolationism, defeatism, and a 'blame America first' attitude by national Democratic leaders at a time when retreating from the world is particularly dangerous.

How about the danger of retreating from reality? I sure hope the big Republican donors keep providing enough money to support Mehlman’s crack habit, because it seems clear he’s been smoking something!

First of all, he’s discounting the fortunes of a political opponent by suggesting that he’s following in the footsteps of a guy who just won!

And Ned Lamont is a true Democrat who just defeated a Republican masquerading as a Democrat, yet Mehlman is able to reach the stunningly absurd conclusion that:
Today's Democrat Party has become the Defeat-ocrat Party.
Huh?

It seems - to paraphrase Mehlman's line - that:

Today’s Republican Party has become the Retard-lican Party!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Lieberman: Oh, Woe is Me! I’ve Been Hacked! [Updated]


Amazing!

Joe Lieberman’s campaign manager has accused Ned Lamont supporters of hacking Joe’s website. However, some evidence suggests that they just didn’t pay their bill!

Why do I keep thinking of the story of Karl Rove bugging his own office and blaming it on a political opponent?

[Update] TPM has more info on the allegations from the Lieberman camp. Looks like a set up for Joe to rationalize an independent run while still insisting he's a Democrat!

[Update II] As is often the case, Hunter at Dkos nails it with his take on the latest (and hopefully last) Lieberman stunt.

The Wedding of Joe & George


Watch the Wedding of Lieberman and GWB via Huffington Post. It is a classic.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Play the Bush Backrub Game






While George Bush has time to go on vacation during this time of global crisis - I offer this new game as a way for you to take a tiny vacation of your own.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Profiles in Pathetic!


A desperate Lieberman, now that he’s 13 points down in the polls:
I supported our war in Iraq but I have always questioned the way it was being executed
(snip)
This administration took far too many shortcuts. We continue to suffer the consequences, as do the Iraqi people.

Next, Mr Sanctimonious will be trying to tell us this pathetic whopper:
I supported Bill Clinton’s right to get a blowjob in the White House, but I have always questioned the way it was executed.

Clinton took far too many shortcuts, and it was Monica who suffered the consequences, as did her blue dress.

This Says it All!

August 2, 2006

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Photo of the Day! With Update

AND I SAY TO YOU,

CAN YOU TRUST NED LAMONT TO MAKE A PERFECT SMURF SHADOW PUPPET WHILE REPRESENTING YOU IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE?

I'VE BEEN MAKING SHADOW PUPPETS SINCE THE EARLY 1960'S! WHERE WAS NED LAMONT THEN?

Update by Left-Over:

Lieberman Responds to criticism of "Shadow Puppet Speech"

"You are all confused. I said I look like a smurf, but my shadow puppet was a rabbit..... and not just any rabbit.

I know that Ned Lamont has picked up many major endorsements of late, but I am proud to announce that Brer Rabbit has decided to hop on the Smacky McBushKisser Bandwagon."