Katie Couric is in Baghdad! I am going to protest this horrible injustice by not watching CBS Evening News until they BRING KATIE HOME!

Our little Katie is putting on a brave face but if you read between the lines of her blog post you can feel just how terrified she really is.

When I returned, Phil said, "I'm really glad that's done with." When I asked him why, he said he could tell me now. "That was the one dicey thing you were doing. I was worried that while you were inside, some troublemakers would have time to plan something." Now he tells me.

See? They are purposefully putting the perky one in danger just to attract viewers who think that Katie might get shot full of holes, or blown up! That is just sick!

And you just know that if that happens it will be all over YouTube so that it can emotionally scar thousands of computer savvy kids who have never even heard of a network news program.

If this keeps up I may not watch "Ghost Whisperer" or "Big Brother"either. I won't put "Two and a Half Men" on that list only because I don't think that Jon Cryer should have to suffer as well. (Besides Charley Sheen just slays me!)

Hang in their Katie we are rooting for you! You brave little television personality you!

Alaska teachers make me proud

Teachers and staff at a Fairbanks elementary school are turning down bonuses offered by the state.

The staff at Pearl Creek Elementary School appreciate being recognized for the good work they do, but don't want a monetary reward for doing what they're already paid to do.

The school was one of 42 across the state whose staff were recently awarded cash bonuses because of student improvement on standardized assessment tests.

All the teachers at Pearl Creek as well as the principal and other certified employees each received $2,500, while the school's other staff, including librarians, custodians, and secretaries, received $1,000 each.

Principal Mary Short said as a group the staff felt the cash bonuses were inappropriate.

"Most of the discussion was about how uncomfortable the incentive program made us feel," Short said, referring to a staff meeting she convened the week before school started.

At the meeting, the staff decided to donate the bonus money from the state to nonprofit organizations or to districtwide education initiatives.

"Most felt that (the money) should go to other schools," Short said.

I work with many of Alaska's best teachers, and just let me tell you that they absolutely rock!

I am just totally impressed by these incredibly dedicated professionals.

George Bush does not have to bribe our teachers to do their jobs.

Five term Senator John Warner recently called for a reduction in troops in Iraq. And now he has suddenly decided not to seek a sixth term. Hmmm.

Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia -- the respected former Navy secretary and outspoken critic of the current state of affairs in Iraq -- will not seek re-election to a sixth term, he announced Friday.

"I say that my work and service to Virginia as a senator will conclude upon the sixth of January, 2009," said Warner, 80, during a news conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the University of Virginia, his alma mater.

"Now, by taking this action, no one can say politics is going to dictate in one way or another how I'm going to decide to speak out on what's in the best interests of this nation. And I'm going to do that," Warner said, noting that some have read his recent public criticisms of Iraqi leaders as political posturing.

Okay I have to say that I just gained a little respect for Senator Warner. I may not agree with him on many of the issues, but the man certainly puts his money where his mouth is.

So now can we expect to hear even more pointed criticism of the Bush Iraq war plan? Becaseu that would be awesome.

All I know is that I will be paying close attention to the Senator to see if he has anything significant to say in the next few months.

In a shocking turn of events that NOBODY could have seen coming General Petraeus says the surge is working!

The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has thrown al Qaeda off balance and led to a reduction in sectarian violence and bombings, the U.S. commander in Iraq was quoted on Friday by an Australian newspaper as saying.

"We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al Qaeda is off balance at the very least," General David Petraeus told the Australian in an interview after briefing Australia's defense minister, Brendan Nelson, in Baghdad.

I am stunned! I have to admit that I have believed for quite some time that the war in Iraq was unwinnable, and that this surge was nothing more then a way to "kick the can" down the road.

But since I have been told repeatedly that General Petraeus is a man of unquestionable integrity and honesty, then I simply have no choice but to trust that the man is giving us the unvarnished truth. Which means those bozos over at the GAO must have their heads firmly up their asses.

Well I guess I have to go and digest this large helping of crow.

Damn, I just can't believe that I, and so many smart people, were so wrong about this surge.

NASA is tired of exploring space. Would much rather explore the personal lives of their staff.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers sued NASA and the California Institute of Technology on Thursday, challenging extensive new background checks that the space exploration center and other federal agencies began requiring in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The lawsuit says NASA is violating the Constitution by calling on employees -- everyone from janitors to visiting professors -- to permit investigators to delve into medical, financial and past employment records, and to question friends and acquaintances about everything from their finances to sex lives. Those who refuse could lose their jobs, the suit says.

Do you smell that? Yep that is the smell of something fishy.

Now I am completely supportive of background checks of people who work in national security sensitive jobs. I want to know if they have a gambling problem, a drug problem, an anger problem, or if they are a spy from China. What I don't need to know is if they are gay, straight, into furries, are a transsexual, have a foot fetish, or any other possible sexual proclivity. I just don't care.

As a matter of fact if I had to choose a sexual orientation for the men who have to get a giant phallus to blast off smoothly and on time, I think I know who would be best suited for the job. And it ain't the guy trying to bang the hot chick in accounting!

And if I may take a moment to remind everybody that Lisa Nowak was a straight woman. A crazy, crazy, straight woman.

Hat tip to Skippy for this post.

Director of "Scarface" takes on the Iraq war. "Say hello to my leetle movie!"

A US film exposing the ugly reality of the Iraq war seared the big screen at the Venice film festival Friday, with director Brian De Palma saying he hoped it would help end America's military occupation.

"The pictures are what will stop the war," De Palma told a news conference after the showing of the movie, "Redacted".

The feature, which is based on the actual March 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers who also slaughtered her family, is a reaction to what he sees as sanitised media accounts of the war seen in the United States.

"All the images we (currently) have of our war are completely constructed -- whitewashed, redacted," said De Palma, who is best known for such violent fictions as "Carrie" and "Scarface".

I believe that the only way Americans will learn the truth about the war is through the efforts of these "guerrilla" truth tellers.

It seems that there are very few unvarnished looks at what is being done in our name in Iraq. We see it in some of the videos posted on the Internet by soldiers, but that only demonstrates the kind of gallows humor of people who are confronted with horrible situations every day develop. It is often uncomfortable to watch, and it makes us feel ashamed of our soldiers at times, but it does not really show just how horrible it is over there. But there are much worse things happening that we have not yet been exposed to.

So movies like the one listed above and Ground Truth, or Lions for Lambs, or The War Tapes may start bringing images and ideas to the masses, that up until this point, have been sanitized to the point that they have little, if any, impact.

I know that there are people who will avoid these films like the plague (I am, after all, the guy who flatly refuses to watch the movies "World Trade Center" or "United 93"), but I hope that many people are curious enough to see what the administration desperately does not want them to see to make these films successful. Perhaps then we will see even more truth in a theatre near us, and that might even lead to more truth being revealed on our television sets.

I will save you a seat in the front row.

Is John Edwards getting ready to catapult to the front of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls?

John Edwards is betting that a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses will catapult him into national contention, and so far his strategy in the state is on track. A new TIME poll of likely Iowa caucus goers, taken a week after Edwards' seven-day, 31-stop bus tour of the state, gives Edwards 29% of the vote, five points ahead of Hillary Clinton and seven ahead of Barack Obama. This latest TIME Poll of 519 likely Iowa Democratic caucus goers finds that, among the so-called "second-tier" candidates, Bill Richardson has 11%, with Joe Biden at 5%, Dennis Kucinich with 2%, and Chris Dodd at 1%. (The Poll was conducted August 22 � 25, 2007. The margin of error is approximately +/- 5 percentage points.)

With the field limited to the top four candidates, Edwards's lead over Clinton widens, to 32% to 24%. Obama was at 22%, with Bill Richardson at 13%. Iowa polls can be unreliable, since only 5% to 10% of voters go to the caucuses; some other recent surveys have Edwards in a dead heat with Clinton and Obama. The race remains wide open, but Edwards's position remains strong.

Edwards has put almost all of his eggs in this basket. I hope it pans out for him, since I am totally over the Hillary/Obama two person race.

And let's face it, an Edwards/Obama ticket, or an Obama/Edwards ticket would be completely unstoppable for the Republicans. And that is why they are constantly pretending to worry about Hillary's nomination.

Remember Brer Rabbit? "Please. oh please don't nominate Hillary, we could never beat her." Let's try not to be suckered by the Republicans again, shall we?

Thursday comics. Featuring guess who?

Justice grinds to a halt in the Haditha murder case.

The preliminary hearing for Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich begins today, marking possibly the last chance for prosecutors to bring to a court-martial any of the Marines charged with murder in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the Iraqi village of Al-Hadithah.

But to prevail, prosecutors have to convince a hearing officer who has been skeptical of the case and also a top general who does not believe in punishing enlisted Marines for mistakes made in a "morally bruising" conflict where insurgents hide behind women and children.

The Al-Hadithah charges represent the most serious case of alleged war crimes committed by Marines in Iraq or Afghanistan. But what looked to some like a slam-dunk murder case against four enlisted Marines could be on the verge of collapsing.

Of the four initial defendants in the slayings Nov. 19, 2005, charges were dropped against one in exchange for his testimony against other Marines; charges were dismissed against another by Lt. Gen. James Mattis after a preliminary hearing; and charges against a third appear on the verge of being dismissed by Mattis, also after a preliminary hearing.

One of the features of all wars is the dehumanizing of the enemy. American troops have called them Rebels, Nazis, Japs, Charlie, Ragheads, and many others. What a soldier rarely calls an enemy is "human". If you do that it just makes it that much harder to kill them.

What happens after awhile is that soldiers do not view the "enemy" as human beings. They see them as less then they are and start actually hating them or being disgusted by them.

And then just hating the men who they fight against is not enough. The soldiers start to hate their whole culture. The women, the elderly, and the children all become the "enemy". This is not new. This has happened repeatedly throughout history.

And after this transformation happens the violence against the civilians begins. They are raped, killed, abused, tortured, and treated like less then animals.

The only way that this pattern can be diffused is by strong, competent leadership. And as we know that is lacking in all levels of this conflict. If the military is ever going to show that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, they must punish ALL who engage in it, or work to minimize it. Not just the soldier on the ground, but his commander, his general, and his civilian leadership.

If this does not happen I am afraid we will see many more incidents like the one at Haditha.

Rep. John Conyers has his own table, and right in the middle of it sits impeachment.

"Nancy Pelosi has impeachment 'off the table,' but that's off her table, it is not off John Conyers' table," the Michigan Democrat said during a town hall meeting in his district Tuesday. "Nancy Pelosi, who I actually supported, cannot prevent me from introducing an impeachment resolution against, well I've got a long list of people who are eligible."

"I want you to know that I have no reticence, no reluctance, no hesitation to use the tool of impeachment ... whenever I feel that it is appropriate," Conyers said. "I only wish that I could be moved by a lot of people coming to my office."

Did you just feel that? That tingle of excitement that just ran up your back? That is the feeling of the possibility of impending justice.

I hope, with all of my heart, that is a feeling that we start having on a regular basis.

Republicans, who are clearly terrified of getting a little gay on them, call for Larry Craig's resignation.

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's political support eroded by the hour on Wednesday as fellow Republicans in Congress called for him to resign and party leaders pushed him unceremoniously from senior committee posts.

The White House expressed disappointment, too _ and nary a word of support for the 62-year-old lawmaker, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to a charge stemming from an undercover police operation in an airport men's room.

Craig "represents the Republican Party," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the first in a steadily lengthening list of GOP members of Congress to urge a resignation.

Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Norm Coleman of Minnesota joined Hoekstra in urging Craig to step down, as did Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida _ and others who joined them as the day wore on.

McCain spoke out in an interview with CNN. "My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn't serve. That's not a moral stand. That's not a holier-than-thou. It's just a factual situation."

Coleman said in a written statement, "Senator Craig pled guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator."

I do agree with McCain and Coleman that Craig did break the law and therefore needs to leave office. Where I disagree with all of these guys is the underlying theme that being gay is an automatic get out of "politics free card" for Republicans.

It is that very fact which makes somebody like Mr. Craig feel the need to find an outlet for his repressed sexuality in a public restroom. You don't hear about Barney Frank groping somebody under the bathroom stall door in Massachusetts.

Maybe if Craig could have been gay and socially accepted in the Republican party he may not have destroyed his life. Because lets face it, neither McCain nor Mitt Romney would ever let a Republican fag work for their campaign, or appear in a photo op with them. It would screw with their "family values and hate the homosexual"political platform.

By the way here is a YouTube video of "Wide Stance" back in 1982 denying that he was gay during a scandal centering on Congressional Pages that did not even name him as a participant.



Larry Craig, not having sex with men since 1982.

CBS is trying to kill Katie Couric!

One year after Couric jumped from NBC's "Today" to CBS in a big-money talent deal, the "Evening News" anchor is embarking on a high-risk tour of Iraq and Syria to revive the broadcast.

Announcement comes just days after an Iraqi translator working for CBS was killed in Baghdad. CBS said Monday the translator had been found dead following his abduction just hours after leaving work at CBS News' Baghdad bureau.

Couric has never been to Iraq, and she will be the second of the big three anchors, following NBC's Brian Williams last spring, to venture to the region since ABC News' Bob Woodruff was nearly killed by an IED attack on his convoy outside Baghdad in early 2006.

Okay I don't watch CBS Evening News, and I am not a huge fan of Katie Couric, but I certainly don't want to see her blown up in Iraq no matter what kind of ratings that might draw.

Katie is good at talking to Martha Stewart about how to make doilies out of used coffee filters, she is not somebody who should be in the middle of a war zone.

If CBS wants to get rid of her they just need to buy out her contract, not send her to her death in Iraq. Just look how sad she is.

I am going to start the "Save Katie" campaign. She is perky, not bulletproof dammit!

Larry "wide stance" Craig has something to say to all of you: "I am not gay, I have never been gay". Well good now that is all settled.

A defiant Sen. Larry Craig denied any wrongdoing Tuesday despite his guilty plea this summer in a men's room police sting, emphatically adding, "I am not gay. I have never been gay."

Craig, a third-term senator from Idaho, proclaimed his innocence as well as his sexuality less than an hour after Senate leaders from his own Republican Party called for an ethics committee review of his case.

I almost did not bother to even blog about this since EVERYBODY is covering this thing from every angle. But then I read this: Craig, 62, has faced rumors about his sexuality since the 1980s, but allegations that he had engaged in gay sex have never been substantiated. He has denied the assertions.

And I thought, "damn this guy has been posing as somebody else his entire professional life". And apparently he has continued to engage in risky behaviors that entire time.

I just cannot help but feel some sympathy for this guy. He is clearly filled with self loathing and a constant need to attack the homosexual lifestyle in an attempt to keep the spotlight off of his proclivities.

Is it any wonder he went after Clinton so voraciously? I mean Bill had oral sex with a WOMAN! Craig must have found that totally disgusting!

Remember the more outspoken the Republicans are against a certain lifestyle the more likely it is that they themselves are a part of that lifestyle.

Todays Jesus sighting is on a fence. I think he just looks board.

"I looked up and saw the face of Christ in the fence and I said, "Whoa," West said.

She called her sister Ana over to ask what she saw. She too agreed, it was the Son of God.

These are the kind of worshippers that I think most religions would like to send to another belief system.

"Hey maybe you gals would like to be hare Krishna's for awhile. They wear robes."

All I see is a knotty board. You can go ahead and play around with that sentence if you want.

The problem with writing posts about the Bush administration is that pretty soon you see conspiracies everywhere. For instance.

Several U.S. Army soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq last week were to be witnesses in the homicide trial of their former superior.

Honolulu's KITV reported Sunday that some of the soldiers who died in the crash had been scheduled to testify in the trial of Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales, who is accused of orchestrating the death of an Iraqi detainee this year.

Corrales, who was in the same Hawaii-based platoon as the soldiers killed in Wednesday's crash, allegedly shot the detainee repeatedly June 23. He is accused of then ordering his subordinate and fellow defendant, Spc. Christopher Shore, to continue shooting the man. The detainee died from those wounds.

Retired military lawyer Earle Partington said the loss of the witnesses could prove detrimental to the prosecution's case against the pair.

"If these witnesses are no longer alive, there is no way for the accused or their counsel to question them. Unfortunately, it could mean that there is no trial," Partington told the TV station. "Obviously, it depends on what witnesses the government still has."

Now see because of the constant lying that has been done by the Bush administration I immediately think there may be something fishy here, but I am sure that is just me being paranoid.

I just wonder why all of the witnesses were riding in the same helicopter.

Now see there I go again! What is wrong with me?

I think I will start off today with some rare Alaska blogging.

Our favorite collapsing elephant is getting some celebrity support from Bob Barker.

If the Alaska Zoo sends Maggie the elephant to a sanctuary in Northern California, retired game show host Bob Barker says he'll kick in $750,000 to help take care of her.

You know I don't know where Bob Barker gets the idea that Alaskans can be bought off like this.

Oh yeah, I forgot about these guys.

In other news it seems that as a state we have not gained any weight. (Oooh look, accidental poetry!)

Alaska didn't have to loosen its belt for this year's national ranking of fat states, but neither did it trim down from what experts call epidemic rates of obesity.

The state's adults held steady with a 25.8 percent obesity rate, while 31 other states got fatter. Alaska is now ranked 16th for the percentage of adults who are obese, defined as having a body mass index reading of 30 or higher, according to the Trust for America's Health.

As every Alaskan will tell you they are starting their diet tomorrow. And this is just the "Holiday weight", or the "winter weight", or the "too busy to exercise weight", or the "I just had a baby during the holiday in the winter and am much too busy to exercise weight". It is really hard to argue against that last one.

And last, as well as least, we had an honest to goodness visit from a current Presidential candidate. That is unheard of in Alaska due our three measly electoral votes. But if loony Mike Gravel wants them then he may as well go ahead and get them. I mean really, when was the last time that our three votes had an impact on anything anyway? Besides they ALWAYS go to the Republican.

And that is the rare Immoral Minority Alaska news update for today. Fascinating wasn't it?

Bad news, the Baptists are determined to keep creating the dumbest voters in American history. I guess the Republicans would call this good news.

Convinced that God has been erased from public schools, Southern Baptists are now working to open their own schools, where Jesus is writ large and Bible study is part of the daily curriculum.

Church leaders are not calling for a wholesale exodus from public schools, which would be a monumental hit, considering that Southern Baptists make up the nation's largest Protestant denomination with 16 million members.

Rather, they talk about alternatives to public schools capable of educating a new generation ready and willing to advocate for biblical principles rather than popular culture.

I am going to beat Bill Maher to the punch on this one.

New Rule: If you have not graduated from public school or an accredited private school in which the answer to every other question is not "God made it", you may not vote in this country.

I mean come on we all have to live with the paste eating morons that these damn hillbillies keep electing! It is just not fair to those of us who have more then a handful of brain cells to rub together.

Do you know what you get when you keep your kids from getting a sound education? You get Miss Teen South Carolina, that is what you get!



Oh God, make her stop talking!

Pat Buchanan is insane!

Buchanan pointed to recent claims by the US military that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (al-Quds) is the source of explosive devices that are killing American soldiers in Iraq, saying, "They're laying down a predicate for military strikes on the al-Quds camps inside Iran. ... And I think then they'd go for the nuclear sites. "

Buchanan believes that an attack on Iran would be well received by Americans and that the Democratic Party would not offer any meaningful opposition. "My guess would be that Barack Obama and Miss Hillary and the others would be in a state of paralysis," he stated, "because it might be a very popular initial move and elements of the Democratic Party would support. You take Joe Liberman, would cheer his head off."

"I think if you took polls of the American people, they would put Iran right up at the top of America's enemies list," Buchanan continued. "So I think in the Democratic Party, of course, you've got the -- with due respect, you've got the Israeli Lobby and Israel, and you've got the hardline like Lieberman, and you've got the Neoconservatives, and you've got a lot of evangelical Christians and others who think this is a real menace and you ought to hit them."

WTF?

Who the hell is Buchanan talking to?

I doubt that there are more then 20% of Americans that would support an attack on Iran. Most Americans do not trust anything this President says!

We all just think he makes shit up so that he can blow shit up.

But I have some thoughts on the whole "let's invade Iran" idea. I have been thinking that it was imminent and that there was nothing that anybody could do to stop it. But that was before most of the administration ran out of the back door. Now I just don't think that Bush has got enough yes men around him to attempt such an incredibly stupid move.

And at this point would the military even obey his directives? I KNOW Congress would never okay it.

Yeah I am feeling a little better about the likelihood of an attack on Iran.

Another closeted Republican Senator arrested for being naughty in a mens room.

Roll Call is reporting that Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, was arrested earlier this summer in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport by an undercover officer investigating complaints about sexual activity. The Capitol Hill newspaper says it obtained the arrest report.

You just HAVE to read Craig's explanation for his behavior. It is a riot!

I sometimes feel badly for these guys. They decide, probably due to a small town environment and conservative parents, to hide who they really are and then spend their whole lives struggling with urges and desires that they find morally repugnant.

It must be a kind of living hell.

Unfortunately it is much harder to forgive anybody for these stances: Strongly Opposes Same-sex domestic partnership benefits. YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. NO on prohibiting job discrimination sexual orientation. NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.

Alberto Gonzales can run, but he cannot hide.

"Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove," said Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the belief among many Democrats that political strategist Rove engineered the ouster of the U.S. attorneys to make room for appointees more loyal to Bush.
"This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House."

Harry Reid has got the scent now baby!

He is going to track Gonzales to the end of the earth, or Crawford Texas, which ever one is closer.

By the way Chertoff is not going to be the guy named. The two confirmation hearings, one for Attorney General and the other for Homeland Security head, would use up all of time that is left to this administration.

Harriet Meirs is not a possibility for the same reason.

In my opinion it would have to be somebody that nobody has even heard of, somebody that would just offer too small of a battle for the Senate to worry about. After all they have bigger fish to fry.

"Shhh, be vewy, vewy quiet. The Senate is going Rove hunting! Heh heh heh heh!" (This is more fun if you imagine it in the voice of Elmer Fudd.)

Gonzo go bye bye.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.

I have to say I am almost amazed. I thought Gonzales was a goner so many times in the past only to see him hang in there with the Presidents support. But I think the pressure just became too much.

And didn't Bush, in his most recent press conference, just say that Gonzales had done nothing wrong? Hmmm.

So now we have Tony Snow, Karl Rove, and now Alberto Gonzales having left the administration in the last few weeks. I do believe this makes Bush the lamest of lame ducks.

Is Gonzo finally on his way out?

The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he's got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general.

I am going to file this under "unsubstantiated rumor" at this point.

Perhaps Gonzales has just grown tired of getting his ass handed to him every time he testifies before the Senate. We all know he is going to have to do it again real soon, because he lied last time. I am guessing they would like to talk to him about that.

I find it especially funny that Bush's pool of prospective replacements is so small that the has to take somebody from one job to put into another. It is like "musical cabinet positions".

I wonder who will have to replace Chertoff? Wolfowitz? Rumsfeld? I am damn sure it won't be Colin Powell.

This administration is looking more like the Keystone Kops every day.

I am going to have to buy stock in the company that manufactures water wings.

But a study led by James Hansen, the head of the climate science program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University, suggests that current estimates for how high the seas could rise are way off the mark - and that in the next 100 years melting ice could sink cities in the United States to Bangladesh.

"If we follow 'business-as-usual' growth of greenhouse gas emissions," he writes in an e-mail interview, "I think that we will lock in a guaranteed sea-level rise of several metres, which, frankly, means that all hell is going to break loose."

Okay right after I finish this post I am going to turn off my computer, and my television, and my fan , and my lights, and sit outside trying to control my methane output.

You know if these guys are truly accurate then we are really screwed, because we know that we are never going to make a big enough change in our habits to stop the damage to our planet that seems to be dragging us to a disaster of world shattering proportions.

Another trip to the dark side.

Frequent visitors to this site know full well that I have many, many concerns about the official story of 9-11. I have gone from somebody whom, while astounded that amateurs could pull off such an amazing attack on American soil, essentially bought the official story of what happened, and how it happened (In my defense I was completely stunned for months after the attack.), to somebody who has read and watched too much information about the inconsistencies to accept any version of events that he has seen thus far.

And I know that I am not alone. Anybody who, even rarely, visits YouTube, or liberal blogs, or even various chat rooms, cannot have avoided the fact that many, many Americans simply do not buy the official story of 9-11. And these people fall into various categories.

• The guy who is absolutely certain that it was a government plot, and by the way so was the Kennedy assassination, Roswell, and fluoride in our water.
• The person who, at least in this case, thinks that there is a conspiracy of our government and our mainstream media to sell us a false story as to what happened. And that it was all done to start these wars that we are currently fighting.
• The person who occasionally finds themselves searching the web for conspiracy data and then spending sleepless nights trying to digest what they have read and then reconciling it with the "official" story. (I guess this is where I would be categorized.)
• And then finally the person who does not think that everything adds up, but simply cannot accept that "their" government would do such a terrible thing. (My poor mother)

So the link above goes to an article by a reporter who is struggling with the same conflicts and unexplained data that many of us have found ourselves dealing with. One of the points that he makes, which I completely concur with, is this one: My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Now, for me at least, this has been the one thing that kept me from jumping right onto the "conspiracy express". I have no problem believing that this administration would do something as evil as kill almost 3000 Americans to push forward their agenda (After all they have no problem sacrificing our troops by the thousands to keep from admitting that the Iraq war is a failure and that they were wrong in starting it.) So it is not a question of if they are "evil" enough, it is simply a question of whether they are "competent" enough.

But then I have to ask myself this question: Of the two possible choices for 9-11, is it less likely that a few ragtag middle eastern men gained access to flight instruction, overpowered four plane loads of people and successfully crashed three of them into their intended targets, or that a powerful group within our own government staged the events to allow them to gain unprecedented power over our people to put into motion a plan that never would have had a chance of success in any other time? If you are honest with yourself they both seem completely unreasonable, but one of them is the truth. So which one?

I don't know. At least I am not positive of anything yet. But I do know that the "official" story is not completely accurate. That much I am willing to accept as a fact.

I am also not going to stop looking for the truth. In my opinion the media did not do its job, which is part of the reason that blogs like this exist now, and so as an alternate source of information I feel that I have an obligation to try and bring as much as I can find to the nice people who visit me here. And I am quite aware that it may cost me visitors who will just write me off as "one of those left wing nutjobs". I know this because that is what I did not too very long ago. And if you do decide to do that I understand perfectly.

For the rest of you I will direct you to YouTube. When you get there put "Loose Change" into the search box. And then after a day of absorbing all of that, put "9-11 in Plane Site" in the search box. There are other videos posted that challenge the assertions made by these two series. I chose to watch those as well and so can you. Like I said all information should be considered.

I apologize ahead of time for complicating your life, it sucks, I know. But if you are at all like me you just hate being lied to and want to know the truth, even if it hurts.

If you are feeling really masochistic you can do a Google search for 9-11 conspiracies. I would suggest that you make sure to follow that experience with a stiff drink, or two.

Result of the surge so far, violence in Baghdad is down but violence in the rest of Iraq has doubled. Let the spinning begin.

This year's U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.

The findings include:
• Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.

• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.

• Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.

_According to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31.
However, Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq "has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006."

He offered no statistics to back his claim, but in a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon on Friday he warned insurgents might try intensify attacks in Iraq to coincide with three milestones: the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the beginning of Ramadan and the report to Congress.

I think that we are already seeing how the military leaders and administration plan to cherry pick information coming out of Iraq to support their argument and ignore any data which shows the opposite.

And of course anyone who has been paying attention to how this administration functions would expect nothing less from them.

There will, of course, be no truth coming from the Petraeus report or this administration.

In Bush's world liars are given the Congressional Medal of Freedom and truth tellers are punished.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

So one of our brave fighting men is put in a prison for demonstrating ethics? Of course one isolated case does not mean there is wide spread corruption though does it?

Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.

This is just another example, among many, of the bizarro world we live in with the Bush administration in power. It is almost like the war was designed to funnel money into the hands of corporations and criminals. And perhaps that is really all it ever was.

Warner refuses to bow to White House pressure to soften his position on bringing home the troops.

Sen. John Warner's suggestion that some troops leave Iraq by the end of the year has roiled the White House, with administration officials saying they've asked the influential Republican to clarify that he has not broken politically with President Bush.

But Warner said Friday that he stands by his remarks and that he did not object to how his views have been characterized.

"I'm not going to issue any clarification," Warner, R-Va., said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't think any clarification is needed."

I have to admit to being a little skeptical when I first heard this story. I have been disappointed before by Republicans that seemed to be breaking with the President but suddenly, either just stopped talking, or fell back into line with the administration.

So if John Warner really is going to be the one to start looking at the reality of the situation and say that no matter what Petraeus says it is time to bring our soldiers home, then I applaud him.

Did Bush fulfill Bin laden's ultimate fantasy?

TONY JONES: When you met bin Laden, he told you that his long-term plan was to "bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil". That must have sounded like madness at the time, but now we have Iraq.
ABDUL BARI ATWAN: It seems Osama bin Laden had a long-term strategy. He told me personally that he can't go and fight the Americans and their country. But if he manages to provoke them and bring them to the Middle East and to their Muslim worlds, where he can find them or fight them on his own turf, he will actually teach them a lesson. It seems the invasion of Iraq fulfilled Osama bin Laden's wish. That's why the Americans are losing in Iraq, financially and on a human basis, and even their allies, including Australia, are really losing patience, losing money, losing personnel, losing reputation in that part of the world.

.....And it seems President Bush did not actually give him a lot of hard work to plan for this. Immediately after the bombardment of Afghanistan - which actually destroyed 85 per cent of Al Qaeda infrastructure, personnel, deprived them of a safe haven - after that huge success against Al Qaeda, President Bush made terrible mistakes when he sent his troop to invade Iraq, one of the most difficult countries to be invaded, to be occupied, the worst land for democracy, human rights. And we can see the outcome.

.....That's what we are seeing now. Al Qaeda is very strong, Al Qaeda is now expanding. We used to have one Al Qaeda in Tora Bora and Afghanistan, now it is like a monster, it is like Kentucky Fried Chickens, actually, opening branches everywhere in the world. We have Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which is regrouping again; Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is very active; Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, which managed to destabilise the country there; Al Qaeda in Europe, and we saw what happened in Madrid in London; Al Qaeda in North Africa now, which is very, very active. I think this war against Iraq gave Al Qaeda a huge opportunity to expand, to recruit more people under its fold.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating, George Bush is the best friend that Al-Qaeda ever had.

Here is a video that shows how the US is creating its future enemies in Iraq.

Treating people like this is inhumane! Is there really any doubt that the vast majority of these "prisoners" are completely innocent?

There is no excuse for this to be happening on America's watch.

It is so past time for us to get our people out of there that is not even funny.

And now with the surge there are even more Iraqi prisoners. We can only imagine how much worse the conditions have become.

You know I don't want all that much in life, but Goddammit, I do want to not be ashamed of my government for once. Is that too much to ask?

Mother Theresa may not have believed in God.

In a new book that compiles letters she wrote to friends, superiors and confessors, her doubts are obvious.

Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, the spirit left Mother Teresa.

"Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."

Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith.

"Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said.

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.

"What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

I am sure that many Christians would assume that I, an atheist, would take some glee in this revelation. But they are incorrect.

I feel nothing but compassion for a woman who did extremely important humanitarian work, while suffering a crisis of faith. I have more respect for her now then I ever have before, and I have always felt very humbled by the sacrifices that Mother Theresa made to care for the children of Calcutta.

In my opinion somebody who dedicates their life to caring for others without the assumption of a reward in the afterlife is morally superior to somebody who believes there is a reward waiting for them in heaven.

No matter if Mother Theresa believed, or did not believe, she should serve as a role model of selflessness and compassion to all of us, religious and secular alike.

Lisa Nowak would like to have her ankle bracelet removed. I guess it clashes with pretty much everything.

Former astronaut Lisa Nowak, who is facing charges of assaulting a romantic rival in a love triangle that brought embarrassment to NASA, came to a Florida courtroom on Friday to seek relief from an electronic monitoring bracelet — then took journalists to task for their "tabloid approach" to the case.

During a televised statement to the press, Nowak also apologized to the woman she's accused of attacking. "I would like her to know how very sorry I am about frightening her in any way," she said.

The alleged victim, Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman, said during Friday's court hearing that she was still afraid of Nowak and felt better knowing that the former astronaut was monitored. "When I’m home alone and there’s nobody there with me, it is a comfort," Shipman testified.

I watched part of this court appearance today, and all I felt was very sorry for Lisa Nowak.

She looks just totally humiliated by her experience and that if given a choice would just like to crawl off to live under a rock for a while.

She made a mistake and I, like almost everybody else in America, had a lot of fun with her story. But she is a real flesh and blood person who has had her job, reputation, and family placed in jeopardy because of an impulse that I am sure she can no longer understand either.

So I am done poking fun at her and laughing at her situation. I think Lisa Nowak should be allowed to get on with her life without any more late night comics making a living off of her difficulties.

P.S. And by the way I saw the other woman, Colleen Shipman, and that bitch has crazy eyes! I think Bill Oefelein better watch his ass!

Get ready for the battle of the Iraqi reports!

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

So what do we do here? Pick sides?

Are Fox News and Blogs for Bush going to pump up the Petraeus report, while CNN, MSNBC, and the liberal blogs embrace the Joint Chief of Staffs recommendations?

As you can see in this YouTube clip with O'Reilly and Bill Maher, Fox News is really pushing the Petraeus report and trying to diminish the importance of anybody's opinion who might be less then convinced by it.



You know when you see Fox News or the administration pinning all of their hopes on a report you just know the fix is in. These guys are really getting extremely clumsy. I mean Roves only been out of the office for a week.

No FOX News you can't be like YouTube, or MSNBC, or CNN, or a gay rights group, and have a presidential debate. Because you suck!

Fox News and a black political group say they will not hold a Sept. 23 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which the leading candidates already were planning to skip.

Fox News unfair and clearly unbalanced.

I bet this pisses Karl Rove off.

Now this news makes me happy.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate committee that oversees workplace safety today sought a massive load of documents relating to Utah's Crandall Canyon Mine.

That request, made to the Department of Labor, comes as congressional scrutiny begins of the coal mine where three rescue workers died last week, and six miners remained trapped and feared dead.

Meanwhile, another congressional committee has already scheduled the first of what could be many hearings on the mine disaster.

A Senate Appropriations subcommittee set a hearing for the day after the chamber resumes session, Sept. 5. It has asked for testimony by Richard Stickler, head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration; Bob Murray, the co-owner of the Utah mine; and Cecil Roberts, head of the United Mine Workers of America.

In preparation for what could be another hearing, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who heads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asked Labor Secretary Elaine Chao for a laundry list of documents.

Among them are any petitions to change the mining plan at the site, and any inspections performed in the mine - along with any notes or memos between the mine operators and Mine Safety and Health Administration officials.

I want this guy brought to justice in the worst way.

Click here to watch the video that demonstrates how FOX News is beating the drums for an invasion of Iran, just like they did for Iraq.

This is a new website for me but I have to say I support their message wholeheartedly.

What is the percentage of Americans that are completely ignorant? 41% and thanks for asking.

Some 41% of Americans now believe the U.S. made the right decision in using military force against Iraq, down from 45% in April of 2007. A 53% majority now say that using military force against Iraq was the wrong decision. And the number saying the U.S. military effort is not going well stands at 59% in the current survey.

There is a commercial that I see about three times a day which starts off saying "people are smart", and whenever I hear it I think "that is just not true."

There are a whole lot of stupid, uneducated, simple minded people who do not know what to think until somebody tells them. These are the low hanging fruit that Karl Rove was so good at plucking for his own devious ends.

I don't want to be a "hater" but some of these people should be made to pass a test before being given a ballot.

Is it possible to laugh and feel sad at the same time? Well Jon made me do just that last night.

I have been riveted by Christine Amanpour's special on CNN called "God's Warriors"

On Tuesday they covered Judaism and the battle over Israel.

Last night it was the Muslims and much of what I saw was quite frightening.

Tonight it is the Christians and this is the one I have been waiting to see.

So far I have been very impressed with the amount of access and the quality of the information that Ms. Amanpour has provided. If you haven't been watching, you should.

General Batiste who was fired by this administration for speaking the truth has some more truth to speak.

Over a year and a half ago, I made a gut-wrenching decision to leave the Army in order to speak out about the war in Iraq. I turned my back on over 31 years of service and what by all accounts would have been a great career. I realized that I was in a unique position to speak out on behalf of Soldiers and their families. I had a moral obligation and duty to do so. My family and I left the only life we knew and entered the political debate. As a two-time combat veteran, I understand the value of thorough planning and deliberate execution. I understand what it takes to win. As a life-long Republican, I am prepared to carry on with the debate for as long as necessary. I have been speaking out for the past 17 months and there is no turning back.

As a conservative, I am all for a strong military and setting the conditions for success. America goes to war to win. I am not anti-war and am committed to winning the struggle against world-wide Islamic extremism. But, I am outraged that elected officials of my own party do not comprehend the predicament we are in with a strategy in the Middle East that lacks focus and is all but relying on the military to solve the diplomatic, political, and economic Rubik’s Cube that defines Iraq. Our dysfunctional interagency process in Washington DC lacks leadership and direction. Many conservatives in Congress have allowed the charade to go on for too long.

It is disappointing that so many elected representatives of my party continue to blindly support the administration rather than doing what is in the best interests of our country. Traditionally, my party has maintained a conservative view on questions regarding our Armed Forces. For example, we commit our military only when absolutely necessary. In the same way conservatives have always argued against government excess in social programs, the lives our young men and women in uniform, our most precious resource, are not to be used on wars of choice or for nation building. The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz taught us that wars are to be fought only as a last resort–the extension of politics by other means.
These principles are apparently not understood by many of the Republicans in our Congress. Besides the fact that many conservatives allowed President Bush to jump head-first into a war of choice, the bullheadedness of Congressional Republicans who argue for staying the course runs contrary to conservative values. Many politicians of my party continue to argue that we must liberally use up whatever our military has left. Bottom line, the Republican Congress of the last six years abrogated its Constitutional duty and share in the responsibility for the debacle in Iraq.

Our all-volunteer military cannot continue the current cycle of deployments for much longer. America’s national strategy in Iraq is akin to a four legged stool with legs representing diplomacy, political reconciliation, economic recovery, and the military. The glue holding it all together must be the mobilization of the United States in support of the incredibly important effort to defeat world-wide Islamic extremism. The only leg on the stool of any consequence is the military–it is solid titanium and high performing, the best in the world. After almost six years since September 11, our country is not mobilized behind this important work and the diplomatic, political, and economic legs are not focused and lack leadership. Most Americans now appreciate that the military alone cannot solve the problem in Iraq. In this situation, the stool will surely collapse.

Our military and our treasury are not unlimited resources. The war in Iraq is breaking our fine Army and Marine Corps, and we are perilously close to doing damage that will take more than a decade to fix. Our brigades and divisions in Iraq today are at near full strength because the rest of the force has been gutted. We cannot place America in a position of weakness as it just begins its long war against world-wide Islamic extremism. The Republican administration is bleeding our national treasure in blood and dollars with little to show for it.
The high price we are paying might be worth it if Iraq’s many factions were making meaningful progress to achieve political reconciliation. But, after more than four years, Iraqis are no closer to settling their differences and the sitting Shia government is ineffective. With insufficient coalition and Iraqi security forces on the ground, the myth of Sisyphus is playing out over and over again. The Iraqi Parliament goes on vacation instead of working, and every few months, it seems, another Iraqi political faction walks out of the process. To me, continuing to expend money and American lives on a nation that shows little drive to solve its own problems is the foreign policy equivalent of a welfare queen.

The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources–those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery. In other words, when it comes to Iraq, it’s time for conservatives to once again be conservative.

I have nothing to add as I think the General did an excellent job of speaking for himself.

Jon Stewart on Karl Rove's departure.

Greatest line ever: "Karl Roves bountiful advisory teats." For that alone you must watch this clip.

I knew that there was something rotten about this guy.

Robert Murray insists that his company did not change the mining plan at Crandall Canyon after purchasing a joint interest in the mine last August. But documents obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune clearly contradict Murray's assertion, and show that Murray's company sought and received approval from federal regulators to make a significant, and, experts say, risky change to the mining strategy.

Records of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) show that, after Murray acquired a 50 percent ownership in the mine on Aug. 9, 2006, his company repeatedly petitioned the agency to allow coal to be extracted from the north and south barriers - thick walls of coal that run on both sides of the main tunnels and help hold up the mine.

Have you ever seen anybody for the first time and just knew that you did not like them or believe anything they said? Well that is what happened to me when I first laid eyes on this Murray sleazebag. He immediately struck me as somebody who was desperately trying to endear himself to the world before the facts came out about the mine collapse. I knew he was lying, and I was right.

Those six men became trapped because this bastard wanted to make money more then he wanted to keep his employees safe. And then three more men died trying to rectify the mistake that he made.

I hope that we see this guy prosecuted with the full strength of the law, and if any of his Republican buddies want to try and protect him I would love to see them lose their next re-election bid. That would be a little thing I like to call justice.

Just how desperate do you have to be to use our experiences in Vietnam to support our policies in Iraq? Lets ask the President.

"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he was to say. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be."

"In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation, torture, or execution. In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished," he was to say.

"Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea," said Bush, who pleaded for patience with the US-led security crackdown in Iraq.

Of course anybody with any sense of history can see that this is not an argument for staying in Iraq until "the job is done", but rather an argument to not tell the people of a country you will never abandon them on Monday and then run for the border on Wednesday.

We need to start reducing the number of troops in Iraq as soon as possible, but do it in a controlled manner which does not appear that we are being chased out.

No matter if we stay or if we go, there are going to be more Iraqi casualties. And it is almost certain that the months around our pullout will see an increase in violence against the Iraqis and Americans. But it simply has to be done. Because until we leave this thing will just never end.

And we better make some considerations for the Iraqis who supported us, because they will be the first ones killed when we do leave. I don't have a good solution for this problem.

When we went in we should have known that we would cause a bloodbath. Hell we killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these people ourselves in the lead up to the war.

All of this is our fault. We have no moral ground to stand on here.

Iraq Prime Minister Maliki: "We can find our friends elsewhere."

Al-Maliki, on a trip to Syria, reacted harshly when asked about the recent comments from U.S. officials.

"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people," he said at a news conference in Damascus at the end of the three-day visit to Syria.

"Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere," al-Maliki said.

Without naming any American official, al-Maliki said some of the criticism of him and his government had been "discourteous."

I am having trouble understanding the logic of an American government that claims that Maliki is a legitimate, duly elected leader of Iraq. And yet when he does not jump through the hoops that they hold up for him they call for him to be replaced.

Somewhat schizophrenic isn't it?

Really the only thing we can threaten him with is the removal of our troops. Which he seems fine with. So I am failing to see the problem, unless you are one of those conspiracy theorists who believe that this war was fought over oil rights. If you are one of those tin hatted fellas you may think that America will not leave until it gets its hands on all of that oil money.

But who thinks like that?

Do you believe that the government is closing down a Pentagon program that spied on Americans? You do? And you call yourself a conspiracy theorist.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that it will shut down an anti-terror database that has been criticized for improperly storing information on peace activists and others whose actions posed no threat.

It will be closed on Sept. 17 and information collected subsequently on potential terror or security threats to Defense Department facilities or personnel will be sent by Pentagon officials to an FBI database known as Guardian, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.

The program, known as TALON, was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and was designed to maintain a base of information on reported potential threats to military facilities and personnel.

Unfortunately the Pentagon seemed to think that anybody who disagreed with the President, or the war strategy,were the same as somebody who wanted to blow shit up. So many odf us got added for having the wrong point of view.

Documents obtained by the ACLU have revealed that the inclusion within the Pentagon's TALON database of traditional and constitutionally protected protest activities was more widespread than previously known. According to a memorandum released to the ACLU, as of February 10, 2006, of the entries deleted from the TALON database, 186 TALON reports involved "anti-military protests or demonstrations in the U.S." The document does not reveal whether any such reports remain in the database, though it does state that approximately 2,821 TALON reports involve what the Department describes as "U.S. person information."

This is your government, using your money, to spy on you and take away your rights. And now the Pentagon will no longer keep those records, the FBI will. Feel any better? Nope me either.

Clinton stumbles over Iraq surge question.

We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working.

Wrong answer lady!

The surge is not working because it is not keeping the violence down so that the government can get its work done. That was the plan. But just as this stupid surge thing started, the Iraq government took a vacation. So there is no new progress on that front. As a matter of fact a great number of the members have either quit or have been killed. Therefore, even if there is less violence in some places, the surge is a failure.

Besides how can something that only diminishes the violence in one area so that it can SURGE in another area be considered a success?

Clinton was talking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and it is clear that she was shaping her message to match their expectations. But what she seems to be forgetting is that she is constantly in front of a national audience. This is the era of YouTube and every damn thing she says is going to heard by all of us.

And this was certainly a "damn" thing.

In case you were still on the fence concerning whether this Vice President wields too much power this should convince you.

Today in a press briefing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed that the White House had missed its 2:30 PM deadline to turn over documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding legal justifications for the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program. The Committee had already pushed back the original July 18 deadline twice after the White House requested more time.

Leahy said that the administration’s stonewalling amounted to “contempt of the valid order of the Congress,” and pointed out that these subpoenas were passed by broad bipartisan votes. In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee in the conservative-led 109th Congress, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) also attempted to ask questions about the program’s legal justifications. But Vice President Cheney personally barred him from issuing subpoenas:

In fact, we were about to issue subpoenas then and one of the senators came to our meeting and said that the vice president had met with the Republican senators and told them they were not allowed to issue subpoenas.

Did you get that? The Vice President told the Congress they are not ALLOWED to issue subpoenas!

Holy shit!

Nobody, and I mean nobody has ever flaunted his power and shown such incredible disregard for the law as this megalomaniac.

I am dying to see him testifying before the House and the Senate. That will be a spectacle worth clearing my schedule to see. Imagine the fireworks!

Here is your comedy break courtesy of the Colbert Report's segment called "The Word" from last night's show.

Keith gets a new gig.

SECAUCUS, N.J., August 20, 2007 – MSNBC's Keith Olbermann will bring his unique take on the day's events, from politics to pop culture, to a primetime network audience this Sunday night. A special edition of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" will air on Sunday, August 26th at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT on NBC, leading into the network's "Sunday Night Football" pre-season NFL matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers, live at 8 p.m. ET. Olbermann is joining the network's "Football Night in America" studio team this season. The special edition of "Countdown" will be broadcast live from MSNBC's studios.

"Countdown's" network debut comes on the heels of the program's stellar performance this year. According to Nielsen Media Research, the program attracted 721,000 viewers in July, up an incredible 88% over July 2006. "Countdown" continues to be the number two cable news program at 8 p.m. ET, beating CNN by a 20% margin for the year.

Somebody recently said that I was brave for writing my thoughts on this blog, but I am not so sure. I hide here in cyberspace while Keith Olbermann strode out onto the Countdown set, looked right into the camera, and started telling the truth that only Comedy Central had dared to tell up to tht point.

Keith is a hero, and that is finally being recognized by network executives who probably sat cringing through Keith's "Special Comments". And it is important to note that Keith probably had no idea if those segments would resonate with the public or end his career. He did them because he felt they had to be done. And we owe him for his bravery.

We don't have to assume that this administration is determined to bomb Iran anymore, it has now been confirmed.

An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

Any of you who were still on the fence concerning this issue can jump on down now.

This mistake will make the Iraq invasion look like a minor glitch by comparison. When we attack Iran we will have effectively started World War 3.

I, and others, have been saying for quite a few years now that George Bush truly does believe he is called by God to start the great battle that will signal the return of Jesus Christ.

I know to many critical thinkers that just sounds insane, and you are correct. But remember who you are talking about.

I have never been a huge fan of Ronald Reagan, but it appears he was a pretty good judge of character.

Direct quote from the just published REAGAN DIARIES.

The entry is dated May 17, 1986.

'A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.'

Forty years old and never had a real job, and this is who we allowed to be our President?

And we wonder how our country got so screwed up.

US is ratcheting up the rhetoric accusing Iran of helping Iraq.

For the first time, the U.S. military said on Sunday that Iranian soldiers are in Iraq training insurgents to attack American forces.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top U.S. commander who is in charge of a large swath of Iraq south of Baghdad, believes there are about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in his battlefield area, military spokeswoman Maj. Alayne Conway said.

Conway said that U.S.-led forces have not caught any of the Iranians, but she said military intelligence and recently discovered caches of weapons with Iranian markings on them indicate that the Iranians are there.

I have more then a healthy dose of skepticism over these stories. We all know that the Bush administration wants to start some shit with Iran, and then we start getting these reports that there are Iranian weapons being found or that they are helping to train the insurgents, and the whole thing reminds me of the build up to the Iraq war where every little thing was blown out of proportion. Back then we were told to connect the dots and then imagine that there are more dots to connect that made a picture they wanted us to see.

I would bet that if the military were to try and identify the country of origin of most of the weapons and explosives being used against us they would find that the main source would be the good old U.S. of A.

And it does not help their cause when this is the best they can do by way of proof:

Spokeswoman Conway said that since April, the military has found 217 weapons in four provinces south of Baghdad that it suspects were supplied by Iran. She said the military has not caught any Iranians or Iraqis smuggling weapons across the Iran-Iraq border, but she believes it soon will.

"Just because we're not finding them doesn't mean they're not there," Conway said.

"We have not found the Weapons of Mass Destruction, but the world knows that Saddam has them." So said everybody in the Bush administration in the lead up to invading Iraq.

We failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, are we going to fail to learn the lessons from Iraq as well?

This quack thinks we have a problem.

Internet addiction should be grouped with extreme addictive disorders such as gambling, sex addiction and kleptomania, an Israeli psychiatrist said.Dr. Pinhas Dannon of Tel Aviv

University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine said 10 percent of Internet surfers are afflicted with "Internet addiction disorder," which can lead to anxiety and severe depression.

Hey Doctor Know-nothing, it is not surfing the Internet that causes my anxiety, it is surfing the Internet and learning just how screwed up my country is that causes my anxiety.

If I just use the web to look at pictures of pretty naked ladies I don't feel any anxiety at all. I get another feeling altogether.

We are constantly told that the soldiers in Iraq support our war plan. But is that accurate? Do you really have to ask?

This was written in the Opinion section of the New York Times by some active duty troops in Iraq.

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

How can this be, you ask, when the President, his administration, and the generals keep talking about the great attitude of the soldiers on the ground?

It is a little thing that we call lying, and I am sorry you had to find out about it here. But while I am at it I guess I should tell you that there is no Santa Claus either.

Yep, everything you believe is a lie.

The Muslims would like to respectfully disagree with the Christians on that whole Jesus is the Messiah thing.

There was no manger, Christ is not the Messiah, and the crucifixion never happened. A forthcoming ITV documentary will portray Jesus as Muslims see him.

With the Koran as a main source and drawing on interviews with scholars and historians, the Muslim Jesus explores how Islam honours Christ as a prophet but not as the son of God. According to the Koran the crucifixion was a divine illusion. Instead of dying on the cross, Jesus was rescued by angels and raised to heaven.

Well good it is about time that the Muslims extended the olive branch in an attempt to patch things up with the Christians. I mean how can the Christians get upset with Islam when it holds Jesus in such high regard?

Hee hee, I am such a stinker.

Karl Rove is identified as the architect of the illegal funneling of federal funds to Republican candidates. I just love being right.

Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected, chief strategist Karl Rove summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The subject of the Oct. 1, 2003, meeting was "asset deployment," and the message was clear:

The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush's reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort.

"The White House determines which members need visits," said an internal e-mail about the previously undisclosed Rove "deployment" team, "and where we need to be strategically placing our assets."

So Karl Rove directed millions of dollars of federal grants and high level visits from officials to Republicans who were in difficult fights to hang onto their jobs. This is why Rove is ducking for cover. If the Democrats can make the case that federal money was withheld from Democrats and instead given to Republicans to make them appear more effective right before an election, then they can demonstrate that millions of Americans went without federal support for purely political reasons.

And of course this is also all possibly tied together with why those US Attorneys were fired. According to Wikipedia: Congressional investigations have focused on whether the Department of Justice and the White House were using the U.S. Attorney positions for political advantage. Allegations are that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters.

See how neatly everything ties together? I bet the Democrats in Congress will notice that as well.

Okay I watched Meet the Press today (absent a certain Tim Russert. Curious?) and watched David Gregory try to corner the slippery Karl Rove.

There was nothing unexpected during the exchange, with one exception.

Gregory was trying to get Rove to admit that the reason that Republicans keep attacking Hillary Clinton while virtually ignoring the remaining Democratic hopefuls is because secretly they want her to be the nominee. Karl refused to give a real response to that question, bu David had a follow up.

"Are the Republicans afraid to run against Barack Obama?"

Karl said no, but you should have seen his face! Rove is a very good liar, but he could not hide his discomfort at that question. The Republicans are afraid of Obama!

I am going to watch YouTube and when it surfaces I am going to post that part of the interview.

Todays law broken by the Bush administration is using millions of dollars in federal funds to support GOP candidates. Tah dah!

Top Commerce and Treasury department officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.

Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings - all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating whether the White House's political briefings to at least 15 agencies, including to the Justice Department, the General Services Administration and the State Department, violated a ban on the use of government resources for campaign activities.

Under the Hatch Act, Cabinet members are permitted to attend political briefings and appear with members of Congress. But Cabinet members and other political appointees aren't permitted to spend taxpayer money with the aim of benefiting candidates.

And now ladies and gentlemen we now know why Karl Rove was running for the exit.

This is a big one kiddies. Using federal funds for political reasons is a giant no no.

I don't think that Karl can run far enough to avoid the fallout from this one.

More from Pat.

I am such a fan of this guy.

Majority of Americans are demonstrating a grasp of the obvious.

A majority of Americans don't trust the upcoming report by the Army's top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn't change their mind, according to a new poll.

President Bush frequently has asked Congress -- and the American people -- to withhold judgment on his so-called troop surge in Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, issue their progress report in September.

But according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Thursday, 53 percent of people polled said they suspect that the military assessment of the situation will try to make it sound better than it actually is. Forty-three percent said they do trust the report.

In my opinion those 43 percent are going to have a hard time reconciling their blind support with the realities of what is about to happen when Congress starts questioning Petraeus about his report.

I think part of the intrigue of this is seeing how long Petraeus can stick to the administrations talking points before he just cannot stand it anymore and tells them that it is a hellhole and we need to get the hell out as soon as possible.

And we will know he is saying this when he uses the term "Executive Privilege".

Merv Griffin died a closeted homosexual

Griffin, who died of prostate cancer Sunday at 82, stayed in the closet throughout his life. Perhaps he figured it was preferable to remain the object of gossip rather than live openly as "one of them."

But how tremendously sad it is that a man of Merv's renown, of his gregarious nature and social dexterity, would feel compelled to endure such a stealthy double life even as the gay community's clout, and its levels of acceptance and equality, rose steadily from the ashes of ignorance.

What a powerful message Griffin might have sent had he squired his male companions around town rather than Eva Gabor, his longtime good friend and platonic public pal. Imagine the amount of good Merv could have done as a well-respected, hugely successful, beloved and uncloseted gay man in embodying a positive image.

When I read something as sad as this it just makes me so angry at the people who still seem to believe sexual preference is a choice. If you read about Merv's life it is very clear that he would have had ample opportunity to have many female lovers, but that was not who he was, and there was nothing he could do about that.

So he had to live his life in secret. That just makes me sad for a man, who on the surface seemed to have everything, but who was not allowed to feel accepted because of an accident of birth.

And if the religious conservatives have their way this kind of shame will continue for many decades to come.

Now here is a consequence of the Iraq and Afghanistan war that even I did not foresee.

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

Our police are running out of bullets? Running out of bullets? I am pretty sure that having bullets is a pretty big part of their jobs.

And of course you just know that the criminals are not having the same problem, because that is just the way things go. I cannot help but wonder how this may affect how the police go after bad guys.

"This is the police! Halt or I'll shoot!'
"No you won't. You can't afford to waste the bullet."
"Damn you are right. Well then halt or I will pepper spray your crooked ass!"
"I will take my chances pig!"

Maybe our men in blue can just throw their guns at the bad guys.

It is astounding just how much damage this bullshit war is doing to our country.

Countdown's take on the Petraeus/White House Iraq report.

Keith is way out ahead of any other broadcast news shows. As usual.

38% of Americans still believe that premarital sex is wrong. Well clearly they are not doing it right.

Fewer than four-in-ten American adults (38%) now say that sexual relations between a man and woman before marriage is always or almost always wrong compared with nearly six in ten (59%) who say that it is only sometimes or never wrong. Not surprisingly, premarital sex is even more accepted as morally OK by adults who have themselves engaged in it. A recent Pew survey found that about a third of all adults (and more than four-in-ten adults under age 50) have, at some point in their lives, been in a cohabiting relationship with a person to whom they were not married. Among this group only 21% believe that premarital sex is always or usually wrong. Demographically, cohabiters are more likely than the rest of the adult population to be younger, black, and secular rather than religious.

I am a product of the free love mindset of the sixties and seventies so perhaps my views are a little slanted. But I just cannot believe that there are people who still cling to this primitive idea.

Take it from somebody who has loved and lost, and loved and lost, and just simply lost. If you are not physically compatible then your relationship is doomed.

The only other reason given for the breaking up of a marriage mentioned more often then sex is money. So if your wife is not giving you enough sex, and you don't have enough money to hire a professional, then you are screwed. (Obviously not in the good way.)

This whole idea is linked to religious beliefs. The idea was to keep women from having children outside their religious groups. And Christian people were sold the idea that if a child were born without the sanctity of a Christan marriage its soul would burn in hell. So essentially that is the church using fear to convince primitive people to make only Christian babies. It is the same tactic used by many religions to increase their numbers.

But with the introduction of birth control there is no longer any reason to save it for marriage. Oh and don't forget the condoms to help prevent the spread of disease, in case one or both of you have already taken the goodies out for a spin.

Now I am not advocating that everybody just start sleeping with everybody else. We would never get anything else done that way. But I am saying that if you love somebody and want to give them pleasure then go for it. You have no reason to feel guilty and if you are compatible in that regard that is just one more reason to want to spend your lives together.

By the way if this post helps you get laid, you are welcome.

Have you ever had the feeling that somebody is watching you? Well that is because you are crazy, but not for much longer.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, gave the Department of Homeland Security expanded authority to use spy satellites to monitor images on borders within the United States, officials tell CNN.

Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer with the Department of Homeland Security, said the move will also help with security during natural disasters. Spy satellites were used for Hurricane Katrina efforts and have monitored the World Series, presidential inaugurals and the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. They mapped out damage at the World Trade Center, too.

"This is a development all Americans should have great pride in, because it expands and uses the national technical systems that we've built for tens of billions of dollars over many decades," Allen said.

"Now we're going to use it to help us protect the homeland and also help the homeland respond and recover in case of hurricanes, earthquakes, natural disasters or man-made attacks upon the United States."

So do you kids remember the rule about when the government tells us something? If they say it it is a what? That's right a LIE. Very good.

In my opinion this is the future we are all headed for anyhow. I think it will not be that much further into the future when we will be paying for thins with thumbprints or microchips and we will each be fitted with our own personal GPS. (Hell if you have a cell phone you may already have that capability.)

So posting about our personal liberties being eroded is probably an exercise in futility. But that is not my concern.

If this were a President Obama administration, or Edwards, or even Clinton, I would not be upset. But it is a George Bush administration, and if you believe that this technology will not be misused then let me welcome you back after your long stint in a comatose state.

We know for a fact that this will not be used for the things that they are saying, it will be used for political and unethical reasons. You can bet the farm on that.

More evidence that Gonzales lied to the Senate.

The White House demanded in 2004 that the Justice Department approve a secret national security program without allowing the ailing attorney general, "feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed," to discuss the matter with top advisers, according to the FBI director's personal notes.

The partially censored notes from FBI chief Robert S. Mueller, dated March 12, 2004, describe a distraught and feeble Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room just moments after being visited by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card, the president's chief of staff at the time.

Mueller's account backs up earlier descriptions of the dispute over whether to continue the program despite Justice Department concerns about its legality.
Last month, Mueller told a House committee that the clash was about the government's warrantless wiretapping; Gonzales and the White House denied that and said it was about other intelligence activities.

"Saw AG," Mueller wrote in his timed log of the events on the evening of March 10, 2004. "Janet Ashcroft in the room. AG is feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed." Ashcroft was in the hospital with pancreatitis.

Before seeing Ashcroft, Mueller met with then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey at the hospital about 7:40 p.m., the notes indicate. Comey said Ashcroft told Card and Gonzales that he would not approve the classified terrorist surveillance program, which was set to expire the next day.

So remember what the rule is when hearing ANYTHING from the White House: If they are saying it, then by definition, it is a LIE! If you just keep that rule in your mind you will always know when this administration is lying to you.

I have absolutely no idea how you would be able to tell if they suddenly decided to tell the truth however. That would be a stumper.