Obama vs Edwards, speech-wise

I'm at Campaign For America's Future's annual "Take Back America" Conference. Three thousand progressives, several dozen sessions, on policy and the practical side of campaigning. And 'the candidates' are here.


Just got out of the pre-lunch session in the main ballroom, Obama followed by Edwards, each running about 30 minutes. I was a delegate to the California Dem Convention in April, and saw each of them, and all the others, there, also. But not back-to-back, not to the same craowd at almost the same time. I'm just ending a year as the president of my Toastmasters Club, and as such I do speeches or speaker evaulations several times each week. This was an experiment in style, and I tried to do a side-by-side comparison.

Obama and Edwards both have a populist style of speechifying. They tell heartwrenching stories and give absolutist pronouncements. They use the string-of-examples-in-the-same-format that develop rolling waves of applause and get the crowd on their feet. And their comfort levels,both with their material and with the crowd, are comparable, and a hge improvement over Junior's discomfort at stringing two sentences together.

But here's the most important difference I've seen so far. Obama is speaking to a crowd. Edwards is talking to each person individually. Obama is speechifying, Edwards is talking to me over the fence. Obama is sticking almost exactly to his speech, while Edwards veered off to 'today' twice, extempore. I only noticed about a one-percent diff from the April speeches in CA for either. But I felt like I was hearing Edwards for the first time, not the third, while I'd already heard Obama's speech.

Maybe this is good for Obama. He's still a new item, unlike Edwards, whom we all saw a lot of in 2004. So Obama's speech, its' 'Turn The Page' mantra sticking in people's heads, may work in his favor. He packed the largest ballroom at the Washington Hilton, literally overflowing into the foyer. Maybe 10-15% left when he did, rather than stay and hear Edwards. So there's an energy for Obama that Edwards may not have anymore. But hell, Obama may not have it either, by the time the primaries actually arrive...NEXT YEAR!

But Edwards got huge applause as often as Obama, and the two folks sitting net to me, sold on Obama at the end of his speech, were equally sold on Edwards at his finish, both repeating his take-away lines/concepts: "That's Not Who We Are!"/"We're Better Than This" after examples of Republican failings, and still-existing problems.

The GOP is envious. The Dems are suffering from a wealth of riches, candidate-wise. The GOP looks at their ten dwarves and weeps.

Hillary tomorrow, 8AM

Monica gets no immunity from the GOP

Listening to Monica Goodling's immunized testimony today shows how far the Republican Party has fallen. Because even with immunity, she's living in 'I don't know'-land. And that's because there's no one left in the GOP to give her immunity from political retribution for telling the truth. If she actually tells the truth she'll never have another job. Rightfully, no Democratic-leaning operation would have her, and she'd be radioactive to any Republican-connected operation, especially after the abuse Tom DeLay's "K Street" project put them through. And there is no respectable, ethical faction left in the Republican Party, willing to accept the fact of the crimes of this Administration and others in the administration of the current Republican party.

It's a damning thing that the government's immunity can be trumped by the oath of Olmerta taken by members high and low in the criminal operation known as the GOP.

How and Why Regulations Are Born: An Evolution Lesson

Republicans always whine about all these laws and regulations that keep them from being able to ignore everyone but themselves. The correct response is,"Because we tried it without those regulations, and you and your friends almost killed or bankrupted us, that's why." And because they didn't live through the world as it was before those regs, and because they have the imagination God gave a salt shaker, they don't get it.

So let's watch it happen all over again, in a whole new arena, for the same damned reasons it ever happens: greed, collusion and theft. I'm talking about the widening Student Loan Financing disaster. We relied on the ethics of the financial officers and boards of the universities. We relied on the integrity of the bankers. We were fools, again. They took our trust and literally laughed all the way to the bank, leaving teenagers, teenagers!! holding the bag. One is my youngest niece, who starts college this fall.

As always, add a pinch of Bush-Crony Incompetence. Jon Oberg, a high-ranking staff researcher at the Dept of Education reported on federal subsidies supporting loan-pushing collusion back in 2003 and recommended action to stop it. Two different Secs of Education, both Bush loyalists from Texas, told him, 'Go work on getting us some grant money. We have no power to change the situation.' Then add a dash of Congressional Oversight, when, in January, faced with a suddenly-Democratic Congress, the Dept of Education ended these subsidies...with a single letter to the lenders. And began an investigation.

This is the cycle that creates regulation: a small problem becomes larger, comes to the attention of experts, who warn the players, who ignore the warnings because 'it's not illegal, so the morality is irrelevant'. When it finally comes to the attention of the general public, first they rear back in horror, then they rise up in anger, and demand that the law match their sense of fairness.

This is one way Democrats are created.

Apocalypto Redux

Sometime today, like an Aztec king sharpening the dagger he'll use to remove beating hearts from living subjects to appease the gods, Junior will announce the need for more sacrifice, in the name of burnishing his name.
He'll sacrifice our military, not just our soldiers.
He'll sacrifice our reputation, not just his.
He'll sacrifice our dreams, not his fantasy.
He'll sacrifice our future, because he has none.

This sacrifice will be made by the soldiers he sends to the slaughter.
This sacrifice will be made by their families, whose hearts will be ripped from them, in many cases forever.
This sacrifice will be made by their children, who will spend their lives and their childrens' lives paying for the privilege.

This sacrifice will not be made by the 'haves and have-mores' who are the king's base.
This sacrifice will not be made by American industry, which continues to build gas-guzzlers and video games, instead of electric vehicles and solar panels.
This sacrifice will not be made by you or me, who will find all the gas we want at the corner station.

What a relief that he told us to go shopping instead.
Got your Christmas gift cards?
Let's go!

Listen...in the distance...a funeral

Listen. In the distance, the sound of a funeral march. But not the usual, brass-and-drums version played in New Orleans. No, this is The Washington Republican Dirge, played on shredding machines, with a whining choir. Security paper services, the ones that take away those rollaway bins lurking in the corner of every office in Washington, are working overtime, and hiring extra crews. Even the White House, especially over at Dick's office, has turned off the heat and cranked up the A/C to offset the heat the industrial-grade shredders are throwing off, as White House staffers, in shorts and shirtsleeves, throw ream after ream into the maws of those shredders. There are even a few, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, that can grind almost anything into unrecognizeable pulp. Hard drives, CDs, thumbdrives, even framed photos of Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Hussein, even Rumsfeld, all the evidence goes into the hoppers, to become fuel for alternative-energy generators.

"In the meantime" now becomes a literal designator of the next sixty-some days, the official name of the last throes of this Republican Congress. And in this mean time, expect to see some of the ugliest behaviors, in service of ramming through the most extreme bills. Constitutional ban on abortion, make Bush's tax handouts permanent, more hand-off of legislative and constitutional powers to the executive, any an all are possible, even probable. And the floors of the House and Senate are going to make Hormel's rendering plants look pristine. Republicans are mean masters, and sorer losers, and they'll do everything they can to take their ball, OUR Constitution, home with them when they have to leave.

To any and all that can get near to these operations: Take picture, get copies, record conversations. Keep "contemporaneous journals," as both the FBI and IRS call them, because they can be used in evidence, even when the original evidence has been ground up, hauled away, and used for fuel or landfill.

Because America is doomed to let these fascists back in, if we don't learn exactly what they did, and hold them publicly accountable in such an extreme way that NO ONE will ever dare try steal America from its citizens again.

Treason is a hanging offense, and I wouldn't mind a few hangings. (Names available on request.)

ARVN, anyone?

As more Republicans, in the electoral fights of their lives, find themselves facing the hard choices in Iraq, of either ramping up our manpower or 'redeploying' it, more and more of them are finding some refuge in the GOP line about training and supplying an Iraqi Army to replace our personnel there. As Junior puts it, so eloquently that you know someone wrote it for him, "As the Iraqi Army stands up, we'll stand down."
I've got a one-word answer to these weasel-words: ARVN. Army of the Republic of Viet Nam. Look it up. The parallels are so eerie, and obvious, that I'm amazed that no one's made this connection.

And as we continue to build the largest, most barricaded US Embassy in the history of the world, right there in downtown Baghdad, I remember a joke from National Lampoon, from that period that Junior avoided, both in service and in lessons.

What do you call 2500 people hanging from a helicopter?
Our orderly retreat from Viet Nam.

Iraq: Viet Nam Redux.

Mark, Laura, Denny and the Cardinal

OK, everyone's weighed in on this Foley affair, some pretty despicably. What did you expect from Republicans?
The farthest-out was the plaintive squeal from ditto-heads that Ted Kennedy was still in office, killer that he was. God, they go for their last argument first. So boring. I'm not going to compare an single accident to a ten-year pattern of behavior, or 40 years ago to here and now. Naw. I'll drop my murder-bomb: why is Laura Bush still in the White House?
Granted, most of the gang-bangers Laura's supposed to be mentoring should be listening to her, but only because she's a killer, something most of them haven't gotten to...yet. Don't believe me? Look it up. Welcome to the reality-based world.
Moving on. Do Dennis Hastert and the Republican leadership in the House remind anyone else of Cardinal Mahoney, Cardinal Law and the rest of the American Catholic prelate? Pages, choir boys, what's the difference? Moving their priests and congressmen around, just to maintain their power and avoid scandals. Maybe this is that convergence of Protestant evangelists and the Catholic priesthood that the Republicans have been working on. Big Tent. Just don't look inside. "Deliver Us From Evil" is in theaters now. But does that title refer to the Catholic priesthood or the Republican Party?
Finally, the two Foley talking points Republicans seem to have settled into are the following:
One, "It's a vast, Soros-financed conspiracy...that we got caught with our pants down, masturbating while e-mailing, right before an election." Yet the left-wing can't get Soros to write a measly check to keep AirAmerica financed. Face it, the left ain't that well organized.
And two, "See, this is what homosexuality leads to: wanting sex with teenage boys." This is a personal favorite of the evangelical loonies of Dobson, Robertson and Falwell. They ignore that the same logic implies heterosexual Christianity leads to shooting 10-year-old Christian girls in their schoolrooms because otherwise the killer will want to molest them.
The scandal isn't that a Congressman was diddling teenage boys or girls (I'm waiting for that shoe to drop.) The scandal is that all evidence says that the Republicans have known, for YEARS, about this situation, and always relied on fear to deal with the problem. Fear of the congressman being outed. Fear of the pages being blackballed from politics for reporting this. Fear of the homosexuals in the RNC and the House leadership being accused of being pedophiles.
So Republican. "We have nothing to use but fear itself."

A newer mini-series at ABC

A new mini-series is in production at ABC, based in part on a report of findings from Senate hearings into past Administration actions. The docu-drama also draws interviews with participants, news reports and books. Several Administration figures have written ABC to object to their portrayals, and to the fictional events that appear in the drama.
"People won't be able to tell where the truth stops and the lies start," complained Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, who is portrayed in one scene hanging up on a CIA agent who is complaining about contractors using water-boarding and electric shock on detainees at a secret CIA prison in Romania. Gonzales said further, "And at no time did President Bush say 'I don't care if they're dead after we get the info, as long as we get it!' "
VP Cheney has written an op-ed piece denouncing the portrayal of him making several phone calls to Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of his former company, Halliburton, assuring them they will get all the reconstruction contracts once the war in Iraq starts, and his ordering his Chief of Staff, in a meeting with Karl Rove, to shut down the CIA's monitoring program of Iran's nuclear effort by exposing an undercover CIA agent. "It's a two-fer," his character says in the mini-series' scene. "We discredit Wilson on Iraq's nuclear program, and we keep the CIA blind to Iran's. Hell, we can use the same Powerpoint slideshow again at the UN."
The mini-series, "Inside Bush's Secret Prisons" was written by one of Al Franken's close friends.
Hope Hartman, ABC spokesperson said that, as with another, similar series, this one will be broadcast without commercials, as a public service.
And no, she was not being ironic.

Five Years Later

If you are against this invasion and/or occupation in Iraq, you have to vote Democratic in 2006. And you know why.
But if you believe every reason that George W Bush gave for us to invade and/or occupy Iraq, then you have to vote Democratic this year, too. Because if you believe we have to succeed in Iraq, whatever that means to you, you have to elect someone who will fight this war. Because every day this Administration is in charge of this war is one day closer to the day when we HAVE to leave Iraq because we CAN'T fight any more.
The Administration's idea of success isn't yours. Their idea of success is a location of continuing hazard and havoc, to use as a place to make money as mercenaries, on no-bid, no-oversight contracts. Their idea of success is to use a made-up war to keep you distracted from their theft of your job, your tax money, your health insurance, your pensions and your Social Security. Their idea of success is keeping you in line by questioning your patriotism while they make you work harder every day to make the same money you made last year.
And that's not your idea of success, is it?
If Iraq is the central front on the war on terror that threatens the entire civilized world, then we need to fight it like that. No new cars, so we can build thousands of Hummers and tanks, fighters and choppers. No deferments, for men or women, because we need a million people in regular uniform to take over the Middle East, rather than MBAs driving Beemers. No tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, the least patriotic of our citizens, profiting from this war twice each day, by paying less, and not sending their kids.
We need to add two hours to every flight boarding period, and half a day to the sched of every unloaded ship, so that no one can ship any WMD by air or sea. And we need to apply these rules to the private jets that avoid all this scrutiny.
We need to build and staff more emergency clinic facilities, to react to the injuries and diseases of a chem/bio/rad attack.
Not to mention bring our exhausted Guard back home, to rest, and then to protect the Homeland. We need to train more police, firemen and nurses to be the front line in this 'war of cultures' that is bound to last for tens of years.
Five years after, the clowns in this administration haven't done any of this. They can't win it over there, and they won't protect us over here.
And now they want to invade Iran? Haven't you had enough?

"There Must Be Consequences"

Junior gave a speech today. He's angry that Iran won't roll over on his demand that they shut down their uranium enrichment program. Regardless of the ins and outs of that, which will be discussed ad infinitum, ad nauseum, from left and right, I want to remark on one phrase he used.
"...there must be consequences."
Why? What leads him to this conclusion? What experience in his life leads him to think that actions have consequences? Not his family's history. Certainly not his academic career or his avoidance of his military service. Not his business career. And he has paid no price for his absolute (and I use that word in its mathematical sense) failure in service to the nation and and its constitution.
What consequences have been delivered unto him? 'Consequences' is a word he uses to justify his petulant foot-stomping when he doesn't get his way. And until someone teaches him what the word actually means, it's meaningless coming from his mouth.
He wants to start a war, and he should say so, like he told his biographer in 1999, about Iraq.
This is why I want a Democratic House and/or Senate. Not to impeach this clown, at least not right away. First, I want two years of showing this guy the consequences of his absolute failure.
Then we impeach him between the 2008 election and the swearing in of the next President, just so his name always has that stain, that asterisk, that lumps him with Nixon and Clinton. That would be a bitter pill. A better one would be for the impeachment to conclude with conviction, and his ouster.
Like he says, "there must be consequences."

Olbermann Has Arrived

Keith Olbermann, over at MSNBC, has been a comer for a while now. As he has snarked at the various mouthpieces for the Reaganazis, pronouncing 'Coulter-geist' or O'Reilly the "Worst...Person..In The WOOORLLD!", at least for that evening, his writing has become more pointed and (to mix geometric metaphors) more edgy. And his ratings have climbed.

Well, last night, he arrived. Taking more than five minutes to give as good as he thinks we got from Rumsfeld, Olbermann took not only Rummy but the whole Administration to the public square, and flogged them for the miserable little people they are, and for what they are doing to America. No pulled punches, but no name-calling, the preferred tactic of the little minds that are trying to justify their support of this Administration. Just excellent analysis, perspective, and rhetoric in the classic sense of that word.

His blow-off is a long quote from Edward R. Murrow, eerily appropriate to the current situation, though Murrow spoke the words in 1954, at the height of the Joe McCarthy's manipulation of the Red Scare. If he seeks to wear Murrow's shoes, that ghost would have permitted it, at least this once.

Without further ado, watch this. And welcome Keith Olbermann to the A-list or journalistic analysts.
A while in coming, but worth the wait.

Who has principles in Connecticut?

Who has fewer principles? Is it Joe Lieberman, for refusing the judgement of his party and of the people of Connecticut that he's supposed to represent? Or is it the Republican party, and more specifically the Republicans of Connecticut, who would rather vote for a man who disagreed 90% of the time with the president they elected? Well, they ARE Republicans, so what do you expect?
In this situation, the people with principle are the Democrats of Connecticut that voted based on the candidates' records and campaigns, not on the candidates' electability. Also principled are the Democratic Party leaders, who supported the incumbent in the primary, as they should, and now support their party's new choice for Connecticut. Because it's about preferences in the primaries, and about party in the general election.
And the win-at-any-cost, never-mind-the-ethics White House has decreed that the party's own candidate in Connecticut will get no money and no support from the RNC, the NRSC, or any other official party organ at the national level. As always, since they don't care about the law, they have even less care for ethics and principles.
So right now Joe's ahead, because all the Republicans are running to him, and he'll take all comers, and their money. Ned's behind for now, because the rest of the Democrats haven't come to grips yet with the fact that voting for Joe Lieberman will mean a vote for more Republican dictatorship, more Republican malfeasance, more Republican destruction from the Senate, because he'll vote with those that brung him, and that'll be Republicans.
Wake up, Connecticut.

"Macaca" - Welcome To The Real World of Virginia

George Allen is a racist SOB! George Allen also happens to be the senator from Virginia. And his racism is, according to him, the real representation of Virginia. And he's right. Virginia is home to hundreds of thousands of racist bastards. You know how I know? Because they elected him! This is a guy who moved to Virginia from California because he knew they'd never elect him in California, not after driving around with a Confederate flag painted on his car. This is guy who keeps a noose in his office in Washington, to remind himself of the good old days. A guy who knows a nigger when he sees one, and would have been laughed out of that Virginia Republican meeting if he'd called S.R. Sidarth, a native Virginian born of Indian parents, a nigger. Because George Allen knows that this guy was a 'macaca,' actually spelled macaque in his mother's native Tuunisian French, at whose knee George learned his racist attitudes and the correct vocabulary to go with it. It's the name of a type of monkey, and it's been used for decades, in Africa and in white supremacist gangs here, to specify non-whites of Arab or Indian ancestry. And George Allen is a very discriminating racist!
Go check out '

So Much for "Adults In Charge"

It's amazing what motivates me to write. I'm listening to Franken, interviewing Eugene Linden, author of the new book on climate change, The Winds Of Change. And he says ..."we caused it, and we can change it...". Yet the Republicans continue to deny it is happening, as well as refuse to acknowledge that anything can be done.

This is one more example of the refusal by Republicans to be held accountable. For anything!! And that's what gets me to finally write on this thread I noticed that runs through the behavior of all Republicans. By now, we've all heard the quote from Cheney that "the adults are back in charge," from his first days in the White House. But Republicans NEVER want to be held responsible. And the litany of "nobody could have foreseen"s, for the use of planes as missles on 9-11(Rice), for the cost and length of the Iraq insurgency(Cheney), for the collapse of the levees(Bush), is just the beginning.

Let's start at the White House. Do not hold them responsible for imprisonment or torture. No one has jurisdiction to tell the President what to do. The same with wiretapping and all the other invasions of privacy, from library reading lists to outing undercover CIA agents. The 'unitary executive' theory is just a fancy name for 'king,' and kings only answer to God. The examples are unending, from increasing air pollution and child poverty to decreasing real incomes and food quality, best epitomized by Bush's inability to think of any mistakes he'd made after more than 4 years in office. He was angry anyone had the gall to ask him a question. he certainly doesn't think he has to explain anything, to anyone.

How about Congress? Nope, not here. By letting the president have everything he wants, from tax cuts to a shiny new war every couple of years, without ever investigating any of the financial losses or policy changes that have come out of the White House, they have said "We don't want to do anything. Let them do it!" And by refusing to change any policies on how Congress operates, they demonstrate their refusal to be held responsible for their own actions. From dismissing and repacking the Ethics Committee until it wouldn't indict Tom Delay, to attempting to have a dinner honoring former Congressman Randy Cunningham, who was unable to attend because he's doing 100 months in federal prison for bribery and ethics violations, Congress refuses to change at all, even as the Abramoff scandal continues to send Congressional staffers to prison and require ever-more members, ALL REPUBLICANS, to put criminal defense attorneys on retainer, using campaign funds to do it.

Of course, the judiciary is an exception. Oh, yea? Read the Supreme Court's first decision of the Bush era, the one that selected him for high office. A more unsavory bit of torture was not committed until Guantanamo, a year later. And the Court knew it. Why else would the decision also say, essentially, "You can't hold us responsible for this, so we refuse to allow this decision to be used as a precedent. This is a one-time deal!" That precedent of not being willing to be responsible for the reality of their decisions especially informs the knackered pencil shavings of Scalia and Thomas to this day.

And what of the heavily-moneyed group of industrialists and theocrats that fund this continuous error in judgement? The whole POINT for them is to never be held responsible. Corporatists like Olin, Scaife, Allen-Bradley and Coors all want nothing more than to go back to when their money began, back to the turn of the last century (all of these boys having inherited their wealth.) That was when nobody could tell them who they could hire, how much they should pay, how long they could work their employees, or in what kinds of conditions. No one could hold them responsible for the cyanide and mercury they dumped in the water or the lead they burned into the air, or for the lies that passed for lists of ingredients, if they put a list on the label at all.

Theocrats want the government's money, but don't want to have to tell how they spend it, or if it does any good. And that's why George W Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. In a later stage of government-based theocratic enforcement, it'll be the new FBI. It's already got the initials. For now, it's why they work so hard to undermine science. It requires review and accountability, both anathema to the religious right.

And finally, we come to the folks that elect these politicians, who worship these theocrats, who dream of being one of the 1/2 of 1% of America that runs the corporations. And they don't want to know. They don't want to see the disasters these policies have caused. They don't want to invesitgate the collusion, the money-laundering, the bribery, the sheer theft. They don't want to worry about the economics or the health of the world they're leaving their children. So sooner or later, you get one of two bottom lines from them. Either it's Clinton's fault, or it won't matter when the Rapture takes them.

The worst thing about this attitude of non-responsibility is that it is based on a fear of failure. And fear always leads to anger, directed first at the thing that did the scaring. And the scariest thing to a person like this is someone else who knows this person failed. So Bush lashes out when asked about mistakes. Cheney belittles anyone who questions. Rush refuses to admit he committed a crime, while O'Reilly buys the silence (and the phone-sex tapes) of the staffer he sexually harrased.

Ultimately, the only resolution would be to have no one left that pointed out the failures. So, first, no Democrats are Americans, so their opinions don't count. Then, per Ann Coulter, Liberals, including all Democrats, should be killed. Only Republicans will be left, scared to death they'll be next. But since the failures will continue, someone must be to blame. And since it can't be those who actually failed, another group to blame will be found, and killed.

This will continue to one of two ends. Either some contingent finally wakes up to reality, and overthrows the failure-prone leadership AND its philosophy, or it ends with two people at each others' throats over who was responsible for that last failure. And no matter who wins that fight, they'll be wrong.

But the 'winner' will never admit it.

Two slogans and some math...

Well, the Muddled East continues to entertain...
1) "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" - someone far wiser than I.
2) "A Theocracy Is NOT A Democracy Is NOT A Theocracy Is NOT A Democracy..."ad infinitum - A major facet of the problem of Israel.

At the same time these two seemingly-neverending characteristics of the current situation play themselves out in a delightful new variant, Junior and his strange bedfellow, Condi, demonstrate how completely clueless they both are. Condoleezza literally spoke for 10 minutes without constructing a declarative sentence that had semantic content. Listen to her. Students of semantics are impressed, but none others.

And now, the math. Solve this series of simultaneous equations:

Is > P + S + L + J + In + Iq + SA
P > Is
S > Is
L > Is
J > Is
In > Is
Iq > Is
SA > Is

This is the military balance-of-power problem of the Middle East, defining the perceived military needs of each player, where Is = Israel, P = Palestine, S = Syria, L = Lebanon, J = Jordan, In = Iran, Iq = Iraq, SA = Saudi Arabia...

The situation is one of perception, leaving sheer religious and racial hatreds out of it (yea! right!)

Israel sees a pan-Arab enemy, and so must have more arms than all Arab countries combined. Meanwhile each internationally-recognized shiekdom (Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia) as well as each of the other nations, who all see themselves as sovereign, free-standing nations, contending with the others as well as with Israel, must have more arms than Israel.

The joke is that the non-governmental Islamic organizations, Hamas in Palestine (Sunni), Hezbollah in south Lebanon(Shi'ite), and the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt and Pakistan, ARE creating a pan-Arabic movement. Using the hatred of Israel, and its biggest supporter, US, to organize and motivate followers to overthrown their national governments, the rise of a pan-Islamic federation is happening before our eyes, and without a whimper from the Junior Administration. Hamas was elected in Palestine, Shi'ite mullahs run Iran, and we have not a civil war but a religious war happening in Iraq. Now Hezbollah has dragged the nation of Lebanon into supporting its fight against Israel.

Two last thoughts on Junior's press conference...

1) The story of the disbanding of the CIA unit that searches for Osama is "not true."
[from the NYTimes transcript today]
PRESIDENT BUSH: I -- you know, it's just an incorrect story. I mean, we got a -- we're -- we got a lot of assets looking for Osama bin Laden. So whatever you want to read in that story, it's just not true, period.

2) The transcript doesn't let you hear how Junior's exasperation at the 'hard work' of answering questions allows him to slowly work himself into a high dudgeon at the end of the press conference, so that he is literally gritting his teeth when he says "I've enjoyed it. Appreciate it."

Is this just his usual disgust with having his policies questioned, or if it's a sign that his anti-psychotic meds need adjusting?

Still Listening to Bozo

During this press conference, he has touted diplomacy, that it takes time, and that we have to do things with partners, not alone. Who says he can't learn new talking points?

About 45 minutes into it, a gal busts him on the failures of his North Korea policy, and asks why stick with a policy that's failed. And he literally repeats all his talking points on North Korea, the same ones he'd used in his speech and in answering a previous question. Literally verbatim.

It's awe-inspiring to see someone so uninterested in participating in doing the work his job demands. (As I type, he has just stormed off angrily, saying 'I've enjoyed it!' through actually-clenched teeth.) This guy has been coached to the nth degree, and sticks to his talking points.

There's 'on message' and then there's 'automaton.' This man isn't just a white-knuckle drunk, he's a white-knuckle speaker, gripping his talking points and agenda and never letting go, no matter what the facts, no matter what the question...

Dear Lord, how much longer must we suffer in this desert that is the Junior Bush intelligence vacuum?

It's "hard work" listening to this clown's press conference

Junior is still interrupting all the summer school trips to the Museum Of Science and Industry in Chicago. He just made his "You look like you're over 65" joke to the first member of the press corps. As always, an inslt treated as a joke. Typical 3rd-tier frat boy humor...

And he has reminded us, at least a dozen times, that "it's hard work", whether in reconciling the House and Senate Immigration bills, or fighting the "war on terror," or creating jobs...

First, I don't think I ever heard Clinton talk about how hard the job was, which may have been one of the reasons why he made it look so easy.

Second, whenever Junior says it, it comes out as a whine. "Y'know, I mean, it's haaaarrd wooorrk!" I can't stand having this whiner as our leader. No wonder we get no respect.

And third, WE all know being president is a tough job, WTF did he expect? Oh, yea! This is the first job he's ever had where he actually had to show up every day, where Daddy's money and his connections couldn't bail Junior out. Where he at least had to look like he was paying attention. No wonder he's so incredibly bad at the job. Even the "Governor Of Texas" gig was easy, because that governor's job is to be a figurehead (read their state constitution), and his legislature only met for 90 days every other year! No wonder the family ran him for that job.

Man, it'll be hard work digging America out of the pile of shit this guy has dropped on us...Post-Republican America will be a turdblossom, or just a turd. Either way, it'll be hard work...

Happy Birthday, Mr. Pres-i-dent...

Marilyn sang for Jack Kennedy's birthday in a sheer, skin-tight dress that she had to be sewn into. The only thing that kept it legal was the splash of sequins across the front...

Dick Cheney may have worried, in some fever-dream, that Kenny-Boy would sing for Junior, in some orange jumpsuit that he was shackled into....

But Kenny-Boy gave Junior a MUCH better gift for his birthday.

Boy, Dick might think about giving something similar to America on its birthday next year. I'm sure America would appreciate it even more than Junior appreciated his gift...

Happy Birthday, Junior!

Give me your poor, your tired...

Tuesday I celebrated America's Independence doing the same thing as many American men: yard work.

Differently from most, as I worked, I listened to 'The World' on NPR, as they played two articles that explored the naturalization of immigrants, many of whom became citizens yesterday across America.

The first story interviewed several long-time immigrant workers, one a mechanic of 22 years, one a housekeeper for eight years. Both still live in the deep south of the Southwest, both were originally illegal, both still speaking in their native Spanish. Both are now determined to become citizens, to protect themselves from the animosity towards illegals in the current debate.

The second story was of a woman, now 22 and graduating from college, who came to the US five
years ago from the Sudan as a sanctioned refugee. She settled with a host family, was given legal status from the US and funding the refugee agency, and was prepping for her naturalization ceremony yesterday. Her entire interview was in perfect, lightly accented American English.

From two stories, a choice of lessons: If even a refugee girl can learn English and join
American culture, then those illegal immigrants that haven't learned English must not really want to be Americans, and don't really even want to try.

Or: Keeping people illegal keeps them out of the mainstream of America, keeps them segregated, huddled with others in their situation, and prevents them from ever reaching their economic potential here, even while they exceed their economic potential in the country they came from.

It seems like a choice between America's hopes and its fears.
Pick one.