Category: Uncategorized

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (wait for it…..R-Texas) believes that perjury (lying to a grand jury) is a “technicality.”

Funny how Republicans spent the 90s screaming about the “rule of law” until they were blue in the face when it came to Bill Clinton, but when it’s Dubya and his cronies, perjury is a “technicality.” Nice.

To be fair, Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob, while Rove and Libby lied about exposing a covert CIA operative in time of war. Not the same thing at all!

The blowjob is worse, of course.

“Won’t someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN!”
-Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons

Cheney cabal hijacked U.S. foreign policy
I love the word “cabal.”

Senators say Miers’ answers “incomplete to insulting”
Harriet’s making friends wherever she goes these days.

Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak
Was there any doubt the President knew all along what was happening? No.

Texas court issues warrant for DeLay
I admit my love for schadenfreude.

No quorum for Santorum
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

In a comment thread on Balloon Juice about the Frontline report on U.S. use of torture in the Iraq war:

I just finished watching Frontline and all I can say is I am sure glad that we ignored the Geneva Convention because without doing so we never would have found those stockpiles of WMDs.

Oh.

“You’d think after five years they’d start running out of ways to suck.”
-Atrios commenter

You’d think so. But you’d be wrong.

The left-wing media is positively giddy over the prospect of multiple indictments on the Plame investigation, thought by many to be widening out into an investigation of the selling of the Iraq war by the Bush administration. But I confess I can’t get excited about this. They’ve weaseled out of so much over the last five years, why should this be any different? And if they do get out of it, it’ll just be another cudgel to beat their opponents over the head with. “Look at what those damn liberals did! Criminalization of politics!” etc. etc.

I’m in another of those periods where none of it seems to matter. Go ahead, put Jerry Falwell on the Supreme Court. Imprison Muslim Americans in concentration camps. Invade China. Elect a four-slice toaster to be President. At this point, I just don’t care.

Fascinating article from The Nation about attempted-right-wing-poster-boy Pat Tillman (hat tip: John Callender at lies.com):

Pat Tillman, Our Hero

The fact is that Tillman was so much more than a shill for the fever dreams of the New American Century crowd. His family deserved better. He deserved better.

We all deserve better.

This week’s “Top Ten Conservative Idiots” over at Democratic Underground is one of the best ever – each one is a gem. But this passage about Iraq stood out to me:

The truth is that Iraq is on the verge of tearing itself apart, with our soldiers trapped in the middle. In order to “catapult the propaganda,” Bush has been tossing out the fantasy that “Right now there are over 80 army battalions fighting alongside coalition troops,” with “over 30 Iraqi battalions in the lead.”

There are about 500-600 soldiers in a battalion, so that’s a minimum of 15,000 Iraqi soldiers ready to rock n’ roll. Considering that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, that means we only have to train 135,000 more Iraqis (at a cost of $7 billion per month) to finish the job. It took us two years to train 15,000 so it should only take another, oh, 15-20 years or so to train the rest.

There’s just one problem – when Bush says that there are 30-80 Iraqi battalions fighting in Iraq, he’s talking out of his ass. Last week Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there is actually only one self-sufficient Iraqi battalion.

One. It’s taken us two years to train one self-sufficient battalion, comprising 500-600 soldiers, at a cost of $200 billion dollars and counting.

President Bush: job approval at 37%. (yep.)

Tom DeLay: indicted (three times).

Karl Rove: on the cusp of indictment.

Harriet Miers: attacked by both right (Ann Coulter!) and left.

wait for it…

wait for it…

NYC subway terror alert!

And for those who think I’m just a pinko Commie baby-eating Chomsky-loving liberal conspiracy theorist, remember when Tom Ridge admitted that the administration pressured him into raising the threat level? Yeah.

Dean Esmay, the avowed atheist who never met a hard-line Christian conservative he didn’t like, links to an article by Michael Balter whose premise is neatly contained in the headline: Let ‘intelligent design’ and science rumble.

Hey, what a great idea. I think the next series of debates should be “Physics vs. Magic: Who’s right?” Can physicists explain everything? Hell no. So the obvious alternative is magic. I’m not sure if it should be the magic of “Charmed” or “Bewitched” or even “The Craft” (if we’re reaching), but that can be determined by a public opinion poll, or something.

I personally believe that angels cause “gravity” by pushing us all down away from Heaven until we’re ready to go. Prove me wrong, Stephen Hawking! I dare ya!

If Bush nominated a fax machine for the Supreme Court, right-wing weblogs and pundits would be engaged in endless discussions of what the judicial philosophy of the Xerox 4250 would be.

On Fox News Sunday:

Brit Hume: We still don’t know how the Xerox would rule on Roe v. Wade. But the fax machine has been in the Oval Office for some years, so we have to trust that President Bush knows how it would rule.

Juan Williams (incredulous): It’s a FAX MACHINE!

Brit Hume: What’s your point?