simple answers to stupid questions

Stupid question:

With the breaking news about Representative Mark Foley (R-NAMBLA) and his evident appreciation of males not old enough to vote, a lot of news readers and bloggers are wondering aloud "why didn't anybody take action to protect young Congressional pages when they were notified about it, people like Denny Hastert, Rodney Alexander, and Tom Reynolds, whose jobs it was to enforce the rules in the event of these sorts of violations?"



Simple answer:

It's because they knew that Mark Foley (R-NAMBLA) was now a guaranteed supporting vote whenever they needed it.


Thank you, stay tuned for our next episode of "simple answers to stupid questions."

Look What Just Got Passed

Funny how we don't hear about this stuff till after it's passed, isn't it?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,0,619852.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

New Stuff From Olbermann

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15004160/

I think this guy should run for president.

The Clinton Temper

On NBC news tonight, they were saying that The Clinton interview on FOX yesterday was mild compared with the temper that aides saw when he was in the White House.

To me, he seemed angry and intense, but it didn't seem like what I would call "temper." I mean, really. He didn't throw anything, or stuff the interviewer's microphone up his nose, or anything like that.

I fail to see why he should put up with being blindsided by questions about his administration. I thought it was a good interview. I like him, and I don't care where he put his tallywhacker. Wherever it was, it's a whole lot better than where Bush is putting his!

RIP Waffles

Good-bye, pretty baby. While I never knew you, I knew your spirit.

I'll take three, please...

I have mixed feelings. With all the little urchins on the streets who need love, it's sad to see folks going to these extremes, but any way to help people who are really allergic to cats, enjoy them safely, is a good thing. They're bred, not manipulated, and that's commendable.

US hypoallergenic cats go on sale

journalismism

"CNN Faith and Values Correspondent."

I'd sure love to see that job description.

September Surprise?

So, Bin Laden is dead.

Oh? We're not sure? Can't confirm? Just a rumor?

I guess that means we're safe, but we're not SAFE.

Friday Cat Blogging...

This is Velcro, A.K.A. Twinkle. She was already in the household when I showed up in 1995. It was a rocky start, I was a girl moving into the household where she had been the only girl for a few years, AND I brought an upstart little lovebird with me.
Velcro sprayed (yes, such a precious looking little girl) some of my belongings, and talked her buddy Spike into doing the same--I was under seige for the first few weeks I was here, but eventually they stopped targeting me and moved onto my bird. They never got to Benny, we kept his cage high, but once Velcro brought a baby mockingbird in through her little door and sacrificed it right under Benny's cage. We assumed it was a threat.

We eventually became close and from about 1998 to 2003 she slept on my chest or back, depending on my sleeping position, most nights. She'd start out on my chest but if I rolled over during the night she'd simply stand up and, like a tiny 6 and one half pound lumberjack, walk on me as I rolled over, and lay back down on the best part available--hip, chest, bum, whatever. From 2000 to 2003, the nights she didn't sleep on me, she slept on my father, who was elderly, ill, and lived with us. His snoring sometimes drove her back upstairs to me during the night, though.














Velcro was one of the two best cats I've ever known. She was 11 when she passed. My father, who loved her dearly, was on a ventialator in the hospital and the day he came off the vent she started to crash. We rushed her to the vet but she only lasted a couple more days. We didn't tell my father for nearly 3 weeks.
Links to more pics of Twinkle at the bottom of this page

whew

Congratulations to the crew of the Atlantis and NASA on a safe landing for the 116th flight in the Space Transportation System program and the 147th American manned space flight.

Keep up the fine work, folks. You're heroes even if people don't notice any more. Not enough bling, I guess.

something stinks

In the last couple of months, gas prices where I live have dropped from about $2.95 per gallon to $2.15 per gallon. Similar drops have happened around the country.

George Bush has not taken credit for this gasp of fiscal sanity. Why is that?

lost a great one

Farewell to Ann Richards, fiery Texas Democrat. Thank you, Ann. You were a stateswoman, not a politician. You will be missed.


Now who's going to tell poor Bill Dauterive?

more Olbermann

This Hole in the Ground
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
11 September 2006

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and - as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul - two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast - of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds - none of us could have predicted this.


Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial - barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field - Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party - tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election - ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications - forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President - and those around him - did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced - possibly financed by - the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you - or those around you - ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded - are still succeeding - as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car - and only his car - starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot - but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again - as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus - that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American ... When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11" ... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Foot, bullet. Bullet, foot.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and macacas, thank you for coming to our Ethnic Rally!"

unintended consequences

It seems with Keith Olbermann's blistering excoriation of the Bush administration on tonight's "Countdown," that Karl Rove's fundamental and entirely predictable gameplan of "motivating the base" is being extremely effective.

There's just one problem.


It is the liberal base that is finally being motivated.


Thanks, George!

what's wrong with this picture?

ANSWER: It's actually his ASS that Bush is wiping with the flag, not his feet.

what he said

http://billmon.org/archives/002721.html

if Rove was honest

Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Vote Republican or else...

why I can't be a journalist

Breaking news this morning, with reports on both CNN and MSNBC, are that a United Airlines plane flying out of Atlanta, Georgia, has been diverted to Dallas/Fort Worth international airport. Reports on both channels, while sketchy, claim that a backpack that can not be linked to any passengers on board the airliner, was found "in the cargo hold" of the aircraft. There are also indications that a BlackBerry device was found that nobody on the plane is claiming.


"In the cargo hold?"



I know I'm not a real reporter with a degree and all that, but why isn't anybody asking HOW THE FUCK ANYTHING WAS DISCOVERED IN THE CARGO HOLD OF AN AIRCRAFT THAT WAS IN FLIGHT?

still unanswered

Why Don't We Have Answers to These 9/11 Questions?
By William Bunch
The Philadelphia Daily News
Thursday 11 September 2003

No event in recent history has been written about, talked about, or watched and rewatched as much as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - two years ago today.

Not only was it the deadliest terrorist strike inside America, but the hijackings and attacks on New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington were also a seminal event for an information-soaked media age of Internet access and 24- hour news.

So, why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that day?

No one knows where the alleged mastermind of the attack is, and none of his accomplices has been convicted of any crime. We're not even sure if the 19 people identified by the U.S. government as the suicide hijackers are really the right guys.

Who put deadly anthrax in the mail? Where were the jet fighters that were supposed to protect America's skies that morning? And what was the role of our supposed allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?

There are dozens of unanswered questions about the 2001 attacks, but we've narrowed them down to 20 - or 9 plus 11.

1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001?

Rice has suggested in vague terms that the president's brief - prepared daily by the CIA - included information that morning about Osama bin Laden's methods of operation - including hijacking. But when the congressional committee probing Sept. 11 asked to see the report, Bush claimed executive privilege and refused to release it.

2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?

On July 26, 2001 - 47 days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that Ashcroft was flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."

Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared with the American public?

3. Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance stocks before Sept. 11?

On Sept. 10, 2001, the trading ratio on United Airlines was 25 times greater than normal at the Pacific Exchange, where traders could buy "puts," high-risk bets that the price of a company's stock will fall sharply. The next day, two hijacked United jetliners crashed, causing the company's shares to plummet and ultimately leading the airline into bankruptcy. CBS News later reported that at intelligence agencies, "alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market" on the day before the attacks.

The unusual stock trading suggests that someone with a sophisticated knowledge of finance also had advance information about the impending attack. But two years later, no one has been charged in this matter, and officials have not indicated even if the probe is still open.

4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as participants in the Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers?

Probably not. Just 10 days after the attacks, a report by the British Broadcasting Corp. said that some of the supposed hijackers identified by the FBI appeared to be alive and well. The BBC story said Abdelaziz al-Omari, named as the pilot who crashed the jet into the World Trade Center's North Tower, was reported by Saudi authorities to be working as an electrical engineer. He reported his passport had been stolen in Denver in 1995. Saudi officials said it was possible that another three people whose names appear on the FBI list also are alive.

The article, which can be read at Unanswered Questions, makes a persuasive case that another man was posing as Ziad Jarrah, the alleged pilot of hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa. So why did this story line vanish into thin air?

5. Did any of the hijackers smuggle guns on board as reported in calls from both Flight 11 and Flight 93?

Quite possibly. An internal Federal Aviation Administration memo written at 5:30 p.m. on the day of the attacks said that a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11 - Israeli-American Daniel Lewin - had been shot to death by a single bullet before the jet slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The FAA insists the memo was a mistaken "first draft," even though the alleged shooting is described in great detail.

Aboard Flight 93, passenger Thomas Burnett told his wife, Deena, in a 9:27 a.m. cell-phone call: "The hijackers have already knifed a guy, one of them has a gun, and they are telling us there is a bomb on board."

Why has this angle of Sept. 11 not been investigated in more detail?

6. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four hijacked jets?

During the depths of the Cold War, Americans went to bed with the somewhat reassuring belief that jet fighters would intercept anyone launching a first strike against the United States. That myth was shattered on 9/11, when four hijacked-jetliners-turned-into-deadly-missiles cruised the American skies with impunity for nearly two hours.

Why did the North American Aerospace Defense Command seem unaware of literally dozens of warnings that hijacked jetliners could be used as weapons? Why does NORAD claim it did not learn that Flight 11 - the first jet to strike the World Trade Center about 8:45 a.m. - had been hijacked until 8:40 a.m., some 25 minutes after the transponder was shut off and an astounding 15 minutes after flight controllers heard a hijacker say, "We have some planes..."?

Why didn't the fighters that were finally scrambled at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fly at top, supersonic speeds? Why didn't fighters immediately take off from Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, D.C.? Why was nothing done to intercept American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon, when officials knew it had been had been hijacked some 47 minutes earlier?

And why has no one been disciplined for the worst breakdown in national defense since Pearl Harbor?

7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in its history?

In arguably the greatest understatement in U.S. history, Bush told a questioner at a California town-hall meeting in January 2002 that 9/11 "was an interesting day." Interesting, indeed. In the two years since the attacks, questions have only grown about the president's bizarre behavior that morning, when he was informed in a Sarasota classroom that America was under attack.

"I couldn't stop watching the president sitting there, listening to second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building," World Trade Center widow Lorie van Auken, a leader of relatives of Sept. 11 victims who have raised questions about the attacks, told Gail Sheehy in the New York Observer.

Why did Bush read a children's story about a pet goat and stay in the classroom for more than a half-hour after the first plane struck the World Trade Center and roughly 15 minutes after Chief of Staff Andrew Card told him that it had been a deliberate attack? Why didn't he take more decisive action, and why wasn't he hustled to a secure area while the attacks were clearly still under way?

Conspiracy advocates have cited these strange lapses as evidence that Bush knew about the attacks ahead of time, but why would anyone with advance knowledge appear so clueless?

For a fascinating read on the subject, go to: www.unansweredquestions.org /timeline/main/essayaninteresting day.html.

8. How did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?

The most popular version - that heroic passengers who fought with the hijackers successfully stormed the cockpit - has become so widely accepted that people were jarred last month when an Associated Press report seemed to contradict it. The AP story took one line out of a congressional report and wrote that the FBI now believes the hijackers crashed the plane on purpose.

Many were dismayed that the FBI would change its story, but the government had never put out an official story. Some unidentified government officials had first floated the hijackers-crashed-the-plane-on-purpose theory in late 2001.

Based solely on circumstantial evidence from several cell-phone calls made by passengers, most of the public and the mainstream media have come to believe that the plane crashed because of a struggle between the passengers and the hijackers.

Meanwhile, the FBI reportedly has enough hard information about what really happened on Flight 93 to have worked up a flight-simulation video. But that video, the cockpit audio recording and the hard data from the other "black box," the flight data recorder, is still top secret.

The issue symbolizes the government's continuing refusal to release information about what really happened on Sept. 11. Even some relatives of Flight 93 victims are growing unhappy that more information has not been publicized.

9. Was Zacarias Moussaoui really "the 20th hijacker"?

Almost certainly not, even though the allegation has been repeated hundreds of times in the media. The Moroccan native, who has been in custody since his August 2001 arrest on immigration charges after he attended a flight-training school in Minneapolis, has admitted that he is a member of al Qaeda and wanted to commit terrorist acts in America. But he arrived here much later than the Sept. 11 hijackers and reportedly had no contacts with them.

The issue is important because some family members of Sept. 11 victims who are seeking information about what happened that day have been turned down because of the ongoing Moussaoui case.

10. Where are the planes' "black boxes"?

Nothing is more critical to learning about air disasters than the so-called "black boxes." They are the 30-minute audio recordings of cockpit chatter and the fight-data inputs which show the speed, direction and operational condition of the plane, and which are encased in material designed to withstand a high-speed crash. Yet the government has continued to keep a lid of secrecy on the black boxes from Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and from Flight 93.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said Flight 77's data recorder provided altitude, speed, headings and other information, but the voice recorder contained nothing useful. Why not? Why not release the information to the public? Why has a docile mainstream media not demanded this information?

And how come none of the four "indestructible" black boxes was recovered from the World Trade Center, even as investigators said that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers had been found in the rubble, undamaged, a week after the towers's collapse?

11. Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks?

CBS News reported that the defense secretary was making notes about invading Iraq even before the fires from Flight 77 had been extinguished on the other side of the Pentagon. Rumsfeld wrote that he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H." - Saddam Hussein - "at the same time. Not only UBL" - Osama bin Laden. He added: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Rumsfeld and a number of other Bush administration officials have ties to a once-obscure policy group called the Project for a New American Century. In a 2000 white paper, PNAC - which had long urged an American invasion of Iraq - said that for the United States to assert itself properly as the world's lone superpower, "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" - would be required.

That new Pearl Harbor came - two years ago today.

12. Why did 7 World Trade Center collapse?

7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building, was not struck by an aircraft on Sept. 11, yet the building mysteriously collapsed at 5:20 p.m. that afternoon. Apparently debris from the jetliner attacks on the adjacent twin towers started a fire at No. 7. But as the New York Times noted: "No building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire." Investigators have speculated that excess diesel fuel for emergency generators fanned the flames, but the full story may never be known.

Some questions also have lingered about why the two 110-story towers collapsed. But investigators think the burning jet fuel - compounded by paper-and-electronics-laden cubicles and possibly insulation matter - burned long enough, at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees, to weaken the structural steel.

13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?

Because apparently some White House officials felt that the health of the American economy and Wall Street was more important than the health of New York City residents who lived nearby. For example, on Sept. 16, 2001, a draft press release from the Environmental Protection Agency said: "Recent samples of dust gathered by OSHA on Water Street showed higher levels of asbestos in EPA tests." That was deleted and replaced with this: "The new samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

A key figure in the changes was the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who - you can't make this stuff up - is a lawyer who formerly represented the asbestos industry.

In fact, the EPA told workers and residents that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan at a time when some test results had not been analyzed and other key tests had not even been performed. The outcome? Key medical professionals say thousands of New Yorkers have developed respiratory illnesses associated with exposure to the dust. Symptoms include periodic gasping for air, a choking sensation and unusual sensitivity to airborne irritants, apparently from a type of "occupational asthma" called Reactive Airways Disease Syndrome.

14. Where is Dick Cheney's undisclosed location?

We'll never know, but a widely reported rumor was that it was right here in the Keystone State. The speculation is the vice president spent the days after the attack at Site R, a secretive Cold War-era site, also known as Alternate Joint Communications Center, deep inside Raven Rock Mountain. The mountain is in western Pennsylvania, near Waynesboro.

15. What happened to the more than $1 billion that Americans donated after the attack?

The largest recipient, the American Red Cross, says it already has used $741 million from its Liberty Fund to help more than 55,000 families cope with the death of loved ones, serious injuries, physical and mental health concerns, financial loss, homelessness and other effects of the attacks.

Of that, $596 million was in the form of direct financial assistance to families of those killed or seriously injured, as well as to displaced workers, residents and emergency personnel who were seriously affected. Depending on individual needs, this financial assistance included up to a full year's living expenses, estate and special-circumstances cash grants, and more.

16. What was the role of Pakistan's spy agency in the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl?

The idea that Pakistan is considered a leading American ally in the war on terror is both ironic and a bit disturbing when one considers that there are proven links between Pakistan's intelligence agency, the notorious ISI, and the Taliban, as well as likely ties to al Qaeda and bin Laden.

In October 2001, the Wall Street Journal and many reputable news organizations in South Asia reported that the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, was fired after being linked to a $100,000 payment that had been wired to al Qaeda hijacker Mohamed Atta in America to pay for the Sept. 11 attacks. The New York Times said the intelligence service even used al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan to train covert operatives for use in a war of terror against India.

In recent weeks, two troubling reports have emerged. The highly regarded French journalist Bernard-Henri Levy has written that Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl had been murdered by elements of the ISI because he'd learned that al Qaeda "is largely controlled by the Pakistani secret service" and that Islamic extremists control the nation's nuclear weapons. And investigative reporter Gerald Posner writes that bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah not only revealed a link to top Saudis but also to high-ranking Pakistani air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir. Mir, who is said to have cut protection deals in secret meetings with bin Laden, died earlier this year in a plane crash that also killed his wife and closest confidants.

17. Who killed five Americans with anthrax?

Actually, it's not clear whether this question should even be on this list. Two years later, it's not known whether the anthrax-laden letters that killed five Americans from Connecticut to Florida, and targeted some leading Democratic pols and TV news anchors, had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed, the list of potential suspects - al Qaeda terrorists, Saddam, crackpot U.S. scientists - hasn't been narrowed down. Our government's utter cluelessness about a reign of terror that rattled the nation and dominated the headlines in fall 2001 is an investigative failure of epic proportions.

One man, a former Army biomedical researcher named Steven J. Hatfill, has been labeled "a person of interest" by the FBI, but nothing definitive has linked Hatfill to the crime. Just this summer, federal investigators drained a Frederick, Md., pond where they speculated the anthrax letters might have been assembled, but tests of soil samples taken after the draining yielded no evidence of biological weapons. And now Hatfill has sued the government for invading his privacy - in a case that may never be solved.

18. What happened to the probe into C-4 explosives found in a Philadelphia bus terminal in fall 2001?

Do you remember this front-page headline from Oct. 20, 2001: "In Phila. locker, a lethal find; Explosive 'would probably have leveled' bus depot." You can be forgiven if you don't. There's been no mention in local media since late 2001 of the alarming discovery of one-third of a pound of lethal C-4 and 1,000 feet of military detonation cord in a locker at the Greyhound bus terminal in Center City, even though it's possibly the most direct link between Philadelphia and domestic terrorism.

Investigators conceded a couple of months into their probe that the trail had gone stone-cold. They speculated that the material had been stolen from an Army base and that the culprit, who rented the locker on Sept. 29, 2001, decided that the material was too hot to handle after the Sept. 11 attacks. The truth may never be known.

19. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report?

It's not a total mystery. Everyone has acknowledged that the pages contain highly embarrassing information about links between the Sept. 11 hijackers and the government of Saudi Arabia, America's supposed ally in the Middle East and home to the world's largest oil reserves. One of those officials is said to be Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, whose wife, Princess Haifa, indirectly funded at least two of the Sept. 11 terrorists during their time in San Diego. The prince is so close to the Bush family that he's known, incredibly, as "Bandar Bush." This week, Time reports that just after the Sept. 11 attacks, when U.S. commercial airspace was still closed to our citizens, Bush allowed a jet to stop at 10 U.S. cities to pick up and fly home 140 prominent Saudis, including relatives of bin Laden.

A new must-read book by investigative reporter Posner - "Why America Slept" - takes the conspiracy to the highest of levels of the Saudi government. He says a top bin Laden lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002, stunned investigators when - allegedly given the "truth serum" sodium pentothal - fingered three top Saudis. They were Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the Westernized owner of 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem; Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief, and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir.

The most incredible part of the story is what happened next. In an eight-day period in late July 2002, Prince Ahmed died at age 43 from a heart attack, Prince Turki died in a car crash and Prince Fahd "died of thirst." Coincidence? What do you think?

20. Where is Osama bin Laden?

Remember how President Bush vowed on Sept. 17, 2001, that he was determined to catch bin Laden "dead or alive"? Well, the good news is that if he wants bin Laden "alive," there's still a chance that could happen. Intelligence experts now agree that bin Laden successfully escaped his Tora Bora hideout in Afghanistan back in December 2001 - when the U.S. failed to commit ample manpower to the chase - and that the al Qaeda leader is alive and well, and plotting new attacks.

"We don't know where he is," Army Col. Rodney Davis, spokesman for America's forces in Afghanistan, said recently. But Newsweek seems to know where to find bin Laden: in the remote, mountainous - and lawless - Kunar province of Afghanistan. The magazine chillingly reported that just five short months ago, bin Laden convened the biggest terror summit since Sept. 11 at a mountain stronghold there. The participants reportedly included three top-ranking representatives from the Taliban, several senior al Qaeda operatives and leaders from radical Islamic groups in Chechnya and Uzbekistan. The topic was carrying out attacks against U.S. interests inside Iraq.

The most chilling aspect of the Newsweek report is that bin Laden has access to biological weapons and is determined to find a way to use them against the United States. A source from the Taliban told the magazine: "Osama's next step will be unbelievable."

But this week, ABC News reported that the hunt for bin Laden has been narrowed to a different area - a 40-square-mile section of the Waziristan region of Pakistan. The report said that local residents suspected of trying to inform Americans about bin Laden's whereabouts were executed in broad daylight.

republicanism

1. Collect underpants
2. ???
3. Profit!

Path to BS

I'm recording the propoganda piece tonight...only so we can fast forward through it to find out who the sponsors are.

I'll post them when we have the list.

Friday Cat Blogging...

Well, I thought today might be a Friday not fraught with trauma and drama but the baby (Cleo) looked up at me this afternoon with a "blinky" left eye and as I looked more closely, it appeared a bit cloudy. David had just laid down for a 20 minute power nap after hours in front of the computer and I rushed to wake him. I was still chugging along on a giant project for a client and was not in a position to rush anywhere but David could move quickly.

He called the vet and they said they had no open appointments but he was welcome to come sit in the waiting room and take "pot luck" for a doc.

David brought the carrier in from the garage (Buffy started howling, Cleo ran to hide and Mini followed, hoping she was going for a ride somewhere). We squeezed the protesting baby into the carrier with a fresh, clean, scrap of fleece and David headed for the car, Buffy still howling and Mini now disappointed that she was to stay home.

Long story short, the kitten was tested for corneal abraisions (none) given a shot of cortisone (vet had to get a second needle to administer as Cleo apparently has VERY tough skin) and the eye drops came home for us to administer. The vet was very pleased that we had not wasted time getting her in and said if she is worse in the a.m. to bring her back. I'm praying 'cause the $98 today will kill us--we can't go it again tomorrow! Don't know what the cause is, though the girls did have a centipede cornered in the family room last night...they're such good little hunters....who knows?

Otherwise the doc said she appears healthy and normal at nine pounds (still growing "like a weed").

David forgot to ask the doc if the trouble could be from watching too much TV.....

Forgive me....

happy 40th

do it

ewwww....

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/09/terrorism-and-my-toothpaste.html

I love google

Today I found something I have been looking for for many years.

As a young girl, I played the guitar. I was primarily self-taught but I occasionally hung out with a couple of guys who were very good--who'd jam with me a little and teach me a lick or two now and then. One was a guy named Rob Fair. I was in 7th grade and he in 8th or 9th. He had studied classical and was very good. He gave me a cast-off from his album collection--one that I think he'd gotten from the local (and very hip, mind you) radio station (KFMG) It may have been a promo copy. It wasn't his cup of tea but he thought I might like it and he was right. I learned a song from it that I loved. I couldn't play it at all like the original but I loved playing it, none-the-less.

I don't know when our how it disappeared from my album collection but it did, sometime in the late 70's. I looked around but could not find a replacement. No one had ever heard of it. I had them check the big fat catalogues at the record stores but it wasn't there.

Every now and then, since connecting to the internet, I've done a search to see if I could find any reference to the band or the album. The song I loved so much was called "Rain" and since I've been on a kick drinking gatorade "Rain" lately, the song--in fragments, with what lyrics I could still remember--has been running through my head. Early this morning when I woke up and plodded down the hall to get a drink it started playing in my head again. It's been at least a year, maybe more, since I looked. This time I struck gold:

Cherry Red Review mp3.com clips artists direct clips

"Cat Song" was another good one and I'll bet Ronni and Milo would like that one...I think this is going on my christmas list this year ;-)

I love google.

Dying Gasps of a Lurid Anachronism?

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Klan_Gettysburg.html

Please note that the Klan got all of 25 members to show up for this, and it required 150 LE officers and drew 200 spectators.

Friday cat-blogging

I'm breaking the order of my cat-blogging and taking a short break from the saga of Mommy Kitty the 2nd and her progeny this week to visit my oldest friend.

In late 1988, I was enjoying the bloom of new love. I had moved in with the woman I was later to marry, and I had brought my two cats, Beezer and Tasha, to our new home, and had adopted a pair of brothers from a friend of mine who couldn't keep them any more, the boys named Monty and DeMoios. All four of these wonderful friends are no longer with me. However, a few months after we started building our lives together, my future wife brought home a souvenir just before the new year of 1989.

It was a horrible winter, the coldest and snowiest winter I have seen in Kansas. One afternoon, in the middle of what was for all practical purposes a blizzard, I was awakened by my girlfriend coming home and pulling a mewing little black ball of fluff from her coat.

This scrawny and smelly little kitten had been trapped inside of a dumpster at a fast-food place, one of those big things that the garbage truck picks up, hoists overhead and empties, and then places back down on the ground. The kitten was cold and hungry and tired, and he promptly curled up on the bed and took a long nap, after which he jumped down, crawled under the bed, and stunk up the entire house with the smelliest kitten bowel movement in history which instantly saddled him with the name he carries to this day.

Over the years, he became the head of the cat household. He stopped fights, welcomed new family members, suffered dozens of kittens who for some reason liked to try to nurse on his big fat furry black belly, and was always ready to cuddle and purr and bonk faces.

He is the senior member of the household, and at nearly eighteen years of age is still pretty spry and alert, even though he moves more slowly than he used to and probably doesn't have many years left with me.

Meet Stinky, also known as Stinkbug and Uncle Stinky. Of all of the kitties I have known and loved, none have been around for as long as he has, and I fear that our time left together is drawing to its inevitable end. He has been a wonderful friend and companion, and I have learned a lot from his quiet thoughtfulness and his calm self-assurance. May he live many more years and always occupy the center of his favorite sunny spot on the bedroom floor.

analogy for the day

If George W. Bush was the captain of the Titanic, he would have sped up when he saw the iceberg and then, after hitting it, he would have backed up and run into it again and again all the while insisting that he knew in his gut that this was the proper way of dealing with icebergs and that anybody that disagreed with his strategy just wanted the ship to sink.

One for fears...I mean tears....

Rising fascism in America, eh? I saw the the photo of Mussolini and Hitler that Huff Po used to link to the story of Rumsfeld's acid trip accusation of the meaning behind America's objections to the administration and their handling of pretty much everything they've gotten their grubby hands into since 2000...and I just couldn't stop myself.

Hopefully this will be "live" on the Huff-Po servers by morning:

The Pot calls the Kettle Black

One for laughter...

That silly creative visual side of me reared its irreverant head again this week and our current Secretary of State (and I use that term loosely) is the object this time.....

Condive Oyl

I just couldn't help myself