irony-immune

With uproarious amusement I just watched Bay Buchanan, who apparently didn't take her medications today, flinging spittle all over the CNN studios as she screechingly berated John Kerry for his "manic performance," a phrase she loved so much she used it twice within sixty seconds.


Does this bat-shit-crazy harridan not have a mirror or a VCR?

counting forward

One week.

One week, and with any kind of luck, our country will take its first steps at pulling back from the precipice on which George W. Bush has put us.

One week, and with any kind of luck, a semblance of "reality-based thinking" will return to our government.

One week, and with any kind of luck, our disaster of a president will be hobbled.


One week.

With any kind of luck.



VOTE. TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO VOTE. GIVE SOMEONE A RIDE. DO SOMETHING. DO ANYTHING. WE MAY NOT GET ANOTHER CHANCE.


To borrow a phrase, "those are the stakes."

an invitation

From Fredericksburg.com -
http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2006/102006/10282006/232595/index_html

Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts

WHEN I WAS speechwriting at the White House, one rule was enforced without exception. The president would not be given drafts that lowered him or The Office by responding to the articulations of hatred that drove so many of his critics.

This rule was especially relevant to remarks that concerned the central topic of our times, Iraq. Having left the White House more than a year ago, I conclude that the immunizing effect of that rule must have expired, because I now find that I am infected with a hatred for the very quarter that inspired the rule--the deranged, lying left.

I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth. I do now.

And though these figures might be dismissed as inconsequential, their views seem mild compared with those of some of our university professors charged with the "higher" education of our youth.

Thus have I come to hate Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who called the Sept. 11 victims of the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns"; Nicholas De Genova, the Columbia professor who loudly wished "a million Mogadishus" on American troops in Iraq; and Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin professor who teaches his students that President Bush was the actual mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

I used to laugh these people off. Now I detest them as among the most loathsome people America has ever vomited up.

I have also grown to hate certain people of genuine accomplishment like Ted Turner, who, by his own contention, cannot make up his mind which side of the terror war he is on; I hate the executives at CNN, Turner's intellectual progeny, who recently carried water for our enemies by broadcasting their propaganda film portraying their attempts to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

I now hate Howard Dean, the elected leader of the Democrats, who, by repeatedly stating his conviction that we won't win in Iraq, bets his party's future on our nation's defeat.

I hate the Democrats who, in support of this strategy, spout lie after lie: that the president knew in advance there were no WMD in Iraq; that he lied to Congress to gain its support for military action; that he pushed for the democratization of Iraq only after the failure to find WMD; that he was a unilateralist and that the coalition was a fraud; that he shunned diplomacy in favor of war.

These lies, contradicted by reports, commissions, speeches, and public records, are too preposterous to mock, but too pervasive to rebut, especially when ignored by abetting media.

Most detestable are the lies these rogues craft to turn grief into votes by convincing the families of our war dead that their loved ones died in vain. First, knowing what every intelligence agency was sure it knew by early 2003, it would have been criminal negligence had the president not enforced the U.N.'s resolutions and led the coalition into Iraq. Firemen sometimes die in burning buildings looking for victims who are not there. Their deaths are not in vain, either.

Second, no soldier dies in vain who goes to war by virtue of the Constitution he swears to defend. This willingness is called "duty," and it is a price of admission into the highest calling of any free nation--the profession of arms. We have suffered more than 2,300 combat deaths in Iraq so far. Not one was in vain. Not one.

These are the people I now hate--these people who seek to control our national security. The best of them are misinformed. The rest of them are liars.

So I intend to vote on Nov. 7. If I have to, I'll crawl over broken glass to do it. And this year I'm voting a straight Republican ticket right down to dog catcher, because I've had it. I'm fed up with the deranged, lying left. They've infected me. I'm now a hater, too.


PAUL BURGESS of Spotsylvania County was director of foreign-policy speechwriting at the White House from October 2003 to July 2005.




Now it's my turn, Paul.

I will not waste one second on addressing your vile mudslinging and disparaging accusations. You are vermin. You don't have the class and dignity that the common cockroach does. Your party are the ones that have brought us to this place, and here's what you get for it.

You get people like me, who are normally mild-mannered and quiet, but who have had enough of the disreputable bullshit that scumbags like you have been pumping out non-stop for the last decade.

Here's the deal, Paul.

Remember the phrase "get over it" that your side used to say to people like me who disagreed with you, a phrase that you used to tell us that our opinions didn't matter, that it was your country and we had better just shut up if we wanted to live here?

Well, bitch, the shoe is on the other foot now. And, if I ever meet you in person, I assure you that foot will go right up your ass. So, it's your turn to get over it. You are a coward, you are a traitor, you are a criminal, you are a halfwit, you are lying, treasonous scum, and one of these days a liberal like me is going to thrash you like the mangy cur you are. I'll give you a real reason to hate me.

I invite you to contact me in person. If you are man enough to say this kind of crap to my face, I will be happy to beat you bloody and educate you in manners and teach you to show the proper respect to people who are better than you. Me, for one.

Any time, any place, you sniveling little coward.


Any time, any place.

The lies...the lies...pass me the SSRIs!

I got SO angry this morning, reading headlines about all the lying that's going on in the repugnicans' last ditch campaign efforts to save their legislative stronghold (heaven forbid they should only have control over the OTHER TWO branches of what's left of this democracy). I got SO angry this morning that I created this "cartoon". I'm still not sure if it's funny or not.
http://theskyisnotblue.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

I may have to quit reading and watching news this week. Either that or get a big bottle of SSRIs.... or just turn off the radio, quit hitting the new pages and go make some phone calls for moveon.org ...

pwned

I sure hope Dave Letterman wore a condom last night. He really took a big risk screwing Bill O'Reilly as hard as he did. Goodness knows where that particular falafel has been.

Gotta love the music, though. They ushered Bill in to the strains of the Who's classic, "Baba O'Riley" and pushed him out with Edwin Starr's "War," although a better choice would have been the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again."

stomach-turner

I just watched tonight's episode of "Real Time" with Bill Maher.

His butt-squeezing guest, right-wing blogger Andrew Sullivan, had the incredible gall to castigate the Bush administration for the United States having "a war that we are losing, we have a doubling of the national debt in the next generation, the suspension of habeas corpus and the authorization of torture," words he spoke with the shocked and aghast outrage of personal victimhood.

That's just great.

One of the biggest enablers and supporters of this administration is now washing his hands of the inevitable results of all of the political machinations he echoed and heartily assented to from a fairly lofty soapbox. How nice.

Andrew, it's time for you and the other turncoats of your ilk to shut the hell up. I, for one, do not want our party accepting people like you who flee the sinking ship as they indignantly complain of the incompetence of the crew without mentioning that they share the blame for cheering on the captain who steered it into the iceberg. Stay with your Republican friends. We simply don't need you.

the stress is showing

I've noticed an amusing trend over the last several weeks. With more and more frequency and regularity, right-wing supporters are responding to criticisms of their governance by beginning their limp rebuttals with the word "look."

It's "look, the president is..." or "look, Iraq is..." or "look, the United States is..." or "look, the terrorists are..." or "look, the Democrats are..." and "look, I am..." followed by a weak recitation of the appropriate talking points.

The vermin are losing and they know it.

how could I be so blind?

Comes the news that as of today, ninety-eight American armed forces personnel have been killed in Iraq this month. And, there's still five days left in October.

Wow. If I recall the Republican system of measurement correctly, that's an awful lot of proof of how desperate the evildoers are and of how much we are winning the war. This thing is in the bag, for sure.


Boy howdy, am I ever embarassed.

gas pains

Yesterday, I filled my tank for $1.97.9/gallon of regular unleaded. Today at the same station, the price was $2.21.9 for a gallon.

Here we are, two weeks before the most hotly contested election cycle in my memory, at a time in which for the last six weeks or so fuel prices have been puzzlingly low which certainly benefits the Republican party incumbents seeing as how the two most senior members of the party have tremendous ties to the oil cartels, and suddenly prices rise 10% overnight.

I can't help but wonder if that means that the oil companies have given up on the elections and have decided to start raking in the exorbitant profits they had denied themselves for a couple of months knowing that their free ride is almost over.



A guy can hope, right?

no damned wonder

"Thank you for taking our questions today, Mr. President." - Reporter Peter Baker to George W. Bush at presidential press conference, October 25, 2006.



"Thank you?"



"Thank you?"




"THANK YOU?"




Listen, moron, our glorious leader works for US.
He is accountable for the state of our union to US.
He OWES us answers, he doesn't simply grant them.


If you aren't smart enough to understand that, turn in your fucking useless press pass and get a job at Burger King - if you can pass the entrance exam.

google-bomb Republicans - c&p to your blogs

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Greed

It's SO close running up to the election--I was just thinking about greed...if w and the republicans hadn't been quite so greedy, they might have gotten away with this for a couple more years. If they had not been quite so blatant about robbing the American people of their jobs, children, health, wealth, dignity, civil liberties, etc.....

I hope we can take congress back in time. We've slipped a long way since 2000. We're gripping the crumbling edge and may not be able to hang on much longer. This election may be either the hand reaching out or the boot stomping on the fingers.

I hope the greed proves to be too much. I haven't the time or stomach for much more of this....

"After Pat's Birthday" by Kevin Tillman

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/


You tell them, Mijo!

absent friend

RIP Binnie.

My big yellow tomcat. I knew when you got all cuddly the last few months that something was up. Thanks for the forget-me-not nose-kiss last night.

reading and writing and... wtf?

Just click it. I really can't add anything to this one.

http://www.koco.com/news/10105982/detail.html

ooooooo-kay

"I did well in Missouri politics." - John Ashcroft on "The Daily Show."



Pardon me for bringing this up, but isn't his main claim to fame prior to becoming Bush's Attorney General who draped nude statues of justice that of being the guy who got drubbed in an election by the LATE Mel Carnahan?

Losing to a dead man is "doing well in Missouri politics." Strange world we live in.

Keep Making Sense

Mr. Olberman, producers, editors and staff:

Thank you for standing up and making sense in these senseless times. I look forward to your broadcasts and especially your "special commentary" pieces, to which I affectionately refer as "tirades".

You continue to speak for millions (I HOPE) of Americans who are approaching despondency under the Bush administration. As you say, we are losing grip on the very fabric from which our stars and stripes was made. We grow weaker, daily, in our struggle to realize the "American Dream" and it is apparent that the hand basket we are in continues it's down bound journey.

Tonight you made a suggestion that, for me, sparked a moment of hope for the days, weeks, months and years to come. Perhaps we can use this latest sham of a law to bring our not-soon-enough former head of state to justice, or at least to a deserved state of limbo in a dark room in Eastern Europe somewhere, when enough people wake up and realize his agenda is as much the enemy of America as Al Qaida.

Thank you for continuing to be the voice of the America that wants to see another 200 years of Democracy, Equality, Freedom and Liberty. I salute you.



PS. You know, he really doesn't deserve to be called "sir"--don't you mean "cur"?

life's delicious ironies

An African-American woman has filed suit against a restaurant chain for discrimination based on race for allegedly ignoring her and her family while favoring Caucasian patrons for admittance.

The restaurant chain?



The Cracker Barrel.

thought experiment

So, let's see...



The Democrats win big in a few weeks and take back the House, or even the House and the Senate. With their new-found subpoena power, they begin aggressive investigations into the seeming malfeasance of this administration regarding the invasion of Iraq, the purported rigging of elections, a secretly conceived energy policy, the siphoning off of government funds by companies like Halliburton and Exxon, rampant Republican corruption, and all of the other myriad concerns of the rational thinkers in the country.

The president, with his own new-found power to unilaterally proclaim individuals to be "unlawful enemy combatants" decides that the opposing party is "aiding and abetting" terrorists with their investigations into "classified matters" and promptly throws the opposition's investigators in jail.

With their right to Habeas Corpus excised by the new Military Commisions Act of 2006, the prisoners are held in "black prisons" around the world and kept away from family, friends, legal counsel, and the press, with no recourse whatsoever other than the kangaroo court to which they may or may not be sent, providing their heart doesn't fail during their presidentially-approved (non-torture) waterboarding sessions of persuasion. Nobody has the legal standing to file suits on their behalf, so the judiciary review system is circumvented.



What's the next move?

why I'm a keyboard player

http://www.trojanpleasure.co.uk/so/so.htm

elbow room, indeed

300,000,000.

The population of the United States has doubled in my lifetime.

oops!

What with all of the excitement around Casa Milo at the arrival of the wonderful bit of musical history just mentioned, I overlooked a special occasion.

Jones Alley just had a birthday! Our first post was October 6th of 2004.


That means we are now officially in our "terrible twos."




He he he he he...

Friday 'tron-blogging

Gotta go set up, but here's the newest family member...

Novatron Mark V #104, electromechanically restored to perfection, cosmetically left with provenance intact, previously the property of Patrick Moraz, and a former member of the Yes and Moody Blues instrument arsenals that has been heard on a couple of dozen great albums and on as many world tours. Roughly thirty years old, it is one of thirty such instruments produced and my most treasured material possession.

Friday Cat Blogging...

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was one of Milo's brood...

The Kitten Composer

semantics

Bob Ney (R-Felon) pleaded guilty today to corruption charges as a result of his association with Jack Abramoff. He addressed the court, saying he was "taking responsibility" for his actions, and told the judge that he "got too comfortable" with the way "things were done" in Washington, and used "poor judgement."




Sorry, Bob.

"Poor judgement" is buying a Hummer when gasoline costs three dollars a gallon.

"Poor judgement" is telling your wife that, yes, those pants do make her ass look big.

"Poor judgement" is going for a five-mile run wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the cold rain.

"Poor judgement" is gorging yourself on spicy food before you go to bed.



What you did is illegally conspire to enrich yourself at the cost of the taxpayers of this country for whom you work.

You are a criminal. A common, garden-variety criminal.

I hate to follow such a lovely post with this...

I hate to bring this on so quickly, on the heels of such a lovely moment, but...
DUH, freakin' DUH!

Politicians want more N.Y. flight restrictions

And now for something completely different...

A friend sent me this. She wants to go downtown and do it.

I can't be shocked any more

With today's wall-to-wall coverage of the fatal private plane crash into a New York City skyscraper, I have yet to see one person ask how this was possible.

Here we are, five years after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers that occurred only blocks away from today's incident. We force people to give up their toothpaste, their nail clippers, their very rights under the Constitution, all in the name of "securing the homeland" and yet somehow an aircraft still manages to crash unimpeded into a tall building in the very city where this happened a scant five years ago, and nobody seems to be realizing that this is a glaring example of how little has changed in the intervening time and how incredibly vulnerable to this kind of attack this country still is.

I can't wait to hear how this accident is going to be bad for the Democrats.

Could we hope for an exodus?

Foley escapes reprimand in House probe
Resignation gives him immunity; others to be punished if cover-up is found

Marc Serota / Reuters

Former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., cannot be disciplined by the House ethics committee.

Updated: 2:05 p.m. CT Oct 7, 2006

WASHINGTON - The House’s investigation of a page sex scandal has only one certainty: Former Rep. Mark Foley will escape punishment by his peers.

It is the Florida Republican’s sexually explicit electronic messages to teenage former male pages that have ignited what has become a pre-election firestorm.

Congress only can punish current members, officers and employees. Foley resigned on Sept. 29, but is under investigation by federal and Florida authorities.

If the House ethics committee finds evidence of a Republican cover-up, many people could be in jeopardy, facing consequences that range from a mild rebuke in a committee report to a House vote of censure or expulsion.

Unlike the committee’s usual practice of identifying the investigative target at the outset, this probe is wide open. Anyone who knew of Foley’s salacious messages before the story broke at the end of September has reason for concern.

The rest of the AP story from MSNBC

They'll be deeply sorry

State had warned hazardous waste company about potential disaster

By MIKE BAKER : Associated Press Writer
Oct 6, 2006 : 8:51 am ET

RALEIGH, N.C. -- State environmental officials warned of a potential disaster six month ago at the hazardous waste materials facility in Apex that exploded into flames and continued to burn Friday.

EQ Industrial Services Inc. failed to "maintain and operate the facility to minimize the possibility of a sudden or non-sudden release of hazardous waste ... which could threaten human health or the environment," the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources found when issuing a $32,000 fine in March for six violations.

The fine, detailed on the department's Web site, was almost twice as much as any other assessed against a hazardous waste facility this year in North Carolina.

But a spokesman for EQ Industrial Services, which has more than 50 years of experience in the business, cautioned the violations may not have had anything to do with the fire that started late Thursday.

"That could range from anything -- like a spill of materials that could get in a storm drain," said Robert Doyle from the company's headquarters in Detroit. "It could be completely unrelated to something like a fire or explosion."

the whole story at the Herald Sun

deeply sorry

Denny Hastert just announced that plans are in motion to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. He has even arranged for a toll-free hotline pages and others can use to report Congressional pedophiles.

The number he read was not the same as the number on the TV screen.


That shows how much he cares. Oh, and he also made it a point to comment on how other people had discrepancies in their accounts of the events leading up to all of this.


Keep talking, Denny. We couldn't afford this kind of help.

Republican Party To Check Into Rehab....

For once, I think laying fairly low on this one is the best thing the Dems can do right now. That may change but, the evangelical vote may turn on the R's because of this. If the democrats leave the gnashing and wailing to the republicans, the R's will continue to hurt themselves with the moderate and progressive voters, and will have shown the Christian right that they'd protect a gay child molester to keep their power. I think Hastert MUST go, or the will lose their grasp completely. The R's have painted themselves into a corner on this one and I don't think the D's need to offer a hand. The R's need to purge those who knew and make the sacrifice— "we were wrong but we did it because we were addicted to power"--the equivalent of checking the whole party into rehab.

If the Dems scream too loud, they'll be perceived by the right as acknowledging that gays are bad. Of course, that would not be the true message but the press has already shown their propensity to manipulate the facts (ie "Former Congressman, Mark Foley, (D-FL)") and could easily place emphasis in just the right places to change perception, I can see the headlines “Dems turn on gays in congress”.

I still have to wonder if this is this October surprise. It was well-enough timed to shield Condi from public scrutiny and repercussions over her OBVIOUS dereliction of duty over Al Qaeda's threat in the run up to 9/11. It’s been VERY quiet on that front, because, once again, the family values card trumps national security and deaths of thousands of Americans. I think, if the repubs clean house quickly they might gain back some ground on this Foley scandal. If they get the gay child molester out of congress they've got to earn SOME points back. Perhaps a sort of Munchausen by proxy scenario.

on another note, can someone please tell me why they waited until TODAY to go get Foley's computer? That should have been pulled days ago. He's probably had an expert in to change out the hard drive by now...sheesh.

it's so cute when they eat their own

With all of the Republican criminals turning on each other in the Pedogate circus show over the last few days, I've had a sense of deja vu while watching the coverage, but I just couldn't place it.

I just did.

It feels like the last few minutes of "Goodfellas" as Ray Liotta's character fingers all of his accomplices in the courtroom.

air freshener

On a positive note, on October 4th, 1957, Sputnik 1, the first manmade object placed into orbit around the Earth, was launched.

Space travel is forty-nine years old today.

Congratulations to the human race for its most significant accomplishment.

optical illusion

CNN headline:

"Hastert, GOP stand together amid Foley scandal"


The folks at CNN might want to look at that picture a little closer. While it may appear that Hastert and Boehner and Reynolds and the rest of the scoundrels are "standing together," it's just a trick of perception, like the vase that turns into the two profiles facing each other.

They look that way because the whole group of them has been backed into a corner.

FOX "News" labels Foley as DEM

from bradblog.com Why does this appall but not surprise me?

restored to like-new

Q. Why is Representative Foley barred from the Library of Congress?


A. He folds his pages over.



Thank you, drive carefully.

homina-homina-wha?

Today's pedogate news is that Mark Foley has put himself into a treatment center for alcoholism and "related behavioral problems" and that his substance issue is what caused him to try(?) to seduce young male pages and to exchange graphic and suggestive internet messages with them.

I'm stunned I didn't figure this out on my own. After all, every heterosexual male out there knows just how tempting sixteen-year-old boys with "cute little butt(s)" are when you've got a good alcohol buzz on. That's why these red-blooded Republican he-men want laws against that sort of thing, to save virile American men from themselves.

Right?

impromptu cat-blogging

Hope Cleo enjoyed "Countdown" tonight.

shorter Matt Drudge

"The little tramps were begging for it, teasing poor Foley like that. It's their own fault!"

secret ingredient

It's October.

Anybody else anxious to see what sort of surprise Uncle Karl has cooked up for us America-haters? It's going to have to be a good one, as the Republicans, in the form of Mark Foley (R-NAMBLA) have donated the one kind of news story that the traditional media just can't resist and has missed horribly since the halcyon days of crusty blue dresses and John Goodman playing Linda Tripp on Saturday Night Live.


The kind that lets them endlessly talk about cock.



By the way, that sound you hear in the distance is the crumbling of an empire.