I could watch this all day.....

BAM!

And NO, I Will NOT "just fucking get over it...."

Keith Olbermann tells us what the NeoScum accomplished and why we need to hold this grudge until the scum who did this are all ground up and thrown into the dustbin of history

Don't Let the Door Hit You in the Ass as You Go

Good Riddance.

May I never see your fucking smurking face again, except during your sentencing at the upcoming war crimes trial.

Go eat some pretzels.

Worst

President

Ever!

Mr Maverick Republican

Feel the Love.

John McCain voted to support Bush over 90% of the time.

Has your life gotten better under Bush?

Has the country been made stronger?

John McCain, the original Bush Baby.

Go ahead George, you can burp him now.

EFF sues NSA, Bush, Cheney over illegal wiretaps

From Boing Boing:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance. 

The lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.

w00t!!!

Undoubtedly a futile gesture given the Roberts Supreme Court will have to agree that the suit is even possible, but maybe it will keep the heat on their lying thieving asses through the election...

A reminder

What Bush and McSame were doing while New Orleans drowned. 

Remind them of it.

Often.

One from the vaults....

via Reuters:

Gustav disrupts McCain's Republican convention

(Poor Baby. Of course a couple of million 'evacuees'/refugees might argue about who is having what disrupted)

* Bush, Cheney to miss Republican convention

(Much to McSame's relief we might add)

* Most convention work suspended for Monday

(Well the country is better off for that at least)

* McCain may address Republicans from Gulf area

(But only Republicans. The rest of us can go fish (probably along the new Gulf shore just south of Memphis))

By Steve Holland

ST. PAUL, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Republican John McCain on Sunday ordered political speeches canceled for his Republican nominating convention on Monday to avoid a festive atmosphere while Americans cope with Hurricane Gustav.(more)

___________________________________________________

My little meditation on another September day a few years back....

Somewhere over Louisiana, a brain is abuzz


"... Boy there's some champion brush cuttin' to be done down there ... hard bike ridin, tho with all that stuff on the roads ... have ta use the truck ... wonder if Lance would wanna come? he's got such a cute little bald spot ... wonder if Bandur would like to join us ... probably not, he'll just say he's too busy being king like he always does when I want to do something special... damn Secret Service probably wouldn't effin' let me go anyway ... 9/11 ...

... What's for lunch? ... hope they don't forget the pretzels this time ... why did Cheney make me call Da and that nice smiling Clinton boy from next store to come bail me out ... it's like he thinks I'm dumb or sumthin' ... they never let me do what I want ... always making me go to damn meetings ... telling me I can't bomb Terrorhan ... making me wear that dumb thing in my ear so I always have to be listening to Rove blathering on about something when I'm trying to talk ... 9/11 ... won't even let me finish a good book when I find one ...

... And I mean who gives a frog exploding fuck about this New Orleans place ... not our kind of people ... libruls ... poor ... gays ... effin' preverts .... always yelling about the oil bizness ... always complaining about the damn river overflowin, as if spending money I needed elsewhere for the war and bribes was gonna help ... damn levees anyhow ... hey, is that a Jewish name? ... sounds Jewish to me ...gotta have Rove check it out ...

... don't see why we don't just bulldoze the damn place anyhow ... send all those smelly old poor people back to where they came from ... tho it's gonna be easier to do stuff now that the place is a chemical sty ... betcha those smartass environmentalists won't be going on about wetlands now ... just created a whole lot more for 'em, heh heh ... 9/11 ...

... and sure we're showing them Al Kayda creeps how real 'Murikans handle a disaster ... this'll make them think twice before hitting us again. ... hey, maybe this whole thing was an Al Kayda plot all along. ... did those levees really 'break' or were they 'helped' ... maybe it was a moozlum weather machine or super prayers to Devil Al Law or somethin' that steered the storm ... better ask Pat about steerin' hurricanes with prayer ... 9/11 ...

Gotta talk to Karl 'bout all that right away. 
Right after I rub my hands all over his shiny, shiny bald head and calm down a bit."

...9/11 ...

FREE SPEECH ZONE

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 -- The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

The whole country is a "free speech zone".  Get it NeoThug assholes?

Supposedly police intimidation of legitimate protest only happens elsewhere, or so we were led to believe by all the tut-tutting during the Olympics.

And to those who say that "well, something must have been behind it" I say, the police showed no warrants,  forcibly entered homes in armed gangs,  made unreasonable seizures of personal property,  intimidated journalists, and arrested lawyers ... so how is this any different from what went down in China?

The NeoThugs are so afraid of answering for their behaviour that they ran from the very idea that a group of college kids might protest them. I guess McSame and the Rezident might have their feelings hurt or something if they realized someone disagreed with them.

What a bunch of totalitarian imbeciles.

As for you Mr Bush, you and your little cabal of thieving, duplicitous venal war criminals are not fit to lick the boots of a true patriot like General Taguba.

From McClatchy:

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes

By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers 

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. 

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." 

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.(more)

Oh Ghod...the Neocons Can't Even Do Propaganda Right

Another example of BushCo's incompetent management of the "War on Terror." This US taxpayer financed 'organization' actually spends most of its time broadcasting anti-American programming. I am  feeling so much safer.

from ProPublica:

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, whose speeches were carried live and unedited on Alhurra. The State Department lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Lost in Translation:

Alhurra—America’s Troubled Effort to Win Middle East Hearts and Minds

by Dafna Linzer

An Arab-language television network and radio station, founded by the Bush administration to promote a positive image of the United States, has aired anti-American and anti-Israeli viewpoints, has showcased pro-Iranian policies and recently gave air time to a militant who called for the death of American soldiers in Iraq. 

So far, U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $500 million to fund those broadcasts. The television station, called Alhurra, and the radio network, Sawa, were meant to provide an American perspective on world events and counter the wave of global criticism that had been building against the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

Instead, Alhurra’s four years of operation have been marked by a string of broadcast disasters that government officials believe are as negative as anything aired by Al Jazeera, the widely watched Qatar-based station that aired unedited speeches of Osama bin Laden. 

Alhurra’s reporters and commentators operate with little oversight. Alhurra’s president, Brian Conniff, does not speak Arabic and is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage. Conniff has no journalism experience and worked previously as a government auditor. His news director, Daniel Nassif, grew up in Lebanon and has no background in television. Before coming to the network, he helped promote the political aspirations in Washington of a Lebanese Christian former general. 

Both men said in interviews that they are providing effective supervision of the network’s five 24-hour radio and television broadcasts and they praised their staff as professional and committed. A string of highly publicized “mistakes” are behind them, Conniff said. 

That does not appear to be the case. (more)

There are no words

Dear Mr. President

As true now as when first spoken...

"They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people"

Eugene Debs

By the Numbers

  from Jim Hightower: 


The economy under the current "adminstration'.                     2001         2008

EARNING
Median pre-tax household income                                           $49,158        $48,201
decrease for African American households under Bush                                 $2,766
decrease for Asian American households                                                          $1,381
decrease for Hispanic households                                                                      $1,043
decrease for white households                                                                               $745

WORKING
Salary of full-time minimum-wage earner in 2007                                       $12,168
Increase in productivity of American workers under Bush                                 18%
Increase in real earnings of American workers under Bush                                   9%
Total # manufacturing jobs                                                  17.3 million     14.2 million
National unemployment rate                                                            3.5%                 5%
Number unemployed Americans                                          5.6 million        7.7 million
Number including discouraged or underemployed             9.9 million     13.5 million

LIVING
Americans living in poverty                                                  31.6 million     36.5 million
Americans going hungry according to USDA                       31 million        38.2million
Cost of a gallon of milk                                                                          $3               $3.79
Cost of a loaf of bread                                                                       $.98                $1.32
Rent, 2-bedroom home, Los Angeles (month)                         $1,658              $2,229
Rent, 1-bedroom home, Boston (month)                                  $1,453              $2,000
Total consumer credit debt                                                 $7.65 trillion   $12.8 trillion
Personal savings rate                                                                     +2.3%                 -0.5%

HOMEOWNERS & RENTERS
Increase in number of home foreclosures from 2006                                     68%
Households currently at high risk of foreclosure                                         2 million
Households paying more than half their income for housing                    13 million
Households unable to afford
even the lowest-priced home rentals in the U.S.                      2.8 million

But he knows so much more than we do...

ANNOTATED TEXT OF THE SIGNING STATEMENTS

From Coherent Babble, this LIST with text of all the signing statements the Resident has used to claim authority to ignore and twist the intent of laws passed by Congress. Complete with annotations.

Frightening. And awe inspiring in its abilty to produce  anger.

Avedon gets it exactly right.

 from Sideshow:

Digby warns that the Stepford Press is going all-out to tell each other how important it is that Nancy Pelosi rein in the partisanship in Washington. Every time a pundit says something like this, a little bell should go off in your head that says, "I must ask this person immediately how Pelosi is supposed to stop the Republicans from being so viciously partisan."

It wouldn't hurt to start reminding people that "what is partisan" and "what is good for the country" are two different issues, and it is the latter that matters. If the Republicans oppose programs that are good for the country, the Democrats have no choice but to appear "partisan" - because this isn't about being a Democrat, it's about being an American.

She has it right. We CANNOT fall for the BS that disagreeing with The Chimp and his gang of thieves is somehow partisan and expecting us to do everything he wants is not. As I've said before, we need to grab these neocon pukes where the sun don't shine and kick them hard and long. Kick them until they think twice about taking this country to war for profit. To think long and hard before sending our young people to die in some hellhole so the vice president's friends could get a bigger golden parachute. And to think  forever before allowing a sociopathic loser to resolve his issues with his Daddy by playing toy soldiers with real lives.

Never Again.

Amen.

Garrison Keillor in Salon:

Here we have a slacker son of a powerful patrician father who resolves unconscious Oedipal issues through inappropriate acting-out in foreign countries. Hello? All the king's task forces can gather together the shards of the policy, number them, arrange them, but it never made sense when it was whole and so it makes even less sense now.

American boys in armored jackets and night scopes patrolling the streets of Baghdad are not going to pacify this country, any more than they will convert it to Methodism. They are there to die so that a man in the White House doesn't have to admit that he, George W. Bush, the decider, the one in the cowboy boots, made grievous mistakes. He approved a series of steps that he himself had not the experience or acumen or simple curiosity to question and which had been dumbed down for his benefit, and then he doggedly stuck by them until his approval ratings sank into the swamp.

What he said......

from MSNBC via Crooks & Liars:


Keith Olbermann  spits in The Chimp's smirk ridden face, removes his pointy little head and hands it back to him. 

A bravura performance that speaks truth to power the way all of us, the media included,  should be doing all the time.

Watch it.

Pass it forward.

Draw strength from it, the time  for direct action may be coming soon .

My God, What Have We Done?

 from the New York Times:  

A listing, with photos, of the 3000 plus American service personel who have died so far in Iraq.

Do your duty. Call up the dead from your state. Memorize their faces. Salute them for their sacrifice. Do not forget them in the coming years.

From Pennsylvania:

144 lives, 141 men, 3 women. 

Ages 19 to 51. 

Mainly Army. Some Marines. A few Navy.

Mostly they come from small dead or dying ex-industrial burghs scattered all over the state. Strangely, none are from the rich suburbs of Philly or Pittsburgh.

Many of these brave and wonderful people were probably looking for the way out of poverty so gloriously promised by the lying ass recruiters. They didn't live long enough to find those promises turning to ash in their mouths.

And for what in the end? So that a psychopathic narcisistic loser could show the world that his dick was bigger than his Daddy's?

Sadly, there are not many websites large enough to post the pictures of the half a million Iraqis who have died as a result of our "Liberation. 

Not that anyone would make the effort to do so in any case.

It is to weep.

Well, remember you heard it here first -- back in October 2002

from the WaPo:

GREELEY, Colo., Nov. 4 -- During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

Told you so. Told you so. Neocon scum.

The Tragic Consequences of Cocaine Use Exposed

Maybe there's more to Bush Avoidence Syndrome than we thought. Watch in horror and shame as the Resident misidentifies the Congresscritter he is stumping for not once, but twice. (here)

And he's the Decider?

gHod, somebody please get him from behind the wheel before he kills again.