This is so appalling

These are the people Sarah Palin is bringing out. My God. If I were McCain I'd hang my head in shame that I'm depending on them for their votes. Unbelievably foul human beings.

This is scary friends

And all McPalin can talk about is Bill Ayers, a former radical activist who is now a Distiguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. A man who has worked closely with that known bunch of radicals The Annenburg Education Foundation (snark). A man who was named "Chicago Citizen of the Year" in 1997.

The economic world is crashing down around us largely because of the policies championed by McCain and his chief economic wiz, Phil Gramm.

And all they can talk about is this meaningless gossip. 

It is to weep.

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.

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.

Peak Oil keeps getting weirder.

It seems that half of the refined products that we import to cover the daily shortfall of oil production vs usage,  is used to make refined products we then export. Yes half the so called shortage is really just pass thru. When will we realize that Big Oil doesn't care a whit about our security and are purely interested in ripping as much profit from the system as they can before it all comes crashing down? 

WASHINGTON3 (Reuters) - While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.
 
A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.
 
The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
 
"We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," President Bush told reporters this week. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home."
 
"As a nation, we can have more control over our energy destiny by supplying more of the oil and natural gas we'll be consuming from resources here at home," Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum (otcbb: AMPE.OB - news - people ) Institute, said in a letter last week to U.S. lawmakers.
 
But environmentalists and other opponents to expanding drilling areas could seize on the record exports to argue Congress should not open more acres if U.S. refineries are churning crude oil into petroleum products that are sent out of the American market.
 
"It doesn't look good to say: 'We need more oil.' But then export the refined products that you're getting. It doesn't seem to be consistent," said Jim Presswood, energy lobbyist for the Natural 
Resources Defense Council.
 
But many energy experts say oil and petroleum products are traded globally, and it may make economic sense to export gasoline refined along the U.S. Gulf Coast to Latin America and import European-refined gasoline to U.S. East Coast markets.
 
"The fact is that the (United States) participates in global markets for both crude and refined products, and there are any number of variables that impact supply and prices in those markets," said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the National Petrochemicals and Refiners 
Association.
 
The 1.6 million barrels a day in record petroleum exports represented 9 percent of total U.S. refining capacity of 17.6 million barrels a day.
 
However, with refiners operating at 85 percent of capacity during the January-April period, the shipments represented a much a larger share of total U.S. oil products produced.
 
The exports were also equal to half the 3.2 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products the United States imported each day over the 4-month period.
 
The biggest share of U.S. oil products exported went to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Singapore and Brazil.
 
U.S. consumers are paying record prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, which the Bush administration blames in part on tight supplies.
 
While the administration argues that more supplies would help to bring down prices, U.S exports of diesel fuel in April averaged 387,000 barrels per day, up almost seven-fold from 59,000 barrels a day in the same month a year earlier.
 
U.S. gasoline shipments in April averaged 202,000 barrels a day, the most for the month since 1945, when America was sending fuel overseas to ease supply shortages in other countries during World War II. Gasoline exports in April 2007 were almost half at 116,000 barrels per day.
 
Residual fuel exports in April were 377,000 barrels per day, the fourth highest level for any month, and up 10 percent from 344,000 barrels per day a year earlier.
 
John Felmy, the chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, said a portion of the oil products exported, especially diesel, was fuel that did not meet U.S. clean air requirements and therefore could not be sold in America. "You may have some that you're not able to use," he said.
 
Also, while U.S. gasoline demand is down due to high prices and a weak American economy, there is "strong economic growth outside the United States" where fuel is often subsidized and demand is high, said John Cook, director of EIA's Petroleum Division.
 
However, both the EIA and API admitted they did not know why daily U.S. gasoline exports to Canada skyrocketed to 41,000 barrels in January-April this year from 9,000 barrels in 2007.
 
The EIA said more U.S. diesel is going to Latin American to fuel power plants because of a shortage of natural gas in the region, and China has switched to diesel from coal to run some of its generating facilities in order to reduce smog ahead of the summer Olympics next month in Beijing. 

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)

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

Gotta Stop Slammin' My Head in the Door.....

STAR TREK™ Casket

The STAR TREK Casket styling has been inspired by the popular “Photon Torpedo” design seen in STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Khan. Caskets will be available beginning late 2008.

Heck of a job, Steny! You too, Harry. Yep, heck of a job!

Glad to see choosing Steny and Harry to the Leadership got us the result we elected the Democrats to produce.

The term is Majority LEADER you twits. Look to Mitch McConnell for lessons on party discipline if you must. Grow some political stones or at least take a drink before a session for some false courage. Or get the hell out of the way for some people who will do what the people elected them to do.

Can't talk about impeachment, it's not proper; can't criticize anyone, they might get angry at us come the election; can't enforce a subpoena, the mean old Vice Prezzie might get mad at me.

Sad, pathetic wimps, one and all.

The Constitution is dead.

Long live the Empire.
Fucking bastards.

The Daily Blatt Now Banned in China!

Apparently, The Blatt is one of the many sites blocked in China.

I suspect it's really nothing we've done. Our sin is that we use a blog host (Blogger) which is probably being mass blocked.

Still, all in all a good example of how pervasively stupid and arbitrary the whole web censorship meme is.

Test your own site.

WWII Disney Propaganda Cartoon. Truly Amazing!

Disney Nazi Cartoon

WTF.......

from Think Progress:

Yesterday, during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed there is no express right to habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution.

Gonzales was debating Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) about whether the Supreme Court’s ruling on Guantanamo detainees last year cited the constitutional right to habeas corpus. Gonzales claimed the Court did not cite such a right, then added,

“There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

Specter pushed back. “Wait a minute. The constitution says you can’t take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?” Specter told Gonzales, “You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.” (more)

What mail order law school did this idiot buy his diploma from? Has he never heard of the Magna Carta?