Boy I hope this gets some airtime.

Funny how some people can act so tough, but if you even touch them they can’t take it.

the blip has become a blowup, with Secret Service agents — under oath in court depositions — accusing one another of unethical and perhaps even illegal conduct in the handling of Mr. Howards’s arrest and the official accounting of it.

...

OK, I've had enough of David Brooks, AKA "Mr. Bobo". And as long as I watch PBS I'll have to see his ugly mug, in his Friday discussions with Mark Shields on the News Hour. Brooks is supposed to represent a sane conservative, but now we can see, by his own admission, he's nothing but a right-wing moron who slams people for fun.

Apparently he's got some kind of wingnutty mental issue, and he can't even control what he writes...

On the news tonight, Tim Russert tried, and failed, to spell Iraq.

He corrected himself immediately, but god damn it was hilarious.

Can't wait to see the youtube replays!

OK, so I'm sitting here at work listening to Terri Gross on NPR interviewing Frank "I'm an asshole" Luntz, and he's going on and on about the shit he always goes on and on about, and he's saying how he thinks there's a "double standard" and how conservatives can't make jokes about liberals but liberals can make jokes about conservatives. Politics is getting really nasty, and he feels SO sorry for the bloggers because the level of hate is so icky out there, blah blah blah... All of a sudden, the BZEEEEP BZEEEEP BZEEEEEP noise comes on, and the automated voice announces that this is a test of the Emergency Broadcast Service Alert, if this had been an actual emergency Blah blah BZEEEEP BZEEEEP BZEEEEEP.

OK, no big deal, right? Except when it's done, I hear Luntz being all defensive, saying "It was a JOKE, and other people, even some Democrats thought it was funny"...

[Update: To all those who think I am in favor of the war, please get a clue. Obviously I would rather see the progress we need to have without the war. All I am saying is that maybe something good can come out of Bush's disaster. But I am not saying I'm glad it happened, and anyone who thinks this is simply wrong.]
------

I've been thinking, maybe this insane war will be worth all the pain, if we can finally make progress on the following critical issues:

1. A sane, sustainable energy policy

2. A precedent for putting warmongers on trial

Maybe it was necessary. But that sounds horrible. It is horrible. I would like to think the war wasn't necessary. Maybe we could have achieved those two goals without it. But I suspect it was necessary, because people don't make major changes unless they have been forced to, and both of these will be major changes.

Can we achieve those two goals? We must.

POOR POOR whiny-ass-titty-baby-neocons. They're stamping their feet at the MEANIES who TRICKED THEM into talking trash about Bush in the Vanity Fair "Neo-Culpa" article...

Richard "Prince of Dark-Eyeshadow Dumbasses" Perle:

"...Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday's election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.

Sniff... They LIED!!! Those bastards made up a bunch of CRAP and then launched a war that killed thousands of Americans... Oh wait, I did that. Nevermind...

more if you want a laugh...

Looks like Junior got a visit from the realists in his camp, and he's got a choke collar on his neck!

Check this out...

He's talking to a bunch of right wing reporters, and he's talking about Iran. He takes the conversation off the record, and this is all we get to see of it:

[Off-the-record comments redacted.]

Anyway, back on the record.

Q: Okay. I don't know how to read that.

THE PRESIDENT: No, no. You shouldn't read anything to it at all. I just want to make -

Q: Are you saying that a military attack is not feasible?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not saying that at all. That's important.

interesting, no? I think someone with a brain (Baker?) finally explained to the Moron what will happen if we go to war with Iran. As in total collapse of the American economy.

more below.

Looking for a little help here, as I have an idea which may work out well...

What if...

you had a projector, and the means to project an image from a laptop onto the walls of buildings as rush hour traffic crawled by...

what would you say to these people?

I'm thinking...

* the video of GWB giving the camera the finger

* pictures of the fallen soldiers he killed in Iraq

* graphs of our economic decline

* quotes of the local Republicrooks praising the worst president ever.

but you tell me.

'cause I'm going to do it...

Some interesting data from a poll at Faux News:

The bombshell:

Two-thirds of voters say they think the Republicans knew about Rep. Foley's inappropriate behavior and intentionally failed to take action.

Got that? They intentionally covered it up.

This is game, set, match. Unless the R's can somehow make it a bipartisan coverup, they are TOAST.

more interesting tidbits:

What a shock. Once again, the Israelis are caught by the BBC doing what they've been denying for years, and things the "axis of evil" has been saying are true, are... true.

The BBC has obtained evidence that Israelis have been giving military training to Kurds in northern Iraq.

A report on the BBC TV programme Newsnight showed Israeli experts in northern Iraq, drilling Kurdish militias in shooting techniques...

...Iran and Syria, which have long accused the Kurds of allowing the Israelis to operate on Iraqi territory, will most likely demand an explanation from the government in Baghdad.

The Israeli government says it is conducting an investigation into the BBC report because it is against Israeli law to export military know-how without prior permission...

I'm sure this won't make our situation there any worse, especially since the Isralis have also been charged with teaching our spooks how to torture Arabs properly. Caution: More Snark after the flip...

no time for a good diary, but check this out!

Free Bumper Stickers: Call For Change
Let's Spread Our Message!
Over the years, Republicans have gotten away with some pretty terrible things: they've used fear to win elections, they've argued that people who disagree with the war in Iraq are comforting the terrorists, they've repeatedly sided with big corporations over us--and the list goes on. Now it's clear that Americans are fed up with their corrupt style of government and poll after poll shows that voters are ready for change this November. That's why we're launching a campaign to show how popular opposition to Republican rule in Washington really is.

To participate, all you have to do is order a sticker and put it on your car, or some other highly visible place.

You can get one sticker for free HERE: https://pol.moveon.org//stickers06

IMO it's a good sticker, too. it says:

DEFEND AMERICA
FIRE THE REPUBLICANS

OK, everyone and their dog has now seen Ann Coulter get her scawny ass kicked by Kirsten Powers on Fox.

Waaayyy too funny.

But aside from the health benefits of a good belly-laugh from seeing "poor little Annie" whining for help, looking back and forth and flicking her hair back as if to say "help, I'm a girl, someone please HELP ME", and acting like the poor victim of the liberals she loves to pour hate on, how can we use this to our advantage?

I'll tell you how.

She slipped up and blurted out a searing truth that we need to pound into the head of every uninformed dipshit in the country.

Bush (and right-wing morons like Ann Coulter) could care less if we catch a mass murderer. They are by definition WEAK on terror...

I'm sorry I don't have time to do a proper diary, but there's something we all should do. Sign a petition to keep the government's hands off of the confidential data on individuals in crisis, people who call 1-800-SUICIDE.

If you can, please do one more thing... make a small donation here to help them keep the lines open, you can read more about the plight of 1-800-SUICIDE here.

Ilona did a great diary on August 11th, and that, plus other people helping out, got them a two week extension. But that's almost up. Tomorrow they run out of time.

more

Hopefully this has been diaried before, but if not here goes. We know all those frozen fetuses are awfully important, but look how unimportant actual people are to the Republicans.

1-800-SUICIDE, the nation's best known, private and confidential suicide prevention hotline network, will be shut off at midnight tonight unless action is taken. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), a division of HHS, has decided to end all funding for KBHC while continuing to owe them $266,000 from over 2 years ago. Instead of sending the funds that were already allocated, SAMHSA has gone on to create their own competing crisis hotline -- which gives them access to callers' private information through phone records. 1-800-SUICIDE does not disclose its phone records to the federal government.

Nice, huh. Over 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year and they can't provide funds to help prevent many of these deaths, because the hotline doesn't give callers' confidential info to the government.

As many have noted, Bill Kristol, one of the vilest people to see print, one of the chief proponents of the Iraq debacle is now rooting for a war with Iran.

"...we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities..."

That's just batshit crazy, of course. Certifiable. Can you say "oil spike"? Can you say "blocked Straits of Hormuz"? The man needs to be taken out back and taped to a chair, then educated with a rubber hose by the military planners who have already gamed this scenario and found that it's not a workable idea. He should not be released until he has viewed the pictures of at least 100 dead Iraqi children, and has memorized their names.

But the fact that Kristol is insane isn't news, and it isn't my point...

OK, maybe it's time to admit what we're doing isn't having any effect, maybe even admit that what we're doing is having the opposite effect as what we would want.

In today's Times...

...Mr. Rumsfeld said the number of Iraqi and American troops in Baghdad had increased to about 55,000 from 40,000 to deal with the surge in attacks in the city. But the increase has not noticeably restrained the sectarian bloodletting, mostly between Sunnis and Shiites...

sheesh...

My deepest apologies to Bob Seger and any Bob Seger fans out there...

Hopefully Bob would not be too mad...

According to this site, he appeared onstage with Michael Dukakis in his 1988 Michigan campaign appearances.

enjoy...

I just listened to a recording of Al Gore speaking in September of 2002. He had some good stuff to say:

transcript

I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism...

...I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it... I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task...

OK, we can all agree with that.