We’re all really, when it gets down to it, waiting for the electoral process to put a gigantic microfiber pillow down on the Bush Administration’s aged, Constitution-bashing head and asphyxiate the pernicious bastard. 201 days to go!!!!
I tend to favor the “head on a pike” allusion. (Totally metaphorically and non-violently, dear Department of the Fatherland.) Serendipitously, Mer’s rotating desktop background brought this goodie up this morning:
Little Scotty McClellan always struck me as the perfect representative of BushCo: A pasty patsy frat boy in over his head. A second-rate ad-man who believed he was part of a revolution and a generational change. (I only hated McClellan half as much as I hated Ari Fleisher.) Now, Scotty admits, he was just part of the problem, like a child on the corner watching for cops while the drug deal goes down. There is no news in BushCo’s deception or the perpetual campaign waged by Rove. The news is that a insider loyalist finally noticed the emperor has no clothes. Better watch your back, Scotty. Elephants never forget (and they carry ice picks). Don’t get on any swiftboats. peace, mjh
Let’s just give all the money we have to “Defense” (formerly, the War Department) and let them decide what programs, domestic and foreign, “keep us safe.” It would be efficient.
Duhbya and company have so decimated the system that Defense has to beg for money for State. You can also thank Donni “Big Dick” Rumsfeld and Condi Rice. peace, mjh
All Things Considered, May 19, 2008 · Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expressing concern that the State Department has become stretched too thin by the diplomatic demands of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gates is arguing for more resources for Foggy Bottom.
Duhbya is desperate for immunity for the telecoms who rolled-over for him. Only they don’t even care. They’re actually insulted he things they need immunity. peace, mjh
Think Progress » Communications trade group opposes retroactive immunity.
In a letter to Congress late last week, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — which represents groups such as Google and Microsoft — said that it “strongly” opposes retroactive immunity for firms that cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping. CCIA President and CEO Edward Black writes:
CCIA dismisses with contempt the manufactured hysteria that industry will not aid the United States Government when the law is clear. As a representative of industry, I find that suggestion insulting. To imply that our industry would refuse assistance under established law is an affront to the civic integrity of businesses that have consistently cooperated unquestioningly with legal requests for information. This also conflates the separate questions of blanket retroactive immunity for violations of law, and prospective immunity, the latter of which we strongly support.
In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the “burn” rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.
Beyond 2008, working with “best-case” and “realistic-moderate” scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.
Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.
Think Progress » 452: Number of days President Bush has spent at his ranch in Crawford, TX. His stay there this past weekend with the the Danish prime minister marked Bush’s 70th visit as president. President Ronald Reagan, one of the modern presidency’s most “famous vacationer[s],” spent just 335 days at his ranch in Santa Barbara, CA.
Think Progress » Bush incoherently praises Odierno for ’snatching defeat.’
President Bush thanked Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who until recently served as the No. 2 commander in Iraq, for his service in Iraq. In attempting to apply the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” Bush offered this nonsensical praise for Odierno:
I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeatout of the jaws of those who were trying to defeat us in Iraq.
