ramsey clarke is a saddam/cindy/murtha/chavez lover who probably went to davos and speaks french
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
impeachbush.org
impeachbush.org ran this fullpage ad in the nyt a coupla days ago

ramsey clarke is a saddam/cindy/murtha/chavez lover who probably went to davos and speaks french
ramsey clarke is a saddam/cindy/murtha/chavez lover who probably went to davos and speaks french
no big fat lies
* "If your religious beliefs interfere with your job providing any and all desired or required care for a patient, you have several options- change your job, change your religion, suck it up and hope yours is a forgiving God." (link)
* krugman: "Why does the insistence of some journalists on calling this one-party scandal bipartisan matter? For one thing, the public is led to believe that the Abramoff affair is just Washington business as usual, which it isn’t. The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory."
* "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today sued the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over its continued refusal to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Katrina-related issues." (link)
i heart melanie.
* yesterday i mentioned the Silent Disco. thnx to a reader in Holland who pointed me to the official site - it turns out the concept was big in europe over the summer.
* more on the mydd poll results here and here
* "But of all the changes over which President Bush has presided, the biggest is probably the 'hopelessly polarized country we live in today,' says independent pollster John Zogby."" (link)
* "Sen. Russ Feingold Monday charged that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales misled the Judiciary Committee at his Senate confirmation hearing on January 6, 2005, when repsonding to questions about the President's authority to order warrantless surveillance." (link)
* idiot bumiller has her annual article about the writing of the sotu (16words): "
bumiller continues:
* krugman: "Why does the insistence of some journalists on calling this one-party scandal bipartisan matter? For one thing, the public is led to believe that the Abramoff affair is just Washington business as usual, which it isn’t. The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory."
* "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today sued the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over its continued refusal to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Katrina-related issues." (link)
i heart melanie.
* yesterday i mentioned the Silent Disco. thnx to a reader in Holland who pointed me to the official site - it turns out the concept was big in europe over the summer.
* more on the mydd poll results here and here
* "But of all the changes over which President Bush has presided, the biggest is probably the 'hopelessly polarized country we live in today,' says independent pollster John Zogby."" (link)
* "Sen. Russ Feingold Monday charged that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales misled the Judiciary Committee at his Senate confirmation hearing on January 6, 2005, when repsonding to questions about the President's authority to order warrantless surveillance." (link)
* idiot bumiller has her annual article about the writing of the sotu (16words): "
"(Blinky) will say, 'Get it out, it doesn't follow,' " Mr. McGurn (head'no fat, no repetition, no meandering' and no big fat lies? 16 words?liarspeechwriter) said. The president, never known for his elocution, does have clear ideas of how a speech should sound — no fat, no repetition, no meandering. "He's not big on anecdote," Mr. McGurn said. "He really wants to make it on an argument.""
bumiller continues:
"While they have had varying success, Mr. Bush's State of the Union addresses have been memorable for one reason or another: defining an "axis of evil," preparing the nation for the Iraq war, opening a re-election campaign, calling for an overhaul of Social Security."no mention of the 16 words? this would be a perfect paragraph to mention it, surely.
Marlboro Man gets PTSD
* jeralyn: "Bush undoubtedly will use this (new zawahiri) tape and Osama's tape of a few weeks ago to remind us during SOTU that we must win the war on terror. He probably won't remind us that his war on terror and curtailing of our civil liberties did not produce either one of these two top terrorists despite the passage of more than four years since Sept. 11."
* jeralyn has a post up about Marlboro Man getting PTSD. ftr - i thought that the whole Marlboro Man thing was actually an advertisement for Marlboro - a clever way to get around the restrictions on advertising. IIRC, at one point Fox put the still up on the screen and literally added an image of a pack of marlboro's... nice work.
* ""In order to protect his brand as a hard-charging, truth-probing journalist, Team Russert needs to do an Oprah: haul back on his show Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the politicians who've lied to him on the set and damaged his credibility and confront them straight out."" (link)
* St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial "But sound financial and accounting practices are American values, too — or at least they used to be. The Justice Department can’t just let it slide. Defrauding the government in peacetime is a crime. Defrauding it during a war is very close to treason. " (link)
* chris deliso: "Today we live in an imperial moment like any other. And when it becomes necessary to grovel at the feet of empire to curry favor, those who have neither self-respect nor an interest in self-reliance always win. Sometimes it's better to lose." (link)
* it's time to rush out and get an abortion. or two. stockpile them if you can.
* jeralyn has a post up about Marlboro Man getting PTSD. ftr - i thought that the whole Marlboro Man thing was actually an advertisement for Marlboro - a clever way to get around the restrictions on advertising. IIRC, at one point Fox put the still up on the screen and literally added an image of a pack of marlboro's... nice work.
* ""In order to protect his brand as a hard-charging, truth-probing journalist, Team Russert needs to do an Oprah: haul back on his show Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the politicians who've lied to him on the set and damaged his credibility and confront them straight out."" (link)
* St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial "But sound financial and accounting practices are American values, too — or at least they used to be. The Justice Department can’t just let it slide. Defrauding the government in peacetime is a crime. Defrauding it during a war is very close to treason. " (link)
* chris deliso: "Today we live in an imperial moment like any other. And when it becomes necessary to grovel at the feet of empire to curry favor, those who have neither self-respect nor an interest in self-reliance always win. Sometimes it's better to lose." (link)
* it's time to rush out and get an abortion. or two. stockpile them if you can.
more tristero
Oh - and here's tristero again - first he quotes molly ivins:
Tristero sounds a lot like me this morning.
here's what i said earlier in the month:
I am confounded by the authoritarian streak in the Republican Party backing Bush on this [extensive, illegal spying on Americans]. To me it seems so simple: Would you think this was a good idea if Hillary Clinton were president? Would you be defending the clear and unnecessary violation of the law? Do you have complete confidence that she would never misuse this 'inherent power' for any partisan reason?tristero responds:
Molly, you're assuming that sooner or later there actually will be a Democratic president. Republicans assume that will never, ever happen again. And they're doing everything possible - controlling voting machines, gerrymandering, fraud, blackmail, buying the media - to make sure it doesn't.
Tristero sounds a lot like me this morning.
here's what i said earlier in the month:
"Why is a hobbled repuglican administration so desperate to claim uber-power for the executive? Even if they are successful at grabbing that power, they will only be able to use it for a year or so before getting totally lame-ducky (if for no other reason that the electoral politics change as we approach the end of any president's tenure.) The repugs are trying to claim the president as king, even though they are most likely to be handing that power to the Dems as the repugs get thrown into electoral wilderness for a decade or more while they try to throw an amnesia blanket over the electorate in the hope that people might forget the Bush Reign.
i'm pretty sure that Cheney et al don't really believe in executive power - but rather only Republican Executive power - therefore we are forced to ask what the hell they are doing. are they just trying to make sure that the next few years till impeachment or 2008 are as fun as possible for themselves? maybe. or are they really confident that there will be a repuglican president in 2009? how on earth could they be confident of that? there are two possibilities - one, they own the voting machines, or b) they plan to use all the executive power that they have taken for themselves and call off the 2008 election.
does anyone have a more reasonable explanation?"
unintelligent design or intelligent undesign
* there are two memes gathering traction that we've been discussing a lot lately: one, it's difficult to know whether the egadministration is intentionally fucking everything up, or if they are simply massively incompetent. two, it is essentially irrelevant.
here's tristero:
here's tristero:
A cynic, or a paranoid, might think that a terrorist breeding ground was the goal all along for Bush/ Iraq - to create a genuine existential threat for the US to fight - which would maximize profits, destroy liberalism, etc. I don't think that's so. It's too simplistic a formulation to satisfy me; the world is more complicated than that. But in a certain sense it doesn't really matter. Deliberate psychopathy or blithering stupidity or both: The reality is that Bush has opened the gates of Hell.
no ambient sound. how cool is that?
* juancole: " In his press conference on Thursday, Bush portrayed the Palestinian elections in the same way he depicts Republican Party victories over Democrats in the United States: "The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare." He sounds like a spokesman for Hamas, underlining the irony that Bush and his party have given Americans the least honest government in a generation, have drastically cut services, and have actively opposed extension of healthcare to the uninsured in the United States." (link)
* glenn greenwald reiterates a point that i made earlier today:
who googled "cindy sheehan evil" - thankyou rush limbaugh. does that make anyone feel safer?
* i cant remember how many times i've pointed out that repugs are more scared of impeachment than is warranted by the apparent democrat silence on this issue - they usually push limbaugh and his ilk to pre-emptively dismiss the idea. here's another example from the National Journal:
* glenn greenwald reiterates a point that i made earlier today:
"The cause of this irrationality, this inability to view the terrorism threat with any perspective, is not a mystery. Terrorists like Al Qaeda deliberately stage attacks which are designed to instill fear in the population far beyond what is warranted by the actual threat-level posed by the terrorists. That's the defining tactic and objective of terrorists. Fortunately for the terrorists, in the United States, Al Qaeda has a powerful ally in this goal: the Bush Administration, which for four years has, along with Al Qeada, worked ceaselessly to instill in Americans an overarching and excessive fear of terrorism."* i havent done a 'highlights from the server logs" for a while - this one from "iraq.centcom.mil "
who googled "cindy sheehan evil" - thankyou rush limbaugh. does that make anyone feel safer?
* i cant remember how many times i've pointed out that repugs are more scared of impeachment than is warranted by the apparent democrat silence on this issue - they usually push limbaugh and his ilk to pre-emptively dismiss the idea. here's another example from the National Journal:
"Expanding on the Conyers gambit, Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative leader and the chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, went even further. "If you have a [Democratic] takeover in the House, Bush will be impeached," Weyrich bluntly predicted in an interview.* i've been meaning to inject a little non-political discourse into this blog - and i've failed dismally. here's a story tho - i used to be a raver of sorts - in a different decade - and a tech-freak. there's an australian version of lollapalooza called The Big Day Out - they always get an incredible line-up and i've been on many an occasion. to be clear - its a big multi-stage summer music festival. i'm only guessing - but i guess they have something like 80 performers in ten different venues. yesterday was the melbourne edition - and i heard something i've never heard of before - The Silent Room. apparently, what happens is that they have a shed with two different DJ's playing simultaneuosly - and it's silent. no speakers. how's that? when you walk into the shed, you are given a pair of wifi headphones with two settings - one for each DJ. so everyone is dancing, as normal, but there's no ambient sound. how cool is that?
Livingston, Scanlon and DeLay
further to my current interest in all things Livingston - i thought i'd have another look at the snippet last week from New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, January 25, 2006 (via TPM)
At the time, I asked:
Did Scanlon cough up the info on his own as part of his attempt to negotiate a deal? or were prosecutors already probing the issue? If it is the former, then Scanlon presumably coughed up 3 pieces of information: 1) that he looked into Livingston's 'Teh Sex' life 2) that there is something amiss (legally) about what happened, and 3) at whose behest.
If it was the latter (that prosecuters were probing a reluctant Scanlon about the issue) - then it's conceivable that he 'admitted' his involvement (perhaps given proof of some sort), but not admitted who was the client - which would explain why the prosecutors are still looking into it (and we also have to assume some criminality).
Why would the prosecutors be looking at DeLay? Either because Scanlon is squealing, or perhaps because his ex-fiance knows something...
"Jack Abramoff's partner Mike Scanlon admitted to digging up former Congressman Robert Livingston's private life. Set to become speaker, Livingston then got sidelined for Tom DeLay's man Denis Hastert. Prosecutors now checking if Abramoff and Scanlon took Livingston down at DeLay's behest."This is most odd for a variety of reasons. As Laura noted, it's difficult to see where any conceivable criminality might exist.
At the time, I asked:
"my question is under what circumstances did Scanlon 'admit' it? was he asked about it by prosecutors? why on earth would they do that? or did scanlon offer it up all by himself? and if so, why?"Adam's scoop seems to have two distinct elements - a) Scanlon admitted it, and b) the prosecutor is 'checking if Abramoff and Scanlon took Livingston down at DeLay's behest'.
Did Scanlon cough up the info on his own as part of his attempt to negotiate a deal? or were prosecutors already probing the issue? If it is the former, then Scanlon presumably coughed up 3 pieces of information: 1) that he looked into Livingston's 'Teh Sex' life 2) that there is something amiss (legally) about what happened, and 3) at whose behest.
If it was the latter (that prosecuters were probing a reluctant Scanlon about the issue) - then it's conceivable that he 'admitted' his involvement (perhaps given proof of some sort), but not admitted who was the client - which would explain why the prosecutors are still looking into it (and we also have to assume some criminality).
Why would the prosecutors be looking at DeLay? Either because Scanlon is squealing, or perhaps because his ex-fiance knows something...