One Year Anniversary

Today is the One Year Anniversary of Vice President Dick Cheney ignoring all protocols and safety rules of hunting when he shot Harry Whittington in the face during a quail hunting trip.

Here's to ya, shooter. If shooting a man in the face with a shotgun isn't enough to give you a heart attack, nothing is. Either that, or you're not human.

Wes Clark tells it like it is, and pays

Matthew Yglesias's insight into Wes Clark's recent foray into the delicate realm of criticizing Israel, Smears for Fears is a worthy read:

"Everything Clark said, in short, is true. What's more, everybody knows it's true. The worst that can truthfully be said about Clark is that he expressed himself in a slightly odd way. This, it seems clear, he did because it's a sensitive issue and he worried that if he spoke plainly he'd be accused of trafficking in anti-Semitism. So he spoke unclearly and, for his trouble, got … accused of trafficking in anti-Semitism."

What Clark said, according Ariana Huffington, about America attacking Iran, was:

"You just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers."

This is not anti-semitic. Why is any criticism of Israel (which has many nukes, in direct violation of many UN resolutions) considered anti-semitism? How are we ever going to get anywhere in the middle east unless Israel stops killing 10 for every one, stops building walls to support its apartheid, and goes so far as to call Jimmy Carter and Wes Clark anti-semites for trying to find solutions to huge problems that are caused, in part at least, by Israel.

Clark had a wonderful response for the likes of Jonah Goldberg and Michael Barone who are so afraid of a Clark presidency that they attack him over nothing. Clark sent this letter to Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti Defamation League:

Dear Mr. Foxman:

I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday and look forward to our continuing relationship.

As we discussed, I believe that the United States today finds itself in a pivotal position as we seek to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

We need to get our strategy right. Challenging the threat posed by Iran’s quest for regional hegemony and nuclear capabilities requires a multi-faceted strategy. There is still time for direct dialogue, and the United States should take the lead. There are no guarantees that such a dialogue would be successful; and the option to use force should not be taken off the table. It has been my experience that diplomacy has always been America’s most effective tool and that force should be used only as a last resort.

My position on Iran should not be misinterpreted, defined out of context or used to create conspiracy theories about one group’s influence on U.S. foreign policy. There is no place in these critical policy debates for Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that blame the Jewish community for the war in Iraq and for action against Iran.

A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a grave risk to the United States and our allies, including Israel.

I will not tolerate anti-Semitic conspiracy webs to permeate the honest debate Americans must have about how best to confront Iran.

I look forward to working with you and others in the American Jewish community to ensure that Iran does not become a nuclear threat to the United States, Israel, and our allies.

Sincerely,
Wesley K. Clark

One thing's for sure. George Bush could never write a letter like that.

A Letter to My Local Editor

In the past few months, I have seen letters stating that "everyone" thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is a blatant lie.

Many people, including people in the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, and Congress, were trying to tell the administration that the "intelligence" they were leaking to the press was wrong. Many people, including former weapons inspectors, tried to tell them that they were cherry picking the bits that made their case, and ignoring the evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, many members of the United Nations, including France, Canada, Germany, Russia, and many others were trying to tell the Bush administration that they were getting bad intelligence.

Of course, this is not the first time that the cabal of neo-con hawks in the Bush administration had gotten "intelligence" wrong in order to spend billions on military endeavors. During the Ford Administration, a group known as "Team B" (team A was the CIA) was making a case that the Soviet Union had thousands of ICBMs. They claimed the Soviets were spending almost their entire GNP on their military. They claimed the Soviets had a particle beam that could blow our warheads out of the sky. They pressured Ford, who caved in, to let them examine the "intelligence," which they then manipulated and leaked to the press, resulting in billions being spent on weapons to counter weapons that didn't exist.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's because Team B consisted of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, among others: a who's who of the neo-con architects of the Iraq War. Most of these men became members of the Project for a New American Century, which wrote in 2000 that "the process of transformation [in the middle east], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Even more ironically, during the Ford administration, CIA Director William Colby dared to disagree with the Cheney crowd. He was fired and replaced with George HW Bush, who agreed with them. Anyone keeping up with the Scooter Libby trial can note the ominous similarities to the outing of Valerie Plame, who's undercover operation, Brewster and Jennings, was gathering actual intelligence on nuclear proliferation. So it seems that this cabal of Cheney's has now gotten rid of a possible impediment to WMD intelligence from Iran.

This same gang of neo-cons were wrong about the Soviet Union in the 70's, and they were wrong about Iraq in 2003. Now they are telling us about the threat from Iran, without showing anyone the supposed evidence. Bush says he doesn't have to explain anything. He says he is the decider. He has boldly claimed that congress can do nothing to stop him.

Well, congress can. They can impeach. In fact, considering the lives and treasure we are spending on this fiasco (much of the treasure going to the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about, and for whom so many in the Bush administration have worked or will work), it is the constitutional duty of congress to look into the facts leading up to the Iraq war. When they find a high crime or misdemeanor, it is their duty to impeach.

So, the next time readers of this newspaper hear the same old lie about how Bush was working with "bad intelligence," run to the cabinet and get a BIG grain of salt. Everyone did not have it wrong. Shame on anyone, Republican or Democrat, who supported a war based on the word of a bunch of proven liars like these. If we do not impeach Bush and Cheney, then we will know for sure that the American pledge of "justice for all" is as much of a lie as those that got us into this mess.

Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link

Hey, whaddya know? The Bush Junta is lying again! I wonder if Curious George will accuse Iran of supplying weapons to the Iraqi insurgents tonight in his catatonic state of the union address? Yep, the LA Times is reporting that scant evidence has been found of an Iran-Iraq arms link. I'm shocked. Shocked that there are no weapons there.

Really, folks. Are we sensing a theme here? These guys make the Gulf of Tonkin look like the greatest ruse of all time.

For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement. During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.

The lack of publicly disclosed evidence has led to questions about whether the administration is overstating its case. Some suggest Bush and his aides are pointing to Iran to deflect blame for U.S. setbacks in Iraq. Others suggest they are laying the foundation for a military strike against Iran.

Of course, they could be doing both. You don't have to be a genius to think that in one of the many meetings the administration has had on how to do the politics of attacking Iran, Cheney has shot something like this into the faces of his fellow hawks:

Quack. We can blame the insurgency, quack, on the Iranians. Quack. That'll cover our asses on why we're losing in Iraq, and we can say attacking, quack, Iran will help us win in Iraq. Quack.

Of course, since it's not being reported on FAUX Nothing (it sure ain't news, as Olberman pointed out yesterday), the shit-for-brainers, like the fucking idiots in charge of my union news group, who think Obama is a muslim sleeper cell won't believe it.

Historic Quote Pertinent to GW Bush

I more than suspect already that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong - that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him. That originally having some strong motive - what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning - to involve two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory - that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood - that serpent's eye that charms to destroy - he plunged into it and has swept on and on till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico [read Iraq] might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the half-insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of his late message!.....His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease. -- Abraham Lincoln

Administration leaving out important details on Iraq

Why am I surprised to hear that Bush-Cheney Inc. is cherry picking information again? It's really par for the course, isn't it? Because, as Bill Clinton pointed out, these guys are operating on ideology. They already know what they want to do in a given circumstance. Their ideology tells them to make friends with whoever they think can win the civil war in Iraq, so they can push through an oil law that allows Western Oil Services companies (think Halliburton) a nice chunk of the pie. So, it's not really that shocking to find that the Bush Administration is leaving out important details on Iraq:

"President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq."

Go read the whole story. The details are irrefutable. It's all so damn obvious, and yet, they thumb their noses and dare us to stop them.

No Oversight on Katrina?

Just what is the White House doing for Joe Lieberman? Besides bombing Arabs, that is. In No Oversight on Katrina?, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball investigate why the Joementum has ended on demands "that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans." Could Joe be kissing Republican butt in order to be John McCain's vice president? Is Joe looking for a cabinent appointment? Just why, for example, would Joe back off this position:

Asserting that there were “too many important questions that cannot be answered,” Lieberman and other committee Democrats complained in a statement last year that the panel “did not receive information or documents showing what actually was going on in the White House.”

Seems good ol' independent Joe just isn't interested in finding out why the Bush administration did nothing to help the thousands of Americans who were devastated, and still are, by Katrina.

Among the missing material: the record of a videoconference in the White House Situation Room in which former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown said he warned senior officials about the dire situation in New Orleans, but was greeted with “deafening silence.” Also missing: records believed to include messages and conversations involving the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and their top aides during the days in late August and early September 2005 when the Katrina disaster was unfolding and thousands of city residents were flocking to overcrowded shelters and hanging onto rooftops awaiting rescue.

Gee, Joe. I bet is this had happened to Hartford Connecticut, you'd really want to see that video...

The Geo Strategic Importance of The Horn

In Salim Lone's article at Tom Paine, Destabilizing The Horn, you can get a brief history of the recent developments in the Horn of Africa, especially Bush's support of the Warlords, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.

The Horn of Africa, at whose core Somalia lies, is newly oil-rich. It is also just miles across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through that waterway.

So, if you're following along on your Risk Game Board, you need to note that you can guard your oil route from a land with even more oil. Geo-politics is all about business for these guys, and business means oil.

The New Iraqi Oil Law

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

Wonder if this vote has a chance in the Iraqi Parliament? I wonder who wrote this proposal? I wonder whose behind all this?

Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Blogswarm for Fair Use in Free Speech

The legal ramifications of this move by Disney to squelch fair use in free speech make this story noteworthy, but it also spotlights a dangerous disease rampaging through the right wing of this country, and that is hate speech which encourages violence as a way to settle disputes with liberals. Join the effort to cover this story so that ABC/Disney will be challenged for going after this blogger, Spocko, who is exercising his rights as a US citizen, but also to make sure that the hateful commentators are exposed for the disgusting, violence inciters that they are.

Of course, we can go after these assholes by targeting their advertisers, or by blog-swarming, or many other peaceful ways. I don't want to advocate violence against them. HOWEVER, I am for instant Karma, and I think if these bloodthirsty shits are so set in their ways that they want to call incitement to violence free speech, then I can take a few of their "conservative" points of view and beat them over their proverbial heads with them.

For example, they advocated blowing up all the mosques in Syria with cruise missiles while they're full of people praying. Of course they don't mention how they'll pay for it (cruise missiles costing millions each), but that goes without saying for wing-nuts. The instant Karma here would be for me to hope that some one blows up their church while they're praying in it. But I'm not going to hope that. I wouldn't want any innocent people to get hurt. What I do hope for, though, is for them to get stuck in Iraq with crappy body armor, in a shittily armored Hummer. Or, since they support everything the Bush administration does, I could just wish my old standard on them: I hope they get cancer, are refused marijuana to help with the pain, and just days before their cancerous organs explode, I hope they're denied the right to a dignified death and have to suffer through the cancer death, as Republicans have tried to force the people of Oregon to do, despite the fact that Oregon voters passed the death with dignity act.

Big difference between what they're doing and what I'm doing. In one case, these frumunder cheese eaters fantasized about putting NY Times editor Bill Keller in a malfunctioning electric chair. What has Bill Keller ever done to anyone? These people have supported a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. They support a president who says the law does not apply to him. They support policies of torture and murder. I do not. I only wish that these people get to experience a little of what they've wished on others. Maybe if they actually had to suffer a little in their delusional little lives, they'd think twice before wishing torture and murder on people.

White House argues its visitors log is off-limits to public

That's odd. I was under the impression that we, the taxpayers, own the White House. Bush doesn't even pay rent. But this isn't the usual landlord/tennant relationship. Bush isn't just our tennant. He's our employee. The Business side of the White House is not the residence. As Bush's employer, I want to know who's been visiting during office hours. So, when I heard that in yet another step towards unitary executive authority, that the White House is arguing that its visitors log is off-limits to public, I thought, well, that's gotta be the last straw. Coupled with the recent announcement that the executive branch can read any American's mail without a warrant, I figure even the die-hard anti-impeachment lefties must be caving in now.

And I was right. Thereisnospoon, one my favorite bloggers at the Daily KOS, has finally come over to the pro-impeachment camp:

The fact is that George Bush's continued insistence on using contra-legal signing statements to justify increasingly outrageous activities has left Americans with any shred of respect for the law with their backs against the wall.

Torture, wiretaps, mail reading, and hundreds of other laws have been shredded by the Bush egomania machine. Each one is a big fuck you to the legislative branch, as if laws of the land do not apply to the office of the President.

But I think it's more than that. After a life of having everything handed to him, GW Bush is convinced that he can do whatever he wants. And considering that many legal experts contend that a President can pardon himself, perhaps he is right. George can do whatever he wants and get away with it, because, when the shit hits the fan, the most that can happen is impeachment. In the midst of the investigations into the charges of impeachment, Bush could just pardon himself, or pardon Cheney and resign, and then Cheney pardons him. Either way, the worst that happens to the spoiled little brat is that he has to leave the Presidency a little early. Big deal. He's done what he went in to do anyway.

The rest of us will pay for years.

Robert Scheer: Silencing Saddam

Robert Scheer knows what's up with Silencing Saddam, at The Huffington Post:

"The irony here is that the crimes for which Saddam Hussein was convicted occurred before the United States, in the form of Donald Rumsfeld, embraced him. Those crimes were well known to have occurred 15 months before Rumsfeld visited Iraq to usher in an alliance between the United States and Saddam to defeat Iran."

This is a basic mafia hit. In an international trial, with real witnesses to ALL of Saddam's crimes, we would have found out where the goodies came from that Saddam used to kill his own people. We would have found out about all the help Ronnie Raygun and Bush's dad gave this third rate dictator who was more of a threat to the Republican party and the Bush family than he was to the Americans who'll be paying for this war for years to come.

Two Guys Out of Work

Of course, one of these guys has been tried and punished. The other gets a nice pension, and, no doubt, a book deal. I wonder which one is responsible for the most deaths? How do you teach ethics in a world where one mass murderer is rewarded and another is hanged? In fact, the Bush cabal, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, has killed hundreds of thousands more Iraqis in just a few years, a much quicker rate than Saddam ever achieved, even with the poison gas we gave him.

Republican War

DarkSyde wants to remind everyone that this is a Republican War:

"this is a Republican War started by a Republican President managed by a Republican Cabinet enabled by a Rubber-stamp Republican Congress and cheered on by Republican media operatives."

Cheered on by a lot of Democrats too. Like Hillary. And John Kerry. I mean, while we're working for public opinion, why not gain a little by admitting that certain members of our own party cheered this Treasonous administration on, like a bunch of political gamblers cheering on a cock fight, wherein they thought that out of the post-9-11 nationalist fervor, they could win the kind of political points afforded to those who sell out to the center.

Of course, Pro-war Democrats were just icing for Karl Rove's plan to politicize the war. Of course some Democrats would go for the head fake. Others did everything they could short of blocking the shot (thank you, Russ Feingold).

The rest of us need to point out that the Democrat/Republican difference is less important that the war/anti-war difference. Only ONE side of the latter was right. That makes for some very wrong Democrats (I'm looking at you, Joe Lieberman). Now I want to hear them admit they were wrong, otherwise, they're not much better than this narcissistic President on this issue.

Caniac the Miserable

The wing nut over at Questions for Christians wrote back, of course, because the fighting keyboardists don't have lives or kids in Iraq. And, as I promised, he has now been banned from the blog my wife started to honestly ask questions of Christians. When Caniac actually asked how the Iraq war conflicted with Christianity, I just had to let 'em go. But, he wrote back with a rude, hate-filled tirade for me that's just not worth posting (after saying he had no ill will, HA!). So, I got the last word. Am I too harsh? No. I don't support a war of lies, torture, creating more extremists, destroying diplomacy, deficits, supression of science, and environmental catastrophe. Am I too nasty and angry? Uh, well, just look at the state of the world this guy and his glorious leader have brought us? We should all be EXTREMELY ANGRY. These people have done more damage to the world in 6 years than anyone could have dreamed. This great country I love is being ruined by these red-neck mother fuckers, and I will never calm down to talk to their ilk. They should be in prison, and I'm going to severely pissed until that day arrives. So, here's the two barrels I gave him:

I knew you wouldn't be able to shut the fuck up, just like most Republicans.

80% of Americans disapprove of your glorious leader's handling of the war. I will no longer listen to the nonsensical ravings of your lunatic mind that says killing innocent people is OK with Jesus. After 911, the whole world was with us. Even Iranians were marching in the streets against extremist. Now the whole world hates us, and there is even more extremism. All because of George W. Bush. All because of idiots like you.

Crybaby? I have been physically assaulted by pricks like you because of my bumper stickers (so much for free speech), and I have seriously kicked the ass of every prick who ever did that to me. The last guy sucker punched me in the face through my car window and I got out and kicked him in the balls so hard, he was still on the ground crying when I drove away. I'm sure you would be no different. Without your guns or your keyboards to hide behind, you are sad little shits who never worked hard for anything in your miserable life. I have busted my ass at hard labor for 20 years, and I don't need some sad little shit like you to tell me what's real and what's not. You are a chicken shit little puke who couldn't fight in the war you support, so you join the fightin' keyboardists with the rest of your chicken hawk friends. Now piss off, fuck head. I could care less what you think about me. You started a war on lies, from a President who wasn't even elected, controlling a theocratic government that dismisses science and shoves a backwards religious view down the throats of those the constitution says have a right to be free of that.

When a democrat wins in 08, and the new democrat congress has passed a higher minimum wage, ethics reform, lower student loan rates, medicare reform, and your idiot president has vetoed all those things a majority of Americans want, then the only thing I will have to whine about is the fact that people like you aren't in prison for your treasonous crimes, and the enormous tax you've left to my children because of your massive deficits.

Your idiotic ravings have been marked as spam and you are no longer able to post at Questions for Christians. Any email you send back to me will be marked as spam and go unread, so don't bother. I control this site, and you are no longer welcome. I get the last word. You and your red-neck buddies down in North Carolina can all go fuck each other's pretty mouths while you rant and rave about the homosexual agenda, you fucking deliverance hypocrites. I hope you get cancer and are denied marijuana as medicine, I hope you suffer in your final days without the option of euthanasia, and I hope it all happens after you're forced to patrol the streets of Baghdad in shitty body armor.

So long, prick. You will not be missed.

If anything, I was too easy on the miserable excuse for a living being.

Christian Questions for Christians Answer Christian Questions

The End of Caniac?

"You have certainly shown yourself to be an ignorant and angry man with whom an intelligent conversation is impossible."

I can only hope. But there's no way I'm going to let a wing nut get the last word...

Well, I'll be glad to see you go. Throughout your ignorant tirades, you have ignored my questions and provided lies as proof for yours. You ask ignorant crap like "how is the Iraq war a corruption of Christianity?" And, apparently, you're actually serious. Just once I'd like for jerks like you to quote where Jesus said killing people is good. But, forget Jesus for a while. I can ethically argue that sometimes war is neccessary, and even good, like when we stopped the Nazis. But you have made no such argument for why the Iraq war is good. You are blindly following your lying jerk of a President, who has called me a terrorist, while you support the killilng of innocent civilians. You and your chimpanzee leader have lied at every turn. Your attempt to equate Islamist extremists with Nazis is a sad joke. You just can't face the fact that you and your glorious leader have been wrong about EVERYTHING. So, suck it up and get lost. This country is finally on a path back to REASON and SCIENCE, and your pitiful attempts to debunk global warming with EXXON funded bullshit has been exposed for the dangerous, murderous lie it is. From the environment, to the war, to Katrina, to the deficit, to the attack on science, your glorious president has made this world a more dangerous place. Millions will die as a result. You should be ashamed of yourself. And to have the balls to call me ignorant after the display you've provided on these pages is the height of Hubris. Why don't you go see what your Bible says about that...

Frankly, if someone who pays attention to the evils you and your ilk have perpetuated isn't as angry as I am, there's something seriously wrong with them. So long, and thanks for all the death, destruction, and deficits. We'll clean up your mess, but you're not allowed to play here anymore.

Of course, there's no way he'll let that go, so I hope he comes back for one last diatribe that I can mark as spam, so he can no longer speak for Christians over at my wife's Questions for Christians blog.

EPA Gone Feral: Destroying Our Future

This Bush treason will kill many more children than his little war has.

"In defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar."

This is self destruction of public property at its worst. While selling the furniture for pennies on the dollar to friends is just plain old theft, the destruction of years of research into toxic chemicals and pesticides is an outright assault on the lives and health of every American. This obvious attempt to help industry by knee-capping the regulatory agency that protects us from the chemicals is so cynical, so dangerous, and so homicidal that somebody from the Bush cabal had damn well better go to jail over this one. They'll put Nuns in jail for graffiti on Pentagon property, but they'll let this shit slide?

In a letter dated November 30, 2006, four incoming House Democratic committee chairs demanded that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson assure them “that the destruction or disposition of all library holdings immediately ceased upon the Agency's receipt of this letter and that all records of library holdings and dispersed materials are being maintained.” On the very next day, December 1st, EPA de-linked thousands of documents from the website for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA’s Washington D.C. Headquarters.

Last month without notice to its scientists or the public, EPA abruptly closed the OPPTS Library, the agency’s only specialized research repository on health effects and properties of toxic chemicals and pesticides. The web purge follows reports that library staffers were ordered to destroy its holdings by throwing collections into recycling bins.

“EPA’s leadership appears to have gone feral, defying all appeals to reason or consultation,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Congress has yet to review, let alone approve, the library closures. “The new Congress convening in January will finally have a chance to decide whether EPA will continue to pillage its library network.”

Un-fucking-believable. These people have no shame. Do their kids breath different air, drink different water, or eat different food from the rest of us. Or are they actually thinking, fuck the kids? Oh, right. Iraq. Deficit. Pollution. I see a trend. The GOP just doesn't give a shit about the future generations of Americans. I guess they're really betting the farm on the Rapture....

Daily Kos: Impeachment: you think the world is not watching?

"So Democrats also think it's okay to go invade another country, to get several hundred thousand of its inhabitants killed, to proudly practice and promote torture around the world, to tear up the Geneva Conventions and a whole load of international treaties, and to go grab random foreigners around the world to put them in Guantanamo and throw away the key?"

Right. But when we discover the crimes, we need to make it clear that there is no choice. The constitution states quite clearly that impeachment is what you do if there have been high crimes and misdemeanors. This isn't something we can throw away for political expediency. This is a constitutional duty. If we don't do our duty, we are just as guilty as Republicans for putting party over country.

Document shows Bush guided CIA on detention - Americas - International Herald Tribune

If this isn't treason, I don't know what is. George Bush personally authorized torture techniques. Remember the reports that as young person, he tortured and killed frogs? First sign of a serial killer.

There is something wrong with the Bush family. Just look what Jeb has been up to:

Officials Clash Over Mentally Ill in Florida Jails

For years, circuit judges here have ordered state officials to obey Florida law and promptly transfer severely mentally ill inmates from jails to state hospitals. But with few hospital beds available, Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration began flouting those court orders in August.

Now, in a growing standoff between the government of Florida and its judges, the state is being threatened with steep daily fines if it does not comply. And at least one judge has raised the possibility that the secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families could go to jail for contempt of court.

“This type of arrogant activity cannot be tolerated in an orderly society,” Judge Crockett Farnell of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court wrote in an Oct. 11 ruling.

Despite Billions Spent, Rebuilding Incomplete - washingtonpost.com

So, we lefties never talk about all the good things that America has done for Iraq. OK, let's do that. Today's WP has a look at exactly what our reconstruction dollars have done in Iraq. And that's just some of the trillion or so we'll spend on it. Well, we didn't really spend it. We charged it. Our kids will be paying the Iraq tax for decades. But, let's look at the good stuff.

"'We accomplished a significant amount of work. But it was just overwhelmed by the overlay of violence,' said Clifford G. Mumm, who has spent much of the past three years in Iraq managing projects for Bechtel Corp. 'It's hard to be very optimistic.'

U.S.-funded projects have long been a target for sabotage. Many of those that were spared remain unused by a population paralyzed by violence.

Yet those inside the reconstruction effort say security concerns were hardly the only problem. Poor planning and coordination by U.S. officials meant that even successful individual projects failed to do the job; for example, health-care centers were built at great cost but had no water and sewer service. Poor work-site management by contractors meant that some projects went awry. And now that the United States is handing over reconstruction efforts to Iraq, many involved with the process worry that the Iraqis don't have the training or the money to keep U.S.-built facilities running."

I know, commie bastards like me even try to ruin the good stuff for you. So, maybe you'd like to hear what an actual Iraqi has to say.

"What reconstruction?" Othman said in an interview last week. "Today we are drinking untreated water from a plant built decades ago that was never maintained. The electricity only visits us two hours a day. And now we are going backwards. We cook on the firewood we gather from the forests because of the gas shortage."

Well, there you have it. Our money has actually done the opposite of what GW Bush, the great leader and hero who was OH so much better than Gore or Kerry (people with actual experience in war), intended. Well, boys and girls, the road to hell is paved with GW Bush's good intentions. So is the road to Baghdad.