We've done such a GOOD job bringing peace and democracy to the Middle East and the Iraqi's are so much better off now that we've taken charge of their country:

From Harper's Weekly ..

Thirteen U.S. soldiers died in Iraq,
where the U.S. military was planning to deploy 5,000
more troops. At least 34 gunshot bodies were found in
Baghdad, all showing signs of torture. Shiite militia
groups in Baghdad were setting up checkpoints, demanding
that passersby provide identification, and shooting Sunnis
on the spot. "The gangs also raided houses and shouted at
the people there, 'You pimps, Sunnis, we will kill you,'"
explained an eyewitness. "And they did." Gunmen in Mosul
set fire to government-run food-ration shops. A marine
sniper who has killed as many as 60 insurgents in Iraq said
of his work, "It's like hearing classical music playing
in my head." It was reported that Private Steven D. Green,
who is charged with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then
killing her and members of her family, had said that, in
Iraq, "killing people is like squashing an ant, I mean,
you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get
some pizza.'" The coach of the Iraqi national soccer team
resigned and fled to Kurdistan.

Some quotes from this morning's read:

By Ruben Navarrette in the SacBee
SAN DIEGO -- Common sense and conventional wisdom can be valuable in politics. But here in California, there is a place where those things go to die.

Is the recent anti-abortion law in S.Dakota is a harbinger of our decent into the horror's to be found in El Salvador?

What you find is a nation in a near-Handmaid's Tale dystopia where a mother of three is imprisoned for 30 years, where a woman must wait until her ectopic pregnancy bursts in her fallopian tubes to get surgery, where the mother of a pregnant woman can be prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to her daughter before, during or after an illegal abortion.

The title of this post? The folks who check vaginas for evidence of an abortion procedure. It's real. (in El Salvador)

YES!!!!
Molly tells it like it is... Go Ms Ivins!!!

Molly Ivins: Enough of the D.C. Dems
Enough of the D.C. Dems
By Molly Ivins
March 2006 Issue

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.

I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.

Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.

As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:

1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.

2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.

3) Single-payer health insurance.

Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.

Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.

This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.

Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.

What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”

I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.

We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.

One dedicated congressman... I thank you!

S.RES.398
Title: A resolution relating to the censure of George W. Bush.
Sponsor: Sen Feingold, Russell D. [WI] (introduced 3/13/2006) Cosponsors (None)
Latest Major Action: 3/13/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

From the Washington Post today:

Put another way, Mr. Bush has managed to rack up more new debt during his five years in office than the entire debt amassed by the United States through 1988. And there is more to come: The president's budget envisions the debt rising to $11.5 trillion by 2011. This means that an increasing share of an increasingly tight budget must be devoted simply to paying interest -- an estimated $220 billion this fiscal year alone. Remember: This is the president who entered office promising to pay off $2 trillion in debt held by the public over the next decade. Far from being paid down, the debt held by the public has grown, from $3.3 trillion in 2001 to $5 trillion this year.

In the end, of course, Congress will vote to raise the debt ceiling, as it must. Indeed, the House has already done so, quietly, under a rule designed to let members take that step without having any politically damaging attention called to it. The Senate is to take up the issue this week, most likely just before it leaves on its latest recess; there, too, the hope of the majority is to get this unpleasant business over with as quickly as possible. But Democrats have secured an agreement to vote on several amendments, including tying the debt increase to restoring pay-as-you-go requirements on new entitlement spending or tax cuts. This is mostly for purposes of political point-scoring -- the amendment's not likely to be approved -- but that doesn't take away from the importance of doing something to get the budget under control.

Because, as the debt ceiling approaches $9 trillion, it's time to pause and consider the unabashed recklessness of the Bush administration's fiscal policies and its unwillingness to alter its tax-cutting course to accommodate new budgetary realities. "Future generations shouldn't be forced to pay back money that we have borrowed," Mr. Bush said in March 2001. "We owe this kind of responsibility to our children and grandchildren." Where is that responsibility now?

Sometimes one death revirberate around the world and has a great impact. The death of Tom Fox is and should be one of those circumstances. A good man... doing good, thoughtfully and stongly....

"Be patterns, be examples in every country,place,or nation that you visit," George Fox wrote, "so that your bearing and life might communicate with all people. Then you'll happily walk across the earth to evoke that of God in everybody. So that you will be seen as a blessing in their eyes and you will receive a blessing from that of God within them."

Thank you for a light that shone brightly ... bless you all who strive for PEACE.

Why don't they tell us the good news?

By Cervantes

The population of Iraq is about 24 million, just a tad more than the population of Texas. Imagine that in Texas, several acres in the center of the capital city, including the capitol building and government offices, are surrounded by a 12 foot high blast wall, and that citizens are forbidden to enter the zone to meet with their representatives or officials of state agencies, or to observe legislative or court proceedings. The state is occupied by 140,000 Russian soldiers, who travel in armored convoys and shoot 50 caliber automatic rifles at any vehicle that gets close to them. Hardly any of them speaks a word of English.

The government is controlled by evangelical protestants, whose police work closely with the Russian soldiers. The evangelicals live in separate neighborhoods from people of other faiths. Routinely, Russian soldiers surround non-evangelical neighborhoods, while the evangelical police break down the doors of every house, force the inhabitants to kneel in the front yard, and ransack the homes. On each occasion, they haul away a dozen or so young men to secret prisons, where they join thousands of others who are held without charges, who have no access to lawyers or the legal system, and who no-one is allowed to visit. On a typical Friday:

1. A car bomb kills 9 people at a Catholic church in Lubbock.
2. A Texas Ranger is killed and 3 are injured by a roadside bomb in Dallas.
3. A car bomb in Waco kills three civilians.
4. Gunmen kill a government official in Galveston and kidnap another.
5. A roadside bomb kills a police lieutenant and injures a police captain in Crawford.
6. A Russian helicopter fire two rockets into a Jewish neighborhood in Houston, killing six members of a family. The government claims the dead were all insurgents.
7. A gunfight between unknown militants and Russian and Texan forces near Texas Stadium results in four injuries.
8. Gunmen killed a policeman in Huntsville.
9. The kidnappers of a Russian journalist threaten to kill her unless the Russians release all the Texan women they hold in prison.
10. Gunmen kill a traffic policeman in College Station.
11. Gunmen killed a police sergeant on patrol in Nacogdoches.
12. A roadside bomb kills a civilian in Fort Worth.



On this day, as on most others, a couple of dozen people are kidnapped for ransom. It is unsafe to travel on the highways, and bodies turn up with their hands bound and signs of torture in vacant lots every day. Most of the state has electricity for only 4 hours a day, and most Texans have contaminated drinking water. The unemployment rate is 60%, and 10% of children are malnourished. Most people depend largely on government rations for food.

Vladimir Putin complains constantly that the news media aren't covering all the good news from Texas.