A Scary Man to Watch...

Grooming the next Ahmad Chalabi By Alan Weisman
November 28, 2007

Richard Perle is again propping up regime-toppling Mideast dissidents who lack credibility.

 

So, in his quest for idealistic dissidents to do in the Middle East what the Walesas and Havels achieved in Eastern Europe, Perle and his acolytes have tapped the discredited Ahmad Chalabi for Iraq, the suspect Amir Abbas Fakhravar for Iran and the allegiance-challenged Fahrid Ghadry for Syria. They're just not making heroes like they used to. Alan Weisman is the author of the first biography of Richard Perle, "Prince of Darkness -- Richard Perle: The Kingdom, the Power, and the End of Empire in America."

Found...

Great color generator: http://www.colorjack.com/

Directory of Museurms: http://www.museumstuff.com/

A new year

It's been a while since blogging.  I think that I reached a saturation point and there was little point in tracking the outrageous, and the outrageous overwhelmed joy in the good....

These guys have good links:
http://www.tadgear.com/links.htm
along with outdoor equipment....

Just signed up with vmix.com to explore a new means of video/photos for the club...
I don't know how to get the yc members involved in the club and the website..  I'm sure that the main problem stems from a lack of focus or a goal...

There's the "new year" flurry... but we'll see...

Finished reading:

The Law of Love - a mixture of Mexican history and spirituality. The author mixes in comics (graphical novel?) and music (CD comes with book). 

Q&A - Indian novel of life.  It adds to The Life of Pi and The God of Small Things. 

Now listening to Molly Ivins.... I miss her insight and humor!

Next week starts a new adventure.  Stella's and TPM are past and gainful employment hoped for...

The Original Mother's Day Proclamation

Following the horror of our Civil War....It is as valid today.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Some of the things that REALLY bother me

In No particular order, nothing new... just today's dismay...

GW's Palace:
The new American embassy in Baghdad (known to Iraqis as "George W's Palace"). When completed, it will be the largest embassy in the known universe with untold thousands of employees; then there would need to be forces to protect the heavily fortified citadel of the Green Zone (aka "the International Zone") which protects the embassy and other key U.S. facilities.

Blackwater and contract KILLERS...
According to the Government Accountability Office, there are now some 48,000 employees of private military companies in Iraq. These not-quite G.I. Joes, working for Blackwater and other major U.S. firms, can clear in a month what some active-duty soldiers make in a year. "We got 126,000 contractors over there, some of them making more than the secretary of Defense," said House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha. "How in the hell do you justify that?"
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman estimates that $4 billion in taxpayer money has so far been spent in Iraq on these armed "security" companies like Blackwater -- with tens of billions more going to other war companies like KBR and Fluor for "logistical" support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of the House Intelligence Committee believes that up to forty cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors.
Contractors have provided the White House with political cover, allowing for a back-door near doubling of U.S. forces in Iraq through the private sector, while masking the full extent of the human costs of the occupation.
more on Blackwater from Tom Dispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=190995

Neo-Con Hypocracy while blatenly breaking the law:
for example:Randall Tobias, the "abstinence makes the heart grow fonder" AIDS czar is a screaming hypocrite for his extra-marital "massages,"
more... Hullabaloo:http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/abcs-of-hypocrisy-by-digby-i-know.html
Not only does the hypocracy boggle the mind, over and over again but the fact that these miscreants can resign for "personal reasons" are are NOT put in jail.. .OH, I forget, the federal prosecuting attorney's get fired if they prosecute Republican Bush supporters... EGADS!!!!!!!

ad nauseum.......

Halberstam on the press.....

timothy.rutten@latimes.com  apr 28, 07

Halberstam was acutely concerned about the effect the economic assumptions behind such cuts would have on newspaper journalists' ability to bring to light our government's propensity for deadly "mendacity and delusion.

"The industry as a whole is in trouble because people at the top are taking out too much money and driving the profits up. The perception is that the real customers are not those who read the paper but those who buy the stock. It damages the profession."

© 2003 In These Times

Knowing What’s Nice
by Kurt Vonnegut
November 6, 2003

Author’s note: I’m working on a novel, If God Were Alive Today, about a fictitious man, Gil Berman, 36 years my junior, who cracks jokes or whatever in front of college audiences from time to time, something I myself have done. Here are excerpts from some of what I myself said onstage at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on the evening of September 22, 2003, as we touch off the last chunks and drops and whiffs of fossil fuels.

K.V.
September 24, 2003
Sagaponack, New York

It must be kind of spooky to be a student or teacher in a university as great as this one, with its libraries and laboratories and lecture halls, while knowing it is within the borders of a nation where wisdom, reason, knowledge and truth no longer apply.

I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, ''If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.''

But actually, to practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. Dance on your way out of here. Sing on your way out of here. Write a love poem when you get home. Draw a picture of your bed or roommate.

And hey, listen: A sappy woman sent me a letter a few years back. She knew I was sappy, too, which is to say a lifelong northern Democrat in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt mode, a friend of the working stiffs. She was about to have a baby, not mine, and wished to know if it was a bad thing to bring such a sweet and innocent creature into a world as bad as this one is. I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society. Perhaps some of you are or will become saints for her child to meet.

And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, ''If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.''

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ''If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.''

That’s one favor I’ve asked of you.

Now I’ve got another one, a show of hands. How many of you have had a teacher at any point in your entire education who made you happier to be alive, prouder to be alive than you had previously believed possible? Now please say the name of that teacher out loud to someone sitting or standing near you.

OK? All done? ''If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.''

I’ll be 81 on November 11. What’s it like to be this old? I can’t parallel park worth a damn anymore. Please don’t watch when I try to do it. But no matter how bad things may get for me, the music will still be wonderful. My epitaph, should I ever need one, God forbid: ''The only proof he ever needed of the existence of God was music.''

You and the police are entitled to know, since I am going to spend the night near you, that I am both a Humanist and a Luddite. I may hold a Black Mass in the parking garage of the Best Western Hotel, if I can find a neo-conservative baby to sacrifice.

Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.

We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, ''Isaac is up in Heaven now.'' It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ''Kurt is up in Heaven now.'' That’s my favorite joke.

Do you know what a Luddite is? That’s a person who doesn’t like newfangled contraptions. Contraptions like nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles that have H-bombs in their warheads, and like computers that cheat you out of becoming. Bill Gates says, ''Wait till you can see what your computer can become.'' But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work—not the damn fool computer.

Now you know what a Humanist and a Luddite are. Do you know what a Twerp is? When I was in high school in Indianapolis 65 years ago, a Twerp was a guy who stuck a set of false teeth up his rear end and bit the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs. (And a Snarf was a guy who sniffed the seats of girls’ bicycles.)

And I consider anybody a Twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is ''Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,'' by Ambrose Bierce. It isn’t remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like ''Sophisticated Lady'' by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove. ''Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,'' by Ambrose Bierce.

I consider anybody a Twerp who hasn’t read Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

Want a taste of that great book? He says, and he said it 168 years ago, that in no country other than ours has love of money taken stronger hold on the affections of men. OK?

And many of you, if not most, have surely at least dipped into that great book. But I can hardly call you Twerps, or even Snarfs, if you have never even heard of the next book I want to celebrate. Practically nobody has, since it is basically a medical text: The Mask of Sanity, first published in 1941 and written by the late Dr. Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia.

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort who are making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These are people born without consciences. They know full well the pain their actions may cause others to feel but do not care. They cannot care. They came into this world with a screw loose, and now they’re taking charge of everything. They appear to be great leaders because they are so decisive. Do this! Do that! What makes them so decisive is that they do not care and cannot care what happens next.

Now then, there’s a good news and there’s a bad news tonight. The bad news is that the Martians have landed in New York City, and are staying at the Waldorf. The good news is that they only eat homeless man, women and children of all colors, and they pee gasoline.

But seriously, if you read the supermarket tabloids you know that for the past 10 years a team of Martian anthropologists has been studying our country, the only country worth a damn on the whole planet—forget Brazil and Argentina. Well, they went back home last week because they knew how really awful global warming is about to be. Their space ship wasn’t a flying saucer. It was more of a flying soup tureen. And they’re little, only six inches high, but they aren’t green. They’re mauve.

By way of farewell, their little mauve leader said there were two things about American culture no Martian could ever understand. ''What is it,'' she said in that teeny-weeny, tanny-wanny, toney-woney little voice of hers, ''what can it possibly be about blow jobs and golf?''

That is stuff from a novel I’ve been working on for the past five years, about a standup comedian at the end of the world. It is about making jokes while we are killing all the fish in the ocean, and touching off the last chunks or drops or whiffs of fossil fuel. But it will not let itself be finished.

Its working title—or actually non-working title—is If God Were Alive Today. And hey, listen: It is time we thanked God that we are in a country where even the poor people are overweight. But the Bush diet could change that.

And about the novel I can never finish, If God Were Alive Today: The hero, the standup comedian on Doomsday, not only denounces our addiction to fossil fuels, with the pushers in the White House. Because of overpopulation, he is also against sexual intercourse. His name is Gil Berman, and he says to audiences like this one, ''I am a flaming neuter. I am as celibate as at least 50 percent of the heterosexual Roman Catholic clergy. Celibacy is not a root canal, and it is so cheap and convenient. Talk about safe sex! You don’t have to do or say anything afterwards, because there is no afterwards.''

Gil Berman goes on: ''When my tantrum, which is what I call my TV set, waves boobs in my face, and tells me that everybody but me is going to get laid tonight, and this is a national emergency, so I’ve got to rush out and buy pills or a car or a folding gymnasium I can hide under my bed, I laugh like a hyena. I know and you know there are millions upon millions of good Americans, present company not excepted, who aren’t going to get laid tonight.

''And we neuter vote! And I look forward to a day when the President of the United States, no less, who probably isn’t going to get laid that night either, decrees a National Neuter Pride Day. And out of our closets we’ll come. And we will go marching up main streets all over this great land of ours, shoulders squared, chins held high, and laughing like hyenas.''

What about God, if He were alive today? Gil Berman says, ''God would have to be an Athiest, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time.''

© 2003 In These Times

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' " - Kurt Vonnegut..

Your voice will be missed and if there's an afterlife, I hope you and Molly Ivins have one Hell of a Cocktail Party!!!! We thank you for your wit and wisdom.......

Requiem - Kurt Vonnegut....
.............................................. closing lines:

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Just on small story... but we caused this..

from Iraq Today

We Never Promised You a Flower Garden

My mum – a sweet old lady pushing eighty - was a Schoolmistress (Principal) for almost thirty years, the last fifteen of which were in the secondary school that is located just behind were I live now, and about ten minutes walk from my parents' house. She retired in1985 because only Baathists remained to serve that high honor. When she received the newly renovated school it was quite empty, and its grounds brown soil. She worked so hard, marshalling the efforts of the newly appointed teachers, and charming the parents of the students into the most unexpected donations of labor until the school became quite a sight, especially the grounds. The girls themselves participated by bringing plants for the gardens and saplings that each planted herself and watered herself all the year through. They were so proud of their school that when it was time to leave and move on to college, three years later, they cried both for their success and for their heavy hearts at leaving their beloved school. When she retired she left her heart behind inside the walls she so lovingly had decorated with ferns and arabesques; and she always preferred to take the rout that passes in front of the school and would sometimes drop in to say "hello" to whomsoever had remained there from that time.

Ever since the war she has not left the house except once every two months to receive her pension from the bank close by, because she is terrified of going out into our war zone. But she asks me every now and again, "Sahar, did you pass by the school?", " Sahar, do the girls look clean and tidy?", "Sahar, do drop by and see if the plants are well taken care of, will you?", , , , And I would always answer, "Yes, mum", "Sure, mum", "They're soooooooooo beautiful, mum" , , , but would avert my face lest she see my expression. I couldn't tell her that the school was converted into a recruiting post for the Police, especially chosen for its safe location between the houses of innocent people, and that it was targeted several times, so that now it and the adjoining houses look a real mess. I couldn't tell her that the adjoining kindergarten with it's beautiful playground was converted into a centre for investigating car bombs, and that not a single plant remained alive on the grounds, apart from the hardy cacti and date palms, and that no sound of laughter was to be heard there any more.

Contractors

Reuters is outsourcing News to India and our defense contractors are outsourcing technical writing to the Ukraine?  Soon, when we do nothing in the US, we will be "nothing".............

When Kathy Hanten's employer began outsourcing some of her work to Ukraine last year, she could see the writing on the wall. After three years of working for a Carlsbad defense company as a technical writer, her responsibilities were gradually scaled down to a part-time position.

>From the NY Times:

In Washington, Contractors Take on Biggest Role Ever
By SCOTT SHANE and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — ..........
Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

The contracting explosion raises questions about propriety, cost and accountability that have long troubled watchdog groups and are coming under scrutiny from the Democratic majority in Congress. While flagrant cases of fraud and waste make headlines, concerns go beyond outright wrongdoing. ..........(article)..

Molly Ivins (1944-2007)

Molly Ivins Quotes
From Jone Johnson Lewis,Your Guide to Women's History.

Selected Molly Ivins Quotations

• The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.
• What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking
respect given to authority.
• Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.
• The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly,
or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
• There are two kinds of humor.
One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity
-- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to
public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is
traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only
aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not
only cruel -- it's vulgar.
• I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one
knows the truth.
• You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
• It is possible to read the history of this country as one long
struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to
everyone in America.
• What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the
system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people
get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in
Washington and our state capitols.
Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can
decide you don't much care for.
• There's never been a law yet that didn't have a ridiculous consequence
in some unusual situation; there's probably never been a government
program that didn't accidentally benefit someone it wasn't intended to.
Most people who work in government understand that what you do about it
is fix the problem -- you don't just attack the whole government.
• I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.
• It's hard to argue against cynics -- they always sound smarter than
optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
• Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to
get worse.
• I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as
Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.
• One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the
heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically
need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't waste a
lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either.
OK, so it's not that bad yet -- but it's getting that bad.
• It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of
difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're
wrong.
• In the real world, there are only two ways to deal with corporate
misbehavior: One is through government regulation and the other is by
taking them to court. What has happened over 20 years of free-market
proselytizing is that we have dangerously weakened both forms of
restraint, first through the craze for "deregulation" and second through
endless rounds of "tort reform," all of which have the effect of cutting
off citizens' access to the courts. By legally bribing politicians with
campaign contributions, the corporations have bought themselves immunity
from lawsuits on many levels.
• Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of
government, is on the high road to permanent glory.
• During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism,
I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: "Look
out! They're about to smack you around again!"
• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In
the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him.
A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical
fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives
don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.
• The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The
government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not
American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We
want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions
other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with
our children's blood.
• from her last column, January 11, 2007: We are the people who run this
country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of
us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.
Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.
Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.
• I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point --
race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to
question everything.
• If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the
South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, "Don't drink out
of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty." In the white part of town,
the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of
grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean. Children
can be horribly logical.
• In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's]
office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.
• Good thing we've still got politics in Texas -- finest form of free
entertainment ever invented.
• [on Texas politics] Better than the zoo.
• I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless
perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.
• As a veteran of many an electoral defeat at the polls, may I remind
you of the proper Texan attitude toward slaughter at the polls?
A few years before Billie Carr died this September at age 74, a friend
called to ask how she was doing. "Well," she said, "They just impeached
my boy up in Washington, there's not a Democrat left in statewide office
in Texas, the Republicans have taken every judgeship in Harris County,
and yesterday I found out I have cancer."
Pause.
"I think I'll go out and get a pregnancy test because with my luck,
it'll come back positive."
• Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to
discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one
hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise
the question: Why bother?
Oh, it's just that your life is at stake.
• It's a low-tax, low-service state--so shoot us. The only depressing
part is that, unlike Mississippi, we can afford to do better. We just don't.
• Texas' performance, or lack of it, on Medicaid is already the subject
of one federal court order and is likely to attract another as we
continue to lag in providing health insurance for poor kids.
• As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their
whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em
anyway, you don't belong in office.
• What is a teenager in San Francisco to rebel against, for pity's sake?
Their parents are all so busy trying to be non-judgmental, it's no
wonder they take to dyeing their hair green.
• I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot
of land that's good for nothing but grazing.
• The problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and
logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible
famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why
any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the
Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic
document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not
with authority, but with ourselves.
• The Israelis and the Palestinians are not condemned to some eternal
hell where they have to kill each other forever.
• Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are
in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in
salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent
salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing
that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of
their hearts.
• Conservatives have been mad at the Supreme Court since it decided to
desegregate the schools in 1954 and seen fit to blame the federal bench
for everything that has happened since then that they don't like.
• You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It's their job.
• ...Phil Gramm, the senator from Enron...
• ...you could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.
• Say, here's an item: A group of right-wing journalists famed for their
impartiality has set themselves up as the Patriotism Police. No less
distinguished a crowd than Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, The New York Post
editorial page and the Fox News Channel -- quite a bunch of Pulitzer
winners there -- are now passing judgment on whether media outlets that
do actual reporting are sufficiently one-sided for their taste.
• I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience
somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but
it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.
• If he gets even more sedate, we will have to water him twice a week.
[Molly Ivins about then-President Ronald Reagan]
• If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin' rights on that
man's head. [Molly Ivins on Dick Armey]
• There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that
politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity.
Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion,
we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a
hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me
leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an
asshole. [Molly Ivins about Camille Paglia]
• She bellies up to the gourmet cracker-barrel and delivers laid-back
wisdom with the serenity of a down-home Buddha who has discovered that
stool softeners really work. [Florence King on Molly Ivins]
• When Ivins writes, there has to be a jalapeno in every line. [critic
James Thurman on Ivins]
• I should confess that I've always been more of an observer than a
participant in Texas Womanhood: the spirit was willing but I was
declared ineligible on grounds of size early. You can't be six feet tall
and cute, both. I think I was first named captain of the basketball team
when I was four and that's what I've been ever since. [Molly Ivins about
Molly Ivins]
• Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the
United States, please pay attention."
• Everyone knows the man has no clue, but no one there has the courage
to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been: barely
adequate. [on George W. Bush]
• Let me say for the umpteenth time, George W. is not a stupid man. The
IQ of his gut, however, is open to debate. In Texas, his gut led him to
believe the death penalty has a deterrent effect, even though he
acknowledged there was no evidence to support his gut's feeling. When
his gut, or something, causes him to announce that he does not believe
in global warming -- as though it were a theological proposition -- we
once again find his gut ruling that evidence is irrelevant.
• Last week, I began a sentence by saying, "If Bush had any imagination
..." and then I hit myself. Silly me.
• [On then-candidate George W. Bush, in a 2000 book on his "short but
happy political life"] If, at the end of this short book, you find W.
Bush's political resume a little light, don't blame us. There's really
not much there. We have been looking for six years.
• [On George W. Bush (and George H. W. Bush)] If you think his daddy had
trouble with "the vision thing," wait till you meet this one.
• [Molly Ivins quotes George W. Bush in one of his "Bushisms"] "What I
am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically
delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think
vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody
else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position."
• [On then-President George H. W. Bush] Personally, I think he's further
evidence that the Great Scriptwriter in the sky has an ovrdeveloped
sense of irony.

No. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a nasty busniness plan, gang.

From the "Rant"...http://www.capitolhillblue.com/wp/2007/01/31/1950

Bush recently made more moves to consolidate power in the executive branch, signing an order that requires key government agencies to place his political appointees in positions to control policy on health, environmental issues, civil rights and privacy.

These political hacks, appointed without review or approval of Congress, can now "interpret" the laws as they - or their President - see fit without regulatory oversight or a requirement to report to anyone.

Even worse, my White House sources tell me that Bush is putting into place a carefully-crafted plan to extend his power and influence over government policy long after he leaves office on January 20, 2009.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, at Bush's direction, is advising cabinet secretaries to convert these political appointees to Senior Executive Service (SES) positions before Bush's second term ends, giving hand-picked policy makers absolute authority even after the President leaves office.

SES positions are protected by federal civil service, so the policy makers could not be replaced by an incoming President - Democrat or Republican — who follows Bush.

Impeachment.... the cure for a constitutional crises

The Onion,
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/51140

From the NYTimes:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

John Nichols on the Need for Impeachment

John Nichols of THE NATION gave an incredible speech calling for Impeachment
View it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B...h? v=BHfMneQKdDM

State of the Union

Is shaky....as we swing back to oligarchy, the dream of freedom of choice, equality, respect for all, and basic Human Rights for all slips further away.