OK here is the token wildlife pic.
This is Desert View again but from a different angle and closer to sunset. You can just see the western edge of the Painted Desert in the distance and just a peek of the Colorado River below. We spent a couple of hours here waiting for the sun to set.
This was taken at Desert View point and is the most easterly point the park. At the top is where the Little Colorado joins in.
I realized a while ago that I hadn't really uploaded any of my Grand Canyon pictures. Here is one taken from the walking trail along the south rim and one of the few places that you can actually see the Colorado River from the rim. I picked this photo since I think it kinda gives you the sense of how freaking big this hole in the ground really is.
What, specifically, would a terrorist have been willing to do on June 22 [the day before the banking story was published] that he would not do on June 23 as a result of the Times' article?
What the Times revealed is the lack of oversight and checks on these intelligence-gathering activities, not the existence of the activities themselves, which were already well known.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased.
The minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Democrats want to raise it to $7.25. During the past nine years, as Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to increase the minimum wage, members of Congress have voted to give themselves pay raises -- technically "cost of living increases" -- totaling $31,600, or more than $15 an hour for a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, according to the Congressional Research Service.
An asteroid possibly as large as a half-mile or more in diameter is rapidly approaching the Earth. There is no need for concern, for no collision is in the offing, but the space rock will make an exceptionally close approach to our planet early on Monday, July 3, passing just beyond the Moon's average distance from Earth.
Astronomers will attempt to get a more accurate assessment of the asteroid's size by “pinging” it with radar.
And skywatchers with good telescopes and some experience just might be able to get a glimpse of this cosmic rock as it streaks rapidly past our planet in the wee hours Monday. The closest approach occurs late Sunday for U.S. West Coast skywatchers.
The asteroid, designated 2004 XP14, was discovered on Dec. 10, 2004 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), a continuing camera survey to keep watch for asteroids that may pass uncomfortably close to Earth.
I can't believe we're paying these people in excess of $160,000 a year to pull off this shit. We've got crumbling schools, melting ice caps, gas at $3 a gallon, the Gulf Coast still cleaning up after Katrina, no plan for Iraq, the Taliban on the rise again in Afghanistan, port security actually worse than it was on 9/11, and the best the Congress can come up with in their three-day work week is gay bashing, idol worship, and an exercise in kill-the-messenger. Sheesh.
On the other hand, given their propensity for coming up with truly monumental wastes of money and rubber-stamping their way into irrelevancy at the hands of the Bush administration, perhaps the best we can hope for is that Congress just spends their time not doing any more harm than they've already done.
One common facet of our world and Tubman's is that in both of them, utter disregard for fundamental human rights has been institutionalized by the powers-that-be. Is a government that secretly establishes the prison camps at Guantanamo and the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib and probably a dozen other places, a government that secretly employs "extraordinary rendition" of prisoners of war and political prisoners to countries in which they are tortured, a government that sends its own young people to kill and to die based on a naked lie, less damnable than a society in which the ruling powers openly accommodated the enslavement of human beings? Both are unconscionable and deplorable.
But in the end it doesn't matter. The Lieberman Dems don't hate and fear Kos and the Daily Kos "community" because they are too far to the left. They hate them because they represent an emerging power center within the Democratic Party that they don't control -- what's more, one that is now much closer to the public mainstream on the central issue of our time (the Iraq War) than they are.[snip]
Read the whole thing...it is a good read.Whether the grown ups (Peretz, Lieberman, Hillary) actually set the Swiftboat in motion, or just watched approvingly ("Who shall rid us of this meddlesome blogger?") as their hatchet boys did what comes natural, is almost irrelevant. The important thing to understand is that we have reached the point where the Dinos and their media allies are willing to use Rovian tactics against anyone who challenges their entrenched position -- even someone like Kos, who is hardly the second coming of Henry Wallace or George McGovern.
Whether that's good or bad for the Kossaks I don't know -- I suppose it depends on how much credence you give to Gandhi's old saw: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." In the real world -- and in imperial America, too -- the truth is that sometimes they ignore you, then ridicule you, then fight you and crush you like an overripe eggplant. We'll see if that's true this time. Either way, though, it looks like the battle between the netroots and dino Dems is going to get very down and dirty indeed.
In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: "I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore's new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?"
"I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary ... to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil..."
The President -- as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find -- is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said -- as he also did a few weeks ago -- that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" ... well, there really is no such debate.
At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society level."
Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence -- gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world -- that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.
Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.
One small group of special interest businesses leaders -- those of some fossil fuel companies -- have been well documented by journalist Ross Gelbspan and others to have been fighting a PR campaign for 15 years to keep the American public confused about the wide and deep scientific consensus on this.
They've aimed, as Gelbspan explains, to keep us thinking that (to borrow the president's words this morning) "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" -- though no open and thorough journalism this reporter knows of can find any such thing.
Drenching waters, president's words, high judges' scrutiny, worried voters, journalists scrambling to get their arms around this enormous story, oil executives looking at spread sheets while they explore for more oil in Canada and the Arctic, and one elm down ... so far.
Meteorologists predict more heavy rain this week along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.
Climatologists predict much the same for the coming decades.
Bold is mine.
Thanks Americablog
(CBS4 News) WEST PALM BEACH Sources have confirmed to CBS4 News that conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.
Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when officials found the drugs, among them Viagra.
If you do the math the numbers are $5.15 per hour times 40 hours per week times 52 weeks a year... with no vacation and no holidays you get the grand total of $10,712 per year or $206 per week. Note that this is before the income, social security and medicare taxes are taken out which will reduce it by at least a third.
Just for the record, just this month, Congress agreed to keep their automatic salary increase for cost of living.
This is a very partisan issue. Every Democrat present voted for the minimum wage increase. The only Republicans that seem to have some concern for the fate of the American worker and to join Democrats were Senators Chafee, Collins, DeWine, Lugar, Snowe, Specter, and Warner ( Jeffords too).
I suppose the Republicans are counting on the typical American amnesia to kick in before the November elections. They assume by that time all the poor bastards they just screwed one more time will have forgotten this new insult. The tragedy is they may be right. It is amazing how often the folks that have the most to lose vote for the party that will surely ignore their needs and do nothing for them.
I captured the 2004 Poverty chart from HHS below. You can readily see that even two years ago, if you consider taxes, not even a single person makes the grade. I am really trying to understand how the folks that voted against the Kennedy bill sleep at night. There wasn't even a counter proposal to meet Kennedy half way. It is just another American tragedy under this Republican misadministration.
| Size of Family Unit | 48 Contiguous States and D.C. | Alaska | Hawaii |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $ 9,310 | $11,630 | $10,700 |
| 2 | 12,490 | 15,610 | 14,360 |
| 3 | 15,670 | 19,590 | 18,020 |
| 4 | 18,850 | 23,570 | 21,680 |
| 5 | 22,030 | 27,550 | 25,340 |
| 6 | 25,210 | 31,530 | 29,000 |
| 7 | 28,390 | 35,510 | 32,660 |
| 8 | 31,570 | 39,490 | 36,320 |
| For each additional person, add | 3,180 | 3,980 | 3,660 |
WASHINGTON - A thief recently stole a computer server belonging to a major U.S. insurance company, and company officials now fear that the personal data of nearly 1 million people could be at risk, insurance industry sources tell NBC News.The computer server contains personal electronic data for 930,000 Americans, including names, Social Security numbers and tens of thousands of medical records. The server was stolen on March 31, along with a camcorder and other office equipment, during a break-in at a Midwest office of American Insurance Group (AIG), company officials confirm.
I'm trying to understand how somebody could walk into the computer center of a major corporation and walk off with a whole server. Did they keep their server arrays on the back porch?
This is part of reason why Zarqawi's death means nothing. He represents the weaker side of this asymmetric warfare, so already naturally gains from our arrogance of power. What's more, our early mythmaking only enhanced his position in Iraq--both alive, and now as a martyr to the cause--and our later mockery undermined any positive domestic impact.
The only thing that Zarqawi's death really accomplishes is in the minds of the deluded, which merely solidifed our defeat and decline. And in the long run, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Still, the coming storm isn't going to be pleasant...
Companies that provide Web-based telecommunications services must allow wiretapping by law enforcement officials, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.
The ruling upholds a Federal Communications Commission decision that companies such as Vonage Holdings Corp., the country's largest provider of Internet phone service, are under the same legal obligation as telephone companies. The requirement for a wiretap-compatible system could mean higher expenses for broadband service companies, and it marks the further spread of regulation into Internet phone services.
I feel better knowing that people like Michael Berg are out there.O’BRIEN: Mr. Berg, thank you for talking with us again. It’s nice to have an opportunity to talk to you. Of course, I’m curious to know your reaction, as it is now confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who is widely credited and blamed for killing your son, Nicholas, is dead.
MICHAEL BERG: Well, my reaction is I’m sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that.
I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can’t end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.
O’BRIEN: I have to say, sir, I’m surprised. I know how devastated you and your family were, frankly, when Nick was killed in such a horrible, and brutal and public way.
BERG: Well, you shouldn’t be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.
O’BRIEN: No, no. And we have spoken before, and I’m well aware of that. But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, ‘I’m glad he’s dead, the man who killed my son’?
BERG: No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?
Shakespeare's Sister reminds us that today has been proclaimed Jesus Day in Texas by the former Governor of the great state and our current resident of the Whitehouse.BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN)-- Nearly 1,400 Iraqi civilians died in a wave of targeted killings in Baghdad last month, according to a high-ranking Iraqi Health Ministry official.
The figure does not include civilians killed in insurgent bombings, the official said. Even so, the number is the highest monthly death toll in the capital since the war began three years ago.
In May 1,398 bodies were brought to the Baghdad morgue, the official said.
All were killed in attacks; in most cases the bodies were found strewn across the Iraqi capital, shot execution-style, the official said.
The number 666 is a simple sum and difference of the first three 6th powers:
666 = 16 - 26 + 36.
It is also equal to the sum of its digits plus the cubes of its digits:
666 = 6 + 6 + 6 + 6³ + 6³ + 6³.
There are only five other positive integers with this property. Exercise: find them, and prove they are the only ones!
666 is related to (6² + n²) in the following interesting ways:
666 = (6 + 6 + 6) · (6² + 1²)
666 = 6! · (6² + 1²) / (6² + 2²)
The sum of the squares of the first 7 primes is 666:
666 = 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17²
The sum of the first 144 (= (6+6)·(6+6)) digits of pi is 666.
Gunmen in police uniforms staged a brazen daylight raid on bus stations in central Baghdad on Monday, kidnapping at least 50 people, including travelers, merchants and vendors selling tea and sandwiches.The usual mayhem in Iraq:
The operation was a direct challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's efforts to restore security in the capital, which has been hard hit by suicide attacks, roadside bombs and sectarian death squads.
At least 17 killings were reported across the country Monday, including a Shiite school guard and two Sunni brothers who were shot to death as they were driving to college in the capital. Iraqi police found the blindfolded and bound body of a man who had been shot in the head and chest and another body that had been shot in the head in separate locations in Baghdad.The Dow dropped almost 200 points on inflation fears:
On Wall Street, Bernanke's fresh inflation warning sent the Dow Jones industrials sliding 199.15 points to close at 11,048.72. It had dropped even more, 214 points, two weeks ago on May 17.Islamic militants prevail against our allies in Somalia:
After months of fierce fighting, Islamic militias declared Monday that they had taken control of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, defeating the warlords widely believed to be backed by the United States and raising questions about whether the country would head down an extremist path.Katrina residents still can't come home:
Hundreds of displaced residents of public housing have for several days been returning here for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.As Chris posted yesterday morning, oil prices rose again: $73.23.
Displaced residents in the tents are trying to force the city to reopen their storm-damaged apartments. They are armed with little more than cleaning supplies and frustration, in an effort to force the city to reopen their storm-damaged apartments.
The city, saying the projects are not ready, has refused.
What the right seems to want is a pliant media will to spread "the good news" as they and the Administration see it. What we on the left want is not the same — what we simply want is for them to present the truth. Unvarnished, painful though it may be — just the facts, the truth, the heart of the matter. No more tabloid fluff. No one really cares about whether Britney Spears is driving in a convertible with her baby — but we do care about the world in which that baby and all our babies will grow up.
The American public must make decisions at every election which require them to be informed — fully informed. We rely on our press corps to dig out the facts, the truth, the things that the powerful are trying to keep hidden away. Some journalists do this very, very well — and we try to highlight that when we see a good example here on FDL. But for the folks who would rather hang back on the cocktail weenie circuit, let this serve as your notice: the American public is hungry for some truth. And if you don’t provide it — real, honest to God truth, they will pass you by in favor of something else. If the choice is Pravda or Edward R. Murrow, I’d pick Murrow every time.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Wolf.
Guess what Monday is? Monday is the day President Bush will speak about an issue near and dear to his heart and the hearts of many conservatives. It's also the day before the Senate votes on the very same thing. Is it the war? Deficits? Health insurance? Immigration? Iran? North Korea?
Not even close. No, the president is going to talk about amending the Constitution in order to ban gay marriage. This is something that absolutely, positively has no chance of happening, nada, zippo, none. But that doesn't matter. Mr. Bush will take time to make a speech. The Senate will take time to talk and vote on it, because it's something that matters to the Republican base.
This is pure politics. If has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in gay marriage. It's blatant posturing by Republicans, who are increasingly desperate as the midterm elections approach. There's not a lot else to get people interested in voting on them, based on their record of the last five years.
But if you can appeal to the hatred, bigotry, or discrimination in some people, you might move them to the polls to vote against that big, bad gay married couple that one day might in down the street.
I don't use them a lot since I hate paying for my hotel in advance but I have used them once or twice in the last few months. I haven't received any notification yet about whether I'm affected. There is no excuse for this kind of information to be on a laptop computer. I don't care who's it is. There are very simple safeguards that Expedia could have had in place to prevent this information from ever getting out of a secure environment. No excuses.NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The names and credit-card numbers of 243,000 Hotels.com customers were on a laptop computer stolen from an employee of accounting firm Ernst & Young, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Hotels.com, which is owned by Expedia (Research) and Ernst & Young, its auditor, began notifying customers that their information was stolen last week.
The Department of Homeland Security yesterday slashed anti-terrorism money for Washington and New York, part of an immediately controversial decision to reduce grant funds for major urban areas in the Northeast while providing more to mid-size cities from Jacksonville to Sacramento.The announcement that the two cities targeted on Sept. 11, 2001, would suffer 40 percent reductions in urban security funds prompted outrage from lawmakers and local officials in both areas, who questioned the wisdom of cutting funds so deeply for cities widely recognized as prime terrorist targets. The decision came less than five months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff unveiled changes in the grants plan intended to focus funding on areas facing the gravest risk of attack.That's classic. Say one thing, do anotherThis paragraph so completely defines the incompetence of out current leadership that maybe someone should etch it in stone. Amazing.
The enemy cannot defeat us on the battlefield, but what they can do is put horrible images on our TV screens.I'm sorry but these are the ravings of a madman. No grasp of reality. No grasp of why these images are showing up on the TV other than some paranoid littany against the media about showing the "good things". It is really hard to show the "good things" when you are in critical condition in a Bagdhad hospital.
A CBS News correspondent was critically injured and her two-person crew killed Monday when the Baghdad military unit in which they were imbedded was attacked.Can we seriously question the damage another 2 plus years of this administration will produce? If something doesn't break soon on the home front I can't even imagine the chaos in Adghansitan and Iraq... not to mention the rest of the area.
Kimberly Dozier, 39, sustained serious injuries in the attack and underwent surgery at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad, the network reported. She is in critical condition, but doctors are cautiously optimistic about her prognosis.
Cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, both London-based, were killed.
"Bushco has enslaved Americans into a psychological reign of "War on Terror" that amounts to a criminal protection racket. We are told we must be afraid. That is, we are told we must live in terror. This is to protect us from. . . terror. Then, because we feel terrified, we must give up our freedom - freedom to write what we believe without fear of reprisal, freedom of due process and habeas corpus protection, freedom from secret intrusion into our private lives by government.
If there were really a "War on Terror," an emotion, Wes Craven would be hiring a lawyer: he scares people. The "War on Terror" is a sham. You know what changed after September 11th? We, the people of the United States, forgot how strong we are. We gave in to fear, when the only thing we should have feared was fear itself. Osama bin Laden wants you to be afraid. So does George Bush....read on"
Sometimes working so hard and traveling in between has it's advantages. I can sometimes go for 24 hours without being reminded of how screwed our once great country is.John Sugg--Global warming and other issues that relate to our stewardship of the planet seem finally to have struck a chord among evangelical Christians.tip to Kos and Happy Birthday DailyKos
The ministers, academics and lay activists ... signed the global warming statement encompassed a wide range of beliefs, including 39 evangelical colleges, the Salvation Army and a cross-section of major denominations and churches. As innocuous and as Christian as such a statement sounds, it was a pointed rebuke of the leadership of the religious right and the Republican Party. Up until the declaration, political preachers had dismissed environmental concerns. In many cases, after all, their power relies heavily on claiming the Second Coming is coming soon: Why worry about Mother Earth when you, Tim LaHaye, Ralph Reed and a few others are about to be raptured up to heaven? Such blitheness fits well with the corporate wing of the GOP, which places profits above prophesies of peak oil and environmental disaster from global warming.Those who refused to sign the global warming statement included America's foremost ayatollahs: Jerry Falwell; the Rev. D. James Kennedy of the mammoth Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in South Florida; James Dobson ...
"There's no surprise at who didn't sign," said Jim Jewel of Atlanta, spokesman for the evangelical environmentalists. "What we did was signal that the evangelical movement has a new cause, beyond just abortion and gay marriage ... This let people know we have more than one voice."
Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.
On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former executives of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 symbolized the wave of corporate fraud that swept the United States early this decade.
Skilling was found guilty on 20 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on eight counts of insider trading.
Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud.
That’s the problem. If I thought Al Gore’s movie was as you like to say, fair
and balanced, I’d say, everyone should go see it. But why go see propaganda? You
don’t go see Joseph Goebbels’ films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You
don’t go see Al Gore’s films to see the truth about global warming.
Anyone that thinks Global Warming is "bad science" is full of shit. While I was in Gothenburg, Sweden week before last one of my clients noted that the harbor used to freeze over in winter when he was younger but it hasn't done so in the last few years.
While you're waiting for Al Gore's movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, you should take a look at Bill Maher's segment on the same subject, War on Terra. Here's added incentive to watch Maher: he accuses Bush of treason. And his reason for doing so is valid.
Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!UPDATE: John at AmericaBlog has more examples of cowardice among the GOP.
GOP Senator Jeff Sessions referring to the rightness of Bush's domestic spying after 9/11 declared melodramatically:This kind of attitude will get us exactly what we are getting. These cowards have so little respect for the liberties our fathers and forefathers fought and died for. No reverence for the lives wasted in Iraq and no courage to make the hard choices necessary to lead a country like the U.S. They all need to be turned out in shame.
"Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us."
On February 3rd, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts similarly claimed:
"You really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on December 20, 2005:
"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."
So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will unveil two 60-second TV ads focusing on what it calls “global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions.” The ad, which will be aired in more than a dozen cities across the country, is being released just a week before the May 24th opening (in LA and NYC) of Al Gore’s new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.Here is a big surprise...
Exxon documents reveal the company gave $270,000 to CEI in 2004 alone. $180,000 of that was earmarked for “global climate change and global climate change outreach.” Exxon has contributed over $1.6 million to CEI since 1998.
CEI’s general counsel Sam Kazman said, “I think what attracted [Exxon] to us was our position on global warming.” CEI’s position? The Institute believes the dangers of global warming are akin “to that of ‘an alien invasion.’”
Let's hope the American people realize that the oil companies that are funding this organization know that doing something about global warming means doing something about oil and using less of it. The oil companies are only concerned with profit in the short term and give a rip about the long term effects of their business on the planet. This has to change.
- gay marriageIf we can stop them here and further frustrate the religious right and thereby suppress their influence in the coming elections we will have come a long way into putting the GOP were they so richly deserve to be.
- immigration
- pray in school
- obscenity/porn
- abortion
Former Vice President Al Gore gave yet another vague hint yesterday in Atlanta that he might be open to a run for the presidency in 2008, RAW STORY has found.[snip]Gore told a reporter for the Atlanta Progressive News, a nascent politics site, that he was a "recovering politican," but added, "You always have to worry about a relapse."
One can only hope he is wavering in his resolve and does, in fact, relapse.After the crowd cheered Gore in encouragement, the Progressive News' Matthew Cardinale reports, the former Vice President told the audience, “I’m a recovering politician, on Step Nine. Thank you for your sentiment.”
"Later, after the larger crowd left the theater, APN Staff Writer Susan Keith brought the issue up again in a more private, yet informal gathering in the theater after the show," Cardinale adds. "'It’s not a sentiment!' she said, while others in attendance offered their campaign support and said, stop listening to those consultants."
Straight talking Johnny McCain will flash a valium-esque smile at the clown and hug the monkey warmly while it takes a dump on his lap and smears shit all over his face. And an editorial written by a belt way democratic insider will warn us all that if we don't clap real loud and pretend it was a terrific show, the performer will turn into the Killer Klown From Outer Space and the monkey will prance around the stage menacingly in a parody of King Kong.Here is the clincher.
This is the writing that makes the blogoshere addicting.Here's an intervention shout-out to our esteemed media pundits and their handlers: You Don't Have To Cover for this Crappy Clown Show Any More. A White House with an 80% approval rating and a jazzy video-war in the works can play games with access and deal you out of the family Nielson if you don't play ball. But a beleaguered administration less popular than Tricky Dick, with shall we say a shrinking market share, and under assault from all sides, will eagerly wag their PR tail to the cadence of your agenda, because they desperately need to get their respective clowns on every dang channel juggling those talking points and riding that unicycle. If they don't get that organ grinder cranked up to deafening levels and put on a hell of a clown show, they know they don't have a chance of holding what's left of their admiring fans attention, let alone reversing the public's general malaise with clown shows and musical monkeys.
This isn't the greatest show on earth any longer. It really never was, that was just promotional hype anyway. And, unlike the old cliche, this show doesn't have to go on at all.
From the Drug Policy Forum of Texas memorial page: On May 20, 1997, Esequiel Hernandez, Jr. was herding his family's goats 100 yards from his home on the US-Mexican border in Redford, Texas, as he did every day. Six days before, he had turned 18 years old.Unknown to Esequiel or any of the other residents of Redford, a group of four Marines led by 22-year old Corporal Clemente Banuelos had been encamped just outside the small village along the Rio Grande River for three days. After watering his small flock of goats in the river, Esequiel started on his way back home when the Marines began stalking him from a distance of 200 yards.
The four camouflaged Marines were outfitted with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment and weapons. Esequiel carried an antique .22 caliber rifle -- a pre-World War I, single shot rifle to keep wild dogs and rattlesnakes away from his goats. The autopsy showed that Esequiel was facing away from the Marines when he was shot. He probably never knew the Marines were watching him from 200 yards away.
Thus it was that a 22 year-old United States Marine shot and killed an innocent 18 year-old boy tending his family's goats. This outrageous act was the inevitable consequence of a drug prohibition policy gone mad. Esequiel Hernandez was killed not by drugs but by military officers of the United States government.
This idea that somehow if you say the words 'plan for victory' and 'stay the course' over and over and over and over again and you put these subliminal messages behind you that say 'victory' and 'victory' and 'victory,' that somehow people are not going to notice the 2,400 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at the Dover Air Force Base.
[snip]
I don't know about you, but when George Bush said he did not believe in nation building, I did not know he was talking about this nation.thanks to Kos
At least now we know that the Bush administration's name for spying on Americans without first seeking court approval -- the "terrorist surveillance program" -- isn't an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak after all. It's just a bald-faced lie....Bolding added
You'll recall that when it was revealed last year that the NSA was eavesdropping on phone calls and reading e-mails without first going to court for a warrant, the president said his "terrorist surveillance program" targeted international communications in which at least one party was overseas, and then only when at least one party was suspected of some terrorist involvement. Thus no one but terrorists had anything to worry about.
Not remotely true, it turns out...
President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%.
