What the hell is wrong with us?

Tastes Like (Mutant) Chicken
The great McDonald's diet test, and why Ukrainians won't touch your buffalo wings

Honor and Integrity, my ass!

Krugman takes BushCo to task over accountability for events surrounding 9/11, the Iraq war, the Plame incident, and Bushthink in general. So much for bringing honor and integrity back to the White House, eh Georgie?

Where's the Apology?

In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.

Iraq was a mistake, Repugs refuse to admit it, the media spins the Dem race

Chickenhawks come home to roost: Iraq war questions gain momentum

And she (Condoleeza Rice) insisted that regardless of whether former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons stockpiles, the administration remained convinced that he posed a threat to the U.S.

Based on what? How was Saddam possibly a threat without any weapons with which to attack the U.S. or anyone else? Condie might as well claim that her next door neighbor's neutered dog knocked up her poodle. Not gonna happen!

"The American people, I think, understand that this president saw a grave and gathering threat in Saddam Hussein, a threat that had been gathering for more than 12 years," Rice said on NBC's "Today" show.

Well, the pResident was wrong. Saddam posed no gathering threat. His weapons capabilities had been dwindling, not gathering, for a decade. I hope that the American people understand that the pResident was wrong and that he lead us in to war because he was wrong.

A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the White House planned to review the intelligence after receiving the final report by Kay's staff.

The official said the purpose would be not so much to detect failure as to draw lessons on "how to deal with highly secretive regimes."

This would be a good exercise for the American people, as well as the rest of the world, to undertake, considering the monumentally secretive regime currently in power in America.

On another front, House Republican leaders have mobilized to defend Bush against the impression that he took the U.S. to war under false pretenses. They circulated an analysis arguing that, in other, less-publicized comments, Kay "makes the case for action in Iraq."

The analysis cites Kay saying it was "unfair" to say Bush misled the American people, and noting that his understanding of Iraq's weapons capabilities was shared by intelligence agencies in France, Britain and Germany.

This little "share the blame" tactic is as lame as the "well Clinton felt the same way toward Saddam as the Boy pResident does". Clinton didn't march us off to war, guns blazing, over any feelings he might've had for Saddam, now did he? So, regardless of how they interpreted the intelligence (with the exception of lap dog Blair and the rest of the coalition of the threatened and paid off, of course) the rest of the world knew attacking Iraq was unwarranted and the wrong thing to do.

While Republicans stand publicly firm in their support of the war...

In other words, while the Repugs all stand proud with hard-ons for war.

Kay's successor as chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, says he plans to change the focus from a hunt for illegal weapons to an investigation into how the weapons programs were dismantled.

Are they seriously going to try to convince us that, now, this is the reason we went to war? So that we could "investigate...how the weapons programs were dismantled"? What difference does it make how the programs (notice he didn't say "weapons") were dismantled? The fact is that Iraq had disarmed before we attacked! And Saddam having banned weapons with the intent to use them was the only credible reason there was for going to war. I wonder how long it'll be before the maladministration changes the focus to what kind of underwear Saddam preferred. "So, we couldn't find any WMD and we couldn't find any programs to develop WMD and we couldn't really ascertain how any weapons programs he probably didn't have were dismantled, so now we're going to focus on just how much of a threat Saddam's boxers were", a mindless Repugnant drone will probably someday say.

While opposition to the Iraq war was central to the rise of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean to the front of the Democratic pack in polls last year, his losses in Iowa and New Hampshire to Kerry — who voted for the invasion — suggested that the war was not the most important issue to Democratic voters.

No it doesn't, you bonehead. It merely suggests that more Dems are willing to give Kerry a pass (not me, mind you) on the fact that he voted for the war because he is now claiming, basically, that he was duped. Kerry is posing (genuinely, one hopes) as anti-war now, so the fact that he initially voted for war and Dean didn't (even though he couldn't being that he wasn't a Congressman) doesn't mean that the Iraq war is no longer an issue to Dems. It means that Dems see in Kerry a candidate who his capable of beating Bush and who represents enough of the core Democratic ideals (of at least those who've voted in the oh-so-representative states of Iowa and New Hampshire) to represent them.

But some analysts say the issue could become more problematic for Bush if the euphoria of capturing Hussein wears off and events in Iraq turn sour.

Am I missing something here in my little leftward leaning bubble? Didn't events in Iraq turn sour long ago? Was there ever any euphoria over the non-accomplishment of being lead to Saddam's hole?

"Bush is not bulletproof," said Andy Kohut of the Pew center. "If the cost continues to rise, and one of the reasons we went to war has been taken off the table, that may increase discontent with the decision."

One of the reasons? All of the reasons we went to war have been taken off the table. No WMD. No link to 9/11. No credible threat to the U.S. The only reasons left on the table (the real reasons...the one's that no one in the Bush maladmin will admit to) are: increase U.S. hegemony, control Middle East oil, a boondoggle for "U.S. interests" (i.e. big bidness...HalliBoeiBechtel), and scare the U.S. citizenry into submission so that our freedoms could be stripped thus allowing Repugs to stay in power.

To guard against that, some Republicans say, Bush should move now to acknowledge intelligence problems and make a conspicuous effort to get to the bottom of them.

"Hi, my name is George W. Bush and I have an intelligence problem: I'm an idiot. Me and my fellow Chickenhawk corporate whores are at the bottom of the Iraq debacle." Somehow I don't see it happening.

Boeing Cuts Costs, Screws Employees

Military stint may cost Boeing workers OT

Boeing, the nation's largest aircraft manufacturer, wrote the Labor Department in June, saying it "strongly supports" the revisions, particularly one that would classify employees who had received military training as "learned experts" who could lose access to overtime pay.

Boeing also supports harebrained plans to go to Mars, missile defense shields that don't work (and wouldn't protect us from most of the world's threats even if they did), and infinite wars all of which involve lucrative contracts that Boeing receives from the government, a.k.a. Boeing's #1 customer, a.k.a. the "cash cow".

Under federal law, workers who are "learned professionals" are presumed to have control of their own time and are exempt from receiving overtime pay.

Assphincter says "what"? "Learned professionals"? In the most general of interpretations, wouldn't that include, well, just about all of the non-degreed (a college degree being, apparently, how one is determined to be a "professional") workforce in the world? And maybe it's just me, but I'm completely confused by the statement that these "learned professionals...have control of their own time" and that this necessarily means they, then, don't qualify for overtime pay.

It seems to me that all of this is just another way that BushCo is paying back big corporations for all the campaign contributions...at the expense of working Americans.

BushCo Stonewalls 9/11 Commission

9/11 Panel Seeks Extension

Administration officials have acknowledged concern that Democrats - and especially the Democratic nominee for president - will try to make use of the report's findings to embarrass Bush, especially if the report contains any suggestion that the White House failed to act before Sept. 11 on intelligence suggesting that a catastrophic attack might be imminent.

Well, if he failed to stop an imminent terrorist attack and he had the data to do so, he should be embarrassed. And he should be ousted. This isn't some conspiracy to smear a capable president, it's a report on just how incapable the pResident has been on this front.

"It smacks of politics to put out a report like this in the middle of a presidential campaign," said a senior Republican congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The Democrats will spin and spin."

Somebody please remind this meat-head that he's a politician. That Bush is a politician. The the congress person for whom this aide works is a politician. That the business of politicians is politics and if he doesn't like it, he should please find another line of work.

Mickie D's Toxic Foodstuff

McDonald's food destroys your body...who knew!
Arch Enemy

Something about the First Amendment

Bush's Same Sex Remark Sparks Debate

College Republicans Chairman Jarrett White said his group is "100 percent behind the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman," and the group supports a Constitutional amendment. White said marriage is a sacred union created by God and the issue of same-sex marriage should be a federal issue and not left to the states.

Hmm...let's see here. If marriage is a sacred union created by God, then the federal government should have nothing to do with it. Drafting a Constitutional amendment to protect a religious sacrament is in clear violation of the first amendment. It establishes a federal endorsement of religion. But just try explaining this to a Fundie Bonk Job. The way their eyes gloss over is just so precious.

"I think that individuals should be allowed to make whatever sort of economic unions they want," Martin said. (That's Father Reginald Martin, a Roman Catholic priest). "I believe the state must honor those arrangements. I think the president, whom I admire a great deal, is simply making himself look silly."

Hey, what do you know? I agree with a member of the clergy! Well, except for the admiration of the preznit.

Bush said, "The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God's sight."

A truer statement would be something along the lines of "The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches bigotry and hatred". Consider the way gays and women are treated by the tenets of the church. No women in positions of leadership. Gays can be gay, just so long as they don't act gay. It's anything but dignified.

The Easter Bunny and Terrorism...

Irrefutable proof that the Easter Bunny is in collusion with Al Qaeda:
Cheney Adamant on Existence of Easter Bunny

Moving the Goal Posts

White House emissaries head abroad to recast war

Washington — Seeking to recast its reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Bush administration is sending high-ranking officials abroad to justify the war as good for humanity, despite increasing evidence that Baghdad did not possess stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Also, despite having decreased world security with the invasion of Iraq, thus making it a difficult case to prove on the grounds of being "good for humanity".

"The former dictator sits in captivity. He can no longer harbour and support terrorists, and his long efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction are at an end," U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney said yesterday in a speech to political and business leaders in Rome.

Normally, one would have to prove that Saddam first harbored or supported terrorists in order for him to "no longer" engage in those activities. Also, the veep should really not be allowed to make such bellicose statements about Saddam's efforts to acquire WMD without ever having proved that he was making such attempts in the first place. But these are not times of critical thinking, so most here in the U.S. will let him get away with this. It's sad that it takes non-U.S. media sources to call this maladministration to the carpet on their tactics. Good luck getting Faux news or Corporate News Network to point out that it has yet to be proven that Saddam had, or was seeking to get, WMD. And, by logical extension, if it has yet to be proven by now, the chances are slim that it ever will be. I'm actually quite surprised. I'd have thought BushCo would've planted some evidence by now.

In Vienna yesterday, Attorney-General John Ashcroft said that even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the war was justified because Mr. Hussein can no longer resort to "evil chemistry and evil biology."

Evil chemistry and evil biology? And what the hell, exactly, would those be? This guy really is a Fundie Bonk Job, isn't he. Chemistry and biology are inanimate. They are fields of study and can be neither good nor evil.

Mr. Bush laid the groundwork for redefining the war's rationale in his recent State of the Union address. "For all who love freedom and peace, the world without Saddam Hussein's regime is a better and safer place," he (Bush) said.

The implied message is, of course, that anyone who is, or was, against the war is not for peace and freedom. Of course, this is nonsense. Those who were against the war should be considered more for peace and freedom than anyone in the Bush cabal. Yes, Saddam was a terrible despot. But that was not the rationale BushCo tried to sell as the reason for going to war against Iraq. This is Machiavellian politics at its best. Or is that worst? As a side note, many would argue that the world is in worse condition since 1) BushCo stole office, and 2) America invaded Iraq.

But he made no mention of a rogue regime that posed imminent danger to the United States because of stockpiles of weapons.

Ah yes, North Korea. Quite inconvenient to the BushCo war hawks. And quite ignored by the very same.

And his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is sounding increasingly vague about the lack of evidence found in Iraq, despite months of searching. "What is the open question is, how many stockpiles they had, if any.

None.

And if they had any, where did they go?

See above.

If they didn't have any, why wasn't that known beforehand?" Mr. Powell said on the weekend, en route to the Georgia capital of Tbilisi before heading to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It was known before hand. BushCo simply refused to listen because it didn't fit with their hegemonic plans for Middle Eastern domination.

Meanwhile, the White House was adamant yesterday that the war was justified. "Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and gathering threat,

yeah, right

and the President made the right decision to remove him from power," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. But Mr. McClellan also seemed to suggest that there would be no more pre-emptive wars against rogue regimes, the controversial Bush doctrine that many regard as flouting international law.

"Iraq was unique," Mr. McClellan said.

Indeed! Iraq was an easy target; no military to speak of with which to repel a U.S. invasion. Not only was Iraq an easy target, militarily speaking, it was a rich target! They have oil, we could take it without even breaking a sweat.

""Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction, (which were really our WMD since they were purchased from the U.S.) they used weapons of mass destruction on its neighbours and on his own people (which the U.S. cared so much about at the time it was happening that it did nothing to stop it), and they failed to account for the weapons and weapons programs. . . . Given his history and given the events of Sept. 11, we could not afford to rely on the good intentions of Saddam Hussein."

There it is, folks! The nefarious link between Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein. Can you believe that these morons are still using that one? Yeah, me neither.

But Washington's efforts to recast its justifications for the war seem unlikely to satisfy critics, or defuse it as an election issue.

One can only hope that the U.S. public will be smart enough this time around to recognize this steaming pile of "efforts to recast the justification for war" for what it is. Pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Democratic presidential candidates have stepped up their attacks on the war. "We were misled," said Massachusetts Senator John Kerry...

Come on, Senator! You hold one of the most powerful offices in government. You're a U.S. Senator. You should be intelligent enough to recognize a sham of an argument when you see one. Shame on you!

The Double Standard of Invasion

The following article asks the rhetorical question, "Would we have stood idly by as, say, Germany invaded Iraq and behaved there in exactly the manner in which the US is behaving?"

The Iraq Paradigm

In other words, the US is sponsoring phony elections that will produce results that are already predetermined.

Well, they did say they wanted to bring the freedom of America to the Iraqi people and all we got last time around was a phony election.

State of the Union Address

So, I managed to sit through the last half of Duhbya's SOTU address last night. I missed the first half, but something tells me I didn't miss much. The over-arching theme, from the half that I saw, seemed to be a huge chasm between his speech and reality. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this guy actually wanted to make America a better place. But, the programs he proposed (some of which he's actually enacted) that I agreed with either will never get funded (or haven't been funded, in the case of programs like "No Child Left Behind") or were such an abusive example of double-speak that you just know they won't accomplish what the name might imply. For example, any time Bush mentions "reducing our dependency on Middle East oil", he doesn't mean we should invest federal funds in R&D for reusable, clean non petroleum-based fuels, he means, "god damn it, let's drill the f*ck out of ANWR and see if we can't find some domestic oil upon which we can be dependent". Of course, he couldn't find oil in Texas, so I'm not sure we should have any confidence that he could even find oil in Alaska, were we to give him the chance.

Anyway, it's an election year, so I'm sure a lot of pretty things will be rolling off his lips just to try and get his ass re-selected. Well, those words that he can pronounce anyway.

Among the shots of the audience, I noticed several members of Congress and noted dignitaries seemed to squirm a bit at some of the more Orwellian things Bush had to say. But my favorite moment was when the camera panned over to Ted Kennedy as Bush was talking about -- well, I can't recall what he was talking about. It was all so replete with unremarkable bullshit. But anyway, there was old Ted Kennedy actually rolling his eyes and looking away. With the state of the media these days, there's no way to be sure how many in the audience had the balls not to stand up and applaud every time the boy Resident actually completed a sentence, but it was nice that they caught at least one. Also, Ted was scratching his chin. But not in the "I have an itch right here" way, more like the way Italian mobsters do it in Mafia movies that means, "up yours you piece of sh!t"! That was probably the one redeeming moment.

Nepotism, Cronyism, and Conflicts Oh My!

The GOP, Inc.

45 million Americans have no health care coverage, as President Bush, on Heritage Foundation cue, undertakes the privatizing of Medicare. The greater his success, the more the Hospital Corporation of America will benefit. HCA operates the country's largest chain of for-profit hospitals, but can't make enough money honestly when Medicare is public. The company has paid $1.7 billion in fines for overcharging Medicare and Medicaid, the largest fraud settlement ever. HCA was formed by a Mr. Thomas Frist. One of his sons, Thomas Jr., earned $160 million a year as CEO. Another son, William, has a $26 million interest in HCA, and he is the Majority Leader of the United States Senate.

Can you say "conflict of interest"?

Health care corporations and PAC's have contributed over $2 million to William Frist's campaigns. Mr. Frist engineered a provision in the Homeland Security Bill shielding the Eli Lilly drug company from liability lawsuits. Lilly contributed $1.6 million to Senate election campaigns in the 2000 election cycle, 79% to the G.O.P., Inc. And now Mr. Frist has steered through the Senate the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act. Drug sales are expected to increase, under the law, by $13 billion a year.

I'm going to have to work on breaking my image of our government as representing the people. These guys don't represent anyone but themselves and the highest bidder.

Mr. Jeb Bush, the President's brother, served as a Trustee of the Heritage Foundation. Virginia Lamp Thomas is the Director of Executive Branch Relations there. Jeb Bush's father appointed Ms. Thomas' husband to the Supreme Court, which decided the 2000 election in favor of Jeb Bushs' brother. Privatizing Medicare and public education are two of the targets at Heritage.

Mr. Rupert Murdoch served on the Board of The Cato Institute. He owns Fox Television News and the Weekly Standard, virtual house organs of the Bush Administration. Mr. Murdoch's application to acquire Direct TV was finally approved by the Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Colin Powell's son Michael. The approval was delayed because Mr. Murdoch's communications empire exceeds the national media ownership cap of 35%. The Republican House raised the cap with a rider on the Omnibus spending bill to 39%--precisely the number Mr. Murdoch needs.

Cronyism and nepotism. It's the the neo-con way!

Clueless Executives

Further proof that CEOs are clueless. All the more reason why it was terribly wrong that the Supreme Court installed one.

"All is good in the world today"

Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher flew aboard "Connexion One", a Boeing 737-400 which is the flying test bed for the new mobile broadband communications. After Harry had tried it out, Scott Carson, Connexion by Boeing President, sent the following e-mail to his secretary:

"Hi,
"Here we are high above Washington state. Harry has used and liked. ... All is good in the world today.
"SEC"

Presumably, Stonecipher was impressed by the speed with which he could download porn using the Connexion by Boeing system, although he should've wondered aloud, "won't downloading porn on a commercial flight where passengers are packed in like cattle be inappropriate?".

After downloading a porn video, Harry "chatted" with an online "friend", annihilated VP Cheney in a round of Unreal Tournament 2003, and checked his stock portfolio to insure that, yes, he is still indeed over compensated for what he does. At no point during the flight did either Stonecipher or Carson use the Connexion broadband capability to check a news site. If either had, they would've seen that, in fact, all is not good in the world today.


Harry and Scott surf the web: "Go back, Harry. Yeah, yeah, click on 'nubile nymphs'."

Space Invades, Strip Mine the Moon

U.S. eyes space as possible battleground

No country depends on space and satellites as its eyes and ears more than the United States, which accounted for as much as 95 percent of global military space spending in 1999, according to the French space agency CNES.

"Yet the threat to the U.S. and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the U.S. government charged with national security responsibilities," a congressionally chartered task force headed by Rumsfeld reported 10 days before Bush and he took office in 2001.

Huh? If we control 95% of military space, exactly what threat is there "in and from space"? The Russians? Aren't they supposed to be an ally now that the cold war is over? The Chinese? Again, if they're a threat to us, why do they have most favored nation status? Terrorists? Yeah...they have the technology.

"I think the new initiative is driven by a desire to beat the Chinese to the moon," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy research group.

Umm…shouldn't someone in the Bush maladministration know that we already beat the Chinese to the moon…over 30 years ago!

The moon, scientists have said, is a source of potentially unlimited energy in the form of the helium 3 isotope -- a near perfect fuel source: potent, non-polluting and causing virtually no radioactive by-product in a fusion reactor.

"And if we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn't have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be," said Pike.

Now I understand why Bush wants to go to the moon so bad: monopolize an energy market. Although, he couldn't find oil in Texas, so what do you think his chances are of finding helium 3 on the moon?

Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison estimated the moon's helium 3 would have a cash value of perhaps $4 billion (2.23 billion pounds) a ton in terms of its energy equivalent in oil.

Scientists reckon there are about one million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the earth for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 30 tons could meet all U.S. electric power needs for a year, Kulcinski said by e-mail.

$4 billion? That's pocket change! With just the latest installment of the war in Iraq costing $87 billion, I don't see how $4 billion is really worth chasing after. Besides, that number seems a bit low. If there is enough helium 3 on the moon to power the earth for thousands of years, I would think that be worth just a touch more than $4 billion.

How does the saying go? "Earth first, we'll strip mine the other planets later". Not that I think we shouldn't make use of a "clean" source of energy that could be found on the moon, but we've got several options for clean, reusable fuel right here on Earth.

Mark Morford

The longer this blog gets, the more you're likely to hear me say it: Mark Morford simply rules!

God Hates Unmarried Losers

Here's a hard flick of the finger into the forehead of GOP sanctimony: Marriage has nothing to do with God. Marriage has nothing to do with Christian "interpersonal skills." Marriage has nothing to do with how one colon-clenched segment of the power elite decides it must restrict matrimony lest it lose more control and become increasingly insignificant and tumble further down the slope into hot pools of rage and intolerance and bad sex once a year with the lights off.

And, finally, marriage has nothing to do with political attitudes or party affiliation or how big your right-wing campaign contribution was during the last election, and therefore how much you get to shove your personal pseudo-pious homophobic missionary-position ethos down the nation's throat.

Because marriage is, of course, about connection. It is about social ritual and new, wide-open definitions of family and the ability of two people to commit to going deep and peeling each other back and agreeing to deal with each other's crap for the next 50 years.

Bush Crashes King Ceremony

Bush Unwelcome at Dr. King Ceremony

Brooks and several black clergy members in Atlanta accused the White House of barging in on the King ceremonies in Atlanta, inviting themselves and demanding changes in the schedule to accommodate Bush and the Secret Service's security concerns.

Five Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority buses parked in front of them blocked their view of the president. Police in riot gear stood atop the vehicles.

Must be free speech, neo-con style!

Administration officials said Bush had been sensitive to the needs of blacks. They cited his "No Child Left Behind" initiative, which is intended to make schools more accountable for student performance

Officials neglected to point out, however, that Bush has yet to propose any method of funding the initiative.

"Today would have been (King's) 75th birthday. It's important for our country to honor his life and what he stood for," the president said in New Orleans.

King was a civil rights visionary. Ironic, don't you think, that the pResident who's done more than any President in history to revoke civil rights should pretend to honor King.

Once Again, Taxpayers Would Underwrite Halliburton

Red Planet Profits

(Halliburton), which was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and is a major financial backer of the Administration, has long supported funding a Mars plan because it is good for its drilling technology business (it was also Cheney who spearheaded the Mars plan inside the White House).

Well, surprise, surprise!

As Streich wrote, "Drilling technology for Mars research will be useful for the oil and gas industries." He says "the oil industry is in need of a revolutionary drilling technique that allows quicker and more economical access to oil reserves." A Mars mission "presents an unprecedented opportunity" to develop that drilling technique and "improve our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth."

…all for free to Halliburton and at the expense of the taxpayers. Typical Repug policy.

On top of the Halliburton factor, USA Today reports that Cheney "persuaded Bush that there could be military benefits, such as space-based defense systems."

Cheney: "Oh Buuuushhiiieeee…we can get some more war toys if we do this!"

Bush: "Really, Uncle Dick? That'll be swell!"