From Holden: Did Laura get a new doo while flying across the Pacific on Air Force Uno? Here she is departing for Asia with the Chimp in Chief. AFP/Paul J. Richards And here she is arriving in Osaka. Same Chimp, different hair. AFP/Paul J. Richards Continue reading Laura’s Mile High Club
From Holden: Helen Thomas deserves a Pulitzer for putting up with this shit for so long. Presidential press secretary Scott McClellan says he can be trusted. But I don’t think he should take a poll in the White House press room [snip] The record shows otherwise. McClellan might be forgiven for declaring from the White House lectern two years ago that Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove had told him that they were not involved in leaking to the media that war critic Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, … Continue reading Helen Thomas on Little Scottie
From Holden: Nothing piles up the war crimes like a large scale military operation in an urban setting. An Iraqi Red Crescent doctor said on Saturday more than 50 bodies had been found in the rubble of a town near the Syrian border which U.S.-led troops swept through this week in an anti-insurgent offensive. [snip] The U.S. military says it has detained around 180 insurgents and killed at least 36 more in the operation, which was continuing in the nearby town of Karabila on Friday. It said around 900 civilians who fled the town were given temporary housing nearby during … Continue reading Hearts and Minds, Kidneys and Livers
From Holden: We don’t torture, but we do feed Muslims to lions. Two Iraqi businessmen, who were imprisoned by U.S. forces in Iraq, claimed Monday that American soldiers threw them into a cage of lions in a Baghdad palace, as part of a terrifying interrogation in 2003. “They took me behind the cage, they were screaming at me, scaring me and beating me a lot,” Thahe Mohammed Sabbar said in an interview. “One of the soldiers would open the door, and two soldiers would push me in. The lions came running toward me and they pulled me out and shut … Continue reading The Imperial Presidency Comes Full Circle
From Holden: Today’s New York Times lead editorial thoroughly deconstructs all of the Bush Assministrations protestations over Chimpy’s Iraq War lies. And for good measure, E. J. Dionne puts Chimpy’s lies in context. Continue reading Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Lies But Were Afraid To Ask
When you stand up to a bully, a bully backs down. The Senate is to vote Tuesday on a proposal by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., that would allow detainees to file habeas corpus petitions, but only in the D.C. appeals court. However, the proposal would prohibit detainees from filing petitions based on claims objecting to living conditions. “It is reasonable to insist that when the government deprives a person of his or her liberty _ and in this case for an indefinite period of time _ that the individual have a meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention … Continue reading Happy Democrat Photo: Bingaman Edition
It was a little ridiculous, honestly. After a while I started to feel like Wendy with the Lost Boys, with these guys: Andy who’d show up drunk on my porch and talk about how nobody loved him, Jake who was four days sick with the flu and had nothing in his house to eat but half a lemon turning green in the fridge, Mark who taught me how to make coffee with hot chocolate powder to stay awake for my 8 a.m. classes, who was pulling a 4.0, the jackass, when I could barely score Ds with the hours we … Continue reading Get Me Through December
Newspapers are DOOMED! • The latest statistics out of the Audit Bureau of Circulations find that newspaper circulation dropped 2.6 percent in the six months that ended in September. That’s more of a drop than in any comparable six-month period since 1991. • A new Pew survey reports that 48 percent of blog creators are under 30 and 39 percent of them have college or graduate degrees. All this speaks volumes about the state of the print news business, and its increasingly perilous future. As someone who earns his daily bread working for an online media publication, I’m opening myself … Continue reading Doooooooooom
From Holden: Thank god we liberated Iraq from that cruel dictator. The U.S. Army discovered scores of detainees in poor health at a building run by the Iraqi Interior Ministry during a search for a missing 15-year-old boy, a U.S. general said Monday. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst of the 3rd Infantry Division said the prisoners were found Sunday “in need of medical care — so I brought medics in.” Iraqi police went further, telling CNN that many detainees in the Baghdad building “had obviously endured torture” and were “detained in poor health conditions.” The Iraqi Interior Ministry could not be … Continue reading Freedom On The Crawl!
From Holden: Gee, thanks alot, Colin. The United States created the myth around Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and reality followed, terrorism expert Loretta Napoleoni said. [snip] Napoleoni, the author of “Insurgent Iraq,” told reporters last week that Powell’s argument falsely exploited Zarqawi to prove a link between then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. She said that through fabrications of Zarqawi’s status, influence and connections “the myth became the reality” — a self-fulfilling prophecy. “He became what we wanted him to be. We put him there, not the jihadists,” Napoleoni said. Iraq’s most notorious insurgent, Napoleoni argues, accomplished what … Continue reading Manufacturing a Terrorist Leader
From Holden: Where there any Iraqi suicide bombers before Chimpy launched his Vanity War against Iraq? Continue reading Where There Any?
From Holden: The AP shouldn’t have listened to Secretary of State Rosey Scenario. Rice: Border-Crossings Deal ‘In Sight’ The now-Millerless Times knows how to keep its powder dry. Rice Fails to Broker Deal on Monitoring Gaza Extremists REUTERS/Oleg Popov Continue reading A Tale or Two Headlines
Bush Didn’t Mislead on War, Adviser Says Is it me, or are members of this administration starting to sound like parents insisting that their child is the brightest, smartest kid in the class, even as said kid puts a bucket on his head and runs repeatedly into the wall? It’s not that I don’t appreciate the abstract value of familial loyalty and all, but if I tell you my grandma’s apple pie is the best ever, it’s not exactly fair to treat that the same as getting the information from the Zagat guide. A. Continue reading Department of the Most Beautiful Baby in the World
This is not a joke, and, no, I will not calm down: I watched the little boys kick the soccer ball and took in the sails on the blue water and felt the warm November air. � And then I thought again: Bill O’Reilly invited Al Queda to come and blow us into bits. � There was some commotion on the field. �The goalie was hurt, so I switched in my own son, seven years old, big blue eyes and soft brown hair, a bright smile and a sweet disposition. �He looked good, manning the crease, waiting for the next … Continue reading Taking It Personally
Thersities reads Michelle Malkin. Thank God. I didn’t want to check it out of the library, lest it get cooties on me. (And yes, that’s exactly the level of insult it, and she, deserves.) A. Continue reading Corn Muffins
From Tena: from Dan Savage’s November 8 column in the Village Voice: A vaccine for two common strains of HPV, the virus that causes genital warts, is currently moving through the federal approval process. HPV can also cause cervical cancer in women, and these cancers kill 4,000 American women annually. Who could possibly be against a vaccine that has proven 100 percent effective in clinical tests and will save thousands of women’s lives every year? Those “culture of life” assfucks, that’s who. “A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates [and] social … Continue reading The Culture of Life Assfucks
Thank God for Adventus. War on Christmas this, bitches. A. Continue reading Xmas
Steve and his iPod, sitting in a tree. I have one of the little iPods, couple years old now, but I rarely use it. I ride my bike more than I walk, and I like to be alert when I ride in traffic, so I don’t wear the thing around, plus, I’m just not that big of a music freak. I feel bad. It’s a cool little machine, but I’m not in love with it. Mr. Athenae on the other hand, the man who rides a train to work every day and then has a bit of a walk at … Continue reading Steve’s New Toy
Question for the assembled. Last year around this time I asked people to comment with their favorite local or out-of-the-way shops or businesses from which to buy Christmas gifts. We came up with a list of a lot of interesting stuff, from coffee to books to fun gifty things. My family generally doesn’t do charity gifts. Through the years we donate to charities all over the place, everything from religious groups to scholarship funds, but we don’t usually do the “I gave something in your name” type of gift. A couple of years ago, though, I gave my dad a … Continue reading Holiday Giving and Charity
Kevin Sites on a guy trying to do good work in the midst of the rotten situation our leaders have placed him in: “I get just about everything I ask for,” Walton says. “But, yes, I’d like to have a whole battalion of civil affairs Marines out there backing me up. I wish there were more of us so we could be the main face of the Marine Corps that people see here.” Walton says he wants to check out a college of business administration and a school of law, which he thinks have been abandoned. But when we arrive … Continue reading Veterans Day
Oh hell yeah: In an effort to find out how the now infamous 16 words about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa, which turned out to be false, made it into President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) today introduced a House resolution that would require the White House to present Congress with all drafts and documents related to the crafting of that speech. Hinchey’s measure would also require the White House to deliver to Congress all drafts and related documents surrounding an October 2002 speech that the president made in which he discussed a possible … Continue reading Happy Democrat Photo: Maurice! Edition
From Holden: Things are looking up for the torture ban in the House. Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., says Bush and Vice President Cheney have lobbied House Republicans to oppose the amendment, but Blunt stopped short of saying he would urge members to vote no. “It’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t get a lot of votes,” he said. In the Senate, the torture ban was approved 90-9. [snip] In the House, the ban is backed by another Vietnam combat veteran, Rep. John Murtha. The conservative Pennsylvania Democrat wrote in a letter to House colleagues that revelations about abuses … Continue reading Who’da Thunk It?
From Holden: Everyone’s favorite mentally challenged Senate Majority Leader screwed the pooch by leaking about the leak. A leak suspected to have come from the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) complicated, confused and nearly derailed a joint effort by Senate and House Republican leaders to seek an investigation of the unauthorized release of classified information. [snip] On Tuesday at 11:36 a.m., the Drudge Report reported that Frist and Hastert would “announce a bicameral investigation into the leak of classified information to The Washington Post regarding the ‘black sites’ where high-value al Qaeda terrorists are being held,” catching … Continue reading Leaky Bill
From Holden: Paul Morse-The White House/Handout/Reuters There is a precedent. All Hat No Cattle. Continue reading Yo, Chimpy – Truman Capote Called, He Wants His Look Back
From Holden: Lame Duck: House leaders late Wednesday abandoned an attempt to push through a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling, fearing it would jeopardize approval of a sweeping budget bill Thursday. Continue reading Quack-Quack
From Holden: From PollingReport.com, a synopsis of Chimpy’s job approval ratings in all the major national polls conducted so far this month. NBC/Wall Street Journal 11/4-7/05 Approve: 38% Disapprove: 57% Pew 11/3-6/05 Approve: 36% Disapprove: 55% AP-Ipsos 10/31 – 11/2/05 Approve: 37% Disapprove: 59 ABC/Washington Post 10/30 – 11/2/05 Approve: 39% Disapprove: 60% CBS 10/30 – 11/1/05 Approve: 35% Disapprove: 57% Continue reading November is National Pony Month
From Holden: Senate Democrats are now focusing attention on Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito’s failure to recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard and Smith Barney Inc. Alito has said that a court computer system failed to remind him to step aside in the Vanguard case. And the White House has argued that the court rulings could not have affected his personal finances in any meaningful way. Democrats concede that point, but say they are troubled that the nominee failed to withdraw from the cases, as he had said he would, to avoid any possible conflict of interest. The Senate Judiciary … Continue reading ScandAlito
It was a hundred and four degrees when I stepped off the plane. I was slightly hung over, having had a couple of whiskeys to try to get to sleep about halfway through the 14-hour flight from Chicago to Amman. There was a screaming baby behind me. The baby screamed all 14 hours of the flight. The whiskey did nothing, except give me a headache, so now I had a headache in a country I’d never been in before, my ears were ringing from the screaming baby, I couldn’t find the airport exit. And it was a hundred and four … Continue reading Amman
From Holden: The gaggle kicks off with a discussion of President Millstone. Q You’re not in denial here? I mean, the President has got his lowest job approval ratings in his presidency. Do you not acknowledge that that’s not, as Secretary Rumsfeld would say, not exactly helpful to Republicans? MR. McCLELLAN: We have a proud record of accomplishment and a positive agenda for the future. And we look forward to continuing to talk about it. Q — the public doesn’t agree with — MR. McCLELLAN: I mean, you can get caught up in polls; we don’t. Polls are snapshots in … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle