Thanks for Stopping By!

Thanks for Stopping by, and Farewell!

2008-06-11T06:52:00.004-04:00

The last 2 weeks have been whirlwind at my house. It all started at the end of May, when a friend of mine, who was working as the Library Aide at the school our kids attend, called me up to let me know that she decided to resign her position effective at the end of the current school year. I spoke to her on a Saturday after I worked a 5 hour shift at the library - starting at 8:00am - and before I had to pick up one son at a birthday party to take him to another birthday party. And we had a hell of a thunderstorm that afternoon, too.

Anyways, after speaking with my friend, I decided to email the principal and let her know I would be pleased to be considered for the position. The same day I emailed the Principal, my parents came to visit because my husband and I were leaving the next day to travel to New York City to see "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.

We flew up to NYC on the morning of June 2, and boy did we luck out. It was perfect - around 75*, sunny, just a beautiful spring day in the Big Apple. We met a friend of my husband's for lunch, then spent about an hour and a half walking around the Times Square area, seeing Broadway, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and Central Park.

We had tickets for the Daily Show that night, so around 3:00, we decided to head down to 11th (between 51st and 52nd) to get in line. The ticket confirmation recommended being in line between 3:30-4:30. I checked my cell phone when we got in line and it said 3:33. By my count, there were between 80-100 people ahead of us. As we read the fine print on the ticket confirmation, we noticed it said something like, having your confirmed tickets does not mean you get tickets into the studio...I was a little concerned, but felt pretty good about our chances getting in.

The show starts handing out studio tickets around 4:40pm. The crew hands out 240, and the 240th person in line was 6 people in front of my husband and me. Bummer! We had flown all the way up there to watch the show, but it did not appear that we would get in. But....then the crew handed out 15 additional tickets which were described to us as being for "VIPs" who show up last minute. If the VIPs showed up, they got in...if not, we would get in. We got numbers 7 and 8 in that group of 15.

Fast forward to about 6:00pm. We're still in line (yes, nearly 2 1/2 hours later), edging our way closer to the door to the studio. We eventually get in through the front door and go through the security process and metal detector. The studio crew comes out to tell us they'll take the first 16 people who have the VIP tickets, and since there are only 15 of us, we all get in for the show.

As luck would have it, since I had a small bag with me (unlike most of the people in our group who had just come from work and had briefcases and larger bags), we got through the security process first in our group. So we're waiting to go in, are directed into the studio, and told we could take whatever seats were available, which, just happened to be the VIP seats....and we end up sitting in the front row! The show itself was fantastic - the guest that night was none other than Scott McClellan and he was on for almost the entire program. I would have loved to have seen Rob Riggle or Samantha Bee, but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

So on Tuesday, we return to Virginia, and I set up an interview with the principal for Wednesday afternoon to interview for the open library aide/media specialist position. On Wednesday, I work a 5 hour shift at the library, and quickly race home to freshen up a bit before my interview. On my way home, I heard on WAMU (the local NPR affiliate) that a tornado was spotted in Loudoun County (to our West) and the entire listening area was under a tornado watch. As I left my house at around 2:55 to head to my interview, I heard some rumbles of thunder off in the distance and thought, well, I guess we won't be having swim practice this afternoon. I got about 3/4 of a mile down the road and noticed the first traffic light was out. I slowed down and noticed a few rain drops. About 200 feet further, I think I drove through a tornado. The rain came down in sheets, trees were bending from side to side, branches started flying around me, wires were coming down. I've never been so scared...I kept thinking, just let me get to the school, just let me get to the school....

As I get to the main intersection which is about a block from the school, I notice that all the traffic lights are out and the shops have no power. I'm still thinking about my interview, though I just want to get inside the school. I get there, and not only is the power out, the kids are in their tornado drill positions, in the hallways with their heads covered. I'm not surprised, I say, since I think I just drove through part of the tornado! Anyways, the interview is cancelled (and rescheduled for the same time on Thursday), obviously, so I stay and help the front office deal with the onslaught of phone calls and nervous parents. I take my kids home, and not wanting to drive over another wire lying on the ground, decide to take them a different way. We left the school at 4:00, and got home at 5:20. It normally takes us about 10 minutes to get home.

Upon arriving in our neighborhood, we see that our street is blocked off because a neighbor's tree was struck by lighting and about 1/3 of the tree is lying cross ways across the street. Access to our driveway is blocked, although we could have gone out to the main road and made a series of left turns to get back in the other way. We park the van and walk to our house to make sure nothing fell in the yard or on the house - nothing had, but the power was out. VDOT told our neighbor that it would take 3 days minimum to get the tree off the road, but in an incredible turn of luck, a VDOT crew was stuck on the main road, detoured off into our subdivision (and the one next to us), saw the tree and decided to cut it down and get it off the road. What good fortune!!

Meanwhile, my husband calls to say that the metro is off-loading passengers at East Falls Church because a tree fell on the tracks and they can't go farther west without "single tracking" and shuttle buses are supposed to be taking passengers to the next station. He gets off and there are literally thousands of commuters waiting for the bus and the metro staff seem to be unable to handle the onslaught, so he decides to start walking to the next station (he's still got the blisters to prove it, though they're healing now) and as he's doing that, the next band of severe thunderstorms roll through.

He ends up at West Falls Church, takes the commuter bus to the parking lot by our house, gets in the car and gets home around 6:15. We our time listening to our only battery powered radio, and about 7:50pm, a tornado warning came on for Fairfax County, so we round up the kids and head to the basement. Our youngest son is pretty upset, our oldest son is taking it all in stride, my husband decides to ride out the storm on the back (covered) porch and I'm just wondering what will happen...

Anyway, I wake up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to discover we still don't have power. I take our oldest up to Safeway with me to get ice and batteries, come home, load as much as I can into coolers, and try to figure out how I am going to make myself presentable for my 5 hour shift at the library. I get the kids off to school, head to work and make the best of it. One of my neighbors walked into the library and told me our power went back on around 9:30-10:00, so I asked for (and got) permission to leave an hour early to get the food back into the fridge/freezer. I had enough time to shower, dry my hair, and I had my interview that afternoon.

Friday came and it's my last day in the library, our youngest son's last baseball game for the season, our school picnic. Your typical busy suburban family day I guess. Oh, and I should mention, it was about 3,000* with 120% humidity on Friday - the beginning of the heat wave which I think ended last night with another round of thunderstorms. Saturday and Sunday we spent out on the Shenandoah River camping and canoeing with our Cub Scout Den. It was surprisingly cool at night out by the river, a nice respite from the heat and humidity we'd been slogging through in the Virginia suburbs. The 7 mile canoe trip was pleasant and uneventful (a nice change from our canoeing trip in Michigan last summer when we tipped the canoe over about 3 miles into a 12 mile trip), though by the end, we were all ready to get out of the bright, hot sun.

On Monday morning at 7:45am, I got a call from the Fairfax County schools HR department officially offering me the part-time Library Aide/Media Specialist, which I happily accepted. I was nervous about receiving a call that early in the morning, especially since my grandmother (96 years young) was going in for a second round of surgery to remove/replace her pacemaker, which had a staph infection on the wires and was causing no end of infections and a steady dose of antibiotics, which she's been on and off since December. She came through the surgery in good shape, and is out of the hospital recovering at my parents house.

I went through the Fairfax County HR New Support Orientation yesterday, and they mentioned their policy regarding blogs, My Space, etc., and it got me thinking about my blog. While I don't think there's anything too objectionable here (honestly, who among us doesn't get a case of the "f bombs" while discussing the absolute incompetence of this administration??), the policy is to not have anything that would embarrass the school system, or be objectionable to students or parents. Plus, as the head of the Mock Election being held at the school this fall, it's probably best to keep my political opinions to myself, so, in that regard, I think I'm going to hang up my blogging shoes for now. I know that will disappoint my two loyal readers, but I'm always happy to discuss my views either lounging at the pool or around the kitchen table.

Update: This has been sitting in my edited but not posted file for a few days. School is now officially over for the year, my boys both had terrific report cards (the oldest got straight A's) and both of the boys earned citizenship awards for their classes this year. Our 4th grader earned the overall citizenship award for his class, and our 1st grader recieved (for the second year in a row) the P.E. Citizenship award for his class.

Congratulations doodles and happy 1st day of summer vacation!!! :)

Medal of Honor Recipients

2008-06-09T19:21:00.002-04:00

I don't like it when people say someone "won" the Medal of Honor, or any other military decoration for that matter. You don't "win" the MoH like you "win" a baseball game, you earn the Medal of Honor, and usually posthumously.

Operation Iraqi Freedom has had fewer Medal of Honor recipients (4) than any other conflict (a story for another day). President Bush honored the actions of PFC Ross McGinnis (since promoted to SPC) and presented his parents, Tom and Romayne McGuiness, with the MoH for their son's actions throwing his body on a grenade tossed into his humvee allowing the four soldiers riding with him to escape. SPC McGuiness was killed instantly; his fellow soldiers in the humvee all survived.

On June 3, 2008, Tom McGinnis, spoke at the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, where his son was inducted. He spoke out in favor of Jim Webb's post 9/11 GI Bill, saying,

"We’ve had the support of hundreds and hundreds of people — family, friends, and strangers that have helped us deal with what we had to go through. And this is a good thing. But our troops when they get home also need our support. They put their lives on the line for us, sometimes for four years, sometimes for two years, sometimes for 20 years. But when they get home, they also need our support. And many of these people were very young when they left home, they put aside their education and went into the service because it’s young people that make up the active army and really do the fighting for us. So we owe them an ability to be able to return home and become a productive part of their society. They need to be able to continue their education where they left off. And so I say thank you to the Senate and House who have helped to pass the new GI bill. Now this GI bill only needs the signature of the President of the United States to become law. And I think it’s time that George Bush can sign this bill and make it law to show his appreciation for the support these loyal youth have given him."

Amen brother. Supporting the troops means really supporting them, and that costs more than simple, inexpensive words. It means helping them through deployments and reunions, providing adequate health care for wounds seen and unseen, sending them into battle with the tools they need to win the fight, and giving them the means to become better educated if they so choose. It's the least - the very, very least - that we can do.

Pass the bill, Mr. President. Do the right thing for the soldiers you lavish with such praise - and spend money on those who have truly earned it.

Fox News Anchorettes and IQ Requirements

2008-06-08T14:55:00.017-04:00

Updates below.

Just out of curiosity, how stupid do you have to be to get a job as an anchor at Fox News? Seriously - if you have an IQ of over 85, are you automatically disqualified from reading the mind-numbing drivel that comes out of the teleprompter?

I'm asking because on June 6, some generic blond talking moron on Fox asked this question:

Seriously? Is this idiot fucking with us or what? Fist bumps are now reserved only for terrorists? Jeez, I guess my son's Rookie League baseball team has got some splainin' to do to homeland security!

Here's a montage of the terrorist appeasers who are fist bumping their way to the destruction of the United States and everything it stands for:

Schneider and Cordero:

Giambi and Jeter:

Harry Connick, Jr and daughter Sara:

Former Presidential Candidate Joe Lieberman and a fellow terrorist sympathizer:

Golfer Billy Mayfair and his caddie:

Now, don't confuse the Hamas/Hezbollah/al-Qaeda/SLA/Weather Underground/Minutemen fist bump with the patriotic, All-American, freedom-loving, terrorist hating chest bump, demonstrated here, by all-around class act George W. Bush:

Update: Former President George H.W. Bush "terrorist fist jabbing" Anna Kournikova to show his support of Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the al-Asqa Martyrs brigade.

Or maybe he's just celebrating going up 40-30 at 6-5 in the 1st set. I report, you decide!

Update II: The terrorists and their fist jobs have won!! E.D. ("Extra Dumb?") Hill has lost her show "America's Pulse", though she remains with the network. She "apologized" for insinuating that the Obama's shared a "terrorist fist jab":

Uh huh. That's quite a defense: others called it a "terrorist fist jab" - so I had not choice but to characterize it that way! Right. I would love to know who thought that the fist pump was anything other than a fist pump, or was inspired by al-Qaeda. Seriously, ED, names please!

As for the "apology" associating the word "terrorist" with Barack and Michele Obama, I'm sure you meant it. Most empty-headed, bleach blond conservatard losers who just got fired usually do.*

*My intent is not in any way to imply that you are an empty-headed, bleach blond conservatard loser, and I offer my sincere "apologies" if you were offended by that, 'k? ;)

FOREVER HOCKEYTOWN!

2008-06-06T06:59:00.003-04:00

Four cups, 11 years. 104 games. Regular season: 54-21-7. Playoffs: 4-2 series win over Nashville; 4-0 series win over Colorado; 4-2 series win over Dallas; 4-2 series win over Pittsburgh to win the cup.

June 5, 1968

2008-06-05T20:13:00.002-04:00

Bobby Kennedy speaking in Cleveland on April 5, 1968. He was shot by Sirhan Sirhan 2 months later in Los Angeles, California immediately following a speech to his supporters to celebrate his victory in the Democratic Presidential primary.

His brother, Ted, gave a eulogy at St. Patrick's Cathedral and said,

"My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

I wonder what America would have been like with Robert Kennedy as its President. Then, as now, we are faced with a war with no end. In 1968, the nation dealt with a counterculture that rebelled against everything they were taught (now those same counterculturists tell us "don't do as we did...it's sinful!"). The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was fresh on the mind of Americans. Rioting in urban areas had happened across the country.

Today, we face different challenges. We are faced with rising prices, with stagnant wages, with a falling dollar, with health care out of reach for millions of Americans. We struggle with Abu Gharib, with Guantanamo Bay, with the long solitary confinement of Americans (and others) charged with terrorism and other crimes, with a Patriot Act that allows the government to read email, listen to phone calls, and review library records. We see movie actors and sports stars paid millions upon millions of dollars, while nickel and dimeing enlisted soldiers for uniforms lost when their humvees were attacked.

We are now a nation where your actions do not count nearly as loudly as your words, where patriotism is measured in the size of your American flag lapel pin and not in what you do for your country, where "liberal" and "progressive" are equal to terrorist and "compassionate conservatism" trumps all, where American soldiers who fight and bleed and sacrifice and give are told to shut up when they disagree with the President.

And through it all, we sit and watch. Unlike in 1968, we do not protest. We do not fight the transgressions we see around us. We do not march in protest of the travesty of the Iraq War. We don't walk to work to show our anger at the oil companies. We are too busy getting the kids to school, or baseball, or swimming, and we barely have enough time to have a conversation about what is really happening around us, and where America has gone wrong.

We have been bullied for 7 years by people who believe that they are right - not just believe it, but feel it to the very core of their being - and are told that those who do not agree are not just wrong, but immoral, and evil, and unpatriotic, and blinded, and appeasers, and haters. I am hopeful that the people who have led this country for 7 years are given a long and painful kick in the ass in November. I hope those people - who sit in judgement of others while ignoring the plank in their own eyes - will come to see the damage they've done to this country, though I doubt that will ever happen. They are wholly convinced of the righteousness of their cause. Getting them to think another way would be like deprogramming a cult member.

I take solace that it will happen. It is coming. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and judging by the polls out there, I'll bet you are, too. If you like the way things are, vote McCain. If you are ready for America to take a new course, to set sail in a different direction, if you want America to once again be that city on the hill, that beacon of light and guidance to the rest of the world, then protest. Make your voice heard.

Stop the Presses!

2008-06-01T09:39:00.005-04:00

Talk about an earth-shattering event - I'm here to tell you that I agree with Dick Cheney on something. Yes, friends, it's true. Now wipe the coffee you just spit out onto your computer screen and read on.

Ole' Dick was in Virginia yestereday - our former stomping grounds to boot - hobnobbing with the Republican Delegates who were busy voting on a Republican nominee for Senate to run against Mark Warner (they chose Jim Gilmore - you might remember him from such fiascos as ending the car tax and leaving the state billions of dollars in the hole). Ole' Dick, who gave us such whoppers as our troops will be greeted as liberators in Iraq (not true), Saddam's loyalists met with Mohammed Atta in Prague (also not true), and the insurgency is in it's last throes (thousands of dead and wounded American troops later, not true by a longshot), encouraged Republicans to run on the the Bush administration's record of success (!!!) to win in November. And that, friends, is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

I'm hoping the McSame team will run on our successes in Iraq, the high price of gas we're paying, inflation on everyday food items like bread, milk and eggs, the high esteem people around the world have for the United States, the eavesdropping by phone compaines of our calls and emails, and the general douchebaggery of this administration. That, plus picking Charlie Crist as the VP (....don't ask....don't tell...) will make this girls dreams come true!!

And now, ask the children to leave the room as I present you with one truly frightening pic of the VP (and let me be the first to give Lynn Cheney a whole lotta credit for "putting up" with this over the years):

Inquiring minds want to know....My guess? He's either related to John C. Holmes, or he's got a colostomy bag...the secrecy surrounding this administration means your guess is as good as mine...but my money's on the bag.

GRRRRRLS ROCK!

2008-05-28T19:30:00.006-04:00

Joan Jett is one seriously bad ass rocker. That song is AWESOME. I first heard that cover in the 1999 movie Drop Dead Gorgeous, a wickedly funny movie about teen beauty queens. The cover is perfectly done by JJ - kicking ass and taking names - and if (and when) I get a drum set, I am learning that song - and maybe I'll sing it too!

The song, if you haven't guessed, is "Love is All Around", the theme song from "The Mary Tyler Moore" show. I vaguely remember watching that show in the mid 70s on our little 10 inch black and white. The lyrics are awesome - who among us girls didn't think of Mary throwing her hat into the air when moving to a new city or starting a new job?

"Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone
But it's time you started living
It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all

You're the one most likely to succeed
Just be sure to keep your head
Cause girl you know that's all you need
Everyone around you adores you
Don't give up, the world is waiting for you

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have the town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all,
You're gonna make it after all

Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have the town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all,
You're gonna make it after all."

For fun, here's the 1st season opening theme (with the much less certain "You might just make it after all"):

And here's the song used in Seasons 2- 7 (Mary's "gonna make it after all!"):

As we Queens say, ROCK ON!

I love it when...

2008-05-28T16:57:00.004-04:00

...Republicans eat their own. I'm talking, of course, about Scott McClellan and his new book "I worked for the Worst Administration in the History of this Great Republic". No, that's not it, it's "Karl Rove is the Biggest Asshole in Washington, DC (and Texas)!" No, wait it's "Shilling and Lying on the Taxpayer's Nickel". No, it's "You Suckers Got a War in Iraq and Didn't Even Get a Tee-Shirt!" No, actually it's:

Not to be confused with this:

The Republicans are none too happy with Scotty, but let's recall what George Bush had to say about him when his resignation was announced:

WASHINGTON (AP) - White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday he is resigning, continuing a shakeup in President Bush's administration that has already yielded a new chief of staff and could lead to a change in the Cabinet.

Appearing with Bush on the White House South Lawn just before the president boarded a helicopter at the start a trip to Alabama, McClellan, who has parried especially fiercefully with reporters on Iraq and on intelligence issues, told Bush: "I have given it my all sir and I have given you my all sir, and I will continue to do so as we transition to a new press secretary."

Bush said McClellan had "a challenging assignment."

"I thought he handled his assignment with class, integrity," the president said. "It's going to be hard to replace Scott, but nevertheless he made the decision and I accepted it. One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas and talking about the good old days."

As for whether Scotty and Georgie will ever be sittin' 'round chewin' the fat and talkin' about the good ole days? I don't THINK so! (see the video above from one of the funniest mockumentaries to date)

The Mister and I are headed to NYC to see a live taping of "The Daily Show" with John Stewart next week. His very special guest that night? One Scott McClellan. Hopefully the brouhaha over his memoirs will not have faded from the limelight before John gets to take his pound of flesh.

On Memorial Day

2008-05-25T09:03:00.003-04:00

It's nice to have a day off once in a while, isn't it? Especially now, with the weather getting nicer and school almost out for the summer. But far too often, we enjoy our respite from work without remembering why we have the day off.

I present this video for Memorial Day, 2008.

My friends...

2008-05-25T08:40:00.007-04:00

they know me so well. I celebrated my almost 40th birthday on Friday, and was fortunate to meet up with one of my closest friends (variously called the "MCBC" and "L'S...") at Panera Bread for coffee (...sigh...like the good ole' days in Cairo...) and then with another (the "QB") to see the Capitol Steps downtown at the Ronald Reagan Building (the irony is delicious: the president most known for being in favor of "small government" has his name on the biggest and most expensive federal building in the country) with our "goozs".

Anyways, the QB gave me the following for my birthday:

I proudly wore this pin on my purse last night - on the other side from the Pope Benedict pin I got when the QB and I saw him in downtown DC in April.

The coffee mug starts with red and blue states (indicating which team won which states in '04) and then changes to all blue when strong Dunkin' Donuts (or Tim Horton's) coffee is added. Love it!

It's funny, there are multiple political viewpoints expressed among my circle of friends, though we all seem to be united on one point: none of us can stand Hillary Clinton.

Drop out already, will ya????

The Wingers get their panties in a bunch.

2008-05-24T11:16:00.012-04:00

AGAIN. Seriously, the wingnuts on the right seem to be perpetually afraid of their own shadow - and everyone else's to boot. For as much grief as I give those cowards for not signing up to fight, we're probably all better off that they're here in the states being douchebags rather than having them sit in a foxhole soiling their pants everytime a person of Arab descent walks by.

What's got them all atwitter? This:

Rachel Ray holding an iced coffee. AND OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! WEARING A KEFFIYEH!!1! She's a member of Hamas, no Hezbollah, no she wants to bear Osama's children !!!!1!

Of course, a keffiyeh looks like this:

and this:

Even some of Malkin's brain dead followers know that she's making a mountain out of something that's not even close to a molehill. Rachel Ray is wearing what we call a "scarf". See how the patterns are different between what RR is wearing and a keffiyeh? And how her scarf has long tassles, and keffiyeh's don't? That means THEY'RE NOT THE SAME THING. Morans.

Besides, everyone knows that this is the way to wear a keffiyeh, beautifully worn by our pet olive-wood camel, Ali Talal, who greets visitors in our front entryway:

Update: Oh my god....this Army/Navy store is selling keffiyeh-like scarves! Why do Army/Navy stores want the terrorists to win????

Update again: The good folks at Sadly, No! found this interesting pic, which obiviously means Michelle Malkin is a terrorist sympathizer:

Lucy...you got some 'splainin' to do!!!

Supporting the Troops - for real

2008-05-22T15:07:00.003-04:00

The Senate voted today on another war supplemental (the Senate votes every six months on funding for Iraq and Afghanistan rather than add the costs to the annual budget), and added on Jim Webb's GI education funding bill. As late as last week, Webb was 2 votes shy of getting the 60 needed for a veto-proof majority. Today the Senate stood up and did the right thing and voted 75-22 to pass the bill. President Bush has promised to veto the bill. Good. Do it. The Senate will override your veto and pass the bill over your temper tantrums.

Roll call (with Republicans who stood up to the President and did the right thing for the troops in bold):

Grouped By Vote Position
YEAs ---75
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Bond (R-MO)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Hagel (R-NE)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Warner (R-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wicker (R-MS)
Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---22 (all Republicans):

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bennett (R-UT)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lugar (R-IN)
McConnell (R-KY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Not Voting - 3
Coburn (R-OK)
Kennedy (D-MA)
McCain (R-AZ)*

I'm fairly impressed with the list of Republicans who grew a set and voted yes. It's a real mix of passionate conservatives (Chambliss, Crapo, Inhofe, Isakson, Thune, Vitter, Wicker) and fairly moderate Republicans (Specter, Snowe, Collins, Hagel) and everyone in between.

But speaking of temper tantrums, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) threw one today and it's got to be seen to be believed.

He's got it completely backward. You will be rewarded if you vote against the Webb bill - with a one way ticket back home on November 5, 2008. Unsolicited advice to McBush: please, please, please pick Lindsay Graham as your Veep. I would love to see the conservative Christians supporting McBush stand up for a guy like Lindsay with some...how shall I put this...interesting rumors about him....

*Apparently, presidential candidate John McBush couldn't be bothered to come back to DC to vote - too busy raising benjamins.

I love pictures like this

2008-05-17T19:58:00.011-04:00

Looks like ole' Georgie has a new BFF! Tell me you don't look at that picture and sing to yourself:

"King Fahd and Georgie sittin' in a tree..."

I cannot begin to imagine the outrage on the right if John Kerry or Al Gore were photographed holding hands (twice - scroll down below!) with the leader of a country that produced 15 of the September 11th hijackers! We would hear about it ad nauseum on Faux News...

Personally, I agree with my friend who thinks the Saudis have some secrets on our country and/or leaders and blackmail us to keep those secrets secure. The only other explanation I can give for our continuing friendship with the Saudis is they feed our oil addiction and we are addicts always coming back for more...

Update: As habibi gooz politely pointed out to me, George Bush's BFF is not King Fahd, but King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, son of of King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud. You can read all about him here.

Nazi Appeasers are everywhere

2008-05-15T18:44:00.003-04:00

Ole' Georgie took his traveling "Bring It On" show to Israel and proved to be the bully we all know him to be.

Here's what he said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

First, the American Senator who said, "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.", was Senator William Borah - a Republican (and isolationist) from Idaho.

Second, I know of one American Patriot who was accused of aiding and abetting the Nazi's. His name? Prescott Bush - grandfather of the current President.

Third, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and current Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have all expressed support for some type of negotiation with Iran and Syria, either in face to face meetings or in less public settings.

Fourth, what a complete asshole. Seriously. The sooner this country is rid of George W. Bush and his minions the better off we will all be. How dare he go to a foreign country, sit in front of their congress, and criticize the opposition party and compare them to Nazi appeasers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that there is a longstanding policy of not attacking the President while he is traveling abroad. This is just another in a long list of examples of how George Bush expects rules to apply to him, but refuses to return the courtesy - truly the definition of an asshole.

My life is Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows...

2008-05-15T17:46:00.004-04:00

...That's how this refrain goes, so come on, join in everybody!

John McCain gave a speech today about what life will be like for us in 2013. It is truly going to be shangrila...paradise...wonderful:

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced but not eliminated. U.S. and NATO forces remain there to help finish the job, and continue operations against the remnants of al Qaeda. The Government of Pakistan has cooperated with the U.S. in successfully adapting the counterinsurgency tactics that worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan to its lawless tribal areas where al Qaeda fighters are based. The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants. There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven. Increased cooperation between the United States and its allies in the concerted use of military, diplomatic, and economic power and reforms in the intelligence capabilities of the United States has disrupted terrorist networks and exposed plots around the world. There still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.

The United States and its allies have made great progress in advancing nuclear security. Concerted action by the great democracies of the world has persuaded a reluctant Russia and China to cooperate in pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and North Korea to discontinue its own. The single greatest threat facing the West -- the prospect of nuclear materials in the hands of terrorists -- has been vastly diminished.

The size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased, and are now better equipped and trained to defend us. Long overdue reforms to the way we acquire weapons programs, including fixed price contracts, have created sufficient savings to pay for a larger military. A substantial increase in veterans educational benefits and improvements in their health care has aided recruitment and retention. The strain on the National Guard and reserve forces has been relieved.

After efforts to pressure the Government in Sudan over Darfur failed again in the U.N. Security Council, the United States, acting in concert with a newly formed League of Democracies, applied stiff diplomatic and economic pressure that caused the government of Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force, with NATO countries providing logistical and air support, to stop the genocide that had made a mockery of the world's repeated declaration that we would "never again" tolerant such inhumanity. Encouraged by the success, the League is now occupied with using the economic power and prestige of its member states to end other gross abuses of human rights such as the despicable crime of human trafficking.

The United States has experienced several years of robust economic growth, and Americans again have confidence in their economic future. A reduction in the corporate tax rate from the second highest in the world to one on par with our trading partners; the low rate on capital gains; allowing business to deduct in a single year investments in equipment and technology, while eliminating tax loopholes and ending corporate welfare, have spurred innovation and productivity, and encouraged companies to keep their operations and jobs in the United States. The Alternate Minimum Tax is being phased out, with relief provided first to middle income families. Doubling the size of the child exemption has put more disposable income in the hands of taxpayers, further stimulating growth.

Health care has become more accessible to more Americans than at any other time in history. Reforms of the insurance market; putting the choice of health care into the hands of American families rather than exclusively with the government or employers; walk in clinics as alternatives to emergency room care; paying for outcome in the treatment of disease rather than individual procedures; and competition in the prescription drug market have begun to wring out the runaway inflation once endemic in our health care system. More small businesses offer their employees health plans. Schools have greatly improved their emphasis on physical education and nutritional content of meals offered in school cafeterias. Obesity rates among the young and the disease they engender are stabilized and beginning to decline. The federal government and states have cooperated in establishing backstop insurance pools that provide coverage to people hard pressed to find insurance elsewhere because of pre-existing illness.

The reduction in the growth of health care costs has begun to relieve some of the pressure on Medicare; encouraging Congress to act in a bipartisan way to extend its solvency for twenty-five years without increasing taxes and raising premiums only for upper income seniors. Their success encouraged a group of congressional leaders from both parties to work with my administration to fix Social Security as well, without reducing benefits to those near retirement. The reforms include some form of personal retirement accounts in safe and reliable index funds, such as have been available to government employees since their retirement plans were made solvent a quarter century ago.

The United States is well on the way to independence from foreign sources of oil; progress that has not only begun to alleviate the environmental threat posed from climate change, but has greatly improved our security as well. A cap and trade system has been implemented, spurring great innovation in the development of green technologies and alternative energy sources. Clean coal technology has advanced considerably with federal assistance. Construction has begun on twenty new nuclear reactors thanks to improved incentives and a streamlined regulatory process.

And with that, the press corps, hands intertwined with McCain staffers and supporters, joined voices and sang in unison the newly dedicated McCain '08 theme song...

Hat Tricks

2008-05-14T09:12:00.002-04:00

I like hockey. Despite growing up in a winter wonderland like upstate New York, I didn't really become a fan until I met my husband. I vividly remember watching the Detroit Red Wings getting spanked by the New Jersey Devils 4 games to zilch in 1995. That was depressing, although led directly to the turnaround that gave the cup to the Wings in 1997 and 1998.

Before becoming a Red Wings fan, I couldn't have told you what in the hell a "hat trick" was. It's when a player scores three goals in one game. Sometimes Wings fans would throw Octopi out on the ice after a hat trick, but that's long been banned by the NHL, probably because it's so disgusting to pick up a wet, slimy octopus from the ice.

Why am I writing about hat tricks? 'Cause the Democrats scored one last night with Travis Childers' decisive win over Gregg Davis in the Mississippi 1st Congressional District. In a district that's +10 Republican (meaning there's 10 percent more Republicans than Dems), that went for George Bush with 63% of the vote in 2004, that re-elected former Congressman Roger Wicker (who Gov. Haley Barbour appointed to fill out Trent Lott's seat when he up and left to make money as a lobbyist before the rules changed) with 66% of the vote, where the RNC ran ads tying Childers to Obama, Pelosi and Jeremiah Wright, Travis Childers beat Davis 54-46.

The Republicans have lost three straight special elections, first in former House Speaker Denny Hastert's seat in Illinios, then Don Cazayoux wins in a district that was held by the Republicans for thirty years, and now in deep, deep Red Republican territory in Mississippi.

I'm never one to look optimistically at my party to do well in any election, but I like our odds in November more with each passing day.

Re-marketing the Edsel

2008-05-12T18:52:00.005-04:00

So, the Republicans have rolled out their new slogan for the fall election: "The Change you Deserve".

"In a memo to be sent to Republican members today, the leadership hints at a new slogan building on the change message that has already been shown to have political resonance with a public unhappy with the nation’s direction.

It looks like Republicans will counter the Democratic push for change from the years of the Bush administration with their own pledge to deliver, drum roll please, “the change you deserve.” The first element of the party agenda developed over the past few months by the leadership and select party members will focus on family issues.

“Through our “Change You Deserve” message and through our “American Families Agenda,” House Republicans will continue our efforts to speak directly to an American public looking for leaders who will offer real solutions for the challenges they confront every day,” said the memo prepared for lawmakers."

I like it! I really like it! After 7 years of bamboozling, hoodwinking, fooling and tricking the American people into believing that war is peace, up is down, forward is backward, and we all deserve to have our phones tapped, who among us isn't for change?

Turns out these people are. The good people at Wyeth marketed an anti-anxiety medicine called EFFEXOR with the tag "The Change You Deserve", and in their promotional text, asked the following questions:

Are these symptoms of depression interfering with your life?

Not involved with family and friends the way you used to be?

Low energy, fatigue?

Not motivated to do the things you once looked forward to doing?

Not feeling as good as you used to?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you need "The Change You Deserve." Keep in mind, though, that side effects include :

"...constipation, dizziness, dry mouth, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, nervousness, sexual side effects, sleepiness, sweating, and weakness. Ask your doctor if EFFEXOR XR - or the Republican Party - is right for you."

Ouch

2008-05-11T17:12:00.003-04:00

Wow, is Amy Poehler awesome as Hillary Clinton or WHAT? I have a feeling this video cuts a little close to home for the Clintonites...and HRC will not appear on SNL anytime soon.

Let's see...1) I'm a sore loser; 2) my supporters are racist and 3) I have no ethical standards. Yup, that about sums it up.

Fighting the War on the cheap, Example No. 438

2008-05-11T11:58:00.003-04:00

Here's the headline from a front page story that ran in yesterday's Washington Post:

"Military considering new cremation policies"

Are you wondering why they are considering new cremation policies? Because apparently some of the fallen troops returning to Dover, Delaware, were sent off to two crematoriums, one of which had this sign out in front of it:

"Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service."

Maybe that's why the military has banned photos of dead servicemen and women returning home in flag draped caskets. It would be too embarrassing for the American people to watch the caskets unloaded AT A PET CREMATORIUM.

Here's what the SECDEF said about the whole matter:

"Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed the earlier situation was "insensitive and entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

"Our heroes deserve to be better treated than that," Morrell said, adding that a sign at one of the crematoriums noted that it also does pet cremations. He said Gates offered an apology to military families for the insensitivity.

How did this story come to life?

"Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, Air Force staff director, told Pentagon reporters that it is not uncommon for crematoriums to provide both services.

Klotz said the issue came to light Friday when an officer who works in the Pentagon went to Dover to pay respects to a fallen comrade who was being cremated. The soldier noticed the pet cremations sign, and was concerned about the fact that the facility handled both human and animal remains.

The officer alerted senior officials at the Pentagon, who notified Capitol Hill and quickly pulled together the policy changes. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, sent a letter to Gates calling the report "very disturbing."

Is this really the first time anyone has noticed where our fallen troops have been cremated? Are you honestly telling me that no one else has noticed this over the past 6 years??

I think this is just another in a long list of examples of how this war was misguided from the beginning, mismanaged from about March, 2003 onward, and how every choice we make is guided by one overriding principle: the financial bottom line. It would not surprise me in the slightest to find that this Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service came in with the lowest bid for cremation services.

In honor of Mother's Day...

2008-05-10T10:13:00.004-04:00

The family values crowd in the House of Representatives voted against a proclamation honoring "Mother's Day". Seriously.

"It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day."

By voting against it?"

Yup. The Republicans in the house, led by their man Boehner (sadly, not pronounced "boner"), voted for Mother's Day before they voted against it. It's going to be a long, long summer and fall for the Republicans. They're already 0-2 in races held in strongly Republican electoral districts (welcome aboard Rep. Bill Foster, who won former House Speaker Denny Hastert's seat and Rep. Don Cazayoux, who won in a district that has been held by Republicans for thirty years). The NRCC, short on cash and common sense, and reeling from yet another scandal involving one of their own, claimed victory in both races. As Nipsy Russell said in "Wildcats", "Rrrrriiiiiiggggghhhhhttttt......."

So...wishing all of you who are mothers a very happy and relaxing day tomorrow...let us all be thankful we do not have sons (or daughters) who fight, yell and needle each other at every opportunity!

Downfalls

2008-05-09T18:47:00.003-04:00

I'm no fan of Hitler. Far and away the 20th century's biggest douchebag, he's just not a funny guy in any way, shape or form. But I gotta admit... these two videos are kinda hilarious. Judge for yourselves.

An interesting take on The Godfather

2008-05-09T18:04:00.002-04:00

I'm obsessed with the Godfather. Really - just ask my family. I talk about it all the time, quote the movies (Parts I and II only), read and re-read Puzo's book, and recently read both the Godfather's Return and the Godfather's Revenge by Mark Weingardner (Revenge was the better of the two).

Anywho, Habibi Gooz sent me this editorial from the LA Times with a very interesting take on the Godfather and current events.

'The Godfather' doctrine
Coppola's film offers lessons in diplomacy that we can't refuse.
By John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell
May 7, 2008

"It is one of the best-known scenes in cinematic history. Vito Corleone,head of one of the most powerful organized-crime families in New York,crosses the street to buy some oranges from a fruit stand. Seconds later, his peaceful idyll is shattered as multiple gunshots leave him bleeding in the street -- victim of a hit by Mafia rival Virgil "theTurk" Sollozzo. By a miracle, he is only badly wounded. Two of his sons, Santino (Sonny)and Michael, and his adopted son and consigliere, Tom Hagen, gather in an atmosphere of shock to try to decide how to save the family. This, of course, is the hinge of Francis Ford Coppola's movie, "The Godfather." It is also a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems and global power structure of our time.

The don, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck by forces he did not expect and does not understand, as was America on 9/11. Intriguingly, his heirs embrace very different visions of family strategy that approximate the three schools of thought -- liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism -- vying for control of U.S. foreign policy today.

As consigliere, Tom's view of the Sollozzo threat is rooted in a legal-diplomatic worldview similar to the liberal institutionalism of today's Democratic Party. The way to handle Sollozzo, Tom judges, is not through force but through negotiation. Tom thinks even a rogue power can be brought to terms, if the family accommodates his needs and accepts him as a normalized player in the Corleones' rules-based community. In this, he echoes the Democrats' belief that Washington's only option for coping with the Iranian nuclear crisis is immediate, unconditional talks with our latest "Sollozzo," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But to succeed, Tom's diplomacy must be conducted from a position of unparalleled strength, which the family no longer possesses. Gone are the days when Tom was invariably the man at the table with the most leverage.

Like the petty tyrants who challenge Washington with increasing confidence, Sollozzo is an opportunist who will take things as they come -- as either a revolutionary or a status quo power, but certainly as one out to profit from the transition to multi- polarity. Power on the streets has already begun to shift to the Tattaglias and Barzinis -- the Mafia equivalent of today's BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The reality confronting the Corleones is one of increasing multipolarity -- something lost on Tom, who, like many Democrats, thinks he is still the emissary of the dominant superpower.

By contrast, Sonny's response is to advocate "toughness" through military action, a one-note policy prescription for waging war against the rest of the Mafia world. By starting a gangland free-for-all against all possible enemies at once, Sonny severs long-standing alliances and unites the other families against the Corleones. One can imagine that Sonny's shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach would meet with the firm approval of arch-neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen. Confronted with the current Iranian nuclear crisis, Sonny would urge an immediate airstrike, and it is unlikely he would make a cost-benefit analysis of the military option:What? A U.S. airstrike would imperil American allies in the region, directly benefiting Al Qaeda? I knew you didn't have the guts to do this, says Sonny, who doesn't let facts get in the way of his desire for action.

This rash instinct to use military power as a tactic to solve structural problems merely hastens the family's decline. Blinded by a militant moralism bereft of strategic insight, Sonny proves an easy target for his foes. In place of understanding the world, he accosts it, and the world, in Iraq as on the causeway, is able to strike back.The strategy that ultimately saves the Corleone family from the Sollozzo threat and equips it to cope with the new world comes from Michael, the youngest and least experienced of the don's sons.

Unlike Tom or Sonny, Michael has no formulaic fixation on a particular policy instrument; his overriding goal is to protect the family's interests by any and all means necessary. In today's foreign policy terminology, Michael is a realist. Relinquishing the mechanistic, one-trick-pony approaches of his brothers, Michael uses soft and hard power in flexible combinations to influence others. Can the Iran policies advocated by candidates in either party be said to proceed from these assumptions?

Thinking long term, Michael also adjusts the institutional playing field to the family's advantage through a combination of accommodation (granting the other families access to the Corleones' New York political machinery) and retrenchment (shifting the family business to Las Vegas and giving the other families a stake in the new moneymaker, gambling). A similar effort at preemptive institutional reform is vital if America wants to persuade its competitors to resist the temptation to position themselves as revolutionary powers. Doing so now, before the wet concrete of the new multipolar order has hardened, could ensure that,though no longer hegemonic, America is able to position itself, like the Corleones, as the next best thing: primus inter pares -- first among equals.

Can any of the candidates vying to become the next president of the United States match Michael's cool, dispassionate courage in the face of epochal change? Will they avoid living in the comforting embrace of the past, from which Tom and Sonny could not escape? Or will they emulate Michael's flexibility -- to preserve America's position in a dangerous world?

John C. Hulsman is the Alfred von Oppenheim scholar in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations and president of John C. Hulsman Enterprises. A. Wess Mitchell is the director of research at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. A longer version of this article appeared in The National Interest

Cartoons

2008-05-09T16:54:00.007-04:00

The movie Speed Racer - based on the cartoon of the same name - debuts today, and apparently, it's a huge pile of crap. It spurred Lowell at one of my favorite blogs (http://www.raisingkaine.com/ - all Virginia politics, most of the time) to put up a video from his favorite cartoon (Underdog) and ask what cartoons other people remember and like from their childhood. That made me put together my Top 5 favorite Saturday morning cartoons (all from the early-mid 70s):

5. The Brady Kids A total knockoff of The Brady Bunch (with twin pandas!), and, like the TV show, only available in re-runs once I was of prime viewing age. I have all 5 seasons of the Brady Bunch on DVD, met Alice and got my picture taken with her and had her sign my "Alice's Brady Bunch Cookbook", got Marcia's country music CD signed (via my brother), saw the Brady Bunch play onstage at the Kennedy Center ("The Subject Was Noses"), so I've got my Brady Bunch bona fides. No luck with the Brady Kids on DVD...yet.

4. Magilla Gorilla. Not one that usually makes the lists, but I vividly remember watching this show on WPIX (Channel 11) that beamed out of New York City. They had all the cool cartoons, Japanese monster movies, Odd Couple reruns, Pocono commercials, and this video game they played in the afternoons, where kids from NYC called in and played something like Space Invaders yelling "PIX" into the phone to shoot things. It was as cool as it sounds...but WPIX might be best remembered by New Yorkers for this Christmas message (I honestly cannot imagine seeing anything remotely like this on TV these days) and the blazing yule log for apartment dwellers with no fireplaces.

3. Josie and the Pussycats. Totally cheesy all girl band who solved mysteries and/or fought crime. I really wanted to be the drummer. Rock on!

2. Scooby Doo, Where Are You! Loved watching this on Saturday mornings. I remember always being confused as to who the bad guy (or gal) would turn out to be - my younger sister was much better at picking out the criminals. "...and I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

And coming in at #1: Superfriends. Simply awesome. "Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great Hall of Justice, are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled: SUPERMAN! BATMAN AND ROBIN! WONDER WOMAN! AQUAMAN! And The Wonder Twins: ZAN and JAYNA, with their space monkey, GLEEK! Dedicated to truth, justice and peace for all mankind!" Take that, you Commie bastards!

Despite my feminist leanings, I was more partial to Aquaman for some reason, although Wonder Woman in her invisible jet and lasso totally kicked ass. Challenge of the Superfriends was also cool.

Ctrl-Alt-Del

2008-05-08T06:55:00.000-04:00

Here.

John McCain and I have something in common

2008-05-05T17:33:00.003-04:00

Neither one of us voted for George W. Bush in 2000!* At least, that's what Arianna Huffington is reporting.

Think about that...the 2008 Republican candidate for President is riding the coattails of a dude he disliked so much he refused to vote for in 2000. I can understand it - after what Bush and Rove did to him it's hard to believe that McNasty could ever be seen in the same room with him, let alone vote for him.

Sadly, I think it's perfectly in keeping with the campaign McSame is running though - for the Bush tax cuts now while being against them in 2001, against the occupation of Iraq in 2003 but for it now, opposing torture in general terms but voting against a torture ban last year. He'll be the 3rd Bush term, god forbid.

*Let me proudly state for the record that I have never, ever voted for anyone named "George Bush" - neither 41 nor 43.

Iraq is not Vietnam

2008-05-05T14:35:00.005-04:00

I used to think that Iraq and Vietnam were similar: wars fought thousands of miles from home, for reasons later found to be false, with thousands dead and wounded (on both sides), and our troops unable to figure out who was actually on our side.

I was wrong.

Because after reading about this, I came to the conclusion that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam. There is absolutely no way that anyone serving or fighting in Vietnam was as delusional as the Pentagon braniacs who think an entertainment complex in the heart of Baghdad is a good idea - and a solid financial investment!

Luckily for all the chickehawk pro-war cowards on the right, soon they'll have a family-friendly tourist destination in Baghdad where they can relax at the Marriott (yeah, I'll bet the Book of Mormon will be well received in Iraq...) sipping mai-tais wearing flak vests and telling the kiddies to stay clear of incoming mortar fire.

BAGHDAD - Forget rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and no sewer system and try picturing luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.

It’s all part of an ambitious five-year development “dream list” to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a gleaming centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.

The $5 billion plan has Pentagon backing and apparently the interest of leading hotel developers, said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

Of course there are a few problems to be worked out:

"There is no sewer system, no working power system. Everything here is done on generators. No road system repair work. There are no city services other than the minimal amount we provide to get by," Karnowski said.

About 50 percent of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the U.S. State Department or private foreign companies. If all were to go according to Karnowski's plan, only 5 percent of land in the Green Zone will be in foreigners' hands in five years.

Privately, American diplomats say the plan is, at best, wishful thinking."

And the locals aren't keen on the idea:

Security is nowhere near the level needed for major development projects. Then there is the question of whether the Iraqi government even wants U.S. involvement in developing the center of their capital.

One diplomat, who asked not to be named because of no authorization to speak to the media, said they did not think Iraqis would want Washington to "turn this area into downtown Kansas City."

And it's never good when you're compared to the previous tenant, S. Hussein:

"Some Iraqi leaders even have drawn parallels to the U.S.-backed development plan and what Saddam Hussein did in the area — known by its Iraqi name of Tashri during his regime.

Hussein stocked the neighborhood with family and tribal allies, political loyalists and members of his elite Republican Guard. Karnowski called the accusation "partially true."

"Why do people build fences around their house? The intent is until such time as it's much safer around here, you want to be able to influence what goes on," he said.

No worries though... if you build it they will come, so pack your bags and get ready for the trip of a lifetime...to beautiful downtown Baghdad!!!

"If you talk to people at the State Department, they still believe a hotel isn't going up. But it is a done deal," Karnowski said of the Marriott project.

Seriously, I cannot envision a time at any point in the future when a) State Department and military families will be allowed to live in the Green Zone and b) anyone with an ounce of sanity would ever want to take their families there. Add this project to the very long list of projects that never happens - but the taxpayers end up paying for anyways.

Moran of the Week

2008-05-05T07:20:00.004-04:00

Hmmmm. See anything wrong with that picture? I mean, besides the ugly shirt? The "moran" holding it (see sidebar for visual depiction of a moran), one Becky Smith of Texas City, spelled "official" wrong - it's got an extra "i" sister. She was holding the sign at an Immigration Reform/rights rally in Houston last week.

Poster board: $1.00

Paint: $2.00

The irony of a woman holding a sign calling for the English language to be the "offical" language of the United States and spelling English words wrong? Priceless.

Yet another 5 year anniversary?

2008-05-01T09:00:00.006-04:00

Wow, this war sure has a lot of 5 year anniversaries. I'll bet 2013 will be a humdinger of a year, what with all the 10 year anniversaries and such.

Today, of course, is the day that George W. Bush "landed" his plane on the flight deck of the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, to the delight of Americans everywhere, and announced that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended in the battle of Iraq and the United States and our allies have prevailed." And who could forget this:

The White House has gone to great lengths to hide that banner, or blame the Navy for wanting to post it. Take these comments from a Presidential Press Conference on October 28, 2003:

"Nora.

Q Mr. President, if I may take you back to May 1st when you stood on the USS Lincoln under a huge banner that said, "Mission Accomplished." At that time you declared major combat operations were over, but since that time there have been over 1,000 wounded, many of them amputees who are recovering at Walter Reed, 217 killed in action since that date. Will you acknowledge now that you were premature in making those remarks?

THE PRESIDENT: Nora, I think you ought to look at my speech. I said, Iraq is a dangerous place and we've still got hard work to do, there's still more to be done. And we had just come off a very successful military operation. I was there to thank the troops.

The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way. But my statement was a clear statement, basically recognizing that this phase of the war for Iraq was over and there was a lot of dangerous work. And it's proved to be right, it is dangerous in Iraq. It's dangerous in Iraq because there are people who can't stand the thought of a free and peaceful Iraq. It is dangerous in Iraq because there are some who believe that we're soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by suiciders -- and suiciders who are willing to drive up to a Red Cross center, a center of international help and aid and comfort, and just kill. "

Of course, given this administration and its allergic reaction to the truth, it was, not suprisingly, a BIG FUCKING LIE.

Then, Tony Snow took the excuse machine for a ride and claimed that President Bush meant exactly the opposite of "mission accomplished" when he stood in front of the banner. Right.

Yesterday at the White House press briefing, spokeswoman Dana "Peroxide" Perino said the real problem with that banner was that it wasn't more specific:

Maybe I'm out in left field, but I have never seen or heard of any other US Navy Ship flying anything like a "Mission Accomplished" banner, let alone something that says "Mission Accomplished For These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission". That is just absolutely fucking ridiculous - though completely in keeping with this administration and its predicliction for reaching 110 on the bullshit meter.

But here's the completely sad and tragic reality of "mission accomplished". From March 19, 2003 - May 1, 2003, the United States lost 140 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Figure 4 times that number wounded, so maybe around 560 or so.

But consider these statistics, also from icasualties.org/oif:

718 American casualties from May 2, 2003 - June 28, 3004 (the official handoff of soveriegnty to the Iraqi people);

580 American casualties from June 29, 2004 - January 30, 2005 (the first Iraqi elections);

715 American casualties from January 31, 2005 - December 14, 2005 (the second Iraqi elections);

933 American casualties from December 15, 2005 - January 31, 2007

977 American casualties from February 1, 2007 - May 1, 2008.

The grim total is 4,063 Americans killed in Iraq, everyone of them with family and friends who will carry their deaths with them for the rest of their lives. Upwards of 30,000 Americans wounded. Anywhere from 100,000 to 600,00 Iraqis killed and wounded. Nearly 4 million Iraqis displaced, either within Iraq or in neighboring countries like Jordan and Syria. Close to $520 billion dollars spent.

Mission most certainly not accomplished, Mr. President. Not for the Iraqi people and not for the United States of America.

Update: How sad that on the 5th anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" word comes of an Army Ranger killed in Afghanistan - it was his seventh deployment between Iraq and Afghanistan. While it's comforting to know that SFC David McDowell died doing what he loved, it's tragic and irresponsible beyond belief that a nation like ours fighting multiple wars has not instituted a draft.

Update II: Click here to relive the memories of May Day, 2003.

Webb to McCain: "He's so full of it..."

2008-04-30T11:09:00.002-04:00

I've been pushing Jim Webb as the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee because of his ability to connect with the average voter and describe in thoughtful terms why diplomacy in the world matters, why the growing gap in wages matters, and why Iraq has been a colossal mistake. You can watch his 2007 State of the Union rebuttal here.

I've also written about the first bill Sen. Webb sponsored in the US Senate: The Post 9/11 G.I. Bill which will update the current GI Bill with better educational benefits. Sen. McCain couldn't be bothered in the past to become one of the 50+ co-sponsors - or even read the bill - but that hasn't stopped him from introducing his own GI Bill.

Apparently the two Naval Academy grads are at odds with who is supporting what bill and to what extent. From today's Politico:

"From Annapolis to Vietnam and back to the Pentagon, John McCain and Jim Webb trod the same paths before coming to the Senate. Iraq divides them today, but there’s also the new kinship of being anxious fathers watching their sons come and go with Marine units in the war.

So what does it say about Washington that two such men, with so much in common, are locked in an increasingly intense debate over a shared value: education benefits for veterans?

“It’s very odd,” said former Nebraska Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a mutual friend. And that oddness gets greater by the day as the two headstrong senators barrel down colliding tracks.

An Arizona Republican, McCain has all but locked up the Republican presidential nomination and is preparing for a fall campaign in which his support of the Iraq war is sure to be a major issue. Yet the former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW makes himself a target by refusing to endorse Webb’s new GI education bill and instead signing on to a Republican alternative that focuses more on career soldiers than on the great majority who leave after their first four years.

Undaunted, Webb, who was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, is closing in on the bipartisan support needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate, where the cost of his package — estimated now at about $52 billion over 10 years — is sure to be an issue. But McCain’s support would seal the deal like nothing else, and the new Republican bill, together with a letter of opposition Tuesday from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, threatens to peel off support before the Democrat gets to the crucial threshold of 60 votes.

“There are fundamental differences,” McCain told Politico. “He creates a new bureaucracy and new rules. His bill offers the same benefits whether you stay three years or longer. We want to have a sliding scale to increase retention. I haven’t been in Washington, but my staff there said that his has not been eager to negotiate.”

“He’s so full of it,” Webb said in response. “I have personally talked to John three times. I made a personal call to [McCain aide] Mark Salter months ago asking that they look at this.”

“Hell, no,” Webb bristled when asked if there had been an implicit message that he would attack McCain if he didn’t come on board.

"John McCain has been a longtime friend of mine, and I think if John sat down and examined what was in this bill, he would co-sponsor it,” Webb said. “I don’t want this to become a political issue. I want to get a bill done.”

But McCain’s camp has its back up and complains of being bullied by what it says are Webb’s demands to “sign on” to the bill without being given the needed time — and, some would say, due deference — to make changes.

The Gates letter, sent to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), echoes many of McCain’s arguments, and beyond politics, the fight underscores a real policy divide over how the nation views its professional military. Iraq has been the most prolonged conflict for that military since the all-volunteer force was created after Vietnam. And while Gates, like McCain, focuses first on those willing to re-enlist for longer service, Webb believes the nation owes a debt to those who rotate out after one enlistment, which can often include multiple tours in Iraq.

“I’ve been doing veterans law for 30 years. The GI bill is designed as a readjustment benefit for people who leave the military,” Webb said. For the Marines and the Army — which account for the brunt of the fighting — he estimates as many as 70 percent to 75 percent rotate out after a single four-year enlistment.

Webb’s new GI education benefits would apply, then, to anyone who has served up to 36 months of qualified active duty beginning at the same time as or after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “These are the people who answered the call,” Webb said at the rally Tuesday. “These are the people who moved willingly forward toward the sound of the guns.”

In private life, Webb is known as an officer who kept in touch with the enlisted Marines who served under him in Vietnam. And his rhetoric is a throwback to another era, when military service was seen less as an ongoing career than something undertaken for a shorter period, whether defined by the draft or enlistment during a war.

By contrast, Gates wrote in his letter that “our first objective is to strengthen the All-Volunteer Force” and “re-enlistments (and longer service) are critical to the success of the All-Volunteer Force.” From this vantage point, a too-generous GI Bill is counterproductive, and the defense secretary warns that “serious retention issues could arise” if the benefit were extended above the average costs for a public four-year college.

The Webb bill shoots higher, promising payments up to the cost of more expensive state schools plus a monthly housing stipend equivalent to costs in the same area. The government could even match, dollar for dollar, any contribution a private college might make, if its tuition is more than that of the state schools. This creates a new, more complex, multi-tiered system, which critics contend would be an administrative nightmare.

By contrast, the Republican alternative backed by McCain seeks to build on the current benefits system dating back to 1985. All levels would be increased but not to the degree of Webb’s bill; the greatest benefits — including the ability of career noncommissioned officers to transfer their benefits to their children — would be extended to those who remained at least six years.

Warner, for one, is skeptical of the retention argument against the Webb bill. “I think this argument that it’s going to hurt retention is very thin and tenuous, very thin and tenuous,” said the former chairman. “The flip side of that is, putting a big piece of cheese out there will induce more qualified people to join just to get this. It should be a tremendous incentive for recruitment.”

“This happens in Washington. You have competing proposals side by side,” said McCain. “We need to increase benefits. We share that same goal completely.”

Jim Webb is not the kind of guy to fuck with. Seriously. A combat Marine awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Why the McCain people are lying about contacts with him is beyond me. Repeat after me: honesty is the best policy. Do not lie about talking to Jim Webb. He will take you out behind the woodshed and kick your ass (metaphorically speaking of course).

McCain knows that he's going to be badly hurt appearing to be against college benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan vets so he proposed his own bill, which requires that people serve 6 years in order to qualify for any benefits. His argument is that Jim Webb's bill will hurt retention rather than help it. The least we can do to thank those who volunteered for active duty service after September 11th is to give them the opportunity to better themselves. Is that really too much to ask?

It's a hard knock life for Hillary

2008-04-29T20:21:00.003-04:00

Apparently HRC thinks she's had a tough life. I don't doubt that being beaten up in the VRWC (Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy) since 1992 has been hard. But, come on, she went to Harvard, got a plum job at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, lived on the government dole since the early '80s, including swanky digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - and to top it all of, she and her lesser half are worth more than $100 mill. Sweeeeeeeet.

I think Dr. Evil and mini-me nail it with this video:

Who said it?

2008-04-29T07:15:00.003-04:00

Another guessing game - how fun!! Try and figure out who said these things in January, 2005:

"When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, [this person] was for the idea before he was against it.

Three years before [this person] argued... that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, [this person] decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.

In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan -- something [this person] has repeatedly advocated during the campaign -- [this person] offered nothing short of a categorical "no."

"I would hope that we could bring them all home," he said on MSNBC. "I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff."

Host Chris Matthews pressed [this person] on the issue. "You've heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I've heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German...the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?"

[This person] held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. "I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence," he responded. "And I don't pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."

The January 2005 comments, which have not surfaced previously during the presidential campaign, represent a stunning contrast to [this person's] current rhetoric.

They also run squarely against his image as having a steadfast, unwavering idea for U.S. policy in Iraq -- and provide further evidence to those, including some prominent GOP foreign policy figures in the "realist" camp, who believe [this person] is increasingly adopting policies shared by neoconservatives.

Finally, the comments undercut much of the criticism [this person] has launched at his Democratic and even Republican opponents.

When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain was for the idea before he was against it."

I do not think that means what you think it means

2008-04-28T08:54:00.003-04:00

Headline from today's blogs:

"McCain calls Obama insensitive to poor people "

Right. Because the child of a single parent, raised by his grandparents, who took out student loans for college (just recently paid off) wouldn't know anything about being poor or lower middle class (or nice to people who are)- as opposed to the son and grandson of Navy Admirals who married the daughter of a beer distributor worth, say, $100 million or so.

Ahhhh....the fabulous life of John McCain:

New DNC ads

2008-04-28T07:19:00.002-04:00

I think the second ad is better - the DNC needs to hammer Huggy McSame on the Iraq issue over and over and over again. Of course, the RNC and McCain are acting like WATB, claiming that McCain's comments are "out of context". Nope. 100 years of war is exactly what McCain and the rest of the Republican establishment want.

Prediction time: if I had to put money down today on what will happen in November, 2008, I'd bet on McCain winning the presidency and the Dems expanding their majorities in both the House and the Senate. I just think there are too many people out there who won't vote for Obama because of his race, and too many people out there who won't vote for Clinton because she's a bitchy shrew. McCain becomes the default candidate. ....sigh.....

Supporting Our Troops

2008-04-26T07:20:00.003-04:00

How many times have you seen a car waiting in front of you at the traffic light or parked next to you at the grocery store with a yellow metallic ribbon with "Support our Troops" or "We Support the Troops" imprinted on it? How many times have you seen someone wear a flag pin on their lapel while talking of the bravery of American soldiers and how much we need to support them? How many people on right wing blogs have said that they personally thanked a soldier at the airport, or the shopping mall, or the post office?

Those are all wonderful things. Really. But the very sad reality is that none of those people give one god damned crap about American servicemen and women. It's all words, it's all superficial compliments and it means NOTHING. It's all easy plattitudes and it's all the American people have been asked to do in these wars. "Supporting the Troops" should mean something more than just a bumper sticker slogan. It means supporting efforts to allow servicemembers to get a college education. It means giving soldiers that extra 1/2% pay raise without fighting them about it. It means awarding people what they've earned in combat and not being stingy with Bronze Stars and Silver Stars and campaign ribbons.

But most of all, it means providing soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines with housing that YOU yourself would live in. Watch this video, made by the father of a Sargent who has spent 30 MONTHS in combat - 15 in Iraq and 15 in Afghanistan - of the housing his son is assigned to at Ft. Bragg. If you are not outraged, disgusted, embarrassed and fucking pissed off, then you should move your whole family to Ft. Bragg and go live in those barracks.

"Most Terrifying Headline Ever"

2008-04-23T08:53:00.002-04:00

So sayeth John Cole at Balloon Juice. I report, you decide.

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

By Joe Bavier Tue Apr 22, 1:24 PM ET

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Uhhh...just wondering about that last quote - was he recently in the pool and suffering the same fate as George "Shrinkage" Costanza?

Personally, I think this whole thing will be used now as excuses by...ahem...smaller gentleman to justify their size (not that size matters or anything....): "I'd be bigger if it wasn't for that black magic curse put on me by the local sorcerer!"

Irony is dead, long live irony

2008-04-21T20:36:00.005-04:00

Condi Rice secretly left the United States, flew to Baghdad (where she's taken up residence inside the Green Zone for as short a period of time as possible), and proceeded opened her mouth in Iraq and had this whopper (no, not the statement where she implied Moqtada al-Sadr is a coward):

"But clearly, the prime minister has laid down some ground rules which any functioning democratic state would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state, not to -- not in private hands," she said. "The current circumstances come out of what I think is a very important and indeed appropriate action that the Iraqi government has taken."

Hmmm. "...rules which any functioning democratic state which would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state...not in private hands."

Did I miss something? Have we scrapped the 2nd Amendment, you know, the one that allows guns in private hands? 'Cause I'm pretty sure the Supremes just heard the case involving DC's handgun ban (my prediction: it's overturned 6-3). Or maybe we still allow guns in private hands because the Bush administration has given up on even trying to run the country like a functioning democratic state.

Seriously, this is ironic on soooooo many levels. First of all, Maliki has his own militias, loyal to the ISCI (formerly SCIRI) and the DAWA parties. Are we going to insist they turn in their weapons because that's what any functioning democratic state would insist upon? Secondly, haven't we been arming groups in Iraq like the Kurdish peshmerga forces? Should they line up tomorrow morning to turn in their weapons?

Condi's verbal diarrhea is more proof that this administration has no idea what they're doing. I mean, the Secretary of State goes over to Iraq - secretly - and from behind the blast proof walls and armed escorts in and around the Green Zone and flat out says Sadr, one of the most popular dudes in Iraq, is a coward? WTF? Why are we provoking him? We had our chance to get rid of him in 2004. We blinked. Now he's calling the shots, threatening to call off his cease-fire (which had more to do with the "success" of the Surge than anything else) unless the Maliki Government keeps their mitts off his Badr Corps.

Heckvua job, Condi. "Bring it on" worked really well for us when Bushie said it.

OK, that didn't last long

2008-04-20T13:37:00.005-04:00

Back to politics. Today's New York Times has an incredible story of media manipulation by the Pentagon, former military officers (many of whom are now employed by the Defense Industry), and the Bush White House.

Here's how it works: the Pentagon recruits retired military officers to comment on Iraq, Iran, any aspect of the War on Terror. These recruits are given private briefings by Pentagon, State, White House and presumably other federal agencies, trips to places like Iraq and Guantanamo Bay where there are given separate tours and briefings, "talking points memos" with specific messages to deliver, and then they are sent off to the news networks to spread the word. In many cases, these retired military officers (all of whom are O-5s and above) are working for defense contractors which have some ties to either the Pentagon, the White House or both.

The Plan
"Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”

Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

How it all started

"By early 2002, detailed planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.

Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities.

In the months after Sept. 11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” — authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences.

The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.

Even analysts with no defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, were reluctant to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends. “It is very hard for me to criticize the United States Army,” said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and ABC analyst. “It is my life.”

From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. Ms. Clarke’s team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war.

“Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said Mr. Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004. (Through a spokesman, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment for this article.)

Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways — either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.

The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example, sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks."

Selling the War

From their earliest sessions with the military analysts, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides spoke as if they were all part of the same team.

In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”

The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.

In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive “war of liberation.”

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”

Think about how much the American people have been used and duped over the past 6 years. The White House and Pentagon work hand in hand with people paid to deliver the message: we're winning in Iraq, despite the chaos you are watching on your tv in your house with your eyes. I didn't watch the talking heads after the Petreaus/Crocker show last week on Capitol Hill. My guess is that the retired military officers took their checks, free rides to the airport, comp'd meals and lodging, and went on national TV and said whatever their handlers at the Pentagon encouraged them to say. Sounds a lot like the communist Pravda, nyet?

A Break from Politics

2008-04-20T09:38:00.006-04:00

You know, living here in DC it's really easy to get overwhelmed by politics. What happens here on Capitol Hill makes the local section of the news because it happens in our backyards. The front section of the Washington Post on Sundays is about 25 pages long - today the top story above the fold is about John McCain (HG calls him "Huggy McSame") and his bad temper. There are also stories about coal mining, such as it is, in West Virginia, the National Harbor in Prince George's County, and something about the Prom, which I skipped entirely, since it's been many, many moons since I went to (or worried about) a Prom. Inside there are full page stories about Obama, Clinton and the Pennsylvania primary, Sadr calling off his cease-fire, the economy, and on and on and on. Same story, different day.

Anyways, it seems like a good day to take a break from politics. It's pouring here, with some crackles of thunder off in the distance, just the kind of day to make my Top 10 list of all time favorite movies. So without further ado, here goes:

1. The Godfather. The single best American movie ever made. My kids and husband are so tired of hearing me say that. I remember watching this movie in my senior year in High School and being completely blown away. I watch this movie every time it shows up on cable, and have the collector's DVD set. I'm hoping the Godfather Saga is released on DVD - that movie combines parts 1 and 2 into a chronological saga with extra scenes (like how Hyman Roth and Vito Corleone meet). If you haven't watched it, rent it or borrow my copy.

2. Not surprisingly, The Godfather, Part 2. I really go back and forth between which of the two movies is my favorite. Usually when I watch Part 2 I think it's the best, and then when I watch Part 1, I think that one is my fave. They really are both my favorites, but I think Part 1 is the best simply because it introduces us to the Corleone family and is such a beautiful movie. Part 2 gives us the back story of Vito Andolini and how he ends up in America. The early 20th century scenes were shot in New York City and you truly believe you are there. Interesting sidenote: Robert De Niro (Best Supporting Actor, Part 2) and Marlon Brando (Best Actor, Part 1) are the only actors to have won academy awards for playing the same character.

3. Dances with Wolves. I love this movie. It is absolutely visually stunning; in the director's commentary, you hear how all the scenes were shot in the Badlands and other parts of South Dakota - no blue screens or computer aided graphics. I think it's a terrific story, and treats the Native Americans as real people. In the director's commentary, they talk about how this movie was previewed in Rapid City, and how whites and Native Americans came out of the movie together in tears.

4. The Shawshank Redemption. This movie came out in 1994, and while it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, it was completely overshadowed by two of the other nominees that year: Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction (the other Best Picture nominees were Four Weddings and a Funeral and the also underrated Quiz Show). This movie has gotten more popular over the last 5-10 years or so, and routinely shows up on Top 100 American movies lists.

5. The Best Years of Our Lives. The Best Picture of 1947, this movie revolves around the lives of three returning servicemen from WWII (an Army Sargent who fought in the Pacific, a Navy Seaman badly wounded in the Pacific, and an Army Air Forces Captain who flew in in Europe), all of whom have difficulties returning to life in Boone City, a small midwestern town. New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther said this about the movie, "It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought..." The movie was so successful in humanizing the difficulties returning servicemen face that it was re-released after the Korean War as fighting men were once again returning home from combat.

6. V for Vendetta. "Remember, Remember the fifth of November/The Gunpowder Treason and Plot/I know of no reason/Why Gunpowder Treason/Should Ever be Forgot". Definitely a movie for those who tend towards conspiracy theories. Not surprisingly, it's a popular choice in my household.

7. Miracle. 1980 Olympics. USA vs. Russia. Do you believe in miracles?

8. It's a Wonderful Life. Beyond being one of my favorite movies, I think that's my personal motto. Set in a small town in upstate New York (rumored to be based on Seneca Falls), a small town hero finds out how valued he is in life. I watch this movie every Christmas and have about 15 pieces from the Enesco "It's a Wonderful Life" collectibles set released through Walgreens from 2003-2008.

9. Star Wars Episode IV. My boys are huge Star Wars fans. We have all 6 episodes, plus the Clone Wars DVDs (cartoons) and usually throw the movies in to watch on long car trips. I try to explain to them how revolutionary Star Wars was when it was released in 1977. Awesome special effects for the time, great characters, cool flight scenes - Star Wars had it all.

10. The Manchurian Candidate. The original, not the remake - although the remake was interesting. I love Frank Sinatra (and not just because he's a great singer AND rumored to be the model of the "Johnny Fontaine" character in the Godfather). I know Hillary Clinton is sometimes compared to Angela Landsbury's character, but I think Barabara Bush is a better comparison. As is often the case, the book is better than the movie (same goes for Dances with Wolves and the Godfather).

Update: Tied at #10 is All the President's Men. I saw this movie as a Sophomore in college taking a class in Media and Politics and immediately fell for it. I used to listen to G. Gordon "The G-Man" Liddy when he was on 106.7 - he hated the movie, but it's definitely worth seeing. My Watergate connections are that we used to live in a townhouse once owned by Carl Bernstein, and a friend and I checked out the room at the Watergate Hotel used by the Plumbers and their accomplices while breaking into the DNC.

Notable omissions from this list: My favorite CBC movie, Anne of Green Gables (Parts 1 & 2) and my favorite HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers.

My favoritest Bushism

2008-04-20T09:27:00.003-04:00

Habibi Gooz gave me a calendar for Christmas - "The George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown" which tells you how many days are left in the Bush Presidency (275 as of April 20) and a Bushism for the day. Today's Bushism, from an appearance on CNBC in April, 2000 is:

"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."

There you have it folks. A guy with TWO Ivy League Degrees speaking about how bright his daughters is. If I were Harvard and Yale I'd want - no, make that demand - my degrees back.

But I think I've come up with my favoritest Bushism to date, one he uttered last week in the Rose Garden while discussing the war in Iraq:

“So long as I’m the president, my measure of success is victory – and success,’’ the president said in the Rose Garden.

I think we should all do that - let's all say that now we measure success by success. And victory. And since we've had nothing but success and victory in Iraq, we can measure our success by the successes we've had and the successfulness we've witnessed and the successfullest successes we've accomplished. And don't forget the successful victories! It's all a successful success, matched only by our victorious victories which have all been a success! Personally, I blame the MSM for not saying more about our successes, whether they be victorious successes, or just successful victories, but in any case, our measure of success is success and the whole thing has been one long success!

More Proof

2008-04-19T16:39:00.005-04:00

that George W. Bush screws up everything he comes into contact with. Seriously, it's like he's making these shortsighted, impractical, wrongheaded decisions on purpose because no one can be as wrong as he is. Or maybe he's just a "moran."

Take this excerpt from the Vanity Fair article as an example, under the headline "Everyone Was Against the Elections":

"In a speech in the White House Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, President Bush announced that American policy in the Middle East was turning in a fundamentally new direction.

Arafat was still in power at the time, and many in the U.S. and Israel blamed him for wrecking Clinton’s micro-managed peace efforts by launching the second intifada—a renewed revolt, begun in 2000, in which more than 1,000 Israelis and 4,500 Palestinians had died.

Bush said he wanted to give Palestinians the chance to choose new leaders, ones who were not “compromised by terror.” In place of Arafat’s all-powerful presidency, Bush said, “the Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body.”

Arafat died in November 2004, and Abbas, his replacement as Fatah leader, was elected president in January 2005. Elections for the Palestinian parliament, known officially as the Legislative Council, were originally set for July 2005, but later postponed by Abbas until January 2006.

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing.”

“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”

First of all, I'm sick and tired of hearing that "few in the administration had predicted the result" of the Palestinian elections. Spending one week (or less) in the middle east and reading the newspaper would have told them quite clearly what was about to happen: Hamas would win handily. If they weren't able to see that - after seeing the results of elections in Iraq, where the religious Islamic parties did extremely well - then they deserved to be fired for being so stupid and incompetent. Period.

Secondly, it's become obvious that George W. Bush has no idea what the fuck he's doing. The economy is in the toilet, the dollar is in so much trouble other countries are begging us to help raise its value, the good news never stops coming out of Iraq, Iran grows stronger by the day, and our country is unable to respond to any other crisis that arise any where in the world due to our military overcommitments.

There is some discussion of letting George Bush become the Commissioner of Baseball after he's done at the White House. For the love of all that is good and holy, I sincerely hope that the powers that be NEVER ALLOW HIM ANYWHERE NEAR MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL - he's a jinx like Cousin Oliver! If he's hard up for a job after January 20, 2009, let him go here and be the new Ambassador.

The Iraq War: A "Major Debacle"

2008-04-19T08:22:00.007-04:00

No...say it ain't so, Joe! Yes, it's true, apparently, based on this report published by the National Defense University, and written by retired USA COL Joseph Collins, a former Pentagon official.

The report does not paint a pretty picture of the war at any stage. Then Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld's pre-war plan was

"...to conduct a quick, lightning-like operation in Iraq, followed by a swift handover of power to the Iraqis. He did not want a large-scale, ponderous operation like Desert Storm, which he saw as wasteful and outmoded. He also did not want U.S. Troops unnecessarily bogged down in an endless postwar peace operation."

How ironic to read that Rummy didn't want a Desert Storm like war-fighting force because it would be "wasteful", when that's exactly what we've got now to the tune of $10 BILLION (or as my husband puts it $10 THOUSAND MILLION) per month.

The post "Mission Accomplished" phase of the war can be summed up this way:

"In May, 2003, war "A" was ending, but war "B" was about to begin. We had a complex, flexible plan for war "A" but no such plan for war "B". War "A" was a rapid, high-tech, conventional battle, war American style, but war "B" was a protracted conflict, an insurgency with high levels of criminality and sustained sectarian violence, just the sort of ambiguous, asymmetric conflict that the American public finds hard to understand and even harder to endure.

From 2003 to 2007, reconstruction and stabilization activities...did not drastically improve under the CPA or the new Iraqi government in either of its forms. Indeed, many billions have been wasted and electricity and oil production still only match pre-war levels. There remains to this day a very limited capacity to execute meaningful reconstruction."

It is unbelievable to me that having recently "celebrated" 5 years of war in Iraq, the Iraqi people are about to suffer through their sixth summer of less electricity than they had before we invaded. Having lived in Cairo, Egypt in August, allow me to sum up what it's like in the middle east in the summer: IT'S FUCKING HOT. The temps in August in Cairo were as high as 120*. Luckily, we had air conditioning, pools, cool drinks and ice cream. Plus, we American women did not have to cover like Egyptian women did and do. The thought of living in Cairo in the summer without A/C and a pool is unimaginable to me, although I know the vast majority of Cairo residents do not have such amenities. It's even hotter in Baghdad, and I cannot imagine the misery of living in slums like Sadr City, with piles of garbage on every street corner and not enough electricity to run the generator more than 6 hours a day.

I would encourage you to read the "Errors in Decisionmaking and Execution" part of the report. It's long, and the laundry list of mistakes made is too much for my little fingers to type. But I will provide you with the conclusion to this report (which is actually at the beginning, not at the end):

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle. As of the fall of 2007, this conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead [ed. note: 4,039 as of today] and over 28,000 wounded [ed. note: more wounded than we thought]. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or displaced persons [ed. note: that would be the equivalent of 4,500,000 Americans]. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that the total, direct U.S. costs from March, 2003 to July, 2007 have exceeded $450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending. No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on Service personnel and materiel.

The war's political impact has also been great. Globally, U.S. standing among friends and allies have fallen. Our status as a moral leader has been damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time, operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq, when it comes to manpower, materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces - especially the Army and the Marine Corps - have been severely strained by the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East."

That is the most upsetting and discouraging assessment I've read about Iraq to date. It is also probably the most accurate. We are in such a bind in Iraq it is almost not possible any more to figure out a way out. Either we leave Iraq in the state it is today - the most dangerous place on Earth with its elected leaders closer to Iran and less able to govern than we would have ever thought possible, or we stay in Iraq, spending billions every week, losing more Americans every month, watching our image as the "beacon on the hill" sullied daily with every errant bullet and every corrupt leader we support. We should have NEVER gone into Iraq, and despite what the Democratic political candidates say, we will be there in Iraq fighting George Bush's war for decades to come.

Bitter Soldiers

2008-04-18T15:25:00.004-04:00

My loyal reader, Habibi Gooz, copied this article into the comment section. It is yet another example of this government saying one thing ("We support the troops!") while their actions say something entirely different.

New York Daily News

April 18, 2008

G.I. Bill Of Wrong

Schumer protests benefit denials to Iraq’s ‘Pvt. Ryans’

By Stephanie Gaskell, Daily News Staff Writer

IN A REAL-LIFE VERSION of the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” Army Spec. Jason Hubbard agreed to an honorable discharge last year after his two brothers were killed in combat in Iraq.

Now, the 33-year-old California native has been stripped of many of the military benefits given to soldiers who serve in war zones.“It is absurd and unjust to deny full benefits to frontline soldiers who chose the humane options of honorary discharge after losing siblings who are also in combat,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).Schumer introduced a bill with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) yesterday that would make sure these soldiers get their full benefits.

Called the Hubbard Act, the legislation would waive a requirement that “sole survivors” who chose to be honorably discharged pay back enlistment bonuses and separation pay, lose access to home loan programs and transition health care coverage, as well as G.I. Bill benefits.

“These folks have sacrificed for this country in a way that most people can’t imagine,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “It’s an outrage. It shouldn’t take a press conference from senators to fix it.”

Since 9/11, 51 soldiers have been honorably discharged with “sole survivor” status.Army Spec. Ivan Medina, 26, of Oneida, N.Y., lost his twin brother, Irving, in Iraq in 2003. The only remaining son in his family, he agreed to an honorable discharge after fighting in Baghdad and Fallujah.“I sat down with my sister and my parents and I said that it would be their decision — if they wanted me to get out, I would get out,” he said. “My mom started crying and said, ‘Yes, get out.’“My dad said, ‘Yeah, we paid our price.’ ”

Medina wants to attend college, but he found out he no longer is eligible for G.I. Bill benefits. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “I gave an oath to the country that I would defend it and I did. I thought I paid my price in blood, sweat and tears. My brother paid with his life. I don’t see how they can deny me what I’ve worked so hard far. It’s not like I’m asking to be rich.”

Medina said if this bill isn’t passed soon, or if the government doesn’t fix the problem on its own, he will try to pay for college himself.“This administration sent us out there to get killed,” he said. “This is the minimum that this President needs to give us.”

Guess Who?

2008-04-17T14:17:00.003-04:00

Let's play a little guessing game. I'll give you some information about someone in the news, and you try and figure out who it is:

"In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.) The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician.

Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation. What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades. Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations, denouncements and rejections of his comments and him. We've seen on television, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev. Wright's many sermons.

Some of the Wright's comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him "unpatriotic," let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country.

How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many. While words do count, so do actions. Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism."

Article found here, with over 300 comments.

At last night's atrocious excuse for a Presidential debate, Barack Obama was asked if Jeremiah Wright is patriotic:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But you do believe he's (Rev. Wright) as patriotic as you are?

SENATOR OBAMA: This is somebody who's a former Marine.

Once again, it would seem to be obvious that any American, regarldless of color, creed, religious background or economic position, who devotes a portion of his or her adult life to military service would do so because of an intense desire to serve their country, whether out of love for America, devotion to the Constitution, or a feeling that it is important to give back to a nation that offers so much in return to each and every one of us.

But sadly, in today's America, patriotism is defined by what you say, not what you do; what you wear (a flag lapel pin, for instance), not what you sacrifice; and who you voted for in 2000 and 2004 above all else. It's a sad reflection on the state of affairs in today's America, and the really depressing thing is that as we approach the 2008 Presidential elections, it will only get worse.

Pope Benedict XVI Comes to Washington

2008-04-17T07:52:00.036-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI is here in the Washington, DC area this week - yesterday he met with the President at the White House, and today he is celebrating Mass at Nationals Stadium before departing for New York City for a Mass at Yankee Stadium and praying at Ground Zero.

Yesterday morning, I got an email from my friend, the "QB", who wanted to know if any of the DC Queens wanted to meet her downtown to catch a glimpse of the Pope in his "Pope Mobile" traveling down Pennsylvania Avenue. I was immediately intrigued - I didn't have to work yesterday, and frankly, was not looking forward to a day of housecleaning and grocery shopping (...ugh....) so I emailed her back and said count me in! This looked like it would be another of our "Sleuthing Expeditions", having previously checked out 1) the park and bridge in Vienna, VA where Robert Hanssen left his messages for the Soviets, 2) the Watergate Hotel during it's "Firesale" last fall (including the rooms where the Plumbers directed the burglars breaking into the DNC), and 3) "Midgetville", also in Vienna, VA, which sadly, lives on only in our memories as the small cottages have been razed to make way for McMansions built for inhabitants of all sizes.

I am so glad the QB proposed the idea of seeing the Pontiff...the pictures don't really do justice to the beautiful, cloud-free day we had here yesterday, or the large number of the faithful waiting to get a glimpse of Pope Benedict. It was a great day, and I feel lucky to have been downtown and had a chance to see the Pope.

So, without further ado, here is my photo montage of pictures taken by the QB's friend, "J", who was perched somewhere down by 20th Street, and by me of the protesters hanging out in front of the White House:

Now, those of us who have lived here for a while know that whenever there is a dignitary in town, or a hot-button issue being discussed, the counter-protesters are out in force. Thank God for the 1st Amendment which gives these people the right to be the douche bags they are:

Three days in Iraq

2008-04-15T20:28:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, April 15

Baghdad

Two civilians were killed and two others were wounded in a bomb explosion near al Alwiyah police station in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 7:00 a.m.

Two civilians were injured when mortar shell hit al Dolai neighborhood in west Baghdad around 5:00 p.m.

Around 12:00 p.m. three mortar shells hit the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad.

A civilian was killed and 8 people including five policemen were wounded when a car bomb exploded targeting the convoy of director of police affairs directorate Major Ali Sabri nearby Mosa Bin Nasir fuel station in Karrada neighborhood around 1:15 p.m.

Police found three unidentified dead bodies, one in Husseiniyah, one in Ubeidi, one in Yarmouk.

Diyala

At least 38 people including women and children were killed and 80 others were injured in a parked car bomb in front of the building of Diyala province in downtown Baquba north of Baghdad around 11:15 a.m. The US military said in an emailed press release that 36 people were killed and 67 wounded adding that three buses were destroyed and 10 local shops were damaged.

Anbar

13 people were killed and 10 others were injured when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated himself in al Karama restaurant northwest of Ramadi city around 12:30 p.m.

Basra

Gunmen opened fire targeting Ali al Fadhli, a representative of the Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani while he was passing through al Tayaran intersection in downtown Basra city south of Baghdad around 11:00 a.m. one of Fadhli guards was killed. Fadhli and another guard of him were injured.

Nineveh

Gunmen stormed a house in Al khadhra neighborhood in central Mosul, killing three women and a man from one family.

Gunmen killed a lawyer and her sister as they were their car in Mosul.

Two car bombs targeted police vehicles in Mosul. The first car was driven by a suicide bomber and the second was a parked car that targeted police units that rushed to the site injuring 17 people including four policemen.

A roadside bomb targeted a police vehicle injuring four policemen.

Gunmen shooting randomly killed a female student at her school in Al Muthana neighborhood northern of Mosul

Karbala

Gunmen from Mahdi Army militia attacked Al Daoum village south east of Karbala city killing five people and kidnapping six others and destroyed four houses in retaliation from the families of Iraqi soldiers.

Monday, April 14

Baghdad
- Around 11:30 pm of Sunday , a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at the New Baghdad neighborhood (east Baghdad) near Samarayee mosque .One Humvee was damaged with about 20 commercial shops were burned , Iraqi police said. No casualties reported. While the MNC in Iraq reply on the incident was “Criminals attacked a Multi-National Division - Baghdad patrol with an improvised-explosive device in eastern Baghdad April 13. The IED attack ignited a major fire at the nearby Al Ummal market. The market blaze began at approximately 11:30 p.m. Iraqi emergency response personnel responded to the fire. MND-B Soldiers recovered the vehicle and sustained no major injuries in the attack.”

- Around 8 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Tahriyat intersection in Karrada neighborhood .No casualties reported.

- Around 8:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Fudhailiyah neighborhood (east Baghfdad).No casualties reported.

- Around 11:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Shaab intersection. No casualties reported.

- Around 11:45 am, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Tayran square in Bab Al-Sharji (central Baghdad).Five policemen were killed and 13 others were injured (two policemen and 11 civilians).

- Around 3 pm, 7 mortar shells hit the following neighborhoods:
- 4 shells hit Zayuna neighborhood killing one person and injuring 4 others.
- 2 shells hit Ghadeer of the New Baghdad neighborhood injuring three people.
- one shell hit a mini bus (coaster model) at Sinaa street Karrada near Technology University .Two people were killed and 6 others were injured.

- Police found (5) dead bodies in the following neighborhoods in Baghdad: (3) were found in east Baghdad (Risafa bank); 1 in Zafaraniyah , 1 in Qahira and 1 in Khilani. While (2) were found in west Baghdad( Karkh bank); 1 in Amil and 1 in Doura.

Basra

- Monday night, gunmen assassinated an officer of Basra intelligence directorate at Al-Jaza’er neighborhood (downtown Basra). Major Rafia Mohammad was killed by gunmen who opened fire on him from a sedan car (Cresta model, Toyota) and ran away.The assassinations attacks had disappeared since the Charge Knights operation in Basra has started due to the army check points in neighborhoods and controlling the entrances of the city.
Salahuddin

-In the morning , gunmen of about 40 members of what is called the Islamic State of Iraq attacked some houses at Ral Al-Dhahab village north of Fatha andwest of Baiji which is 240 km north of Baghdad )injuring 17 Sahwa members .

- In the morning, the Iraqi army found a dead body in Dour (south Tikrit and north of Baghdad).
Diyala

- In the morning, gunmen killed a head of one of the electoral station centers ay Had Mizaid in Wajihiyah (east of Baquba).

- An American squad with Sahwa members found 30 dead bodies at Al-Zour village in Muqdadiyah (45 km north east of Baquba).

Mosul

- In the afternoon, a suicide truck bomber targeted a Peshmerga squad while they were on their way home to Sinjar in vacation .Also after that , gunmen opened fire on the Peshmerga squad .14 soldiers were killed and 15 others were injured , an official of Peshmerga said .

- In the afternoon, a car bomb targeted an American patrol at Muthna neighborhood (east mosul) .Two Iraqi people were killed and two others were wounded having no casualties of the American army reported.

- In the afternoon, a car bomb exploded at Al-Mahata neighborhood (south Mosul).Two civil defense men were wounded in that incident.

- Around 6 pm, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral ceremony in Tal Afer (west of Mosul) .Four people were killed with 22 others injured in that incident.

Sunday, April 13

Baghdad
Around 10:00 a.m. Iraqi security forces detonated under control two bombs which were planted in Ferdows intersection in downtown Baghdad.

Two policemen were injured in an IED explosion that targeted their patrol near the national theater in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 12:00 p.m.

Around 4:00 p.m. two mortar shells hit the green zone.

Police found tow bodies in Baghdad today. The first body was found in Zayuna neighborhood and the other body was found in Saidiyah neighborhood.

Diyala
A civilian was killed and another was injured in a bomb explosion in Abo Saida area east of Baquba city around 10:00 a.m.

A civilian was killed in al Aswad area north of Baquba city around 11:00 a.m.

Kirkuk

Two members of awakening councils were injured seriously in a bomb explosion that targeted their bus near Wahid Huzairan area in south Kirkuk on Sunday morning.

A member of awakening council was killed in a bomb explosion that targeted his patrol in Dirsh village south of Kirkuk city on Sunday morning.

Three members of awakening council were wounded in a bomb explosion that targeted their patrol in Kharabat Rot village south of Kirkuk on Sunday morning.

A bomb exploded near the gate of an employee in the directorate of health in Kirkuk city causing material damages only.

Anbar

The deputy of the local council in Falluja town Qasim Mashkoor and his 11 years old son were injured seriously when an IED attached to their car exploded. The incident took place in Nowab al Thobat neighborhood in downtown Falluja town around 7:15 p.m.

Bitter Pittsburgh Steelers for Obama

2008-04-15T20:11:00.003-04:00

Sure are a whole lotta bitter Steelers up in the Steel City. Here's what owner Dan Rooney had to say in his endorsement of raised-by-a-single-mom out-of-touch elitist Barack Obama:

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney on Monday endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid

In a statement, the 75-year-old Rooney said endorsing political candidates is not something he regularly does.

"As a grandfather and a citizen of this community, I think Barack Obama's thoughtful, strategic approach is important to America," Rooney said. "When I hear how excited young people seem to be when they talk about this man, I believe he will do what is best for them, which is to inspire them to be great Americans."

The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator and Rooney met Monday after Obama spoke at a meeting of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, also addressed the gathering.

Last month, former Steelers running backs Franco Harris and Jerome Bettis also endorsed Obama.

My take on the whole "bitter" controversy is that it will have virtually no affect on the polls. While the talking heads like to blather on about it, the rest of us know exactly what Obama was talking about. Believe it or not, there are people who are bitter about any number of things, including (but not limited to): the war in Iraq, the economy, the destruction of the US Constitution, patriotism questioning, rising gas prices, outing covert CIA agents (and then lying about it), the Taliban still killing our troops in Afghanistan, and promises made by politicians but never kept, just to name a few. People who like Obama do so because they feel like, for once, there's actually someone out there who appeals to them and who they believe will make some changes in Washington.

Here are my predictions about what will happen in the upcoming primaries: The latest polls have Clinton up by an average of about 6 points in PA. I think she'll win by 8%, but the candidates will basically tie in delegates. Obama wins North Carolina big, Clinton wins Indiana by 2%, but loses in delegates. She still takes this thing all the way to the convention as she's promised to do, despite Obama being ahead in both the pledged and superdelagate counts.

George John McBush

2008-04-15T20:06:00.004-04:00

Are John McCain and George Bush the same person?

I report, you decide.

p.s. Thanks HG!!

McCain to oppose Webb's GI Bill

2008-04-15T12:53:00.003-04:00

Several weeks ago, I blogged about Sen. Jim Webb's updated GI Bill, which includes significant changes to the education benefits offered by the US military. Despite calls by Webb and others for McCain to join on as one of the 50+ co-sponsors to the bill, McCain today said he would join the military in opposing Webb's amendment, making the argument that more generous educational benefits for today's soldiers would hurt the military.

Sorry, Senator, but you and the Pentagon have it way, way wrong. Today's fighting men and women deserve the chance to better themselves with a college education, and the least that you and the rest of the "Support the Troops" non-supporters can do is offer them an updated GI bill with improved educational benefits - much like the benefits your son is getting at the USNA. But perhaps what's good for the goose is not good for the collective ganders?

The Sky is falling! The Sky is falling!

2008-04-15T07:10:00.003-04:00

We've all heard that expression from "Chicken Little". The right-wing bloggers I come into contact have all said or implied that I'm like Chicken Little, always assuming the sky is falling, especially when it comes to economic matters, whereby they tend to tell me the economy has never been better, jobs are plentiful, and inflation is going down. [Side note: And I'm the one with "BDS" - Bush Derangement Syndrome? Not hardly!]

So let's take a look at where the economy is today, for those of us who live in the reality-based world. Anyone who does the grocery shopping in their home can tell you that prices are rising, but here's some proof:

"After nearly two decades of low food inflation, prices for staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour are rising sharply, surging in the past year at double-digit rates, according to the Labor Department. Milk prices, for example, increased 26 percent over the year. Egg prices jumped 40 percent.

Many analysts expect consumers to keep paying more for food. Wholesale food prices, an indicator of where supermarket prices are headed, rose last month at the fastest rate since 2003, with egg prices jumping 60 percent from a year ago, pasta products 30 percent, and fruits and vegetables 20 percent, according to the Labor Department.

Several factors contribute to higher food prices, analysts say, but none more than record prices for oil, which last week closed above $105 a barrel. [Ed. note: Oil is selling now at $112/barrel.] Oil is not only driving up production and transportation costs, but also adding to demand for corn and soybeans, used to make alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.

The weak US dollar, at or near historic lows against the euro and other currencies, adds more pressure. Oil and other commodities trade in dollars, so when the dollar is worth less, producers demand higher prices to make up for the loss in value. This pressure raises inflation fears, which in turn make commodities attractive to investors, who view them as holding value during inflationary periods. As investors buy, demand grows and commodity prices go even higher.

This combination of a weak dollar, soaring energy prices, and global demand recalls the 1970s, when retail food prices rose an average of nearly 9 percent a year, said Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, an Omaha research firm. Over the past year, Lapp said, food prices rose nearly 5 percent, more than double the average rate of the previous 10 years. Prices will rise even faster the next five years, he forecasts, increasing at an annual rate of 7.5 percent."

There are many factors at play in the rising cost of food, many of which are absolute staples in our house (milk, eggs, bread, fruits and veggies): the weakness of the dollar, the already high and rising price of oil, increased demand vs. decreasing supply, stagnant wages, and poor job growth, and the housing crisis (apparently hitting people other than middle-class homeowners) to name just a few.

So, is the sky falling? Let your checkbook answer that for you...but in the interest of fair and balanced reporting from "Thanks for Stopping By", let me leave you with the view from the other side of the aisle:

Update: After I posted this entry, I heard about this on NPR. This isn't good news, either.

Things that make you go...hmmmm.....

2008-04-13T19:12:00.002-04:00

Headline on the Huffington Post: "Shieffer asks Pelosi: Is Bill Clinton Working to Undermine Wife's Candidacy?"

I've been making this point to my husband and some friends for about a month now. Bill Clinton is a very astute political guy. He lives it, he loves it, it feeds him. So why has he made a series of gaffes while out on the stump for his wife? First there was this episode with Bill saying about Barack Obama's war votes "This is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen..." Then there was the episode in South Carolina where Bill compared Barack to Jesse Jackson. Then there was the reported red-faced tirade directed at superdelagates in California, complete with yelling and finger pointing.

Now comes Bill's insistence on bringing up the Tuzla incident again (where Hillary claimed to have landed in Bosnia under incoming mortar fire, something she later recanted and the pilot flying her there denied as well).

So, what gives? Personally, I think it's because Bill doesn't want Hillary to win. He wants to be the only Clinton to be President. No way he wants to sit around the White House while Hillary's in the Oval Office answering the phone at 3 am. I would imagine that being President does wonders for the ego - try to imagine being one of only 43 people in the history of the country to have achieved the Presidency of the world's superpower. It's probably hard to top that feeling of being the top dog- and no way Bill Clinton wants Hillary to be one of those select few, either.

There's just no other way to explain how such a smart guy is making such stupid blunders on his wife's behalf. I'll bet he's catching hell like he's never caught before - and given the rumors about those two, that's saying something.

From today's CBS' Face the Nation:

Honesty is the best Policy

2008-04-13T14:08:00.002-04:00

Wise words to live by. Those who do not live by that philosophy end up like this.

God's Country

2008-04-11T06:45:00.001-04:00

I grew up in what is known as "Upstate" New York - and that does not mean Westchester County. No, I'm talking really upstate - between Rochester and Syracuse in a village along the Erie Canal. It's often called "God's Country", more for its scenic beauty than for its history of religions appearing quickly and fervently.

My little hometown village of Newark, New York has less than 10,000 inhabitants. It's the kind of place where not only do you know your neighbor, you've probably had the same family living next door for years - if not decades. The Erie Canal, a technological marvel in the 1820's, runs through the north side of town and runs parallel to Route 31 - a road that will take you to the "big city" of Rochester if you head west, or to smaller towns and villages like Lyons (home of Jim Boeheim) and Clyde-Savannah. Newark is part of the "Finger Lakes" region, which in the past 20 years or so has become known for the large number of wineries that have grown up around the lakes, and is now the second largest wine producing area after Napa Valley.

Newark and the surrounding area was part of the "Burned Over District" in the early - mid 1800s. New religions and religious leaders sprouted up frequently, including one that we still talk about: the Latter Day Saints movement, which became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith in nearby Palmyra. The Fox Sisters, practitioners of spiritualism, were scandalous for their day as they communicated with the dead. The house they lived in still stood north of Newark in Hydesville until the early 1980's. There's now a museum that houses the foundation to their house along with information about the sisters.

"The Lost Weekend" - a movie which was nominated for 9 Academy Awards and won 4 in 1946 (Best Actor - Ray Milland, Best Director - Billy Wilder, Best Screenplay - Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett) - was based on the book by the same name written by Newark native Charles Jackson. Though I don't know much about him per say, I imagine he was a relative of Albert Jackson, who co-founded Jackson & Perkins Roses with his son-in-law, Charles Perkins. Both the Jackson and Perkins families are well-known in Newark - my younger sister and brother and I all attended Charles H. Perkins Elementary School on West Maple Avenue, and Cecilia Jackson was the Village Historian for decades.

One of Newark's more famous residents was US Navy ADM Leslie Gehres. He was the Captain of the USS FRANKLIN, and his actions on 19 March 1945, for which he was awarded the Navy Cross and those of his crewmates, including two sailors awarded the Medal of Honor, are memorialized in a museum at the area High School.

Why am I writing all of this? Because the other day, while talking to my father - a third generation "Newarkite", he told me that little ole' Newark, New York was featured in an Atlantic Monthly article by Megan McCardle, the daughter of a former Newark resident who graduated from Newark High School the year after my father did. At first I laughed - someone actually wrote about Newark? Really??

But she did, and the article is a good one. I'm sure there are lots of places like Newark - they've seen better days, have their share of problems, but underneath that, generally a decent place to live. Sure the school system might not be what we have here in Fairfax County, but the cost of living is pretty inexpensive, and it's nice to think there are still places where going for an ice cream at Sal's is a treat on a warm summer evening, and where kids can still ride their bikes to get to ball practice or the park. So congrats Newark on your well-deserved spotlight - you've earned it!

Bonus: Erie Canal video- with Springsteen cover of "15 Miles on the Erie Canal"! And no, the driver of this boat is not my brother, though they bear more than a passing resemblance...

Winning in Iraq on the Installment Plan

2008-04-10T13:52:00.001-04:00

Miserable Failure

2008-04-04T08:57:00.006-04:00

I couldn't help but comment on this story. In an informal poll of 109 of the nation's professional historians - Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize winners among them - 98.6% rated George W. Bush's presidency as a failure, with 1.4% rating it a success.

The poll itself was self-selective, meaning people were free to respond or not respond. There were only two questions:

"1. On balance, do you consider the presidency of George W. Bush to have been a success or failure?
Success ___
Failure ___

2. Forty-two people have been president of the United States. At this point, where would you rate the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other men who have held the office?
Best Ever ___
2-10 ___
11-20 ___
21-30 ___
31-41 ___
Worst Ever ___"

Beyond the overwhelming belief that this presidency has been a total and complete failure, 61% of respondents felt that George W. Bush is the single worst president this country has ever had (or suffered through), 35% rated him in the bottom 10 - with at least two respondents putting him at the second worst ever, while 4% rated him somewhere between the top 2 through 30 presidents.

The historians' comments that accompanied their responses sum up what the 64% of Americans who feel Bush is doing a lousy job as president, and the 81% of Americans who feel the country is off on the wrong track. Allow me to highlight a few here:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

“Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

But the best part of the article was this comment by "Brandy Lewis":

"All you liberals think the same. With all your books, you don't recognize a great leader when you see one. Iraq War is making the country safer because Ben Ladin and the other are there like hornets. And they would be here if not for the war. Sure some people die, but it's war, dummy. Saddam Insane attacked us on 911 and now you guys want to coddle him and read him his rights. I am not rich, but I know that God made Bush president for a reason, and that is to make the country better for us. You guys are just mad that you didn't get elected and didn't win. I still have my W sticker on my bumper."

Priceless.

April 3, 1968

2008-04-03T14:58:00.000-04:00

"We as a people...will get to the promised land."

The Iraq Generation GI Bill

2008-04-03T08:49:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned in my post recommending Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) for Vice President, the first bill he sponsored as a US Senator was S.22, the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007. Here's a detailed summary of the benefits the bill would offer servicemembers:

"Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007 - Amends federal veterans' benefits provisions to entitle to educational assistance under the Montgomery GI Bill certain individuals who serve on active duty in the Armed Forces on or after September 11, 2001. Requires such individuals to complete the requirements of a secondary school diploma (or its equivalent) before applying for such assistance. Establishes the duration of such assistance (in most cases 36 months) and assistance amounts. Requires programs of education pursued with such assistance to be approved by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Allows for the pursuit of an approved program of education while on active duty. Allows, under such assistance, for the pursuit of: (1) programs on less than a half-time basis; (2) apprenticeship or other on-job training; (3) correspondence courses; (4) flight training; (5) tutorial assistance; and (6) licensure and certification tests. Requires such educational assistance to be used within 15 years of the individual's discharge or release from active duty (with exceptions). Allows individuals currently under the Montgomery GI Bill educational assistance program to elect to participate in the post-9/11 educational assistance program with respect to any unused entitlement."

So far, Sen. Webb has 50 co-sponsors to this bill - only 9 short of the needed 60 for passage by the Senate. The 51 sponsors (with Sen. Webb) include 42Democrats, among them Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Noticeably absent from the list is the Republican nominee for President, Sen. John McCain, despite calls from Sen. Webb for McCain to sign on.

Not suprisingly, the White House is opposed to the bill, making the argument that better GI educational benefits are a "retention killer":

The Pentagon and White House have so far resisted a new GI Bill out of fear that too many will use it - choosing to shed the uniform in favor of school and civilian life.

"The incentive to serve and leave," said Robert Clarke, assistant director of accessions policy at the Department of Defense, may "outweigh the incentive to have them stay."

The White House also opposes the bill for financial reasons - the estimated cost of the updated GI bill is around $2 billion dollars annually. To put it another way, the estimated cost of the updated GI bill equals 1 1/2 weeks worth of spending in Iraq.

The VFW, IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), American Legion, MOAA (Military Officers Association of America), VVA (Vietnam Veterans of America) and other military organizations have thrown their support behind Senate Bill 22.

Sen. McCain and other Republican senators who never miss a chance to be photographed with soldiers, loudly sing the praises of the American fighter, and never leave home without their American flag lapel pin have the chance to help and assist the American soldier/sailor/airman/Marine by supporting Senate Bill 22. Talk is cheap Sen. McCain - do the right thing and help this 21st century GI Bill pass the Senate.

Assholes who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

2008-04-02T20:39:00.005-04:00

The man to your left, Douglas J. Feith, had this to say about torture and people who worry about it (from TPM Muckraker)

Feith boasted to Sands that back in 2002, he "was really a player" in ensuring that Gitmo detainees would not receive Geneva protections.

But when Sands asked him "whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority," Feith got nasty: He was not. “The problem with moral authority,” he said, was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”

Hmmmmm.....wonder what those who had to work with Dougie thought of him?

Here's what GEN Tommy Franks had to say about Dougie (from Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack, page 281):

"I have to deal with the stupidest fucking guy on the planet almost every day."

Here's what then National Security Advisor Condi Rice had to say about the Dougster:

"According to the long-running Washington newsletter, The Nelson Report, edited by Christopher Nelson, quoting an anonymous source, Feith was standing in for Rumsfeld at a 2003 interagency 'Principals' Meeting' debating the Middle East, and ended his remarks on behalf of the Pentagon. Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, "Thanks Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we'll invite the ambassador."

Here's what Colin Powell's Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson had to say about Doug:

"Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man."

He also had this to say about Doug and David Wurmser:

"A lot of these guys, including Wurmser, I looked at as card-carrying members of the Likud party, as I did with Feith. You wouldn’t open their wallet and find a card, but I often wondered if their primary allegiance was to their own country or to Israel. That was the thing that troubled me, because there was so much that they said and did that looked like it was more reflective of Israel’s interest than our own."

Here's what CENTCOM Deputy Director LGEN Michael DeLong had to say about Feithy:

"Feith wasn't somebody we enjoyed working with, and to go much further than that would probably not be a good thing. To be honest, we blew him off lots of times. Told the secretary that he's full of baloney, his people working for him are full of baloney. It was a real distraction for us, because he was the number three guy in the Department of Defense."

I suppose there are much worse things in this world than being labeled an asshole by the "stupidest fucking guy on the planet." Living with the mess that is Iraq would be one, though I'm sure that doesn't bother ole Doug. You've gotta have a conscience for that.

For "T"

2008-04-02T17:16:00.001-04:00

Here is my youngest son's favorite youtube clip:

Troop Readiness

2008-04-02T08:57:00.004-04:00

An article in today's Washington Post about troop readiness prompted me to write a blog entry about where the United States military is today, 6 1/2 years after the start of OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan and 5 years after the start of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM in Iraq.

The sad truth is that the Army and USMC are stretched dangerously thin, and the stress of repeated deployments to Iraq are straining servicemembers and their families to the brink. Ann Scott Tyson's article "Heavy Troop Deployments are Called Major Risk" highlights what active duty Officers and Enlisted personnel have been saying for years. GEN Richard Cody, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, testified yesterday before the Senate Armed Service's Committee Readiness panel and said,

"..the heavy deployments are inflicting "incredible stress" on soldiers and families and that they pose "a significant risk" to the nation's all-volunteer military. "

"When the five-brigade surge went in . . . that took all the stroke out of the shock absorbers for the United States Army," Cody testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee's readiness panel.

He said that even if five brigades are pulled out of Iraq by July, as planned, it would take some time before the Army could return to 12-month tours for soldiers. Petraeus is expected to call for a pause in further troop reductions to assess their impact on security in Iraq.

"I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today," said Cody, who has been the senior Army official in charge of operations and readiness for the past six years and plans to retire this summer.

The article continues,

"The testimony reflects the tension between the wartime priorities of U.S. commanders in Iraq such as Petraeus and the heads of military services responsible for the health and preparedness of the forces. Cody said that the Army no longer has fully ready combat brigades on standby should a threat or conflict occur.

The nation needs an airborne brigade, a heavy brigade and a Stryker brigade ready for "full-spectrum operations," Cody said, "and we don't have that today."

Soldiers and Marines also lack training for major combat operations using their entire range of weapons, the generals said. For example, artillerymen are not practicing firing heavy guns but are instead doing counterinsurgency work as military police.

Let's put that in perspective: if the United States is attacked again, or is needed in a conflict other than Iraq or Afghanistan, the United States Army no longer has standby combat forces forces to deal with that threat.

Read that again.

I've heard many times the traditional standby "We're a nation at War", usually from those not in uniform, to justify our the status of the uniformed military, and I always make this argument: the military is at war, the rest of the nation is living life as normal. There has been no request for sacrifice for 99% of the population, no national call for enlisting, nothing save for spending a few bucks at the mall to help the economy out.

I believe the time has come for this country to re-institute the draft. The military is not able to defend this country from enemies foreign and domestic, as is their duty. The military is stretched to a breaking point, and it's about time for this country to step up and lend a hand. Bland plattitudes like "God Bless the Troops" and "We support our military" no longer cut it. Everyone between the ages of 18-42 should be prepared to serve their country - and yes, that includes me. Deferments would be issued for the following people: single parents and those with significant physical and/or mental disabilities. Everyone else is eligible and should be prepared to serve.

The time has come to ask ourselves: will we be a nation at war, making sacrifices to defeat our enemies? Or will we continue to be a military at war, relying again and again on the same group of people to win this war while 99% of America pays no price?

Update: Phil Carter of Intel Dump has an article on fixing the military at Slate.com that is well worth reading.

Update II: GEN Cody's prepared text.

After Basra

2008-04-01T14:03:00.004-04:00

To follow up on my post below about (Iraq: Situation Normal)...the Sadr forces and the Maliki government reached a "truce" whereby Sadr called all the shots: his forces stopped fighting and returned home while keeping their weapons, the Maliki government agreed to release the Sadr forces being held and grant them amnesty, and Maliki agreed to stop arresting Mehdi Army members. The most important part, of course, is that this all transpired because the Maliki government went to Iran to ask for help in dealing with Sadr - and not just to anyone, but to someone the American government considers a terrorist.

In short, the Maliki government looks foolish, Sadr and his forces remain a potent threat, the US and its allies are forced to rely on our enemy to stop the fighting in southern Iraq, the Iraqi people are wondering who won (consensus: al-Sadr) - and John McBush expresses surprise that that an "independent" Iraq would take actions without notifying the US first and once again has his facts wrong.

Heckuva job Nouri al-Maliki - Mission Accomplished!

Update: Warren Strobel at McClatchy reports, "There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up" on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. He and other military officials requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the record.

The failure of Iraqi forces to defeat rogue fighters in Basra has some in the military fearing they can no longer predict when it might be possible to reduce the number of troops to pre-surge levels. "It's more complicated now," said one officer in Iraq whose role has been critical to American planning there.

OK, I'll offer a prediction: the United States military will have an average of 130,000-140,000 troops in Iraq until at least both of my sons (now in 1st and 4th grade, respectively) graduate from High School - the youngest will graduate in 2019.

Bad Bowlers for Obama

2008-03-31T14:03:00.002-04:00

I'm a terrible bowler. Really. I like sports, and I'm capable at most of them, but bowling...it's always been my achilles heel. Habibi and I went bowling when we were dating - he's a terrific bowler - and I think the final score was him: 160, me: 43. Instead of getting better, I got worse as the game went on. People who know me know that I'm fairly competitive, so losing by that score made for a sour afternoon. The only thing worse was when I shot a 9 on a par 3 mini-golf course (with Habibi the weekend we got engaged).

I went bowling about two years ago in Cairo. Now that's an experience. No bowling shoes required, intermitent power outages on the lanes, dirt and dust everywhere. I bowled against one of my best friends, and it was close for about 8 frames. Final score: her - 70, me - 69. I should add that was on lanes with bumpers on them. Painful. Very painful. We bowled again about 3 months ago, and while I forget the final score, she beat me. AGAIN. The weird thing is that I bowled a strike in the first frame of both games...I'm not a closer I guess.

I saw this story on MSNBC this morning, and I tell ya', I felt Sen. Obama's pain. I've been there. Not even breaking 50 with 19 rolls is tough...but it spurred me to think that maybe I could start my own subgroup of Obama supporters. "Bad Bowlers for Obama". There's got to be more than just me who likes Obama and can't break 80 ON A LANE WITH BUMPERS!

In all seriousness, Sen. Obama's bowling episode says a lot to me. He's not afraid to do something he's not especially good at, and he can make fun of himself. His comment that his "economic plan is better than his bowling" makes him seem like a real person. He laughed about his experience and came across looking like a regular guy.

Nats Win!! Nats Win!!

2008-03-31T07:31:00.002-04:00

Wow...what a game! Walk off homer by Ryan Zimmerman in the 9th...staduim given rave reviews...the only thing better was the shower of boos directed at the honorary guest who threw out the first pitch.

Iraq: Situation Normal (AFU)

2008-03-30T18:39:00.003-04:00

This week, the White House and President Bush continued to paint a rosy picture of Iraq, its government, and the Iraqi Security Forces, both police and the Iraqi Army. Only in the Bush bubble could the United States Military getting involved in a turf battle between competing Iranian sponsored fundamentalist Shia militias be a good thing.

Now, I'm all for fighting Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. But let's have a little honesty from the Bush administration: what our servicemembers have been asked to do is side with President Nouri al-Malaki's Dawa (Islamic Call) Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's SCII (Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, formerly known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI) Badr corps in their fight with al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. The SCII's Badr corps are notorious for their desire for a fundamentalist Islamic area in Southern Iraq- the place where women are beheaded and barbers are murdered for being un-Islamic. So, in essence, we are siding with the SCII militia (funded and supported by Iran) against the Mehdi Army, which has been helpful in keeping Baghdad quiet and helping "the surge" to "succeed."

One has to ask, is that really what we signed on to in March, 2003? How many of the 4,000 dead or 30,000 wounded fought for a fundamentalist Islamic theocratic state in southern Iraq? How many Americans can even understand what is happening in and around Basra, can name the major parties and players in this inter-Shia rivalry - and how many believe this actually helps the United States remain free?

I'm happy to see that al-Sadr has called on his troops to stop fighting. It will no doubt be spun as another success in Bush world. But al-Sadr offered these conditions in his surrender: his fighters be released from prison, the Iraqi government offer amnesty to all Mehdi Army fighters, and that his militia retain its weapons. So how, exactly, is that a win for either the Iraqi government or the US? If the whole point of al-Maliki attacking the Medhi Army was to crack down on militias and reduce their influence, how is letting al-Sadr and his followers go home with no penalties and with their weapons a success?

In the reality based world, Iraq is a money pit, something that will be a financial and emotional drain on this country for decades. The US Embassy in Baghdad, overbudget, behind schedule and under daily attack, would have been closed years ago if it was anywhere else in the world. The US military, asked to be the peacekeepers between people for whom grudges last millenia, in a language and a culture they don't understand, and for longer amounts of time, is in danger of being broken beyond repair. The best case scenario for the Iraqi Army - one that the US isn't even sure will pan out - is that they can defend themselves within their border by 2012, and against their adversaries bordering them by 2018. To put it another way, my current 1st grader will be A SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL before the Iraqis can defend themselves against any country that attacks them.

I'll say it again: the next President of the United States should appoint one person and one person only as the next Ambassador to Iraq - George W. Bush. He dreams of the romance of war...so let's give him his wish and let him spend his days within the romantic confines of the Green Zone.

Update: Loyal reader "Serving Patriot" gets his $.02 published on another blog. He's a smart guy, war veteran...and handsome too. His thoughts are well worth reading.

Opening Day!!!

2008-03-30T13:29:00.005-04:00

The third best day of the year...after Christmas and the 1st day of school. Our hometown Nats take on the Braves tonight, the Orioles start Monday at home vs. Tampa Bay, and the World Champion Red Sox take on the Dodgers in California (and not playing at home until the 9th vs. Detroit).

My top 5 favorite baseball movies:

1. The Natural. Simply the best movie about baseball, and not just because it was filmed in Buffalo's War Memorial staduim. All-American Roy Hobbs fights his past, his owner and mysterious women to create the single greatest baseball sequence ever. Rated: Fastball, down the middle.

2. A League of Their Own. Yes, it has Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell - both of whom can be a little annoying....but the movie is solid, Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Lori Petty are all terrific, and the ball playing is good, too. I can't tell you how many times I've said to my kids, "There's no crying in baseball!" Rated: Fastball, low and outside.

3. Field of Dreams. "If you build it, he will come." A little trippy at times, but some real heartwarming moments. Rated: Slider

4. Eight Men Out. The Black Sox - the worst scandal to hit the game until steroid use became the rage among ball players. Rated: Spitball

5. Bull Durham. Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and a delightfully loopy Tim Robbins combine poetry, sex and AAA baseball for a solid hit. Rated: Knuckleball

Honorable mention: Major League, The Sandlot, The Bad News Bears (the original), Fever Pitch, Stealing Home, 61*.

Remarkable Progress in Iraq for Thursday, March 26

2008-03-28T08:09:00.002-04:00

The 20%ers who believe strongly in the Iraq War often complain that the "MSM" isn't really covering the war, that we aren't really getting a true picture of what it's like "over there". I completely agree - things there are much, much worse than we're being told.

So, in their honor, I present what, sadly, will probably be a regular feature here, The Remarkable Progress in Iraq Daily Update.

From McClatchy Newspapers, a roundup of the remarkable progress being made in Iraq yesterday:

"The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers Special Correspondents in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It's posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy's Washington Bureau."

Baghdad

12 mortars hit the Green Zone starting at 10 am until this report was prepared at 2 pm, Thursday, said Iraqi Police. The U.S. Embassy said no one was injured. Update: 1 US Government Official killed

2 mortar rounds fell on Ur neighbourhood, east Baghdad near an open air marketplace killing one civilian, injuring two.

2 mortar rounds hit Karrada Kharij Street, central Baghdad injuring 1 civilian.

17 wounded Iraqi Army soldiers from Basra were taken to al-Yarmouk Hospital for treatment.

Clashes in al-Mansour district, from Iskan neighbourhood to Abu Jafar al-Mansour began this morning between Mahdi Army members and security forces. 3 Iraqi Army soldiers were injured and the clashes continued at the time of publication.

A parked car bomb exploded near the Red Crescent office, Andalus Square, in central Baghdad causing some material damages to its outer wall.

Clashes between Mahdi Army members and National Police in al-Amin neighbourhood started this morning and continue until the preparation of this report at 2 pm. Casualties have not been reported until this time.

The office of al-Da'wa Party in al-Shaab neighbourhood has been torched, causing only material damages.

3 mortars hit al-Alawi bus station, central Baghdad, killing 2 civilians, injuring 15.

Updating Sadr City news, since the fighting started on Monday until now, the toll has reached 38 killed and 47 wounded, Iraqi police said.

Gunmen kidnapped the civil spokesman of the Baghdad Security Plan, Tahseen al-Shaikhli. An armed group attacked his home, took him captive, let his family go and torched his house. They also took a government pick up truck, loaded it with 26 pieces of weaponry belonging to his security detail.

8 Iraqi soldiers were wounded in clashes between Iraqi Army and members of the Mahdi Army in Talbiyah, north Baghdad at around 3 pm Thursday.

Random fire by gunmen passing in a speeding car killed a father and his son, 13 years old in Talbiyah, north Baghdad at 5 this afternoon.

1 civilian injured when gunmen opened fire randomly across Sabah al-Khayat Square in Shaab area in north Baghdad at around 5 pm.

1 mortar round fell in Battawin neighbourhood, which is a largely commercial area in central Baghdad, injuring 2 civilians at 5 pm.

Clashes between gunmen and Iraqi Army in Zafaraniyah, southeast Baghdad at around 5.30 pm left 2 soldiers seriously injured.

2 mortar rounds hit the Ministry of Interior, al-Tasfeerat compound in central Baghdad at 6 pm killing 1 employee and injuring 4.

A mortar shell hit a residential building in Karrada Dakhil, central Baghdad at 6.15 pm, injuring 2 residents and causing material damage.

Clashes broke out between National Police and gunmen in Husseiniyah neighbourhood at around 6.30 pm and the clashes continued at the time of publication.

4 mortar rounds hit the US military base in Rustamiyah at 6.30 pm. No casualties were reported and no comment was available from the US military at the time of publication.

Gunmen target a police patrol at the entrance of al-Hurriyah neighbourhood at 8 pm injuring 1 policeman.

Thursday at 8 pm the Shoala Police Station fell in the control of an armed group.

5 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad by Iraqi Police today. 1 in Ur, 1 in Zayuna, 1 in Husseiniyah, 1 in Mansour, 1 in Alawi al-Hilla, Sheikh Ma'roof.

Basra

Fighting in Basra between the Mahdi Army and the security forces has been ongoing since early Tuesday, and the toll of the fighting is at least 97 killed and around 300 injured, a medical source in the Directorate of Health in Basra said.

Hilla

Clashes have resumed in the city centre of Hilla city causing the injury of 30 people, 22 of whom were police and army, 8 civilians amongst who was a woman and the death of 1 soldier and 2 policemen.

Clashes in Chiffel neibourhood inside Hilla city continue, and the offices of al-Da'wa Party and the Supreme Council were torched by members of al-Mahdi Army causing the death of 3 policemen and the injury of 4.

Maysan

Gunmen torch Badr Organization Bureau located in Hitteen Square, in the centre of Amara city. They launched 4 RPGs at the bureau, three of which hit the bureau and burned the building to the ground. The fourth hit an adjacent house, injuring one of its inhabitants.
Clashes between Iraqi Army and Mahdi Army members as the regular army was crossing what is commonly known as the Yugoslav Bridge, north Amara. 2 civilians were killed and 7 injured by cross fire.

Salahuddin

Gunmen attack a Sahwa, US sponsored militia, member's house in al-Khadhraa neighbourhood, downtown Samara and kill both him and his son and injured his wife and one of his daughters. Joint forces, Iraqi army and US military announce a curfew in order to search for the armed group, said First Lieutenant Muthanna Shakir. US military did not include this report in their release.

A roadside bomb exploded yesterday, Wednesday targeting a Support Force, CLC, checkpoint on the main road near Awja city injuring 7 Sahwa members and 2 civilians.

A mortar shell fell on Tel al-Jarad, Baiji city, yesterday evening killing a woman Mona Ajaj, injuring 5 civilians, amongst whom were 3 children and a woman.
IED exploded targeting a soldier as he left his home going to work, in Malha neighbourhood, north Baiji, causing his death.

Diyala

5 unidentified bodies were found in a mass grave by security forces in al-Zor area, Muqdadiyah district, 25 km to the east of Baquba.

Local police found 4 bodies in al-Asaiba village, Shahraban district, 8 km south of the town of Baladruz. They were immediately sent to the coroner's department in Baladruz General Hospital, where through procedures the bodies were identified and collected by their families and returned to al-Shamsiyah village, their home town.

A roadside bomb exploded targeting a civilian car in the town of Khanaqin injuring 2 civilians.
The District Commissioner's office in Khan Beni Saad was targeted with mortar fire by the Mahdi Army today. The security forces announced a curfew in the town in order to track the armed group.

Anbar

2 ready-to-use improvised explosive devices were found by Iraqi Police near 40 Street in a garbage container at 7 am Thursday. They were propane gas cylinders (used for cooking) with an addition of TNT explosive material. They were removed safely by the police and a curfew aided the security forces to capture the outlaws and the curfew was lifted at one pm.

5 Iraqi Army soldiers from Anbar were killed in the fighting in Basra. Their bodies were returned to their families today.

Kirkuk

A suicide car bomb targeted an Asayesh, a Kurd security intelligence agency, vehicle killing an officer, Captain Tayib Mahmoud, and injuring 2 of his security detail and 5 civilians in the proximity of the explosion. The incident took place in al-Quds Street, Tiseen neighbourhood, downtown Kirkuk city early Thursday morning.

Gunmen assassinated the Commander of Garmian Peshmerga Forces, of the KDP. The gunmen opened fire upon his motorcade in a town near Daqooq, south Kirkuk, killing him and 4 of his security detail.

2008 McClatchy Newspapers

"Remarkable Progress"

2008-03-27T16:51:00.003-04:00

President George W. Bush gave a speech today and said the Iraqi Government is making "remarkable progress" and credited the "surge" of U.S. troops over the past year not only for improving security but for slowly encouraging "a rebirth of civil society."

See, it must be me. Maybe I'm not up to speed on what "remarkable progress" actually means, because I'm thinking "remarkable progress" would not look like this or this or this or this or this.

But, then again, I live here in the "reality based community" as opposed to the Bushies who live in this place:

"That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the Bush aide told the journalist. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do.”

My husband told me that he read a comment online somewhere that said that the next President of the United States should make appointing George W. Bush the Ambassador to Iraq the first order of business. Dick Cheney could be DCM. Nothing would be sweeter than letting those two live in the reality based world for a change.

Update: If the events happening at this Embassy were occurring at any other US Embassy in the world, it would have been shut down months - if not years - ago. Unbelievable.

So?

2008-03-25T07:14:00.006-04:00

If there is ever a monument built to remember the Bush/Cheney years (besides the trillion dollars in deficits we'll be paying off for ever), I hope it is a big, enormous granite "SO?", for that has been the general attitude of this administration since it took office in January, 2001.

On March 19, ABC news aired an interview reporter Martha Raddatz did with VP Dick Cheney. The highlights (such as they are):

“On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success,” Cheney told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz.

When asked about how that jibes with recent polls that show about two-thirds of Americans say the fight in Iraq is not worth it, Cheney replied, “So?”

So, indeed. Who gives a shit what the American people think? Not the Bush Administration - just look at the record over the past 7 years.

The Bush Administration pushes for passage of the Patriot Act, thereby giving the government powers to inquire what books the American people are checking out of the library, listen to phone calls, read emails, and enter homes without having to notify the residents that the government has been there.

So?

The Bush Administration pushes the CIA to rework its Iraq intelligence reports to show the presence of WMDs, ignores their pre-war assesments of post-invasion chaos and political obstacles, then blames the CIA for bad intell, tells GEN Tommy Franks to scale down the size of the military invading Iraq, and implies again and again and again and again and again a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden when none exists.

So?

The Bush Administration calls for tax cuts during wartime - only the second administration in our history to do so, proposes closing VA hospitals nationwide, cuts medical benefits to veterans, and nickel and dimes the Congress over an additional 1/2 percent pay raise for fiscal '09, finally giving us the additional 1/2% (though not willingly).

So?

The Bush Administration bullies the world into supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, encourages democracy in the Middle East and then punishes the victors by cutting off aid, encourages democracy in the Middle East and then looks the other way when repressive governments punish democracy activists.

So?

The Bush Administration extols its enviromental record while pushing things like the "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" inititiatives - which in reality are anything but, sits idly by while species are nearing extinction, and appoints former gas and oil excutives to positions dealing with the environment and relies on gas companies for advice on global warming.

So?

The Bush Administration appoints anti-birth control activists to head the Family Planning section of DHS - twice - and appoints men who prescribe bible passages to combat PMS to lead the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

So? Whacha gonna do in November - get fooled again?

Another Tragic Milestone

2008-03-24T08:54:00.006-04:00

Here

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" spends 40 minutes with family members of those lost in this war.

Update: Serving Patriot recommended the Frontline program "Bush's War". Also worth checking out is the NY Times Monday edition.

Jim Webb for Vice President

2008-03-22T08:32:00.008-04:00

In July, 2006, my family moved to northern Virginia from Cairo, Egypt. Our two years in Egypt were the best of our Navy career - we made friends that will last a lifetime, got to see and do things that most people only dream of, and my husband's job was one brought more personal satisfaction than almost any other tour in his (then) 18 years in the United States Navy. After spending our tour in a vibrant city halfway around the world, we were not thrilled about returning to the DC area for the 4th time.

Our tour in Egypt changed my husband and me, and when we returned here in the summer of 2006, I was fed up with the way things were going in this country. Living in a Muslim country and seeing things through a different set of eyes made me question what exactly our foreign policy was, what it was accomplishing and most importantly, where it would take us in the years to come.

I was following the Virginia Senate race closely, and remember watching the debate between then Sen. George Allen and his opponent, Jim Webb, at a hotel in Tysons Corner. My kids were bugging me to take them to the pool, but I wanted to watch and see what the candidates had to say. I was immediately impressed with Jim Webb and his thoughtful, reasonable responses to questions, as opposed to George Allen's 30 second soundbite answers and standby "I stand strong for freedom" blather.

One afternoon, after getting my youngest son on the bus for afternoon kindergarten, I drove down to Jim Webb's statewide headquarters to volunteer my time. I became one of about 30 "Office Assistants" - all volunteers - who did various office tasks like staffing phone banks, dealing with online requests for voting information and absentee ballots, general computer work, and whatever office assignments came up. I LOVED IT!! The feeling of working - for free - with similar minded Democrats who were at their wits ends with both a sitting Senator and a President who could barely put together two coherent sentences in a row....well, it was awesome.

One of the things I respect most about Jim Webb is how he treated his military service and that of his son during the campaign. He neither ran from it nor made it the centerpiece of his campaign. His campaign literature rarely mentioned the awards he earned in combat: the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. He refused to release the citation he received for earning the Navy Cross - second only to the Medal of Honor for bravery in combat - so the Virginian Pilot ran it in their endorsement of him. Jim Webb missed a traditional Labor Day parade because he wanted to be among the families watching their sons and daughters deploy to Iraq.

People say that George Allen lost because of "Macaca", but I really believe he lost because Jim Webb has a way of speaking for solidly middle class Americans who believe in national service, who believe in being paid a fair wage for a fair day's work, who believe that their government should be trusted and not feared.

I'm proud of my very, very small role in electing Jim Webb to the United States Senate from the great state of Virginia. I consider it one of the best things I've ever done. He's done great work there; the first piece of legislation he introduced was the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. As another veteran put it, Jim Webb did more in one day to help veterans than George Allen did in 6 years. That's why I supported Jim Webb for Senate in the fall of '06, and that's why I hope that Jim Webb is on both short lists for Vice President.

Here's is Sen. Jim Webb's response to President Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, in two parts:

You know you're biased when your own reporters say so

2008-03-21T19:13:00.005-04:00

I'm not a Faux News viewer. I've turned in occasionally this week, not at all surprised to find them spending about 53 minutes out of every hour talking about Barack Obama's minister, with the video on replay every 6 minutes and 30 seconds. EVERY SINGLE HOUR.

So this morning, they were doing the usual Faux News freakout over every word uttered by a Democrat, this time by Barack Obama's comment that his grandmother is a "typical white female." God forfend! Heavens to Besty!! My stars!! !The Faux News talking heads got a serious case of the vapors...

Along comes Chris Wallace, who basically tells them what the reality-based, logical, rational thinkers are all thinking about what Obama said: first, you've taken the words out of context, and second, you're continuing a to beat a horse that you beat to death two days ago, and then again yesterday. So shut up already!

I'm still no fan of the network, but it's somewhat comforting to know that at least someone at Faux has a shred of decency and integrity left.

Steve "This is HUGE!" Douche-y? Not so much.

They shoot stupid women, don't they?

2008-03-20T12:49:00.016-04:00

Women's History month has turned out to be a real blast. I mean, first you have the absolute piece of crap the Washington Post editors printed on March 2nd - you know the one they thought would be "funny" - or at least "ironic"? [note to editors: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."*]

Then we have the linguistic stylings of Dana Perino, White House Spokeswoman. You might remember her actually - and in all seriousness - uttering this:

"I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis," said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. "It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure." So she consulted her best source. "I came home and I asked my husband," she recalled. "I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, 'Oh, Dana.' "

Oh, Dana indeed. I mean, my only thought about that at the time was, are you serious? Are you actually that stupid? [And as a Political Science minor, if Dana Perino never actually heard anything about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 4 years of college, she should return her degree, 'cause she obviously didn't earn it.]

So then the President's spokeswoman appeared on Faux News Sunday, and cleared up any question as to her intelligence. Yes, she is indeed that stupid. Sayeth Dana, "Some of the terms I just don’t know, I haven’t grown up knowing. The type of missiles that are out there: patriots and scuds and cruise missiles and tomahawk missiles. And I think that men just by osmosis understand all of these things, and they’re things that I really have to work at — to know the difference between a carrier and a destroyer, and what it means when one of those is being launched to a certain area. "

Oh, puh-leeze. First of all, speak for yourself, sister. Not all of us are morons about military matters - or delight in appearing to be one. But, come on. You honestly don't know the difference between an aircraft carrier and a destroyer? Didn't you ever watch Top Gun??

Here's something I think will really help: when it comes to US Navy ships, size matters. So, like, an aircraft carrier is, like, really big, 'cause, it like, carries, like 5,000 sailors. And, like, airplanes, too! And so a destroyer, which carries, like, 350 sailors, is smaller. Like, you need a big ship (don't call it a boat) to carry more people, and you need, like, a smaller ship to carry fewer people. Got it? And no, submarines are not the same things as like aircraft carriers. Submarines go under the water, not on top.

*"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Conservative hypocrisy, take 5,983

2008-03-20T11:14:00.005-04:00

So the right wingers are up in arms about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's horrible comments about America - comments Barack Obama has repudiated, rejected and denounced over and over again.

What I want to know, is when will the attendees of the September, 2007 Values Voter summit - who you can hear rapturously applauding - reject, repudiate and denounce this travesty? How many of them walked out while listening to this? *

"Why Should God Bless America?"

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is.

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”

O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God,
has gone astray

Why should god bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

I mean, unless I'm missing something, isn't the point of this song not "God Bless America", but "God is Damning America", or at the very least, something we've heard a lot about lately, namely "God Damn America"?

*The answers, of course, are never and none, respectively.

Another One Bites the Dust

2008-03-20T07:37:00.004-04:00

In the constant drumbeat about how Obama's minister hates America, his wife wrote a scandalous college thesis, and now, that Obama had a nice tricycle as a child and is therefore wholly unfit to be President (click that link at your own peril) and that Obama is "trash" (so sayeth a real whacko who has renamed Harlem "Atlah"), the real story of the upcoming election is truly not being covered: the number of Republicans retiring from the House of Representatives, and to some degree, the number of Democrats running unopposed in both House and Senate races.

Yeah, I know, that's a totally wonky story, and I'm sure my former PoliSci professors will be mighty proud. It's not a headline grabber and isn't a "sexy" political story in anyway what so ever. But isn't the fact that that 1st term US Senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas- a state that went 51%-46% for Bush in '00 and 54%-46% in '04 - is running unopposed in the fall big news? When is the last time a southern state was unable to find an opponent to run against a Democrat - and a first termer at that??!!

What's remarkable about the number of Republicans that are not running for reelection this fall are the number of those Republicans that reside in what could be called "swing districts". Take my neighbor, Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia's 11th Congressional District. Well, technically he's not my "next door" neighbor, but he lives about a mile and a half down the road (curiously in another Congressional district - he's in the 11th and we're in the 8th). The 11th CD switched from Democrat (blue) to Republican (red) in 1994, when Tom Davis beat incumbent Leslie Byrne 53%-45% as part of the "Republican Revolution". Davis has held the seat ever since then, until he announced his retirement from Congress in January of this year. He's not ruled out a return to public service, and odds are that he wants to run against Jim Webb in the 2012 Senate race (memo to Tom: good luck with that).

The 11th has seen some real changes since Tom Davis took office, and he and his 2nd wife, state Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, surely saw that up close and personal when she was handily defeated in the fall '07 election by J. Chapman "Chap" Petersen, 55%-45%. This district will almost certainly go blue in 2008, though for which candidate remains to be seen and won't be known until the primary election in June of this year. Tom Davis is known to be a pretty astute political observer, so when he says something like this: "He's just killed the Republican brand.", it's not hard to understand why he and so many others are not running for re-election on the Republican ticket.

For those keeping score at home, here's a list of Congressmen and women and US Senators not running for re-election this fall:

Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.), 61, 7 terms
Tom Davis (R-Va.), 59, 7 terms
John Doolittle (R-Calif.), 57, 9 terms
Terry Everett (R-Ala.), 70, 8 terms
Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.), 37, 4 terms
David Hobson (R-Ohio), 71, 9 terms
Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.), 68, 6 terms
Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), 59, 14 terms
Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), 62, 7 terms
Ron Lewis (R-Ky.), 61, 8 terms
Jim McCrery (R-La.), 58, 11 terms
Mike McNulty (D-N.Y.), 60, 10 terms
John Peterson (R-Pa.), 69, 6 terms
Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), 44, 6 terms
Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio), 56, 8 terms
Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), 61, 9 terms
Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), 83, 18 terms
Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.), 49, 3 terms
Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), 65, 13 terms
John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), 58, 7 terms
Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), 62, 5 terms
Jim Walsh (R-N.Y.), 60, 10 terms
Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), 55, 7 terms
Jerry Weller (R-Ill.), 50, 7 terms
Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), 64, 2 terms
Larry Craig (R-Idaho), 62, 3 terms
Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), 75, 6 terms
Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), 61, 2 terms
John Warner (R-Va.), 80, 5 terms

Add to that list Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), who represents Buffalo and the western Rochester suburbs, who is caught up in the NRCC financial scandal and was part of the cover up of Mark Foley's page text messaging scandal, and barely got by a virtual unknown opponent in 2006 (winning 52%-48%). That makes two open seats in my part of Upstate NY (the other being the seat vacated by Jim Walsh, who represents Syracuse and parts west through the Finger Lakes) - and I'd give even odds that one of those seats switches to the Dems. In 2006, the Dems picked up two seats held by Republicans, Sue Kelly in the 19th and John Sweeney in the 20th. Both of those seats were hard fought, and the Republicans were not helped by Sue Kelly literally running away from a local TV reporter asking questions about her involvement in the Foley page scandal, and John Sweeney partying it up with local college students and domestic incidents involving his wife.

It is going to be a very interesting political year. I guess I'm a pessimist at heart, and coupled with a total and complete belief in "the jinx", I refuse to even venture a guess as to how things will turn out in November - but I will say that i'm feelin' kinda optimistic!

Five Years On

2008-03-19T17:45:00.002-04:00

The Iraq War tends to bring up some heated discussion. I prefer reasoned, thoughtful debate free from name calling and patriotism testing.

Here are some worthwhile reads on the 5th Anniversary of the start of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM - from all points of view.

New York Times

Los Angeles Times

Christian Science Monitor

San Fransisco Chronicle

The Washington Times

The Washington Post

Miami Herald

Happy 5th Anniversary, Take Two

2008-03-19T07:52:00.005-04:00

Where were you 5 years ago today? Most of us were probably keeping a close eye on the news, knowing that President Bush's 48 hour deadline for Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Iraq would soon be coming to an end.

We lived in Norfolk, Virginia at the time, a few miles down Hampton Boulevard from Naval Station Norfolk. My husband's XO tour had him serving on a destroyer in the USS HARRY S. TRUMAN (CVN 76) Carrier Strike Group. Our boys were 5 and 2, then, and on March 19, 2003, they were very much missing their dad, and I was worried about what was to come.

My husband's ship was in the Red Sea, having been among the first ships that transited the Suez Canal about a week earlier after the Turkish government turned down our request (and sizable sum of money) to use their land and air space to attack Iraq from the North. Communications being what they were then, my husband and I were able to send and receive emails back and forth daily. In addition to keeping a set of journals with news clippings from the war (starting with his deployment in early December, 2002 and culminating with his return - on my birthday of all days), for Christmas in 2003, I gave him a journal of our email correspondence during his deployment. Here's our back and forth on March 19-20, 2003 (I have, of course, edited out any information deemed "classified" by me - but left in all the spelling mistakes):

From me to him:
XXXX - I'M WATCHING TV NOW, IT'S ALMOST 10:00PM OUR TIME ON WEDS 3/19 AND IT LOOKS LIKE THE WAR IS BEGINING...PRESIDENT BUSH TO SPEAK TO THE NATION AT 10:15PM TONIGHT...WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM THINKING OF YOU AND THAT GREAT CREW AND WISHING ALL OF YOU THE BEST. I KNOW THAT YOU WILL DO THE JOB YOU WERE SENT TO DO AND I KNOW THAT YOU WILL DO THE BEST JOB POSSIBLE...YOU ARE A GREAT MAN AND A TRUE PATRIOT...PLEASE STAY SAFE AND KNOW THAT MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU...I KNOW IT WILL NOT BE AN EASY FEW DAYS BUT MY SPIRITS WILL BE HIGH KNOWING THAT YOU ARE PROTECTING ALL OF US BACK HERE...I FEEL SAFER KNOWING THE USS XXXXXXXX AND HER CREW ARE OUT THERE DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE... TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF XXXX ...NEVER FORGET FOR A MOMENT HOW TRULY LOVED YOU ARE BACK HERE IN THE STATES....
SENDING YOU LOTS AND LOTS OF LOVE
C

And his response:

Hey there,

All is well with us. We're staying busy and keeping up with events. Don't worry about us. We're ready and we know what to do! And we're gonna do it!

Remind those who call not to discuss where we are and what we may/may not be doing over the phone. just let them knwo we're doing great and very proud to be doing our duty for everyone back home. We have not forgotten.....all the way back to 1979 we're owed a payback. Now it is time to get one. Remind people of some forgotten fallen: Desert One, 1980, 8 dead; Beruit, 1983, 283 dead; USS STARK, 1986, 37 dead; First Gulf War, 1991, 165 dead; Khobar Towers, 1996, 19 dead; East Africa, 1998, 6 dead; USS COLE, 2000, 18 dead; Pentagon, 2001, 197 dead. WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN OUR FALLEN COMRADES. Now, we will get our due.

I love you.
Me

[As a personal aside, when I read that, I wonder how in the world anyone could classify either me or my husband "anti-American", but that's more a reflection of the people who utter such nonsense than anything else.]

Reading that, I think it's amazing how much can change in 5 years. My view on the war has certainly evolved, as I'm sure it has for many people who read about what has happened there over the past 5 years. It's sometimes hard for me to grapple with the fact that my husband's actions firing missiles at regime targets may have killed innocent Iraqis. It's been difficult for me not to feel as if I were used - that my support of my husband and his shipmates was used to create an Iraq that has fallen very short of the goals set out in 2003. I look at Iraq today - a government run by theocratic Shia muslims with close ties to Iran, and I think, is that really what I sent my husband off to fight for? Is that what nearly 4,000 American servicemen and women have died for, and what 30,0000 Americans have been wounded for? Is that really worth $1.5 billion dollars per week?

I wonder what Iraq will look like 5 years from now. I do not think the government will be friendly to the United States and Israel, something that the Iraq war planners told us was the goal. I do not think the government will be respectful of women's rights, something also sold to us as a reason for the war. I think Iraq will look much like it does today. I think we will still be having arguments about the number of troops serving there. I think there will still be several hundred (at least) killed there every year, and many more wounded. I think the country will be more fundamentalist, if that's even possible.

I'm not optimistic about the outcome there, and that's a shame, because as the emails I posted show, my husband and I were completely supportive of the war effort and the grand goals the United States had for Iraq. I suspect we are probably more representative of what Americans really think about the war than George Bush and his most ardent followers, who believe as strongly in the Iraq War today as they did on March 19, 2003.

It's over, Obama, so pack your bags, kid

2008-03-19T07:03:00.005-04:00

You might have heard about Barack Obama and the momentous speech he gave yesterday. While many people were moved by hearing someone speak so eloquently about where the United States is some 40 years after Jim Crow ended, people like Michelle Malkin, Ann Althouse, and the braniacs at "The Corner" on National Review were not so moved. They did not like Obama's speech, so Barack, hang your hat proudly friend, because if you were not able to move people who would never vote for you, who mock your supporters, who despise your wife, and who belittle your beliefs, then it's just over, dude.

The part I liked most about his speech was this:

"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."

Barack Obama is right. We can spend the next 7 months watching an endless run of clips from Jeremiah Wright's speeches - or we can talk about where we see the United States of America and our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan five years from now. We can spend the next 7 months obsessing about whether or not Barack Obama wears an American Flag lapel pin - or we can talk about what kind of America we want to be - one that supports torture, or one that respects the rule of law. We can spend the next 7 months discussing Michelle Obama's senior thesis, written in 1985 - or we can spend talk about the real problems the American economy is facing. We can spend the next 7 months talking about how Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein - or we can spend our time talking about the real health care crisis in this country.

The choice is ours. How do we want to spend the next seven months? I know how I want to spend them, and to those who say they would rather discuss Barack Obama's patriotism, his trip to Kenya, his wife's attitude, I say to them: fine. That is your right. But for those of us who see the direction our country is headed and don't like it, those who see what is happening in Iraq and want to change it, those who know families without health care and want to fix that, those who see injustice and want to help end it - we are simply moving on.

Éirinn go Brágh

2008-03-17T07:00:00.001-04:00

A traditional Irish welcome:

"Here's Céad Míle Fáilte to friend and to rover
That's a greeting that's Irish as Irish can be
It means you are welcome
A thousand times over
Wherever you come from, Whosoever you be."

Irish blessings:

"May the roads rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
The rain fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of your hands."

"May you be poor in misfortunes and rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness from this day forward.
May good luck be your friend in whatever you do,
And may trouble be always a stranger to you."

Irish humor:

Two men were sitting next to each other at a bar. After a while, one guy looks at the other and says, "I can't help but think, from listening to you, that you're from Ireland "

The other guy responds proudly,"Yes, that I am"

The first guy says, "So am I. And whereabout from Ireland might you be?"

The other guy answers, "I'm from Dublin, I am."

The first guy responds,"Sure and begora, and so am I. And what street did you live on in Dublin?"

The other guy says,"A lovely little area it was, I lived on McCleary Street, in the old central Part of town.

The first guy says, "Faith and it's a small world, so did I. So did I! And to what school would you have been going?"

The other guy answers, "Well now, I went to St. Mary's of course."

The first guy gets really excited and says, "And so did I. Tell me, what year did you graduate?"

The other guy answers, "Well, now, let's see, I graduated in 1964."

The first guy exclaims, "The Good Lord must be smiling down upon us! I can hardly believe our good luck at winding up in the same bar. Can you believe it; I graduated from St. Mary's in 1964 my ownself."

About this time, Molly walks into the bar, sits down, and orders a beer.

Sean, the bartender, walks over to Molly, shaking his head, and mutters, "It's going to be a long night tonight." Molly asks, "Why do you say that, Sean?"

"The Murphy twins are drunk again."

Finally, a little Irish music. The Chieftains are truly a gift from Ireland. From the traditional Irish music they are famous for playing, to duets with musicians from around the globe, the Chieftains are a band to celebrate year round. The Corrs, another Irish band, appeared on the Chieftains 2002 release "The Wide World Over: A 40 Year Celebration" with the song "I Know My Love". Enjoy and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Black is the new President $%&*@!

2008-03-16T11:11:00.004-04:00

I'm a big Tina Fey fan, and not just because I can relate to the antics of a bespectacled, slightly nerdy 30-something who happens to be a soduku fanatic. I'm one of the dozens of fans of "30 Rock", which is easily the wittiest and best written show on television.

She appeared on SNL a few weeks back as the "Women's News Correspondent", and had this to say about Hillary Clinton's run for President:

So last night, Tracy Morgan - who is absolutely hilarious on "30 Rock" as the slightly insane star of "The Tracy Jordan show" - had this response:

SNL at it's funniest. Robin Givens as heavyweight champion? Priceless!

Happy 5th Anniversary!

2008-03-16T10:19:00.005-04:00

Five years ago today, Vice President Richard B. "Dick" Cheney was a guest on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. It was 3 days before OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM began, a mere 24 hours before President George W. Bush adressed the nation and gave Saddam Hussein a 48 hour ultimatum to leave the country.

Here's what Dick Cheney said on Meet the Press, March 16, 2003:

Vice President Cheney: "Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. And the president's made it very clear that our purpose there is, if we are forced to do this, will in fact be to stand up a government that's representative of the Iraqi people, hopefully democratic due respect for human rights, and it, obviously, involves a major commitment by the United States, but we think it's a commitment worth making. And we don't have the option anymore of simply laying back and hoping that events in Iraq will not constitute a threat to the U.S. Clearly, 12 years after the Gulf War, we're back in a situation where he does constitute a threat.

Mr. Russert: "If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?"

Vice President Cheney: "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who's a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he's written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that. "

Well. I think we all know how that prediction has worked out. Or do we? The Washington Post reported Wednesday that only 28% of people surveyed could correctly answer the question of how many Americans have been killed in OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. Less than 3 out of every 10 Americans know that the American death toll in the Iraq conflict is just shy of 4,000.

It used to be that the war was a backdrop on the nightly news, a casual 30 second mention of "3 soldiers killed" or "28 Iraqis killed in a bombing at a market". We hardly hear that anymore. I'm guessing most people couldn't tell you how many soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines were killed in Iraq in February, let alone how many were lost in Afghanistan. For as little as we hear about Iraq, we hear even less about Afghanistan.

This weekend in Washington, DC, two competing veterans groups are marking the anniversary of Dick Cheney's famous - make that infamous - statement of March 16, 2003. One the one hand, you have Iraq Veterans Against the War, who are hosting the "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations" symposiums. Here's a link to the Washington Post story from yesterday. On the other hand, you have Eagles UP! The money quote from today's Washington Post about this group:

"We're here to protest IVAW," the Iraq Veterans Against the War organization that sponsored Friday's event, David Russo, 47, of New York said in an interview. "We believe what all of them are saying is lies."

Russo, who has not served in the military, added that he and others recently held a rally in Times Square to show support for the military recruiters. "We brought them lunch, cake, ice cream and coffee," he said, adding that people in the station "loved us."

So that's where we are 5 years after Dick's appearance on Meet the Press. On one side you have actual living, breathing war veterans talking about their experiences, and on the other, you have actual living, breathing chickenhawks calling them liars. [Hey, Davey, here's an idea: next time you bring cakes and cookies to the recruiters, why don't you man up and enlist?]

In all fairness to Dick Cheney, the good news is that the Iraqi's are greeting some people as liberators: our enemies. Mission Accomplished!!

Yes, They're True

2008-03-14T07:26:00.010-04:00

A few of my friends have emailed me and asked if the quotes I have up on the right side of this blog are actually things that online bloggers have said about me. Yup, they're all comments made to yours truly over the past year or so.

For those who are new to the "blogosphere", things can get a little rough at times. There's a lot of "I'm smarter than you" taunting and name calling. For the most part I've gotten off pretty lightly - there are a few people out there who seem to like calling me names and making fun of what I write. But that's part of what goes on out here on the "internets" every day, and I don't take it very seriously.

However. I did, as you can imagine, take the implication that I'm anti-American very poorly. I can't speak for my friends, but I'm guessing that's not a description they would use to define me. I'm as patriotic as the next person - flying my flag, voting in every election, taking part in political campaigns, volunteering my time in the community, and, of course, supporting my husband in his role as a military officer.

Here's my ironic take on patriotism: Before September 11, 2001, outside of our immediate family, most people - including our friends - had a passing interest in my husband's military career. The questions tended to be the "you're moving again?" type of inquiry. We did our thing and most people we knew didn't pay much attention. And before September 11th, I honestly do not recall one time when anyone ever questioned my patriotism, let alone my husband's. I guess it was fairly obvious to most people that a family devoted to military service is probably doing it for love of country.

Fast forward to September 12, 2001. We received many calls from friends wanting to know if we were OK. People wanted to shake my husband's hand and personally thank him for his service (and still do when we visit our families in our hometowns), and our parents and my grandmother began flying a blue-star service banner in their front window. Complete strangers - including people in the blogosphere - have gone out of their way to thank my husband for his service. The downside for us was that now our loyalty to the United States was completely open for debate - by complete and total strangers, who couldn't pick us out of a lineup if they tried - and something we've had to deal with more than once over the past 4 years.

People often say "September 11th changed everything". I think that' s true, but not in the way most people think. My country no longer appears to judge people on their actions, but merely on their words. Patriotism today seems to be determined this way: If you voted for George W. Bush, you're a true patriot. If not...well...despite being a combat veteran...maybe you're not such a good American after all.

I think that's wrong, and I hope that someday soon we go back to the September 10th "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" position on patriotism: don't ask me about my family's sacrifices, and don't tell me I'm not a patriotic American.

Positive vibes for the QB

2008-03-13T11:26:00.008-04:00

I'm a lucky person in many, many ways. Besides having a wonderful, caring, loving husband and the two greatest children, I've got the best group of friends in the world. 5 of us met in Cairo, Egypt and dubbed ourselves "The Queens", partly because one of the Queens had a birthday party for her two girls and she got us plastic tiaras to wear, but mostly because, frankly, we are Queens.

One of the Queens (the esteemed QB) is having hip surgery today. She's probably the most determined person I know - she climbed Mt. Kiliminjaro because she wanted to. She's a real inspiration to the rest of us. She began a running regimen after Christmas to train for a 1/2 marathon held locally in late spring. Within a month or so, she was running up to 10 miles a day. Long story short, she twisted her ankle while training and also suffered a left hip fracture, which is being surgically repaired today.

So here's a shout out to you QB! Wishing you a safe and "E" factor free surgery, and a quick and painless recovery....inshallah....

Update: The Queen has been summarily discharged from the hospital and is out tooling around obtaining her prescription meds (you'll let me know if you get any medical marijuana, right?) The surgery went well....hamdulilah...and there are no "E" factors to report. Hopefully she'll stop by and give us the lowdown on getting screwed (twice) while under general anesthesia.

Memo to Geraldine Ferraro: Please Stop Talking

2008-03-13T06:45:00.009-04:00

I'm a news junkie. I read the Washington Post every morning, listen to NPR during the day, read political blogs as often as possible and catch the nightly news reports at dinner time. Last night, of course, the top story on network news was soon to be former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace. As a native New Yorker, I may post on that sometime soon, but for now, I'd like to focus on what I saw on the NBC Nightly newscast.

Ann Curry was hosting, and maybe 10 minutes into the program, she mentioned the controversy surrounding onetime Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro's comments regarding Barack Obama. Here's what she said:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Her performance on the Nightly News was nothing short of a train wreck. She was absolutely awful - defensive, pushy, arrogant and claimed that she was the victim of a smear by the Obama campaign. In short, she personified every negative quality people think Hillary Clinton has. And Gerry? You're not the victim here - you're the perpetrator.

[As an aside, let me say this: I like Geraldine Ferraro. I was a freshman in High School when she and Walter Mondale ran against Reagan/Bush in 1984. I was a trumpeter in the high school band, and our band was selected to perform at a Reagan rally at the Rochester, NY War Memorial in the fall of '84. Despite coming from a long lineage of Republicans, I knew then that I was a Democrat. I didn't want to go to the rally and asked the band leader if I could skip out on the event. He laughed and told me "You're going." So I went - with my Mondale/Ferraro button proudly pinned to my band uniform. ]

Sadly, Geraldine Ferraro's comments about Obama were not an isolated incident - she's made that point about him specifically over the past few months. She's also made similar comments other black politicians in the past - including in '88 when she said that (in reference to Jesse Jackson's "radical" views), "If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."

I think that's why her comments bother me so much. First of all, they're preposterous. As Obama himself said

"I don't think Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive," he told the Allentown Morning Call. "I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd. And I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign, they shouldn't have a place in Sen. Clinton's, either," he added.

I tend to think Ferraro's smarter than her comments, or at least, she should be. She has to know how her comments will be used by the opposition. The Republicans are sitting back watching us eat our own, taking notes and deciding what to use against us in the fall. I fault the Clinton campaign - why do you have your surrogates attack Obama for being black (Bill Clinton in South Carolina), why do you have your surrogates send out phony emails about Obama's "Muslim upbringing" (staffers in Iowa), and why are you producing things like the "3 am" ad against Obama? You're writing the attack ads that McBush will use against Obama (should he be the nominee) in the fall. Your surrogates are writing the attack lines that McBush will say about him in the fall. The Clinton team has apparently decided on a "scorched earth" strategy - they must completely destroy Barack Obama to win, and if Obama wins, he's such damaged goods that he's doomed to fail in November.

I'm glad Geraldine Ferraro has stepped down from whatever role she had in the Clinton camp. If her performance on the NBC news was similar to the performance she gave on the other networks, then she deserved to be fired, let go, or whatever else the campaign could do to her. And no playing the victim card. You said what you said, and based on what I saw last night, you completely stand by your words. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, and she's been around politics long enough to know that.

Syracuse Basketball Blows

2008-03-12T18:52:00.000-04:00

...it again. By losing to Villanova in the Big East tourney, they just poorly played themselves right out of an NCAA tournament berth. There's no joy in mudville tonight, especially for us 'Cuse fans. 19-13 is a decent record I suppose, but finishing 9-9 in a tough conference (5 Big East teams are in the Top 25) is not going to get you a spot on the tourney bracket. Bummer.

Thanks for stopping by!

2008-03-12T15:46:00.001-04:00

Well hello friends! This is my new blog and I'm taking it out for a spin around the block. I've been thinking about starting my own blog for some time now...so fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!