Fincher Cracks me up!

Betrayed Us...22 Democratic Senators

So what choice do Americans have?

The United State Senate voted to condemn MoveOn.org for an ad that called General Petreaus the same name used by the troops serving under him., "General Betray-Us"

We should use that name for the 22 Democratic Senators who voted for this incredibly cynical resolution generated by the party of a President who retained undeserved power, in part through the actions of the most offensive ad campaign in presidential history.

A moral observer must watch these proceedings and think, "This is the same group of people who refuse to condemn the Swift Boat ads which, far from just offering opinion, told plain out lies to attack John Kerry."

Where is the resolution condemning lies of that nature?

How about a resolution calling for truth in campaign ads?

How about a resolution condemning lies spoken before Congress?

How about a resolution condemning abject the abject hypocrisy of 49 Republican Senators and the moral cowardice of the 22 Democratic Senators who cravenly supported this idiotic and blatently pandering piece of dung thrown in the face of the American people?

Be Strong, America!

Steve

MoveOn responds

Webb Kingston Girl's Soccer

General Betray-us got the name from his Troops!

That sort of puts the mock outrage of republicans in perspective, doesn't it?

Bad Move-on.org! How dare they speak they truth about one of Bush's lackeys?

And he's had it for a fairly long time, courtesy of those who served under him:


From Daily Kos

Oh Yeah...Alberto left at 3 pm today...

John McCain has now called for an end to the First Amendment and for me personally to be thrown out of America.

I used to think well of him but now, John McCain is just a crazy old man...and who holds a seat in the Senate of the United States of America. The fine folks in Arizona might have to deal with that one.

Alberto Gonzalez has left the building. The Justice Department is now in the hands of...Well, nobody.

I feel better, actually.

Steve

The Question of the Day?

In his speech last night President Bush told a few whoppers. The Associated Press has done a little fact checking and has a long piece with details of what Bush twisted in his statements but some of them are pretty much out and out prevarications like this:

Bush: "Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working," Bush said, noting that just last year U.S. intelligence analysts had written off the Sunni area as "lost to al-Qaida."


Associated Press: "Anbar is not secure, accounting for 18 percent of the U.S. deaths in Iraq so far this year - making it the second deadliest province after Baghdad."

Finally, our Corporate Media are even starting to lose control of their commentators, with fewer of them seemingly willing to outright lie...Repeat spin, yes, though, so be careful. For every Jack Cafferty there are still two Sean Hannity's.

We're finally seeing the more honest of our TV Talking Heads openly turn against the Bush administration. Watching CNN before the speech last night, you would have thought Moveon.Org had written the entire thing. The sense of what was said is that there is no question that we should leave Iraq...The question is...

"How do we leave Iraq?"

That is much more complicated than it seems.

Peace,

Steve

Pix from last nights hike

The water is the "blue hole" on Whites Creek looking back toward the house, which is hidden from the creek itself. The left side of the picture is Roane County...the right is Rhea County.

I hiked up to the high rim and took this shot of the Laurel Branch cut which comes in from the Rheas county side..

Quote of the Day

The Quote of the day is from General Petreaus testifying before Congress. When asked, "Is the Iraq War making us safer?"

His answer?

"I don't know."

Here's another answer to that question:
(By way of Lisa)

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/91107bet.gif

The Bottom Line...(nothing to do with Brittney)

Yeah, It's the anniversary of 9-11, and we are now having to listen to the Bush Administration's mouth piece of the moment talk about how swimmingly things are going in Iraq and why we should keep marching American Troops off a cliff.

Before I give you the bottom line about Iraq, let me point you toward a review of lies we have been told and a taste of the incompetency that got us in the sorry state which America finds itself:

Via Kos:

Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, yet that country has paid no price for producing and harboring terrorists. Neither has Pakistan, the country in which Osama bin Laden is now hiding.

The PDB said: Bin Laden determined to Strike in U.S.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.

Sitting in a classroom for seven minutes after being told "America is under attack" is a poor display of leadership, especially if you're America's president.

If the administration had tried to sell the Iraq war based on anything other than the fear of weapons of mass destruction, we never would have invaded.

Colin Powell, the most trusted man in the administration, said: "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

There were no WMDs. Not "in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat," and not even in the Oval Office "somewhere."

Four and a half years after declaring that "major combat operations have ended," major combat operations have not ended.

Taunting the insurgents by sneering "Bring 'em on" was really dumb because the insurgents brought it on.

The insurgency wasn't "in its last throes" then, and it isn’t in its last throes now.
The Taliban has bounced back in Afghanistan. The Maliki government has flatlined in Iraq.

Osama bin Laden has not been caught, either dead or alive. He is still making videos.

Ok, here's the deal...While General Petreaus was at Congress, I listened to the BBC interview the former British Ambassador to Iraq and a host of Iraqis who have escaped their country and a larger number of Iraqi citizens who are still there. The consensus is that America has transformed Iraq from a slightly crazy but stable Middle Eastern Dictatorship sitting on a huge load of oil, into a cluster-disaster on a biblical scale.

George W. Bush and his republican enablers have created a hole in Iraq into which a stable government must be inserted and that government is probably going to be Iran as things now stand...And there is very little hope of any better outcome, unless you consider region wide armed conflict and chaos, in the guise of a civil war with no predictable result, a better outcome than having the Iranians in possession of the mother load of what is currently the most monetarily precious resource on this planet.

In a showdown between the Iranians and the Saudis, I'm betting on Iran, because they are much more crazy, having years ago, summarily executed the last rational human being who dared to speak out loud. ( a couple of hundred thousand of hangings is a serious demand on rope, by the way)

What President Bush has managed to achieve is an entire country that hates not only us...but most of it's own people. What Bush is having General Petreaus ask us to do is to allow the little Dutch boy to hold his finger in the Dike until Bush and Cheney can get out of town. (Karl Rove has already left.)

Is it any wonder why the Bush family has bought 100,000 acres in a South American country?

Bush Boy Petreaus is asking Congress to let him run out the clock so that the Middle Eastern Armageddon will actually come down on the next President's watch. He's also lying his ass off and we all know it.

Iraq is in a civil war that can only be ended with brutal outside aggression and takeover by some powerful entity that speaks "desert", or a fight to the death among internal factions. Neither bodes well for us, and there is nothing we can do about it because of the massive F.U.'s of George W. Bush and his masters.

I say, Work the best deal with the powers in the region to attempt an armed standoff between the Iranians, the Saudi's, and anybody else we can sucker into that mess....

And bring our people home.

That's the bottom line.

Peace,

Steve

Tennessee Stud

I think that's going to be the slogan for the Freddie Thompson Campaign for President.

It's a lot better than the one under his picture in his high scholl yearbook:

"The lazier a man is, the more he plans to do tomorrow."

Freddie has trouble managing his money and his women. As Senator he wrote a note to Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff stating that he "shares the President's taste in cigars."

Apparently "cigars" is code for something else.

Freddie has taken a look at the Bush Presidency and decided he can read lines better than that, so why not? Reagan and Bush have proven conclusively that you don't have to pay attention or even stay awake to be a Republican President.

Only Democratis Presidents actually try to govern the country... Who needs that?

Peace,

Steve

More

Now Playing...Osama's Greatest Hits

Word from the Middle East is that Osama Bin Laden will release his video tapes from prior to 9-11.

Boy! America is really got the terrorists on the run, right?


Ok...I write a "lefty blog" and I admit that. I feel like I can be labelled a "lefty" because I insist on the facts instead of the republican administration's marketing phrase of the day.

"Mission Accomplished"

"They hate our freedoms"

"The Surge is working"

"Weapons of mass destruction, Saddam, Al Queda, Blah. blah, blah..."

Whatever. Speaking and demanding that others speak the truth. An obvious "lefty" tendency.

If you believe anything the Bush Adminstration says, you need help, but I'm a lefty because I want the truth.

Now I find out that I'm helping Osama...and now, I'm the same as Osama...

How the Hell does David Brooks come up with something as stupid as that?

Actually, I think David Brooks is a creep and a liar. (he's the PBS commentator who said that lefty bloggers are the same as Osama)

PBS has been headed by a Bush appointee for five years now and it shows. We used to be able to trust what was said on PBS...even if it was said in the most incredibly boring manner possible...It was the truth. Now we have to be careful.

Osama Bin Laden is the mastermind responsible for the 9-11 tragedy, the younger brother of George W. Bush's first business partner, and the enemy of every patriotic American. George Bush should be fired for severe incompetence in not apprehending Bin Laden and David Brooks should be fired for lying on national TV.

Lefty Blogs, such as this one, demand the truth...facts...Justice, and the American way.

Peace,

Steve

Meteor Blades got me started!

Catholic @ Kingston Girls Soccer

Fred Thompson's Tax policy

Bruce Bartlett, the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department from 1988 until 1993, thinks Fred Thompson's tax ideas are solidly grounded....

In science fiction.

"...the FairTax is a crackpot scheme from beginning to end. That would be true even if the Scientologists hadn't authored it."

Lying Bastards...

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail...

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq.

Blumenthal

A Short Car Ride...

I've followed this Iraqi girl's writing from inside her destroyed country for a couple of years now. When my President stands up in front of a camera as he did yesterday and says, "We're kicking ass!"...I know the truth because of what she has written.

My President is a liar.

The Iraqi girl's blogger name is Riverbend, taken from a poem she herself wrote in better times. After a lifetime lived in war torn Iraq, she has escaped to Syria. here is her story:

How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.

I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…

How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?

The complete essay is here. It paints a picture far different from the one of our moronic "We're kicking ass!" President.

RiverBend

Free Market?

Conservatives say the words "free market" but that's the last thing they want.

Most of our national debt was created by three presidents. Reagan, Bush, and Bush. Since 1776, all of the other 40 American heads of state combined failed to match up to the incredible credit card debt of president all by himself...George W. Bush...After being handed a balanced budget by the Clinton-Gore, which included a surplus.

How was this done?...WAR!

Let's hear it for the "free market" which works every time:

...What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure...


The great Iraq swindle

That great investigative piece was not from the NY Times or the Washington Post, but from Rolling Stone.

I guess this is where we are in America today.

Peace,

Steve

Say...What?

Needy? Boy, does this ever validate some long distance psychiatric speculations:

The Washington Post reported Monday that in the book -- "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush" -- journalist Robert Draper reveals that Bush was intent on picking Cheney as his running mate, despite his warnings against it.

"Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy," Draper quotes Rove as saying.

And have we ever known a more destructive Vice President in all history?

His Lips are moving...

I have a tough time with Congressmen just flat out lying to this country, but when you hear things like "The surge is working" and you know danged well it simply isn't, how are we supposed to not think of these people as traitors?

It's like, "How do you know when a Republican is lying?"

an exchange between CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA). The
congressman rattles off a series of statistics from the approved Republican
talking points about declining numbers of casualties. And Blitzer runs down the
list demonstrating pretty clearly that Boustany's numbers -- and thus the
numbers pretty much all president's supporters are dishing -- are simply false
on their face.

Send in the Clowns (White Powder?...Wife Power?)

"One last time they screamed “White Power!”

"The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”

Digby has links