Saturday, November 19, 2005

Links!

I don't know if anyone cares or if this stuff is just "shop talk" but here is a good place to find the cable news ratings on a daily basis. What is rather amazing to me is to realize that there are nearly 300 MILLION "persons" in America. At best there are only 5 or 6 million watching cable news at any one time. What's that 2%? This certainly begs discussion. Their influence is certainly more than that.

I have been reading this site for some time. I was warry of it at first as a bit far to the left to be very reliable. I have since found that they are mostly well in the ballpark on their stuff. ..Put it this way, They make newsmax look like the sensationalist rag they are.

Take care of those pesky little computer problems..see the elder geek.

I tuned into Des Moines for a while last weekend. It was like being home again :-). I knew all the streets they were talking about and could see the picture of it in my head.

Very creative writings....What if Dr. Suess wrote Star Trek ?

A Week Of Comments

Ron said...
I would just like to have Dick Cheney listen to and watch all his lies over and over and over and over and over again interspersed with real scenes of the havoc he created in Iraq. For about a week and a half, with no way to avoid it. If that is torture I apologize.

Democat said...
Uh uh! That wouldn't be torture for Cheney. (Is Ron bucking for sainthood and that's why he wants to let Cheney off so easily?) Cheney should spend eternity with a big ol' pile of money just out of his reach. (Also, Mark David Chapman must burn eternally in the bad place while listening to Yoko Ono sing-his screams may sound a lot like the latter.)

The Donkey said...
"If people actually realized what was happening they would be appalled". In this time with internet, radio, newspapers there is no reason people should not know, unless they do not want to. There are many people that do not know, do not care, and do not care to know.

The Donkey said...

The Donkey voted early, and feed his paper ballot in to a locked optical scannng machine. The Donkey knows now his vote never made it to the tally. It was one of the thousands of undervotes in the county. The Donkey will not be voting early in Chaves County anytime soon. The Donkey will vote on election day. It is not who votes that counts it is who is counting the votes. Greg PalastNovember 04, 2004Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

The Donkey said...

The Donkey found most of this information in Wikipeda articles and a few other sources. The following are paragraphs, cut from Wikipedia aranged in a sort of time line by the donkey.Feith first entered government as a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council (NSC) under Ronald Reagan in 1981, but was abruptly fired after only one year. Perle, who was then serving in The Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, however, hired him as his deputy, a post he retained until leaving in 1986 to found Feith & Zell. Feith's former law partner, L. Marc Zell, is a spokesman for the Jewish settlers' movement in the West Bank, and is known to have collaborated with Salem Chalabi (Ahmed Chalabi's nephew) in Baghdad to help interested companies win contracts for reconstruction projects. Douglas Feith argued during the Reagan administration that Geneva Convention guarantees should not be extended to terrorists who mingled with civilians. In 2001 this policy was endorsed by Defense Department counsel and implemented, and led to the designation of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as "enemy combatants" or "unlawful combatants" rather than as "prisoners of war." In 1999, Feith and Perle signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton calling for the United States to work with Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) to oust Saddam Hussein. Chalabi had been accused by the interim government of having given information to the Iranians, but these charges have been dropped due to lack of evidence. In August 2002, Feith and DIA analyst Chris Carney discuss Iraq's alleged ties to al-Qaeda to the CIA. CIA analysts immediately recognize that the Feith's allegations comes from discredited sources. The information will nevertheless be included in speeches by George W. Bush and in CIA director George J. Tenet's Congressional testimony. Feith distributes a classified memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee based on this information, and the memo is later leaked to the Weekly Standard, a neoconservative magazine. The Office of Special Plans, which existed from September, 2002, to June, 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Donald Rumsfeld and led by Douglas Feith, dealing with intelligence on Iraq. [OSP] was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States In an interview with the Scottish Sunday Herald, former CIA officer Larry Johnson said the OSP was "dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace. [The OSP] lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam. It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality. They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignore anything contrary. They should be eliminated." Feith led the Northern Gulf Affairs Office, renamed from Office of Special Plans. In early August 2003, Colin Powell had complained directly to Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice about Feith conducting missions that were contrary to official U.S. policy. His complaint was in regards to the June 2003 meeting; an earlier meeting that was held with Ghorbanifar in Rome, Italy in mid-December, 2001; and a meeting in Rome in June 2002 that Ghorbanifar arranged with Harold Rhode but did not attend, consisting of an Egyptian, an Iraqi and a Pentagon official. The FBI had uncovered a spy, Larry Franklin, working as a policy analyst under Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Larry Franklin, who had previously served as an attaché at the US embassy in Israel and was one of two mid-level Pentagon officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense responsible for Iran policy in the office's Northern Gulf directorate. He has since been demoted within the Defense Department and no longer has his previous security privilegesFranklin has pled guilty to passing on a classified Presidential Directive, and other sensitive documents pertaining to US deliberations on foreign policy regarding Iran, to a pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who in turn allegedly provided the information to Israel. When Feith left the DOD, Rumsfeld said :"Years from now, unfortunately it may be many years, accurate accounts of what’s taking place these past four years will be written and it will show that Doug Feith has performed his duties with great dedication, with impressive skill and with remarkable vision during this perilous and indeed momentous period in the life of our country."

Anonymous said...
David Corn wrote a pretty good summary of how BUSH is rewriting history and was in his Veterans' Day rant. Notice his speech had nothing to do with veterans. It is too bad the people who need to read this won't. On the "Colbert Report" last night (follows Jon Stewart) Bob Kerrey was on. He said Bush still cannot admit even one mistake he has made. He said "I can think of five mistakes I've made just today." http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2005/11/bush_rewrites_h.php Lonna

Anonymous said...
Before they succeed in smearing Murtha, his biography from a reader contribution "No More Band of Brothers" in Buzzflash:...U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha has dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. He had a distinguished 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990; and he has been serving the people of the 12th Congressional District in Pennsylvania since 1974.He learned about military service from the bottom up, beginning as a raw recruit during the Korean War. There he earned the American Spirit Honor Medal, awarded to fewer than one in 10,000 recruits. He rose through the ranks and was selected for Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia. In 1959, Captain Murtha took command of the 34th Special Infantry Company, Marine Corps Reserves, in Johnstown. He remained in the Reserves after his discharge from active duty until he volunteered for Vietnam in 1966-67, receiving the Bronze Star with Combat "V", two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. He remained in the Reserves until his retirement. He was awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal by the Marine Corps Commandant when he retired from the Marines.This tough old marine is now under attack by a bunch of people who never bothered to serve in the military of their country but are all too willing to let others fight and die.If the people in this country who have served, as Congressman Murtha served, allow another veteran to be smeared by the lies and innuendo of a bunch of loud-mouthed cowards who never bothered to serve themselves, then the term "Band of Brothers" needs to be eradicated from the English language. If you do not stand up for your own, what possible unity do you represent?Marjorie L. Swanson Proud Daughter of One Who Served Kenosha, WI
Lonna

Friday, November 18, 2005

How Much More

A handy dandy reference tool. Should be encouraging to watch it get smaller.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Nancy Pelosi

Well it's nice to see somebody finally doing something!

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Not A Patriot

Rush does sooooo much for the troops.

Memories Of Our Great Republic Remain

I may not agree with him on many issues but I give him credit for being a Real American.

Senator Chuck Hagel(R)

The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan political platform," the Nebraska senator remarked. "This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. War is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The casualties of war are from both parties. The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner, offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration’s policies."..........To question your government is not unpatriotic – to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices."

That is TRUE American values. Thank you Chuck Hagel for making me feel less alone.

Where's Personal Responsibility?

Of all the evil seven dwarfs I have to admit to strangely liking something about Rummy. I think he is a smart guy and probably has some ideas that would be good ones. Unfortunately we went straight to the bad ones.

Rumsfeld portrayed the memo as a warning blast, an attempt to do "everything humanly possible to prepare" Bush for the awful responsibility that had settled onto his presidential shoulders -- and his shoulders alone. For there comes a point when even the secretary of defense must realize that "it's not your decision or even your recommendation," Rumsfeld reflected with Woodward. By which he meant the Iraq war wasn't Don Rumsfeld's decision or recommendation.
As if to underline the point, Rumsfeld also told Woodward that he couldn't recall a moment, in all the months of planning for the war, when Bush asked whether his defense secretary favored the invasion. Nor did Rumsfeld ever volunteer his opinion. ("There's no question in anyone's mind but I agreed with the president's approach," he added.)


Since he has signed on..offically... to the idea as a part of PNAC there is certainly no question what his plan was..or Cheneys' or Scooter, or Wolfy. Actually Bush is close to alone in non PNAC membership, although Jeb is a member.
I'm watching Hannity tonight saying that the push on the administration is going to end up with a "backlash" of angry citizens. Bhwhahahahahahahahaha. ...Sean, in case you haven't noticed, the rats are abandoning the ship.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Reading Room

I guess we arrested most of organized crime and put it in government.

Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed claimed in a 2001 e-mail to a lobbyist that he choreographed John Cornyn's efforts as Texas attorney general to shut down an East Texas Indian tribe's casino.
The lobbyist was Jack Abramoff, who is under federal investigation, along with his partner Michael Scanlon, on allegations of defrauding six Indian tribes of about $80 million from 2001 to 2004.




Jimmy Carter deserves thanks for putting the case in a humble and easily understood fashion

It’s not a matter of Democrats versus Republicans because the new policies I describe in the book…are different from what George Bush Sr. expounded. They’re different from what Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford proposed and implemented and obviously from what Democratic presidents have done down through the ages…And this relates to the fundamental policies of our country concerning peace.

Lobbyists, money grubbers and Delay...go together like a horse and carriage.

The fundraiser was organized by some of DeLay's staffers-turned-lobbyists after his indictment in September and the loss of his leadership post.

Filling in the blanks of the pResidents speech. The missing details. And more importantly.

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

How much more do you want for God sakes! Let's reign it in..save a little for somebody else would ya, ya selfish bastard!

In 1980, the average chief executive earned about 42 times the amount of the average worker, but now CEOs earn about 431 times more than their workers, according to the AFL-CIO. And pay is rising at a rapid clip.The average CEO took home a 91 percent raise in 2004, according to the Corporate Library, even as workers got raises amounting to less than 4 percent on average.

Miss Molly hits it snap on again. Click in.