$300 Billion Lost

The Pentagon, no matter who is in charge, knows how to waste money. Add Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and you have the perfect storm of abusers and deniers. Add a Republican Congress and you have no one calling anyone out for any wrong doing, no oversight hearings, for 6 years.

Running 2 wars at the same time calls for efficiency. Resources need to be protected. I'm not saying I want Democrats to run everything, that's not good either, but check out this film and see what happens when the Republican-led Pentagon's wasteful spending goes unchecked.

Olbermann Getting More Popular

Via Huffington:

MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" beat Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" in the key Adults 25-54 demographic for the first time ever last week.

"Countdown" averaged 477,000 viewers (A25-54) vs. O'Reilly's 472,000 (excluding Tuesday's primary coverage). This marks the first time that MSNBC has beaten Fox News in O'Reilly's 8pm time slot since June 2001.

I would love to see Keith and Billo head-to-head in a real debate. Bill is great at shouting at his guests and making old white guys feel scared, but his intellect is highly questionable.

Let The Games Begin

This evening on the House floor, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is presenting 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush to Congress.



More here.

Students Cause Unemployment Spike According to GOP

The Labor Department reported today that the unemployment rate rose from 5.0 percent to 5.5 percent in May, the largest monthly spike in more than two decades. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s explanation?

“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate reflects the fact that unusually large numbers of students and graduates are entering the labor market.”

Elaine, doesn't this happen every May? Should they not be looking for jobs? I would love to see how unusually large this year's graduating class is. I call bullshit.

The unemployment rate reflects how poorly Bush has guided the economy, spent way too much, neglected to collect the taxes to pay for anything, increased our debt making the dollar weaker, thus making imports like oil more expensive, which is doubled by Bush's shit foreign policy/never-ending war/stroking the Iran invasion/taking the oil companies' dick, in turn, increasing the prices on everything, which much to your denial, has slowed the economy and caused lay-offs and higher unemployment.

The GOP, with it's head up it's ass, foreseeing McCain has no clue how to turn thins around, is trying to somehow see how they can pin this on Bill Clinton.

What Conservative Think Of McCain

Arch-conservative Bay Buchanan suggested that it may not matter what McCain does. Writing in Human Events on June 4, she declared:

"In reality there is only one candidate. Barack Obama. In November he will win or he will lose. John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama. The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps."

More here.

Lincoln Would Be Proud

Secret McCain Website Edits Leaked To Press

More Lee Camp on 23/6

McCain Underwelms Me

Lime green? Like the color of jello you get at old folks homes. Your old folks home soon enough. Politics is theatrics and you look sad. Very sad. He looks like he's at a Senior PGA tour luncheon. Cracking jokes about dentures or his new hip.

And his new slogan - A leader you can believe in? I wouldn't trust this geezer behind the wheel of a car, let alone the entire country. Staring into the teleprompter, the nervous smile, mixing up words, the line of sweat.

For arguments sake he wins now and wins re-election, he'll be 80 at the end of his second term. Is this the guy we need running the joint?

McSame, prepare to be pounded into the ground. Feeble tough guy talks from old dudes just doesn't hold up. Your time was around 15 years ago. Barack will be serving free eats at the whoop-ass buffet, make sure you get the early bird special.

The Hummer Is Done

What is the wimpy, pro-war idiot with the "I support the troops" magnets to do? His fake military gas guzzler is done.

Via Think Progress:

Today, General Motors announced that it will be closing four truck and SUV plants in North America and may discontinue its Hummer line, citing the slumping sales of large vehicles brought on by high oil prices. Sales of the Hummer were down 61 percent last month, and May was also the first month in which cars outsold the Ford F-series truck since 1992. In place of the Hummer, GM CEO Rick Wagoner announced that the GM board has approved production of a new small automobile and a new electric car. As CBS reported, Wagoner “said the change in the U.S. market to smaller vehicles likely is permanent.”

These cars always screamed "dickhead" to me. Good riddance.

From The Pen Of: John Sherffius

I'm happy books like this come out and shed light on how screwed up the Bush government is. At the same time I'm tired of the naivety they use after the fact. The I-didn't-know-at-the-time BS. How come I figured it out? How come millions of other people figured it out? In his heart of hearts, McClellan knew what he was doing and just put on the blinders. So, now he has seen the light and wants to help change things. Fair play. But will the Kool-Aid drinkers on the right even care to hear what he has to say?

Next up should be Colin Powell. It's his turn to come clean.

Vincent Bugliosi's The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

In a nutshell, "Bestselling author Vincent Bugliosi has written the most important and thought-provoking book of his prolific career. In a meticulously researched and clearly presented legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial for murder after he leaves his presidency, Bugliosi delivers a searing indictment of the President and his administration. With what he believes is overwhelming evidence that President Bush took the nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses--a war that has caused great loss of life, cost this nation close to $1 trillion, and alienated most of our allies in the Western world--Bugliosi argues that it is George W. Bush who must be held accountable for what Bugliosi considers to be monumental crimes. In this groundbreaking book, Bugliosi, in his inimitable style, presents a powerful case against the man in the oval office."

Buy it at Buzzflash

He's the guy that got Charles Manson, fitting he's after Bush now.

"Drop Weapons" In Iraq

American News Project does a piece on the use of "drop weapons" in Iraq.



ANP Website

I'm not going to get into the the use of "drop weapons" to cover up the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, just realize it is happening all the time over there. Like the video says, you put a powerful weapon into the hands of 18 and 19 years-olds, something bad is going to happen. Troops are trained to kill, trained to conquer, trained to overpower an enemy. They are not trained to police a civil war and mediate problems in a country where they can't speak the language and are viewed as occupiers.

War is ugly. These kids in the military have it so rough. It's time our pampered politicians got real about how destructive the past 5 years have been.

Wearing US Flag Pins On Your Lapel

So much is made of who and who does not where a US flag pin on their lapel. Does just wearing a pin make you more patriotic? I find these are the phony people trying to look like they care, it's all for show.

What's funny, I bet most of these pins are made in China.

CNN's Ware Dismisses McSame

So McSame says Barack should go with him to Iraq to get a firsthand view of "success"? I'm sure the escorted Blackhawk, kevlar and tank visit really gives you insights into what having no water and electricity is like. CNN's Michael Ware, who has the best nose on TV, said that U.S. officials’ trips to Iraq are usually “divorced from reality” adding that its “impossible” to “get much of a real picture.” Ware then noted that McCain’s own trips to Iraq have not helped him get a sense of the realities in Iraq:

WARE: I’ll issue a word of caution, too. I mean Senator McCain has been here, what, more than half a dozen times. And we’ve seen him get assessments of Iraq terribly wrong. So I wouldn’t be hanging my hat on the fact that your opponent has only been here once.

Video and more here.

That's what is great about being old like McCain, you see your own reality, senility is bliss for him. Hey Cheerleader Johnny, have any of your trips to Iraq resulted in saving American lives or shortening the occupation in Iraq? Your six visits have amounted to Jack Squat. Dog and pony show paid by US tax dollars.

Printing The Truth

There is a great moment in the Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back by D.A. Pennebaker where Dylan is engaged with an established Time magazine writer. The writer is trying to uncover the Dylan mystique that is intangible, a sort of generation gap personified.

After a series of annoying questions, Bob fires back [paraphrasing], "you don't want the truth, magazines like Time would never dare print the truth, if you printed the truth you'd go out of business the next day".

While that particular exchange was based around a broader "what is truth", Dylan's words always stuck with me. Printing the truth is not in the interest of our culture, we always need the spin to make it palatable. I understand that. I wish it were different. The truth is a powerful thing. It has to be taken in doses.

I'm not saying I know what truth is, I'm biased. So take a current story. Maybe someone like Scott McClellan is telling the truth when he airs all the dirt on his years working for Bush. The truth about how Bush is inept or how he mislead the country is too hard to handle, but "disgruntled", "traitor" and "not the Scotty we knew" are easy tags we can throw at McClellan. These will make the news cycles. A good gauge is always how hard they attack the messenger and not the message. How many segments will be about why McClellan said what he said versus what he actually said? Who will show the lessons Scott learned from the Bush mindset that made a lot of really bad choices. The truth of his statements are not the issue. I hope the MSM can prove me wrong this time. Seeing how a passive media got us into this mess, I'm not counting on them to get us out of it.

Thinking back on that exchange in 1965 with Dylan and Time, truth was too hard to print. I hope the times they are-a changin'.

Bush: Is It Possible To Get More Inexperienced?

Reflect on this:

President Bush said Wednesday that rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan is proving difficult as the wars rage on, and "we're learning as we go."

A few things popped into my head.
1. Learning as we go implies they did not know what they were doing at first.
2. To really learn, you have to admit mistakes, which Bush will never do, so you'll never really learn.
3. Can a Presidential candidate use "I may not know, but I'll learn as we go"?
4. Does inexperience count?
5. What are some real examples of what Bush and Co have learned?
6. Can rebuilding a country and engaging a country in a war happen at the same time?
7. How can someone who does not know anything be so confident about what and what will not work? [i.e. leaving vs staying]
8. What does he learn from getting rid of all the CENTCOM commanders in the Middle East?
9. Is this a disingenuous use of the word "learn"?

More broadly, what has Bush learned about issuing debts to China, the Palestinian situation, rising energy costs, shrinking dollars, housing foreclosures, failed foreign policies, climate changes, hiring cronies without skills, gay marriages, not asking tough questions, looking into Putin's eyes/soul, domestic natural disasters like Katrina, and on and on.

Bush is a lifelong C student, learning is not his strong suit. He is like the old guy that asks "can I get emails on the internet?" He really has no clue.

What Really Happens In Iraq

In the spring of 2007, a conference was held on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Entitled Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, it hearkened back to the Winter Soldier testimonies held three decades ago during the Vietnam War. Of the testimonies filmed, this one, by Iraq War vet Jon Michael Turner, was the most compelling and intense.

Watch as he talks about his "kills".