Jimi Hendrix
All Along the Watchtower

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Headed for the “Gray Bar Motel”
Two Ohio election workers seen in “Hacking Democracy” (shown on HBO during last
fall’s elections) have just been sentenced to jail for rigging a recount. Filmmakers
Russ Michaels and Simon Ardizzone discuss the impact of their documentary, which is
now out on DVD. If you haven’t seen this video yet, it is, truly, a disturbing “must
see.”

Cheney and More Misinformation
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two
former aides “all confirmed” that Hussein’s regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a report declassified
Thursday by the Pentagon. This came as Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on the
Rush Limbaugh show, reasserted the existence of such a pre-invasion connection.

Cheney on Zarqawi:

“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the
al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of
course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June,” Cheney told radio
host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. “As I say, they were present before we
invaded Iraq.”

Meanwhile, Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) had a response to the Vice
President’s comments. Check out the video of Rep. Rangel on CNN’s “The Situation
Room.”

In Need of H20
The driest periods of the last century - the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts
of the 1950s - may become the norm in the Southwest United States within decades
because of global warming, according to a study released Thursday. The research
suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been
in a severe drought since 2000, which the study’s analysis of computer climate models
shows as the beginning of a long dry period.

Shut The Hatch
Meanwhile, from the “YOU GO,GIRL” Department, many kudos to Air America’s Rachel
Maddow for calling out Senator Orrin Hatch over last week’s remarks about fired U.S.
Attorney Carol Lam. Maddow both published and aired an open letter to Mr. Hatch on
one of last weeks radio shows. The letter is as follows:

An Open Letter to Senator Hatch
by Rachel Maddow on April 4, 2007

Host, “The Rachel Maddow Show”
Air America Radio

In his feeble attempt to apologize and explain himself, Hatch Sent a letter to NBC’s
“Meet The Press” host Tim Russert.

Read Hatch’s letter below

Have a great weekend.

Jim

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Is it just me, or does anybody else get a blank stare on their face every time either President Bush or Vice President Cheney make comment on television?

I’m beginning to think, like others, that every time Bush makes a shirt speech at the podium of the Rose Garden, his speech writers just grab a card from a plastic recipe box and hand it to him.

Aside from the fact that Bush can hardly string a sentence together on his own, his rhetoric is getting boring. He’s been handed two bills for his emergency spending request: One from the House, one from the Senate. Of course he plans to veto both as he claims “These Democrat leaders are undermining our troops.”

The Clown President keeps up the refrain of how Democrats are not supporting the troops, while his veto of these bills passed are the real cause of undermining our troops in Iraq.

So if democrats are not supporting the troops, Mr. President, how in God’s name can you say you’re supporting their efforts by not supplying them with the tools they need to fight your “War On Terror”. You constantly send them to the desert without the proper rest or combat training, in some instances, sending 18 and 19 year olds straight out of basic training to the hell hole that you and your administration have created. And let’s not forget the fact that your military leaders at Veterans’ Hospitals who send severely injured soldiers back to the meat grinder called Iraq.

Sign the damn bills and let the money roll out. Stop politicizing the efforts to get them the things they need. You’ve done more than enough to insure the rest of the world will hate America for generations to come. Thank goodness there are three hundred million Americans who still love this Country. Just because Democrats in the House and Senate are doing the work your 109th “do nothing” Congress couldn’t or wouldn’t do, doesn’t mean American soldiers need to suffer due to your childish hissy fits.

Bush * Iraq War * Spending Bills

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Can you say Anger Management?
This exchange caused Keith Olbermann to declare Geraldo “Best Person in the World.”

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The government said this week it was extending the nearly two-month-old U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad to other cities as it seeks to halt a slide into sectarian civil war. What happen to if we secure Baghdad it’ll all be good? A slide into a civil war? Ahh…. I think we slide down that slope a long time ago meathead! Meanwhile, 23 US and 6 UK deaths in 6 days.

DIWANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces launched an air strike in Diwaniya on Saturday as U.S. and Iraqi troops fought for a second day to overcome Shi’ite militias and bring the city back under government control.

A local hospital source and a resident said six people, including two children and a woman, were killed in the missile strike on a home in the centre of the city, 180 km south of Baghdad.

U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl said one person had been killed when a warplane fired on gunmen carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

“The engagement was initiated by a tip that was called in by a local citizen. We had visual confirmation that there was a hostile target. There was no collateral damage,” he said.

Iraqi and U.S. forces launched Operation Black Eagle at dawn on Friday to restore the government’s authority over a city where Shi’ite militias are a powerful and feared presence, particularly Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, which the Pentagon says is the greatest threat to peace in Iraq.

The government said this week it was extending the nearly two-month-old U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad to other cities as it seeks to halt a slide into sectarian civil war.

More at Reuters

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The moron (I can’t bring myself to even type his name today) running our country has proven time and again he will NOT do the right thing until people like John Holley expose him for the uncaring jerk he really is and MAKE him do the right thing. How he has the nerve to let the words “support our troops” slip out of his mouth is beyond me. A BIG thank you to Jim Holley for making this right!!!

In an about-face by the U.S. government four years into the war in Iraq, America’s fallen troops are being brought back to their families aboard charter jets instead of ordinary commercial flights, and the caskets are being met by honor guards in white gloves instead of baggage handlers with forklifts.

That change - which took effect quietly in January and applies to members of the U.S. military killed in Afghanistan, too - came after a campaign waged by a father who was aghast to learn that his son’s body was going to be unloaded like so much luggage.

John Holley said an airline executive told him that was the “most expeditious” way to get the body home.

“I said, A-That’s not going to happen with my son. That’s not how my son is coming home,’” said Holley, an Army veteran from San Diego whose son, Spc. Matthew Holley, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2005. “If it was A-expeditious’ to deliver them in garbage trucks, would you do that?”

Kalitta Charters of Ypsilanti, Mich., won the Pentagon contract to bring the war dead home, and has returned 143 bodies since Jan. 1.

Continue reading at MSNBC

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and it is ill-equipped to do so And why, after going on 5 years, are we ill equipped? Why?
From the Washington Post:

About 1,800 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) caused by penetrating wounds. But neurologists worry that hundreds of thousands more — at least 30 percent of the troops who’ve engaged in active combat for four months or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan — are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and mortars, all without suffering a scratch.

For the first time, the U.S. military is treating more head injuries than chest or abdominal wounds, and it is ill-equipped to do so. According to a July 2005 estimate from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, two-thirds of all soldiers wounded in Iraq who don’t immediately return to duty have traumatic brain injuries.

Here’s why IEDS carry such hidden danger. The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point of explosion and travels hundreds of yards. The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain against the skull. The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by the “secondary wind”: a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again under high pressure. No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.

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H/T Patriot for this post! He thought you’d appreciate this one Buck!

From BuzzFlash:

ThinkProgress.org reports: “Here’s what McConnell said on June 16, 1996: I think the testimony [from Clinton staffers] obviously ought to be sworn testimony. And we ought to go all the way into this and take as much time as we can to reassure the American people that this sort of thing’s not going to happen again in the future.”

Here’s the incriminating exchange on, of all places, FOX News:

CHRIS WALLACE: Senator McConnell, my point is that back in 1996, you were saying those White House aides should testify in open hearing. These were White House aides of Bill Clinton, in open hearing under oath. Why shouldn’t the same rules apply for the Bush White House and people like Karl Rove?

MCCONNELL: And what I’m telling you is the president’s going to make that decision. I was a senator. I was talking about an administration. The president made the decision in 1996, President Clinton, as to how that would be done, and this president’s going to make the same decision and we’ll see how it all works out.

WALLACE: Well, you’re still a senator. So the question is do you call on this president to do the same thing?

Ah yes, unfortunately for America, McConnell is still a senator and still in the pantheon of GOP hypocrisy.

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About time……now my question is, how does this play on her testifying? Funny a girl who attended a college that is “committed to an embracing evangelical spirit,” is so worried about perjury. Doesn’t she know the truth will set her free???

WASHINGTON: A top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned on Friday, becoming another casualty of the political storm that has rocked the Justice Department since the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors last year.

The aide, Monica Goodling, had helped to coordinate those dismissals with the White House, an episode that has provoked demands for Gonzales’s dismissal. Even his allies, including President George W. Bush, say the dismissals were bungled from the standpoint of public relations and politics.

Goodling, who has been on leave as the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, notified the Senate Judiciary Committee through her lawyer on March 26 that she would invoke her constitutional right not to testify in the panel’s inquiry about the dismissals - not because she had anything to hide, the lawyer said, but because she did not expect fair treatment in the current climate of political hostility.

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