By MATTHEW LEE
The Associated Press

It looks like Bush’s advisers (read that as “yes men/women”) are keeping the boss happy by telling him what he wants to hear. The delusional emperor with no clothes just keeps in his own little world of pretend, doesn’t he? - JS

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s top two military and political advisers on Iraq will warn Congress on Monday that making any significant changes to the current war strategy will jeopardize the limited security and political progress made so far, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who has been less forthcoming than Gen. David Petraeus in advance of his testimony, will join Petraeus in pushing for maintaining the U.S. troop surge, seeing it as the only viable option to prevent Iraq and the region from plunging into further chaos, U.S. officials said.

Crocker and Petraeus planned to meet on Sunday to go over their remarks and responses to expected tough questioning from lawmakers - including skeptical Republicans. But they will not consult Bush or their immediate bosses before their appearances Monday and Tuesday, in order to preserve the “independence and the integrity of their testimony,” said one official.

Petraeus and Crocker did have lengthy discussions with the president, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when Bush visited Iraq on Labor Day.

Crocker, a career diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East who opposed the war when it began in 2003, is pushing for political change where progress has been elusive and the administration’s options are limited under the fragile Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Yet the diplomat will say that as poorly as al-Maliki’s government has performed, it would not be advisable at the moment for the U.S. to support new leadership or lobby for a different coalition of Iraq’s fractious Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the officials said.

read more HERE

T-Bone Walker and Chuck Berry
“Everyday I Have the Blues”

Campaign reform…….gotta happen before anything is going to change.

Want to find a great stock? Find a donor.

A political donor, I mean.

Here’s why: Companies that give money to political campaigns have better-performing stocks, according to a new study, than companies that don’t contribute. It’s no small gap, either. Corporations that give the most have beaten the market by 2.5 percentage points a year over the past 25 years.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” says Charles Gabriel, a longtime political analyst with Prudential Equity Group, a division of Prudential Financial (PRU, news, msgs). “Unfortunately, an investment in Washington pays off.”

What is surprising is how much companies get for so little money. The public companies that do give money, on average, fork out just $1,700 to $2,000 per campaign and support an average of 56 federal candidates in each two-year cycle.

Continue reading at MSN Money

How’s the song go……..MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY……….MONEY

Envision an aircraft carrier in the sky. Drugs that can immediately prepare soldiers for duty at high altitudes. Prosthetic limbs with something approaching real sensitivity.

The Pentagon has.

For half a century, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - a low-profile but vital division of the Defense Department - has developed technologies to confound America’s foes and comfort its friends. The agency has been the force behind dozens of weapons, from the M-16 rifle and night-vision goggles to smart bombs and stealth aircraft.

Now, DARPA is planning for a long war in which U.S. troops will be expected to face guerrilla adversaries. And just as during the Cold War, DARPA is counting on high-tech Silicon Valley to give U.S. forces the edge.

“We need to anticipate all of the challenges and discover the technical means to conquer those challenges,” Anthony Tether, DARPA director, told more than 3,000 scientists, entrepreneurs and military leaders who gathered in Anaheim earlier this month for the agency’s 50th anniversary conference.

Full article at SFGate (see what Chalmers Johnson has to say about this)

I’ll say it again. If you haven’t heard Jim Swanson’s interview with Matt Kelly from the Innocence Project, give it a listen. I don’t know if they are involved in this case. If they aren’t, maybe they should be!

From Reason.com:

By Radley Balko

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Kennedy Brewer, the Mississippi man sentenced to death for raping and killing his girlfriend’s daughter. The state’s case against Brewer was based largely on the testimony of Dr. Michael West, a megalomaniacal “bite mark expert” who has since been suspended by several forensic professional organizations, and was forced to resign from another. Jurors believed West’s assertion that bite marks on the little girl’s chest matched Brewer’s “upper plate,” despite testimony from another expert who said the marks weren’t bite marks at all.

Brewer’s conviction was later thrown out when advanced DNA testing revealed that neither of two semen specimens in the rape kit taken from the little girl was his.

(more…)

I can just picture the people in the audience…..with that expression of HUH? on their faces. Keep talking Sparky….. you’ll sink your own ship. And we thought Bush was stupid…….

Freshly minted GOP White House hopeful Fred Thompson puzzled Iowans yesterday by insisting an Al Qaeda smoking ban was one reason freedom-loving Iraqis bolted to the U.S. side.

“They said, ‘You gotta quit smoking,’” Thompson explained to a questioner asking about progress in Iraq during a town hall’style meeting.

Thompson said the smoking ban and terror tactics Al Qaeda used to oppress women and intimidate local leaders pushed tribes in western Anbar Province to support U.S. troops.

But Thompson’s tale of a smokers’ revolt baffled some in the audience of about 150 who came to decide whether the former Tennessee senator is ready for prime time.

“I don’t know what that was about,” said Jim Moran, 72, who had driven from nearby McCook Lake, S.D.

More at the NY Daily News

By DAVID ESPO
The Associated press

WASHINGTON - Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a persistent Republican critic of the Iraq war, intends to announce on Monday he will not seek a third term, according to a Republican official.

The official also said Hagel does not plan to run for the White House in 2008, despite earlier flirting with a candidacy.

The 60-year-old senator arranged a news conference for Monday in Omaha, Neb., to make his formal announcement. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the event.

The decision by Hagel is the latest in a string of setbacks for minority Republicans in the Senate, who must defend 22 of the 34 seats on the ballot next fall.

Last week, Sen. John Warner of Virginia announced his retirement, a decision expected to create an intensely competitive race for a seat he probably would have held easily had he decided to run again.

Nebraska is one of the most Republican states in the nation, but Hagel’s retirement could open the way for former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey to attempt a political comeback. Democratic officials have been in contact with him in recent weeks, hoping to recruit him to become a candidate if Hagel were to retire.

read more HERE

By AARON BEARD
Associated Press

DURHAM, N.C. - Former Durham County prosecutor Mike Nifong walked out of jail Saturday morning after completing a 24-hour contempt sentence imposed by a judge for lying to the court about critical DNA evidence in the Duke lacrosse rape case. Nifong left the county jail shortly after 9 a.m., where he was greeted with cheers and applause by a crowd of about 20 supporters waiting for him in the lobby. As they did Friday when Nifong reported to jail, they surrounded the disgraced and disbarred prosecutor as he moved through a crowd of reporters to a waiting car.

“Other than that, I just want to go home and spend some time with my family,” he said, refusing to speak with reporters who peppered him with questions during his walk to the car.

“Other than that, I just want to go home and spend some time with my family,” he said.

The veteran prosecutor, who spent his entire career as an attorney in the Durham County district attorney’s office, won indictments last year against three Duke lacrosse players, charging them with raping a woman hired to strip at a March 2006 team party.

The players - Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans - were declared innocent earlier this year by state prosecutors, who concluded no crime could have occurred. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said the students were victims of Nifong’s “tragic rush to accuse.”

Nifong was later disbarred for more than two dozen violations of the state’s rules of professional conduct, including withholding exculpatory DNA evidence and making numerous inflammatory comments about the lacrosse players to the media. He resigned as district attorney in July.

Last week, Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III found that Nifong “willfully made false statements” to the court in September when he insisted he had given defense attorneys all results from a DNA test that helped exonerate the players.

read more HERE

I can’t stand this woman. She’s gotta go……… she’s the female version of Lieberman.

Move over Bridge to Nowhere. Congress is back in town, and clearly back to business even uglier than usual.

It takes hard work to come up with an earmark more egregious than that infamous Alaskan bridge, but California’s Dianne Feinstein is an industrious gal. Her latest pork–let’s call it Rambo’s View–deserves to be the poster child for everything wrong with today’s greedy earmark process.

The senator’s $4 billion handout (yes, you read that right) to wealthy West L.A. (yes, you read that right, too) is the ultimate example of how powerful members use earmarks to put their own parochial interests above national ones–in this case the needs of veterans. It’s a case study in how Congress uses the appropriations process to substitute its petty wants for the considered judgments of agency professionals. And it’s just the latest proof that, no matter how much outrage the American public might display over these deals–and no matter how often Congress promises to clean up its act–the elected have no intention of reforming the process.

Ms. Feinstein, who in the last election received some of her largest donations from the rich area, has been only too happy to come to its defense. She honed in on the military construction and veterans affairs bill–a sensitive spending vehicle that few Republicans would dare vote against, and that President Bush would be loath to veto. She then slipped in an earmark provision that would bar the VA from disposing or leasing any of the ground. Thus a potential $4 billion worth of help and aid for our nation’s veterans goes bye-bye in the name of preserving a view for those Hollywood actors who play veterans in the movies.

Full article at RealClearPolitics

From Youtuber Heathr234 (thanks for all the great videos!):

After spending a week in the Middle East, Dennis Kucinich comes on Carlson’s show to talk about what happened on his tour. Weenie ex-bow tie boy Tucker Carlson tries to paint Dennis Kucinich into a corner and say that he hates America with his loaded questions to him, but Kucinich doesn’t let him get away with it. It’s no wonder Carlson’s ratings are in the dumps. Ask MSNBC to replace him. If they didn’t have their heads up their rears they’d be giving Ron Reagan, David Shuster, or Rachel Maddow a show instead of Carlson and somewhere around Keith’s show to keep their audience. They’re obviously not really worried about ratings since they have not chose to fill the progressive news gap that exists in the media today with the exception of Olbermann’s show.