Kenny Wayne Shepherd
“Born With A Broken Heart”

While we’re discussing the rich irony and Orwellian nature of Bill O’Reilly calling John Edwards a “charlatan” on the plight of homeless vets, I wanted to highlight another instant classic, from that eloquent, persuasive statesman, President Bush:

“But yeah, look, I’m sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker.”

Dan Froomkin has much more, if you can stand it.

Clearly, Newspeak continues. Of course, this is the same crew that thinks General Petraeus deserves the Nobel Peace Prize , and discuss such issues with all the intellectual integrity and eloquence of schoolyard taunts in junior high. I don’t think this is mere hackdom. Yes, they are hacks, and more importantly, scoundrels. But some of them are also really, really this goddam stupid.

But let’s let libural Hollywood get in the last word:

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

The Edwards campaign has put out a hilarious, on-target spot with great editing/timing about the lastest round of the media blackout he’s consistently faced (via Greg Sargent, who has some good thoughts, as usual).

What blackout is that? Greg Sargent passes on this helpful graphic:
(more…)

My Mom has been with me for about 3 1/2 months this visit. She can’t remember what she did two minutes ago but she remembers her highschool days clear as can be. She is 83. The mind is a mysterious thing, to say the least. But she still can dish out the zingers. She’s moving in with me, so you can expect to see more post about our adventures.

Last night she walks out of her bedroom into the living room wearing a white nighty. My boyfriend, who is sitting on the couch, looks up and says “Oh my God.” She looks back at him and says……”No, it’s not God, it’s just me, Edna.”

Gotta love her……..

Another thing congress is ignoring. Of course, they have much more important issues to deal with, such as steroid use in sports.

A company, whose head is the former chairman of the Maryland Republican Party and is on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign steering committee, has won a contract from Diebold to deliver its voting machines on Election Day to precincts in 14 Maryland voting districts. I filed this story on the deal for Wired’s front door.

The trucking firm, Office Movers, is owned by the family-run Kane Company, whose CEO and president is John M. Kane, chairman of the Republican Party in Maryland from 2002 until December 2006 and pictured at right with President Bush. Last November, Kane joined the steering committee for Republican presidential nominee candidate Mitt Romney, who won Tuesday’s primary in Michigan.

Diebold Election Systems (now called Premier Election Solutions) has a statewide contract in Maryland. Its paperless touch’screen machines are the only machines used at Maryland polling locations (absentee and provisional ballots are cast on the company’s optical’scan system). According to Diebold’s state contract, the voting machine vendor is in charge of delivering its machines from warehouses to polling places on Election Day and with picking up the machines after the election.

More at Wired

Katrina is all but forgotten in the minds of Americans. A country that donates billions of dollars to victims of natural disasters elsewhere in the world and we neglect to take care of our own. It’s mindboggling to me. And I’m not speaking of just our government. Individuals. My own Mother said to me that she thought Orlando went downhill when victims of Katrina came there and never went back. I said well God help you if you ever get displaced and are left homeless and helpless. I must say, I have no doubt she got this “talking point” from my heartless Republican sister, who I refer to as Bethzilla. But I’m sure many other Americans feel that way. How did we come to be like this? Something else, while I’m on the subject. With the economy in the dumper the way it is, I asked my Mom if there was alot of crime during the depression. If people stole from one another due to desperation. If the crime rate went up drastically. She said…..no, people helped one another. What do you think would become of us if we suffered a depression in this day and age? I think it would be quite ugly. Just my opinion.

A United Nations official who has toured parts of Louisiana and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina says the thousands of victims of the storm resemble poor people displaced by natural disasters in other parts of the world.

“Whether you’re displaced in a rich country or a poor country, what remains the same is you need to get the help, the assistance of the authorities, of the communities, to be able to restart a normal life, and the people I have met are not there yet,” said Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general’s representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

Kalin spoke Wednesday, a day when he also saw hard-hit areas of the two states. He met Tuesday with evacuees in Houston.

The United Nations’ human rights committee has been critical of the Bush administration’s efforts to help people displaced by Katrina, particularly those without the financial means to rebuild.

More at Yahoo

The new face of the antiabortion movement: Post-Abortion Syndrome–for men.

Pity the Man

Pity the man who conceived four babies with four women and suffered anxiety attacks and nightmares after all four, with his consent, were aborted. Pity the man who saw his soon-to-be-born baby on an ultrasound and instantly came to believe that he “had killed two of my own kids” through abortion. Pity the man who abused alcohol after his girlfriend aborted. Pity the man who suffered a nervous breakdown, depression, psychosis and nearly suicide after his girlfriend had an abortion despite his pleas.

Reverse this. What about the men who don’t want to become dads? Long ignored, does this mean they now have a voice in this argument? I think so!

Are there no straws these people won’t grasp for?

Roger Chapin, founder of Help Hospitalized Veterans, one of the country’s largest veterans charities, is expected to testify today before a congressional committee on questionable spending practices.

Between 1997 and 2005, the charity paid $3.8 million in salary and benefits to Chapin and his wife and spent more than $200 million on fundraising and public education campaigns, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal tax filings. The public records also show that the charity awarded at least $19 million in contracts during that period to companies owned by Richard A. Viguerie, a prominent conservative political commentator and advertising consultant based in Virginia.

Why is it, when I read an sickening article like this, I’m assured ninety-nine percent of the time there’s a “compassionate conservative” involved?

“We’re talking about an individual that has tried to duck the committee; he refused to testify voluntarily. It appears he has something to hide, and if you look at his past operations, there are very good reasons to be suspicious about his activities,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a committee member, said in an interview.

Van Hollen said the committee wants to find a way to distinguish between charities that truly serve veterans and those “committing fraud against the public.”

Mr. Hollen, I think clear distinction can be found in this case.

The CIA has concluded that members of al-Qaeda and allies of Pakistani tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud were responsible for last month’s assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and that they also stand behind a new wave of violence threatening that country’s stability, the agency’s director, Michael V. Hayden, said in an interview.
[...]

The same alliance between local and international terrorists poses a grave risk to the government of President Pervez Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism…

So, al-Qaeda was behind it all. But why Bhutto? I mean, with Musharraf being “a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism“, you would think al-Qaeda would have spent more energy going after him!

Am I missing something?

When asked yesterday about a previous statement by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino that some White House e-mails are indeed missing, Fratto demurred. “I’m not sure what was said on that,” he said. “I could tell you today, though, that we have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any e-mail at all are missing.”

Hesitate… Obfuscate… Deny… Fratto does his job well.

I don’t understand why the media isn’t eating this story up. I don’t understand why congress (as a whole) isn’t all over this. I don’t understand why the 2008 presidential contenders aren’t railing against this. It’s a direct slap in the face for government accountability, transparency and openness - which is a requirement of our government.

Are we to believe anything will come of this though? Nope. This lying, thieving and power-grabbing republican bus will continue it’s journey onwards to a more kingdom-like America.

White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.

The 2005 study — whose credibility the White House attacked this week — identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
[...]

The White House is required by law to preserve e-mails considered presidential or federal records, and it is the target of several lawsuits seeking information about missing data and efforts to preserve electronic communications.

The internal study found that for Bush’s executive office, no e-mails were archived on 12 separate days between December 2003 and February 2004, Waxman said. Vice President Cheney’s office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.