Ray Charles
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

I love love love Ray Charles………..

CNN Video: Cop pushes cyclist to ground

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A NYC police officer is on desk duty after a YouTube video shows him body-checking a cyclist in Time Square.

Texas justice…….

As district attorney of Dallas for an unprecedented 36 years, Henry Wade was the embodiment of Texas justice.

A strapping 6-footer with a square jaw and a half-chewed cigar clamped between his teeth, The Chief, as he was known, prosecuted Jack Ruby. He was the Wade in Roe v. Wade. And he compiled a conviction rate so impressive that defense attorneys ruefully called themselves the 7 Percent Club.

But now, seven years after Wade’s death, The Chief’s legacy is taking a beating.

Nineteen convictions - three for murder and the rest involving rape or burglary - won by Wade and two successors who trained under him have been overturned after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants. About 250 more cases are under review.

No other county in America - and almost no state, for that matter - has freed more innocent people from prison in recent years than Dallas County, where Wade was DA from 1951 through 1986.

More at Forbes

From the NYT:

Sen. Ted Stevens from Alaska, the longest serving U.S. Republican senator ever, was indicted Tuesday on seven counts of making false statements, according to a federal grand jury indictment.

The U.S. Justice Department has scheduled a news conference for 1:20 p.m. to make an announcement “regarding a significant criminal matter.”

A federal law enforcement official said the news conference would discuss the criminal charges against Stevens. The 28-page indictment outlining the charges against Stevens was released by the Justice Department right before the news conference.

Keith Olbermann revues McCain’s actual voting record compared to his campaign’s rhetoric. Rachel Maddow weighs in on how the media is giving McCain a complete pass on this.

If it were me, I would have gone. But what do I know………

From the New York Times:

But two days before the visit, Pentagon officials told the campaign that only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center in his capacity as a senator. The adviser who had intended to join Mr. Obama, Scott Gration, a retired major general in the Air Force, was told he could not go along because he was a volunteer campaign adviser.

Mr. Obama was asked by reporters to explain the matter on Saturday in London.

“That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns,” Mr. Obama said. “So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were there.”

“When our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence they were not worried about political will, how much time there was, or about any parties’ political future, they were just worried they were going to be hanged by the neck. But they did what was right. Now it is your time.”
Elliott Adams, President, Veterans for Peace, testimony July 25, 2008

Read more at Scoop.com

If anyone in the Bush administration steps in front of a microphone and open their mouths, you just KNOW the bullshit is about to pour forth! On Bush’s approval of the Army’s request to execute a soldier [Pvt. Ronald Gray] convicted of rape and murder:

“While approving a sentence of death for a member of our armed services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander-in-chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. (emphasis mine)

You would know how funny and how outrageous a comment that was if you really knew just how “Shallow And Callous” Bush has been in his past. I think such things gives the man a hard-on.

Just and warranted

Impeachment is just and warranted too. But, thanks to a pack of spineless democrats, (who, if you asked me, should be horse-whipped all the way back to their home states), have taken impeachment off the table.

Kinda funny really… One one side of the aisle, we have a bunch of whiny-assed crybabies, pissing and moaning to have everything their way. On the other side of the aisle are a bunch of babies too weak to even lift their heads. What a fucked country this is.

This WAS McCain’s stance on timetables:

“And both Sen. Obama and Clinton want to set a date for withdrawal — that means chaos, that means genocide, that means undoing all the success we’ve achieved and al Qaeda tells the world they defeated the United States of America. I won’t let that happen.”

Now he’s had a change of heart:

Sen. John McCain could support a 16-month timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he told CNN’s Larry King Monday night.

But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said he would only do that if military chiefs deemed the “conditions on the ground” safe enough.

It’s especially brilliant how he qualified that with “if military chiefs deemed the ‘conditions on the ground’ safe enough.” Which they never would do, of course.

I really like this quote:

Asked whether he would support an invasion of Iraq again, McCain responded: “The fact that Saddam Hussein was bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction. … I think we did the right thing.”

So this is a man who is all for invading a country, illegally, because he “thinks” it is the right thing to do. I think we are a country of non-thinkers if we seriously think we may pull the lever for John McCain this November.

His Mama named him right……

Vice President Cheney’s invitation to address wounded combat veterans next month has been yanked because the group felt his security demands were Draconian and unreasonable.

The veep had planned to speak to the Disabled American Veterans at 8:30 a.m. at its August convention in Las Vegas.

His staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney’s arrival and couldn’t leave until he’d finished talking, officials confirmed.

“Word got back to us … that this would be a prerequisite,” said the veterans executive director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn’t have any rest rooms. “We told them it just wasn’t acceptable.”

When Cheney spoke to the group in 2004, his handlers imposed the same stringent security lockdown, upsetting members, officials said.

Many of the vets are elderly and left pieces of themselves on foreign battlefields since World War II, and others were crippled by recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. For health reasons, many can’t be stuck in a room for hours.

“It was a huge imposition on our delegates,” added David Autry, another Disabled American Veterans official.

More here

Chris Rea, “Blue Cafe” (hubba hubba)….. or as my daughter would say……. Hubba Bubba (drunk is never pretty)

H/T Mirth! (I love this song)

This ought to be interesting… from a Cleveland Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer:

DEVELOPING: Agents take truck loads of material in corruption probe

FBI and IRS Officials seized some eight boxes from the home of Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo today.

Federal agents used U-Haul trucks to cart away documents from the homes of Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo as a day-long series of searches continued in a public corruption investigation.

Officials said the searches were part of a long-term public corruption investigation but refused to elaborate. The list of places search indicates that the probe may involve irregularities in construction contracts.

The places searched include: The home of Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, the home of Auditor Frank Russo, the home of county Information Technology Administrator Kevin Kelley, the county administration building, the county Data Center, the county Engineer’s Office, DAS Construction in Garfield Heights, Blaze Construction in Middleburg Heights, Doan Pyramid Electric in Bedford Heights and Vincore LLC in Cleveland.

(HT: What-The?) (emphasis mine)

They probably couldn’t elaborate if they didn’t have any physical evidence to go on. But hatred will surely light their path.

I found another interesting story, dated May 21, 2008, in which Commissioner Dimora accused The Plain Dealer and the Republican Party of conspiring to take down the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

Well it looks like they’re finally going to succeed. It has that “Bush admin-Karl Rove-fired U.S. attorneys” feel to it, doesn’t it?

From Justice Watch:

Have the midsummer blues caught up with you yet? If the heat, mosquitoes or boredom are starting to get to you, boy have we got some diversions for you. Well, DC-style diversions, anyway.

As far as Justice Watch is concerned, the week starts and ends with Gitmo, as the House Armed Services Committee will hold a pair of hearings entitled “Implications of the Supreme Court’s Boumediene Decision for Detainees at Guantanamo Bay.” Part I will take place Wednesday morning, and will feature “Non-Governmental Perspectives” from a quartet of witnesses, including a Georgetown law professor, a couple of private practice lawyers, and, as the main event, the former Chief Prosecutor of the Office of Military Commissions, Colonel Morris Davis. Thursday afternoon’s Part II will trot out several Bush cronies–who apparently are so scared of opposition that they wanted a hearing of their own–for an “Administration Perspective” that should prove to be infuriating.

Read more »

“We will offer you all the kingdoms of the world if you will come and guide our campaign.”

Do I really need to expound on that comment? Does that not say it all? And even though he may be backing Al Franken’s bid for the Senate, Ben Stein, typical republican, is still full of shit.

Preston on Politics: Bueller? Bueller? — McCain needs Rove

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Ben Stein says he knows how Sen. John McCain can win in November: Karl Rove. [...]

At a time when McCain is seeking to distance himself from President Bush, Stein argues McCain needs to enlist Bush’s chief political guru in order to defeat Sen. Barack Obama.

“I don’t discount the possibility that some really smart person at the McCain campaign might go over to Karl Rove, and say ‘We will offer you all the kingdoms of the world if you will come and guide our campaign,’ ” a hopeful-sounding Stein said in a recent interview, during which he also discussed Al Franken’s Senate bid and his thoughts on a sequel to the 1986 box office smash “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” which launched Stein’s film career.

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