Dubya's Empty Threat

Empty Threat of the Day

Posted on Sep 15, 2006

From CNN

Bush says that questioning of suspected terrorists “won’t go forward” unless Congress passes a law clarifying the treatment and interrogation of such detainees.

Believe that? If so, there’s a nice Nigerian billionaire we met on the Internet who’d love to discuss a business opportunity with you...

CNN:

Questioning of suspected terrorists “won’t go forward” unless Congress clarifies a U.S. standard for the treatment and interrogation of wartime prisoners, President Bush warned on Friday.

During a Rose Garden news conference, the president launched the latest salvo in efforts to write new rules that Bush said would clarify how Geneva Conventions provisions apply to detainee interrogations.

Critics, including three high-profile Republican senators and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, say it’s an interpretation that could threaten the safety of U.S. forces overseas.

Link

Credit to Truthdig. I was watching this press conference and it was just akward at times.

Colbert Mocks Allen’s ‘Ethnic Rally’

Link

The Daily Show - 2006.09.14 - John Oliver's Journey

The Daily Show’s “foreigner” correspondent, John Oliver, reports from the frontlines of the immigration debate, sharing his own harrowing experience: “Jon, like billions of other unfortunate people in the world, I was tragically born not American.”

Credit to Truthdig.com and whoever posted the video on Youtube.

Colbert Report: 'Knowledge of War is Bad for You'

Fool Us Once, Mr. President…

In light news (see above) about a U.S. House report that is, according to the United Nations, exaggerating claims about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, we’ve got a ready-made response. And interestingly enough, President Bush already delivered it.

Watch it:http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060914_fool_us_once_mr_president/

Snow Almost Doesn’t Bother Lying

Asked whether Bush still thinks there was a relationship between Hussein and Al Qaeda honcho Al Zarqawi, White House spokesman Tony Snow nearly admitted the absence of such a relationship, but then said one existed because Zarqawi “operated” in Iraq. But as ThinkProgress points out, that’s like saying America had a “relationship” with the Unabomber because he was “operating” in the United States.

Got this at Truthdig. The Link has both transcrip and video.

Little Richard Translates for Bush on ‘Daily Show’

We’ve had some readers asking for us at Truthdig to dig between the lines of Bush’s 9/11 speech. Turns out Jon Stewart & Co. were already all over that. Watch as Little Richard explicates our prez.

Check Link for Video

What was the ref watching?

Ballboy scores a goal........and it counts?

Link to video.

15 year NHL Contract????

DiPietro's record 15-year deal will pay him $67.5M

ESPN.com news services

UNIONDALE, N.Y. -- The New York Islanders have become the NHL's version of a three-ring circus -- and the spotlight keeps shining on the guys in net.

"I guess it's pretty beneficial to be a goaltender on Long Island right now," Rick DiPietro said Tuesday, moments after signing the longest playing contract in NHL history.

One week shy of his 25th birthday, the brash netminder from New England grabbed a pen and confidently inked his name to a 15-year deal that will pay him $4.5 million each season until 2021, totaling $67.5 million.

"Well, 15 years seems like a long time," he said before a deep sigh. "It is a long time."

Standing next to him was Garth Snow, his 37-year-old former teammate and backup, who hung up his skates earlier this summer the same day he took over as Islanders general manager. If that was strange enough, he was replacing Neil Smith, who had been on the job a little more than a month.

Snow's biggest priority suddenly became negotiating the deal to keep the Islanders' most popular player in the fold until he's nearly 40.

"At first it was a little awkward," DiPietro said.

And so it goes for the Islanders, who always seem to make more news and noise during the offseason than in winter.

"This is not a big deal," owner Charles Wang said. "You have to have a commitment to who you're working with. I've done this all my business career. Now I'm doing it in sports and everybody is like, 'Oh my God. How could he do that?"'

It's pretty funny when you think about it. Given the mess the Isles are in I'd DiPietro is sick in tired on Long Island in 2 years tops and never even comes close to being an "Islander for life"

Link to rest of the story.

Stingrays mutilated in wake of Crocodile Hunter's death

Stingrays mutilated in wake of Crocodile Hunter's death

MERAIAH FOLEY

Associated Press

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — At least 10 stingrays have been slain since Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was killed by one of the fish, an official said Tuesday, prompting a spokesman for the late TV star's animal charity to urge people not take revenge on the animals.

Link to rest of the story over at the Globe and Mail

Terrour Plot

Daily Show: We are Safe! 9/11/06

George Bush recently said “America is safer than it has been, but it’s not yet safe.” Attempting to make sense of this seemingly contradictory statement in a post 9/11, post “mission accomplished,” post Katrina world, the “Daily Show” came up with this rationale: “George W. Bush is the right man to lead us in the era post whatever horrible calamity he leads us into next.”

9/11: America attacked twice

Who would have imagined in their worst nightmares that these political usurpers would employ the human catastrophe of 9/11 to continue the terrorists work for them? Who would have imagined that they would embark on a course that would eventually kill more Americans than died on 9/11 in wars that do nothing to ensure the nation’s security but much to inspire more Arabs to hate us and wish to attack us? Who would have imagined they would dissipate the global solidarity and support the world had offered us? Who would have imagined that, having ignored all of the signs of a certain attack, they would continue to ignore the most obvious steps to protect us against future catastrophe, leaving our ports, our nuclear facilities, our chemical facilities invitingly unguarded? Who would have imagined that they would willingly allow bin-Laden to escape? Who would have imagined they would lie to the rescue workers about the health effects of the air they were breathing. Who would have imagined that they would put the fate of the nation in the hands of a group of lying, conniving, rats like “curveball,” Ahmad Chalabi and the INC? Who would have imagined a political campaign in which a man like Max Cleland, a man who lost three limbs in Vietnam, would be branded as insufficiently patriotic by right-wing politicians and pundits who never sacrificed so much as a chicken dinner for their country? Who would have imagined they would use homeland security as pure pork money, doling out millions for Red State fire houses while leaving tens of millions who live near obvious targets—and were attacked last time—unprotected? Who would have imagined they would emulate our enemies, employing methods of torture and massacre? Who would imagine they would force our brave soldiers to die fighting phantoms, without even proper body armor? Who would have imagined they would outlaw photographs of military funerals, or that the president could not find time to attend a single one of them? Who would have imagined they would use the attacks to create a domestic spying regime, a series of secret prisons and tribunals, and the declare the right to abrogate any and all American civil liberties whenever it struck their fancy? Who would have imagined, in other words, that they would exploit these tragic deaths to seek to undermine our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, indeed the very foundations of the same “freedom” that allegedly inspired the terrorists in the first place? And finally, who would have imagined that our vaunted “liberal media” and nonpartisan political establishment would cheer them along the way, failing to ask the difficult questions and attacking the patriotism and even sanity of those with the courage and foresight to do so?


Full article available at Eric Alterman's MSNBC blog Altercation.

"This hole in the ground"

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party—tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election—ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications—forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics.

It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President—and those around him—did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11, is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is: "impeachable offense."

Keith Olbermann once again.....Link to the full text and video.

The Best War Ever

“Lies got us into this war. Only the truth will get us out.”

The Best War Ever, by the best-selling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception, is a vital account of why America is losing in Iraq and the Middle East. We have met the enemy—and it's our own PR machine. One of the most tragic consequences of the Bush administration's reliance on spin, the authors argue, is its disdain for realistic planning. Repeatedly, when faced with predictions of problems, policymakers dismissed the warnings of Iraq experts, choosing instead to promulgate their own version of the war through conservative media outlets and PR campaigns. And as the book reveals, they're still doing it—as the people who sold us the war in Iraq are now trying to sell an expansion into Syria and Iran.

Link

The 9/11 Timeline

To mark the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, ThinkProgress has created a comprehensive timeline documenting the key events since September 11, 2001. Our timeline charts five threads:

– The steady increase in international terrorism and the growth of al Qaeda
– The campaign to block and obstruct the work of the 9/11 Commission, and the failure to carry out the commission’s recommendations
– The failure to stablize and rebuild Afghanistan
– The downgrading of the hunt for Osama bin Laden
– The steady decline of America’s image abroad

The Full time line is available at Think Progress

So That’s Why the Death Toll Figure Was Low…

So That’s Why the Death Toll Figure Was Low…

It appeared for a while that the death toll had dropped drastically in Iraq in August, but then word leaked out that the initial numbers were two-thirds too low. We didn’t know why. But it appears we do now: The Pentagon isn’t counting those killed in car bombs or mortar attacks—and it has no good excuse. (h/t: Huff Po)

McClatchy:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren’t counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country’s sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.
Link

Got this from Truthdig

Edison, NJ is the 28th best town in the country to live in?

FINALIST Edison, NJ Top 100 rank: 28 Population: 100,500 Compare Edison to Top 10 Best Places
Financial
	City stats	Best places average
Median family income (per year)	$86,205	$76,893
Family purchasing power (annual, cost-of-living adjusted)	$61,443	$68,109
Sales tax	6.00%	6.55%
State income tax rate (highest bracket)	8.97%*	6.46%
State income tax rate (lowest bracket)	1.40%*	2.74%
Auto insurance premiums (Average for the state)	n/a	$2,207
Job growth % (2000-2005)	4.14%	10.97%
Housing
	City stats	Best places average
Median home price	$355,000	$259,566
Home price gain (2004-2005)	16.40%	9.26%
Education
	City stats	Best places average
Colleges, universities and professional schools	4	8
Junior colleges and technical institutes	1	0
Test scores reading (% +/- state average)	10.0%	13.3%
Test scores math (% +/- state average)	10.9%	16.9%
% students attending public/private schools	83.3/16.70	88.4/11.59
Quality of life
	City stats	Best places average
Air quality index (% of days AQI ranked as good)	71.0%	71.9%
Personal crime risk (100 is nat'l average; lower is better)	4	45
Property crime risk (100 is nat'l average; lower is better)	4	74
Personal crime incidents (per 100,000)	186	228
Property crime incidents (per 100,000)	1,890	3,105
Median commute time (in minutes)	25.5	20.8
% population with commute 45 mins. or longer	27.1%	13.4%
Leisure and culture
	City stats	Best places average
Movie theaters (within 15 miles)	26	22
Restaurants (within 15 miles)	5,007	2,268
Bars (within 15 miles)	257	127
Public golf courses (within 30 miles)	116	74
Libraries (within 15 miles)	100	43
Museums (accredited by AAM within 30 miles)	25	7
Ski resorts (within 100 miles)	28	10
Weather
	City stats	Best places average
Annual precipitation (inches)	49.63	36.00
Clear days	93	107
High temp in July ° F	86.6°	87.7°
Low temp in Jan ° F	21.5°	23.5°
Health*
	City stats	Best places average
Has health plan (% of residents)	92.3%	88.2%
Body mass index (avg. for residents)	26	27
Cancer mortality (per 100,000, age-adjusted)	205.6	191.3
Cardiac mortality (per 100,000)	238.3	202.0
Meet the neighbors
	City stats	Best places average
Median age	36.6	34.5
Completed at least some college (% of residents)	60.7%	63.9%
Married	56.9%	54.3%
Divorced	6.1%	9.3%
Amount spent on vacations (domestic and foreign, household avg. per year)	$7,837	$7,549

*County data
Income tax notes:
The tax brackets reported are for single individuals. For married couples filing jointly, the tax rates range from 1.4% to 8.97% (with 7 income brackets) applying to income brackets from $20,000 to over $500,000.

Edison is the 28th best town in the country to live in? This is from Money Magazine. The link to the rest of the story can be found here.

This is SportsCenter - Steve Irwin

Crikey!

Senate: Saddam saw al-Qaida as threat

Senate: Saddam saw al-Qaida as threat

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago

Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq.

Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that before the war, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

Saddam told U.S. officials after his capture that he had not cooperated with Osama bin Laden even though he acknowledged that officials in his government had met with the al-Qaida leader, according to FBI summaries cited in the Senate report.

"Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden," Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi leader's top aide, told the FBI.

Link to the Rest of the AP story

Miami Journalists Outed for Taking Govt. Cash

Miami Journalists Outed for Taking Govt. Cash

Miami Herald | Oscar Corrall | Posted Friday September 8, 2006 at 03:35 PM

In the radio game, it's called payola. But the scheme whereby so-called journalists -- a term that's losing its cultural capital by the second -- take money from the U.S. government to bash anything or anyone the current administration hates, well that's called propaganda. And the latest hacks to get caught up in it are ten well-paid employees who are splitting time between their parent corporations, including the Miami Herald itself, and the Bush administration. The target of their collective, handsomely rewarded vitriol? Who else? Castro. According to today's Miami Herald:

"At least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Marti and TV Marti, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years."

Those caught with their hand in the cookie jar include Pablo Alfonso ($175,000), Olga Connor ($71,000) and Wilfredo Cancio Isla ($15,000), who parroted party-line propaganda for El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language newspaper financed and published by the corporate parent of The Miami Herald, who have so far dismisssed the three offenders outright. Look for more heads to roll if the heat, pardon the pun, stays on. Of course, it's Florida, so anything goes. Knowing that state, all of the offenders will probably land cushy jobs with Jeb Bush anyway. Stay tuned.

— Scott Thill

Credit to the Huffington Post

ABC Docudrama on 9/11

Courtesy ABC

Several progressive bloggers have set up an online clearinghouse dedicated to exposing the fabrications in ABC/Disney’s upcoming miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” It urges ABC/Disney to scrub the film of outright falsehoods, or else shelve the film completely.

UPDATE # 1:

ABC makes some minor changes to the film.

Watch security author James Bamford tell MSNBC that an FBI officer consulting on the film quit half way through because the filmmakers were making things up.

Author Glenn Greenwald reminds us that Bill O’Reilly and his ilk got CBS to cancel “The Reagans” because it contained fictionalized history –- but conservatives seem to be OK with the fictionalized history in this movie.

Bill Clinton, through his lawyer, blasts the film’s implication that Clinton was too busy with the Lewinsky scandal to concentrate on the pursuit of Bin Laden (click here for the full text of the letter). (Unlike Bush, who was so disturbed by the immediate news of the 9/11 attacks that he spent seven minutes reading “My Pet Goat” to a room full of schoolchildren.)

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger warn ABC brass that the film grossly misrepresents their actions in the hunt for Bin Laden.

John at AMERICAblog (who has been doing a bang-up job chronicling this growing media scandal) sees in the above article an admission by ABC that it simply made up (ad-libbed) a scene depicting Sandy Berger as the man who effectively stopped the CIA from taking out Bin Laden.

John: “YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11, YOU FREAKS. You people sent this movie to 100,000 school teachers around the country and told them to show it to their kids. And now you’re admitting you just made stuff up, and that’s somehow okay?”

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz pens a front-page column that finds more factual errors in the film.

John at AMERICAblog (again) uses the above article to declare that the “tide has turned” and that “this is now a full-fledged public relations disaster for Disney.”

Link

The Facebook Rebellion

Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program failed to arouse much more than a collective shrug across much of America, but when the social networking site Facebook recently began broadcasting every change a user makes to his online “friends,” (“you’re out of my top-50,” for example), the community rebelled—quickly and viciously. Could this be the start of something?

How true it is.....Facebook should be the least of your worries.

Credit to truthdig

"You're too good!"

Federer tops Blake to reach 10th straight Slam semi

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- James Blake made Roger Federer work a whole lot harder than he's used to, and it still wasn't nearly enough.

The top-seeded Federer dropped a set against No. 5 Blake and faced all kinds of trouble before pulling out a 7-6 (7), 6-0, 6-7 (9), 6-4 victory Thursday night at the U.S. Open to reach a record-tying 10th consecutive Grand Slam semifinal.

Federer was so masterful at times that even Blake and the partisan crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium showed their admiration. Some of Federer's most impressive offerings drew shouts of, "You're too good!" from Blake, who came into the night 0-4 against Federer, having lost all 10 sets they had played.

This guy is crazy. I'm hoping as a sports fan that Nadal and hopefully Roddick can slow him down a little bit but the talent level is just crazy. Every math he's in he makes it a walk in the park.

Link to rest of the article.

What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA

In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer at the briefing, were pegged to the assumptions that Iraq had these weapons and would be invaded--as if a decision had been made.

Though Cheney was already looking toward war, the officers of the agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq--part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations--were frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have. The JTFI was trying to find evidence that would back up the White House's assertion that Iraq was a WMD danger. Its chief of operations was a career undercover officer named Valerie Wilson.

A pretty good read. Link to rest of the article.

Bush admits the CIA runs secret prisons

Bush admits the CIA runs secret prisons

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

WASHINGTON -
President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the
CIA runs secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.
ADVERTISEMENT

Bush said 14 suspects — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the
USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania — had been turned over to the Defense Department and moved to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trial.

"This program has been, and remains, one of the most vital tools in our war against the terrorists," Bush said

Link to the rest of the story.

Was anyone really surprised to hear this? The 9/11 Anniversary is coming up so you knew it was time to drum up some drama. I'm suprrised there hasn't been another "terror watch" in the last week or so. Would anyone really be surprised if there just happens to be one in the next week.....and then one again close to the mid-term elections?

Watch this brilliant Olbermann piece from a few weeks ago if you didn't catch one of my earlier posts.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Here is a link to the Olbermann video I posted a transcript for last night.

'Have you no sense of decency, sir?'

'Have you no sense of decency, sir?'

It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

“In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.”

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Credit to Keith Olbermann who I must say has become a must watch everynight as of late.

Republican ads show distance from Bush

By DAVID HAMMER, Associated Press WriterMon Sep 4, 6:50 AM ET

Republicans who were once cozy with President Bush are distancing themselves from both the president and their party in campaign ads.

Consider Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record), the fourth-ranking House Republican struggling to hold onto her seat in an evenly split district in central Ohio, near Columbus.

In 2004, her campaign Web site featured a banner of her and Bush sitting together, smiling. But in her latest television ad, Pryce is described as "independent." The spot also highlights how she "stood up to her own party" and the president to support increased federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research.

As chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, Pryce rallies colleagues to the party message.

With the election in about two months and Bush's approval ratings still low — 33 percent in the most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll — Republicans involved in tight races are avoiding party labels and playing down their ties to the president. On issues from the Iraq war to Amtrak spending, GOP candidates are trying to argue that they don't follow in lockstep.

Link to the rest of the story.

Challenging the Culture of Obedience

by ROSS C. ANDERSON

[posted online on September 1, 2006]

As President Bush visited Salt Lake City August 30 to promote his policies in Iraq and the "war on terror," Salt Lake City Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson delivered this address at a peace rally outside City Hall that drew more than 2,500 people. Watch the video here, via CBS affiliate KUTV, Salt Lake City.

A patriot is a person who loves his or her country. Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation--and for our world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Link to rest of the story.

Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

by JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH

[posted online on September 5, 2006]

The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority--perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package. Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?

Link to rest of the article....a very good read.

Why The 9/11 Conspiracies Won't Go Away

Why The 9/11 Conspiracies Won't Go Away

Credit to the 9/11/06 issue of Time Magazine.

Australia's 'Crocodile Hunter' killed by stingray

BRIAN CASSEY

Associated Press

CAIRNS, Australia — Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.

Mr. Irwin was at Batt Reef, off the remote coast of northeastern Queensland state, shooting a segment for a series called Ocean's Deadliest when he swam too close to one of the animals, which have a poisonous barb on their tails, his friend and colleague John Stainton said.

“He came on top of the stingray, and the stingray's barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart,” said Mr. Stainton, who was on board Mr. Irwin's boat at the time.

Link to rest of the story.

Daily Show

This show was taped 2-3 days after the Cheney Hunting incident.

Positive Press on Iraq Is Aim of U.S. Contract

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 31, 2006; A20

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.

The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide "public relations products" that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement of work attached to the proposal.

The request for bids comes at a time when Bush administration officials are publicly criticizing media coverage of the war in Iraq.

Your Tax dollars at work.....to feed propaganda right back to you? Read the rest over at the Washington Post.

Pipedown Rummy

Rumsfeld's cranky outburst mangles a historical analogy, bad-mouths legitimate critics, and illustrates once again why the defense secretary should resign.

August 31, 2006

TWO REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATIONS ago, the mantra of conservatives was "Let Reagan be Reagan." Apparently President Bush has decided to let Rumsfeld be Rumsfeld — even when Bush himself is no longer the Bush who taunted Iraqi insurgents with "Bring 'em on!" and posed in front of a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."

In a cranky speech Tuesday to an American Legion audience, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld compared critics of U.S. policy in Iraq to those who sought to appease Hitler before World War II. For good measure, Rumsfeld suggested (echoing Jeane Kirkpatrick's liberal-bashing speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention) that those same critics "blame America first."

One effect of Rumsfeld's outburst was to serve as a reminder that he is still in office. Once the public face of the war in Iraq, he lately has been AWOL from the administration's public advocacy, ceding the spotlight to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The assumption was that, although Rumsfeld remained fireproof, his cocksure contempt for criticism was out of favor now that Bush has acknowledged that the prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq is "straining the psyche of our country."

Maybe Rumsfeld never got the memo, or, if he did, he crumpled it up. His speech was vintage Rumsfeld. It was also unfair and, in places, inane.

Take the suggestion that critics of Bush's Iraq policy are the moral equivalent of those who refused to stop Hitler. There's a reason why high school debaters are warned away from Nazi analogies: They're almost always disproportionate. Even Bush, who recently raised eyebrows by identifying "Islamic fascism" as America's enemy, stopped short of referring to critics of his policies as latter-day Neville Chamberlains.

Even more offensive is Rumsfeld's "blame America first" canard. Who exactly has been pushing what he called "the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world's troubles"? Certainly no one in mainstream American political discourse, not even those members of Congress who want to set a date for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Their argument, right or wrong, is that Iraq is descending into civil war and that the U.S. presence there is unavailing and a drain on resources better expended elsewhere, including on counter-terrorism at home.

The Bush administration can and should respond to that argument without recourse to overheated analogies and straw men like the "blame America first" crowd. Rumsfeld is obviously unwilling to step down. Could he at least pipe down?

Credit to the LA Times

A Vote to Quit the Electoral College

Legislators pass a bill that could launch a national movement to elect the president by popular vote.

By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer
August 31, 2006

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill Wednesday that would make California the first state to jump aboard a national movement to elect the president by popular vote.

Under the legislation, California would grant its electoral votes to the nominee who gets the most votes nationwide — not the most votes in California. Get enough other states to do the same, backers of the bill say, and soon presidential candidates will have to campaign across the nation, not just in a few key "battleground" states such as Ohio and Michigan that can sway the Electoral College vote.

Link to rest of the story

Coulter on Sen. Chafee: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln"

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter titled her August 30 syndicated column on the Rhode Island Senate race: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln." The headline is a reference to Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), whom she excoriated throughout the piece -- calling him a "half-wit" and a "silver-spooned moron[] -- while expressing her support for his challenger in the September 12 Republican primary, Stephen Laffey.

This is not the first time Coulter has alluded to killing those she disagrees with:

• Commenting on radio host Melanie Morgan's assertion that if New York Times executive editor Bill Keller were convicted of treason she "would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Coulter said, "I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution." She later suggested that Times staff members should be "executed."
• Coulter said of the media: "Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists."
• Coulter suggested that Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) is "the reason soldiers invented fragging," -- military slang meaning the intentional killing of a member of one's own unit.
• Coulter argued that the national debate during the Monica Lewinsky controversy should not have focused on whether former President Bill Clinton "did it," but rather "whether to impeach or assassinate" him.
• Coulter said of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens: "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens's créme brulée.''

Credit to Media Matters For America

Lieberman finally changes stance on Iraq

8.31.06

Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong

The Lieberman campaign has issued a fulminating press release that should let everyone know that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong over at Lieberman HQ. It became obvious that the wheels came off when, in the face of awful news about growing poverty in Connecticut, more casualties in Iraq and the anniversary of the Katrina disaster, Lieberman released a campaign ad telling voters to simply think about "the good stuff." Now, a press release today confirms the train wreck that has become the 18-year incumbent's political career.

In the release, truth-challenged Lieberman flack Dan Gerstein says:

"Despite clear evidence that shows Senator Lieberman has called for a new approach to the war, Lamont repeated his false claim today that Senator Lieberman supports the President’s 'stay the course' strategy. The fact is, three weeks ago on CBS’s Face the Nation, Senator Lieberman said unequivocally that the Bush Administration needs a change in leadership and a change in direction at the Pentagon, and repeated his call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation."

So let me get this straight - Joe Lieberman co-authors the resolution that authorized the Iraq War, he spends the next 3 and a half years using Connecticut's Senate seat as a human shield to defend the White House from those who raise questions about the war, he publicly berates Democrats for criticizing the invasion as more than 2,600 American troops are killed in Iraq, he likens voters who are upset with the war to terrorist sympathizers - and yet, we are all supposed to forget that because 3 weeks ago after losing his primary he finally went on a Sunday talk show and admitted Don Rumsfeld isn't doing such a great job?

As I said before - something has gone horribly, horribly wrong over at Lieberman HQ. Some D.C. insiders and corporate lobbyists have tried to question whether a first-time candidate like Ned Lamont is ready to be a U.S. Senator - as if somehow business experience doesn't matter and the only thing that does matter is being an insulated career politician with experience hobnobbing in the Senate club. But I'd say it's the other way around - people should be asking themselves, when looking at this kind of behavior, whether Joe Lieberman is fit to be in elected office, because clearly this is a guy who has lost control of his faculties.

(DISCLOSURE: I have long been a volunteer supporter of Ned Lamont's candidacy and written extensively about the race. As of today, I am officially working with the Lamont for Senate campaign on research. The work on this blog is my own, and not the official work I do for the Lamont campaign)

Yeah, this is written by a guy now working forLamont campaign.....but the quotes themselves are cited and real.

Another Olbermann Clip

Olbermann Puts Rumsfeld to Shame

Posted on Aug 31, 2006

Keith Olbermann delivered a masterful retort on Wednesday to Donald Rumsfeld’s recent diatribe on fascism. With a commentary as apt as it was eloquent, Olbermann excoriated the defense secretary’s very patriotism: “In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused… the United States of America?”

Video & Transcript

Partial Transcript (from Crooks and Liars):

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

Credit yet again to Truthdig for the video although I did watch this live and I've got to say I am liking Countdown more and more. It's refreshing to see that this kind of reporting still does exist in the US.

Sen. Stevens is 'the secret senator'

Sen. Stevens is 'the secret senator'

From Andrea Koppel, Ted Barrett and Abbi Tatton
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The identity of the blogosphere's "secret senator" has been revealed.

CNN has confirmed that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has placed a hold on a bill that would require the government to publish online a database of federal spending.

"He does have a hold on the bill," Stevens' spokesperson Aaron Saunders told CNN. "At the time he placed the hold he notified Sen. [Tom] Coburn and his staff and identified several questions we had with the bill. Two weeks ago Sen. Coburn named Stevens as having a hold on the bill, so we don't consider it a secret."

Senate tradition allows any senator to keep a piece of legislation from reaching the Senate floor by placing a hold on the bill.

Coburn's office confirmed that Coburn had revealed Stevens' hold during a town hall meeting in Oklahoma two weeks ago.

The bill has become a cause célèbre for both liberal and conservative bloggers as they tried to uncover the "secret senator" who had blocked passage of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590). The bill was introduced earlier this year by Sens. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and Coburn, R-Oklahoma.

The conservative-leaning, anti-government waste site Porkbusters urged readers to call their senators and ask them to go on the record denying that they placed the hold. TPMmuckraker, under the banner "blogosphere unites in pursuit of masked senator" also got in on the act, posting updates from readers around the country.

The effort prompted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to weigh in online: Blogging at his political action committee Web site, Sen. Frist, R-Tennessee, called on "all members, when asked by the blog community, to instruct their staff to answer whether or not they have a hold."

Saunders said Stevens did not attempt to keep his hold anonymous.

"Sen. Stevens has a series of concerns and questions about the bill. He wants a cost benefit analysis to make sure it doesn't create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and not meet its purpose," Saunders said.

"He prefers to handle things at the member to member level or at the staff level," Saunders said. "That's the way Sen. Stevens has always operated."

"This wasn't in any way secretive," Saunders said. "We're baffled as to why it's been called a secret hold."

But a spokesperson for Coburn's office disputed the idea that Stevens had been open about the hold.

"This hold was a secret," Coburn spokesman John Hart said. "His office has ignored media and bloggers' calls about this issue for weeks. We had to ask Stevens if he was the hold. His staff has still not met with us."

"Senator Stevens sits on the committee where this bill was considered and never raised any objections because he skipped the hearings," Hart said. "His specific concerns were addressed at the hearings he skipped, and his office has yet to meet with us to discuss his concerns despite repeated requests."

Last year a proposed $223 million for a "bridge to nowhere" connecting Alaska's Gravina Island -- population 50 -- to the mainland caused a nationwide furor. The allocation was backed by Stevens and fellow Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska, the powerful chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The earmarked funding for the bridge was later rescinded by Congress. However, Alaska's overall allocation of federal transportation funds was not decreased, and the state is free to spend the federal dollars to build the bridge if it wishes.

When Coburn tried to block funds for the bridge, he was heavily denounced by Stevens on the Senate floor.

Link

For those who haven't heard of this "Bridge to nowhere".....click here

Bush Talks Nonsense with Brian Williams

Bush Talks Nonsense with Brian Williams

Posted on Aug 30, 2006

via crooksandliars.com

Watch George W. Bush ramble with Brian Williams through a New Orleans neighborhood as he utters a series of incoherent responses to questions from the MSNBC reporter. Listen with amazement as our commander in chief mangles the English language, and speaks nonsensically about the war in Iraq, America’s standing in the world, relationship with his father, and Albert Camus. (via crooksandliars)

Crooks and Liars:
For someone who does not like how the public perceives him, Bush does not help his case any in this interview. Take this little exchange:
WILLIAMS: When you take a tour of the world, a lot of Americans e-mail me with their fears that, some days they just wake up and it just feels like the end of the world is near. And you go from North Korea to Iran, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and you look at how things have changed, how Americans are viewed overseas, if that is important to you. Do you have any moments of doubt that we fought a wrong war? Or that there’s something wrong with the perception of America overseas?
BUSH: Well those are two different questions, did we fight the wrong war, and absolutely — I have no doubt — the war came to our shores, remember that. We had a foreign policy that basically said, let’s hope calm works. And we were attacked.
more
Watch the Clip (crooksandliars)
Full Transcript (MSNBC)

It's amazing that it's been 5 years and they still can't get a consistent answer going on the war and 9/11.

Oil Company CEO Pay Averaged $32.7 Million in 2005, Study Says

Oil Company CEO Pay Averaged $32.7 Million in 2005, Study Says By Vineeta Anand

Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Rising prices and profits translated into pay packages for oil company chief executive officers that are nearly three times the size of similarly sized businesses, a new study from two watchdog groups said.

In 2005, the CEOs of the largest 15 oil companies averaged $32.7 million in compensation, compared with $11.6 million for all large U.S. firms, according to the study, released today by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

Amid reports of multimillion-dollar pay packages, shareholder activists have sponsored resolutions to limit compensation at companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. and Home Depot Inc. In May, three members of the House of Representatives criticized the retirement benefits of former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond and asked the company to fill a gap in its workers' pension fund.

``Instead of lining the pockets of executives, they should be investing the money into new sources of energy that go beyond fossil oils,'' said Sarah Anderson, director of the global economy project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, and a co-author of the study.

Anderson's group researches peace, justice and environmental issues. United for a Fair Economy, a non-profit group based in Boston, tries to raise awareness about the effects of ``concentrated wealth and power,'' according to its web site.

Combined $512.9 Million

Last year, the top executives at the 15 largest oil companies earned a total of $512.9 million, the study said. That figure includes the $95.1 million awarded last year to William Greehey, chief executive officer of Valero Energy Corp., the largest U.S. refiner, took home, including salary, bonuses, restricted stock and exercised stock options. Raymond, who retired in January as chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, the most profitable U.S. company, collected $69.7 million.

Oil executives help manage the bottom lines as well as directing investments in oil and gas as well as fossil fuels, said John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute in Washington.

``They are paying dividends, buying back stock, and managing their businesses well,'' Felmy said. ``Their CEOs should be fairly compensated.''

The groups also examined the pay of defense contractors' chief executives. The top executives at defense contractors and military suppliers have benefited from the boom in government spending since Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq.

As a group, the CEOs of the 34 defense contractors have received total compensation of just under $1 billion since 2002. The highest-paid executive in the group was George David, the chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corp., the maker of Pratt & Whitney jet engines and the Sikorsky helicopters. David received $31.9 million last year, the study said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Vineeta Anand in Washington at vanand1@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: August 30, 2006 00:17 EDT

Link

Yeah, so all the excuses in the world can be made for high gas prices.....the truth is right there. Who knows what we'd be paying for if we didn't have our puppets in the Oil producing world.

Republicans fail to woo top candidates

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 1 hour, 58 minutes ago

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Click on Katherine Harris' Senate campaign Web site and look for the blog.

"This section will be updated soon," reads a message — dated May 29.

A Web site 100 days out of date is hardly the worst of it for Harris, whose political wounds, many of them self-inflicted, make her the poster woman for Senate Republican recruiting woes. Missed opportunities, stumbles and bad breaks in a half-dozen states or more in 2005 have tilted the map toward the Democrats in ways that are still unfolding.

"In every single state where they were challenging one of our incumbents they did not get their first choice and in many cases they did not get their second," said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, head of the Democratic campaign committee.

As a result, he said, "we can spend our time and money challenging their incumbents."

Link to rest of the story

Cassie Campbell retires from Team Canada

Canadian Press

8/30/2006 10:30:04 AM

CALGARY (CP) - Captain Cassie Campbell announced her retirement from the Canadian women's hockey team Wednesday.

The 32-year-old from Brampton, Ont., is the only Canadian hockey player, male or female, to captain a national team to two Olympic gold medals, which she did this year in Turin, Italy, and in 2002 in Salt Lake City.

She has represented Canada in seven world championships and three Olympic Games, winning six world titles and two Olympic gold medals. She has 32 goals and 68 assists in 157 career games for the national team.

Campbell told The Canadian Press in July that she was leaning towards retirement, but wanted to be sure before hanging up her hockey skates.

The five-foot-seven, 150-pound forward made it official in a statement from Hockey Canada.

Link to the rest of the story

One of the all time greats. Had a great career for Canadian National team.

Conan introduces Stewart and Colbert at the Emmys

The Colbert Report - 2006.08.14 - Jon's On Notice

The Comedy Central/Fox News Feud

Jon-Stephen check-in: Stephen's in the studio......or is he?

The Daily Show - 2006.08.09 - Check-in with Stephen Colbert

The Comedy Central/Fox News Feud

The Daily Show - 2006.08.10 - Apologize to Geraldo

The Comedy Central/Fox News Feud

Iran's president calls for TV debate with Bush

Iran's president calls for TV debate with Bush

POSTED: 9:43 p.m. EDT, August 29, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on U.S. President George W. Bush to participate in a "direct television debate with us," so Iran can voice its point of view on how to end problems in the world.

"But the condition is that there can be no censorship, especially for the American nation," he said Tuesday.

The White House called the offer to debate Bush a "diversion" from international concerns over Iran's nuclear program, Reuters reported.

During a news conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad also blamed "special concessions" granted to the United States and Britain as "the root cause of all the problems in the world."

"At the Security Council, where they have to protect security, they enjoy the veto right. If anybody confronts them, there is no place to take complaints to."

His comments came two days before a deadline set by a U.N. Security Council resolution for the Islamic republic to suspend uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions.

Link to rest of the story.

I love world leaders who speak the truth.

Arabic T-shirt Keeps Man off Plane

Posted on Aug 29, 2006

An Iraqi architect at JFK airport was wearing a shirt that read “We Will Not Be Silent” in Arabic and English. Security officers said it was upsetting other passengers, and said he couldn’t board until he turned it inside out or put on something else. He chose the latter. (h/t: Raw Story)

This is pretty ridiculous: if security guards were worried that he was a terrorist, a new shirt wouldn’t have thwarted his plot. And if they didn’t suspect he was a terrorist, why can’t he wear a shirt of protest?

WNYC:

... JARRAR: I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes. and i know that these things happen. But I’m shocked that they happened to me here, in the U.S. Especially that I moved from Iraq because of the war that was waged in Iraq under titles like democracy and freedom.

Link

Credit once again to Truth Dig.

Bush On Katrina One Year Later: "It's Amazing"...

Bush On Katrina One Year Later: "It's Amazing"...

The New York Times | ANNE E. KORNBLUT and DAVID STOUT | Posted August 28, 2006 09:55 PM

AP

On the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush returned to the devastated Gulf Coast today promising to continue federal assistance, and eagerly pointing out signs of progress.

"It's amazing, isn't?" he told a gathering under a sweltering sun. "It's amazing what the world looked like then and what it looks like now"...

... Mr. Bush delivered his remarks at an intersection in a working-class Biloxi neighborhood against a carefully orchestrated backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. Just a few feet out of camera range stood gutted houses with wires dangling from interior ceilings. A tattered piece of crime scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet seat lay on its side in the grass.

Mr. Bush praised the optimism and grit of the people of Mississippi, and he reaffirmed his belief in neighborly cooperation as well as government help. "A year ago, I committed our federal government to help you," he said. "I said we have a duty to help the local people recover and rebuild. I meant what I said."

Link to rest of the Article.

Holding critical of 'first-world hypocrisy'

Former player extends support to Inzamam

Holding critical of 'first-world hypocrisy'

Cricinfo staff

August 28, 2006

Inzamam's disciplinary hearing is scheduled for the end of September and Michael Holding feels that stating cricket laws as absolute is pointless. Every law has room for flexibility © AFP

Michael Holding, the former West Indies fast bowler, lent his support to Inzamam-ul-Haq, saying that Darrell Hair was "insensitive" to have penalised Pakistan for ball-tampering.

"I have absolute and all sympathy with [Pakistan captain] Inzamam-ul Haq. If you label someone a cheat, please arrive with the evidence," Holding wrote in India Today, a leading weekly news magazine. Holding felt that most umpires would have said something to the fielding captain and given the offending team a warning of some kind. "Then if the tampering continued, they would have been totally justified in taking action.

"There is a double standard at work in cricket and this episode has only highlighted it. When England used reverse-swing to beat the Australians in the 2005 Ashes, everyone said it was great skill. When Pakistan does it, the opposite happens, no one thinks it is great skill. Everyone associates it with skullduggery.

"When bombs go off in Karachi and Colombo everyone wants to go home. When bombs go off in London, no one says anything. That is first-world hypocrisy and we have to live with it."

Holding said that seeing the cricketing law as the absolute and final truth was pointless. Every law, he wrote, has room for flexibility. "I read a prime example recently in the British press. It said that by law, you can be fined for parking within the yellow lines in England. If you do that to run into a chemist to buy emergency medicines, a sensible policeman would more than likely tell you about the law but it's unlikely a ticket would be forthcoming."

The executive board of the ICC is scheduled to meet on September 2 in Dubai to discuss the ball-tampering issue further. Inzamam's disciplinary hearing for Pakistan's actions of ball-tampering and bringing the game into disrepute in the fourth Test against England at The Oval will take place around the end of September.

© Cricinfo

Link

Cheney Chooses Chief Propagator of False Iraq-9/11 Link To Be Official Biographer

Cheney Chooses Chief Propagator of False Iraq-9/11 Link To Be Official Biographer

Vice President Cheney — “the man running the country” — is now working on an official biography.

But don’t hold out any hope that the biography will offer any revealing insight into “Dick Cheney’s dark, secretive mind-set.” The author of the book, according to U.S. News, will be Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes:

We hear that the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes is hot on the case and plans to publish a bio titled, naturally enough, Cheney as early as next spring. “I’m not a historian,” Hayes fesses up.

No, Hayes is not a historian. What are his qualifications? He’s a journalist who has cultivated close ties within the White House and has become the go-to source for insiders seeking to peddle false claims on Iraq. Here are some highlights of Hayes’ record:

1. This January, Cheney was asked by then-Fox News radio host Tony Snow, “Were there links to — between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?” Cheney answered, “Well, I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections.” Hayes wrote an article entitled “Dick Cheney Was Right” about the Vice President’s effort to connect Saddam to 9/11. But even President Bush said most recently that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11.

2. In 2003, Hayes declared “case closed” in an article purporting to show the links between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cheney recommeneded it to the Rocky Mountain news as the premier source of information on the issue. (”[Y]ou ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago…That’s your best source of information.”) Hayes relied on a classified Defense Department memo produced by Douglas Feith. The Defense Department shot down Hayes’ article, stating the Feith memo was “not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”

Each and every one of Hayes’ attempts to link Iraq to 9/11 have been thoroughly discredited, but he continues to push the argument. It’s quite fitting that Cheney chose him to be his official biographer.

Link

Why is a sitting Veep working on his own biography?

George Allen Loves Black People

I like how this picture can now be found on the front page of George Allen's Campaign Website.

9/11 Attacks not on Bin Laden's FBI Most Wanted Notice?

Bin Laden, Most Wanted For Embassy Bombings?

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a longtime and prominent member of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, which notes his role as the suspected mastermind of the deadly U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998.

But another more infamous date -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- is nowhere to be found on the same FBI notice.

The curious omission underscores the Justice Department's decision, so far, to not seek formal criminal charges against bin Laden for approving al-Qaeda's most notorious and successful terrorist attack. The notice says bin Laden is "a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world" but does not provide details.

The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11 reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain.

The Rest of the article can be found here.

Anti-pork bill held up in secret

Anti-pork bill held up in secret

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- The big mystery in Washington this summer is the identity of the lawmaker who put a secret hold on a sunshine bill aimed at stemming pork-barrel spending.

Efforts to smoke out the obstructer is taking place on a Web site called Porkbusters.org, which so far has cleared about a quarter of the Senate from suspicion, the Washington Times reports.

The measure being held up would create a searchable database allowing any interested party to see the name and amount of every federal grant, contract or award of $25,000 or more.

Blogs on both sides of the political spectrum are demanding action on the bill, which is in limbo because of a hold order.

Holds are an unofficial part of Senate parliamentary tradition that allow a single senator to block a measure anonymously.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has promised to try to win passage of the measure when Congress returns from its break next month.

Link

This database actually becoming a reality would really shock me. Not that it will matter as nobody will bother to follow up on it anyways.