Kristof
Ashcroft's at it again... Can't let Oregon be Oregon. Kristof has a good piece today on the Death With Dignity law...

Choosing Death

John Ashcroft and other members of the Christian right have desperately tried to eviscerate Oregon's Death With Dignity law, on the ground that it undermines the sanctity of life...

My hunch is that the right to die will become a hotter issue over the next decade or two as baby boomers confront their own mortality. Boomers have transformed every stage of life they've passed through, and they will surely transform our way of death as well.

That's what Oregon is now pioneering. I'm an Oregonian myself, and like most people here I was ambivalent when the law was first proposed as a ballot measure in 1994. Opponents argued that the terminally ill would feel pressure to commit suicide so they wouldn't be a burden to family members.

That seemed a reasonable argument at the time, but such abuses do not appear to have occurred. Oregonians seem increasingly content with the experiment — partly because of its limited scale. The most recent figures, from February 2003, showed that at least 171 people had hastened their deaths since the law took effect in 1997 (although many with terminal illnesses start the process by getting a lethal prescription so they have the option if they want it).

All in all, the Oregon law has provided the world with a model for how to offer dying people a real choice about how they should bid farewell to the world...

Mr. Ashcroft and other critics have so far lost in their efforts, in the courts and in Congress, to block the Oregon law. But instead of moving on and letting Oregon proceed with its pathbreaking experiment, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on Monday for a new hearing.

The Oregon law deserves to be upheld. It forces us to examine the question of what is special about human life. The answer, I think, is the autonomy and dignity inherent in our individuality — in making hard decisions for ourselves and determining our own destinies. Oregon honors that vision of what is sacred about life.

Caption Contest


What is Pat Boone gesturing? What is Santorum thinking?
Best one gets the steamy Santorum on Boone photos taken prior to the press conference.

Oh, and I'll get the "Santorum's dick is this big" outta the way now. It's not anyway, according to my dog.

That's happened to me before...

apart from whether the Filipino withdrawal is a good thing, I found this line on CNN.com kind of funny.

• Video: The premature Philippines' pullout

How To Free A Hostage
Interesting article in Time. Here's just a schnibit:

A bewildering variety of groups — some seeking money, some pushing a terrorist agenda — have kidnapped dozens of foreigners since the end of the war last year. The hostages then become commodities in a deadly human trade that links street gangs to local mafias to insurgents like Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda — linked jihadi thought to be behind many of the recent terrorist attacks in Iraq. Victims are sold up the chain, and each handler scores thousands of dollars, money used to finance gun running, drug smuggling and the insurgency...

The West generally is aware of only kidnappings that are politically motivated, like the abduction and subsequent beheading of American businessman Nick Berg. But the practice is far more common, and the kidnappers — the men who initially seize the innocents — are often petty criminals. "Those who take the hostages are not sophisticated," says Andrew White, director of the Iraqi Center for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Peace. "They're thugs, gangsters."

The best hope for springing a hostage comes at the initial stage. Groups like White's contact mosques, tribal leaders, militias and even former intelligence agents in search of news about the victim. Because the low-level gangs are after cash, a quick payout might free the hostage before he is "sold up" to groups with less easily deciphered, deadlier agendas. Such deals can be lucrative: prices paid range from $10,000 to $100,000, according to White, with U.S. soldiers fetching the highest rate.

Daily Mislead

BUSH MISLEADS ABOUT RACE RELATIONS

In 2000, Presidential candidate George W. Bush courageously chastised his own conservative colleagues saying "while some in my party have avoided the NAACP, and while some in the NAACP have avoided my party, I'm proud to be here...I believe we can find common ground." [SOURCE: Bush Speech, 7/10/2000] But after refusing to speak at yesterday's NAACP's annual convention, President Bush became the first President since Herbert Hoover not to attend an NAACP convention.[1]

According to NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP "has reached out to Bush numerous times in hopes of meeting with him,"[2] but the President never responded to the NAACP. Instead, the President chose to mark key civil rights holidays with racially-insensitive announcements and behavior. For instance, last year, the President chose the Martin Luther King holiday to announce the Administration's stance against affirmative action.[3] This year, the President used the same holiday to unilaterally elevate Charles Pickering to the federal appellate bench[4] in the face of what Mfume noted was "Pickering's hostility to civil rights and leniency to cross burners."[5] This year he also used a visit to Martin Luther King's grave to force taxpayers to foot the travel costs for a $2,000-a-plate political fundraiser in Atlanta, Georgia.[6]

Big Fat Liar

Moore has provided even more facts and sources (6 pages) to back up F 9/11 here.

Calling all terrorists

Link

American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call "alarming" intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The prospect that Al Qaeda might seek to disrupt the U.S. election was a major factor behind last week's terror warning by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections—as well as intercepted "chatter" among Qaeda operatives—has led analysts to conclude "they want to interfere with the elections," says one official.

Did you get that, Osama? I know we've been ignoring you lately, but you could effect the elections. We're not trying to give you any ideas or anything, but if you want to attack, we might suspend the elections and declare martial law. You got that? Good.

Out-FOXed

The new documentary on the Fox News Channel was released in New York. Check out a trailer here.

Grow-the-fuck-up
I read this earlier on Atrios:

The global increase in HIV infection rates has been cited as "one of the greatest threats to U.S. and global security."

Yet the Bush administration has cut the number of US representatives to the international AIDS conference in Bangkok Sunday by 75% because poor Tommy Thompson was heckled last year:

The U.S. government will send only one-quarter as many people to the huge international AIDS conference starting Sunday in Bangkok as it sent to the last one in Barcelona.

The decision to cut attendance, which comes as the Bush administration is rolling out its five-year, $15 billion global AIDS treatment plan, was reached long after many government scientists had made plans to attend the conference, which is held every two years. Dozens of scientific presentations were withdrawn, about 50 will be published only as summaries and not presented publicly, and dozens of meetings -- many designed to train Third World AIDS researchers and foster international collaboration -- were canceled.

The move, which officials say is to save money, is interpreted by many AIDS experts as payback for the heckling of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson at the last AIDS conference and further evidence of a "go-it-alone" attitude in the administration's global AIDS program.

And now I just read this on my yahoo...

Bush to Skip NAACP Meeting Due to Hostile Comments
KUTZTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - President Bush has decided not to speak to the country's largest civil rights group, the White House said on Friday, citing openly hostile comments by its leaders about the president.

The White House initially attributed Bush's decision not to accept the invitation to speak at the NAACP annual convention to a scheduling conflict. The convention opens on Saturday in Philadelphia.

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with Bush on a campaign bus trip through Pennsylvania cited "hostile political rhetoric about the president" from the group's leaders.

Besides the obvious "we can't handle criticism" attitude, does anyone else notice a trend in the above two articles????

"Nice putt.....and it's par for the course!"

The Bush Administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to capture Bin Laden or other High Value Targets. Well, finally, that's good news, right?

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November.....Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election.

What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections."

Desperation? Pinning your election hopes on the Pakistani Army doesn't sound like a solid plan, but once again the Bushies concentrate more on political appearance than on policy itself.

SHOCKING!!!!!
No wait, not shocking... shocking for the Bushies would be disclosing something of real value.

Pentagon: Bush Military Records Destroyed
WASHINGTON - Military payroll records that could more fully document President Bush's whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air National Guard were inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon

In a letter responding to a freedom of information request by The Associated Press, the Defense Department said that microfilm containing the pertinent National Guard payroll records was damaged and could not be salvaged. The damaged material included payroll records for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.

"President Bush's payroll records for those two quarters were among the records destroyed," wrote C.Y. Talbott, of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information and Security Review section. "Searches for back-up paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful."

Fuck for Forest
Here's a new approach...

The environmental activists who claim they had sex on stage at a live music festival in Norway this week to help protect the world's rain forests say they won't pay fines doled out by police. That means the case will likely head for court...

Ellingsen claims the couple performed the surprise sex stunt during a set by the controversial band The Cumshots "actually to draw attention to the rain forests, which are in the process of disappearing."

The couple also runs a porno web site called "Fuck for Forest," which offers pornographic photos for money that they claim they donate to rain forest preservation groups. " We're idealists, call us 'environmental radicals,'" Ellingsen said. "Porn is just a means of reaching our goals."

They definitely get the thinking outside of the box award (as well as fucking outside of the box.)

Ri-god-damn-diculous

The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.

The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for about 20 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

"Shame, shame, shame," Democrats chanted as the minutes passed and votes were switched. The tactic was reminiscent of last year's House passage of the Medicare overhaul measure, when GOP leaders held the vote open for an extra three hours until they got the votes they needed.

Interesting strategy. Maybe the Blazers could adopt a similar tactic and just keep extending the game until they get enough points to win.

Like clockwork

On the first full news day of the indictment of Bush's single largest campaign contributor... surprise, surprise... a new blanket terror alert, warning of a large-scale attack.

This is getting rifuckingdiculous.

Larry Flynt v. The People in Charge

Link.

The hustler's new book accuses the president of paying for an illegal abortion, the press of lying down on the job and Ann Coulter of being a "fag hag."

Worth watching a brief commercial on Salon to read the article.

Remember ANWR?
Well the Bushies hope you don't. Bruce Babbit, the Interior Secretary under Clinton, writes about more underhanded, under the radar behavior by the White House.

BARROW, Alaska — Thwarted by the public in its efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, the Bush administration and the oil companies are now quietly turning their attention to the balance of the Arctic region of Alaska, all the way west to the Chukchi Sea, within sight of Siberia. In advance of its efforts, the administration has jettisoned environmental safeguards and is now threatening the traditional-use rights of the Alaska Natives who have hunted caribou and waterfowl along the Arctic slope for thousands of years.

This plan was announced in Anchorage just as Congress recessed for the Reagan funeral. Outside Alaska it has received little notice, not even for its centerpiece — a proposal to lease rights for oil and gas development in Teshekpuk Lake, a body of water that is vital to the region. This shallow lake, which is about 30 miles across, is the biological heart of the western Arctic, the summer nesting and breeding ground for hundreds of thousands of black brant, spectacled eider, yellow-billed loons, white-fronted geese and other migratory birds that arrive here each year from 32 of the lower 48 states as well as countries as far south as Argentina.

The lake, however, isn't just for the birds. It is also a critically important subsistence area for the indigenous Inupiat communities on the Arctic slope. They go there to hunt and fish for food to sustain them through the long, dark winters...

In 1998 the Clinton administration took the first steps to open the reserve with a two-year study involving hundreds of scientists and representatives of the Inupiat communities. Two years later the scientific teams returned with a recommendation to begin oil leasing, with stipulations for setting aside approximately 13 percent of the study area, mostly rivers and lakes, including Teshekpuk, as protected areas. They also recommended a ban on permanent roads across the fragile tundra, based upon assurances from the oil companies that they could operate with temporary winter "ice roads" that would simply melt away as summer approached and waterfowl and migratory caribou began congregating at the lake.

The Bush administration now proposes to eliminate these safeguards intended to protect the lake, the wildlife and the Inupiat who depend on it. The decision is not yet final. During the summer there will be hearings in Anchorage and Washington. Then, Interior Secretary Gale Norton is expected to make a decision. In this land of endless summer days, there are bound to be a lot of sleepless nights.

Gale Norton's makin' the call? Bye Bye Inupiat...

Can you believe the nerve of Kerry?

Matthew Dowd:

What the choice says, Mr. Dowd added, is that Mr. Kerry was "reduced to picking someone who would help him win the election"

What's next? Campaigning like he wants to win. Unbelievable.

Portland in Top 10

The World’s Greenest Cities

Seventy-five percent of world energy consumption happens in cities, says Energe-Cites, a France-based organization, which acts as the voice of some 100 European cities committed to sustainable practices. This means that urban areas present rich opportunities for energy conservation. Indeed, a growing number of cities around the world are pursuing eco-friendly strategies. The 10 cities mentioned below are unique because of their innovative approaches to green energy usage.

Portland, Oregon, USA
While renewables now provide only about 10% of its electric load, this Pacific Northwest city (population: roughly 0.5 million people) has set its sights on an ambitious goal—to get 100% of its energy from renewables by 2010. As part of that effort, it depends on solar energy to power its parking meters. What’s more, it also employs fuel cells powered by waste methane, a micro hydro facility located in its drinking water system, and microturbines propelled by waste methane.

Other cities in top ten are: Vancouver, Canada; Chicago, IL, USA; Reykjavik, Iceland; Sacramento, CA, USA; Barcelona, Spain; Malmo, Sweden; Austin, Texas, USA; Freiburg, Germany; Sydney, Australia

John Grisham Novel?

No, John Edwards' life...

Courtesy of Atrios:

The defining case in Edwards' legal career wrapped up that same year. In 1993, a five-year-old girl named Valerie Lakey had been playing in a Wake County, N.C., wading pool when she became caught in an uncovered drain so forcefully that the suction pulled out most of her intestines. She survived but for the rest of her life will need to be hooked up to feeding tubes for 12 hours each night. Edwards filed suit on the Lakeys' behalf against Sta-Rite Industries, the Wisconsin corporation that manufactured the drain. Attorneys describe his handling of the case as a virtuoso example of a trial layer bringing a negligent corporation to heel. Sta-Rite offered the Lakeys $100,000 to settle the case. Edwards passed. Before trial, he discovered that 12 other children had suffered similar injuries from Sta-Rite drains. The company raised its offer to $1.25 million. Two weeks into the trial, they upped the figure to $8.5 million. Edwards declined the offer and asked for their insurance policy limit of $22.5 million. The day before the trial resumed from Christmas break, Sta-Rite countered with $17.5 million. Again, Edwards said no. On January 10, 1997, lawyers from across the state packed the courtroom to hear Edwards' closing argument, "the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen," recalls Dayton. Three days later, the jury found Sta-Rite guilty and liable for $25 million in economic damages (by state law, punitive damages could have tripled that amount). The company immediately settled for $25 million, the largest verdict in state history. For their part, Edwards and Kirby earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's national award for public service.

Freedomship

Ashcroft's ideal democracy...
Link

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi government issued a long-anticipated package of security laws Wednesday to help crush insurgents, including a provision allowing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to impose martial law...

The new laws give Allawi the right to impose curfews, to conduct search operations and detain individuals with weapons, once he receives unanimous approval from the Presidential Council. They also give him the right to assign governors, including military leaders, in specific areas, and they empower him to freeze the assets of suspects and monitor their communications.

The Environmental President...

Bush Team Pushes Huge Timber Sale Under Guise of Fire Protection
Under the guise of preventing forest fires, the Bush administration is planning the biggest timber sale on public lands in modern history. The Biscuit Project would allow logging of 372 million board feet of timber across 30 square miles of southwest Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest—enough timber to fill 70,000 logging trucks. The logging would be done on wildlands of uncommon beauty and ecological diversity, far from any community that could be damaged in a fire.

"It's the biggest logging sale since World War II," says Steve Holmer, communications director with the Unified Forest Defense Campaign, a coalition of national and regional conservation organizations. "Timber companies have made huge contributions to the Bush campaign. This project is political payback."

Holmer tells BushGreenwatch that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) initially proposed a much smaller project. "When the Forest Service first started looking at the area, they planned maybe a 100 million board feet sale." That changed once Mark Rey, formerly a top lobbyist for the timber industry who is now the administration's undersecretary for natural resources and environment in the Department of Agriculture, began to work on the sale.

And par for the course...
Forest Service delays release of fire salvage project records

Iraqi Political & Militia Groups.

Via Juan Cole. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has compiled a list of political and armed groups now operating in Iraq. Part 1. Part 2. Militias/Armed groups.

Chicks Dig the Edwards

If Mrs. Winger's opinion is shared, they sure do. Hell, I'm pretty attracted to the guy. I'm fine with that. Great choice though.

Only In Oregon

The Oregonian has three stories today about beavers, and only one is actually about beavers.

Beavers win with strong effort by Knott, Guzman, Oxspring

Beavers rebound, strengthen habitat

Bullpen is Beavers' biggest concern

Can you guess which one?

This is your president, re-mix

DJ Waingroh felt vibrant and confident to give yesterday's Bush speech a quick little touchup. It's in mp3 format, so that's good news, idn't it? particularly is you somebody who has an mp3 player.

Right click to download Confi-Dense.mp3

This is your President

Link Go watch the video too, it's even better with his commanding oration.

I was pleased to see that consumer confidence is at a two-year high. That's an indication that the economy is strong, and getting better. When people are confident, they tend to be a part of the decision-making process amongst millions of deciders that say the future is going to be better.

Oh, ok. Confidence is good. Especially amongst the deciders.

Real after-tax incomes are up 11 percent since December of 2000. To me, that's a vital statistic. Real after-tax incomes -- that means that the amount of money in somebody's wallet is increasing. That's what we want to hear, isn't it; particularly is you're somebody who has got a wallet.

Wow, look out Adam Smith.

That is good news though, because I is someone who has got a wallet.

No wonder they're scared

Link.

"Fahrenheit 9/11," a left-sided documentary that bashes the Bush administration's war on terrorism, wouldn't find much of an audience in a military town.

Or so they thought.

"This has broken all of our past records," said Nasim Kuenzel, an owner of the Cameo Art House Theatre. "The movie that I thought would make us hardly any money - I never thought it would break all the records."

Note: this is in Fayetteville, N.C.

Village Idiots

First Ashcroft's "Let the Eeeeeeeeeeagles soar", now Colin gives us his own special soundtrack to Iraq. Interesting he chose the construction worker, I woulda thought the Army guy in assless pants much more appropriate.

Idiot.

Interesting...

Matthew Yglesias over at tapped points to a report in the WaPo that K Street firms are hedging their bets in this election by hiring more Democrats. Not overwhelming, but just another reason to be optimistic and keep fighting.

Krugman on F9/11
Link

Mr. Bush's carefully constructed persona is that of an all-American regular guy — not like his suspiciously cosmopolitan opponent, with his patrician air. The news media have cheerfully gone along with the pretense. How many stories have you seen contrasting John Kerry's upper-crusty vacation on Nantucket with Mr. Bush's down-home time at the ranch?

But the reality, revealed by Mr. Moore, is that Mr. Bush has always lived in a bubble of privilege. And his family, far from consisting of regular folks with deep roots in the heartland, is deeply enmeshed, financially and personally, with foreign elites — with the Saudis in particular.

Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives.

In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.

Spy-der-Man

Check out this flash animation about Ashcroft from the Alliance for Justice.

Stars & Stripes no more

Check out the new flag.

'Penetrating' Fox News...

Where's the FCC on this one???



Apparently boobs are offensive and must be covered up (just ask Mr. Asscroft), but a big penis in the center of the screen is A-okay.

MJSMITHO has the video

Whoa Dowd!

Has Maureen Dowd always been this cool?

This Guy is Not a Journalist

Drudge has a report that Hillary will be named the VP candidate, and he has an anonymous "insider, one of the most influential and well-placed in the nation's capital" to tell the story.

I'm not opposed at all to Hillary as VP, I haven't really thought about it. But this "insider" is so obviously a Republican hack pretending to be a Democratic insider, it's just laughable. Go check it out.

Insurgents

Time has a pretty good article on the insurgents here. The thing I don't buy is that they all went from being Saddam loyalists to all being radical jihadists loyal to Zarqawi. I'm sure that once Saddam was captured, the insurgents loyal to him could have become more fundamentalist. But there have been all types of insurgents from the very beginning, especially nationalist ones, as evidenced by Sadr's recent uprising. I don't see why insurgents have to be portrayed as religious radicals or Saddam "dead enders", when, quite obviously, they are all fighting for one thing. The expulsion of US troops and control of their future. I guess it makes it easier to hate them if they're all extremists and psychos.

Shocker

Iraq worse off.

In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday.

Get your Bush on

There's a new get your war on cartoon hot off the presses.

Yankee Fans
So I may not like the Yankees, but their fans are pretty smart...

link:

Cheney, who visited both clubhouses after batting practice, watched part of the game from the box of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and part from a first-row seat next to the Yankees dugout, where he sat between New York Gov. George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Cheney was booed when he was shown on the right-field videoboard during the seventh-inning stretch.

If people at Z-Net feel this way...

Why can't the Naderites? Norman Solomon.

This morning I mailed a form changing my party registration from “decline to state” to the Green Party. It’s a tiny individual step in response to a hugely important collective action -- the party’s decision at its national convention to nominate David Cobb for president.

A majority of the delegates went for a candidate who relied on grassroots organizing and respectful debate. Cobb won the nomination after proving his capacity to engage in substantive dialogue with Green Party activists and other progressives. Without that capacity, he probably wouldn’t have ended up taking his position in favor of a “safe states” approach to this year’s presidential race.

How thoroughly Cobb and his running mate Pat LaMarche will implement such a strategy remains to be seen. Hopefully, history will record that in 2004 the Green ticket boosted the party’s strength among progressives nationwide while making common cause with the wide array of movements determined to prevent a victory for the Bush-Cheney gang on Election Day.

As a practical matter, ending the George W. Bush presidency on November 2 will require sufficient votes for John Kerry in most of the 20 or so swing states: Oregon and Washington; Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado; Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Delaware; New Hampshire and Maine; West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana; and, of course, Florida.

(Since I live in California, where Kerry is running 12 to 15 points ahead of Bush, I’m safely voting for Cobb. But if I lived in one of the 20 closely fought swing states, I’d vote for Kerry.)

With the swing states all too close for comfort, activists should be emphatic that the Green Party’s presidential campaign this year ought to concentrate its efforts on “safe states” -- where the Bush-Kerry race isn’t close.

The Green Party should not be at cross-purposes with the progressive movements struggling to end the Bush presidency. People in those movements will long remember, for good or ill, how the Green Party conducts itself between now and the day that seals the fate of the Bush White House.

One of the potential key benefits of Cobb’s nomination is that he seems genuinely interested in hearing -- and being responsive to -- grassroots activists. This is a refreshing and vital departure for a Green Party presidential nominee. So, more than ever, it’s time for activists to speak up.

If strategic thinking prevails, the possibility exists that the Green Party in 2004 will strengthen itself from the bottom up while also providing tangible solidarity in the national effort to defeat Bush. If the Green Party proves equal to this momentous task, it could open up new possibilities for the years and decades ahead.

Why it Won't be close

Steve explains.
Update: I found more reasons too.

Well...

Remember when Abu Gharib's name was going to be changed? Sometimes it looks like these clowns have excellent discipline, and other times it's like they're deranged. While the press just sits idly by, reporting all their claims, questioning none.

Best Buddies

Angry Chirac puts Bush in his place

Jacques Chirac bluntly told George Bush to mind his own business yesterday when the US president urged European leaders to give Turkey a firm date for starting EU membership talks later this year.

Ignoring the determined effort to celebrate improved transatlantic relations after the Iraq crisis, the French president publicly rebuked Mr Bush at Nato's Istanbul summit for calling for special treatment for the Turks.

Mr Bush, he complained, "not only went too far but went on to territory which is not his own".

He added: "It's as if I was advising the US on how they should manage their relations with Mexico."

As he was speaking, Tony Blair and Mr Bush were asked about their current relationship with France and Germany, the key Nato critics of their Iraq war policy.

Mr Blair said: "There's no point ... in saying all the previous disagreements have disappeared; they have not."

I imagine it went something like this...

Prez Bush: I call on all of Europe to use your stratedgery and expand European Union freedomship to Turkey.

Reporter: Pres. Bush, Who is currently in the European Union?

Bush: You'll..Won't...Initi... Europe!

Reporter: But President Bush...

Bush: Will you let me finish?(snicker)It's a different world, 9/11, terror, so we must give Turkey a tax cut... uh...I mean, freedomship.

Ha Ha, Fooled You!

Iraq Formally Returns to Self-Rule*** Two Days Early

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days earlier than expected Monday, aiming to forestall guerrilla attacks with a secretive ceremony formally ending 14 months of occupation...

The low-key ceremony was over before it was announced and came as a surprise to ordinary Iraqis. Its hurried and secret nature appeared to reflect fears that guerrillas could stage a spectacular attack on the scheduled date of June 30.

***by self-rule, we mean you can do anything you choose, as long as we say you can.

Asshole

This is how low Nader has sunk, attacking his "old buddy's" physical appearance.

Link
Hey, Michael, Where Were Your Friends?

Once upon a time, there was Michael Moore the First. He never forgot his friends. Come time for the Washington, DC premiere of Bowling for Columbine a while back, he invited his old buddies in Washington—gave them good seats and spent the rest of the evening with them. During his other movie's premiere, he affectionately recognized how much those old friends helped him and supported him after he was mistreated and let go by Mother Jones. He was generous with his words and time.

Now there is Michael Moore the Second. Last night he hosted the Washington, DC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and who was there? The Democratic political establishment, the same people whom he took to such mocking task on the road with us in campaign rally after campaign rally in 2000. Who was not there? His old buddies! Not personally invited, not personally hung out with.

A few weeks ago, Michael, I sent you a message: "Hey, Dude, where's my Buddy?" It is attached. It has gone without reply. It simply asked you to come back to your progressive constituency and take on the two-party monopoly of our rigged election system—to challenge the pro-warlike, corporate party with two heads, wearing different makeup when it comes to playing toady for Big Business. These are the giant multinationals who have no allegiance to our country or to communities like Flint except to control, deplete or abandon them. It is not that your views have changed, with an exception or two. It is that your circles have changed. Too much Clinton, not enough Camejo.

Your old friends remain committed to blazing paths for a just society and world. As they helped you years ago, they can help you now. They are also trim and take care of themselves. Girth they avoid. The more you let them see you, the less they will see of you. That could be their greatest gift to Moore the Second—the gift of health. What say you?

Best wishes,

Ralph Nader

Well, I guess he's learned some new rhetoric from his new Republican friends.

Coming Home to Roost

As Bush Confers With NATO, U.S. Is Seen Losing Its Edge

The Bush Administration made its failed plans based on US military superiority, negating American moral superiority. Unfounded or not, that moral superiority is gone for good.

Ludis' Open Letter to Ralph Nader
cc: All Nader Suppoters

Dear Ralph,

Go fuck yourself.

F 9/11

Saw the movie last night, and have been thinking about writing about it, but by thoughts aren't quite organized yet. So here it goes:

Go and see it. It is an amazing film.

Pessimism

You gotta go see the newest Bush web ad. I don't even know what to say.

It's what's for dinner

click
here for free music downloads

Feeling the heat!
First Cheney tells Leahy to fuck himself, then on the day when over 100 people die in Iraq, Bush says the world is safer with Saddam out of power and gets super pissy with the reporter. We need more reporters like this woman.

To see the video click here

Excerpts:

Coleman: "The world is a more dangerous place today."

Bush: "Why do you say that? . . . "

Coleman: "I think there is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place because you have taken the focus off Al Qaeda and diverted into Iraq. Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place? I saw four of your soldiers lying dead, on the television, the other day. . . . "

Bush: "You know, listen, nobody cares more about the death than I do.

Coleman: "Is there a point at which --

Bush: "Let me finish. Please, please, let me finish, then you can follow up, if you don't mind. Nobody cares more about the deaths than I do. I care about it a lot. But I do believe that the world is a safer place, and becoming a safer place. . . .

"People join terrorist organizations because there's no hope and there's no chance to raise their families in a peaceful world where there is not freedom . . . so the idea is to promote freedom and at the same time protect our security."

Actual reporting?

Ron Fournier unexpectedly treats us to a modicum of journalism.

Bush is not the first president to hold his own in polls while events tumble against him. "It takes a lot to vote a president out of office," Kohut said. "There's a tendency to stay the course."

That may be the only thing keeping Bush afloat amid a raft of bad news, much of it his own making. The lowlights include:

-- Bush delivers a State of the Union address, with his opposition to performance-enhancing drugs in sports standing out against a bleak roster of new policies.

-- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, in a book by Ron Suskind, says Bush was determined from the get-go to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

-- The president's shaky performance on NBC's "Meet the Press" fuels anxiety among GOP allies about Iraq and the fledgling re-election campaign.

-- Richard Clarke, the top counterterrorism official for Presidents Clinton and Bush, undercuts the president's tough-on-terrorism claims during congressional testimony.

-- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice at first refuses to testify before the Sept. 11 commission, then bows to pressure.

-- Bush's economic adviser, N. Gregory Mankiw, says the transfer of U.S. jobs overseas is sometimes a good thing.

-- Bush scuttles plans to name Anthony Raimondo as manufacturing czar after Democrats point out that the businessman's company laid off 75 workers in 2002 while announcing the construction a $3 million plant in China.

-- The death toll in Iraq mounts through the spring as Republican governors, busy attending funerals of slain servicemen and shipping National Guard troops overseas, warn the White House that voters are getting antsy.

-- Four U.S. contractors are killed and mutilated near Baghdad.

-- Train bombers strike Madrid. Voters throw the Bush-backing Spanish government out of power. Spain later withdraws its troops from Iraq.

-- Vice President Dick Cheney comes under fire for past business ties, secretive deliberations on energy policy and unsubstantiated suggestions that his office might be behind the leak of a CIA operative's name.

-- U.S. weapons inspector David Kay concludes that Iraq did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons, undercutting Bush's main justification for war.

-- Democrats unite behind Kerry after a short nomination fight, allowing him to raise record amounts of money and turn quickly against Bush.

-- Democratic lawmakers call for an investigation into whether the Bush administration's Medicare chief pressured a subordinate to withhold estimates of the cost of last year's Medicare legislation.

-- Clarke follows his testimony with a book claiming Bush was so preoccupied with Iraq both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks that he failed to effectively confront threats from al-Qaida.

-- Gas prices top $2 per gallon.

-- Revelations that U.S. soldiers abused prisoners in Iraq fuel anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world and raise questions at home about U.S. moral authority in Iraq.

-- Militants linked to al-Qaida behead American Nicholas Berg.

-- The leader of Iraqi's governing council is assassinated.

-- A memo reveals plans for the Bush administration to slash domestic programs after the Nov. 2 presidential election.

-- Al-Qaida militants in Saudi Arabia behead American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr.

-- Militants in Iraq behead South Korean Kim Sun-il.

-- Insurgents launched coordinated attacks that kills more than 100 people, including three U.S. soldiers.

With a list that long, it's no wonder the public needs infotainment.

Daily Line

Bush is going to Turkey next week, I'm putting $20 down that he makes a "surprise visit" to Iraq on the 4th of July.

F-911

Joel Siegel just reviewed the movie for Good Morning America, calling it in part reprehensible and propaganda. As a reviewer he defended the Bushies by calling into account Moore's questionable use of the facts, but used no facts of his own. He's also picked up on the meme that although a good piece of movie making "it's not a documentary." That's right, documentaries never take a position.

The fact that the movie got a bad review doesn't bother me at all, I could care less. What bothers me is that fear of the Administration Thugs have turned pussy movie reviewers into partisan attack dogs.

For those of us in Portland

Courtesy of Kos

This Saturday, there will be a convention in Portland, Oregon to attempt to place Ralph Nader on the Oregon ballot. They will need 1,000 registered voters for his name to be on the November ballot and an independent. A few months ago, they attempted but came up short.

I am a Democrat who, a short while ago, gave my email address and phone number to the local Republican party to receive updates on what they were up to. Today I received a phone call from the local Republican party asking me if I wanted to go the Nader convention. They explained the need to get Nader on the ballot to help President Bush. The name on the caller ID on my phone said ?Bush Cheney? implying that they were calling from the Oregon Bush Cheney headquarters.

He goes on to post the phone script here.

UPDATE: 6/25 9:30am

Nader getting support from unlikely voters
Groups allied with President Bush are encouraging their conservative members to do the seemingly unthinkable: attend a convention Saturday to help put left-leaning independent candidate Ralph Nader on the Oregon presidential ballot.

The groups -- with the encouragement of some Republican political operatives -- are telling their members that Nader would draw votes from Democrat Sen. John Kerry and boost Bush's chances of winning Oregon...

Officials from two groups that have been calling members -- the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy -- said they had no qualms about trying to help Nader despite opposing most of what he stands for.

Nope, they really did take Telfair

Blazers GM John Nash has been known to have a lot of luck drafting gems in the NBA draft. He's going to need all of that luck after spending the #13 pick on Sebastian Telfair, an undersized point guard who can't shoot and can't defend. Hmmmm...

Dick's getting pissed!

Cheney curses senator over Halliburton criticism
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year's Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used a profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was on the receiving end of Cheney's ire, confirmed that the Vice President used profanity during Tuesday's class photo...

Using profanity on the Senate floor while the Senate is session is against the rules. But the Senate was technically not in session at the time and the normal rules did not apply, a Senate official said.

The story, which was recounted by several sources, goes like this:

Cheney, who as president of the Senate was present for the picture day, turned to Leahy and scolded the senator over his recent criticism of the vice president for Halliburton's alleged war profiteering.

Responding to Cheney's comment, Leahy reminded him of an earlier statement the vice president had made about him. Cheney then replied with profanity.

The CNN article leaves out some important info about the argument, but Wonkette has more:

CNN is reporting that on the floor of the Senate yesterday, Dick Cheney told Sen. Pat Leahy, "Go fuck yourself..."

Wonkette operatives tell us that the fighting words sprang from an exchange in which Cheney told Leahy he didn't like what Leahy had been saying about Halliburton, to which Leahy replied that he didn't like Cheney calling him a bad Catholic. So you'd see how "Go fuck yourself" is the only appropriate response.

Cheney's people call it a "frank exchange of views." Wow, so that's the kind of dialogue and frank exchange of views this administration has led us to...

It's not my bag, baby

I was trying to come up with a name for this guy, but I figured some of you could have fun with it.

Judge Suspected of Masturbating in Court
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - An Oklahoma state judge frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing erections while his court was in session, charges a petition by the state's attorney general seeking his removal...

The judge flatly denies the charges made in the petition, his lawyer, Clark Brewster, said on Thursday. He said the judge received a penis pump for his 50th birthday as a gag gift, which became a source of a running joke in the courthouse...

"On one occasion, Ms. (Lisa) Foster (Thompson's court reporter for 15 years), saw Judge Thompson holding his penis up and shaving underneath it with a disposable razor while on the bench," the petition reads.

Several witnesses, including jurors in Thompson's court and police officers called to testify in trials, said in the petition they heard the "swooshing" sound of a penis pump during trials and saw the judge slumped in his chair, with his elbows on his knees, working the device. The witnesses said the pump sounded like a blood pressure cuff being pumped up.

Name away...

Building a Democracy?
The Christian Science Monitor has a great piece today on how the new Iraqi government is being formed.

Old Iraqi council clings to key roles
In a little-noticed edict, the defunct council guaranteed itself seats on Iraq's Interim National Council, a 100-member assembly that will have power to approve the 2005 budget, veto executive orders with a two-thirds majority, and appoint replacements to the presidency. The former council also guaranteed itself seats on a headspinning array of committees that will select other members of the new body.

As political players jockey for positions in the upcoming council, the selection process is being dominated by members of the Governing Council - including Ahmed Chalabi, whose office was raided last month by US and Iraqi security forces investigating charges of kidnapping, corruption, and robbery. The role of former council members is raising concerns among many Iraqis that their involvement may taint the legitimacy of the new government. It is especially troubling to those who had hoped for a more homegrown leadership to emerge.

"There are very important and gifted and honest Iraqi personalities who up until now have been distanced from the new government," said Jawadat al-Obeidi, secretary-general of the Iraqi Democratic Congress, an umbrella group of 216 Iraqi political parties. He reels off a list of names of academics, doctors, and other prominent Iraqis who have been excluded from the process. "These people are trying to go to the Governing Council members, but no one answers or returns their calls..."

"Essentially, the Iraqi Governing Council seems to have granted itself life after death," said Nathan Brown, a political science professor at The George Washington University in Washington.

Chalabi, who fought bitterly with Mr. Brahimi, tried to veto several of his choices for the Supreme Commission. "When we looked at Brahimi's list, we saw people on it who weren't respected in Iraq - some of them live abroad, and some were people who had strong relations with former regime," said Salama al-Khafaji, a Shiite professor also on the committee. "So Chalabi and I protested; Chalabi said he has files on some of the people on the list."

With the former Governing Council calling the shots, many fear that the national conference will merely rubber-stamp its decisions. "I wish it was a different group of people who are selecting this government, rather than people who lived abroad in New York, London, and Washington, drinking whiskey and going out to nightclubs," said Hameed Hassan al-Obaidi, who is sheikh of a 750,000-member Shiite tribe.

Mr. Obaidi's comments reflect the deep dissatisfaction many Iraqis feel with the presence of exiles on the former council and in the new government. (Iraq's new prime minister, former council member Iyad Allawi, is a former exile with CIA ties.)..

Even insiders are dissatisfied with the way the new government is being planned. Dr. Khafaji blasted what she calls the exclusion of anyone from the Sadrist camp - a political movement that includes not just followers of the militant young cleric, but those who adhere to the tradition of his more moderate father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Al-Sadr, a dissident Shiite cleric assassinated by Saddam Hussein in 1999.

Wednesday, the chairman of the Supreme Commission said Sadr's followers had been invited to join. But a Sadr spokesman said the cleric declined the offer of one seat as only a token measure.

"In the Supreme Commission, there is an important Iraqi social movement that is not represented, which is Sadr and the entire Sadrist movement," said Khafaji.

Though a former Governing Council member herself, Khafaji said she opposed the guarantee of seats for herself and her colleagues. "But the CPA argued that the Governing Council members have expertise in running the country, and that different bodies will gain from our experience," she said. "I argued for having a debate and discussion, and competing for seats.... I think it is something that is not democratic, and it is not Iraqi."

Energy Crack Force

Supreme Court sends Cheney energy panel case back to lower court
The Bush administration won't have to reveal secret details of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force before the election, after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a lower court should spend more time sorting out the White House's privacy claim.

NewsCrax

I was just over at NewsMax, and apart from being very funny it also shows how stupid or brainwashed our opponents are. Check out these headlines.

Justice O'Connor Continues Leftward Tilt
Particularly galling is her retreat on abortion wrongs and racial quotas.

More Blacks Run as Republicans


"Environmentalists" fail in their attempt to block shipping and cause flooding. Bonus: Tom Daschle is mad. (too funny)

The Mens Choice™: ‘The Most Comprehensive Study Into Male Sexual Enhancement’. Each year, 20 men compare two different Natural Products for Male Sexual Health and publish their results. Click Here To See Recommended Effective Products.

And enough stuff on Michael Moore that makes me think right wingers want to have sex with him almost as bad as they do with Clinton.

Any ideas?
Nader is really starting to confuse me. Yesterday he got in a shouting match with members of the Black Caucus when they asked him to drop out of the race. Then he sends a letter to John Kerry telling him to pick John Edwards as VP. Finally, he says on NPR that people should come to his rallies, but actually vote for Kerry... Any idea what he's up to?

The Environmental President
I remember when Dubya was elected, I was primarily scared for the fate of our natural resources and the environment. This war in Iraq and the war on terra switched my focus. Unfortunately, everything is tied together. While it is important to be aware of all the bullshit his gang has created in the world, we need to be especially diligent in the attention we pay to the problems that are being created under the radar screen here at home.

Bush Administration Secrecy Imperils Environment and Public Health
The Bush administration is applying new levels of secrecy to public information, using the excuse of "national security risks" to undercut the public's right to know about contamination of the environment, transport of hazardous materials, pipeline routes, and more—putting public health at risk and chilling community activism.

"We've had national security exemptions for a long time under the Freedom of Information Act, and the ability to classify information if needed under other laws, and for good reason," Paul Orum, director of the non-partisan Working Group on Community Right-to-Know, tells BushGreenwatch. "Now, secrecy is creeping forward into other areas, and in subtle ways."

According to the Working Group, over six thousand public documents have been removed from the web sites of over a dozen government agencies since the fall of 2001.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, has removed parts of formerly-public Risk Management Plans from the web, documents that helped communities identify nearby chemical hazards. The Department of Energy has taken down environmental impact statements related to nuclear power plants, and hazardous materials transport information. The Department of Transportation removed from its web site much of the national pipeline mapping data that allowed communities to find hazardous pipeline routes.

President Bush has also issued executive orders that broaden the authority of agencies to withhold information from the public. May 2002's Executive Order 12958 gave the EPA Administrator authority to designate documents "Secret" or "Confidential," two of the three highest possible security classifications. It also allows the Administrator to delegate classification authority to senior EPA officials. Once classified, a person can gain access to information only when an agency head or their designee reviews the request, the person signs a non-disclosure agreement, and the person can establish a "need-to-know" to the satisfaction of agency officials.

The Bush administration has also reduced the public's access to unclassified information. 2002's Homeland Security Act allows agencies to withhold "sensitive but unclassified" information from the public. Information can be restricted with no review, even if public under other laws.

"The Bush administration is hostile to the idea that citizens need to watchdog the government, " says Orum.

We will not negotiate with terrorists
...But we will let 'em off scott free***

Saudis Offer Militants One-Month Amnesty
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia offered Islamic militants a limited amnesty Wednesday, saying their lives would be spared if they surrendered but they would face the "full might" of state wrath if they did not.

The ultimatum, issued in the name of King Fahd, called on militants to turn themselves in within a month — suggesting the kingdom was paving the way for a stepped up campaign against al-Qaida-linked fighters who have shaken the country with a series of deadly attacks.

***You have one month to take advantage of this great deal

Toxic Wonderland

Toxic Emissions Rising, EPA Says

Industry released 5 percent more toxic chemicals into the environment in 2002 than the year before, the Environmental Protection Agency reported yesterday.

The latest statistics, compiled in the agency's annual Toxic Release Inventory, represent a setback: In 2001, according to the inventory, toxic emissions had declined by about 16 percent. Environmental groups, moreover, charged yesterday that polluters were releasing four to five times more toxic material than they reported.

P-Town

Portland continues to draw the young and educated

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Young people continue to migrate to Portland, and they are bringing their college degrees with them.

A new study discovered that Portland's population of college-educated people between the ages 25 to 34 is growing at five times the national rate, putting the city in an enviable position for future job growth.

The researchers, Joe Cortright, a Portland economist, and Carol Coletta, an urban consultant in Memphis, Tenn., also found that Portland's proportion of such residents is much higher in the city's central areas than in other cities with similar geography.

The percentage of the young and educated is twice as high in central city as it is outside, making Portland more similar to New York and Chicago than to Phoenix or Denver, where growth is in the suburbs.

The study combines data from the 1990 Census and 2000 Census, the 2002 American Community survey and driver's license surrender lists.

Their findings reinforce the data about the influx of young educated people that emerged from the 2000 Census.

Despite Portland's economic difficulties over the past few years, "we're pretty confident that these trends are continuing," Cortright said.

The study was paid for by the Westside Economic Alliance, a trade group, and the Portland Development Commission, a public economic development agency. Additional financing came from Nike and the cities of Hillsboro, Beaverton and Tualatin.

Cortright said his study's findings should comfort those who lament Oregon's scarcity of Fortune 500 companies.

"Over the next five to 10 years, the creativity and entrepreneurship of people in this age group will create companies that we can no more imagine than the timber barons could imagine a shoe company being in the Fortune 500," he said.

Nike is the only Oregon company on the magazine's list of largest public companies.

I've always thought having less megacorps was a good thing.

October Surprise

It is inevitable that as meticulous as Karl Rove is, he will have the campaign plotted out to include one last October surprise to get voters hot for the Bush. Here's Waingroh's list of the Top 5 most likely possibilities:

5. Red Alert! The Terrorometer hits red for the first time, making anxious undecideds cower under Bush rhetoric; fearing that if Bush isn't re-elected, 9/11 2 (tm) will happen immediately.

4. We found Osama! Everyone rejoice, Osama has been captured and the War-on-terra (tm) is a continuing victory.

3. Photos of John Kerry released to Fox News proving that he is a homosexual flag-burning drug addict who has several black and latino kids out of wedlock and enjoys setting fire to the homeless and eating babies.

2. 10/11 - a terrorist attack, with incredibly useful political timing, strikes in the US, doing enough enough damage for Bush to declare a state of martial law and thus suspending national elections indefinitely.

1. Last, but not least probable, Diebold to the rescue. Kerry may win by millions of votes, but who could prove it? The Supreme Court votes down any attempt at a recount by a vote of 5-4, right on party lines.

Call it cynical, pessimist, or paranoid, but if the track record of calculated political moves from this band of thieves proves anything, it proves that you should expect the "shocking" to be anything but.

Sex and the Kerry

Via Cursor, Link

More than 20 million unmarried American women, a group polls have found are more liberal than the average person, never even voted in the 2000 presidential election. They didn't think it was worth the effort. If he reached out to those women as aerobically as George W. Bush has to evangelicals, Kerry could be working on his Inaugural speech right now. Instead the Democrats seem to be figuring that most female voters have nowhere else to go.

The Democrats have been accused of this a lot the last few years, but mainly in reference to minority voters. We could make this one a landslide, but Big John is gonna have to reach out to his base with the same fervor that Dinky does to his.

It's the cool thing to do
So by now everyone knows that the man from South Korea, Kim Sun-il, was beheaded, as well as Paul Johnson on Friday, Nick Berg last month and there will obviously be more to come since there were 10 other captured with Kim Sun-il. This is scary shit that is way out of control. What's more, our administration and news media would like to portray these extremists as barbaric and completely devoid of any humanity and the opposite of all that is great about the good old U.S. of A. Which, sounds great until you find out, WE'RE doing or supporting the same shit! It's not too obvious because our news reports it like this:

Four Suspected Taleban Militants Killed in Afghanistan
Afghan military officials say U.S.-led coalition forces and government soldiers have clashed with suspected Taleban rebels in southern Zabul province, killing four of them.

The officials say the fighting occurred late Monday in the Arghandab district of Zabul province after the militants kidnapped and executed an Afghan interpreter and a soldier earlier in the day.

However, if you dig a bit deeper and read how these people were killed, you get a very different story...

Afghans Behead Taliban in Revenge for Beheadings
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan soldiers beheaded four Taliban fighters after guerrillas cut off the heads of an Afghan interpreter for U.S.-led forces and an Afghan soldier, a government commander said on Tuesday.

The interpreter and the soldier were beheaded after becoming separated from a patrol of Afghan and U.S.-led foreign troops in the Arghandab district of the southern province of Zabul on Monday night, Namatullah Tokhi, commander of the government's 27th division in the province, told Reuters.

He said government troops later captured and killed four Taliban guerrillas in the same way.

"They cut off their heads with a knife, so when our forces arrested four Taliban, we cut off their heads too."

Combining the two:

U.S.-led coalition forces and government soldiers have beheaded four Taliban fighters after guerrillas cut off the heads of an Afghan interpreter for U.S.-led forces

Lovely.

It's Not Just a Fad

Sadly, they're just facts of life in the New W. Order.

Afghans behead Taliban in revenge for beheadings

Iraqi Militants Behead S. Korean Hostage

Even though the media has stopped counting...

14 coalition troops killed in the last 7 days, including 5 today...

Hersh Strikes Again, pt. 2

A few more gems from Hersch's report:

A few days later, the Administration, rattled by the violence and the new intelligence, finally attempted to change its go-it-alone policy, and set June 30th as the date for the handover of sovereignty to an interim government, which would allow it to bring the United Nations into the process. “November was one year before the Presidential election,” a U.N. consultant who worked on Iraqi issues told me. “They panicked and decided to share the blame with the U.N. and the Iraqis.”

A former White House official depicted the Administration as eager—almost desperate—late this spring to install an acceptable new interim government in Iraq before President Bush’s declared June 30th deadline for the transfer of sovereignty. The Administration turned to Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, to “put together something by June 30th—just something that could stand up” through the Presidential election, the former official said.

The Saban Center’s Flynt Leverett said of the transfer of sovereignty, “If it doesn’t work, there is no fallback—nothing.” The former senior American intelligence official told me, similarly, that “the neocons still think they can pull the rabbit out of the hat” in Iraq. “What’s the plan? They say, ‘We don’t need it. Democracy is strong enough. We’ll work it out.’”

Clear cut evidence that this Administration lives in a vacuum. Instead of spinning politics to defend their policies, Bush & co. actually create policies strictly for its political potential. Instead of making the real world fit to live in, the Bushies rape reality so that they can polish their image on Fox News . It is a bizarre reverse-thinking; I'm half expecting to see a worm hole open up and the good Spock & Kirk come back from the alternate universe to save us.

Hersh Strikes Again

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who supported the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at this point to privately warn Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel “had learned that there’s no way to win an occupation.” The only issue, Barak told Cheney, “was choosing the size of your humiliation.” Cheney did not respond to Barak’s assessment. (Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

In a series of interviews in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, officials told me that by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government decided, I was told, to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israel’s strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraq’s Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Several officials depicted Sharon’s decision, which involves a heavy financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to grow.

The whole story.

Reaching More People

Ludis is pleased to announce, in our all inclusive nature, that Ludis is now available in Latin. In our never ending quest to expose the right-wing, you can now read our diatribes in the language of Ancient Rome and the Vatican.
Have fun.

*UPDATE*
12:21 pm

Due to funding constraints and limited readership, the Latin Ludis website has been scrapped. We're sorry for this inconvenience.

WHOA!

I hope it's true:

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Orlando Magic general manager John Weisbrod said Monday that contract discussions with Tracy McGrady have failed, and the Magic will pursue trading options for the star player.

Team sources told the Orlando Sentinel Monday that a three-way trade was being discussed with the Houston Rockets and the Portland Trailblazers. The deal would likely involve McGrady going to Portland, with Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Ruben Patterson, and the no. 13 and no. 22 pick to Orlando, and Eric Piatkowski would also be shipped to the Magic, with Houston receiving undisclosed second round draft picks. Though details were yet to be finalized, one source in the Magic team office called the deal "imminent".

T-Mac to the blazers, now all we need is Shaq!

You've got to Be Kidding Me

Bradbury: Change 'Fahrenheit' title

Ray Bradbury is demanding an apology from filmmaker Michael Moore for lifting the title from his classic science-fiction novel "Fahrenheit 451" without permission and wants the new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be renamed.

"He didn't ask my permission," Bradbury, 83, told The Associated Press on Friday. "That's not his novel, that's not his title, so he shouldn't have done it."

The 1953 novel, widely considered Bradbury's masterpiece, portrays an ugly futuristic society in which firemen burn homes and libraries in order to destroy the books inside and keep people from thinking independently.

"Fahrenheit 451" takes its title from the temperature at which books burn. Moore
has called "Fahrenheit 9/11" the "temperature at which freedom burns."

Have the firemen from "451" gotten to Bradbury?

Boo Hoo

Nader upset over likely exclusion from debates

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is crying foul over the ground rules for this fall's presidential debates, which will likely leave him sitting on the sidelines again.

Ralph, don't go away mad... Ralph, just go away.

Welcome to 1984

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda" is "because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda." - George W. Bush

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able -- and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years -- to arrest the course of history.

Let's hope not.

The Good Old Days

Remember when we lived in a world where unnecessary wars, torture, and beheadings weren't the norm? And our biggest problems were an expanding economy and an over-zealous prosecutor bent on exposing the sexual exploits of a Democratic president.

Even if Bush is defeated, and I think he will be, his disastrous policies have changed the world for ever, and cleaning up his mess will take decades.

Once again

Al Qaeda Beheads U.S. Hostage in Saudi, Site Says
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda militants said they beheaded a U.S. engineer they had held hostage in Saudi Arabia since last week and displayed his severed head in pictures posted on an Islamist Web site Friday.

Al Qaeda had said the Saudi government had until Friday to free jailed militants or it would kill Paul Marshall Johnson.

yes HUH

Waingroh was really impressed by the president yesterday. Maybe all of his critics are underestimating W's finely tuned analytical mind. It's quite amazing to see when Our Dear Leader is put "under the spot" the kinds of concrete and devastating counter-arguments he makes to defend himself.

The 9/11 commission came out yesterday, and officially stated what everyone already knew: there is absolutely no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Quaeda. This conclusion was made after interviewing hundreds of government officials and analyzing thousands of historical documents by a non-partisan panel of 10 US congressmen over the past 3 months. How could Bush possibly refute such a detailed finding about the non-existence of a Saddam / Al-quaeda link?

"Yes, HUH."

Like a small child who doesn't get his way but stubbornly hangs on to his story because he doesn't want his pants to catch fire, Bushy basically gave a giant middle finger to the massive efforts of the 9/11 commission. The unfortunate thing is, he won't be painted as the mindless fool he is; in fact his supporters will all fall in line behind him. Soon Karl Rove will order words like "witchhunt" or "liberal politicizing" to appear in news stories about the 9/11 panel. It's par for the course really; this administration has a set objective, and no matter what facts, truths, exposed lies, exposed corruptions, or congressional findings stand in their way, they don't let it alter their thinking. And they always get away with it.

Now watch this drive.

Bush on the Couch

Salon has a more in depth article on Drinky's mental state here. Pretty scary. And Billmon had this to say about Bush I and II's problems with communication.

Now the idea that the 43rd president of the United States may have a severe, probably undiagnosed, learning disability isn't a very original thought. (In his book, Dr. Levine also mentions that such disabilities sometimes seem inherited. Anyone who remembers 41's own ferocious, but losing, battles with the English language might suspect the same.)

Classic.

Dean?

Kos has the latest rumor on Kerry's VP selection.

Things Really are Getting Better

From Dahr, on a trip to Sadr City hospital.

He was quick to point out the struggles his hospital is facing under the occupation. “We are short of every medicine,” he said while insisting that this rarely occurred before the invasion. “It is forbidden, but sometimes we have to reuse IV’s, even the needles. We have no choice.”

This hospital treats an average of 3000 patients each day.

Another major problem that he and other doctors spoke of was their horrendous water problem.

“Of course we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones... but we now even have the very rare Hepatitis Type-E…and it has become common in our area.”

Breaking News...Fox is Fair and Balanced

Well, at least the movie critic is. Link.

But once "F9/11" gets to audiences beyond screenings, it won't be dependent on celebrities for approbation. It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.

As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, "F9/11" — as we saw last night — is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.

But, really, in the end, not seeing "F9/11" would be like allowing your First Amendment rights to be abrogated, no matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat.

He'll be fired any day now.

This is News?

The big story of the day is that al-Qaeda planed to use 10 airplanes, but OBL scaled down the attack. Who gives a shit. They didn't use 10 airplanes, they used 3, and it was horrific enough. Horrific enough to unite the whole country and provide the US with good will from around the world. What happened to all that unity and good will, well... that's another story.

Sure, it's an interesting little factoid, but top story of the day? I imagine it's getting so much play because of this, buried amongst all this bull shit. Unprecedented

It's Party Time, Iraqi Style

The Coalition Provisional Authority's livin' it up in the Green Zone.

On a typical evening, one can see U.S. soldiers smoking from 4-foot-tall hookahs and security contractors guffawing over beer, their machine guns by their sides. The CPA's would-be strategists can sometimes be seen in their ubiquitous military desert boots and dress shirts and slacks, playing Risk, the board game of global domination.

Thanks McGeggy.

"Hey! Porno?"

Dick

Via the Hamster.
Link

Since October, Ralph Nader has run his campaign for president out of the same downtown Washington offices that through April housed a public charity he created -- an overlap that campaign finance specialists said could run afoul of federal laws.

Tax law explicitly forbids public charities from aiding political campaigns. Violations can result in a charity losing its tax-exempt status. In addition, campaign law requires candidates to account for all contributions -- including shared office space and resources, down to the use of copying machines, receptionists and telephones.

Records show many links between Nader's campaign and the charity Citizen Works. For example, the charity's listed president, Theresa Amato, is also Nader's campaign manager. The campaign said in an e-mail to The Washington Post that Amato resigned from the charity in 2003. But in the charity's most recent corporate filing with the District, in January, Amato listed herself as the charity's president and registered agent.

The office suite housing the campaign, the charity and other sub-tenants had a common receptionist for greeting visitors.

And Federal Election Commission records show the campaign paid rent to Citizen Works and Citizen Works' landlord. Nader said the campaign has taken over the charity's lease on its coveted location on 16th Street NW.

---

Jan W. Baran, a veteran campaign finance lawyer who represented televangelist Pat Robertson when his presidential campaign was audited by the FEC, said Nader's arrangement was unusual for a presidential candidate. "Even Pat Robertson didn't have his campaign organization at the Christian Broadcasting Network," Baran said. "His campaign headquarters were down the street in Chesapeake."

Finals

Man. I never imagined that Detroit would even be able to compete with LA, let alone, totally dominate them. Incredible.

I love how LA just quit in the 3rd quarter. This just shows how great a coach Larry Brown is. His strategy turned Phil's vaunted triangle in to a unrecognizable polygon.

I have mixed emotions about Rasheed getting a ring after all the shit he didn't do in Portland. But I hate LA so much, I had to root for the Pistons. The Lakers, to me, are the embodiment of the Republican Party in a sports franchise. All the money, all the players, all the power, arrogance, entitlement, and just about everything I hate about the GOP I hate about the Lakers. And The pistons look a lot like the Anybody But Bush Team. No stars, diverse backgrounds, everybody doing their part to defeat the evil force.

It's been a weird year, and who knows, we might be looking at another thrashing this November. For the good guys.

Public Servant

Caught just a couple minutes of Bushy's "press con'frinse" this morning, including what Waingroh believes to be a glimpse of the true mindset of the Prez when it comes to speeches & the press. When a journalist asked him a two-part question, Drinky got all flustered: "Which question do you want me to answer? Look, it's hot out here (angry snicker), and you have a respectful president up here. Just ask one question, ok?"

As Steve Martin would say, well EXCUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUSE MEE!! I forgot how much of an HONOR it was that Drinky can BLESS us with his mere presence so that we, the small insignificant masses called the American people, should be so GRATEFUL for the rare opportunity to pester our exalted president-lord for a few questions about the Empire's crusade in Iraq. Off the cuff and under-the-spot comments like the one above show you so much more about a person's actual state of mind than prepared speeches and practiced answers. It's clear Bush feels that letting the people know what's going on in the administration is a hassle, an obligation, a waste of time, and he resents the press for meddling in his affairs. I know Drinky McDumbass has trouble with the second grade reading level, but someone should tell him that "public servant" doesn't mean "the public is your servant".

Wow!

Cheney says pigs might fly, cites no new evidence.

Not sure if he is still insisting that monkeys, at one time, flew out of his butt.

Asscroft

Krugman says it all:

No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.

Fahrenheit 911

Here's the trailer. Now go watch it.

Hmmmm....
Did anyone catch Powell's comment on the terrorism report?

"It's a numbers error. It's not a political judgment that said, `Let's see if we can cook the books.' We can't get away with that NOW. Nobody was out to cook the books. Errors crept in," he told ABC's "This Week."

Is he saying that before they could get away with cooking the books? Which of course is true, but to say it, isn't he acknowledging that they previously did so? Am I stretching? Because to me, when I say something and I use the word 'now' it generally means something has changed and I need to signify that change with a time reference. "I used to do this, but NOW I do that." Or, for example, "I used to be able to drink tequila, but now it makes me sick." Doesn't that imply that I didn't use to get sick off tequila? I don't know... just throwing it out there.

Spin this...

Former Officials to Criticize Bush Foreign Policy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of former U.S. officials is urging voters to defeat President Bush in the November election, saying his policies have isolated the United States, a spokesman for the group said on Sunday.

The group of 26 former diplomats and military officials, including appointees of former Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, plan to issue an open statement on Wednesday criticizing Bush's foreign policies.

"We just came to agreement that this administration was really endangering the United States," said William Harrop, a former ambassador to Israel under the previous Bush administration.

Diagnosis: Dipshit

It's actually more serious than that. Dr. Justin Frank, director of psychiatry at George Washington University, has written a book diagnosing Bush's neuroses. He concludes that Bush is a Paranoid Sadistic Meglamaniac.
Link

"Lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."

The President suffers from "character pathology," including "grandiosity" and "megalomania" -- viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.

"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote, and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed," Dr. Frank told Leiby. Bush, he said, "fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."

Dr. Frank's expert recommendation? ""Our sole treatment option -- for his benefit and for ours -- is to remove President Bush from office . . . before it is too late."