The Shining, Re-Visited

Thanks to Houston Bridges for the link to this little tidbit.

"The mood here is that we’re under siege. In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”
We are at war here, there's no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”

Go read the whole article at
Capitol Hill Blue.
Poor George, he must be going around singing their coming to take me away haha to himself.
Oh how I hope he's right this time!!!

*******

On a more serious note, if you want to read something that will damn near make you cry....
Bohemian Mama . [Scroll down to Hungry Defenders.]
The next time somebody says something to me about support our troops, I'm soooooo going to go off on them. Damn a fucking government that would send men and women to fight and die, and let their families have to beg for food.
Excuse me, I need to go kick a wall, or something.



posted by wanda at 12:10 AM

My Kind of President

President Bill Clinton was on C-SPAN tonight, launching the book tour for his about to be released book My Life . As I sat and listened to him speak, I couldn't help but make comparisom's between him and President Bush. President Clinton is an eloquent speaker. He knows how to hold an audience. He gets his point across without seeming condesending or arrogant. He's brilliant with just a slight touch of humble.
He told a few stories from the book. Just enough to wet one's appetite, and leave you hungering for more. Then he touched briefly on the state our country is in right now. He spoke of the Patriot Act. He admitted, it has some very good points, but they are over-shadowed by the trampling of basic civil rights. Rights such as the freedom to protest without censure. The right to privacy.
He didn't really mention Iraq, but what he said was so powerful he didn't need to say the words war or Iraq. He said he knew he had made mistakes. That he had made poor choices. He said knew what it was like to be too proud to admit being human and failing. But, he also said, when the time came, "I knew I had to confess, to own up to my mistakes". In order for our country to move forward. "No matter what the cost to me personally. I had to do it. So I did."
This folks is what makes William Jefferson Clinton, so much more the better man and a better President than George Bush will ever be.
I will take a flawed Bill Clinton over the sanctimonious, arrogant, elitist, George Bush any day. Any day.

***********

Speaking of our good ole boy President, here's a small outtake from the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 .
... Bush all gussied up and looking out to his crowd (a fundraiser i suspect) and he says what a great looking crowd of "haves and have mores. some call you the elite, i call you my base (laughter)".

I've said it before, there are no poor who support George Bush, and the majority of middle class that do, are somehow living with the delusion that by supporting him they too will become rich. What they should ask themslevs is "Am I any closer to being rich, or even better off than I was four years ago?"

posted by wanda at 11:45 PM

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

May this , only be the beginning of the heads that roll in Washington, in the upcoming weeks. Rumsfield should have been such a decent, honorable man as Tenet. No,matter let him stay on, then he can take all of BushCo down with him.

Anyone want to place any bets on how long it will be before Tenet start's telling all? Or how long it will take the neocons to call him yet another disgruntled employee?
posted by wanda at 2:04 PM

Message in a Blog

Thanks goes to Green Voicemail, for this almost perfect statement!

"Sometimes I feel sorry for the rightists. They're trapped in a room full of horse shit, digging furiously and swearing that there's a new pony in there, somewhere. There's really not a lot you can do except to be there for them when they succumb to the stench, as more and more seem to be doing these days."

I keep wanting to reach out, hug them and say gently, walk toward the light.
posted by wanda at 1:59 PM

Wishlist

Bush consults private attorney over CIA leak probe

Is it so wrong of me to hope he really, really, has need of an attorney, and really, really soon?
posted by wanda at 2:33 AM

Reality Bites

The Bush White House and the neocons in the media have spent this past weekend reverting back to their preposterous claims that the glass is half-full rather than half-empty.
Listening to the endless barage of news commentators (mostly FAUX News) continuing to use those same tired lines, "What we've done in Iraq is remarkable..." or, "The good that we have accomplished is so much greater than these small isolated incidents at Al Ghraib prison..." "The economy is on the upswing..." yada, yada, yada.
In other words, lets ignore reality and go with delusions of grandeur.
To think that some have the benightedness to call the media liberal-biased. Are we becoming a country of Philistine's, or is this the twilight of the uber-neocons?
posted by wanda at 2:56 AM

War For Profit

All you neocons out there that have been bitching for months how we Liberals and Democrats are idiots when we say that the war was just as much about oil and profit as it was about freeing Iraq, can now


When Time magazine hits the stands this coming week, this story, will prove once and for all, WE WERE RIGHT!


Here's just a taste of what the article will be saying.
"...The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group. "

Every week something new and nasty is coming out about this gang of money grubbing, Draft Dodgers.
Those nasty little emails will get you everytime. Sometimes when you least expect it. Just ask 'Dick' Cheney.
I am loving every minute of watching them implode.
posted by wanda at 2:26 AM

Hero's Among Us

We won't be seeing the likes of these two men again.
Archibald Cox
Sam Dash

Where are men like them today? Why can't the Dem's come up with another Sam Dash? Or even their own Ken Starr?

Speaking of star's, I can't believe I have only just discovered The Rude Pundit . Somebody stop the presses, this guy is freaking AWESOME!!!
posted by wanda at 10:45 PM

Support the Troops

I've long been one who detest the way people put little yellow ribbons, or American flags on their cars, houses, and even their blogs, with the comment Support The Troops. Here is one of the reasons why...
"
After the homecomings are over and the yellow ribbons packed away, many who once served in America's armed forces may end up sleeping on sidewalks.

This is the often-unacknowledged postscript to military service. According to the federal government,
veterans make up 9% of the U.S. population but 23% of the homeless population. Their ranks included veterans like Vannessa Turner of Boston, who returned injured from Iraq last summer, unable to find healthcare or a place to live.

Or Ken Saks, who lost his feet because of complications caused by Agent Orange, then lost his low-rent Santa Barbara apartment in an ordeal that began when a neighbor complained about his wheelchair ramp.

"I'm 56 years old," Saks said. "I don't want to die in the streets…. This is what our [soldiers in Iraq] are coming home to? They're going to live a life like I have? God bless them."

Studies indicate that some will live such a life. Male veterans are 1.3 times more likely to become homeless than non-veterans, women 3.6 times more likely. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the estimated number of homeless Vietnam veterans is more than twice the number of soldiers, 58,000, who died in battle during that war.

In the past, data quantifying homelessness among veterans did not exist, said Phillip Mangano, who heads the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. "It's been precisely the lack of research that had us groping in the dark as far as what our response should be," he said.

...It is impossible to know exactly how many U.S. veterans are on the streets, but experts estimate that about 300,000 of them are homeless on any given night and that about half a million experience homelessness at some point during the year.

Now, as fighting continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, social service providers wonder what will happen to this generation of service men and women returning home from war.

"What are they going to do for these guys when they come home … other than wave a flag and buy them a beer?" asked Paul Camacho, a professor of social science at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Vietnam veteran.

...Homelessness among veterans is currently
the topic of joint talks between the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, said Peter Dougherty, the VA's director of homeless veterans programs.

"Traditionally, what happens to you after you leave has not been a concern of [the] service," he said.

Thanks to Corrente for this valuable information.

Everyday I see the proof of how we treat our Veterans. John Kerry and John McCain are perfect examples. When their country called out to them, these men gave selflessly of themsleves. And the thanks they get is that the pussy-assed, Draft Dodgers now running this country make fun of them, question their service records, and do everything they can to discredit them.
Then you have those rightwing nuts that lie about their own so-called 'service records' as if they somehow could ever compare to these real hero's. Of course they are also the first ones to spout their bs about liberals not supporting the troops.
One thing is certain about Liberals we continue to care about our troops after the fighting is over and they come home. Except then it's called caring about the poor, the unemployed, and the displaced in our society. We don't limit our support to only when they're doing something we want them to do.
In closing, here's hoping that ALL those Vets out there, not on the square in Washington with the draft dodgers big shot politicians, know that some of us still honor and support them.
posted by wanda at 12:35 AM