What's in a name?

GratisNet: "Of all the blather on the tube about Wilson' wife, seems one item is overlooked. In all the CIA memo documentation, she is identified as Valerie Wilson. In the White House, she is noted as Wislon's wife.

The 64 thousand dollar question is from whence came the Valerie Plame name?

Fitgerald answers that question and a whole lot of republican scum will be measured for red jumpsuits."

The Scooter was protecting Dirty Dick.

GratisNet: "Libby lied to protect Cheney. Libby now says he learned of Valerie Plame from the VP.

Did Libby come to Jesus yesterday? Will he do so today? Curiouser and curiouser it becomes.

Round and round it goes and where it stops only Fitzgerald knows. Karma is, indeed, a bitch."

Deja Vu, all over again?

Will the senior White House staff be decimated by indictments?

Will Cheney resign due to "poor health" in order to avoid emulating Spiro Agnew?

Will Preznit Likesboyz be named as an unindicted conspirator?

These ideas just may not be that far fetched. In any event the next 7-10 days promise to be as interesting and significant as those of the Watergate scandal 31 years ago.

A Nixonian question.

What did Bush know and when did he know it?

Rumors run rampant.

Rumors abound as to the Fitzgerald GJ.

Sealed indictments already. Indictments next week. Meeting with the judge about extending the term of the GJ, etc., etc., etc..

Everyone take a breath, sit back and enjoy the show.

Best rumor I've heard yet, from the old FIDOnet POLITICS area, which can be read at:

http://fidonet.sensationcontent.com/echomail/politics

Get ready. Here it is from the most brain dead, rabid wingnuts you can imagine.

"Joe Wilson AND his wife will get indicted for fraud."

So sayeth the man known, in bygone days, as Centurion.

Too funny for words but then it does beg the question, how is it possible for such feeble brains to generate enough power to run their autonomic nervous systems?

Such are the conservatives of today.

Louis Freeh

Louis Freeh, promoting his book, slams Clinton on 60 minutes.

All one needs to know about Freeh, the most incompetent man ever to head the FBI is that if he hadn't squandered so many agents chasing after Clinton's zipper perhaps 09-11-01 would have played out differently. We will never know because he was too busy doing the bidding of the rabid Clinton haters in the congress and as a result, had no time to do the job he was expected to do, protecting the people.

Compared to him, the fictional Inspector Clouseau was a genius.

Friday Follies

GratisNet: "New York subway threat. Olberman notes that 13 of the last terrorism threats came when the administration was taking severe hits in the media and/or the polls. Coincidence?

Preznit Pretzel Warrior, a split personality? In his speech claimed that 'we gained the peace that freedom brings' but can peace be used to describe what is going on in Iraq? Perhaps Turdblossom is a mite too busy with trying to keep himself out of an orange jumpsuit than helping Bush with his message?

The peace we gained in Iraq? From AP: Six marines killed in bomb blasts, four near Karma and 2 in Qaim. Some peace.

Bush claims ten terror plots foiled. Uh-huh and the moon is made out of cheese. Paraphrasing that old Wendy's commercial from 30 years ago Preznit Lyin' King, show us the particulars.

President Bush said to all of us: 'I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan', “And I did, and then God would tell me, ’George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.' --- Plestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Shaath in a BBC documentary series recounting a June 2003 meeting he attended along with Mahmoud Abbas, now Palestinian president. So Preznit Not-so-dry Drunk is hearing voices. How scary is that?

'Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply,' --- Preznit Putz. Funny, that's exactly what sane people here and overseas are saying about you Georgie boy.

Thoughts on what might happen if indictments are handed down by the Fitzgerald Grand Jury. Preznit Pardon will grant presidential pardons, ala Poppy, in an effort to put out the fire. This will force everyone, even his erstwhile supporters to rethink their positions. Same goes if one or two unindicted coconspirators are named.

Another TGIF day. Have a great weekend and do something nice for someone you DON'T know."

Thursday Thoughts

GratisNet: "Torture was not, is not, nor ever should be, an American tactic. We are supposed to be better than that.

The Geneva Convention regarding prisoners was not enacted in order to protect the prisoners we hold, rather, it was designed to protect OUR combatants in the custody of our adversaries.

With the arrest for espionage of the former Marine who worked in Cheney's office, can we finally dispense with the 'adults in charge' canard?

Can everyone take a deep breath and count to however long it takes for Fitzgerald to do what he is going to do before making any comments? Facts are so much better to discuss than rumors, after all, we are not republicans.

Why hasn't the media covered the fact that only 10% of government funding for the reconstruction on the Gulf Coast and in NOLA has been allocated to local companies? The locals could use the work and the local firms could use the business. They will also do a better job than Cheney's pals at Haliburton for they have a stake in the outcome.

It has been 8 years since the H5N1 flu virus made the jump from bird to human. why has it taken until now for the government to become concerned? Why has the media been so far behind the news regarding the possibility of a pandemic? When will the media note that the current flu vaccines are based on the H1N1 virus and as such has limited or no effectiveness on the H5N1 virus currently expanding in Asia? When will the media report that Tamiflu has not been effective against a strain of H5N1 virus currently on the loose in Vietnam? Are we about to see a replay of 1918 and the so-called Spanish Flu? Why hasn't the media pressed the government for the plan of action, other than Preznit Shallow Thinker's idea of placing areas where it has broken out under effective Martial Law?"

The best person he could find.

GratisNet: "Preznit Lamedick says the Miers was the best person he could find for Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the SCOTUS.

Question for conservative wingnuts everywhere: How does it feel to to have those conservative judges, members of the Federalist Society, called less qualified to sit on the SCOTUS than a 60 year old woman who never married, never was a judge, never really had anything close to a notable career as a lawyer?

Are you wingnuts feeling as used as a douce bag in a whorehouse about now?

That's what you get when you give your allegiance to a man who has no sense of loyalty, ethics or morality. Are you happy now?"

Meirs!

GratisNet: "'She rose to her present position by her absolute devotion to George Bush. I mentioned last week that she told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. To flatter on such a scale a person must either be an unscrupulous dissembler, which Miers most certainly is not, or a natural follower. And natural followers do not belong on the Supreme Court of the United States.' --Former Bush speechwriter David Frum this morning on his blog, before he retracted the comments.

60 years old, never been wed or a judge and she says Bush is the most brilliant man she has ever met.

Unless she has been kept in a locked room for most of her adult life, I would submit that her judgement, RE: brilliant, seems to be a tad disfunctional. Never a judge so no track record, closet (gasp) liberal, perhaps? Never been married, closet lesbian (double gasp), perhaps? I suspect Preznit Morebetter has managed to piss off his base on this one. Time will tell.

Reserve judgement, sit back and observe the wheels continuing to fall off the GOP wagon."

Judith Miller, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, et al.

GratisNet: "Judith Miller speaks, Tom DeLay indicted, the SEC investigating Bill Frist, etc. much time, energy and words expended by the conventional and unconventional (read blogosphere) media trying to get a handle on what it all means.

May I suggest we take a collective deep breath and wait for the strings to play out in Austin and Washington? There will be time enough for the 'I told you so' or mea culpas after Fitzgerald makes his move, DeLay gets his day in court and the SEC makes its decision about Frist.

Until such time, enjoy the spectacle of the wheels coming off the republican wagon and remember always that if the lips of a republican are moving, the probability of his lying approaches certainty.

Now go out and play nice together and do something nice for someone you DON'T know. TGIF!"

Wednesday Wandering

GratisNet: "Word out of Austin: The Grand Jury there looking into campaign funding violations has added conspiracy to their list of targets. Tom DeLay could well be indicted within a day or two. While such an outcome would certainly be a most just dessert for DeLay, prudence dictates a wait and see attitude.

Coming out of DC: Senator Frist does a Nixonesque, 'I am not a crook' song and dance. With both the SEC and DOJ looking into his not-so-blind trust and apparent insider trading his days are apparently numbered. Look for him to execute the 'Trent Lott Maneuver' fairly soon. This will result in the senate republican caucus becoming somewhat contentious, to say the least. Again, I would recommend a wait and see attitude.

Out of DC: Mike Brown, testifying before the congress, blames everyone at the local & state level for the disaster that was NOLA in the aftermath of Katrina. He says he was expected to be a 'Superhero' and solve all the problems. I guess that along with being incompetent in managing Arabian Horses, and padding his resume with imaginary positions of authority back in Okieland, he is also delusional to the point of requiring institutional treatment.

BULLETIN: DeLay indicted! He has agreed to step down as House Majority Leader, temporarily of course. It will be most interesting to watch the spin from republicans. I can see it now, 'This indictment is the result of a political witch hunt', 'A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor wanted them to.' Problem whith that is the word out of Austin that it was the grand jury that wanted to add the conspiracy investigation. It was they, citizens who were obviously fed up with the corrupt dealing of Tom DeLay, who wanted to consider the evidence. They considered and they indicted, now hopefully in due time another group of citizens sitting in judgement at trial will convict, if the evidence warrants, and make an example of Tom DeLay, a politician who took corruption to whole new levels.

Out of the Middle East: Karen Hughes discovering that she is in over her head as she continues her 'Democracy 2005' Tour. In Saudi Arabia she was rebuffed by a group of young women who, in effect, advised her to learn something of the culture before trying to play the Pied Piper regarding democracy.

And so it goes. How is YOUR day shaping up?"

Thoughts on Friday

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist asked a trustee to sell all his stock in his family's hospital corporation, a large-scale sell-off by HCA Inc. insiders was under way.

Seems like the Blind Trust set up in accordance with US Statutes wasn't all that blind when it came to Frist wanting to dump stock before the price took a dive. Can anyone say "Insider trading?" If his name was Martha Stewart the SEC would be all over him by now, but because he is the republican majority leader of the Senate...?

Much to do about rumors of Bush having fallen off the wagon. More bruises, more nonsensical conduct, see his latest press conference when he was calling on "Bianca" and more conjecture as to why he needs so many vacations out of sight at the ranch. Who knows what will turn up with all this, but with his disgraceful conduct regarding Cindy Sheehan followed by his criminal indifference during Katrina, the added stress of Rita could well be one crises to much for him to screw up. Personally I doubt it's the bottle that he has gone back to, if he's reverted to any of his destructive old habits it would be the coke. He would get a momentary high with a drink or two but then depression would really set in. Nope, if he's back to doing anything, it has to be coke, even the way he acted at his last couple of press conferences would seem to point towards coke rather than booze.

Tragedy on a Texas interstate. A bus carrying some 45 elderly people, some on oxygen, bursts into flame, at least 20 feared dead. Common sight on the traffic snarled Texas interstates, cars running out of gas further backing up traffic. Heard a righteous bastard from the state on MSNBC going on about how Texas knows how to evacuate a city unlike the people in Louisiana. Have I forgotten exploding buses and automobiles running out of gas during the exodus out of NOLA or did the media just not report it? Yes sir, Texas sure knows how to manage the evacuation of a city.

Bush cancels photo op in San Antonio, seems he was told such a move would be seen as getting in the way of search, rescue and recovery efforts. He decides to monitor the progress of Hurricane Rita from the bunker in Cheyenne Mountain. What is it with this cowardly bastard, the White House wasn't sufficient for him to keep abreast of the storm as it comes ashore? His cut and run will come as no surprise to anyone considering what will be transpiring in DC this weekend. He STILL doesn't have the stones to face Cindy Sheehan.

Finally, run everything you hear coming from a republican these days through the following filter: If their lips are moving, the likelihood that they are lying approaches certainty.

TGIF, do something nice for someone you DON'T know and have a great weekend.

Diogenese and the republicans.

Given the fact that republicans lack the fundamental honesty, sense of honor, integrity, morals and ethics common to even the least among us, is it any wonder that the Republican Party has come to be regarded as representing a Culture of Corruption? See Sen. Frist's selling off his stock in his family's HMO, for the latest example.

Somewhere Diogenese is breathing a sigh of relief for had the object of his quest been an honest republican, he would be searching still.

The Plan

The mayor of Ocean Springs, MS (across the bay from Biloxi) was being interviewed on MSNBC this morning regarding her and the city council living at City Hall for 12 days while waiting for FEMA support to arrive. She was asked if she contacted the local FEMA office, she did, and was given FEMA's 800 number to call.

FEMA had a plan, call the 800 number whenever telephone service was restored, until then, everyone was expected to fend for themselves. Some Plan.

This is nothing more than an example of "to the victor belong the spoils" patronage tenet of conservative republicans. Placing political hacks with no expertise other than to raise or donate money in positions affecting the safety, health and well being of the people demonstrates their utter contempt for the people.

The Republican Party has brought the Boss Tweed philosophy to Washington DC, although Boss Tweed would be green with envy at how much his Tammany Hall machine has been improved upon.

The Republican Party today stands not for the people or the nation but for passing government jobs and contracts to those who have given money to the cause, regardless of how illequipped they are to perform the job. Republicans prove, yet again, that they place The Party above the nation, The Party above the people, indeed, The Party above everything.

America the selfish.

GratisNet: "Bush says no tax increase to pay for the rebuilding of NOLA and the Mississippi gulf coast communitees hard hit by Katrina. He doesn't even consider repealing the tax cuts for the filthy rich and, according to an online question at CNN, some 75% of those responding agree with him.

I have sympathy for those areas devastated by Katrina, now they are to be devastated again by Bush and his borrow and spend regime. Our children and grandchildren shall have to pay the piper for this tax cut happy Band of Bunglers and that is indeed sad. Sadder still is the apparent fact that the American people are unwilling to sacrifice anything in order to help their fellow citizens recover from a disaster of biblical proportions. No, not the inept response from Bush and his Regime of Reprobates (which was bad enough) but the onslaught of destruction in the wake of Katrina.

Such selfish, self centered people bear no resemblence of the Americans I knew even 30 years ago, let alone those that populated my America as a child. I weep for what the selfish, self-centered and self-righteous neoconservatives have done to our once great society.

Our strength as a nation has always been our willingness to help one another when disaster struck, something Bush and his morally bankrupt followers have never understood, let alone believed in. America suffers and teeters perilously close to the abyss of moral bankruptcy because of it."

Random thoughts.

GratisNet: "Can Bush not button a shirt properly? Was there no one in his entourage of flunkies that had the nerve to tell him that he didn't button his shirt right and consequently looked like a three year old on national television? Once again Bush proves to be unequal to the task at hand.

The big question is, of course, how could the wheels have fallen off the Bush bandwagon so quickly and completely? From the 'May I go to the bathroom' episode at the UN to looking like a toddler after buttoning his shirt for the first time, the Bush White House seems not to be getting anything right. Could it be that Karl Rove is so preoccupied with what Fitzgerald can do to him, as to lose focus in such fundamental ways?

The White House talks about Katrina unfortunately forcing them into deficit spending, showing how little they think of the intelligence of the people. They think the people have missed the fact that they have spent more money on dubious items than can scarcely be imagined. One could compare their money squandering habits to those of drunken sailors on liberty after months at sea but that would be an insult to drunken sailors. Any suggestion regarding repealing certain of the tax cuts is met with the standard, 'That would hurt the economy' as if the tax cuts have ever been shown to to be of benefit to the people in the Bush economy, in the form of jobs, salary growth (other than CEOs, that is) and increasing revenue.

Cutting taxes in times of vital increased spending would be like a person taking a cut in pay while they are trying to buy a new house. Whatever happened to the tried and true republican mantra of old, 'Pay as you go?' It has been conspicuously missing since the days when Ronald Reagan brought his tax and spend modus operendi to Washington and for 25 years republicans have shown less fiscal discipline than a crack addict.

Why do we continue to see people involved in the recovery and clean up effort in NOLA walking around without any protection such as protective gloves, boots, masks, etc.? By all accounts the water flooding the city is a mix of toxic waste including chemicals, oil, gasolene and other petroleum products not to mention decomposing bodies (both human & animal), raw sewage, trash, etc. all known biological hazards both in the water and in the thick coat of sludge where the water has receded, yet we see workers go about their grim tasks unprotected while the EPA remains silent on the dangers to the health and well being of anyone coming in contact with the hazardous residue left in the wake of Katrina.

Yet another example of the moral bankruptcy of the Bush regime?"

Dunce-in-Chief.

GratisNet: "'When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.' --- George W. Bush

Got that?

Has there ever been a greater fool occupying the White House?

One weeps for America and what this reprobate has done. It will take a generation to put right that which Bush and his Band of Bunglers have trashed."

Furiously spinning.

GratisNet: "While flipping through the channels last night, I paused at FOX when I saw Dick 'The Toe' Morris with O'Reilly. I know, I know and I know but I lingered anyway and caught Morris spinning away furiously not unlike the blonde beauty in the Rumpelstiltskin fable from the brothers Grimm. He noted that while democrats are counting on the dead in NOLA to meet or exceed the sad estimates that have been bandied about (I know of no one, democrat, republican, whatever, wishing the death toll from Katrina approach the ghastly estimates heard thus far), he doubted there would be a few hundred, as in 300, total deaths.

I wonder how he feels about the discovery of some 45 bodies in a hospital in NOLA? While I do not expect the toll from Katrina to approach some of the 10,000-20,000 deaths predicted, I would be surprised (and gladly so) if the toll didn't go any higher than a thousand or so.

Leave it to a republican to try and gain advantage from the dead. I can see the headlines now, 'Bush does great job in keeping Katrina deaths to only 2,495' or 'Bush's efforts account for the Katrina death toll being only 2,495 and not the 20,000 as was expected.'

The latest polls seem to indicate that the American people finally, at long last, are getting it about Bush and his Band of Bunglers. They are coming to realize exactly how great a disaster George W. Bush is and the damage he is doing to America. May the fog of the spinners continue to be lifted from the eyes of the American people."

Cover up.

From The Independent of London

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger. In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health. The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.

So once again incompetent hacks that the Bungler in Chief appointed to positions of authority are endangering the health and welfare of the people.

So once again the regime of the most inept individual ever to sit in the White House is striving to cover up yet another monumental f*ck up.

I know I'm surprised, are you? Of course not for it has become painfully apparent over the past 4+ years that not only is Bush a bungler of the first order, he is perhaps the most amoral, ethically challenged individual ever to occupy the oval office. Hell, he has demonstrated that he is the most morally corrupt individual to hold ANY office, ever.

Finally, lest you think that Hugh Kaufman is blowing smoke:

Few people are better qualified to judge the extent of the problem. Mr Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since it was founded 35 years ago, helped to set up its hazardous waste programme. After serving as chief investigator to the EPA's ombudsman, he is now senior policy analyst in its Office of Solid Wastes and Emergency Response. He said the clean-up needed to be "the most massive public works exercise ever done", adding: "It will take 10 years to get everything up and running and safe."

Feeling safer yet?