Money for nothing
To help stimulate the economy, Congress and the White House have struck a deal to begin “rushing” tax rebates of $600 to $1,200 to tax payers hoping we will quickly spend this free money on something stupid and in the process shock this ailing economy to life. If I remember correctly, Bush did this shortly after he took office. It seems so long ago that I can’t really remember.
I’m glad that the federal government has so much extra money that they can just dispense it in such a haphazard way.
Even if the Senate quickly approves this free money scheme, the checks will not start going out till May. It could then take months before everyone gets their free money.
The fear is that people will not take this money and spend it. They might just do something responsible with it and put it away for a rainy day. That wont stimulate the economy. If they really want to make sure people use the money for it’s intended purpose, they ought to issue Visa or Mastercard debit cards. Make them so they can’t be used for anything other then something that would stimulate the economy. That means you couldn’t squirrel it away for the proverbial rainy day. You would have to use it.
I wont believe we are getting this money until we actually get the check and the check clears. Until that happens, I’m not counting on getting it.
I’m glad I don’t have to explain this
It seems Egypt is pursuing a nuclear power program and that’s ok with the Bush Administration. So says White House spokesman Dana Perino. She pointed out that the United States is supportive of countries pursuing civil nuclear energy because it’s clean burning and because it provides electricity in a clean-burning and affordable way.
Except if it’s the Iranians.
President Bush has made references to World War III if and when Iran develops a nuclear power program. The idea is that Iran having nuclear power will be a threat to Israel. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has questioned the historical accuracy of the holocaust and has said that Israel should be wiped off the map. At least that is what he supposedly said. I don’t speak Farsi.
Some may talk about wiping Israel off the map, but Egypt has actually tried. More then once. In fact, the United States pays Egypt over $2 billion a year for the assurance that they won’t try to wipe Israel off the map anymore.
And it’s ok with the Bush Administration if Egypt goes nuclear?
Outed CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson worked on keeping nuclear weapons from Iran
It’s been reported that tonight’s 60 Minutes will have an interview with former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson. She will explain that when Bush administration officials leaked her name to members of the press, she was working on keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Iran. Something I thought Bush felt strongly about.
This certainly is not good. It doesn’t surprise me though. And to think that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi still cannot stop repeating her promise that impeachment is off the table. I would think this is just the type of thing that would get a president impeached. Granted, it’s not as serious as a sexual act between two consenting adults, but outing a CIA covert agent is a serious offense.
Not only did members of the Bush administration out a CIA covert agent, they stonewalled the subsequent investigation. Bush then commuted the sentence of the only defendant to be prosecuted in connection to this crime.
KATIE COURIC: This Sunday on 60 Minutes, Valerie Plame Wilson gives her first interview since top Bush administration officials exposed her role as an undercover CIA agent four years ago. CBS News has learned she was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In the interview, we talked about what it meant to have her identity revealed.
[BEGIN 60 MINUTES CLIP]
COURIC: What went through your mind when you saw your name in print?
PLAME: Oh, it was horrifying, absolutely horrifying.
COURIC: She served 20 years in the CIA, many undercover in the agency’s counterproliferation division, rising to top positions and confronting one of the most ominous threats of our time.
PLAME: Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons.
COURIC: When senior administration officials leaked her name to reporters, they may have exposed other spies and damaged operations targeting Iran. CBS News has learned that she was involved in one highly classified mission to deliver fake nuclear weapons blueprints to Tehran. It was called Operation Merlin, and it was first revealed in a book by investigative reporter James Risen.
COURIC: Are you familiar with that?
PLAME: I don’t think I can tell you.
COURIC: He said the idea was to give the Iranians blueprints for the bomb that were seriously flawed to set them back. Does that sound like something the counter-proliferation division would do?
PLAME: I think I can say it sounds like a good idea.
COURIC: Were you surprised to read about Operation Merlin in the press?
PLAME: Indeed.
COURIC: Is that problematic for the CIA?
PLAME: Leaks are always bad news.
COURIC: She should know, revealing for the first time that the leak of her name had serious repercussions.
PLAME: I can tell you all the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases to see did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Who did she see?
COURIC: And what would be the ramifications of that?
PLAME: Well, it was very serious. It puts in danger, if not shuts down, the operations that I had worked on.
COURIC: Valerie Plame Wilson also has some harsh things to say about President Bush. That and much more in our interview this Sunday on 60 Minutes.
Not only was Valerie Plame Wilson’s career with the CIA ruined, but the lives of the people she dealt with were put into extreme peril. Maybe may have died over her being outed. This is why it’s a crime to out the identity of a covert agent.
Rush Limbaugh and phony soldiers
A lot has been made of late about something stupid conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said about members of the military that favor leaving Iraq. He referred to them as “phony soldiers”. This comment has got a lot of people upset. So much so that Limbaugh has even gone back and edited the transcript of his show to change the context of what he said.
This is something Limbaugh doesn’t normally do when he says something stupid.
I’m having a hard time understanding all the outrage over this specific comment. Granted, it sounds as though Limbaugh is dishonoring those who serve their country, both past and present, but how is that newsworthy? Why is it so hard to understand that Limbaugh doesn’t have respect for members of the military? What would make anyone think that Limbaugh cares about the troops?
I would think that if Limbaugh really cared about the troops, he would be outraged that so many of them have been killed in a war waged over false pretenses. The last time I checked, George W. Bush went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) and he had ties to al-Qaeda. Things that turned out to be not true. If Limbaugh cared about the troops, he would want them to come home, especially now that it’s clear they were sent to wage a war under false pretenses. If Limbaugh really cared about the troops, he would speak out against the idea of a never ending war. Instead of speaking out against it, he advocates it.
It seems to me that Limbaugh is being criticized for simply being Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh said something stupid. That’s just what he does.
My how things change
“I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own.”
George W. Bush explaining why he signed death warrants
for 152 inmates while governor of Texas.
Bush commutes Libby prison sentence
President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term that Bush said was excessive.Bush’s move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case.
That meant Libby was likely to have to report to prison soon and put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby’s allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”
Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, and Bush said his action still “leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby.”
I’m almost speechless. Does this mean Bush will now be reviewing every convicted felon’s sentence to ascertain if it’s too excessive or is this something he will reserve only for his buddies? A pardon would have looked better. By commuting the sentence, he’s admitting there was a crime committed, but that Libby should for some reason be exempt from actually really being punished for it.
If he did this because he truly thought the 2 1/2-year prison sentence was excessive, why didn’t he just shorten it down to something smaller? Because it wasn’t that he felt 30 months in prison was excessive, but that he was to go to prison at all is what Bush thought was excessive.
George Bush criticizes Congress of going on “vacation”
George Bush criticized Congress as being “irresponsible” for going on spring break without first approving money for Iraq with no strings attached. They gave him all the money he asked for. The problem is that they tied the $120 billion dollars in military spending to a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
“They need to come off their vacation, get a bill to my desk, and if it’s got strings and mandates and withdrawals and pork I’ll veto it,” the president said. “And then we can get down to the business of getting this thing done.”
I never thought I would hear George Bush criticize anyone else for taking a vacation. He’s spent so much time on vacation that he actually set a presidential record. Hearing him criticize anyone about taking a vacation is just hypocritically weird.
What’s he going to do next, criticize someone for using a family connection to get out of going to Vietnam?
Update (5 April) : Unbeknown to me at the time when I first wrote this post, Bush left Washington shortly after criticizing Congress. He himself went on vacation to his ranch in Texas. Go figure.
The Democrats have gone and pissed off the War President
Well, they did it. The Democrats in the House agreed to give Bush $124 BILLION, but they put restrictions on it:
The $124 billion House legislation would pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year but would require that combat troops come home from Iraq before September 2008 — or earlier if the Iraqi government did not meet certain requirements. Democrats said it was time to heed the mandate of their election sweep last November, which gave them control of Congress.
Bush and the other neo-cons need to learn that the American people will not sit still for a never ending occupation of Iraq. The neo-cons first tried to base American troops permanently in Saudi Arabia. We all saw how that worked out. They now want to make Iraq a permanent base of occupation to facilitate control over the Middle East.
To the neo-cons, it’s not about not leaving Iraq until “the job is done”. Whatever that means. It’s about staying in Iraq forever. It’s about having a permanent presence in the Middle East.
I doubt Bush would have invaded Iraq if it meant American forces would one day have to actually leave.
The Murtha plan
U.S. Rep. John Murtha has come up with a creative way of putting a stop to Bush’s war in Iraq. It involves placing conditions on how Bush can spend the $93.4 billion in new combat funds.
- The Pentagon would have to certify that troops being sent to Iraq are “fully combat ready” with training and equipment.
- Troops must have at least one year at home between combat deployments.
- Combat assignments could not be extended beyond one year.
- A “stop-loss” program (back door draft) forcing soldiers to extend their enlistment periods would be prohibited.
It’s a good idea. Instead of cutting off the funds, it places common sense conditions on how those funds are to be spent. The conditions are things that really cannot be argued against.
Unless of course Republicans want to argue that troops should be sent to Iraq that are not combat ready. That troops should be sent to Iraq that have not been home for at least one year. That troops should be forced to continue serving in the military even after their enlistments are over. That combat tours should last longer then a year.
How are the chickenhawks going to argue for any of that?
So far, they don’t seem to be arguing against the actual details of the plan. No, they are instead criticizing the end results of such a plan. It will be impossible to continue Bush’s war in Iraq with such conditions placed on the war’s financing. This plan may actually work. It may actually do some good. Where a non-binding resolution does nothing, this can actually bring an end to Bush’s perpetual war in Iraq.
House passes non-binding resolution on Iraq war
The final non-binding vote was a non-binding 246 to a non-binding 182. Seventeen Republicans actually voted for the non-binding resolution.
What a waste of time. What’s the point? To let Bush know that they don’t approve of his war? Couldn’t they just do what I do and write a blog post? This non-binding resolution doesn’t do anything. A non-binding resolution has as much teeth to it as a blog post.
It seems a shame though that they didn’t allow the non-voting members of the House to vote. Since it was non-binding, what’s the difference? The representatives from Puerto Rico, Washington DC, the Virgin Islands, and Guam are allowed to pretend to be actual congressmen. They are not allowed to actually vote. This non-binding Iraq war resolution sounds like it would have been right up their non-voting alley.
If they were allowed to vote.
John Kerry says he won’t run for President in 2008
What a coincidence. I already decided I wouldn’t be voting for him in 2008. Once is one time too many as far as I’m concerned. I voted for him in 2006. It’s not something I am proud of.
What choice did I have? Picking between George W. Bush or John Kerry was a lot like picking between drinking a gallon of spoiled milk or drinking something else nasty and foul. Something just as bad as spoiled rotten milk. Maybe a domestic beer or something else that tastes really bad.
Not only did I vote for John Kerry, I even affixed a John Kerry bumper sticker on the rear bumper of my Hyundai Accent. It remained there for three whole days until somebody removed it while I was shopping at Kmart.
That’s what I get for shopping at Kmart.
Link
Bush is thinking of sending more troops to Iraq and Suzanne Somers’ mansion burned down
I was watching CNN this morning when I learned that there is yet again another fire raging forth in Malibu. So far, four mansions have been destroyed, including the home of Suzanne Somers.
Because of the Santa Ana winds and the geographical location of the hills surrounding Malibu, mansions along the beach in Malibu are constantly burning down. It’s not the first time a celebrity’s home was destroyed in Malibu and it wont be the last. I think it’s dumb to build a mansion someplace where so many of them have burned to the ground, but what do I know? It’s not like I was smart enough to invent the Thighmaster.
Watching CNN switch gears to the topic of sending more troops to Iraq made me realize that there is a parallel between the two stories. What does Bush sending more troops to Iraq have to do with Suzanne Somers and her home burning down?
Sending more troops to Iraq at this point would be like Suzanne Somers going out tomorrow and buying fire insurance .
For both, it’s too late. The time to send more troops to Iraq would have been at the time of the invasion. Before anarchy and chaos and upheaval were allowed to take root in Iraq. Before the looting and before the sectarian violence.
Now it’s simply too late.
If Suzanne Somers were ever going to buy fire insurance for her Malibu mansion, the time would have been before the fire destroyed her home. For her to now say that she is thinking of buying fire insurance would be ridiculous.
For George Bush to say now he is thinking of sending more troops to Iraq is equally ridiculous. Now it’s simply too late.
Bush puts a guy in charge of family planning that does not believe in birth control
When I was reading this over at the Washington Post, I had to stop and make sure I wasn’t reading it over at The Onion. To tell you the truth, I’m still not convinced it’s not a prank:
The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”
Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.
Demeaning to women? Huh?
He will be in charge of $283 million dollars a year for funding birth control and birth control information for poor women. Even though he doesn’t believe in it. Birth control that is.
This doesn’t makes sense. Even for George Bush. It’s like putting someone in charge of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) that doesn’t believe in steel toed safety boots or hardhats for construction workers.
Frankly, I just don’t get it. I guess this means the amount of abortions will continue to increase every year under Bush. They have done so every year since he has been president. In contrast, abortions decreased every year under Clinton. If a woman has easy access to birth control, it’s less likely she will need an abortion. The two are inversely proportional to each other.
Bush admits he lied
Proving once again that he is the President that brought integrity back to the White House, Bush admitted today that he was lying when he told reporters last week that Donald Rumsfeld was doing a fantastic job and that he fully supported him.
When pressed today about last week’s comment lie, Bush had this to say:
The only way to answer that question, and get it on to another question, was to give you that answer.
Brilliant. It’s a shame Bill Clinton didn’t use this same tactic when subpoenaed by Ken Starr and asked about Monica. Sure, Bush lied to subvert an election by giving voters false information before an election. Bill Clinton lied about extramarital S-E-X.
That is what I call a one-two punch
The unthinkable happened. Britney Spears has given K-Fed the heave-ho and filed for divorce. When I first heard the news yesterday, I was shocked. I could not believe that this young and vibrant couple had hit the skids. When Britney and K-Fed had married and decided to start a family, I was like a lot of Americans. I thought that I had finally found a celebrity couple that was for real.
How could I have been so wrong?
Just when I thought nothing could surprise me more then Britney divorcing K-Fed, I found out today that George W. Bush has given Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the boot. The man who made the Iraqi invasion and occupation the rousing success that it is will be replaced with some other guy that used to work for Bush’s daddy.
Go figure. Way to think outside the box.
First K-Fed and then Donald Rumsfeld. Will the madness ever end? America cannot afford to lose any more of it’s great men.
Leader of the National Association of Evangelicals kills two birds with one stone by buying methamphetamine from his gay prostitute
Ted Haggard, a gay marriage hating preacher-man that occasionally participated in White House conference calls, resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and head of his Colorado church following allegations he met monthly with a gay prostitute for three years.
Paster Haggard denies having sex with the man, but admits receiving a massage and buying methamphetamine.
This guy was a heavy hitter in the evangelical movement. When he wasn’t meeting secretly with his gay male prostitute taking methamphetamine, he was meeting with George W. Bush plotting their right-wing battle against gay rights.
Ted Haggard is a fake and a fraud. I’m sure there are many people in his mega-church that will refuse to believe that their gay hating paster is in fact a drug taking, homosexual hypocrite.
The all-volunteer military
President George W. Bush said something that I found interesting. He had this to say at a rally for one of his Republican stooges:
“The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots — and Senator Kerry owes them an apology.”
First he implied that our service members are in Iraq because they volunteered to go to Iraq. That’s simply not true. Just because they took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies doesn’t mean they volunteered to go off and make Iraq a democracy.
Bush also said that members in the military are serving because they are “patriots”. That is simply not true. Most join the military for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with patriotism. Whatever that word even means these days. Sometimes I think it has been turned into something to do with magnetic yellow ribbons and boycotting the Dixie Chicks. To listening to Sean Hannity and getting as many tax breaks as you possibly can.
A majority of the people that enlist in the military do so because of need. Some join for the job training. Some join for help paying for college. Some join for the medical benefits. Others join because they simply want a steady paycheck. Some join for all of these reasons.
If a kid has the means to go to college or to obtain a well paying job, he or she will be far less inclined to enlist in the military.
If anyone owes the troops an apology, it’s George W. Bush. He sent them to invade a country under false pretenses. Thousands of young men and women have been killed or permanently disfigured because of weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Whoops. The fact is that Bush sent our military to invade and occupy a country for false reasons. His huge whopping mistake he himself refuses to admit.
He has no business demanding Kerry apologize for anything. It’s embarrassing. I don’t know if he knows this, but John Kerry is not even running for re-election.
George Bush is only brave when other people’s lives are at stake
President Bush suggested Thursday that Democrats don’t have the stomach to fight the war on terror. He was at a Republican campaign fundraiser in Alabama and had lots of nasty stuff too.
“Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing,” Bush said at a Republican fundraiser.”The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run,”.
Party of cut and run? How does Bush have any business saying something like this? He is the guy that acted like a wuss on the day of 9-11. When the Saudi terrorists attacked, he was at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida reading to kids. Instead of getting on Air Force One and returning to Washington D.C., he flew around the country hiding from threats that never existed. He even spent time in a bomb shelter at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. How embarrassing. There were a lot of people doing brave and courageous things on the day of 9-11. Don’t let anyone fool you. George Bush wasn’t one of them.
I’m tired of Bush and gutless neo-con chickenhawks like him constantly trying to man-up on everyone else. Only in America can someone like Rush Limbaugh describe a man such as John Kerry as a coward. John Kerry earned a Silver Star for killing the Viet Cong into the jungles of Viet Nam. The only thing Limbaugh has ever killed was a bottle of oxicotin.
I find it ironic that Bush can refer to leaving Iraq as “cut and run”. What more do we have to do over there? We took care of ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Granted, Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was captured and is now on trial. They have had democratic elections in Iraq. Twice. Iraqi People even got purple fingers. What more is there to do? Mission accomplished, right? Major combat operations in Iraq are over, right? So why continue the military occupation of Iraq?
Not only are we paying a heavy toll in American lives, it is costing the American taxpayers approximately $2 billion dollars a week to occupy Iraq. Then again, it’s not like current taxpayers are going to be footing this bill. It will be this country’s great, great, great grandchildren that end up paying for the Bush Iraq war. Future taxpayers will be footing the bill for Bush’s war. Bush isn’t really keen on the idea of paying for the things he wants. He drives up the national debt while cutting taxes. Mostly these tax cuts go to the ultra rich. Tax cuts for people that don’t sacrifice or contribute anything to the war on terror or Bush’s war in Iraq. It’s not as though their children are enlisting in the military after high school and going to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Then again, if you join the military, your chances of going to Afghanistan are not all that high. The odds of going to Iraq are seven times more likely then going to Afghanistan. That’s a shame too, especially if someone joined the armed forces to kill the people that caused the terror attacks on 9-11. Instead of occupying Iraq, our military needs to be in Afghanistan killing the Taliban and hunting down bin Laden.
Bush should have someone read him his reports
The most disappointing thing learned from the once classified assessment on global terrorism isn’t that the world has more terrorists then ever before. It isn’t that the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq made the world more dangerous. Anyone that has read a newspaper or watched the news on TV already knew these things to be true. No, the most troubling thing about this report is that once again George W. Bush proves that he ignores his own intelligence reports. Did he even read it? The report is dated April 2006. How many times has he and his administration argued that the war in Iraq was making us safer? He should have known this was a lie.
There is a reason some people like to call Bush a liar. He constantly says things that aren’t true. Things he has to know aren’t true.
I guess it’s easy to ignore something if you have never read it. Or in the case of Bush, had someone read it to you. Bush said the freshly unclassified report supported his arguments that the world is safer because of the Iraq invasion and occupation. If you read all three and a half pages released from the report, you see that’s simply not true. The released segments warn about the spread of terrorism and contrasted greatly with the Bush administration’s optimistic declarations.
“If this trend continues, threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide,”
Instead of saying that invading Iraq has made things better, The report says the complete opposite. It says that the war in Iraq has become a “cause célèbre” for Islamic extremists. It’s become a training ground for Islamic terrorists. Either Bush has not had someone read him the report or he just doesn’t believe what it says. I don’t know which of the two is worse.
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