I haven't written in quite some time. I should get back on the horse. Too many stories...

McCain, the Panderbear and Droopy Dog Lieberman make nice at the AEI

I just finishing watching the tail-end of yesterday's Lieberman-McCain Iraq war surge-party at the American Enterprise Institute and I think I need a shower.

The first thing I noticed was the "D-CT" label in front of Holy Joe's C-SPAN caption. The folks at my favorite channel should know that Joe gave up being a Democrat when Ned Lamont beat him in the August 8th primary. He's now the sole member of the "Connecticut for Lieberman Party."

What a total asshole.

He started going on and on about some Totalitarian Caliphate that'll take over the world if we don't send 20-40K more troops over to Iraq. Also, he doesn't think the aformentioned caliphate will be good for chicks or homos.

"Individual freedoms?! Forget it!"

Then it was Saint McCain's turn at the mic and I tuned him out. I tuned him out because he's the phoniest politician I have EVER seen...besides Rick Perry.

The Carpetbagger Report has a growing list of McCain's flip-flops :

* McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.

* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but has since decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. (Indeed, McCain has now hired Falwell’s debate coach.)

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile with Norquist.

* McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands.

* McCain gave up on his signature policy issue, campaign-finance reform, and won’t back the same provision he sponsored just a couple of years ago.

* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

* McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

*And now McCain has gone from insisting that the war in Iraq would be easy to insisting that he’s always said the war in Iraq would be hard. And yet, you’ll still find most of the political establishment arguing that McCain’s strength as a candidate is his credibility.

Maverick my ass. he's just another callous Republican who has completely sold-out his integrity in order to get elected.

Happy Holidays!

Um...what? Chuck Taylors and a Raiders jacket!!!?

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

Freddy Fender died this evening in Corpus Christi, Texas. he was 69 years old. He was The BeBop Kid from the Rio Grande Valley that made it on the Hollywood/Texas walks of fame, played innagural parties for President's Bush and Clinton, won numerous grammys for his solo work, and collaborative efforts with The Texas Tornados and Los Super Seven, and there's a freakin' WATER TOWER with his face on it in San Benito. "

Liveblogging President Pissy Pants

President Bush the young'n just said his administration tried to exhaust all diplomatic measures before committing the U.S. military. If it's one thing we can all take away from this administration, it's the fact that they are unapologetically diplomatic. Right. (On Foley) Has Hastert lost his credibility?

I think the Speaker's strong statements have made it clear...that he wants to find out the facts. All of us want to find out the facts. We need to find out what Republicans knew and what Democrats knew. Denny's very credible as far as I'm concerned. I think the elections will be decided by security and by the economy.

Fruedian slip..he just referred to Nancy Pelosi as the leader of the House. Was I the only one that heard that? Would you do anything different in Iraq?

Abu Gareff, he said. Abu Gareff, of course, translates to Abu Ghraib in everyone else's language. And that, my friends, is the only thing he "would have done different." One hour later. It's over. I wish he actually had something to contribute to these press conferences. His press conferences sound like his State of the Union addresses sound like his campaign stump speeches sound like his cable news interviews sound like the RNC talking points which can be read HERE.

And later....WHY I'M NOT VOTING FOR KINKY

But but but...what about Clinton?!

From Josh Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo:

"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb. "Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated. Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state. Facts hurt. So do nukes.

It's been weeks

School seems to slow things down. I keep up with Bloglandia, but I tend to forget to post anything on my own. Today isn't any different, really, since I'm investing all of my time studying for midterms. Gross. Here's a new cut from Yo La tengo's new album, "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Kick Your Ass." It's called Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind, and like everything else this band has released, it doesn't disappoint. powered by ODEO
Keep fighting the good fight and buy this record!

You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas

One of the most influential women in my life aside from my mother and grandmothers was, and always will be former Governor Ann Richards. Meeting her during her incumbent run against George W. Bush was a dream come true for me at the time, and each time I saw her come in for the Austin American Statesman at Book People, I always had this feeling that I was in the presence of a great, great woman. Ann Richards died in her home tonight surrounded by friends and family. She was our last great Governor and she will be missed.

I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone,' " Richards said shortly before leaving office in January 1995.

Her electric keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention can be watched or read HERE and you can read some of her most memorable quotes HERE.

Ann Richards on How to Be a Good Republican:

You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but yesterday's gasoline prices are all Clinton's fault.

You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own.

You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.

You have to believe that AIDS victims deserve their disease, but smokers with lung cancer and overweight individuals with heart disease don't deserve theirs.

You have to appreciate the power rush that comes with sporting a gun.

You have to believe...everything Rush Limbaugh says.

You have to believe that the agricultural, restaurant, housing and hotel industries can survive without immigrant labor.

You have to believe God hates homosexuality, but loves the death penalty.

You have to believe society is color-blind and growing up black in America doesn't diminish your opportunities, but you still won't vote for Alan Keyes.

You have to believe that pollution is OK as long as it makes a profit.

You have to believe in prayer in schools, as long as you don't pray to Allah or Buddha.

You have to believe Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were really faithful husbands.

You have to believe speaking a few Spanish phrases makes you instantly popular in the barrio.

You have to believe that only your own teenagers are still virgins.

You have to be against government interference in business, until your oil company, corporation or Savings and Loan is about to go broke and you beg for a government bail out.

You love Jesus and Jesus loves you and, by the way, Jesus shares your hatred for AIDS victims, homosexuals, and President Clinton.

You have to believe government has nothing to do with providing police protection, national defense, and building roads.

You have to believe a poor, minority student with a disciplinary history and failing grades will be admitted into an elite private school with a $1,000 voucher.

Goddamnit. She's been right from the very beginning.

May this country forgive you, Mr. President

In case anyone missed Countdown with Keith Olbermann on the 5th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, here is the transcript of his special comment in its entirety [emphasis/links mine]:

And lastly tonight a Special Comment on why we are here. Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter. And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers. And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors. I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is, and always shall be, personal. And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President. However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this. Five years later this space… is still empty.

Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful. At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field, Mr. Lincoln said "we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract." Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice. Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground." So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all. Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it. And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution. The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support. Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that. Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that. Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that. History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage. Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people. The President — and those around him — did that. They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists." They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did. The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense." Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country. Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11. Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible — for anything — in his own administration. Yet what is happening this very night? A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes. The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11. Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero… So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans. This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things. And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street." In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.

The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves." And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight. "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American… When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.

5 years later

Only Our Government has Forgotten

From Daily Kos diarist HRH:

We hear a lot about beautiful dead girls in the US media. Here are some that we haven't heard about much. Their smiles haven't been plastered over the supermarket tabloid press, and they're not likely to be. One of the reasons is that they don't fit the popular stereotype of beautiful-woman-as-helpless-victim. Another reason is that many people still haven't focused on the reality of women in the military. Even here on DKos, I see comments about "sons and fathers" who have been killed and maimed. Almost NO MENTION of women in the military.

There's a war going on somewhere...