These shoes suck.

Politics, government, functional democracies mean NOTHING if you don't have a pair of shoes that rule. Betch. A million thank-yous to KK La Rue, who passed along this link to Kelly-Wants-Some-Shoes. Also, Vanessa and Paul are engaged. Woot!

The Stache Speaks To Me...And He Keeps It Real

Last night, on the O'Reilly Factor, Geraldo said that in 35 years, he'd seen "a hell of a lot more combat than John Kerry." Back in April of 2003, CNN reported that Geraldo was being kicked outta Baghdad for divulging details of a future military operation. How did he do it, you ask? He drew a fucking MAP in the sand!!!

That's klassy-with-a-K, Rivera.

GOP'n Off...all night long (all night)

Senators John Warner (R-A) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) are in a massage train, sucking on sweet and sour elephant-pops on C-SPAN 2 right now!! (9:15pm) It's like I just happened upon them rapping, and apparently, Iraq is crazyfantastic these days. Oh shit...Sessions just slammed those hippie-ass pussies that went to Davos. Snap, he says...! To the showers, I say!!! ...and I do.

Two Missing Soldiers

A senior Iraqi official has announced that the bodies of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., have been found in the Sunni Arab region known as the "Triangle of Death." They had been missing since Friday, following an insurgent ambush. This past Sunday, upon being grilled by Chris Wallace of FOX News, Tony Snow said this of the missing soldiers:

The thing is the way the war is being covered — and we've seen it right now. We have two U.S. servicemen — and God bless them. We hope they're okay. We're focusing on them and we forget that since Zarqawi was killed, hundreds of bad guys have been rounded up. There's been a lot of intelligence. The Iraqis have gone ahead and mobilized 50,000 of their own to go into five Baghdad neighborhoods. There's a lot going on there. Now, the problem is that from a video standpoint, somebody can blow up a car in a marketplace in Baghdad and get headlines the world over. WALLACE: Or a hostage tape of two American soldiers. SNOW: Exactly right. And that suddenly becomes the perception of everything that's going on in the country. It's a little more difficult sometimes to show incremental progress.

It's better to inundate the public with story after story of missing white women, as opposed to sullying their beautiful minds with news of missing/dead soldiers.

Here are YESTERDAY'S instances of incremental progress courtesy of Reuters' Alert Net: *BAGHDAD - A car bomb targeting a police checkpoint in southern Baghdad killed three people and wounded three. *RAMADI - Helicopters flew over the Iraqi town of Ramadi and warplanes could be heard overhead as U.S. troops hunted down insurgents in the rebel stronghold, a Reuters witness said. NAJAF - One person was killed and five wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near the Shi'ite city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber killed four civilians and wounded 10 when he detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi army checkpoint in central Baghdad, police said. KERBALA - Gunmen killed a senior police officer and wounded two of his bodyguards in the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad. More of that incremental progress later...

Watch out for the Hispanicane....and the Stormbrero!

Today, the House is voting on a non-binding resolution that sets in stone the fact that Iraq is (now) a large part of the global war on terror, and that there are currently no plans to withdraw. Ever.

*****UPDATE*****

House Rejects Timetable for Iraq Pullout

In a 256-153 vote, the GOP-led House approved a nonbinding resolution that praises U.S. troops, labels the Iraq war part of the larger global fight against terrorism and says an "arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of troops is not in the national interest.

*****END UPDATE*****

Last night, on Hardball, Duncan Hunter (R-CA) went head to head with Marty Meehan (D-MA) on the resolution. Duncan Hunter wasn’t able to answer the Why-Did-We-Go-To-War question that Chris threw out at him, but he did say that congress voted to move into Iraq, installed a free government, and did something that will ultimately result in having an American ally for future generations. He also said some bullshit about Iraq being fragile, but free... Naturally, Chris had no follow-up after his rambling non-answer. Chris cut to commercials with a Carvillian metaphor (paraphrased): A lot of people think you guys gave Bush a blank check. He filled it out and it said WAR on it. I want to have Chris Mattews circa Tip O'Neil's era to fill me up with his babies. In the Assholes-On-Parade segment, Chris talked to Bill Frist (R-TN) and, I kid you not, the cat killing monkey doctor said “cut and run” like 4 times in less than a minute-and-a-half. Had he been decked out inna seersucker stylee for the interview, it might have been a little more exciting. Then, Chris talked to Al Sharpton and Ed Rogers, a former Bush 41 advisor. Nothing newsworthy there…really there wasn’t. Moving on to the morning time dot dot dot NBC is really trying hard to force-feed the Bush Is On A Roll narrative down our throats before the week is over. Zarqawi was just the beginning of all this great news. Things are on the up and up for POTUS: Rove was cleared, Bush is getting a lot of mileage (literally!) out of his recent 5 hour visit to the Green Zone, and the stealth manner in which the whole trip was carried out just added dramatic effect to the who kick-ass affair. Charlie Cook said it was like an exclamation point at the end of this fantastic week. After too many reach-arounds to count, what’s-her-face had Micheal Smerconish and James Carville on to talk about the President’s GREAT week. (Did he get his mojo back or what?!)Smerconish referred to Bush as the new Comeback Kid, f’real. Carville giggled the way Carville giggles and pointed out the fact that (according to NBC) this is the biggest 1 point jump in approval ratings ever. Snap!

Paraphrased Carville nuggets:

Bush goes from 36% to 37% and NBC is ready to declare a national holiday. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. We used to get concerned in the Clinton White House when his ratings dropped below 57%.

In the end, all Smerconish could finish with was a breathless : “It’s a good week for America!” AND… In the department of Who Gives A Shit: Jay Z has given up on Cristal.

Blogging About Bloggers?

Ok…to most, this will just be tedious commentary on last week’s blogtastic gatherings in Las Vegas, so skip past the photo at the end if you don’t give a flip…

There’s been an abundance of metaphorical stink-eye directed towards Ana Marie Cox (AMC)ever since her arrival at Yearly Kos in Nevada. Mrs. Cox is the proprietor of Wonkette.com for those of you that currently reside in space hotels next door to Stephen Hawking. We’ll begin with Andy Axel of Knoxviews.com who totally left his sense of humor in one of the dank, caucus rooms at the Riviera:

I didn't think her blog was worth half a domestic Holstein's loaf. And now she's writing for Time? Gee, howdy. How did I miss Ana Marie Cox's transition to hatchet-wielding member of the DC media establishment? She was dispatched (presumably as a woman with some "blogging" experience) to Las Vegas to cover Yearly Kos, an effort directed at the netroots community. She had her own blog for a time, although repetitive and gratuitous references to marginal sexual practice * pretty much undermined whatever credibility that she might have as a serious news source. But, apparently, she thinks she's all growns up now. And apparently, her bosses think so, too. Fisking to follow... As the men behind the nation's two most influential liberal blogs — dailykos.com and atrios.blogspot.com — Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Duncan Black draw interested stares, small crowds and quiet, admiring gossip from the bloggers, lurkers and activists gathered here at the Riviera. They are the Brangelina of Yearly Kos. And by invoking the spectre of "Brangelina" in the first graf of this outing, you know you can pretty much safely ignore every single thing that comes after. Why reduce the news of the Yearly Kos to a tabloid soundbite? Of course, it's because she can, now that she's one of the Kewl Kids at the Kool-Aid table. And the message is, of course: "Blogging: Unserious News."

Um…first of all, is it too much to ask that bloggers stop using any of the following words in their posts: fisking , Kewl Kids, Kool Kids, Kool-Aid, DC media establishment, Repugs, & snark? Alright. Moving on…with absolutely no sense of humor when it comes to self-deprication, ass-fucking and/or the jocks table in the cafeteria that is the blogosphere. The extent to which these otherwise “serious” bloggers overreact to AMC's coverage of the event boggles (bloggles?) the mind. I must have missed the big Ana’s-a-part-of-the-MSM banquet. Did everyone enjoy the Jeff Gannon ice sculpture slash vodka shooter tastefully carved into his now famous Barberini pose? If my blog got over 100K hits a day, I suppose I’d be annoyed, too. She landed a job with TIME, got a book deal, & parties with the DC elite. This means she’s now a shill for the administration that would rather hang out with the douche-chills from Instapundit as opposed to tinfoil hat-making Kossacks. (Seriously!) The misdirected pile-on has inevitably led to not-so-thinly-veiled sexism and general asshole-ness in comment logs and precious liberal blog-space whining about her unfair observations.

**Ezra Klein took time out of his schedule to answer a rhetorical question posed by AMC because that's what we expect from The American Prospect blog. **Trex over at Firedoglake, which is the place to get news/analysis of Plamegate, took the time to write a hilarious (and by hilarious, I mean it’s a predictable attempt at satire that’s soooo not funny) post in which she transcribes Ana Marie’s missing notebook. **Jane Hamsher, also of the Firedoglake blog went from zero to humorless liberal bitch in THIS post, where she refers to AMC as a “drunken public slag” that had previously “teetered through the crowd on a pair of spindly legs shown to ill-effect in a set of shorts I’d seen on the markdown rack at Barneys.” Um…what? Criticizing a DC gossip columnist for being a DC gossip columnist by posting the same kind of bitchy crap you claim to hate so much makes zero sense…but whatevs, bring on Teh Snark or something. *Yawn Get the fuck over yourselves y'all. I absolutely love reading posts from the aforementioned bloggers, but they should stick to blogging about the things they know best. If you can't handle a little somethin' somethin' from Wonkette, what makes you think you can handle the feces that will inevitably be flung in the upcoming elections? I'd like to thank AMC for bringing the truth about ass-fucking and of course, for Butterstick. Sweet, sweet Butterstick. Ana Marie Cox's musings on YearlyKos can be found HERE. In other news, Crony McSnowjob and Sweet Lips Barlett reporting for duty!

This is what it's like to be so white it hurts. ...all the way down to your core, yo.

Also today:

• John Boehner's Super Secret memo to House Republicans advises them to "exploit 9-11, attack oponents ad hominem & create a false choice." {Think Progress}
• Read all about Bush's "triumphant return" from Iraq, and how Republicans "basked in the afterglow" of the recent successes in the wartorn country. {Breitbart}
• Donald Rumsfeld gived a mighty wag-of-the-finger to US reporters in Guantanamo.{Raw Story}
• Joe Lieberman loses his shit and decides to leave the Democratic party if he loses the upcoming primary against Ned Lamont. {Teagan Goddard's Political Wire}

It's 1999, my niggas...

Subject line : Irrelevant I've been listening to Bones-Thugs-n-Harmony's E. 1999 Eternal album for a couple of days now. Perhaps it's my little way of wishing it was still 99, still reeling from the wounds of the drive-by impeachment Republicans were trying to shove down our throats. The towers were still standing, and our wild-eyed governor was busy wrecking public education, throwing away the record surplus left behind for him by Ann Richards, and waiting for a high-profile evangelist to save him from his bacchanalia. Those were the days. Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq today. Good on him. I don't give him credit for much since everything he touches seems to turn to shit, but I'm guessing his late night study sessions with Condi gave him a head start on restoring some of the dignity he's lost on his long, strange trip. It's been reported that this trip was planned two weeks ago. Something about that revelation strikes me as odd. He visits a few days after Zarqawi's bloated face was plastered on TV screens worldwide, a day after his 33% approval ratings were revealed, and on the day that Karl Rove was cleared of any wrongdoing in the Valerie Plame leak case. Hm. King Obvious doesn't want us to think this a photo op. For the next hour or so, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but come 11:45am, it's back to the real world...

Ding dong, Zarqawi's dead.

Here we go again... Zarqawi and his spiritual leader (whatever the hell that means) were killed last night in a precision airstrike in the province of Diyala. Though we wont be graced again with a staged aircraft landing under a “Mission Accomplished” banner, be on the lookout for paste-eating members of the mainstream media eating this shit up like pudding and pie. (Earlier this morning, NBC’s Ann Curry asked Senator Joe Biden if he “pumped his fists up in the air” after hearing news of Zarqawi’s death.) I think a victory entails presenting some sort of structured, thoughtful leadership, none of which President Bush has ever displayed. A victory would assume there was careful planning and non-partisan decision-making, none of which President Bush has ever displayed. As for the reactions from Iraqis: "We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme." Some things never change. Congratulations to the military that carried out the airstrike that killed this truly abhorrent individual. Here’s to hoping that next can of whoop-ass is reserved for bin Laden. Remember him?

Seig Heil, y'all

In honor of this Day of the Beast, I offer you, dear reader, a couple of quotes from my two favorite mouthpieces of the Bush White House: On the 9-11 widows:

" These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process." "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much."

From Ann Coulter’s new book, ‘Godless: The Church of Liberalism’

On the alleged massacre in Haditha:

This Haditha story, this Haditha incident, whatever, this is it folks, this is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic Party, the American left, and the Drive-By Media to destroy our effort to win the war in Iraq. That’s what Haditha represents — and they are going about it gleefully. They are ecstatic about it… Folks, let me just put it in graphic terms. It is going to be a gang rape. There is going to be a gang rape by the Democratic Party, the American left and the Drive-By Media, to finally take us out in the war against Iraq. Make no bones about it.

From : The Rush Limbaugh Show June 4, 2006-06-06

...and a happy End Times to you too!

How DARE you question the President's fidelity?!?!?

*Disclaimer*

If mentally deficient Republicans were able to report on every single tidbit regarding the Lewinskey affair, I can surely indulge in some D.C. gossip, especially when it's this juicy.

Didn't Republicans try to impeach Clinton for shoving a cigar into the nether-regions of the pleasantly plump, pizza-delivering intern? If the POTUS is currently involved in an extramarital affair, can we finally get the ball rolling on impeachment? (...or at least some sort of public scolding or censure.)

Randi Rhodes just reported that Laura Bush has moved out of the White House, and into the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. The report originated with super secret backgound sources that passed along the information to ex-CIA agent Wayne Madsen.

From the Madsen Report:

...two mainstream media sources have confirmed that their sources also have reported an ongoing affair between Mr. Bush and Rice. Informed sources Inside the Beltway report that First Lady Laura Bush has established temporary residence in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC as a result of a tiff with President Bush over an extramarital relationship involving her husband. Mr. Bush's tryst is said to involve Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It is not known how long Mrs. Bush plans to remain at the Mayflower, however, her security detail has been present at the hotel during hours when the First Lady would normally be residing in the White House. While she was National Security Adviser, Rice, who has never been married, referred to George W. Bush as "my husband" before she corrected herself and said, "President. Bush" Rice was speaking at a dinner hosted by New York Times bureau chief Philip Taubman when she made her "husband" remarks.

Flashback to April 2004: Then National Security Advisor Rice drew stifled gasps when she mistakenly referred to President Bush as "her husb-" before stopping to correct herself immediately afterwards.

After the hoopla of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, you'd think the liberal press would jump on this story. I guess we just have to wait and see what comes of it next week.

Bush and Condi sitting in a tree, K-I-L-L-I-N-G First comes Iraq Then comes Iran Then comes a baby with a rifle in her hand -1st four lines courtesy of Randi Rhodes-

Oy! Someone stop the pictures... Can't. Stop. Posting. Photos.