Good News & Bad News
Since I couldn't make heads or tails of my HTML hacks that I did when I moved to the "Powell Street" template in order to make Haloscan work correctly (I was really drunk then), I grabbed a revised edition of the code, added what I needed to add, and then had Haloscan do an auto-install. The results?
Good News:
Haloscan commenting and trackbacks have been
FIXED!!Bad News: All previous Haloscan comments & trackbacks have swirled down the fucking memory hole.
Yes, I was sober, but to hell with it. At least it's working
right this time and now I'm off to drink a case of Rolling Rock and see if Tiger Woods 06 is going to rob my ass of another tournament victory by crashing again. If so, I'm going to stagger my way into a Call Of Duty 2 server and get my ass shot off ad infinitum.
UPDATE: I spoke too soon - HaloScan is STILL broken! Time to visit their forums and grovel in front of one of their gurus. Back to Blogger's commenting system until then.
UPDATE 2: The Auto-Install failed. I just did a manual install of HaloScan and, as you can see, both Blogger
AND HaloScan's comments are working simultaneously -- something that isn't supposed to happen according to HaloScan's support forums. Guess what? This happened before! What I did to fix it was simply remove the visable links to Blogger's commenting system so that vistors would never see Blogger's "Add A Comment" link to a post. The hack didn't disable Blogger's commenting since that has to be enabled in order for HaloScan to work (HaloScan is supposed to override Blogger's commenting by piggy-backing on Blogger's proprietary code and then it's supposed to hide Blogger's "Add A Comment" link from view). Anyway, my hackery works for a few months and then goes to shit so I don't want to go through that again. Therefore, my advice to you is to only use HaloScan if you wish to comment and ignore Blogger's "Add A Comment" link entirely.
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Got 'Em By The Short & Curlies
A report has been germinating in the UK since yesterday regarding a memo that contains information that President Bush deliberately set out to bomb Al-Jazeera to the ground but British PM Tony Blair talked him out of it. From
The Daily Mirror:
PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.
But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.
A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.
The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.
A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush."
Oh, but it gets better:
Yesterday former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the five-page transcript of the two leaders' conversation. He said: "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions.
"I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war."
When the news reached our shores, my fellow bloggers erupted, initially wondering if there was any truth to this damaging report. Just because we can't stand Bush doesn't mean we're going to jump the gun and believe he would be this damned stupid to consider bombing an ally in order to rid the world of Al-Jazeera. As a result, we more or less felt that
The Mirror's report about this so called memo could just well be a bullshit story.
WE WERE WRONG!The attorney general last night threatened newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of a document allegedly relating to a dispute between Tony Blair and George Bush over the conduct of military operations in Iraq.
It is believed to be the first time the Blair government has threatened newspapers in this way. Though it has obtained court injunctions against newspapers, the government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents, including highly sensitive ones about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, last night referred editors to newspaper reports yesterday that described the contents of a memo purporting to be at the centre of charges against two men under the secrets act.
Under the front-page headline "Bush plot to bomb his ally", the Daily Mirror reported that the US president last year planned to attack the Arabic television station al-Jazeera, which has its headquarters in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where US and British bombers were based.
Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror, said last night: "We made No 10 fully aware of the intention to publish and were given 'no comment' officially or unofficially. Suddenly 24 hours later we are threatened under section 5 [of the secrets act]".
Under section 5 it is an offence to have come into the possession of government information, or a document from a crown servant, if that person discloses it without lawful authority. The prosecution has to prove the disclosure was damaging.
That alone speaks volumes of the memo's accuracy and authenticity. If Blair's office wasn't worried about the details of this damaging memo being published, he wouldn't have sicced Goldsmith on the media. The fact that he did and now two people are being charged for violating the OSA is all the proof one needs. As a result, I must agree with
John Aravosis and echo his call. My e-mail address is on the sidebar so if anyone in the UK media feels froggy, by all means leap. As John says, we're not emcumbered by a domestic equivilent of the OSA and I'll simply add that after witnessing the kabuki journalism from our corporate and print media regarding the Plame affair, I wouldn't trust any of them sorry bastards to sit the right way on a toilet seat let alone report accurately and fairly on this memo.
As a blogger, I don't have a Republican CEO (or a DINO Democrat such as Sumner Redstone) of a multinational media conclomerate breathing down my neck telling me what to write and when to write it and there isn't a single sonofabitch in either the Bush Administration or in Washington, DC that intimidates me. The way I see it, my W2s and 1099-MISC forms entitle me to the fucking truth and anybody that wants to beg to differ can stuff the following in their hashpipe while they imagine what finger I'm holding up: "Please Be Seated Here Before You Start To Spin!"
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Tin Hat Not Required
On the heels of Sen. Murtha and the pathetic denials by the Bush Administration's position that our Democrats had access to all the intel regarding the Rich Man's Quagmire In Iraq comes the following from
Murray Waas:
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
...
The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.
Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.
And to think that just a few short years ago, the rightwingers were spouting off about how the suggestion that Bush and the NeoCon-artists djinned up all this shit regarding Iraq was just a "tin hat conspiracy theory among leftist moonbats still sore about losing two elections". Welp, the conspiracy is unraveling and tin hats aren't required. The good news is -- barring any further Fitzgerald indictments that may lead to impeachments (or fatal heart attacks, in Cheney's case) -- we get to watch the rightwingers squirm over their ninnyboy winning the last election for the next three long years (but, of course, it's the only ammount of Schadenfreude we can permit ourselves).
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Rummy Thinks We Were All Born Yesterday
"
I didn't advocate invasion. I wasn't asked." (Hattip
C&L)
QUESTION: How in the hell does a Presidential Administration NOT ask their Secretary of Defense on policy advice, especially when that advice pertains to WAR?!?!?
ANSWER: When an idiot President appoints a senile, old, full of shit, fuckwit for the position.
Hey, Rummy -- the title of Defense Secretary is something much more emcompassing than just saying, "Not my fault! I didn't do it!" all the goddamned time.
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That Dirty Liberal Hippie Murtha-Fuckah!!
That's essentially what transpired on C-SPAN hours ago -- the entire rabidly insane Republican "ownership society" went apeshit on Sen. John Murtha for
introducing a resolution calling for bringing the troops home "at the earliest practicable date" and tried to undercut him and the Democrats by introducing their own ridiculous resolution that called for bringing the troops home from Iraq "immediately". The worst came from "The Wicked Witch Of Freeper Valley" -- Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio (video at
Think Progress):
At one point in the emotional debate, Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, told of a phone call she received from a Marine colonel.
“He asked me to send Congress a message — stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message — that cowards cut and run, Marines never do,” Schmidt said. Murtha is a 37-year Marine veteran.
My late uncle Clyde Sizemore has as many years in the Marine Corp as Murtha and, if he were alive today and saw this crazy woman come unglued like that, he'd have seriously considered putting her down like Old Yeller but ultimately deciding against it since it would be unfair to any self-respecting bullet. Nevertheless, this is just another page in the Bush/Cheney/"Sie Rightving Echo Chambah"'s desperation campaign of castigating Democrats in the hopes that idealogy will trump reality -- actual reality; not the multitudes of "realities" the NeoCon moonbats djinn up for us keen observers of history to study relentlessly.
Of course, the campaign will fail because at this point, I doubt any American in their right mind (stress that right mind part; 30% of this nation still drinks Johnny Walker from Bush's punchbowl) will buy it since it's so damned disengenuous it's pathetic. On one hand, they're heehawing around the landscape bleating like stuck pigs, "Hay! Lookit all these Dems who bought our 'Saddam Has Nukes' BS and voted for the war!! Now, they want to cut and run?!?" when the other hand shows that had those Dems
not voted for the war in the first place, they "hated 'Murika, lubbed Saddam, didn't support our troops, and wanted to gargle Bin Laden's jism" or some such shit. In other words, the Republicans only gave Democrats two choices in the run up to the Iraqi WMD Snipe Hunt Turned Quagmire:
* Suck George W. Bush-Lord's Dick
* Suck Saddam Hussein's Dick
Well, they smoked George's dick and I don't recall either him nor any of the rest of the rightwing bastards complaining at the time. And why not -- this Adminstration loves to have their Johnson sucked by a large clientele: Bob Woodward, Judy Miller, Colin Powell, Jeff Gannon, etc. Even I know that even a
bad hummer is kinda good (except when the bitch is bucktoothed, but that goes without saying). Oh, but they're complaining now and trying to say the big Democratic knob-job on President Bush's war boner clouded his great, moral, Christian vision for Iraq. Orgasms that don't lead to fetuses is spilt seed and thus make the baby Jesus cry, you know.
You just can't win with these fuckers, man. Just when you think they're cornered, they don't just move the goalposts -- they raise and move the entire damned stadium. I say keep moving the fucker, you bunch of incompetent, corrupt asshats! Soon, you and your stadium will be moved into total irrelevancy from the political landscape since the majority of Americans have come to realize that Republicans don't support the troops -- they take 'em for granted. And as most Vietnam vets will say (I had two in my family) there comes a point where being taken for granted gets taken for granted too much. When that happens, kiss your monopoly on the military vote goodbye.
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The GOP "Entitlement Culture" Talking Point Is Dead
That's right, folks! The GOP just killed one of their own Talking Points they've counted on for over a decade in order to marginalize and divide America. How did it happen? Welp, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-ExxonMobil) opened his fat yap and told America exactly who the real "Entitlement Culture" has been all along via a hat tip to
Crooks & Liars (MP3 Audio available):
You know, what -- what makes our economy grow is energy. And Americans are used to going to the gas tank (sic), and when they put that hose in their, uh, tank, and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on, and I don't want somebody to tell me I gotta change my way of living to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we've worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it, and if we're going improve (sic) our standard of living, you have to consume more energy."
If this meely-mouthed asshole thinks the key to improving our standard of living is to further enrich the allready-too-rich Republican oil cretins that have raped and pillaged both the Iraqi people and the American poor and middle classes by craming their hoses into our tailpipe
and nobody can tell him differently because he and the rest of Republican Red-State America believes they're entitled to it, then by his own words he has killed that entire "Welfare State/Entitlement Class" meme of the GOP.
Grassley just paved the way for the Democratic Party to not only recind the Bush tax-cuts on the richest Americans but also to raise their taxes along with raising taxes on Big Oil and Big Business -- two entities that have profitted immensely from both the War in Iraq and by outsourcing American jobs -- and use the revenue for increased welfare benefits, healthcare, keeping the electric and gas turned on during the Winter, and other social programs that help the poor and the middle class whose standard of living, as we've witnessed as a result of Katrina, is just unconcionable in America.
So, if you're among the poor and the middle class who are currently on welfare or happen to be simply "One Nightmare Away" from being on welfare and happen to live in a state where the welfare office employees and the politicians -- Republican or Democrat -- demand more from you than they do of themselves (e.g. threaten to cut your benefits and aide if you give up looking for the non-existant outsourced job while they continue to collect 6-figure salaries from the same state/federal kitty), I want you to print my post here along with burning the MP3 of Grassley's comments from
C&L on to a CD, march on down to either the welfare office or City Hall and demand some results. Tell them you will not be leaving until you get those results.
Why?
Sen. Grassley said it best:
YOU ARE ENTITLED TO IT! You are as equally entitled to your lights and heat being left on and gas in your vehicle as he and the Republican "ownership society" say they are entitled to it and since he says nobody can tell him different, then nobody can tell you different, either. That's not to say conservation isn't important for it is important but we can do our part and conserve energy adroitly (e.g. "not letting our right hand know what our left hands are doing") while at the same time driving the Republicans completely batshit by beating them over the head with their own words.
Besides, if you're waiting for 2006 to see if a Democrat will come along an empower your ass, you might as well forget about it for you'll be waiting forever. How do I know this? From
this video posted on
C&L just days ago when Sen. Ted Stevens refused to have the top oil executives sworn in for their testimony.
The video shows Sen. Maria Cantwell's desire for a vote and Stevens interrupted her with his refusal. Why didn't this Democratic senator or any other Democratic senator on that panel stand up and call the proceedings as a joke (since baseball players were sworn in for their steroids testimony earlier this year)?!? This would no doubt spark Stevens to bang his gavel and bitch about her being out of order, which she could've said, "I'd rather be out of order than out of excuses!" and then walked off the panel, into the Senate's main chamber, and pulled a Harry F'n Reid shutting the Senate down into closed session?!? This is exactly why we'll be waiting forever for the Democrats to empower us because they will not stand up and empower themselves on a consistant basis. Therefore we the people -- like the late Rosa Parks -- must empower ourselves instead of waiting for empowerment from our useless and inconsistant Democrats.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!Use it ... or lose it.
Don't wait for heros.
UPDATE: Grassley also gives gay rights activists the perfect justification for legalizing gay marriage. So, from now on, whenever some sanctimonious Republican stooge or Christian Fundamentalist leader like Pat Robertson spouts off a bunch of invective about "deviant life styles", the gay rights crowd can just turn around and use Grassley's own words: "
I don't want somebody to tell me I gotta change my way of living to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we've worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it!" If Grassley and his Republican brood don't have to "change [their] way of living" to sastify others, then
NOBODY does! Period. I think it's the height of hypocracy to take for granted the tax-dollars of millions of gay Americans for hundreds of years and not give them the basic right to marry each other.
It's dead, Jim.
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...But Do They Have Balls?!?
On the heels of Sen. Reid shutting down the Senate, I and other liberal blogs celebrated. While the Republican O&O'ed Corporate MSM spent the last few years showing us Ann Coulter's legs (personally, I've seen better pairs under the heatlamps at the local KFC), was great to see the Democratic party slip us some tangible evidence of a vertebrae or two. But I think it's also safe to say that we dirty hippies here on Left Blogistan are also prepared for a little "more of the same" disappointment from our Democrats -- more of the same as it pertains to their penchant on plucking out their own spines those vertebrae are attached to. They haven't done it yet ... but that's the keyword there: YET!
Having a spine (and keeping it) is one thing for our Democrats but the question we need to ask now is do they have the testicular fortitude to go with it? In other words, can we expect to see our Democrats jiggle their nuts at the asshole Republicans accross the aisle because -- once again -- the Democrats have been given a golden opportunity to show some serious fuckin' leadership in this country by another blogger in Left Blogistan: the well-respected
Billmon who serves us a post on The Wapo's blog by
William M. Arkin:
Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies and military planners received instructions to prepare up-to-date target lists for Syria and to increase their preparations for potential military operations against Damascus.
According to internal intelligence documents and discussions with military officers involved in the planning, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa was directed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prepare a "strategic concept" for Syria, the first step in creation of a full fledged war plan.
The planning process, according to the internal documents, includes courses of action for cross border operations to seal the Syrian-Iraqi border and destroy safe havens supporting the Iraqi insurgency, attacks on Syrian weapons of mass destruction infrastructure supporting the development of biological and chemical weapons, and attacks on the regime of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.
From there, Billmon invoked the spectre of the Nuremburg trials that brings an interesting question that our Senatorial Democrats must answer after Phase Two of their investigation/whitewash is complete: Do you have the balls to go all the way with this? Not only do we have Libby turning on a spit and Brownie still collecting a FEMA paycheck but we are sitting on a 5-year old stockpile of Weapons of Mass Propaganda that the White House churned out to terrorize Americans into supporting their bullshit war (which has only helped Halliburton's stock triple in value since its inception). If you Democrats in DC uncover the paper trail of all those lies along with these plans to wage another pointless, unilateral, aggressive war on Syria & Iran ... are you willing to show some balls? In other words, are you Democrats ready to do what George W. Bush keeps swearing he's doing: "Bringing the terorists to justice"?!?
If so, then let's start with the terrorists squatting on the chunk of federal land at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just down the road from The Senate and bring them to justice. Since the Republicans are too corrupt and you Democrats haven't earned enough reliability yet, I must suggest The Hague as the only venue to properly bring them to justice.
If not, then God have mercy on your souls.
The American people, however, should not.
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Bush Dead Set On "Operation: Cornhole"
When
Art Silber gives us three reasons why and how we're about to get fucked in the ass by President Bushitler, it usually means we were getting fucked for years but we were just too distracted by something (Shark attacks, Libby Indictment, the XBox, etc.) to actually notice either that stream of blood trickling down our legs or the rivers of Republican seman dripping from our nosehairs. Read it and weep, choke, cry, spew, masturbate or whatever. And if you think he's full of shit,
Jeralyn backs him up. So does
John Amato and
Andrew Sullivan actually dares to ressurrect something from the moldering corpse of Winston Churchill ... and accurately points out that, if he were alive today, Churchill would be castigated by the Republican "ownership society" as a leftist moonbat.
So, which political party
REALLY hates America now?!?
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Comments Slightly Bugged
HaloScan commenting is a bit knackered. It works fine if you want to comment on something from the mainpage or archives. But if you visit a permalink to one of my posts here and try to post a comment on HaloScan that way, that's when the fit hits the shan. It's not HaloScan's fault -- it's most likely something with my Blogger template that I'll have to track down (which is an even bigger pain in the ass considering I whacked alot of code in this template in the first place).
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Shit & Shoeleather - A "Schaivo" Diagnosis For Sen. Frist
Are you a dog lover or owner? If so, then there's a good chance that you've done the same hilarious thing to your dogs that I have done to my own. No, I'm not talking about that time when you cocked a rubber band back, drilled his ballsack, and watched him circle the La-Z-Boy about 18 times yiping his head off (hey, I was a real young kid then and I only did it to see whether or not Chang's sudden yelping around my Dad's chair as he quietly read the newspaper would've startled the old man into swallowing his chewing tobacco juice). Instead, I'm talking about the age old standby of peanut butter. It's hilarious because you feed them peanut butter and they'll sit there working their tongue trying to get it off the roof of their mouth for a good half-hour.
What does that have to do with Bill Frist?
Thanks to the fine guys at
Crooks & Liars, I was able to view back-to-back video footage: one of Sen. Harry Reid shutting down the Senate and the other containing Sen. Frist's response to it. It's the latter video that's compelling because I saw Sen. Frist doing the same damn thing my dog does when I feed him peanut butter and, becoming immediately concerned, I wondered if some strange malady had befallen Sen. Frist to behave in such a manner. Could it be a stroke? An anerysm? I didn't know so I -- just like Sen. Frist did for Terri Schaivo many months ago -- decided to make a breakthru medical diagnosis upon Sen. Frist's sudden illness by just watching the video footage over and over.
Here are my findings:
#1 -- I've discovered a direct correlation linking the cause of Sen. Frist's malady to the actions of Sen. Reid. There's evidence that his actions had liquified Sen. Frirst's cerebral cortex, rendering him just as blind and brain dead as the late Terri Schaivo.
#2 -- However, unlike Ms. Schaivo, Sen. Frist still retained the ability to utter certain comprehensible words in between his mewling and whimpering in frustration over whatever it was in his mouth that brought on the symptoms of "Canine & Peanut Butter" syndrome. I've detected words such as "effront" and "slap in the face".
#3 -- Judging on those two findings, it is my belief that the tongue-lolling blob formerly known as Sen. Frist is sporting symtoms of "Canine & Peanut Butter" syndrome due to the liquification of his cerebral cortex -- the liquification itself being caused by the very first thing that entered Sen. Frist's mind the very moment Sen. Reid shut down the senate: his own asshole.
#4 -- Sen. Frist's own asshole obliterated his cerebral cortex because of the sheer force of Sen. Reid's actions. Thus, Sen. Frist's mumbling about "effrontery" and a "slap in the face" only goes to show that, as a result of not having a cerebral cortext any longer, he is having great difficulty trying to distinguish the difference between a slap in the face from a
KICK IN THE ASS!#5 -- The forementioned kick to Sen. Frist's ass was indeed administered by Sen. Reid. Although Sen. Reid's actions do constitute a crime of aggrivated assault however Sen. Reid should not be charged with any crime as Sen. Reid has provided proof that Sen. Frist and the Republican party in general had been instigating such an assault for the past 2 years although I personally believe 5 years is more accurate.
Since I can't find any evidence of peanut butter anywhere near Sen. Frist from the video footage, I then must conclude that -- to the best of my faculties -- the real reason why Sen. Frist is showing behavior consistant with that of "Canine & Peanut Butter" syndrome is that Sen. Frist is tasting something he doesn't like and it's most likely a combination of the flavor of his own shit combined with Sen. Reid's shoeleather. I also conclude that Sen. Reid's kick in Sen. Frist's ass is enough to suggest Sen. Frist will be tasting this shit and shoeleather combination for about the next month or more. Lastly, since Sen. Reid delivered his kick with such authority, the American public is hereby forewarned that the shit/shoeleather flavor currently giving Sen. Frist symptoms of "Canine & Peanut Butter" syndrome is highly contagious but only to other Republicans. In fact, I anticipate an epidemic of ass-kicking from Sen. Reid and other Democrats while Sen. Frist and the Republican "ownership society" is down for the count since those rotten, corrupt, lying, theiving bastards have been doing it to us for a long time so turnabout is indeed fair play (or at least I had
better see more ass-kicking from 'em ... or the American people will be the ones giving Reid and the Democrats a good kick in
their asses, putting the 2006 and 2008 elections into a "Whose The More Competetant Dog Catcher" context).
That's my Fristian diagnosis of the Insider-Trading Cat Butcher.
Something tells me I'm not alone in making that diagnosis, either.
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