What Economic Recovery?

Whoa.

Bush's Next Career: Comedy Writer?

Hoo boy, this made me giggle:

"After 9/11, I told the American people I would do everything in my power to protect the country, within the law, and that's exactly how I conduct my presidency."

CUT TO: A book on the table behind Bush's Oval Office desk, titled, " 'The Law' According to Me and Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo and Other Administration Flunkies Who Tell Me Whatever I Want To Hear and That Conveniently Justifies Things Like Torture and Using Spy Agencies to Carry Out Illegal Domestic Surveillance of U.S. Citizens and Premptive, U.N.-Charter-Be-Damned War, and [INSERT POLICY YOU WANT TO JUSTIFY AS WITHIN 'THE LAW']"

I Thought He Left When He Walked Off the Set That Time

Robert Novak leaving CNN


Robert "Smiley McSmile" Novak

A Deeply Troubling Disclosure

This crew truly believes they are above the law. This is quite likely unconstitutional, and perhaps not an exaggeration to suggest impeachable offenses.

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

And it's simply outrageous that the New York Times had this story a full year ago but sat on it. For a year. That is unforgiveable. And how about the various Congressional leaders who were briefed on the program? What's their explanation for tolerating this?

There's no legitimate argument for failing to get FISA warrants for these wiretaps.

Heads are going to roll, people will go to jail, and they should.

How About Talk, Not Bombs?

Iraq Peace Talks

Sign the petition, spread the word.

The Alien Invasion is Underway!

Check out this "creature" scientists can't identify. Then, after checking it out, RUN!!!!!

The Borneo "Cat-Fox"

Hilarious FoxNews.com Story

This seemed like an odd story to find on FoxNews.com:

Administration Speeches Put Military in Tough Spot

Until you read the utterly hilarious, faux-journalism final line of the story, which I encourage you to do right now.

Oh ... Dear ... God ... NOOOOOO!!!!

"NBC Pulls 'Joey'"

(Full disclosure: I've never seen 'Joey'. Or much of anything else since the late '90s or so. But I can only imagine...)

Ouch

"A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more." -- New York Times editorial on Bush's Iraq "plan"

Collective National Sigh of Relief?

Or just more rolling of eyes, wondering about what this signals about an impending apocalypse ...

Fox announced yesterday that "American Idol" will not -- repeat, not -- be moved to Thursday nights, but will stick with the Tuesday-Wednesday play pattern that has done so much to make it impossible to phone home on those nights. For weeks now, the show's nearly 30 million fans have been angsting over reports about a possible move to Thursday night. In the reality series, would-be pop stars compete on Tuesday, viewers phone in their faves that night, and the bottom vote getter is whacked the next night.

Erg

When will we learn? A recipe for even less credibility. And see bolded quote for absurdist irony.

U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Titled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders' pessimism about the country's future.

"Western press and frequently those self-styled 'objective' observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation," the article began. Quoting the Prophet Muhammad, it pleaded for unity and nonviolence.

But far from being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi writer, as its language implied, the article was prepared by the United States military as part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends, military contractors and officials said.

Lest Anyone Forget

World AIDS Day.

About 40 million people worldwide are now infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. About 3 million of them are expected to die of AIDS this year. Africa, with only 10 percent of the world's population, suffers over half of its HIV infections.

An Exponential Increase In Annoying Car Noises!

Oh dear.

California company NavTones has contracted with Mr. T and the actors Burt Reynolds and Dennis Hopper to record voices that can be loaded into navigation systems, giving your driving directions a little extra personality. More voices are coming, the company said.

Another company, TomTom, offers John Cleese's voice along with several "fictional" characters that include a New York City cab driver and a Freudian psychoanalyst.

Other companies are also creating customizable voices for navigation systems, said Anne Louise Hanstad, vice president of marketing for TomTom.

"The potential here is as great and as wide as downloadable ringtones," she said.

And no one gets annoyed by nerve-jangling ringtones, right?

New Yorker/Hersh

Key grafs from this week's New Yorker piece about the president's plan for Iraq:

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

[...] Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?” another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. “Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”

[...] The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant—and underreported—aspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. “With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way,” a Marine press release said, “Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line.” Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

Good Question