Just in case ya'll are keeping up with solar system nomenclature

Pluto's little moons now have names.

I suspect that the Supreme Court will stub its toe on this one, too

The Bush Administration is as likely to order the EPA to establish see-oh-two limits as it is to let the Gitmo prisoners go. Regardless of what the SCOTUS says. After all, that's just gonna be the opinion of some judges, right?

What must it feel like to be a Palestinian?

Note here that the Egyptians have a concrete wall between themselves and Gaza, much like the wall the Israelis are building in the West Bank. Also note that the Egyptians moved troops to the Gaza border to prevent the Palestinians from getting away from two days of Israeli attacks that have had one, non-life-threatening casualty.

Is it a Constitutional crisis if nobody cares?

There is no doubt in my mind that this decision by the Supreme Court of the United States will be ignored. The administration will hold that the "extraordinary circumstances" of a "global war on terror" will dictate that "ordinary Constitutional guarantees" don't apply to foreign combatants and they will be held and tried by tribunals anyway.

GOP passes resolution condemning freedom of the press

These sorry sons of bitches don't even understand the oath of office that they took:


"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United
States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and
allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental
reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the
duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. "



They seem to have confused something with the Constitution. I'm not exactly sure what.

Tony Snow introduces pot to kettle

"In any actions the government of Israel may undertake, the United States urges that it ensures that innocent civilians are not harmed, and also that it avoid the unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure," said White House press secretary Tony Snow.

Here's the rest of it. And it comes down to who you think is the worst offender.

When did the administration admit to intelligence failures about WMDs?

I must have missed that. I know that the Hand Puppet and his various subordinate puppets all like to say "Mistakes were made" but they keep implying that it wasn't the administration that made the mistakes. Hell, Cheney says it straight out.

But, once again, they're called on it.

How does Bush walk?

I mean, he's got some enormous balls. "When he makes a recommendation, the president's going to follow it. He trusts General Casey and he's made it clear," Snow said.

He plans to put the entire responsibility for the Iraq policy and its "success" or "failure" on Gen. Casey. I wonder if Gen. Casey is aware of that?

I've missed FUTURAMA more than just about any other cancelled teevee show

And I don't have to miss it for much longer.

Thanks to Chuck for tipping us off on this confirmation.

Iraqi emergency

Read this carefully. They are only now putting a curfew in place. Jeezus.

The President believes that he is above the Constitution

But apparently there are members of his party who don't. Specter is a weasel but right now, I'm with Churchill.

Hmm. I was about to link to a page of Churchill quotes but I ran across this one as I was reviewing the page: "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack." So, I think I'll forego cleverly linking and just quote:

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." -- Winston Churchill

so. Uhm. Specter doesn't deserve to go to hell for the Magic Bullet. There. That's a favourable reference, I think.

Oh, and ITMFA.

Soldiers or cops?

Let's get a few things straight. We are not at war in Iraq. It doesn't matter how many resolutions Congress passes saying that our occupation of a sovereign country is part of the global war on terror; saying it doesn't make it so. Our troops that are in country should be acting as police officers for our puppet government.

Police officers surround suspects and arrest them and put them on trial and minimize the danger to uninvolved civilians. Armies drop bombs on people that they want to kill and if they want to kill them badly enough, they discount the deaths of uninvolved civilians as "collateral damage." Have you given much thought to the idea of dropping a bomb on al-Zarqawi? No arrest. No trial. We're supposed to just take the word of George "Weapons of Mass Destruction" Bush that he was a bad guy. Hell, he wasn't even indicited. We don't even know what it was that he's supposed to have done wrong. And killing him was worth killing children as "collateral damage."

We have at least three instances on record of our soldiers murdering civilians in Iraq. That sort of thing is going to happen when you train boys to be soldiers and then tell them to be peace officers.

I said from the beginning that the Rangers should have taken the FBI with them to Afghanistan. Now, I'm saying that if we're going to continue to do police work in Iraq, let's try to have it done like it would be by policemen.



ITMFA

The GOP will now think we can drill for oil and dig for coal in national parks

I think I'll visit one soon, just to improve the numbers.

If you haven't caved...

...this is probably only vaguely unsettling.

And so we're told, once again, that it's hot

Well, it's replete with all those "likely"s and "probably"s that make science so hard for lay people to understand but maybe, just maybe, there are enough congressional staffers to explain it to their bosses.

Professional sports are just stupid

I think that everybody needs to take a page from Sir Charles. But, of course, MLB doesn't see it that way.

Simple arithmetic

The author of the first paragraph of this article is just eat-up with smarts, ain't she?

Oh, christamighty

I would waaaaay rather they had decided to withdraw.

The sooner mankind outgrows religion the better.

It's been too long since we had any science around here

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/realtime_evolution.php?utm_source=SB-bottom&utm_medium=linklist&utm_content=news&utm_campaign=internal%2Blinkshare

I can't find a link to this Kucinich statement about the war and its cost

But I can reproduce it here so that at least three more people besides C-SPAN junkies and his mother will know what he said.



Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), who has led opposition within theCongress to the war from the beginning, issued the following statement onthe war Supplemental funding bill on the House floor Monday evening:

"Mass death on the installment plan. That's what this supplemental voteto keep our troops in Iraq is all about.

"Today Iraqi civilian casualties number well over 100,000. Iraqi civilianinjuries could be over one million, but who is keeping track? Some act asthough the Iraqis are not real people, with real families, real hopes andreal dreams and loves of their own.

"We have lost nearly 2,500 of our own brave soldiers. Up to 48,000 troopshave suffered physical or emotional injuries that could scar them and theirloved ones for life.

"Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Steiglitz says the war could cost $2trillion dollars. Two trillion dollars for war while the American peopleare told we don't have enough money for job creation, education, healthcare and social security.

"The Administration went into Iraq without an exit strategy not becausethey are incompetent, but because they have no intention of leaving.

"We are spending hundreds of millions building permanent bases in Iraq. The Administration recently announced deployment of no less than 50,000troops in Iraq far into the future. We are looking at the permanentoccupation of Iraq.

"And so the long cadence of lies has led to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo andHaditha, soon to be replaced by more lies and more tragedies.

"What can you say when you are watching your nation descend, sleepwalking, into something like the lower circles of hell in Dante's Inferno?

"You can say stop it ! You can say enough blood is enough blood !

"You can stop it ! Bring our troops home !

"You can say no to any more funds for this war ! And then we can begin aperiod of truth and reconciliation about 9/11 and Iraq. Begin the healingof the soul of America. The Bible says, 'He who troubleth his own house shall inherent the wind.'Our house has been troubled by this war based on lies. What will our inheritance be?"

I'm writing something about constitutions

And it will appear here in the fullness of time but until then, this is an interesting item from an interesting site. The government publishes a lot of info and propaganda on the web. In any event, I'm thinking about federalism and the 10th Amendment and the 14th.

I don't remember political parties being a part of the Constitution

Why are the party leaders paid extra?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060613/ap_on_go_co/congress_pay_raise

I don't mind them being paid by, oh, I don't know -- THEIR PARTIES! Sure, the Speaker should get a little bump but the leaders and the whips?

We knew all this

And despite the fact that we're getting told over and over and over, nobody seems to really care.

The America I grew up in didn't have or need secret prisons

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1791989,00.html




ITMFA

Human trafficking and anti-Semitism

Well? Which is it? Does Israel not do enough or is the guy who's in charge a "hero"?


http://www.forward.com/articles/7942

Report on suppression of workers rights

The reason I hate being accused of union-busting is because I don't want to be assoicated with these guys.

Cheney beleives that he doesn't have to tell you anything about anything

Of course, this administration believes that it is exempt from law. They always do. But my question is more like: Where in the Constitution of the United States does the vice-president have any authority to so anything other than preside over the Senate?



ITMFA

Officers refusing orders will make it hard to have a war

But, I don't think this will make much difference in the short term.

What will it take for the administration to admit failure in Iraq?

Clearly the word of the field commanders isn't good enough.

Of course, it's as hard to define failure as success, I suppose.

Why can't we just have Gore declared president?

Chuck pointed me to this.

And besides the differences that we'd have on environmental issues, we sure as hell wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq and we wouldn't let ExxonMobil steal from us.

The real threat to the institution of marriage

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2006/06/05/the-real-threat-to-marriage-top-10-gop-adulterers/

This is not the country I grew up in

I used to make fun of the super-hero cliche: We can't use their methods because then we'd be no different from them.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/US/US_Armed_Forces/

The administration are old hands at scandal

This is why the sub-title of this blog is what it is. Skip down to the stuff about Iran/Contra.




ITMFA

Gay marriage is "politically ripe"

Ugh.

All governments need to get out of the marriage business. It's the place where the separation of church and state is at its weakest. Why is there not a groundswell of support for state sanctioned civil unions?



ITMFA

The administration lurches from one crisis to another

Apparently, while I was in the hospital, Bush decided that we had to immediately send National Guard troops to protect our borders. Those would be the longest undefended borders in the world. And, apparently, The Gropenfuerher has been forcred, once more, to act like a Republican instead of the right-wing Democrat that he is.

What's so damned important about sealing off the Mexican border that I'm not getting? I suppose it's a Homeland Security sorta deal but I know, you know, and Bob Dole knows that we can't close the border with Mexico or Canada. We can't afford it.

Well, I guess I really do understand why it's the crisis of the moment. There's an election coming and they've screamed terrorist too often and they wore out the godless gays last time so this time it's going to be "Oh, my God, there are immigrants here!"


ITMFA

I'm glad James Kochalka exists

Neil Gaiman, comic book writer, once asked why literature is art and drawing is art but when you put them together the result is not art but crap. I've never had a problem with comic books being considered entertainment fit only for children and morons but I've always known that there are comics that are art.

James Kochalka is not a great draftsman and he's not a tremendous story-teller and his writing is fairly ordinary. But he knows what art is and he's spent the last several years exploring the art of the mundane with his (now) online American Elf: The Sketchbook Diaries of James Kochalka. As a comic strip, these diaries are ineffective. They are not gag-a-days. Often they aren't even close to funny. Some days Kochalka sees life as a prison, except for the love of his wife, Amy, and his son, Eli. But he turns an artist's eye to his life and finds real meaning in what surrounds him. Zen-like, he can write about the smell of his own breath or the pattern that snow makes on unraked leaves.

Kochalka, if his diaries are accurate, is a neurotic, depressed bulimic with deep seated insecurities about the lack of permanence in human interrelations. Creating these strips is, like the creations of all artists, his attempt to declare that he lived and mattered.

Read a month's worth of the strips. Use tonyrose1@comcast.net and vanity to get to the archives. If you like them well-enough, subscribe and quit using my account. :)

The first five years of the diaries are collected in this volume and reading it made me want to keep a sketchbook diary. Or at least to make notes about the quality of my life on a day-to-day basis. He has other work but it all pales beside his magnum opus.

Kochalka is also a singer/songwriter with the band James Kochalka Superstar. Vulgar and un-musical and often very, very funny. Exactly like his comic strips.

I forgot about Barney Frank...

...when I named Fiengold and Kucinich as my guys. Barney deserves to be on the list if only for this.