Fuck The Constitution!

Read on:

McCarthyism Watch

The Fallen

Photos of the Fallen obtained via Freedom of Information Act:
casket exhibit

Quotable

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear."
– General Douglas MacArthur

Come Hither Da'lin!

"Bush not only hosted the de facto head of this regime at his Crawford ranch, however, but literally held Abdullah's hand all the way to his office. This single gesture undermines all of Bush's rhetoric about freedom and democracy.

I realize that the Saudis are presumably important because of our oil dependency. Judging by news accounts, the price of oil dominated the meeting. Plus, there are the Bush family's ties to the monarchy and Saudi investments in this country. Should we let all this, however, force us into such a close relationship with such an obnoxious regime?"



Oil Prices
Amitabh Pal's Blog

Quotable

"There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance."
-– Goethe

Where is the money?

"Trillions of dollars in 'unsupported adjustments' means trillions of dollars unaccounted for. What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? Is this happening in the other government agencies too? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Who can we trust to fix it? "

Where is the money?

This is our Guernica

"In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity."

This is our Guernica

The Comedie of the Absurd!

"The Iraqi insurgency is just as strong now as it was one year ago, the most senior US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers has admitted.

Gen Myers also insists the US and coalition forces are winning the war and is confident of military victory.

'I'm going to say this: I think we are winning, okay. I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time,' Myers told reporters."

US admits Iraq insurgency undiminished

Thank You, Mr. Bush!

"Terrorists staged nearly 200 significant attacks in Iraq in 2004, exceeding the record number of strikes worldwide the year before, according to data the Bush administration gave to Congress but has been withholding from the public.

The total didn't include some Iraqi insurgent attacks and more than 100 operations by foreign terrorists in Iraq because they didn't fit the State Department's strict criteria of what constitutes an international terrorist attack.

The data raised questions about President Bush's claim that the United States and its allies are winning the war on terrorism and came as the Pentagon acknowledged that violence in Iraq remains as high as last year."

Data shows record number of terror attacks in Iraq in 2004

Interesting Statistic

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation."

If Americans Knew

There are some interesting statistics shown there. It is worth taking a look.

The Newspaper Of Record

We always come back to the same conclusion that if you control the facts and the information people receive, you can control the conclusions the same people will reach based on the facts and information you give them. Although the people reach the conclusions on their own, the Source can take credit for having shaped the conclusions reached by the People. Oldest trick in the book.

"Our statistical analysis of their coverage, however, showed that there was startling disparity in how deaths were reported, depending on the ethnicity of the victim.

For example, we found that in 2004, at a time when 8 Israeli children and 176 Palestinian children were killed – a ratio of 1 to 22 – Times headlines and lead paragraphs reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate almost seven times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

A one-month sub-study indicated that this disparity grew even larger when the entire article was analyzed, with Israeli children’s deaths mentioned (through repetitions of deaths reported on previous days) at a rate ten times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

Times coverage of deaths of all ages, while less dramatically skewed, showed similar distortion. In the first year of the current Palestinian uprising, which began in fall of 2000, we discovered that the Times reported prominently on 42 percent of Palestinian deaths, and on 119 percent of Israeli deaths (follow-up headline articles, we find, frequently push coverage of Israeli deaths over 100 percent). In other words, the Times reported Israeli deaths at a rate approximately three times greater than Palestinian deaths.

During this period over three times more Palestinians were being killed than Israelis."

New York Times Minimizes Palestinian Deaths

Quotable

"It's a joke that the right wing claims it is against 'judicial activists.' What they want are judicial activists who agree with them."
--Molly Ivins

Lookit Monkey!

Since When...

... People's opinion mattered to these people?

"As the Senate moves toward a major confrontation over judicial appointments, a strong majority of Americans oppose changing the rules to make it easier for Republican leaders to win confirmation of President Bush's court nominees, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

GOP leaders are threatening a rule change to prohibit the use of filibusters to block judicial nominees and have stepped up their criticism of the Democrats for using the tactic on some of Bush's nominees to the federal appellate courts. They say they are prepared to invoke what has become known as the 'nuclear option' to ensure that Bush's nominees receive an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor."

Filibuster Rule Change Opposed

Quotable

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Thanks U.S., Cuba for Help

"HAVANA (AP) -- Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban castaway whose international custody battle ended in his dramatic seizure from a Miami home five years ago, addressed a crowd of thousands Friday, thanking Cubans and Americans alike for fighting for his return to the island.

Elian, now 11, read a speech at a televised event in Havana marking the fifth anniversary of the April 22 raid in which armed U.S. federal agents snatched him from his Miami relatives in the first step to getting him back to Cuba.

''Five years ago I returned to my dad,'' he said. ''When I saw him, I became very happy. I could hug him, I could see my little brother. That was the happiest day of my life.''"

Elian Gonzalez Thanks U.S., Cuba for Help

Quotable

"War is fear cloaked in courage."
General William Westmoreland

If You Can't Beat Them...

... Join them!

"Newly released government documents reveal that US military personnel arrested and detained Iraqi civilians in an attempt to pressure relatives suspected of involvement in the insurgency to turn themselves in."

U.S. Military Held Iraqis ‘Hostage."

McCarthyism Is Well and Alive

"The fact is that you will never get agreement on such matters of opinion, and no university teacher I know seeks such agreement. The point of teaching a course is to expose students to ideas and arguments that are new to them and to help them think critically about controversial issues. Nothing pleases teachers more than to see students craft their own, original arguments, based on solid evidence, that dispute the point of view presented in class lectures. That is why the New York Times editorial is so wrong, and so dangerous. University teaching is not about fairness, and there is no body capable of imposing 'fair' views on teachers. It is about provoking students to think analytically and synthetically, and to reason on their own. In the assigned texts, in class discussion, and in lectures, the students are exposed to a wide range of views, whether fair or unfair.

Elected bodies throughout the United States, dominated by the Christian right, are now considering radical programs such as imposing the teaching of 'intelligent design' in biology classes, or abolishing academic tenure (the practice of not firing professors for their views). Even Congress has succumbed to the pressure: The House of Representatives passed an outrageous bill, HR 3077, mandating that area studies programs that receive federal money must 'foster debate on American foreign policy from diverse perspectives' -- a heavy-handed attempt to mandate pedagogy that supports the American administration in power and supports Israeli policies uncritically.

The New York Times is a bastion of liberalism and Enlightenment values in an increasingly hysterical and intolerant time. But it has lent this burgeoning movement legitimacy by calling for official oversight of views in the classroom. Its editors should stop to consider that any society that censors Joseph Massad's teaching is unlikely to stop there. The next step will be to censor the newspapers as well. 'Unfair,' 'liberal' "

The new McCarthyism

Spin

Great stuff. A must see video for everyone.

Spin

Problem Solving Map

Funny

Venerable Rain Water

Or is it water?

"A steady stream of the faithful and the curious, many carrying flowers and candles, have flocked to an expressway underpass for a view of a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall that some believe is an image of the Virgin Mary."

Some see Virgin Mary in underpass stain - Apr 20, 2005

OoooOOOooOOoooOOooHHH!!!

:)

If We Cannot Fudge The Numbers...

... We won't give out any at all.

"The State Department announced yesterday that it will no longer publish annual statistics for international terrorism, a year after it was forced to withdraw its study and correct its assertion that terrorist acts had declined in 2003 when in fact they were at their highest level in years."

Annual Terror Report Won't Include Numbers

Vote Republican Or You Hate the Baby Jesus

"If you don't share our politics, you hate the baby Jesus," writes John Cole, a conservative blogger appalled by the fact that Senate Majority Leader Frist is attending an anti-filibuster conference portraying Dems as "against people of faith." Cole continues: "If you don't share our politics, you hate religious people. If you don't share our politics, you are evil...I assume my friends on the right are going to spend the week-end attacking me for being a 'religious bigot' because I rightly point out the inappropriateness of this behavior." (Balloon Juice via Matt Yglesias)

Anyone Hearing This?

"If the Bush administration's policies lead to the decline of U.S. power, it will hardly be the first time in history that an empire bankrupted itself through military overstretch -- even as its more prosperous ally and future rival prospered on the sidelines. The Netherlands profited grandly from the insatiable colonial appetites of Spain and Portugal, and then stood by as the dreams of Iberian glory went down the tubes. Hungary built goulash communism while the Soviet Union found itself bogged down in Afghanistan and eventually laid the seeds of its own demise with its out-of-control military spending.

Even upstart America's rise to global preeminence in the first half of the 20th century was the result of Britain's imperial excess. Once England expended so much life and lucre of its colonial fortunes in two world wars, the global stage was clear for a new leader. Today, having endured the post-World War years of financial dependence on U.S. largesse and decades more of politically subservience to Washington throughout the Cold War, Europe is finally coming into its own."

Goodbye Uncle Sam, Hello Team Europe

Quotable

"The tyrant always talks as if he's preserving the best interests of his people when he actually acts to undermine them.
– Ramman Kenoun"

Best Democracy Money Can Buy--2

"Bankruptcy legislation making it tougher for heavily indebted Americans to wipe out their obligations won final congressional approval on Thursday and President Bush said he looked forward to signing it into law.

Sought for years by banks and credit card companies that say people are abusing bankruptcy to escape repayment, the measure cleared the House of Representatives on a 302-126 vote. It passed the Senate last month by 74-25."

Bush Will Sign Bankruptcy Bill

Anyone Knows Where $9 Billion Went?

"The Defense Department is unable to track how it spent tens of millions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. war on terrorism, Congress's top investigator said on Wednesday.

The department ``doesn't have a system to be able to determine with any degree of reliability and specificity how we spent'' tens of millions in war-related emergency funds set aside by Congress, Comptroller General David Walker told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee.

Walker heads the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan audit and investigative arm. He disclosed the accounting gap as part of a broader indictment of Pentagon business practices.

Congress approved $25 billion in extra defense spending for fiscal 2005, which ends on Sept. 30. Lawmakers were moving to approve $81 billion more this week outside the normal budget process, including about $75 billion for war-related Defense Department operations.

While there was no doubt that appropriated funds were spent, ``trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth,'' Walker said, referring to an accounting effort he said was under way for Congress."

Pentagon's War Spending Hard to Track - Watchdog

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy!

"Ten years after a law was passed to register and track lobbyists, the Capitol staffs charged with the task are woefully short-handed and lack proper auditing and investigative powers, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.

It found the industry doubling in size in just the past six years. At the same time, government's revolving door has ratcheted up to warp speed: an estimated 240 former members of Congress and federal agency heads, as well as 2,000 other senior officials, are now lobbyists, earning salaries only fantasized about in their public service days to gain an entree for major corporations and interest groups.

The some $13 billion spent on lobbying since 1998 is more than twice the amount spent by candidates for federal office, yet campaign financing is vetted far more closely for possible abuses than lobbying. Thousands of required lobbying disclosure documents have not been filed, the center found, with no one making a fuss.

Lobbying has now become an established part of representative government."

Congress's Deepening Shadow World

iPod's Other Use

I can't beleive I did not think of this before.

Wired News: Have iPod, Will Secretly Bootleg

It's 11 O'Clock...

... Do you know who lives in your closet?

"NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A man was beaten to death after catching his wife's lover living in a closet in their home, police said Tuesday. Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey A. Freeman over the weekend.

'From time to time, you come across a case with very unique -- even bizarre -- circumstances,' police spokesman Don Aaron said. 'This one probably rates right up there with them.'

Freeman's wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom home for about a month without her husband's knowledge, police said. On Sunday, her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him, authorities said.

Freeman ordered his wife to get the man out of the house while he went for a walk, authorities said. Martha Freeman told authorities that when her husband returned, Rocha-Perez confronted him with a shotgun, forced him into a bathroom and bludgeoned him.

The Freemans were co-owners of a company that does background checks for apartment rental and job applicants."

Man living in closet charged in homicide

And...

... That is the exact point.

"It frightens me ... as an artist and curator. Now we're being watched,' Hernandez said."

Secret Service visits art show at Columbia

Make Paris Happy!

On Payroll Taxes and the proposed repeal of Estate Tax:

"Make no mistake, these two things are pretty directly related. After all, the reason why Bush thinks the government 'can't' pay back the bonds owed to Social Security is because there are huge budget deficits. Congress, the story goes, needs those payroll tax receipts to paper over the huge budget deficits. And the huge budget deficits are being created by things like… the estate tax repeal, so that heiresses like Paris Hilton don't have to pay taxes on an inheritance they have done nothing to earn. Once again: People working at, say, Wal-Mart put their taxes in. Taxes go out to… the likes of Paris Hilton, who, until recently, didn't even know what Wal-Mart was. Fantastic!"

MoJo Blog

Top Ten List

Top Ten Ways Airlines Are Cutting Back...

10. Pilots have to pay for their in-flight cocktails.

9. Ticket agents urging travelers to stay home.

8. To maximize space, seats no longer recline a luxurious inch-and-a-half.

7. Oxygen mask compartments replaced with video poker screens.

6. Instead of complimentary pillows, wadded-up clothing pulled out of checked luggage.

5. Difference between first class and coach? A bite-size 3 Musketeers bar.

4. From now on, planes will taxi from one destination to another on the interstate.

3. I don't know, but how hard is it to open them peanuts, am I right people?

2. In case of water landing, your only flotation device is the fat guy in 16F.

1. In-flight 'movie' is home video of the pilot 'Gettin' It On.'

---Late Show with David Letterman

Did someone say sovereignty?

"The United States opposed an idea floated by Iraq's new president that could end up extending a proposed amnesty to insurgents who killed US troops.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment directly on the reported plan by former Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who was sworn in as president of the violence-wracked country on Thursday.

But Boucher added, "I think as a general proposition, no we don't think it's appropriate to give amnesty to people who have killed American or coalition forces, or Iraqi forces for that matter.""

US opposes amnesty for Iraqis who kill US soldiers

A Reasonable Premise

"This is not the fault of the vocal minority. The blame for this fiasco belongs solely with the 84% that won’t speak up."

Spitting Llamas

The Award Will Not Be Televised

"On April 14th, 2005 Privacy International will hold the 7th annual U.S. Big Brother Awards to shame the invaders and celebrate the champions of privacy. The ceremony will be held at the 2005 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference, in Seattle.

Distinctive Orwell statues of a golden boot stomping a head will be presented to the government agencies and officials, companies and initiatives that have done the most to invade personal privacy in the previous year. The 'Lifetime Menace' award will also be presented to a well-deserving organization that systematically invades privacy.

Previous 'winners' include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, DoubleClick, ChoicePoint, Trans Union, Oracle, the FAA's BodyScan system, the Department of Commerce and Microsoft. See below for our complete list of previous winners.

Brandeis Awards will be given to champions of privacy. The Brandeis Award is named after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who described privacy as 'the right to be let alone.' The awards are given to those have done exemplary work to protect and champion privacy."

Big Brother Awards 2005

Huh?

Are these Sanctions still in place? One would have imagined that they were one of the first things to go. Strange!

"UNITED NATIONS - Iraq's U.N. ambassador urged the Security Council on Monday to lift the arms embargo and economic restrictions it imposed on Saddam Hussein's government, calling them 'shackles and burdens' on Iraq's fledgling democracy."

Iraq Ambassador Urges Lifting Sanctions

Victory Has Hundred Fathers; Defeat Is An Orphan

"Still, let's recall that the prime mission of presidential and parliamentary commissions tends to be not fact-finding but sweeping scandal under the rug and deflecting blame from politicians.

After mouthing pious verities about needing better intelligence, the commission, appointed by President George W. Bush, amazingly found: (a) No one was really guilty of the Iraq intelligence fiasco; and (b) there was no White House political pressure on the intelligence community to justify the war.

So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on. The report made no mention of Bush's claims about Iraqi drones of death, Vice-President Dick Cheney's pressure on the CIA to declare Iraq a nuclear menace, or Condoleezza Rice's terrorizing Americans with talk of nuclear mushroom clouds.

It ignored evidence from senior Bush aides Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke that the president obsessively pushed for war with Iraq soon after taking office.

There was no mention of Doug Feith's Office for Special Plans, a covert Pentagon intelligence shop set up to funnel claims about Iraq to the White House and U.S. media produced by a cabal of pro-war neo-conservatives -- which was investigated for giving Israel classified material. No mention of patriotic CIA officers reportedly fired or demoted for refusing to participate in such activities.

No mention of how national security was corrupted, manipulated and distorted for partisan political gain.

The report called Iraq 'one of the most damaging intelligence failures in recent American history.'

But, amazingly, the whitewash committee found no one responsible for this disaster. Victory has a hundred fathers; defeat is an orphan. "

Bush rewards his failures

Create Your Own...

I stumbled upon this site where using flash you could create your own South Park character. But, I lost the URL and, for the life of me, cannot find it. I will go through my browser's history to see if I can find it, but I feel lazy right now. Anyhow, this is my custom character...

Update: Here, I found the link! Have fun.

My Brain's Gender

Good thing I am secure enough in my masculinity to be able to accept this.

Your Brain is 66.67% Female, 33.33% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Alliance for Justice

"The Republican leadership in the Senate is threatening to destroy me and hurt my friends, Checks and Balanz. Our founding fathers created this system of checks and balances over 200 years ago. And now Republican leaders in the Senate want to take that away from all of us.

I'm the only check that prevents a party that controls the presidency and the houses of Congress from abusing that power. We can't allow Senate Republicans to rewrite our country's history just to serve their own partisan political agenda."

Alliance for Justice

PostSecret

"Please put your complete secret and image on one side of the postcard.

You may mail your postcard inside an envelope if you prefer.

Tips:
Be brief - the fewer words used the better.
Be legible - use big, clear and bold lettering.
Be creative - let the postcard be your canvas.

PostSecrets are more likely to be displayed if they are short, easy to read, and creative.

Mail your secrets to:
PostSecret
13345 Copper Ridge Rd
Germantown, Maryland
USA 20874-3454"

See PostSecret

Ten Years...

Ten years ago at this time I was preparing to take the LSAT. I had chosen the schools I was applying for. The seed for the upcoming major changes in my life was planted.

Ten years... I feel I should get a watch or something.

Better Alternatives

"There are many FREE programs that are better than the product they replace. If you don't know it already, I'm talking about Open Source programs."

Finding and Using Open Source Software

The Result

Edward Said in The Guardian (London), January 12, 1991

"Because of this lopsided state of affairs militarism asumed far too privileged a place in the Arab world's moral economy. Much of it goes back to the sense of being unjustly treated, for which Palestine was not only a metaphor but a reality. But, I ask myself, was the only answer military force of one sort of another: huge armies, brassy slogans, bloody promises, and, alas, a massive series of concrete instances, starting with wars at the top and working down to such things as physical punishment and menacing gestures at the bottom? I speak superficially and even irresponsibly
here, since I cannot have all the facts at my command, and I perhaps have no right to be passing judgments such as these.

BUT I do not know a single Arab who would disagree with these impressions in private, or who would not readily agree that the monopoly on coercion given the state and its army and police have almost completely eliminated democracy in the Arab world, introduced immense hostility between rulers and ruled, placed a much higher value on conformity, opportunism, flattery and getting along than on risking new ideas, criticism or dissent."

The part I want to focus on is the last part about the resulting social attitude when one grows up in a totalitarian social structure where posts and responsibilities are handed out not based on merit, but based on bloodline, loyalty and personal relationships.

Life During Wartime

By Joshua Brown, executive director of the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project at The City University of New York.

Great political cartoons

See more here.

Nightline Exec's Talk

"Is there any news left?

I think the definition of things has changed. I mean, there’s more quote news than I think there’s ever been, but at the same time there’s less good reporting, there’s less story telling. Where I think it’s headed as a business is news on demand. You know, you’re going to say, ‘I’m interested in the weather, I’m interested in film, I’m interested in the beach, I’m interested in Iraq.” And so your computer will simply give you those stories. What’s being lost now, it’s just about gone, and it’s going to be lost when all that happens, is the idea that there are stories out there that you don’t know about, that you don’t know you’re interested in, but you will be interested in. 60 Minutes did that, Nightline did that. I mean, lots of people used to do that. It’s like, just give us a couple of minutes and we’re going to take you someplace you’ve never been and show you something you’ve never seen, and it’s going to be really interesting. Well now, unless you know ahead of time what exists, you don’t even know what to ask for. So all that storytelling is going to be lost, and you’re going to come down to basic facts and figures. Again, it’s just stuff you know. And it’s a huge tragedy."

LA Weekly: Features: Goodbye to All That

Reminder

No Pants Day 2005 is May 6th

Ahem...

Ahem...

152 executions in Texas alone
Some of which the guilt was known
The others, well, a little doubt
This culture of life is what it's about

President Bush, Frist, Tom Delay
How many troops did you kill today?
Or innocent women and children too?
For life, can they really rely on you?

Political games in the dead of night
With families torn as you worsen the fight
If closeness to Terri makes you feel so good
Substitute feeding tubes for your own damn food

-- March 23, 2005

From annoy.com

Still Waiting...

... For the roses and the welcome red carpet.

The Man Date

Only in America with its god given culture of repressed sexuality and homophobic tensions this article about the Man Date would make sense.

Enough To Make You Hate Religion

How much more of this religious nonsense must we take? This country is being overrun by the Christian Talibans.

"Under House Bill 1042, all hospitals in the state would have had to inform rape victims who were not yet pregnant about emergency contraception, then offer to dispense the pills or refer them to pharmacies that could dispense them. Individual health care professionals would have been allowed to refuse to provide the contraception on religious or moral grounds.

Gov. Owens, a Catholic, said he rejected the proposal because it would have forced church-based hospitals to go against their own moral values, and because it might have caused a woman to 'innocently violate her personal, moral and religious beliefs about when life begins.'

Women’s health advocacy groups said Wednesday that the governor did not have the right to impose his religious beliefs on rape survivors. The bill’s supporters, including sexual assault prevention groups, vowed to endorse similar legislation next year.

[...]

Emergency contraception does not affect a woman if she is already pregnant, but successfully prevents pregnancy up to 89 percent of the time if taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse. Women's rights advocates argue that obstacles to obtaining the drug must be eliminated because the pills are most effective the sooner they are taken."

Colorado Governor Vetoes Emergency Contraception Information Bill

Salon.com News | Bush indifferent over falling poll numbers

"The public's dissatisfaction with President Bush and the Republican-led Congress is growing, with ratings dropping amid record high gas prices, war in Iraq, the Social Security debate and the emotional Terri Schiavo case.

The Republican president's job approval is at 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. Only 37 percent have a favorable opinion of the work being done by Congress, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.

Bush's job approval was at 49 percent in January, the same month in which he was sworn in for a second term, while Congress' was at 41 percent.

The president was asked Friday about his falling ratings in some polls, and he claimed indifference."

And why should he? It's not that he need us any the longer. He has got ample wealthy friends he needs to pay back with favors and there is not a darn thing any of us can do. And he knows it.

Bush indifferent over falling poll numbers (needs subscription)

Making Stalin Proud

Barring people from opposing views from tax payer funded events where the President is informing the public selling his agenda for policy change in the Social Security System to the public is down right anti-democratic--figuratively and literally. Stalin would be proud of these people and their ways and means to disrupt the democratic process.

"The Denver incident was one of a number of events cited by Waxman in a letter asking the Government Accountability Office to calculate the cost of the president's '60 Stops in 60 Days' Social Security campaign.

Waxman said that expelling people with contrary views and promoting a partisan agenda are 'hallmarks of campaign events, not government-funded political meetings.'

A student was barred from a similar event in Arizona for wearing a Young Democrats T-shirt.

In North Dakota, a list surfaced that banned 42 people from getting tickets to another Bush speech in the campaign.

White House spokesman Allen Abney has refused to provide the cost of the Social Security trips, saying it is wrapped up in the annual presidential travel budget.

Taxpayers have paid more than $2 million just for the flights in the Social Security campaign, which is a bit more than half over, according to calculations made by The Washington Post."

Waxman Probes Legality of Bush Social Security Trips

KGB Could Not Have Done It Better

"The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution… No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section."

In other words, they can do it and we can't know. Nothing civil about it. Note, by the way, that "not conducted solely…" which assumedly means that an investigation can be conducted against "activities protected by the first amendment." And keep in mind that the man now testifying, before he morphed into the Attorney General of the increasingly ill-named Justice Department, was sitting in the White House Counsel's office overseeing some of the most pretzled language and tortured logic ever-produced to create a prosecution-free basis for promoting a presidential regime of torture throughout our various jails, camps, and detention centers then being set up abroad.

Creating an Uncivil Society

I Am An Alcoholic

What Kind of Drunk Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

About the Space Gap

So now there are those who worry about the United States losing its supremacy in Space and thoughts and movement is being generated to militarize that vast open airless space.

Reminds me of a movie I saw when I was a kid and then I saw it again right before the Iraq's invasion. While I was watching that movie, it occurred to me that the movie could have been dubbed and all references to USSR could have been exchanged for Iraq and Terrorism and we would have had a movie that could have been made very recently instead of made back in the 60s.

It is a movie where the stupidity of arms race and its futility when knowing that it is a lose-lose proposition and will certainly end with total inhalation of all protagonists--or if not total inhalation a good bit of dead and perhaps the end of life as we know it--is clearly displayed.

And here we have people worrying about a Space gap!

You gentleman can't fight in here, this is the war room!!

"I don't think it's fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slipup, sir." "I do say no more than 10-20 million people killed tops! Er, depending on the breaks."

"Mr. President, we cannot ALLOW a MINESHAFT GAP!"

"Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!"


View trailer

Anti-Humanity At Work

"If only the Wal-Mart corporation lived up to the kindness of its employees. The proverbial 800-pound gorilla of the international economy, Wal-Mart is the largest corporation in the world, with more than 4,750 stores nationwide and revenues of $256 billion in 2003. The five Wal-Mart heirs have a combined wealth of $102.5 billion, twice that of Bill Gates; each heir has an annual income of at least $205 million. H. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's CEO, took home $29 million in 2003.

The average wage of a Wal-Mart sales clerk is $8.50 an hour. That's $14,000 a year if the employee works 'full time,' which Wal-Mart defines as 34 hours a week. And that's $2,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of three.

Wal-Mart stores frequently maximize their part-time work force in order to minimize their payment of benefits, even though fewer than half of Wal-Mart's full-time employees can afford to pay the premiums on the company's least-expensive health insurance plan."

The Times Record's Opinion

Ready For Summer

Check it out! Got my longboard for summer and went ahead and prepared it for it maiden ride... sometimes soon.

It's a 43" Fibreflex (Fibreglass pressed with vertically laminated solid aspen and walnut for a flex like no other) mounted with Randal 180s (Excellent for carving and higher speed riding. Ideal all-around longboard truck) and a set of 70mm, 78a Kryptonics. I used to LOVE Kryptonics back in the late 70s although at that time the red was more fluerescant.

The 2005 set up.
I can't wait!

Holy Crap!

"An accused drunk driver tried but failed to foil a police breathalyzer after stuffing his mouth full of feces. 'I don't think alcohol alone would make you do something as disgusting as that,' South Simcoe Police Insp. Tom McDonald said.

[...]

Arrested Sunday after his Ford pickup was pulled over on a highway just outside of Barrie, the 59-year-old driver was loaded into a cruiser and taken to a police station for testing.

En route, Sgt. James Buchanan said the prisoner vomited, urinated and defecated in the rear of the car.

After arriving at the station, he said the man grabbed a handful of his own waste "and placed it in his mouth, attempting to trick the breathalyzer machine."

It didn't work, Buchanan said."

DUI suspect eats feces

One More On Terri

"It is ironic Terri died of starvation--but you know what is worse, Republicans who disingenuously stood up for her life are the very ones who have blocked legislation that would have granted access to treatment of her eating disorder and not only to Terri but to millions of women and men who suffer from anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating disorder."

AlterNet: Terri's Final Irony

Microsoft Interview Questions

"# Why is a manhole cover round?
# How many cars are there in the USA? (A popular variant is 'How many gas stations are there in the USA?')
# How many manhole covers are there in the USA?
# You've got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
# One train leaves Los Angeles at 15mph heading for New York. Another train leaves from New York at 20mph heading for Los Angeles on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?
# Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?"

More Microsoft interview questions:
Microsoft Interview Questions

More On Social Security

"As reported in last month's Lowdown, step one is to portray Social Security as fatally flawed. The promised benefits are a 'hoax,' the taxes paid into the trust fund are 'wasted' rather than invested for maximum return, and 'the so-called reserve fund ... is no reserve at all.'

Interestingly, these are quotes not from today's alarmist Bushites but from the lips of Alf Landon and the pages of his party's platform when he was the Republican candidate for president way back in 1936! Note that the first Social Security check was not mailed until 1937, so the ideologues and big money interests were predicting doom and gloom and trying to undermine the program even before it started.

Indeed, dismantling Social Security has been a central tenet of the right wing for nearly 70 years, and it's been an increasingly serious goal of GOP presidential politics since the hardcore right made its grab for the reins of the party's national leadership with Barry Goldwater's 1964 run. Nothing that Bush is saying today is new. Just as George is now doing, Goldwater painted a picture of a collapsing system 40 years ago, declaring that 'it is not actuarially sound' and contending that he merely wanted 'to make Social Security solvent, to improve it.' Likewise, Ronnie Reagan called for the same sort of privatization approach now touted by Bush. 'Can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen to do better on his own?' the Gipper asked.

While politicians from Goldwater to George have portrayed their assault on the program in terms of 'saving' it with a curative dose of privatization, it's really the very existence of Social Security that sticks in their craw. (In '64, in a moment of candor about his real intentions, Goldwater said, 'Perhaps Social Security should be abolished.') Behind this campaign is the right wing's anti-government dogma, which has trumped the obvious need to guarantee people a basic level of retirement security."

AlterNet: Neutering Social Security

Sometimes You Need God

I might have blogged this before, but this bit is worth reading twice:

"If there is anything the left fails to appreciate, and that politicians on the right exploit with unerring tact, it is the nature of that woman’s struggle. I mean the class nature no less than the moral nature. You may call it universal if you wish, because it is common to parents everywhere and, in fact, to anyone who loves anything at all, but the struggle to preserve what you cherish becomes especially acute when you live in poverty, or close to poverty, when your well-kept prefab sits on its half-acre lot a quarter mile up the road from the shack with all the dogs. Or, tougher still, when you live in the shack with all the dogs and try to teach your kids not to treat animals like the little sadists up in the prefab house. Sophisticated people of independent means can afford to be disdainful of lower-class attempts at “respectability,” chalking it up to religious prejudice or provincial narrowness, but when their own kids come anywhere within the smell of social dysfunction, they have the private-school applications in the mail. To be sure, the private school they choose will be very “diverse,” which is to say, diverse according to every criterion but class. There will be that very nice boy from the Philippines, but there won’t be any rough boys from Podunk.

Those without the privilege of mobility must learn instead the rigid disciplines of standing still, that is, of making a stand. There are things we do in this house and things we don’t do, things the rednecks do or the gringos do that are not for us. Often those engaged in this kind of struggle will turn to religion. Though I served a small and not very moralistic (Episcopal) church, I saw this more than once. People go to church for all kinds of reasons, but the main reason that people of a certain age will start going to church is that their kids are starting to overdose on the dominant culture. They go to church hoping to find solid ground. Sometimes they go to the polls hoping for the same thing.

“You know where I stand,” George W. Bush said any number of times before his 2004 electoral victory, and I certainly did: on the wrong side of every issue. But did voters know where the Democratic Party stood or, more to the point, on what it stood? Did it stand on anything? If the question offends you, permit me to ask another. Had Howard Dean been an evangelical Christian with an evangelical Christian base, would his followers have deserted him because his Iowa holler made him “unelectable”? Or would they have closed ranks behind him because his stand on the Iraq war made him right?"

Full article here.

Is It Any Wonder...

... Why this darn Israeli-Palestinian war has lasted this long?

"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed Monday to press ahead with expansion of a Jewish settlement near Jerusalem despite U.S. concerns and Palestinian protests the project would cut them off from the city.

'I don't see construction in the E-1 area as a serious problem,' Sharon, referring to the Maale Adumim settlement, said at a closed-door session of a parliamentary committee, an official told reporters."

Sharon Vows to Pursue Settlement Expansion

Stand Up For Your Rights?

This is scary stuff. I was having a conversation with someone some time ago and he was of the opinion that the only way the Citizenry in this country can get back their government from the clutches of these anti-people who run it, is under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. He was thanking god that the Neocons are all for gun ownership... I looked at him a bit with disbelief since I did not think that the situation had come to that. Low and behold here is Scott Ritter, the former United Nations' weapons inspector pretty much saying something to that effect.

"Several insiders have expressed concern over possible oil shortage riots. Would the Patriot Act be put to use, in your opinion, to address such riots?

[The Patriot Act] is simply the neocons putting their judicial agenda in place by other means. It was a compilation of all of the conservative initiatives, not neocon initiatives, which the conservative Republicans have been pushing for, including a more conservative law enforcement element.

This is not unhealthy as long is it is done properly, through legislation, proper channels of debate and discourse. A lot of this had been submitted in the past, but was rejected. After 9/11 all of these initiatives were lumped together.

There are some things in the Patriot Act I agree with, but the Patriot Act requires a responsible society. The neocons have no interest in a responsible society; they simply used the conservatives as a vehicle to push an agenda to assault individual civil liberties.

As the Patriot Act is now, how it came about, is entirely un-American. It is extreme legislation that does nothing to address the issues it professes to, but moreover, it is, as an existing law, un-American. What makes it un-American is that no one read it before they voted for it. So the process was un-American, and the motivation behind it was un-American. We cannot have a nation that is governed by fear. The Patriot Act is un-American simply because it exists.

So how do citizens address this situation since the very means of addressing it via Congress seem to have been closed off?

Congress has ceased to function as a viable tool of government. What is needed is for leaders of honor to resign in protest."

Neocons as Parasites

Another Genius

Huh? John Bolton to represent the United States in the United Nations?

See this.

Now, the question becomes, if there is no United Nations why do we need a representative in that non-existing entity?

Take Action!

Shortly, it is likely that the Bankruptcy Bill will be law--It has already passed the Senate and the conditions seem to be favorable for a passage, this time around. The Credit Card lobby has been at it for the past seven years and finally with their people in place both in Congress and the White House, it is likely that the People will get the short stick... Once again.

"The legislation would make it much more difficult for people turning to bankruptcy as a last resort to actually discharge their credit card debts under Chapter 7, which pays off debts by liquidating assets, offering a fresh start financially. Instead, it would force people into Chapter 13 with a rigid 5-year repayment plan, even after liquidating all assets.

In DC, the banking lobby's line about frivolous debtors lacking personal responsibility plays well on both sides of the aisle. But, as Robert Scheer pointed out recently in a typically strong column, 'for all of the whining about deadbeats ripping off the system, credit card companies' annual pretax profits have soared two-and-a-half times in the last decade, and last year was their most profitable in more than fifteen years.'"

Say No to Bankruptcy Bill by Peter Rothberg

Click here to have your voice heard... For what it worth.

Also worth checking out: DebtSlavery.Org.

Each time I hear about initiatives taken by this Administration, it becomes more and more clear that the only thing American about this bunch is their address. Nothing else.

Amputate!

I know this is small--click on the picture to see it bigger and then you can go here to see even more of these. They are wonderfully satirical. My kind of humor!

God, Guns and Dollars

So here it is the moral value of these right wingies who claim to have a hold on morality in this country. God, Guns and Dollars is what they are all about.

* Judges in the Schiavo case have already been threatened by extremists. Florida Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George Greer has been 'under 24-hour protection by two U.S. marshals due to increased threats against his life by those unhappy with his handling of the Schiavo case,' according to CNN. Last Thursday, police arrested an Illinois man they said robbed a Florida gun store as part of an attempt to 'rescue Terri Schiavo.' The next day, FBI officials took into custody a North Carolina man for placing a $250,000 bounty 'on the head of Michael Schiavo' and another $50,000 to murder Judge Greer. And police yesterday said they had 'logged several bomb threats' to the hospice where Schiavo died and 'the circuit and federal courts that refused to order her feeding tube restored.'

* The House Majority Leader has no place threatening other members of government or encouraging others to seek retribution against judges. Such incendiary statements are even more inappropriate considering the recent high-profile acts of violence against judges, including the March 11 killings of a federal judge and several others at an Atlanta courthouse. Sen. Edward Kennedy called DeLay's statement 'irresponsible and reprehensible,' and urged that 'at a time when emotions are running high, Mr. DeLay needs to make clear that he is not advocating violence against anyone. People in this case have already had their lives threatened.' Tom DeLay should disavow this irresponsible rhetoric and end his personal attacks on the men and women who serve as America's judges.

* DeLay's comments are indicative of the extreme, personally vindictive sentiments of right-wing leaders across the country. Dr. James Dobson, founder of the right-wing Focus on the Family, said 'the judges who would not stop the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube were guilty not only of judicial malfeasance - but of the cold-blooded, cold-hearted extermination of an innocent human life." Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said of those who opposed congressional intervention in the case, "If they want to be vigorous defenders of Michael Schiavo and his right to have his wife killed by starving and dehydration, my words to them are 'Go ahead, be Michael's defenders' - and I wish on each of them a son-in-law like Michael Schiavo.""

Talking Points - American Progress Action Fund

Hmmm... A Coup D'Etat Gone Bad?

"Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent Iraqi expatriates -- many with ties to U.S. industry -- were invited to secret discussions directed by Pamela Quanrud, National Security Council, now at the State Department. 'It quickly became an oil group,' one participant, Falah Aljibury. Aljibury is an advisor to Amerada Hess' oil trading arm and Goldman Sachs.

'The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry -- they'd hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days,' Aljibury told me. On this plan, Hussein would simply have been replaced by some former Baathist general.

However, by February 2003, a hundred-page blue-print for the occupied nation, favored by neo-cons, had been enshrined as official policy. 'Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth' generally embodied the principles for postwar Iraq favored by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Iran-Contra figure, now Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams. The blue-print mapped out a radical makeover of Iraq as a free-market Xanadu including, on page 73, the sell-off of the nation's crown jewels: 'privatization… [of] the oil and supporting industries.'"

BAGHDAD COUP D'ETAT FOR BIG OIL

Found...

I came across this quote somewhere on the Internet and find it interesting:

"If God knows the future, then he already knows exactly what will happen and exactly when. Of course, He knows, as a part of this knowledge, that a person will pray and exactly what they will say. God can't change anything in response to prayer because he already knows what will happen. He also knows in advance every prayer that will be said by any person in the future. Another reason God can't change his mind is because that would mean that He is not perfect, which he is alleged to be. Changing His mind would indicate a mistake. So why pray about anything?"

Amazing Photography

Thierry Le Goues Photography
These photos are great. They remind me of the work of the late Herb Rits.

Quote

"This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is a flash of lightning in the sky. Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain."
-Buddha (563-483 B.C.)

Step Aside

Many still believe in the premise that because we are already in Iraq that we cannot immediately leave without having achieved at least a resemblance of stability in that country. Some others see it differently.

"What, then, should Washington and London do? Knock heads until the Iraqis see the light? Or, get out and let them find their own way?

Neither course of action will produce anything resembling Jeffersonian democracy. Bush, Blair, and the neoconservative ideologues who cheer them on should have realized this before they set out to run someone else's country, let alone the entire Middle East. But, in their arrogant, faith-based rejection of reality, they fell victim to their own lofty rhetoric and the lure of Iraqi oil.

To temper any lingering missionary zeal, consider a few facts. Not all Iraqis, and not all Shiites, share the primitive and puritanical notions of Moqtada al-Sadr. Many Iraqis, Iranians, and others in the region seek to find their own compromise between tradition and the modern world, while others - mainly among the more educated - are openly secular. Freedom and human rights have strong supporters throughout the Middle East.

But how many? And for how long? Every reputable poll shows that a growing majority of Iraqis oppose foreign occupation and demand their national freedom. Very much like the rest of us, they also want to control their own culture and their own natural resources.

Al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army embodied these nationalistic feelings when they held off U.S. troops in the Shiite holy cities last year, and they continue to lead Shiite opposition to the continued presence of British and American forces in Iraq. The longer these outside forces remain, whether to knock heads or otherwise 'create security,' the more Shiites will support al-Sadr. And, sadly, growing numbers will do it even at the cost of their individual freedom.

So, the choice for Bush and Blair comes down to this: Get out of Iraq now, and risk another Iran. Stay, and make an even more repressive Islamic Republic almost inevitable.

When the deadly double bind plays out, please remember all the fine words about freedom and democracy. The ideals are certainly worth promoting, but not by self-interested outsiders with a gun in one hand, a cross in the other, and their eye on someone else's oil."

If You Believe in Freedom, Step Aside

Why Iran is not the new Iraq

"Washington's attempts to isolate Iran, and pretend that its economy would be as vulnerable to economic sanctions as Iraq's was, is wide of reality. According to the latest figures, Iran's per-capita GDP stands at $1,641, double that of Indonesia. It has the 22nd largest surplus in the world at $5,256m, more than Denmark and Qatar. In terms of purchasing power, it is the 22nd largest economy in the world, just below Turkey, but above Poland.

The statistics tell a story that is missed by the British and American governments when they talk about Iran. A quarter of a century after the Islamic revolution, the theocratic authorities in Iran face a critical test of relevance and legitimacy in a country that is changing far more quickly than they are.

[...]

At the height of the Iran-Iraq war, which is estimated to have killed and wounded a million people, Khomeini made an extraordinary statement. He described the conflict that was consuming a generation as "a war sent by God". Western commentators saw this as an example of a grotesque fundamentalist mentality that delighted in the spilling of blood. In fact, it was a brutally honest assessment of how Saddam's attack had given the Islamic leadership a golden opportunity to rally the nation around it, and cast all its opponents as foreign agents."

Another Country

The Anti-War Pope

"In his 2002 Christmas message, John Paul had called on the governments of the world to make an urgent effort 'in the Middle East, to extinguish the ominous smoldering of a conflict which, with the joint efforts of all, can be avoided.' This year, with resistance to the American occupation growing, and domestic antiwar sentiment persisting, the War Party was nervously anticipating his annual 'Urbi et Orbi' (the City and the World) message, and he did not disappoint:

'Save us from the great evils which rend humanity in these first years of the third millennium. Save us from the wars and armed conflicts which lay waste whole areas of the world, from the scourge of terrorism and from the many forms of violence which assail the weak and the vulnerable. Save us from discouragement as we face the paths to peace, difficult paths indeed, yet possible and therefore necessary; paths which are always and everywhere urgent, especially in the Land where You were born, the Prince of Peace.'

God save us from George W. Bush."

Pope John Paul II: Man of the Year

Democrats Where Are You?

"So two years after Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, there still has been no official inquiry into how he and his lieutenants handled the prewar intelligence. The question is whether Bush and other administration officials exaggerated the intelligence community's overstatements. And the evidence suggests they did. Bush claimed Saddam Hussein was 'dealing with' al Qaeda before the war, but the CIA had not reported that. Bush said Hussein had amassed a 'massive stockpile' of biological weapons, yet the intelligence community had only reported (errantly) that Iraq had an active research and development program for biological weapons. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have so far succeeded in keeping his role in the WMD scandal out of the picture. (Democrats, where are you?) "

Capital Games

See my other post about the wrong premise regarding Democrats MIA.

Who Would Have Thunk It?

"HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro expressed condolences for the death of Pope John Paul II and declared three days of official mourning on the communist-run island beginning Sunday.

In a letter to the Vatican published Sunday on the front page of Juventud Rebelde newspaper, Castro called the pope's passing ``sad news'' and expressed ``the most heartfelt condolences of the Cuban people and government.''"

Cuba's Castro Sends Condolences to Vatican

Free Music (Legal!!)

The Wired CD.

Holy Piss

"Why I haven’t watched CNN in a month

They have two people on, right now, discussing how much urine Terri Schiavo did or did not produce last night, and what amount of urine would be considered a “miraculous” amount of urine.

I’ll check again in a year."

From The Poor Man.

Funny Blog

"All Pope All The Time

The cable news channels are running out of experts to interview about the Pope. MSNBC just interviewd Father Guido Sarducci."

From RunningwithLawyers

This made me laugh very hard!

Clarification

not to be mistaken with "Democrat".

Quick... Let's Talk About... 9/11!!!

"Talk about changing the subject.

George W. Bush extended his condolences to the family of Terri Schiavo this morning and said a few words about the 'culture of life' and society's obligation 'to protect the weak.' But before we could even start to think about how much protecting of the weak Bush's administration has really done, the president was on to something else. And what a surprise: It was 9/11.

Without a word of transition, Bush switched instantly from his comments about the 'presumption of life' to this: 'The most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. Since September the 11th, 2001, we've taken bold and vigorous steps to prevent further attacks and overcome emerging threats.'

Translation: 'Look at me, I'm your wartime president!'"

Salon.com Politics

The greatest gift to the Bush's Presidency was given to him by Osama Bin Laden.

Oh well...

... It was a nice thought.

President George W. Bush Resigns

WASHINGTON--President George W. Bush held an impromptu press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House this morning at 10:00 a.m. announcing that he is resigning from Office of Presidency. President Bush said that he has thought about his Presidency long and hard and has come to the conclusion that he can no longer continue the lies and deceit perpetrated upon the American People, in his name. "I am ashamed of myself and those who surround me for the lies that we have told to the American People" Bush said.

Karl Rove, President Bush's trusted adviser, was not immediately available for comment.

"Effective noon tomorrow, I will resign from the Presidency of the United States." Bush said. It is presumed that the Vice President Dick Cheney will be sworn in at the time when President Bush is planning on resigning from his Office. "I will be a good President" said Cheney when pressed for a comment upon being notified of the events of the day and the announcement by the President this morning "but I am not President, yet." Cheney continued.

It is not clear how and what precipitated the decision that has come as a total surprise to everyone in Congress and all those who claim to be close to the President and the Presidency. A trusted anonymous source indicated that the inability of the President to insert Terry Schiavo's feeding tube back into her was a major factor in Mr. Bush's decision. "[The President] want to join a charity group who will lobby for the rights of the weak and the handicapped to have their feeding tubes connected at all costs" the Source said.

The While House Press Office announced that a follow up press conference is now scheduled for Friday at 10:00 p.m. where the President plans on giving more detail on his puzzling decision and what is expected to take place within the next few days.