Iraq Study Group Report Angers A Few

    I am still hearing the cries from some of the GOP faithful/idiots who seem to think that this report was a waste of time.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page said the report was a “strategic muddle,” Richard Perle called it “absurd,” Rush Limbaugh labeled it “stupid.”   Is Rush in any spot to have an opinion on anything of importance? The New York Post called former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic member of Congress “surrender monkeys.”

   The problem with these shitheads is that they were expecting more of the Bushco " stay the course" message from the study group so that the Democrats would have to give in and tow the line with the Crime Family. That is the GOP's idea of partisanship.

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    Senator John McCain of Arizona, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, rejected the major recommendations of the group because they did not present a formula for victory. Mr. McCain, hoping to claim the Republican mantle on national security issues, has staked out a muscular position on Iraq, calling for an immediate increase in American forces to try to bring order to Baghdad and crush the insurgency.>> NYTimes

   I once was a fan of Mr. McCain until the torture bill sham came up. I think that it is time for the senator to go back out to the desert and retire peacefully. This man has been hanging around Bush to many times and he has lost his friggin mind!

      More from the>> NYTimes

The Russian Poisoning

   I have not kept up with this story to much only because I figured that it would get more interesting later on. Well, it is later on!

    Meet Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician turned billionaire who made most of his money thanks to a friendship with Boris Yeltsin after the break-up of the  Soviet Union.

    Berezovsky got very good stakes in the oil company Sibneft, the TV station ORT and Aeroflot. With all of the political power that came with all of the wealth, Berezovsky supported Putin's bid to become president in 2000. Guess that he figured that he would have a puppet on the inside much like Halliburton has with Bush.

   Only problem with that was that Mr. Putin had other ideas such as cutting back on the rising democracy that Russia was heading to and taking back some of the businesses that Putin thought should be run by the state.

   Mr. Berezovsky has made some interesting friends since his asylum in Britain.

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    To the annoyance of those who consider him an outlaw, Berezovsky has been photographed with Neil Bush, President Bush's brother. Bell, the public relations executive in London, said he introduced Berezovsky to Neil Bush in 2003. Berezovsky later became an investor in Ignite! Learning, Bush's educational software company.   WaPo

    Figures that there has to be a Bush in there somewhere.

   Read more from The Washington Post

Bush Still an Idiot

   It is reported that former advisors to  Bush's daddy, George H.W. Bush, are disappointed in his son's  reaction to the report by the Iraq  Study Group.

    "We have a classic case of circling the wagons," says a former adviser to Bush the elder. "If President Bush changes his policy in Iraq in a fundamental way, it undermines the whole premise of his presidency. I just don't believe he will ever do that."

     More HERE

    My own view is that this idiot up in the White House needs to wake the hell up and get with the program! In case you have not noticed, our troops in Iraq are dying over there because this sorry assed piece of crap will not admit that he fucked-up! How much more of this asshole's shit are we going to put up with?

    It is time for Mr. Bush and the rest of the Bushco Crime Family to ride off into the sunset, never to return!

Your Do-Nothing Congress Adjourned

    The failure to pass budget bills for domestic agencies, said Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., amounted to "a blatant admission of abject failure by the most useless Congress in modern times."  This was said after the GOP dumped the un-finished budget on the Democrats.

    In all fairness, the Congress did pass a few bills before they closed up shop Saturday morning (3:15 a.m.)  The Congress bought back some tax cuts that had expired and they passed some goodies that will protect doctors from a big cut in Medicare payments..

     There is more right from The Associated Press

 

               

Bush's Ratings and the congressional Pay Raise

    Mr. Bush's ratings as far as the handling of the Iraqi war is concerned, are down again. No surprise there is there?   Only 27% of Americans approve of his handling of the war and  an all-time high (71%) think that he is doing a bad job with the war.

   Here is a different story for you, because you need to know this.

    Lawmakers get a cost of living increase every year on January 1st. For 2007 it is a 2 percent increase  which puts rank and file lawbreakers, I mean lawmakers, at some $168,500. According to CNN that is a $3,300 pay raise.

    I wish that I had a job where I could work only 2 or 3 days per week, get weeks off at a time, and also get cash from the lobbyist and free perks. I wouldn't want to leave that job either!

    Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada will try to block this raise. More power to them!

 

The House And Senate Intelligence Committees

By Justin Rood - December 7, 2006,

    In Republican hands these past few years, the panels became known more for what they didn't do than for what they did: for not learning about secret government spying projects, not inquiring about interrogation abuses, and for slow-walking investigations into intelligence failures.

But the two Democrats who will take charge of the panels next year say that's going to change.

Player: Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Position: Chair, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)

Player: Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX)
Position: House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence (HPSCI)

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   This should be an interest time when the investigations kick into high gear!

Sen. Rockefeller  said, It's not understandable to me, but the majority party sort of didn't want to do a lot of oversight."  The "terrorist surveillance program," will also be one of the subjects of insight.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes : “First and foremost, I want to prioritize committee work with the understanding that we need to work towards keeping a safe and secure nation, that we don’t want to take a chance we get hit again like on 9/11,” Reyes said in an interview.

    Dealing with the situation in Iraq will be one of his chief concerns also.

    Here is more on both of the gentlemen, from Muckraker.

Republicans Leaving A Mess

    You have to love the GOP, right? Or not! This out going group of idiots are more like children who should be bound for reform school! Nothing but a bunch of hooligans and other assorted crooks and liars!

   I am talking about these hoods that are just going home and leaving the federal spending bill in Washington for the Democrats to figure out! They are sticking the Democrats with responsibility for resolving $463 billion in spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1     And the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas (R., Calif.), has been demanding that the Democrat-crafted 2008 budget absorb most of the $13 billion in costs incurred from a decision now to protect physician reimbursements under Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly and disabled.

With Congress turning off the lights this week, there seems no chance of saving the appropriations process. Instead, most of the government will remain on a stopgap bill through Feb. 15, and in kicking this can down the road, the Republican leadership has no idea where it will stop rolling.

   Read More From The Wall Street Journal Online

 

Saudis Supporting the Sunnis?

       According to the Associated Press, Saudi citizens are providing alot of money (millions) to the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. they also say that the money is used for weapons like shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles.

    One has to wonder if Mr. Bush is aware that his friends are doing this. these Sunni's would be using those weapons against the government and the U.S.-led coalition forces.

    Of course, you that the Saudi government is denying this charge which comes from Iraqi officials.    

    The official story HERE

 

Paper Trails For Voting Machines Recommended

   Hey! Guess what? A federal advisory panel approved a revised proposal that pretty much says that states should use electronic voting machines so that the results can be verified. Can you say ' paper trail?'

   The U.S. Election Assistance Commission recommends that states use voting machines that produce a paper record. What is really funny is that they just rejected this similar idea a day or two ago.

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By STEPHEN MANNING, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 7, 2006

    The report said auditors should have a way to verify that the voting machines produced accurate results.

"If you have an error in an airplane and it goes down, you know it," said Ronald Rivest, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and panel member who proposed both versions. "If you have an error in an election and the wrong person is announced the winner, you may not know it."

The panel deadlocked 6-6 on Monday over the first Rivest proposal, failing to get the eight votes needed to pass.

The revised proposal Tuesday addressed concerns that state elections boards would be burdened by making broad changes in voting technology and that paper records might not be accessible to blind or other disabled voters.     MORE

Do Nothing Congress:The Last Days

   As the final hours wind down for this incompetent Congress, we see the children still doing nothing of any consequence. They did manage to give tax breaks to millions of taxpayers (?) and also opened up 8 million acres off the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling.

    It also voted 95-2 to confirm Robert Gates as defense secretary.

    Needless to say, the boys and girls of the school for stupid will NOT be going home on Thursday as planned!

      More from U.S.News and World Report

 

Reaction to the Iraq study recommendations

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Reaction to the Iraq Study Group's recommendations:

    "This report gives a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq. It is a report that brings some really very interesting proposals, and we will take every proposal seriously and we will act in a timely fashion. ... this report will give us all an opportunity to find common ground, for the good of the country — not for the good of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but for the good of the country." — President Bush

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"We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution; in our opinion, that approach is no longer viable." James A. Baker III, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group.

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"The current approach is not working. And the ability of the United States to influence events is diminishing. ... Many Americans are understandably dissatisfied. Our ship of state has hit rough waters. It must now chart a new way forward." Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group.

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"We acknowledge that this is a tremendous step forward, and it will change course in Iraq. It's up to the president to fulfill his obligation, in my opinion, to the country, and follow the recommendations of this study group." Sen. Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., Democratic leader.

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"Let's use this as a tool to advise the president, as all these recommendations that are coming to him from the Pentagon, from the Congress and from this study group. And let's speak with one voice as we move forward on Iraqi policy. I think that's the most important lesson and the most important track that the country could take right now." — Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., House Armed Services Committee chairman.

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"I feel encouraged, and I feel the stay-the-course strategy is officially dead." — Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.

MORE

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   Now I guess that we will have to wait and see if the man in the White house will actually listen and do something right for once in his life!

The Report on Iraq

    The bipartisan Iraq Study Group came out with their report today and it suggest that the U.S. should withdraw its forces and instead try a diplomatic tactic. It also said that the Bushco administration should engage in talks with both Syria and Iran.

    Of course the White House, ever being stupid and ignorant, says that it has taken its own review of the situation in Iraq but that they would take the new report " very seriously."   Yep, and it is freezing in hell!

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    “Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region and a change in the primary mission of US forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly,” the report said.

  “The primary mission of US forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations,” it added.

             The Iraq Study Group Report

New Work Schedule

"It's long overdue," said Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), who lives in Napa Valley and will have to leave his home at 3 a.m. on Sundays to catch a flight to Washington in time for work Mondays. "I didn't come here to turn around and go back home."

   On the new, longer hours that will be required in Washington of the House. A 5 day work week, that's a new one!

 

5 Day Work Week for the House?

    It seems that the House has gotten to used to the 2 or 3 day work week that they have grown accustomed to since Bushco came into being. They're starting to cry because Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader, has told them that they should expect to work more hours when the Democrats take their positions in January. Darn Democrats!

    From WaPo :

"I have bad news for you," Hoyer told reporters. "Those trips you had planned in January, forget 'em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th."

The reporters groaned. "I know, it's awful, isn't it?" Hoyer empathized.

For lawmakers, it is awful, compared with what they have come to expect. For much of this election year, the legislative week started late Tuesday and ended by Thursday afternoon -- and that was during the relatively few weeks the House wasn't in recess.     More HERE

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 Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), is complaining that the extra hours keeps them away from their families. Hey stupid, we are not paying you to work a 2 or 3 day week on our behalf! You are getting paid to be in Washington for 5 days per week and for however many hours per day that you need to be there to finish our business! You are not getting paid to go home to kiss up to the business interest that you might have!

    Get with the program or go the hell home and stay home! Wal-Mart might take you!

 

Lawmakers offer ethics rules for new Congress

By Andy Sullivan Tue Dec 5, 2006

...Democratic leaders, who made the Republican "culture of corruption" a central theme of their campaign to recapture Congress, have promised to make ethics reform their first order of business when they take control in January.

The measures outlined by Meehan and other reform advocates include an independent office to investigate ethics complaints against members of Congress. That proposal was stripped out of a Senate bill in March as critics said they were capable of policing themselves.

This year's scandals proved that the existing House and Senate ethics committees aren't up to the job, reformers said.

"No group is capable of self-policing," said Connecticut Republican Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record).       From YahooNews

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    Ethics rules and laws have come before many administrations, both Democrat and Republican, only to get shot down or watered down to where they were of no use. Maybe with the 'New Breed' of Democrats coming into power in less than a month, things will change for once.

    We can only hope, right?

 

More GOP in big business pockets?

December 04, 2006 1:40 PM

Anna Schecter Reports:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former tobacco industry lobbyist, won a long battle in court to withdraw all funding for Mississippi's highly successful anti-smoking program, and last week the last dollar ran out. 

    Barbour complained that the program received its funding directly from the courts and that it needed legislative approval, according to Myers.  When the legislature passed a bill to continue the funding, Barbour vetoed it and went back to the courts to withdraw all remaining monies from the program.        From ABC News

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    Another man in big companies good graces, no doubt. Barbour's own lobbying firm made millions lobbying for big tobacco companies so it now looks as if the industry got its moneys worth.

    The lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers , was named the most powerful firm in the country after Bush won the Presidency. that was because of the firms close ties with the GOP. This comes from Fortune Magazine in 2001.

   Here is another poster child for ethics reform when the Democrats start looking into reform!

 

U.S. Panel Rejects Plan For Paper Ballots

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 5, 2006

GAITHERSBURG, Md., Dec. 4 (AP) — A federal advisory panel rejected a recommendation on Monday that states use just voting machines whose results could be independently verified.            More HERE

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   This comes as no surprise to anyone. They made some claim about the state election boards being overwhelmed with the requirement.

    If this would help our election process actually work, then I see no reason that the states cannot be a little inconvenienced. Between all of the machine mess-ups and fraud in our past elections(FL-13 for one) you would think that the states would welcome an actual paper trail for when these pieces of junk go down or do not work as they are supposed to work.

   The Democrats need to push this issue when they get into office as most of the voting problems are against the Democratic party in the first place.

Message From A Megachurch

By E. J. Dionne Jr. via The Washington Post
Tuesday, December 5, 2006

American politics took an important turn last week at a church in the foothills of Southern California's Santa Ana Mountains.

When Rick Warren, one of the nation's most popular evangelical pastors, faced down right-wing pressure and invited Sen. Barack Obama to speak at a gathering at his Saddleback Valley Community Church about the AIDS crisis, he sent a signal: A significant group of theologically conservative Christians no longer wants to be treated as a cog in the Republican political machine.

     Senator Obama's speech HERE

100,000 Contractors in Iraq

   A little snippet of information from WaPo that is reporting that the U.S. Military's first report on the matter says that we have nearly 100,000 civilian government contractors in Iraq.

    This includes American, Iraqi, and other nationals hired by the companies doing the work for the contractors. This is interesting since the Pentagon's estimate had the number at only 25,000.

    Some of the companies and their numbers:

 Dyncorp International  has about 1,500 employees in Iraq, including about 700 helping train the police force.

Blackwater USA  has more than 1,000 employees in the country, most of them providing private security

Kellogg, Brown and Root  one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait

   If you want to read the entire story, go HERE

 

Republican Sen. Brownback looking to 2008

    Here is another Senator who is taking step towards the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. That would be Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Missouri. Another one of the religious rights favorites who is anti everything!

   In a statement Brownback said, "I have decided, after much prayerful consideration, to consider a bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency.There is a real need in our country to rebuild the family and renew our culture and there is a need for genuine conservatism and real compassion in the national discussion."        More HERE

   The only reason I am bringing this man up is because of his anti stem-cell views. I guess that it does not matter that the majority of Americans are in favor of stem-cell research, Mr. Brownback and others are intent on killing it.

84 bodies found

December 4, 2006

84 bodies  found in Baghdad in past two days

Iraqi police Monday said they have recovered 84 bodies in the past two days, all shot to death and scattered across Baghdad. Some were blindfolded with bound hands, and showed signs of torture. They are believed to be victims of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian warfare that has shaken the capital over the past year.   More From CNN

     Yet Mr.Bush will swear up and down that this is not a civil war going on in Iraq! I think that there is one going on in his head and he is losing it!

 

Democrats Who Opposed the War

   Many of the Dems who opposed the war will be moving into some pretty powerful positions in January. We can only hope that they are able to slap some common sense into Mr. Bush and his un-realistic views that all is well in Iraq.

   The Washington Post has an article about those Democrats who voted against this war and it makes for some good reading!

Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.)- "I remember we talked this time about how we got to get answers before this train leaves the station."

 Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.)-Skelton had written Bush a month earlier, after a White House meeting, to say that "I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq's forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it."

Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), who will chair the Appropriations Committee, was among the group that organized the Democrats. He spoke then about poor preparation for postwar Iraq, a concern he developed after listening to State Department officials.

                      More From WaPo

The Week Ahead...

   This will be an interesting week so far as the Bushco Crime family goes!

    President Bush  meets  today with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite leader of the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament and then on Wednesday we get to hear about the recommendations from the bipartisan commission !

    On Sunday, national security adviser Stephen Hadley made the talk show rounds and says that the war policy hasn't failed.

    "We have not failed in Iraq," Hadley said as he made the talk show rounds. "We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we're in a position to help the Iraqis succeed. The president understands that we need to have a way forward in Iraq that is more successful."

           More From The Associated Press

Annan says Iraq much worse than civil war

    George Bush must be on drugs! He's got to be on something to be so far removed from reality!  For this punk to say that we are not seeing  a civil war in Iraq despite all of the evidence to the contrary is just plain amazing!

    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, "When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war -- this is much worse."

    He says that he agrees with the Iraqi's who have said that life is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein. "If I were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same comparison -- that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, 'Am I going to see my child again?"      

Read More Here

MTP Transcript for Dec. 3 - Meet the Press

    Tim Russert took  Stephen Hadley to task today over a memo that he wrote about the Prime minister of Iraq and various other subjects ( Rumsfeld's memo)

    Below is the link to the entire conversation on Meet The Press: 

Link to MTP Transcript for Dec. 3 - Meet the Press, online at MSNBC - MSNBC.com

Bobby L. Maxwell Looking Out for Us

    Bobby Maxwell was an auditor at the Interior Department for some 22 years before the Bush Crime Family got rid of him. Mr. Maxwell was one of the best in the department and had all kinds of awards to back it up!

   He spent alot of time going over the books of the major oil companies looking for money that they may have owed the taxpayers from pumping oil on lands owned by the public to which royalties are due.

    “Mr. Maxwell’s career has been characterized by exceptional performance and significant contributions,” wrote Gale A. Norton, then the secretary of the interior, in a 2003 citation. Ms. Norton praised Mr. Maxwell’s “perseverance and leadership” while cataloguing his “many outstanding achievements.”

     This appears to me to be Bushco and Friends looking out for the oil companies once again! As of this past February, the new interior Department says that the companies may owe as much as $7 BILLION over the past 5 years in royalty payments from leases that were designed wrong! Of course, no one in the Interior Department is actually looking into this!   More after the break

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From NYTimes

Bush Open To Suggestions On Iraq

    A White House security advisor says that Mr.Bush is open to some of  Donald Rumsfeld's suggestions on dealing with the mess in Iraq.

    Rumsfeld had suggested that we put more troops near the Iraqi borders at Syria and Iran, some minor withdrawals of personnel  from the U.S. and other coalition members, for starters.

    HMMMM! Hasn't the Democrats and others been trying to suggest this for some time only to have Bushco tell them it wasn't going to happen?

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    "Of course they're being considered," Bush adviser
Stephen Hadley said.

    The Story