Top Secret America

See Graph

FRONTLINE goes inside the Post's two-year examination into the massive, unwieldy, top-secret world the government has created in response to 9/11.

Via the Washington Post: "... has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

Among the findings: An estimated 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. More than 1,200 government organizations and nearly 2,000 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in 10,000 locations. We speak with one of the co-authors of the series, Bill Arkin. {via: Democracy Now}

Over 2000 new agencies have been created and built to join this Top Secret level clusterfuck supposed to help us since 9-11.

Raise your hand if you think they everyone knows what the other agency is doing.

More Sources: PBS | Washington Post

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The Gang Rape and the Republican

Behold, 30 U.S. senators who don't give a damn about battered women

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 16, 2009

The world's tallest domestic dog? Adorable. The world's biggest newborn baby? Sad and disturbing.

Waterless urinals in every new building in Los Angeles? A positive step. Canada's disgusting oilsands and Coal Country, a new documentary detailing the environmental atrocities in Appalachia? Heart wrenching and depressing.

Jimmy Page showing Jack White and the Edge how to play "When the Levee Breaks" in It Might Get Loud? All flavors of awesome. Garth Brooks coming out of retirement? Anesthetizing.

See, it's all a matter of perspective. It's all a matter of context and spin, into which bin we toss the delightful refuse of our culture to recycle and re-use it another day.

It is with this wonky filter in mind we turn our gaze to the gaping hellmouth that is the U.S. Senate, that drab cauldron of grumpy old men, defeminized women and tiny handful of rebellious dissenters, all of whom claim to have your best interests at heart but mostly only really give a damn about which lobbyist will help them best make their next boat payment.

Do I sound a little bitter? I cannot imagine why. Let us watch the senate and see if we can figure it out.

Look at them shuffle and sneer, hem and haw! Watch as they willingly eat their own souls with an ice pick and some turpentine, then step up to the media microphones and try to sound ennobled and magnanimous when in fact they only make everyone within earshot feel lost and fatalistic. So cute.

It's the same old spectacle, isn't it? There they go, tossing around the health care reform issue like it didn't affect millions of humans every single day, throwing in massive compromises and snags just so the GOP can fellate its pals in the insurance industry and a gaggle of aggrieved Democrats can get their egos fluffed and you still won't be able to get a decent dental plan for your family.

But now, just for fun, let's take it a step further. Or rather, darker. Let's go ahead and step right onto one of those large, rusty nails sticking up from the senate floor, so painful as to make your stomach turn, a bit of your lunch jump back into your throat.

It's a story from the dark political underbelly that makes you question the entire setup, rethink humanity, and lean out your window and scream: what the hell is wrong with these people? Who are they, really? Why do we give them power?

Here is freshman Minnesota senator Al Franken's first-ever legislative action, a relatively simple, almost laughably surefire bill requiring the Pentagon no longer do business with any contractor -- hi, Halliburton! -- that requires its employees to agree that she cannot sue said contractor if she is, oh let's just say, gang raped by its employees.

You read that right. It's a can't-sue-us-if-you're-raped clause. In a U.S. government contract. Aimed squarely at Halliburton. Thanks, Dick Cheney!

First, you are required to get over your initial disgust that such legislation is even necessary, that such clauses even exist and that the Pentagon is already doing business with such contractors (hi, Halliburton/KBR!), and that there has already been a truly horrible case validating it, wherein a 20-year-old female employee was allegedly gang-raped by contractors, locked in a shipping container, abused every way from Sunday, and found out later she was unable to sue.

Let us pause to imagine if, say, Wal-Mart had such a clause. Or maybe Toys 'R' Us. Starbucks. Let us imagine the appalled outcry. But Halliburton? Dick Cheney's vile little spitwad of shameless war profiteering? No problem. Hey, it's Republican-endorsed military contracting. No one said it was ethical.

But that's not most the repellant part. Ready?

The most repellant part is the 30 U.S. senators -- Republicans each and every one -- who just stepped forth to vote against the Franken amendment, essentially saying no, women should have no right to sue if they are sexually abused or gang raped, Halliburton and its ilk must be protected at all costs, and by the way we hereby welcome Satan into our rancid souls forevermore. God bless America.

Let us repeat, for clarity. Franken's amendment passed with a vote of 68-30. Meaning 30 U.S. senators voted against the elimination of the rape/sue clause. Meghan McCain, call your dad. He's one of them.

Here is where you try and do it. Here is where you bring in the filter mentioned above, try to figure out where to slot such wretched information, how to make even the slightest sense of it.

And then you discover a horrible truth: you can't. Turns out, when faced with such vileness, all filters fail. All balance is thrown off. You thought you had some sort of way to process and attain perspective? You are proven wrong.

So perhaps all we can do is ponder how pathetic and sad these various senator's lives must be, how these bitter old men will now go home at night and announce around the dinner table that, yes, today they worked very hard to help improve the welfare of the nation by essentially enabling rape and sexual abuse, tried their darndest to prevent women who've been viciously attacked from having much legal recourse. And lo, Satan will chuckle happily.

Then maybe these senators will try and hug their wives, or their daughters. And maybe, if there's any justice in the universe, their wives and daughters will slap them as hard as humanly possible, lock them in a shipping container, and never let them touch them again.

P.S. Would you like a complete list of these 30 senators' names? Right here.

Why look, there's grandpa McCain. There's disgraced man-child John Ensign. Hooker-lovin' David Vitter. Saxby Chambliss. Inhofe. It's a veritable welfare-state who's who of Dick Cheney's sanctum of oily fluffers, and many more who would love to be. Shall we write a nice letter to them? Or maybe their wives and daughters?

link

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Behind the Veil of Racism

When people say they don't like Obama because he's a socialist and he's like Hitler, their ignorance is showing. Finally a black guy that it's alright to hate. They can wrap up their vitriol, call it "politics" and voila! You've hidden your racism.

I'm sickened at these signs that have appeared at the weekend rally in DC. Signs referring to Obama as a "long legged Mack Daddy" and one printed sign that was being passed out read "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy."

The rallies do nothing more than allow some conservatives' thinly disguised bigotry to pass for conservative rally slogans as they smugly admit when challenged, "I'm not a racist".

I've seen a lot of both thinly disguised and blatant displays of racism in my lifetime so I know it when I see it. I recognize it when I see it slyly hiding behind religion or trying to hide behind freedom of speech. When it looks like a duck and talks like a duck and it walks like a duck, you better believe it's a fucking duck.

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And Damnit, He's Good Enough

Democrat and funny man, Al Franken, finally given the official win on the Minnesota State Senate race.

Yay! Yay! (accent on the 2nd "yay", as my little grandson says)

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Recently subpoenaed Bush/Rove IT expert, is Wellstoned

Karl Rove, left | Mike Connell, right
Recently Subpoenaed Bush/Rove IT Expert, Is Wellstoned

You know about the guy who could blow the lid off the Rove e-mail and Siegelman case? He died in a plane crash last week.

Connell was an expert pilot whose plane crashed in clear weather. He held virtually all the secrets to how George W. Bush was illegally foisted on the American people---and the world---for eight horrifying years.

More importantly, he was a computer guru. If Karl Rove was "the brains" behind getting George Bush elected, Mike Connell knew how to make it happen because he knew how the GOP steals elections.

By manipulating computerized results in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 Connell made history. By some accounts, he was about to tell the attorneys in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit how he did it. He also expressed a willingness to appear under oath before Congress and had sought protection for himself and his family.

But now he is dead.

WATCH VIDEO | link | More »

The more layers you pull back on this under-reported onion, the more it stinks.

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WASSUP 2008

WASSUP 2008
Its been eight long years since the boys said wassup to each other. Even with the effects of a down economy and imminent change in the White House, the boys are still able to come together and stay true to what really matters.

link

Best Video of the Year!

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Obamacans: Prominent Republicans Line Up Behind Obama

Obamacans: Prominent Republicans Line Up Behind Obama

Since Colin Powell crossed party lines to endorse Barack Obama last Sunday, a steady stream of prominent Republicans have endorsed the Illinois senator over rival John McCain.

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld is endorsing Obama today at a press conference in Salem, N.H. Weld was a public supporter of Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries. In a statement, Weld called Obama a “once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America’s standing in the world.”

On Thursday, former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson endorsed Obama at the state capitol. “I think we have in Barack Obama the clear possibility of a truly great president,” he said. “I would contend that it’s the most important election of my lifetime.”

Scott McClellan, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush, also endorsed Obama Thursday. USA Today reported that McClellan told CNN in a taping to be aired this weekend that Obama has “the best chance of changing the way Washington works.”

Ken Adelman, a prominent conservative on foreign policy matters announced his support for Obama on Tuesday, telling the New Yorker that his decision was based on temperament and judgment.

Adelman called McCain “impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird” in his handling of the U.S. economic crisis. He also was unsettled by McCain’s choice of running mate. “Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency,” Adelman wrote.

UPDATE: Add Charles Fried, a Harvard Law professor and former Solicitor General in the Reagan administration, to the list of Republicans supporting Obama. Fried’s vote for the Democratic ticket is particularly harsh, as he was associated with the McCain campaign. Fried voted absentee for Obama this week, and informed McCain campaign general counsel Trevor Potter of his decision in a letter where he stated he could not support McCain in large part because of his selection of Palin as his running mate.

Link

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You'll Never Be Vice President: A Letter to My Daughter, the Community Organizer

You'll Never Be Vice President: A Letter to My Daughter, the Community Organizer

Why didn't I nip all this in the bud and buy you a well-oiled Remington 12-gauge?
By Marc Cooper
Published on September 11, 2008

Daughter Dearest,

It is with great pain and a certain measure of shame that I write you this note. Having grown up in the ’60s and watched, sometimes at glaringly close range, the emergence of the women’s liberation movement, I had always harbored great dreams and aspirations for you.

But as I listened to Governor Sarah Palin address the nation the other night, I had to confess that — as your father — I have clearly failed. Honey, you will never be able to achieve the greatness of being nominated for vice president of the United States. Forget about it.

And for this sad reality, I accept all blame. ’Twas I who steered you wrong.

Here you are, almost 25, with what your mother and I believed was a solid education behind you, and yet you are nothing but a common community organizer. Yes, the labor union you work for represents nearly 2 million service workers — about three times the population of Alaska. But, alas, as Governor Palin pointed out, you have no real responsibilities. By helping janitors, security guards, nursing aides and orderlies gain a living wage, paid health care insurance and a retirement fund, you have only robbed them of the personal initiative to go out there and make something better of themselves. You have rendered them feebly dependent on Big Labor and tax-and-spend Big Government — and all in their own crass self-interest in survival.

I’m not sure when I helped nudge you on to such a mistaken road. Probably sometime while you were attending that government-run high school in which we enrolled you. You could have joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, as Ms. Palin did. Instead, I pushed you to become a columnist on the school paper. You could have spent your afternoons becoming the local barracuda on the courts. But, nope, your mom and I indulged your trivial passions for staging and directing the plays of Shakespeare. You could have competed to be Miss Woodland Hills or even Miss Congenial California, but — no — there were your mom and dad encouraging you to finish writing your first play. Sorry.

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How It Works

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Fucking With The Constitution

Fucking With The Constitution

As you may recall, the Republicans in Congress want to amend the US Constitution with anti-gay language that would supposedly "ban gay marriage."

Who is on the very short list of Senators introducing the "Marriage Protection Amendment" in the Senate? Why none other than foot-tapping Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), and whore-mongering Senator David Vitter (R-LA). You'll recall that the very-married Larry Craig was caught tapping his foot alongside a really hot male cop in an airport bathroom. And the very-married and very-family-values-proclaiming David Vitter, we now know, has repeatedly frequented female hookers.

So there you have it. Two of the Republicans' biggest marriage hypocrites - Larry Craig, who was accused of trying to have sex with a man (who was not his wife) in a bathroom, and David Vitter who has been repeatedly accused of frequenting hookers (who also were not his wife) - want to amend the Constitution to "protect" marriage.

Perhaps you all should call Larry Craig's and David Vitter's offices and ask them the following:

Senator Larry Craig
Phone: (202) 224-2752
Message: Can a married guy give handjobs and blowjobs to other guys in bathrooms and still defend heterosexual marriage?

Senator David Vitter
Phone: (202) 224-4623
Message: How many whores does a married guy have to sleep with before he's no longer defending marriage? And does the price of the whore matter?

via | via

If you get to call, please leave a comment at America Blog, author of this piece.

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Bobby and Barak

TOM HAYDEN

Bobby and Barak


For one who has experienced both eras, the current movement for Barack Obama has achieved a living remembrance of Bobby Kennedy's campaign in the week when RFK's murder is painfully remembered.

On June 4, 1968, I watched from a New York townhouse the murder of a second Kennedy in five years. Martin Luther King already was gone, Vietnam and our cities were burning. I was in the midst of chaotic planning for anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic Convention coming in August.

I drifted off with friends to St. Patrick's Cathedral where Kennedy staffers let us through the doors late at night. After sitting a while in silence, I found myself as a member of a makeshift honor guard standing next to his simple coffin. I was wearing a green Cuban hat and weeping. The last political hope of the Sixties vision -- a movement-driven progressive government -- was finished, whether by chance or plot, it mattered little. The violence I had resisted under white racism in the South was seeping into my veins. Like many who took their rage even farther, I was hardening, and never dared again to recover my young idealism.

"Dad, don't you recognize anything of yourself in this movement?", asked an angry email from my son Troy, nearly forty years later. He was working 24/7 with his [now] wife Simone, for Barack Obama, spreading the boundless energy of the young and an artist's flair for silk-screens. How could I share your giddy utopianism, I wanted to respond, after the murders of the Sixties icons -- John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, all of whom I had known as a young man? [MORE »]

hat tip to krinda

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Huckabee Jokes About Obama

Is Huckabee just so damn stupid that he can no longer keep his narrow views hidden when speaking in front of a televised audience?

It's beyond offensive that these vulgar slights roll off his tongue so effortlessly.

It's usually not so 'in your face' from a skilled politician. Is this his way of trying to be likable and funny to the other squares?

"During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman," CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand reports at the cable network's Political Ticker.

"That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak," said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. "Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."

via | video

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Drug-War Bulletins

Drug-War Bulletins

Three of them:

1. In Seattle, a fifty-six-year old man died last Thursday after being refused a liver transplant because he had followed his doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C. From the Associated Press story:

His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class…

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.

At some, people who use “illicit substances”—including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it—are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months.

The cruelty and stupidity of this beggars belief. This patient did not need “drug treatment.” He was already undergoing drug treatment. Nor did he need to get “clean.” He was already clean. It’s the drug war that’s dirty. (H/t: John Leone.)

[Read More »]

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Moonshine Elections

MOONSHINE ELECTION SERIES - Part 1

Black Box Voting has found "Moonshine Election patterns" in 16 states, which together carry 210 electoral votes.

Kentucky is a swing state where 87 out of 120 counties had a majority of Democratic registered voters, yet 106 out of 120 counties voted for Bush in 2000; 108 voted for Bush in 2004. It wasn't low turnout -- in fact, turnout has been going up. It was Kentucky politics: Registered Democrats went into the voting booth, Republican votes came out. (Details on website)

THE HUNT FOR JOE BOLTON

We discovered that a man named Joe Bolton has inside access to nearly 200,000 votes, most of them in the most troubled areas, locations that have a history of vote fraud, family-run government, drug-dealing sheriffs, what-have you.

In 23 Kentucky counties, citizens are required to trust their votes to someone named Joe Bolton, who is not an elected official and who is not even a government employee. They probably don't even know they're trusting Joe with their votes, because newspapers don't mention him and the county clerks have no line item for his checks in their published financial statements.

We went through all manner of investigations trying to even locate Joe Bolton, and those are chronicled in the short video and the full reports. Eventually we caught up with him. He has been programming the voting machines in his home in a remote location that even the county election officials don't know much about.

AMONG THE MOST INTERESTING COMMENTS:

Black Box Voting: Okay. Well you've been doing this for 35 years, has anyone ever asked you to do something that made you uncomfortable?

Joe Bolton: Oh, absolutely, get it all the time, I get that all the time you know. "Could you rig this machine?" And I don't know whether it's a conspiracy or a joke, you know, "Could you rig these machines for me Joe? How much would it cost me?" I've heard that for 35 years.

Joe told us all kinds of things, like the Appalachian tradition of vote-buying -- whatever you may have heard, it is alive and well.

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The Photo The GOP Is Trying To Hide

The one photo the GOP does not want anyone to see was snapped at yesterday's NAACP GOP Presidential Candidate Forum. The NAACP invited all 9 Republican candidates to the forum, but only one showed up: Tom Tancredo. All the Democratic Presidential hopefuls showed up for their forum.

The excuses given by the Republican campaigns mostly had to do with scheduling conflicts--just too busy to make it.

The resulting photo of Tancredo--standing on a stage of empty podiums--sums up the Republican party's commitment to civil rights in America: the only Republican interested is the guy running to deny immigrant workers their rights.

link

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What does Al know that we don't?

What does Al know that we don't? by Steven Weber

Why, given the opportunity that's been presented to him on a silver Prius, is this man not going to run for (and win) the presidency of the United States? If ever there was a clarion call to be answered it is this one: heed the will of the majority of the people, take back the yoke Bush and his cracked team of highjackers have used to steer the country into the ground and pull the ship skyward again.

Why, after his self-imposed banishment to the wilderness (suburbia), where he along with every other sentient being has observed the feckless evil of the current executive tenant and his Neo-posse, does he demur? Could he know that any run at the office would surely turn out to be a hollow chrysalis which, after gestation, would not incubate a butterfly but more likely belch forth a wingless, blind slug; that an educated, experienced, wise adult can lead more effectively and make more of a difference by being an activist/celebrity and riding a wave of pop-culture popularity, rather than relying upon the rusted and jury-rigged contraption quaintly referred to as the electoral process?

Maybe Al knows that America (to paraphrase Paddy Chayefsky) is a dying giant, that perhaps she is dead already. And the "business of government" is merely the scramble of organisms over the carcass's wan, flaking skin; any rumbles from within aren't the sounds of legislators engaged in constructive debate but the gasses issuing from the anuses of the bacteria digesting the sad corpse's putrefying innards. Are we destined to have the presidency so finally and utterly mediocritized that it no longer holds any attraction for the most qualified person in recent memory who would imbue it with the honor and prestige it -- and we -- deserve?

Well then, that's what Al must know. Because only that kind of realization would prevent him from participating. He says that politics no longer holds any allure for him. And really, why should it? He won an Oscar, for chrissakes. He's raised awareness of a real issue that actually effects us all in a way that makes him truly a uniter -- not a divider. He is the world's activist uncle. George Bush standing in front of his American Enterprise Institute portable backdrop can barely scrape up a strangulated hosanna from his meticulously vetted and dwindling audiences.

Having only once appropriated the toxic phrase "cut and run" to describe the result of catching my fishnet stockings on a partially extruded staple embedded in the side of a bed post (A long, dull story. Forget I mentioned it.) I am forced to resurrect it once again. It's an extremely ugly phrase, wielded by extremely ugly people but I will use it as that mediocre apparatchik/harridan Jean Schmidt never intended: to provoke the discouraged conscience of the marginalized true-patriot who would ably restore what has been so ignobly destroyed. On second thought, it's so shallow and inflammatory that I can't stand to apply it even in a good cause. There has to be some other way to convince this man of his worth. May be we need to convince him of our worth?

Because this country, for all its gaudy fascinations, for all its daily desperation to fend off reality by consuming goods from China as though they were oxygen atoms is also a country of souls betrayed by their loyalty to the idea of America the beautiful, the judicious and the brave. And it is not the loyalty itself that is at issue but those whom we have entrusted with it. A presidential election is not a parlor game, though it may resemble one far too closely. It is as close to being a sacred exercise as this secular republic asks of its congregants. We require a real leader now, one with a true understanding of the importance of why this country must function correctly and efficiently. We and the world depend on it. So here's your hat. And there's the ring. America needs you need to lead us now more than ever.

That's what we know that Al doesn't.

A wee bit pretentious, but effective.

link

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Time Is Right for New Pentagon Papers

Time Is Right for New Pentagon Papers

by Amy Goodman

Of the Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Mike Gravel is probably the least well recognized. His dark-horse candidacy may be the butt of jokes on the late-night comedy shows, but that doesn’t faze former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg: “Here is a senator who was not afraid to look foolish. That is the fear that keeps people in line all their lives.”

The famed whistle-blower joined Gravel this past weekend on a panel commemorating the 35th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the Beacon Press, a small, nonprofit publisher affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association. It was this publisher that Gravel turned to in 1971, after dozens of others had turned him down, to publish the 7,000 pages that Ellsberg had delivered to Gravel to put into the public record.

The story of the leak of the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times is famous, but how they got published as a book, with Gravel’s face on the jacket, reads like a John Grisham novel.

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If you are not familiar with The Pentagon Papers (1971), Daniel Ellsberg, and what part Sen Mike Gravel played in it, this article will lay it all out for you.

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Bush’s Fleurs du Mal

Bush's Fleurs du Mal
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: May 27, 2007

The president thinks he can save face if he keeps taunting Democrats as the party of surrender - just as Nixon did - and dumps the Frankenstate he's created on his successor.

For me, the saddest spot in Washington is the inverted V of the black granite Vietnam wall, jutting up with the names of young men dying in a war that their leaders already knew could not be won.

So many died because of ego and deceit - because L.B.J. and Robert McNamara wanted to save face or because Henry Kissinger wanted to protect Nixon's re-election chances.

Now the Bush administration finds itself at that same hour of shame. It knows the surge is not working. Iraq is in a civil war, with a gruesome bonus of terrorists mixed in. April was the worst month this year for the American military, with 104 soldiers killed, and there have been about 90 killed thus far in May. The democracy's not jelling, as Iraqi lawmakers get ready to slouch off for a two-month vacation, leaving our kids to be blown up.

The top-flight counterinsurgency team that President Bush sent in after long years of pretending that we'd "turned the corner" doesn't believe there's a military solution.

--MORE--

So many deaths; so little truth.

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DC Madam & Her List

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 50, dubbed the 'DC Madam' in local media, has been arraigned in federal court on charges of operating a Washington prostitution service.

I think she's hoping some of her johns clients will step up to the media scrutiny to be a character witness for her and if that doesn't happen, someone will be forced to post the entire client list. Dream on, girlie. But stranger things have happened.

What is that old saying when you sacrifice yourself for others? You "Throw yourself on the, um, sword"?

Exclusive Report from Brian Ross @ ABC - link

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Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac

Frank Rich, NYTimes.com article, 4/22/07

President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care.

Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

Tell it like it is, Frank.

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