July 22, 2008
Come here often?
Ya know... I'll be an average guy again in 'bout 6 months, will you be deployed then? Got a nice ranch, all the fixins', cold beer, absent wife...
By that logic...
If one of the primary qualifications for a presidential candidate is the amount of time spent in a POW camp, we're breeding a slew of future leaders in Gitmo.
July 17, 2008
Your Liberal Media
When did journalists become defenders of and apologists for the candidates?
MATTHEWS: Jill, I score that for Wolf Blitzer. In this business, when you ask a big shot a question and they have no Earthly idea what the answer is, that‘s a victory for the questioner. Wolf asked him a simple question, tell me one area where this will not be a third Bush term for Bush, where John McCain does differ in any way from what Bush would do if he got another four years. He couldn‘t come up with one. He kept saying, I can‘t think of anything.
ZUCKMAN (Chicago Sun Times): Governor Sanford has not spent a lot of time on the campaign trail with Senator McCain. He did not support him during the South Carolina primary. He stayed neutral. He hasn‘t been out on the road with him. So he hasn‘t been listening to him at town hall meetings, when he talks about freezing spending, about cutting domestic discretionary spending, about no more earmarks. He is, I would say, Messianic on this topic. It‘s a very big difference from the way the Bush administration has run things.
Messianic?
July 16, 2008
Firm Hand on the Throttle
Our Commander in Chief. Our Economist in Chief. Chaucy, the Gardner
After ~7 years in a job you'd hope an individual would be able to discuss, intelligently, matters relevant to the position.
Like banking
As you -- talked about banks. Now, if you're a commercial bank in America and your deposit -- and you have a deposit in a commercial bank in America, your deposit is insured by the federal government up to $100,000. And so, therefore, when you hear nervousness about your bank, you know, people start talking about how nervous they are about your bank's condition -- the depositor must understand that the federal government through the FDIC stands behind the deposit up to $100,000. And therefore, which leads me to say that if you're a depositor, you're in -- you're protected by the federal government.
Consumer confidence and retail sales.
THE PRESIDENT: Matt, all I can tell you is we grew in the first quarter. I can remember holding a press conference here and that same question came about, assuming that we weren't going to grow. But we showed growth. It's not the growth we'd like; we'd like stronger growth. And there are some things we can do. One is wait for the stimulus package to fully kick in and not raise taxes. If the Democratic leaders had their way in Congress, they would raise taxes, which would be the absolute wrong thing to do.
Fuel Prices
Q Mr. President, in February you were asked about Americans facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline and you said you hadn't heard of that at the time. Gas prices --
THE PRESIDENT: Aware of it now.
(...)
think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand -- but the President doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, low gas. It took us a while to get here and we need to have a good strategy to get out of it.
The Looking Glass
THE PRESIDENT: Every day is a good morning when you get to serve the country.
The War
Secondly, there is a tough enemy, and they're brutal, and they kill at the drop of a hat in order to affect behavior. It's a little bit reminiscent of what was taking place in Iraq a couple of years ago, where the enemy knows that they can affect the mentality of the American people if they just continue to kill innocent folks. And they have no disregard [sic] for human life. And it's really important we succeed there, as well as in Iraq. We do not want the enemy to have safe haven. Of course -- unless, of course, your attitude is, this isn't a war. So if that's the case, it wouldn't matter whether we succeed or not.
But it is a two-front war. And I say there's other fronts, but there's other fronts where we're taking covert actions, for example.
The Economy
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not an economist, but I do believe that we're growing. And I can remember this press conference here where people yelling "recession this, recession that" -- as if you're economists. And I'm an optimist. I believe there's a lot of positive things for our economy. But I will tell you it's not growing the way it should and I'm sorry people are paying as high gasoline prices as they are. And all I know is good policy will help expedite a -- will strengthen our economy.
The Reason We're in this Mess
THE PRESIDENT: What was the question, Olivier? I'm 62, I'm having trouble remembering a lot of things.
July 15, 2008
In your absence I find other forms of amusement.
Lament Tony Snow
What a patsy what a tool
primum nil nocere
Rather than eulogize his work on the 2000 Bush campaign, his spinning for Fox and then his role as Cap'n Banter as the Teflon King's PR apologist, it's best to let the fawning masses show what an inspiration he was.
I hope and pray that the vilest gathering of humanity, the ultra-liberal White House Press Corps, was given pause by the example of Tony Snow. Can you imagine the effect for the sake of Goodness, if the Press Corps hounded Administrations from the perspective of God’s love for mankind, rather than as shouting minions adept at delivering Lucifer’s deceitful business?
Jesus in the pressroom kids. If you slept through Tony's tenure, go back, watch the videos... we apparently a biblical missed a milestone. Upside, he can't be subpoenaed.
July 11, 2008
Suck it up Bitches
Compassionate Conservativism is soooo 2000
"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," Gramm tells the Washington Times, adding that despite all the bad news out there US economic growth continues at a rate of approximately 1 percent. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."Adds Gramm: "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline...We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today...Misery sells newspapers. Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."
$5 a gallon milk. $4 a gallon gas. 25->50% increase on most food items. Mortgage collapse, diminished dollar strength, stock market plunges, shipping costs impacting 100% of the economy. Name a sector that's not been directly impacted by this recession. Yeah, it's all in our minds.. the forefront of our minds, our pocketbooks and our budgets.
Eat your cake peasants.
July 10, 2008
Losing the War on Terror
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Thank you Congress for undermining the basic tenets of the Constitution. For eliminating the remaining freedoms those who attacked us supposedly hate us for. For creating an Orwellian environment for your nation while ignoring the real threats. Thanks for valuing corporate sponsorship over basic national stewardship, it means so much to all of us.
(via)
With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy.These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity.
The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and other communications, not for selective information, but in search of suspicious patterns.
Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency.
"There's virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn't in some way involved in monitoring or surveillance," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at The George Washington University. "We're operating in a brave new world."
We have met the enemy and he is us.
July 08, 2008
White House, Office Space
WASHINGTON — President Bush will continue his formal exit from the world stage when he arrives in Japan on Sunday for his final annual meeting with leaders from seven of the world's other top economic powers.
(...)
Some analysts think that Bush's domestic lame-duck status will hinder his effectiveness in Hokkaido. They say that some of his G-8 partners, tired of locking horns with him on issues ranging from the war in Iraq to his administration's staunch opposition to the Kyoto climate-change treaty, aren't sad that this will be his eighth and final summit.
”People read the American poll numbers and realize there's no juice behind Bush,“ said John Hulsman, an analyst for the German Council on Foreign Relations, a research center. ”They (other G-8 leaders) will be polite, they'll be respectful, they'll listen to him, but they can't wait for him to leave the room.“
SAMIR: I don't want to go to any prison! Why the hell did I do this?! I've never done anything wrong in my whole life! We weren't thinking clearly because you told us we were losing our jobs! And look at us now, we're, we're worried about going to prison!
PETER: Don't worry about it. I'll think of something.
SAMIR: Ass. I'm going home. You are a very bad person, Peter.
Samir and Michael leave. Peter knocks on the wall.
PETER: Lawrence! You awake?
LAWRENCE: Yeah, man!
PETER: You wanna come over?
LAWRENCE: No thanks, man. I don't want you fucking up my life too!
They're Standing Up
Now, can they come home?
Iraq said for the first time yesterday that it wanted to set a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from its territory.
(...)
“The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or to put a timetable on their withdrawal,” Mr al-Maliki said during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. He rejected efforts by Mr Bush to hurry through an agreement on vital issues such as the immunity of US troops in Iraq and use of the country’s airspace. Mr Bush had hoped to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) by the end of July to establish the basis for a long-term presence of US troops in the country.
(...)
Mr al-Maliki’s announcement showed a growing self-confidence that Iraqi leaders can stand up to their powerful ally. His oil minister said last week that leading Western oil companies would not be allowed to set conditions for future deals over Iraq’s main natural resource. The tough stance also comes before Iraqi provincial elections later this year, and may mark the start of the Prime Minister’s campaign to be reelected. His popularity was bolstered by military operations to take back the southern oil city of Basra and the town of al-Amarah from Iranian-backed Shia militias.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to leave American troops there, no matter what the Iraqi government does? I know this is a question we've asked before, but you can begin it with a "yes" or "no."
THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.
Q -- catastrophic, as you've said over and over again?
THE PRESIDENT: I would hope that they would recognize that the results would be catastrophic. This is a sovereign nation, Martha. We are there at their request. And hopefully the Iraqi government would be wise enough to recognize that without coalition troops, the U.S. troops, that they would endanger their very existence. And it's why we work very closely with them, to make sure that the realities are such that they wouldn't make that request -- but if they were to make the request, we wouldn't be there.
July 07, 2008
Buck Passage
Gas Prices. It's all Obama's fault, Bay---bee.
Hey, Merkel!!!!! C'mere.
July 03, 2008
Celebrated Lucidity
When the senior moment clouds clear it's like being reborn.
July 02, 2008
tattoo the taboo
When you campaign on your record, whether it be military, judicial, corporate or charitable... you open the doors for critique and assessment. Fair game, I believe it's called.
"If Barack Obama's campaign wants to question John McCain's military service, that's their right," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said after Clark's appearance Sunday. "But let's please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is he's proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain's military service record."
From today's McCain funding solicitation.
My Friends,
I am often asked why I want to be President of the United States. And my answer is that I believe in the greatness of this nation as a beacon of goodwill throughout the world. I believe each and every one of us has a duty to serve a cause greater than our own self-interest.
I've spent my life in service to my country, and I've spent my life putting my country first.
When I was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam from 1967 to 1973, I was given the option to come home early because my father was an admiral in the U.S. Navy. I refused to go, because I put my country first.
(...)
But I cannot win this election alone - I need your help right now. Please follow this link to show your support and make a generous contribution of $2,300, $1,000, $500, $250, $100 or even $25 right away.
