When Helen says, "Kiss my 83 year old ass," I think she means it

Helen is understandably fired up with anonymous shit flingers who accuse her of being too positive about the inauguration of Barack Obama. So she invites them to buss her posterior.

If you haven't sampled Margaret and Helen, you should.

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk

The great dictator?

An under-reported bit of news that may have explained why Congresspeople were so ashen when they emerged from the first meeting on the financial bailout - they were threatened by a country under martial law.

Since the financial bailout hasn't gotten any traction, and the market is in freefall, does that mean the threat of martial law hangs like a threat in the Autumn air?

Oh, the law? That's for chumps

From the "tell us something we didn't already know" department, the GAO has found that the Bush Justice Department has violated civil service laws.

In two years, we'll find out that they're still violating laws. Oh, my.

Still pushing for telecom immunity

The New York Times gets it right. Save the renewal of the FISA bill for the next president.

George Bush is still pushing Congressional Republicans to deliver him a bill that provides unassailable rights to spy on Americans, and to protect telecom companies that helped Bush to spy. Of course, a bill that protects telecom companies from prosecution, protects Bush as well.

This president hasn't done much right, but he's done a lot. He's a lame duck, and Congress should be willing to stand up to him, even as we enter the critical months before a presidential election. Unfortunately, Congressional elections take place at the same time, and congressional delegates still seem to lack the backbone to stand for their convictions.

Bush and Brown spin the sanctions

It might have seemed like some late-in-the-game diplomatic coup for our lame, lame-duck President, but apparently the announcement of sanctions against Iran were something already negotiated by the EU, without the urging of Bush.

I guess Gordon Brown has taken on the mantle of Tony Blair as Bush's favorite English lapdog.

And the American press who are swallowing the bait provided by the White House propaganda machine without any followup? Shame piled upon shame.

The real horror of war

Impossible difficult to watch, but required viewing for anyone who needs a counter to someone who talks tough about the glories of war. WARNING: This is graphic and disturbing video.

A mission of mercy

George Bush visited the North End of Hartford today (one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest cities in the country), and talked about malaria. Of course, it's not malaria that's the problem in the North End, it's lack of health care, jobs, educational opportunities, poverty and the attendant scourge of drug abuse and violence.

He artfully ignored those topics, instead making a deft analogy. Eradicating malaria is the same as eradicating terrorism.

The act of defeating malaria in developing nations, he said, was a mission of mercy and an act of hopefulness.

He went on to say that the only way to defeat terrorists was through "acts of love and hopefulness." Yes, he actually said that. So when you figure out how storms of bullets and bombs are "acts of love," please drop me an email.

I wasn't able to get out to one of the "free speech" protest pens, but I'm disappointed that no one in the crowd had the nerve to call Mr. Danger out as the hypocrite that he is.

More on abdication of responsibility by the US press

Glenn Greenwald writes yet another amazing and enlightening column about torture, but more directly about our (yes, our) lack of shock at the debasement of our government. He also implicates the press again, and points to a great speech by Elizabeth Edwards at Harvard on the topic.

Where is Bill Clinton on this topic?

The idiots speak, the targets shift

George Bush proved himself ever a re-setter of the goal posts as he readies the dowry of an immoral war for the next president. Claiming that we are on the right track and making measurable progress, he refuses to allow any more significant troop withdrawals despite earlier promises.

His pathetic strategy is being echoed by Johm McCain in his stump speeches and on Sunday, Frank Rich pulled the argument for war apart like the carefully folded and re-folded hideous origami it is.

Now this is an honor well deserved

How many JFK Middle Schools are there in this country? Thousands, undoubtably.

Now they're beginning to rethink Presidential naming rights in San Francisco.

Other suggestions?

The Dick Cheney National Cemetary.
The John Yoo Secret Incarceration Center.
The General Petraeus Dead End.
The Donald Rumsfeld Overpass (under which homeless veterans live)

Petraeus prepares to beat the war drum

The Bush administration claims that things are going swimmingly in Iraq, but the administration refuses to release the most recent complete NIE before the testimony of General Petraeus in front of Congress next week.

The Brits are worried that Petraeus will be the advance PR man for a new war in Iran.

When he leaves, Bush will have left this country in a terrible state, even if he were to do nothing between no and January, but an excursion into Iran will ensure a legacy as the least competent leader of this country, ever.

Will John Yoo be prosecuted as a torture lawyer?

And does America care?

It's become very clear in the past few days, with the release of a now notorious memo authored by John Yoo, that he rendered legal opinions which placed insurgents, and their interrogators outside of the rule of law. His memo essentially broadened the power of the president to ignore laws forbidding torture. And of course, the president and his men ignored with impunity.

That flaunting of legal ignorance resulted in torture at abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Interestingly, the memo simultaneously set-up an argument against prosecution of justice department lawyers and interrogators as war criminals.

Scott Horton of Harper's thinks that Yoo and his companions may not be able to escape their eventual prosecution:

They also missed the established precedent I have cited repeatedly here, namely United States v. Altstoetter, under the rule of which the conduct of the torture lawyers is a criminal act not shielded by any notions of government immunity. Sands discusses the history of that case which is, lamentably, known by so few American lawyers. And then he turns to the prosecution of Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean strong man whose life ended in a swarm of indictments and criminal proceedings. Americans seem also to forget exactly what the crime was that plagued Pinochet to his deathbed. The answer is fairly simple: he was accused on the basis of convincing evidence of having authorized a regime of torture in connection with the interrogation of insurgents, who were removed from the rule of law. The precise techniques used included a number of those subsequently authorized by President Bush’s torture team and incorporated into his “Program.” Sands recounts a prophetic moment in the course of the proceedings surrounding Pinochet’s case in London.

“It’s a matter of time,” the judge observed. “These things take time.” As I gathered my papers, he looked up and said, “And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place.”

Those are words for members of the torture team to contemplate. In the meantime, they should think twice before traveling abroad. Around the world, and increasingly within the United States itself they are regarded as criminals whose day of reckoning is drawing closer on the horizon.

In the meantime it seems reasonable to ask the regents of the University of California to demand Yoo's resignation from his job as law professor at UC Berkeley.

And the question remains, after the initial reporting on this memo, on this very serious issue, will the press, the American people and the candidates for president conveniently ignore this issue because it's distasteful, complex and a horrible black eye for the country

The reason George Bush doesn't make public appearances except in front of handpicked audiences

He'll be booed. As he was throwing out the first pitch at the new Washington Nationals stadium. BTW, the first pitch was reported in the Hartford Courant this morning, but not the booing.

Johnny, are you really sure the surge is working?

John McCain apes George Bush about our successes in the thousand year war in Iraq. But what he doesn't seem to see, or what he isn't allowed to see, is the truth.

How about another jaunt over there for a stay in the Green Zone this week, McCain? And maybe your buddy Creepy Joe™ Lieberman would like to accompany you?

Are they flesh? Do they not bleed?

In a war where 4000 American soldiers have been slaughtered as a result of the ambitions, lies and stubbornness of a delusional President. Thousands more (officially 90,000) perhaps hundreds of thousands more (unoficially 1,190,000), of Iraquis have died. This doesn't include the devastation of injuries, the plight of refugees, or the loss in property and infrastructure. According to George Bush, the light of democracy glows in Iraq, and even the latest Shiite uprising in Basra is a "a defining moment." Ah yes, one more defining moment in the war where we would be greeted as liberators.

While you were watching dancing with the stars

Frontline's recap of the Iraq and Afghani wars, Bush's War, should be required viewing for anyone who will vote in the next ten years. As evenhanded as it can be, it clearly demonstrates the criminality of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. And the isolation and ineffectuality of Colin Powell.

You can watch the entire first part online at the Frontline website, and if you consider yourself a thinking American, you should.

Oh the surge is working, is it?

Read the important Glenn Greenwald analysis of the imbalanced analysis on the fifth anniversary of the war, here. Be sure to watch the Charlie Rose clip embedded in the article.

What further evidence is necessary of a totally failed presidency?

Now that financial markets worldwide are plummeting as a result of Bush's incredibly lame-brained economic moves (tax-cuts for the rich, unending war, laissez-faire regulation), the final piece of the president's legacy of incompetence is in place.

I love Kabul in the Springtime

Are there really any more ways in which George Bush can prove what an entire ass he is?

It's a wonder he didn't feel the same about Saigon in 1972.