WTF Is It Now?!?

Gee, what a surprise! Industry's a Key Player in WH Energy Data:

The Arbusto administration Monday released thousands of documents on its energy task force, showing that industry groups provided substantial input in drafting the president's energy plan.

In putting out 11,000 pages of documents before a midnight deadline, the Energy Department gave new ammunition to critics of the administration's energy policy, who say it is tilted in favor of the coal, gas, oil and nuclear industries.

The Energy Department withheld 15,000 pages of documents. Of the 11,000 provided, many were heavily redacted. The omissions fanned the controversy over the task force's secret meetings and contacts with industry groups, many of which were sources of sizable donations to the Chimp-Cheney campaign.

- - - read more at the LA Times. Some of the documents provided show that the California energy crisis was a hot topic at the Energy Department: e-mails on the subject were flagged as high priority - but their contents were removed. "Virtually all the e-mails we have seen have been completely blanked out," said John Walke, director of clean air programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are huge blank passages associated with the e-mails. Some of the sentences are cut off in the middle and redacted out in the bizarre way."


The world as video game:

Neither well traveled nor widely studied in matters of foreign politics and culture, the Warmongering Wonderchimp's foreign policy has been and remains mostly informed by a sort of unsophisticated nationalistic machismo that divides the world into Americans, who are good and right, and foreigners, who are good and right when they are willing to be useful to Americans and subject to dire consequences when they are not.

[A]s exemplified by the recently released Pentagon Nuclear Posture Review and Drinky McDumbass's explicit statements placing the use of nuclear weapons "on the table" in the promised war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, is nuclear warfare in the realm of last resorts at this point. Daddy's Little Doofus's take on this issue seems to have been informed less by any serious consideration of the effect such a policy could have on the world situation than on the several hundred dozen virtual first strikes the Smirking Sockpuppet has doubtless launched during his long and well publicized career as a player of video games-- it's hard to imagine what else could lead him to think of such dangerous and destabilizing implements of mass destruction as simply another strategic option, another means of "winning the game."

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Americans have by and large stood behind the Nooculer Nincompoop and supported his efforts in time of war. Through this policy, the Toxic Tinhorn has repaid that loyalty by not threatening, but promising to lead us down a path that is more dangerous and foolhardy than any we have tread before. It is time we took a long, hard look at where this respected leader is leading us, and made arrangements to let him play video games full time as soon as possible.

- - - Read it all at SmirkingChimp.com.


"distortions, misrepresentations, and often vile ethics":

Casual readers of America's daily newspapers can be forgiven for wondering whether anybody at all opposes the War on Terrorism or the bush Administration's handling thereof.

As groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have repeatedly demonstrated, daily newspaper op-ed stables are heavily conservative; the general range is from centrists like David Broder -- "centrist" in the sense of fawning profiles of whomever's in power, regardless of party -- to attack dogs like Krauthammer or conservative evangelical Christians like Pat Robertson or James Dobson. For balance, Molly Ivins, bless her, is about the only widely distributed writer whose opinions are consistently scornful of conservative, corporate state dogma. A handful of others get some distribution, but rarely outside the country's bicoastal liberal zones.

What is most remarkable about the far right crew -- aside from their selective morals -- is how many of them are willing to put other folks' lives on the line, but not their own. The New Hampshire Gazette has compiled an amusing yet depressing list of several dozen "chickenhawks" -- politicians (including both Dubya and Dick Cheney) and pundits who somehow found a way to avoid military service when their country called.

Among the chattering classes, perhaps the most amusing is Rush Limbaugh (who avoided Vietnam due to "anal cysts") but you'll recognize lots of other architects and apologists for massacre, too.

When all people see, read, or hear is minor variations on the same viewpoints, they're going to believe one or another variation on that viewpoint. Ask Mr. Orwell.

- - - Read the whole excellent commentary at Working for Change.





Oh, right: Rightwing media whore Tweety the Moist decries “neo-conservative policy wonks” :

“I write this haunted by the prospect that a U.S.-Iraqi war has advanced well beyond the "contingency" phase, and that the last barrier of restraint, Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been broken by the will of a partnership of ideology and oil that is now set on war. I wonder now if anything can prevent this military move against Baghdad on which so many holding power and influence have set their heart.

“Start with the ‘neo-conservative’ faction. A day doesn't pass that the relentless pound of anti-Saddam war drums cannot be heard from the nearest Op-Ed page. Weekly Standard Publisher Bill Kristol has made a crusade of getting U.S. troops onto the streets of Baghdad.

“Again and again, they and like-minded rightists make the case for at U.S. attack on Baghdad. When the "neo-conservatives" cannot blame Saddam for Sept. 11, they try tagging him with the anthrax letters. When they cannot find a Baghdad connection to anthrax, they again try attaching Saddam to the World Trade Center and Pentagon horrors. “

- Yeah, Tweety, cry me a river….and when attacking Saddam doesn’t work, you and your neonazi wingnut pals try to put the blame on Bill Clinton. Well, f*ck you. You were more believable when you wet your panties over how “manly” the Smirking Simpleton looked in denim. Idiot.

- - - his latest garbage can be found Here.