WTF Is It Now?!?

The bear came back last night and ripped apart the bird feeder I fixed last weekend. Guess I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow.

Today in History:

1649 Elihu Yale, the English philanthropist for whom Yale University is named, was born. Roughly 300 years after he died the grave-spinning began.

1887 British historian Lord Acton wrote, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Boy, he got that right.

1987 The Swedish press announced that an investigation of Lake Storsjon, in central Sweden, was planned. A 12-man team would probe the 243-feet deep lake in the summer, possibly using a submarine. Lake Storsjon has a long 'monster' tradition, and sighting reports go back 350 years. The Ostersund museum had collected 400 accounts, dating 'between 1635 and last month.' Lars Thofeldt, a botanist and teacher, said sightings had described 'large worm-like creatures [and creatures] with a long undulating neck with a horse's mane.'

1994 Kurt Cobain blows his head off. :(

2001 The US and China intensified negotiations for the release of an American spy plane's crew. The Nooculer Nincompoop , hoping to avoid being forced to apologize, expressed regret over the plane's in-flight collision with a Chinese fighter that triggered the tense standoff. He would later fold like a house of cards under Rush Limbaugh's fat cyst-covered ass and apologize for our plane getting hit.


Quotes of the Day!:

"Mr Bush is conspicuously ignorant of the situation in the Middle East. All that he knows comes from the rightwing pro-Israeli extreme in US politic ... If it is so urgent, why is secretary of state Powell coming next week and not tomorrow?" - Khalid Amayreh, journalist and commentator, in The Guardian

"The president wanted to review that, to remind everybody of that vision, and to reinforce that vision as the way forward," a WH official said., sounding extremely bushian (see Flip-flop article below).

"You will be much relieved to know that President Bush's witless dithering while the Holy Land burns is, in fact, a manifestation of the will of God. That's because Witless was appointed to his post not, as you might think, by five corrupt bagmen on the Supreme Court, but by the Almighty Himself." , and...

"For 14 months, Bush sat on his hands, downgrading the peace process to a backwater for low-level functionaries and retired errand boys. The unfolding horror in the Holy Land was only a sideshow to the main events: the coming invasion of oil-rich Iraq and the projection of U.S. dominance over oil-rich Central Asia. " - - Chris Floyd, in The Moscow Times

"MSNBC was next. I knew this was dicey. The GE/Gates Net actually features a show called "Alan Keyes Is Making Sense." To whom? Moonies freebasing LSD?" , and....

"Post-9/11 [Ashleigh] Banfield is to journalism what George W. Bush is to statesmanship. They are both Texas-rooted lightweights (she was a Dallas talking head, he was just a head) who've been deified by a scared and scarred nation, devoid of credible information and leadership" - - Barry Crimmins at BarryCrimmins.com



Well how about that - the Arbusto Admin Flip-flops on Middle-East Policy:

Gee, I guess Bill Clinton was good for something, hmmmmmm??? After a year of hands-off "management" of the crisis in the Middle East, Laura's Little Loser reversed course Thursday and decided to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region to help broker a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, while he himself stayed safe at home.

The Connecticut Cowpie's reversal comes under immense domestic and international pressure for the United States to take a more active role. Just two days earlier, on ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday, Powell had said he would not go to the region until the fighting died down.

But Powell is now going without any new plan to reconcile Palestinians and Israelis. When one senior administration official was asked whether Powell had a new plan with him, the official said only that the secretary brings "the vision that we had put forward previously."

Chimpy McCokehead's handlers and senior foreign policy advisors essentially decided, in a series of nonstop meetings over the past few days, that Powell must go on a "firefighting trip" (not a diplomatic one) to prevent the unraveling of everything that Drinky McDumbass's handlers' count as their goals: the war on terr'ism and completing the little ninny's father's unfinished business in Iraq.

- - Salon.com



"proof enough that pResident Bush had totally failed to understand the tragedy he is supposedly trying to solve"

"A speech laced with obsessions and little else:

"'Terror must be stopped ... no nation can negotiate with terrorists ...leaderships not terror ... you're either with the civilised world or you're with the terrorists ... all in the Middle East must move in word and deed against terrorists ... I call on the Palestinian Authority to do everything in their power to stop terrorist activities."'

- - read the whole thing at The London Independent: - or you're with the terrists!


ExxonMobil pressures Gas-Oil-Petroleum admin to replace global warming expert

The Arbusto administration, at the urging of one of their biggest donors, is trying to oust Robert Watson, the British scientist and chairman since 1996 of the panel that has advised the world about the dangers of global warming.

In what had been a nonpolitical process, the US has proposed alternative candidates for the post that Mr Watson holds, in effect attempting to remove a strong advocate of urgent action to save the planet. An election for the post will now have to be held when the 19th plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is held in Geneva in two weeks - the first contest since the body was formed in 1989.

The Smirking Chimp's decision to take the oil giant's advice is the latest in a long and successful push by ExxonMobil to undermine climate science and stop Washington taking any action that might damage sales.

The Pantywaist Primate's "election" was partly funded by ExxonMobil.

Grrrrrrrrrrr...read more at The Guardian, and thank God for the international media.


Preznit Poopypants' Agenda while the Middle East Imploded:


March 1. He spoke to students at Lakewood Elementary School in North Little Rock, Ark.
March 2.. Issued a proclamation for "National Poison Prevention Week," and met with the President of El Salvador.
March 4. .He christened the USS Ronald Reagan.
March 5.. Met with the University of Oklahoma football and softball teams. He made a call to the hospitalized Vice President Dick Cheney to wish him well, and signed a proclamation for "Save Your Vision Week."
March 6.. Announced that he is going to Sweden in June for the U.S.-European Union Summit. He posed for a photo op with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.
March 8.. Spoke at North Dakota State University, and released his tax plan to help low income families.
March 12. .The pResident visited a youth center in Panama City, Fla., and spoke to the rotary club.
March 14. .Gave a speech to the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, and tours a youth center at the Grace Episcopal Church in Plainfield.
March 15. .The pResident met with World Boxing Association heavyweight champ Johnny Ruiz, and with "PTA Teacher of the Year," Katha Black.
March 16. .Dubya celebrated St. Patrick's Day with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, and proclaimed "National Girl Scout Week."
March 19.. Addressed the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
March. 21. .The pResident spoke at the American College of Cardiology Annual Convention in Orlando, Fla.
March 22.. Dedicated the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center and proclaimed "Education and Sharing Day.
March 23. .Condemned violence in Macedonia, and spoke to the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce.
March 26/27. .Discussed the budget in Billings, Mont., and tackled the economy at Western Michigan University.
March 29. .Spoke at the Radio-TV Correspondents Dinner.
March 30. .He met with members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
March 31. .Was talking to cows at his pig farm, the Lazy W.

- - from O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Mostly. With thanks to BuzzFlash.


Does it depend on what the meaning of "poll" is? Joe Conason kicks some hypocritical repuke butt:

The Bush White House is being accused of being almost as addicted to polls as the Clinton White House was, and the new revelations have the spinmeisters at the Republican National Committee engaging in a fit of what Republicans usually deride as Clintonian double-talk and obfuscation.

The RNC still had not completed a tabulation of how much money it had spent on all polling in 2001. Nor could it stop hedging on whether non-national polls counted as White House polls. After a drawn-out conversation late Thursday afternoon, I asked Dyke if it was true that the White House "had no role in shaping or structuring or consulting on the [RNC's] non-national polls." Dyke said, "That's my understanding." But when I repeated the statement back to him, Dyke began to have second thoughts. "When you say 'consulting,' that's pretty broad," he said. When I offered to drop the word "consulting," he said, "Let me just make a phone call and I'll call you back." Dyke called back an hour later and said the White House was "not involved with [the RNC's] state polling" -- even the polls done by Bush's pollster van Lohuizen. Whether or not that's true, one thing seems certain. If the Clintonian addiction to polling is already gripping the Bush White House, that telltale symptom -- the inability to know what the definition of "is" is -- doesn't seem far behind.
- - from Salon.com


You can get farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. But if you've got the gun and the kind word *and* you've got a big tray of nice, crisp bacon to pass around, man, you can pretty much write your own ticket.

- - -Andy Ihnatko, Top5.com