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LOL
"Arlen, the idea that you're a fiscal conservative is harder to believe than your single bullet theory." - Pat Toomey to Arlen Specter.

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Creepier than Nixon
Tricky Dick Cheney, oily neocon puppetmaster, shadow president.

Dick Cheney is a political disaster awaiting recognition. In the book, I set forth a relatively long list of inchoate scandals, not to mention problems worse than scandals. They all involve Cheney in varying degrees. Bush can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government.

- John Dean, who should know.


"Mwwaahahahaha!"

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Bush and Blair's secret pact for Iraq war
Decision came nine days after 9/11

George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001.

According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington who was at the dinner, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Regime change was already US policy.

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Oh good
The White House will vet "line by line" the report of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks before it is publicly released, the commission chairman said on Sunday.

Chairman Thomas Kean said on NBC's Meet the Press that he was surprised to learn of the White House review, which he said was required under law to ensure any material that could compromise intelligence was not included.

The commission is expected to submit its report in July on intelligence failures before the 2001 attacks. Kean said he was confident the White House would finish its review so the report could be released well before the November presidential election.

- it was a Reuters story, but the link's worthless - the story's vanished. I'll pull up the Press the Meat transcript later.

- on edit: here's the link.

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'Everything is at stake now'
In the aftermath of the massacre of US security personnel in Fallujah, a knowledgeable Coalition Provisional Authority source said that if Iraq descends into civil war, Americans will be "distinctly less safe" than they were before the invasion.

Jebus.

The Bushies hope to whip Iraq into shape by July 1st, when the Iraqis are scheduled to take over running their own government. Oh, and guess who's at the top of the list to replace Paul Bremer as chief representative of the Bushies' interests in Iraq? John 'human rights abuses' Negroponte!

'The Wizard of Oz Letter'
Bush pulls back the curtain on who really runs the White House

Bunnypants gets to bring along his vice president when he appears privately before the 9/11 commission.

With the revelation of the tandem testimony, nobody with a straight face can deny Cheney is a co-president or worse, the puppeteer who pulls Bush’s strings.

Aside from being fodder for the late-night comics, the arrangement confirms Bush’s inability to articulate anything without a script -- or a tutor by his side.

Try thinking about it this way: can anyone imagine Bush’s father in a similar situation bringing his vice president? (For those who need a refresher course, the elder Bush was a rocket scientist compared to his son, and the vice president was Dan Quayle.)

This is a defining moment in the Bush presidency because it reveals weakness at the top.

What Cheney and the tight circle around Bush are protecting is the myth they have created since 9/11 of a war president astride the world stage. Anybody who punctures that imagery is destroyed. Richard Clarke is only the latest in a series of insiders who have pulled back the curtain. At the center is an incurious president who is so inarticulate that he can’t be left on his own to make a sustained argument on behalf of his policies without falling back on rehearsed talking points and sound bites.

- Hot damn. Eleanor Clift, in Newsweek.

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Holy $hit!!!
Check out the cover of the new Newsweek!

Karl's going to have a coronary!!

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Winning hearts and minds
Anti-American voices are getting louder and more insistent in Iraq, and the US tanks with "bloodlust" and "kill them all" painted on them probably aren't helping.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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So, a chimp, a pretzal, and a gram of smack walk into a bar...
"The other night Kerry was on MTV's 'Choose or Lose' and Kerry said he was fascinated by rap and hip hop. In a related story, President Bush said he was fascinated by shiny objects." - Jay Leno, giving his Rove-induced hemorrhoids a well-deserved break.

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Well, we don't have to gas them, but...
Faux Nooze gasbag Bill O'Reilly thinks we should do a Saddam on Fallujah's ass:

The remaining dissenters must be harshly dealt with. Fear can be a good thing. Homicidal terrorists and their enablers must be killed or incarcerated. And their punishment must be an example to others.

How do you think Saddam controlled Iraq all these decades?

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Rush Limbaugh, wiener salesman

In 1971 Limbaugh attended Southeastern Missouri University, where, according to reports, he had a brief but heated affair with Elliot Sanders. So gay is Limbaugh, guarantees Sanders, that, "none of his marriages was ever consummated."

- seen at BartCop.

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PSMs
Waffles and whine: the many flip-flops of George dumbass Bush.

Fear factor: US transit systems are at "code yellow-plus."

Nancy Pelosi wishes John Kerry would pick John McCain as a running mate.

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Yeah, but can he sing 'Lady of Spain' while drinking a glass of water?
Heh.

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LOL
A former brothel madam has been named California Businessman of the Year by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

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Cross-stitching in the firelight
Denied!

VP harpy wife/spoilsport Lynne Cheney has put the ol' chastity belt on the reissue of Sisters, her historical romance novel filled with such sanctified conservative themes as brothels, attempted rapes and hot lesbian love.

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Cool
Great pic of bald eagle chicks.

And one of a 41-pound cat, the poor thing.

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PSM
It's a gray day, but the birds are singing, the crocuses are blooming, my pet stray cat is pregnant, and it's my birthday today. Huzzah! I'm going to celebrate by having some smoked salmon, some cigars, and three kinds of potatoes for dinner.

Mmmmmmm, potatoes......

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Not so fast
The 9/11 commission has been 'granted a look' at some of the Clinton papers.

But - and get this - the Bushies have released 'only a fraction' of the thousands of classified counterterrorism documents requested by the 9/11 panel - and by the Clintons.

The WaPo reports that WH spokes-hamster Scott McClellan 'declined to say whether the White House would agree to actually hand over any of the disputed documents at issue, raising the possibility of further disputes,' and that "some commission members said yesterday that the lack of disclosure of the Clinton documents raises the possibility that the Bush administration has withheld other relevant records, as well."

Powell: 'whoopsies!'
Colin Powell expressed new doubts yesterday on the misadministration's claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying the description in his UN presentation was based on 'faulty sources' - sources that had been cited by intelligence officials, certain journalists, and bloggers as unreliable even before his presentation.

Meahwhile, the US death toll in Iraq hit 600 on Friday.


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The littlest cheerleader
Property of the WH

The White House is now in charge of media access to the yawning, bratty doorstop behind the Letterman/Bunnypants/CNN flap this week.

White House assistant propaganda minister Reed Dickens has been named chief brainwasher/nanny for anyone vacuous enough to want to interview the little hellspawn.

Blah blah blah.

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Why does he hate America?
"And the problem we face right now is we love freedom, and we're not going to change, and the people that we fight hate freedom."

"You know what I'm talking about when I talk about people who are willing to love their neighbor just like they love themselves in the community in which you live."

"We went back to the United Nations and said, look, this guy is a problem, he's a threat. He used gas on his own people. He's a - we've got to take it seriously. September the 11th taught us a lesson. So we came together and said, look, get rid of your weapons, Mr. Saddam Hussein. He said, no."

- America's Dingleberry, mangling the same old tired factually-challenged speech into a new version of craptitude, 3/30/04.


"Hunt 'em down! Freedom! Cookies!"

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Pelosi: 'war preznit' a pathetic #ucking pansy
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says it's baffling and embarrassing that Poppy's Little Poophead is appearing before the Sept. 11 commission with Dick Cheney at his side instead of by himself.

"I think it speaks to the lack of confidence that the administration has in the president going forth alone, period," Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday. "It's embarrassing to the president of the United States that they won't let him go in without holding the hand of the vice president of the United States."

"I think it reinforces the idea that the president cannot go it alone," she said. "The president should stand tall, walk in the room himself and answer the questions."

Not hide behind his minder's skirts as if he was still in didies, the chickenshit little asswipe.

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Quote
"You can't fly in on an aircraft carrier and declare victory and have the deaths continue. You can't do that.'' - hero/patriot John McCain, 04/01/04.


"Karl, kin he say that? Karl??"

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Poll: Bush credibility takes hit
The lying suckjob's approval numbers are circling clockwise down the crapper in the latest poll by CBS.

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Prosecutors expanding inquiry in Valerie Plame case
The investigation into whether someone in the Bush misadministration illegally disclosed Ms Plame's identity will now also examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or 'mishandled classified information' related to the case.

'The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December.'

Heh.

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At least they got that horrible beast Martha Stewart
Unf*ckingbelievable.

The asscorn judge in the Tyco case has just declared a mistrial.

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Before the repugs start blowing each other...
308,000 minimum wage jobs were 'created' - but among those returning to work were the 72-thousand-plus Californians returning from a strike. Those jobs were already there: it's like they're being counted twice. Sort of like counting votes in Florida.

Fun fact: (a) Gateway has pulled the plug on stores, 2,500 jobs lost.
(b) The unemployment rate rose to 5.7 from 5.6 percent.

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'The US knew al-Qaida would attack cities with airplanes'
Condoliar Rice's claim that there was no such information was 'an outrageous lie.'

A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the 9/11 panel which proves senior officials in the WH knew of al-Qaida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gag order.

- from the UK Independent.

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Antonin Scalia, self-made martyr
"He could have been the next chief justice. Today, he's just a poster boy for intolerance, vitriol and questionable ethics." - Tim Grieve, in Salon.

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OK, add another one...
"You know why I think George Tenet is still in his job? I think there are smoking guns all over the White House."

Former Sen. Gary Hart says he, too, warned Condoliar Rice about an imminent terror attack on two occasions before 9/11.

His report "warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally briefed Rice, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But, according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before 9/11."

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Clarke's corroborating witnesses
Add three more to the list!

Brian Sheridan, President Clinton's outgoing assistant secretary of Defense for special operations, was astonished when his offers during the transition to bring the new Pentagon leadership up to speed on terrorism were brushed aside. 'I offered to brief anyone, any time on any topic. Never took it up.'

A three-star general, Donald Kerrick had served at the end of the Clinton administration as deputy national security advisor, and he spent the final four months of his military career in the Bush White House. He sent a memo to the NSC's new leadership on 'things you need to pay attention to.' He wrote about Al Qaeda: 'We are going to be struck again.' But he never heard back.

The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001. Shelton told us that in the Bush administration terrorism had moved 'farther to the back burner... Is the White House going to vilify these men too?

- Daniel Benjamin.

Speaking of witnesses, noone's ever turned up who could confirm Smirky McFlightsuit's claim that he was in the Alabama national guard when he was supposed to be.

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Bush blocks Clinton papers from 9/11 panel
"But...but...they're highly sensitive!" squeals WH spokes-hamster Scott McClellan.

Yeah, to the Bush misadministration. The Clinton papers contain thousands of pages relating to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and terrorism. What do the Bushies have? Toilet paper.

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Thursday that it was pressing the White House to explain why the Bush administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the panel's investigators.

The commission and the White House were reacting to public complaints from former aides to Mr. Clinton, who said they had been surprised to learn that three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of files the former president was ready to offer the commission had been withheld by the Bush administration.

- from the NY Times.

Smear without fear
Whoring for the White House

WH lickspittle CNN makes wild accusations, gets caught, claims someone 'misspoke,' denies responsibility.
- another must-read by Paul Krugman.

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Ho ho
"It's really getting ugly between the White House and this former counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke. Clarke accused pResident Bush of subterfuge, an accusation Bush both denied and had to look up." - Jay Leno, taking a time-out from fellating Karl Rove.

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Judge orders release of Cheney energy cabal documents
Federal judge Paul Friedman told the government to release more documents related to Dick 'Chicanery' Cheney's task force that met behind closed doors to develop a national energy policy. The order covers material that the Energy Department, Interior Department and other federal agencies have refused to produce since a similar federal court ruling two years ago. I'm sure the WH has already appealed.

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Washington Animal House
'While the frat-boy-in-chief cracked wise about missing WMD, the Washington press corps guffawed like fawning pledges -- but the joke's on them,' Sidney Blumenthal says.

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Well, at least he doesn't look French
Kentucky reboob senator Jim Bunning says his Democrat opponent looks and dresses like one of Saddam's sons, then adds "before they were dead, of course."

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Duh!

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All hat, no cattle
Though he owns a few acres of flea-infested land in Texas, Smirky McChimp would make an inept cowboy.

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Asshat of the day
True story: Indicted Enron executive asks judge to unfreeze a couple hundred thousand dollars so he can cover his country club fees.

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Is this an April Fool joke??
Bush misadministration seeks funding boost for marriage education

The Marriage Movement initiative is included in Snippy the Chimp's budget proposal for 2005, currently working its way like a turd through Congress.

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More hanky-panky from the WH
The Chimp-in-Chief's top lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, called at least two of the rethugs on the Sept. 11 commission when the panel was gathered to hear the testimony of Richard Clarke.

Rep. Henry Waxman is on the case.

And where are the rest of the Dems? Where's John Kerry???

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Stealing the vote 2004
The Florida law that requires a manual recount in close elections would not apply to ballots cast on paperless electronic voting machines under a bill endorsed by a state Senate committee Wednesday.

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Clarke spurns WH propaganda outlet
Patriot Richard Clarke tells Fox News to #uck off.

Faux Nooze gasbag/moron Bill O'Reilly just can't understand why Clarke would not only boycott his bullshit show, but the entire fair-und-balanced network (seen at Noozemax, so no link).

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Douchebags for Jebus!
Senate majority leader/Karl Rove puppet Bill 'profiteering from terrorism' Frist is accused of using the Senate as a convention hall, attacking John Kerry, Richard Clarke, Amazon.com book reviewers.

On Wednesday, after watching yet another episode of Frist frothing like a drunken, prissy lout in a cheerleader outfit, James Thurber of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies called Frist's actions "quite unusual."

"I think this shows a certain amount of desperation by the White House to have the majority leader use the Senate floor as a forum to attack people who are questioning the credibility of the administration ... and also the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party," Thurber said.

In a related story...
It should surprise nobody by now - perennial loony and attention whore Zell 'I take it up the ass for W!' Miller is at it again, saying the 9/11 investigation "energizes terrorists."

Senator and WH bootlicker Zell Miller is 'questioning the usefulness of the panel investigating the terrorist attacks of 2001, arguing its public quarrels with the Bush administration could "energize our enemies and demoralize our troops."'

Assclowns make the Baby Jebus cry.

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Main WH focus before 9/11 was NOT on terrorism, says report
Worthless national insecurity advisor Condoliar Rice was scheduled to deliver a major policy speech on Sept. 11, 2001 that focused on missile defense, not terrorism, the Washington Post reports.

Former officials who have seen the text said the speech was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of the Bush misadministration's national security and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups.

It's I'm Embarrassed by the pReznit Day! Wear your brown armband with pride.




US convoy in Iraq attacked
Insurgents attacked a US military convoy and a Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade Thursday near Fallujah. Also Thursday, two explosions near a US-escorted fuel convoy wounded at least one Iraqi in northern Baghdad.

Keepin' us safe, with Chimpy McFlightsuit:
Horror in Falluja, and a plea from 9/11 families.
The 10 Americans killed in Iraq were brutalized.
When Bush Co. came into office they wanted something from the Taliban, and it wasn't Osama's head. It was a pipeline.
Why Colin Powell and George Tenet aren't bashing Richard Clarke.
Congressmen 'dumbfounded' as request for more terrorism investigators is denied by the WH.
Ummmm... Iran has a uranium-enrichment program, 'possibly' aimed at producing fuel for an atomic bomb program.