WH dodges anthrax questions
Boy, it's been a bad week for Snippy the Chimp! {snort!}

"Bush administration stonewalls on production of documents concerning decision to put staff on Cipro beginning September 11, 2001 - Brentwood postal workers denied treatment while White House protected itself.

"Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, said today that the Bush administration has failed to provide a complete and accurate response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request concerning the decision to place White House staff on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic, Cipro, the same day as the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." - link.

Quote of the morning
"I suppose it's too much to ask for profundity from Bush when he's on his way into a coffee shop in Crawford or out giving tours of his ranch, but could the guy prepare a little more before he meets the press? The United States may be within weeks of waging war against Iraq, and the commander in chief can't make a coherent argument to save his life as to why Baghdad is more threatening than Pyongyang." - Matthew Rothschild.

Bush's sneak attack
"The Bush administration said yesterday it will consider removing Clean Water Act protections against pollution and development from up to one-fifth of the nation's streams, ponds, lakes, mudflats and wetlands. While the question is being decided, the administration said, federal regulators should act as if that policy already is in effect. Only by getting clearance from headquarters can the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA try to protect the approximately 20 million acres that appear to be affected, administration officials said.

The move was denounced by some environmentalists and their allies in Congress. Sen. James Jeffords said it would "roll back 30 years of progress" under the landmark environmental law. For those waterways and wetlands that lose protection, "you can throw garbage in it or animal waste in it," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer-lobbyist with the Earthjustice law firm. "You can kill it, ditch it or destroy it.".

In Washington state, the policy apparently would remove protection from mudflats that scientists say are critical to the biological health of Puget Sound. David Beckman, director of the California Clean Water Project said Bush's decision "is going to make it much easier for big corporations to develop wetlands and discharge pollutants into streams. It's a blatant attempt to sidestep Congress, a move under the cover of darkness to rewrite the rules incorporated by the act." - link.

Rosslyn Chapel to undergo hi-tech search
21st century technology is to be used to solve an age-old mystery at a famous Midlothian chapel.

The carved stones of the 15th century Rosslyn Chapel are said to contain dozens of historical relics including early gospels, the Ark of the Covenant, the holy grail and the mummified head of Christ.

Now, more than 550 years after work began on the site, the latest technology will be used to try and find the supposed relics. A non-invasive survey will be carried out at the chapel, home to the Knights Templar, successors to the warrior monks, who fled the Pope to Scotland in the 14th century.

The Knights Templar, successors to the warrior monks, will use ultra-sound and thermal imaging equipment in a bid to find the reputed relics in the vaults. John Ritchie, grand herald and spokesman for the Knights Templar, said: "The machine we are using is the most sophisticated anywhere and is capable of taking readings from the ground up to a mile deep without disturbing any of the land.

"We know many of the knights are buried in the grounds and there are many references to buried vaults, which we hope this project will finally uncover."

Rosslyn Chapel was founded by Sir William St Clair, third and last Prince of Orkney, in 1446. One of the ornate columns, the Apprentice Pillar, is said to contain a lead casket which holds the legendary Holy Grail, a cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, which was also used to collect his blood. - Edinburgh News.


On this date
11 Jan 1966: numerous people, including the mayor of Wanaque and their police chief, observed a UFO over Wanaque Reservoir, burning holes in the ice. The Air Force at first freaked, then explained it as a weather balloon, but later withdrew that claim and called it a helicopter. To this day, the police who were there say it was a UFO. We lived near Wanaque at the time - I still remember the radio/TV interference and the panicky phone calls that some of the radio stations were broadcasting.

In war, some facts less factual
US lies from the last war on Iraq have some experts skeptical this time around.

John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine and author of "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War," says that considering the number of senior officials shared by both Bush administrations, the American public should bear in mind the lessons of Gulf War propaganda.

"These are all the same people who were running it more than 10 years ago," Mr. MacArthur says. "They'll make up just about anything ... to get their way."

"This administration is capable of any lie ... in order to advance its war goal in Iraq," says a US government source in Washington with some two decades of experience in intelligence, who would not be further identified. "It is one of the reasons it doesn't want to have UN weapons inspectors go back in, because they might actually show that the probability of Iraq having [threatening illicit weapons] is much lower than they want us to believe." - Read the whole article at the CS Monitor.

Crazed, powermad chickenhawks in the BFEE oil cartel will attack Iraq 'without UN backing'
America will not delay a war with Iraq until the autumn and is prepared to launch military action against Saddam Hussein without further United Nations authorisation, a senior Bush administration adviser said yesterday.

Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board and a hawk whose views carry considerable weight, rejected suggestions from British ministers and senior Foreign Office officials that plans for an early war should be put on hold. Mr Perle, who is close to Donald Rumsfeld, said he did not expect the UN Security Council to reach agreement on the use of force but had little doubt that George W Bush, would press ahead regardless. - UK Telegraph.


I told you I loved you, now get out
Antidolt from the BC Forum cheerfully informs us "He's losing it!":
"Journalists escorted into a Cabinet meeting on Monday were allowed just four questions. On Wednesday, the media were ushered in at the beginning of a session with congressional leaders from both parties. Bush tersely informed them that no questions would be welcomed.

"I'm going to have a statement and then we'll ask you to leave so we can get down to our business," he said. After his statement and the signing of legislation extending federal unemployment benefits, he reiterated the point. "Get out of the room as quickly as you came in," he said." - link to article.

'They try their best to make excuses for his "tartness", but ultimately, we're getting to see the same Bushie, who when working on Poppy's campaign, had to be restrained from punching reporters.'

Links update
Please welcome mfinley and CNN Lies!

Pseudo-tough and rapidly crumbling
Has anybody else noticed how rapidly the Bush administration's foreign policy is disintegrating? Based as it was on a knee-jerk rejection of everything that Clinton's diplomats tried to do in the Middle East, on the Korean peninsula and with multilateral organizations, the Bush policy was always feebler than it sounded. Now, despite heroic efforts by Colin Powell, the price of those fundamental errors is coming due.

The most obvious example is North Korea, where the president's pugnacity helped to create a dangerous confrontation that his aides are now scrambling to defuse. Actually, the White House has been forced to turn to Democrat Bill Richardson, former Clinton U.N. ambassador (and newly elected liberal New Mexico governor), whose negotiating skills may get them out of this mess. Richardson's meeting last night with two North Korean officials will, with any luck, bring concrete results. Its symbolic significance is to expose the phoniness of the pseudo-tough, "axis of evil" attitudinizing of the president and his aides. Incidentally, this isn't necessarily a partisan difference, although the Republicans have tried to make it into one. Among the strongest advocates of resuming engagement with North Korea is Donald Gregg, the former national security advisor to George H.W. Bush during the Reagan administration who later served as ambassador to South Korea

Eventually Bush will have to conclude a deal with the North Koreans that brings them back into the international nonproliferation regime. The lesson of this experience is that the United States ought to display greater regard for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, so casually discarded by the Bush Republicans before they understood the potential consequences. Maybe they will wake up now, although I doubt it.

In the Middle East, Bush's original decision to distance himself from Clinton's strenuous peacemaking has had disastrous effects that are now undermining his Iraq policy. Although the rift hasn't received much coverage here, the White House and Downing Street are in the midst of intense disagreement over Israel and Palestine. The Bush tilt toward Ariel Sharon always disturbed Tony Blair, but the quiet dispute broke into open feuding this week when Blair invited Labor Party challenger Amram Mitzna to visit him on the eve of the Israeli election. Blair was evidently furious after his "friends" in Washington helped Sharon to scuttle the prime minister's own attempt at Mideast diplomacy by saying nothing when Jerusalem refused to allow Palestinian leaders to attend the London peace conference next week.

Now the Likud Party, which has enjoyed such uncritical support from the White House, turns out to be more or less a racketeering conspiracy, with increasing evidence pointing toward serious offenses by Sharon and his sons, among others. (I can't wait to read about the next late-night phone call from "Arik," explaining the whole affair to William Safire -- who will surely show more sympathy than he did when covering the phony Whitewater scandal.)

With Blair and Bush in conflict over Israel, the inherent tensions of their alliance against Iraq are beginning to emerge, at an inconvenient moment for the White House and the neocon faction so influential in its councils. The British are increasingly alienated from Washington, the Turks don't want their territory used as a base against Baghdad, the U.N. Security Council is unlikely to approve immediate action in Iraq -- but Bush and his advisors may see war as the only way out of the corner they've backed into. After the Korea humiliation, they will surely want to prove how tough they really are. - Joe Conason.

Officials consider faster ways to alert U.S. to terrorism:
whenever you see that Smirky McDumbass's poll numbers have dropped, figure something else is goin' down.

Oh, sorry, was I being cynical? Anyway, here's the link.




"President Bush says he's closely monitoring the situation in North Korea. He's watching M*A*S*H reruns." - Conan

Calendar quote
"Actually, this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me." - the Boob of Kennebunkport to Tweety the Moist on Hardball, 5/31/00.



"Doctors have found that working with stupid people can frustrate you so much it can give you a heart attack. More bad news for Dick Cheney." - Leno

"President Bush said his new year's resolution was to eat fewer cheeseburgers. The economy's collapsing; there's trouble in Iraq...you'd think he'd have a loftier goal, not the same one as Clem from the Shell station." - Leno.



Iraq's oil to pay for war and occupation
Misadministration officials are seriously considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq's oil to help pay the cost of a military occupation, a move that likely would prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq.

Officially, the White House agrees that oil revenue would play an important role during an occupation period, but only for the benefit of Iraqis, according to a National Security Council spokesman (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Yet there are strong advocates inside the administration, including in the White House, also including in Dick 'Chicanery' Cheney's office, for appropriating the oil funds as "spoils of war," according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the dialogue.

"There are people in the White House who take the position that it's all the spoils of war," said the source, who asked not to be further identified. "We [the United States] take all the oil money until there is a new democratic government [in Iraq]." No matter how long it takes. - Knut Royce (mostly).




I must be only two feet tall
There's no guarantee that rich people will do anything economically productive with more money. Their major strategy seems to be stashing it in offshore banks so they don't have to pay any taxes. As Leona Helmsley famously remarked, taxes are for "little people."

The dirty little secret about taxes in this country is that rich people and corporations mostly don't pay them now - they have a whole system of shelters and offshore deals. We don't need to raise taxes in this country - we need to collect them. - Molly Ivins.

The Biggest Threat To Peace
I bet they never saw this coming -

TIME asks for readers' views: Which country really poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?

North Korea 21.5 %
Iraq 20.0 %
The United States 58.5 %

- Cast your vote now!

It's our secret club, we can do whatever we want
Don 'Centerfold' Rumsfeld has suggested that Washington may present little or no evidence of Iraq’s quest for banned weapons even if the Poll-dropping Primate decides to go to war.

Rummy said that disclosing such details to the world or even to the United Nations Security Council could jeopardise any military mission by revealing to Baghdad that the powermad bushies know jack shit what the United States knows.

When weighing the demands of global opinion for proof of Saddam Hussein’s danger against the need to shroud an effective military campaign in secrecy, Rumsfeld said the safer option would be for the US to tilt towards secrecy. - UK Times.

Links update
The Taste of Ink is now The Truth and Other Fiction.
Please welcome Are You Hep to the Jive?!


Well, the hell with you, then!
According to four Time sources, the magazine had prepared a Person of the Year cover commemorating the partnership between Bush and Dick Cheney. But it fell through after the White House balked at giving the magazine access for such a presentation. Aides to Emperor Snippy reportedly preferred that their boss appear alone on the cover. - From the Washington City Paper. Jeebus.

More on the invisible poll
...thanks to skippy!
"Now, a Time/CNN poll -- the results of which the media, including Time and CNN, ignored or buried -- showed that Bush's approval rating has dropped from a high of 90 percent in late September 2001 to 55 percent by last week. In other words, he's lost 35 percent of his popularity in a little over one year. The same Time/CNN poll taken at two points in Bill Clinton's reign may help put this in perspective. On Dec. 9, 2000, the day he left the White House, Clinton's approval rating was 68 percent; on Feb. 12, 1999, the day after his impeachment vote, Clinton held a 73 percent rating. By contrast, and I repeat for emphasis, Bush's rating is currently at 55 percent." - Alan Bisbort.

Oh, yuck
Howard 'the Hormonal' Fineman squirts out another passionate piece of hot, pulsating love to Squinty the Pinhead:

"At various times, he’s played the presidency as Dirty Harry, Emperor Augustus, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Dag Hammarskjold. He’s been skillful in each role, but the variety show is confusing..." - he ejaculates over at pMSNBC, where they really ought to be ashamed of themselves. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go shower.

Time portal to Hell
"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end." - the Oaf of Office, Washington, DC, 1/8/03, evidently stuck in an hyperstupidity-vortex again.


Sore loser, man
"For the past couple of weeks, those wags at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe in Dupont Circle have been marketing a beverage called the "Trent Lotte." The menu describes the $3.25 item as "separate but equal parts of coffee and milk" – a not too veiled reference to Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's career-damaging 100th-birthday praise of fellow Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond's segregationist 1948 presidential campaign. Yesterday bartender Mark Kutcher told us that the coffee and steamed milk are served in two different containers, and it's up to customers to integrate them. "We think it's really funny," Kutcher said. "That's why we do it." But we seriously doubt if Lott is laughing. Our call to the deposed Senate Republican leader's press office yesterday was greeted by grim silence." - Lloyd Grove. LOLOL

Bizarro bs stories of the day
Jesus to be cloned from the Shroud of Turin - a new book from Time Warner, seen as an ad over at drudge. That's just sick.

Don't hate him because he was Der Fuhrer - he was just misunderstood: HBO developing 'Hitler was gay' documentary. WTF? Where are they going with this??


Calendar quote of the day
"The important question is: how many hands have I shaked?" - from the "They Misunderestimated Me!" desk calendar ('the very curious language of George W Bush').




"glaring racial insensitivity"
President Rove The clueless Cretin of Crawford has renominated controversial Trent Lott buddy/crossburning aficionado Charles Pickering for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Richard Durbin vowed to filibuster if necessary to reject him. "To me, this is a moral issue," said Schumer. He said the Dictator-tot's attempt to try again to promote Pickering was "mind-boggling" in the wake of the Lott episode. "Little f*cker gets more stupid every passing day." - link.

One important reason Karl's Little Krackhead decided to go ahead with the renomination was a belief that he had accumulated substantial political capital on race by severely criticizing Lott's comments on the Thurmond candidacy. - links here and here. Isn't that sort of like saying since Hitler was gay.....Anyway, he made one comment, then turned and ran like a dog from the whole fiasco. Give me a f*cking break.

3 April, 2002: US grants N Korea nuclear funds
"...The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused...

"In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

"President Bush argued that the decision was 'vital to the national security interests of the United States.'"

Whole article at: BBC news - from NeonLX @ the BC Forum.

House GOP Softens Its Ethics Rules
House Republicans weakened their own ethics rules yesterday, pushing through language that would allow lobbyists to cater meals to members' offices and let charities pay for lawmakers to travel and stay at golf resorts and other locales.

The party of personal responsibility? Of honor and integritude? I'm shocked....shocked!

McCain May Team With Feingold To Limit Radio Station Ownership Consolidation
Sen. Russ Feingold said Tuesday he plans to reintroduce legislation that would limit the consolidation of radio station ownership and to punish radio conglomerates that stifle competition.

The bill died last year, but in the 108th Congress Feingold may have a powerful, if familiar, partner - John McCain, R-Ariz, who has again become chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

McCain spokeswoman Pia Pialorsi said McCain 'is interested in the topic and has talked to Feingold about it. He's definitely looking at' backing Feingold's legislation, which could be introduced in the coming weeks. - from here.


Let's help skippy get randi rhodes syndicated!
'friends, we are sure you are familiar by now with the plight of randi rhodes, a fine lefty on the radio in miami, who cannot get her bosses, clear channel, to syndicate her show because, according to her own testimony, rush limbaugh threatened to leave clear channel if they syndicate randi...'

Go here for info!