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BBC Radio did a story yesterday that at first seemed totally, uh, foreign, but the more I listened the more familiar it sounded.

It was a story about football.  (Soccer, that is!) 

And about the proposed "six-plus-five" rule. 

Apparently, in the U.K., there's been a lot of hand-wringing lately over the fact that many of the best football teams on the blessed plot are stacked with foreign players--they bring 'em in from France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, wherever they can find the best talent.  Football's governing body, FIFA, has offered and endorsed a plan:  

As it applies to England, the FIFA proposal is that every 11-man professional football squad should have a minimum of six native Englishmen on the squad, and thus, no more than five players from other countries.  "Six-plus-five," in other words.

The radio story I heard featured two commentators:  Pro and con.  (A unique and interesting idea that we might want to adopt over here!)

Pro:  In order to identify with local and national fans, a team should consist of players who have local or regional roots and have individual and personal loyalty to the team they are playing for.  If rosters are left open to a "best-players-to-the-highest-bidders" system, regional and/or national pride will cease to mean much in a game that has always, from its origins, been about stepping out onto the field and making the home crowd proud.

Con: The problem is not about English teams bringing in foreign players...The problem is that for the past couple of decades, English youth have simply not been trained and developed as in other countries.  It just isn't like it used to be--the reason that foreign players are starting to dominate English football is that in England, youth football just no longer has the organization and drive that, for example, youth cricket and rugby still have....

Both experts agreed that English football is the best football in the world, and that the English football league is the richest.  One expert opined that English football is the best football in the world because the league is the richest and therefore can bring in the best players; the other opined that it's because the English football league is the richest that it brings in the best players. 

--Geez, I don't know.  I don't generally pay any attention to "football."  I just heard this story on the radio.  And it kind of confuses me.  But isn't the whole thing sort of eerily familiar?

Posted by Chuck at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can only hope the trend continues:

Beverly Fanning is among the campaign donors who'll be joining President Bush at a gala at Washington's Ford's Theater Sunday night, but she says that won't dissuade her from her current passion: volunteering for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

She isn't the only convert. A McClatchy computer analysis, incomplete due to the difficulty matching data from various campaign finance reports, found that hundreds of people who gave at least $200 to Bush's 2004 campaign have donated to Obama.

Among them are Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the granddaughter of the late GOP president Dwight Eisenhower; Connie Ballmer, the wife of Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer; Ritchie Scaife, the estranged wife of conservative tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife and boxing promoter Don King.

Many of the donors are likely "moderate Republicans or independents who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country now and are looking for change," said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College in Maine who specializes in campaign finance.

"There is a large block of Republicans, particularly economic conservatives, who just feel that the Republican Party in Washington completely let them down" by failing to control spending and address other problems, Corrado said. "The Republicans have really given these donors no reason to give."

Posted by Earl at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've known it for a while now:

"WE'RE not leaving, so long as I'm the President." There in nine words is the exit strategy for the United States involvement in Iraq. Depending on your viewpoint, it's either a commitment or an admission of defeat.

That's been the sole reason for continuing our occupation of Iraq, regardless of whatever else seemed to happen or not.

And now the intelligence community is backing him up - again:

Previewing the world for the next U.S. president, a top U.S. intelligence official this week predicted that the Bush administration would make little progress before leaving office on top national security priorities including an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, political reconciliation in Iraq and keeping Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

A regenerated al-Qaeda will remain the leading terrorism threat, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald M. Kerr said. Pakistan's "inward" political focus and failure to control the tribal territories where al-Qaeda maintains a haven, he said, is "the number one thing we worry about."

Meanwhile, the misdirected Iraq meatgrinder continues....

It truly is a bit frustrating.

Posted by Earl at 05:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Funny in a FARK sort of way, that is.  If you've ever listened to morning radio, you've heard something off of the news aggregator FARK.  They find all kinds of...interesting...stories and link to them, complete with snarky tags and writeups.

This one earned the "dumbass" tag:

Washington intelligence consultants warn that radical Islamists are planning nuke attack on DC, showing a detailed, elaborate computer-constructed image as evidence, or as gamers call it, Fallout 3 graphic

That would be the whole story in a condensed form.

Except that the link given on FARK for the article in the UK's Telegraph leads to an Error 404 page - Page not available.

That's odd.

So...time to look around a bit.

Here's a site that has the picture and the story intact, complete with a link to the Telegraph story that, once again, returns an Error 404.

Gosh, the internet can be a fun place...

UPDATE: SITE explains why the page isn't available.

Still funny to me, though:

SITE reported to its subscribers that extremists posted the image to a password-protected forum affiliated with al-Qaeda. This is entirely accurate. Moreover, this information was part of a report describing the general atmosphere in this forum with regard to extremists' discussions on weapons of mass destruction, making its context all the more important. This report in its entirety is also completely accurate.

Not that's they're contesting the definition of "Is" or anything like that, I guess.

Posted by Earl at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The answer, that is, to the question of just How is Barack doing It?

It almost cannot be understated: Barack Obama's steady, astounding, almost inexplicable rise to the top to not only become the presumptive Democratic nominee but also to overtake one of the strongest, smartest, most well-funded, tenacious rival candidates in American history — and also to out-poll his deeply connected Republican opponent — is both remarkable and historic on a number of fronts.

But the thing is, no matter how you crunch the data and try to logically analyze all the components that made Obamapalooza happen, there appears to be something just beyond the logic, just outside the normal machinery, that makes you shake your head in amazement, and perhaps remember this forever.

I've got to admit that Barack was my #2 guy.  I still, to this day, wish John Edwards was riding this particular wave to D.C. this November, but...he isn't.

Once John dropped out, I felt myself drift over to Barack.  It felt natural enough.

My main problem with Hillary was her last name.  There was a fatigue settling in me from the same damn names showing up on my ballot every four years.  Had she gone on to the nomination I would have just as easily voted for her, but there's that something Mark is talking about happening in this election cycle.

At the end of the column, as mentions the nightmare that hides in the back of the nation's head, he gets really close to the answer but almost seems afraid to say it:

Then again, maybe, in a morose way, this is how we know transformative change is arriving, perhaps quicker than expected, but arriving nonetheless. We're already deeply scared of losing it. Really, how long's it been since we've felt anything like that?

Approximately 48 years, according to some people I've spoken with who were around at the time.

Posted by Earl at 06:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It certainly seems like BuzzFlash enjoys this weekly feature:

Scott McClellan

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

No, Scott McClellan is no hero for fessing up to the fact that George Bush misled the nation into war -- or for revealing, among other things we already knew, that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove coordinated their accounts of the treasonous Valerie Plame outing.

According to advance accounts of McClellan's tell all book, he blames "the liberal press" for not being hard enough on the Bush Administration's dishonesty. But, of course, the deliverer of the misleading Bush narrative and responses to administration scandals during the first years of the Iraq War was, well, Scott McClellan.

Can he go away now?  He bores me.

Posted by Earl at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm just not sure I would be playing this around the boss.

Enjoy!

Posted by Earl at 03:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Earl at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If only because I can't stop sobbing...

President Bush and U.S. Air Force Academy graduate Theodore Shiveley, from Plano, Texas, bump chests during the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

(H/T The Rude Pundit) 

Posted by Earl at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...If you're watching this Twins-Royals series, that is.

I'm a Twins fan, of course, but even if equating "Twins-Royals baseball" with "must-watch-to-the-very-end TV viewing" sounds like a stretch--did you see the games the last two nights?

Tuesday:  Twins up 3-0, bottom of the 9th.  Rookie (and increasingly intriguing) Twins starter Nick Blackburn has pitched his most impressive game of the year--8 1/3 scoreless innings!--before giving way to closer Joe Nathan with two men on base.  Two men on base?  Not to worry.  This is exactly the kind of situation in which Nathan (perfect on the year in save chances to this point) huffs a little and puffs a little and blows out the rally candle. 

Except that this time, Royal Mark Teahan scoots one down the left field line...left fielder Delmon Young makes an ill-advised dive...and next thing you know, it's an inside-the-park home run.  Tie game.  

On to the 10th: and the Twins score a run and the Royals, well, don't.  Twins win in 10--extending the Royals' losing streak to nine straight games, by the way.   

--Blackburn didn't get the win; Nathan didn't get the save; Delmon Young coincidentally batted 0-for-6 at the plate over the course of the game.  I wasn't in the clubhouse after the game, of course, but more than one report indicates that it wasn't a very happy clubhouse for a team that had just won a 10-inning game.

[On the other hand, I would assume that of the two teams' clubhouses, the Royals' might not have been the rockingest place in town, either...] 

Then, Wednesday: Looked like the losing streak was over for the Royals--the Twins played a crummy game in the field (including two errors by Delmon Young!) and going into the ninth, the Royals were up 8-3.  8-3: that's a five-run lead!  A couple of hits, etc., a couple of runs....and suddenly a two-out, three-run homer by Twins pinch-hitter Craig Monroe (who has been, frankly, pretty useless up to this point in the season)...and it's tied!  

So then in the top of the 10th, Justin Morneau pops a line drive just over the right field fence, and Joe Nathan comes in for the bottom of the 10th inning and this time he gets the save...

I suppose if were a Royals fan, I might consider touching the TV or radio dial (possibly even with the business end of a boot, sledge hammer, or shotgun), but as a Twins fan....

I can't wait for the series finale that's scheduled to start in approximately 30 minutes.

Or should I just wait until about 9:30 p.m. and turn the game on then?

Posted by Chuck at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For example, this morning I ran by this article:

If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.

Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.

It was...refreshing...to read this after dealing with Dick and the decider's emphasis on a unitary executive.

"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked.

-- CNN.com, December 18, 2000

Seven and a half years of this joke and the country isn't laughing anymore.

But there was something more to that story.  Something familiar.  It took a while, but then I remembered the damn question posed by Cernig a while back.

He seems to like getting an answer to it, finally, as well:

That wins it right there, for me.

As Spencer writes: "One hopes that the review process is a matter of taking out everything signed by David Addington or John Yoo or Donald Rumsfeld and writing in red pen across the top EPIC FAIL or ROFLCOPTER."

I can only imagine how many signing statements and executive orders could fall by the wayside... 

Posted by Earl at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the release of Scott's book revealing himself to be a sack of lies in a pile of sacks of lies that continue to inhabit the White House to this day, I thought there should be a new word to cover situations like this.

Barring a new word, there should be a phrase - something.

I would like to thank Adam from A Violently Executed Blog for providing it to me:

OMFGWTFBBQ???!11!!!!ELEVENTY!!!???!!!

It's not quite how he meant it, but I think it perfectly sums up what our reaction should be each and every time another rat jumps the sinking ship of state (Version Dubya-Brand GOP) or another tale of outrageous scandal, patronage, or cronyism surfaces.

It's going to be happening a lot in the coming months/years.

Posted by Earl at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One thing I noticed while watching the news yesterday, and QT nails it:

Sticking to the script

• • White House press secretary Dana Perino regarding Scott McClellan's new memoir of deception and incompetence in the White House:

"This is not the Scott we knew."

• • Former White House counselor Dan Bartlett regarding McClellan's memoir:

"This is not the Scott we knew."

• • Karl Rove regarding McClellan's memoir:

"This doesn't sound like Scott, it really doesn't, not the Scott McClellan I've known."

Very nice work. Managed to get their stories straight in no time.

It's amazing, really...

Posted by Earl at 05:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everybody has heard of the Titanic and all the people who perished in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, of course.

The question is, have you ever heard of the Empress of Ireland?

In one of the worst ship disasters in history, the British liner Empress of Ireland, carrying 1,477 passengers and crew, collides with the Norwegian freighter Storstad in the gulf of Canada's St. Lawrence River. The Storstad penetrated 15 feet into the Empress of Ireland's starboard side, and the vessel sunk within 14 minutes, drowning 1,012 of its passengers and crew.

You would have if you read Clive Cussler.

Posted by Earl at 05:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the U.K., for example:

A citizen's arrest can be carried out under certain circumstances by a member of the public, if they believe a person had carried out a crime, under the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.

The humour comes when you find out the reason I have that paragraph from the story:

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has escaped an attempted citizen's arrest as he appeared at the Hay Festival.

That's the kind of fun awaiting a few of our current employees in the executive branch if they travel outside of the U.S., I guess.

In my dreams, it could happen within our borders, as well.

Posted by Earl at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's funny, I guess.  Funny in that "don't-flinch-when-I-pull-that-sliver-out" kind of way, in some ways.

I am an unapologetic Democrat.  It's a part of my DNA, just as greed is a part of human DNA.

I will, unsurprisingly, vote for whoever has that (D) next to their name for president come November.

Most of this thought process is based on a simple thought: The sun will come up tomorrow.  I don't want my government run as a business because, eventually, I don't want my country having a "going-out-of-business" sale.

There isn't going to be an endgame or an armageddon to worry about.  Jebus is dead.  Jebus is risen.  Jebus doesn't care about the price of gas.  Jebus probably does give a damn about all of the killing being done in our (collective) name.

The situation we're in is the situation we've built for ourselves and we've got to ride this bastard all the way 'round.

This corner is one that we have to take:

The Democratic Party has been blessed with an abundance of good candidates this cycle, most or all of whom would probably have won in November and served the nation well in office. The tragedy, however, is that winning this one election probably won’t be enough to do what needs to be done after the last seven plus years of misrule. Putting America right — rebuilding a fair middle class society, addressing potentially catastrophic environmental issues, improving America’s dismal reputation in the world and so much more — will take more than one good president. It will take a committed generation.

The world belongs to the kids.

Teach them well.

Posted by Earl at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

QT seems to have an epiphany about just how far the rightwingery is gone:

Conservatively speaking

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) regarding people who claim to be conservatives:

"They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world."

And to think Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan put one over on us all those years.

Whatever you do, DO NOT Google "santorum" and NEVER look at the image results from a Google search for "santorum."

Fair warning given. 

Posted by Earl at 05:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...and if it concerns oil and energy, odds are that email is from Kirkrrt.

Like this one from today:

Subject: an important distinction

I want to make sure readers of the site understand that we are not blaming "Big Oil" for the high price of oil and gasoline.  Those are the result of market forces.

I blame "Big Oil" for manipulating gasoline prices in America.  This includes artificially lower prices prior to elections.  Gasoline prices currently do not reflect the price of crude oil.  So at this time I am assuming prices are being kept lower on purpose and will rise after early November.

Thanks.

Posted by Earl at 03:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Earl at 02:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Brooks:

"American conservatives had one defeat, in 2006, but it wasn't a big one," he said. "The big defeat is probably coming, and then the thinking will happen. I have not yet seen the major think tanks reorient themselves, and I don't know if they can." He added, "You go to Capitol Hill — Republican senators know they're f***ed. They have that sense. But they don't know what to do. There's a hunger for new policy ideas."

Uncensored here.

Posted by Earl at 12:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BuzzFlash has the short version of why I am supporting Barack Obama:

What has his campaign shown?

• America's youth are still capable of idealism.
• Grassroots organizing is powerful when utilizing 21st century tools.
• A new kind of politics, even extolling bipartisanship, has a chance.
• A stupid war is not a war for patriots to embrace.
  

All this, in an era when the Bush policies of fear and war, and the GOP strategy of dividing by wedge issues, had shamed or simply depressed many Americans. As our tax monies poured through the leaky sieve of the Iraq war, and our national prestige plummeted, and our military slogged on with inadequate armor and an ill-defined mission, we watched in distress. Our government borrowed money from our international competitors; they reduced the domestic social safety net; our dollar's value dropped, making life for our neediest near impossible. And then came this election season.

Americans do still believe in elections, even though we've had some rocky ones, like the 2000 race decided hastily by the Supreme Court justices. But we still believe in our constitutional democracy. We need to hold onto that. The phenomenal turnout and voter registration numbers of 2008 show that we do.

Realistically, Barack Obama is just a guy. He's a politician. He has his strengths and his weak points. But he is offering change at a time when we need it, and he was willing to stick his neck out for it.

I don't know what change is actually going to be possible in the coming years, but I do know the cyclical nature of American politics point to some change starting any year now.

It's as good a time as any, I guess.

Posted by Earl at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I guess we didn't realize the plan all along.

1. Start with America's incomprehensibly large thirst for energy
2. Start a war to destabilize oil energy from the Middle East
3. Watch costs go up all over, especially food
4. Watch Afghanistan liberate itself from the poppy crops

It's all so amazingly obvious that I'm ashamed I didn't see it before this:

The sky-rocketing cost of wheat is breaking food budgets around the world. Families are paying more for bagels in Brooklyn and for flatbread in Afghanistan. The difference is that many Afghans are now spending half their earnings on bread alone. International aid is keeping the country — one of the world's poorest — from food riots and starvation. But the crisis may encourage some farmers to move out of the drug trade and into wheat.

Well, I suppose if they had told us the plan it wouldn't have worked...

Posted by Earl at 07:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Perhaps QT has a problem with this:

The terrorists win?

From Poor QT's Almanack:

On this day in history 329 years ago the British Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, protecting against false arrest and imprisonment. The principles were later incorporated into the U.S. Constitution but are no longer in effect because of fears of the terrorist threat against Americans, many of whom seem to frighten more easily than in the past.

Well, to be fair, we did reject British rule...

Posted by Earl at 05:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...that Memorial Day is the official/unofficial first day of summer in Minnesota.

Currently, it's 30 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

I don't think I will go swimming today.

Posted by Earl at 05:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By now you've probably heard of the Phoenix Mars Lander which arrived safely on the surface of Mars at some point yesterday

To me it is an amazing thing to be able to make that shot and then hand off a few tasks to the little machine up there.  (or over there or down there or whatever you want to say, since there is no intrinsic up to the universe, correct?)

But when we're able to get pictures of the little-lander-that-could on its way to the surface from another satellite near Mars?

Unbelievable.

Posted by Earl at 02:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you were to make a comment on one of the posts today, you may notice something like this:

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

I could get in to the disgusting and obscene details of just why the site owner (That's ME!) needs to "approve" your comment before it appears, but I'm not going to.

It is not, as my fellow GnostiNews crew put it: (Earl is a) Control freak and dictator!, even as they Godwin themselves right off the bat.

Frankly, I simply need to make sure it's a person typing those comments and that's all.

Feel free to verbally whip and beat me mercilessly.  The comments will appear and be followed by a response.

Sometimes, that response will be "please, sir, may I have another?"  

Posted by Earl at 01:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meanwhile, over at Salon, Tom Tomorrow makes a point.

But Clockwork Smurf really nails it in comments:

How dare Mr. Tomorrow imply that the Republicans are now only pretneding to care about issues important to the American People!

The Republicans have been pretending to care about issues important to the American People for decades!

HA!

Posted by Earl at 01:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read far too many cartoon strips each and every day.

It's nice when they point out some truth, though, and I look for those things.

For example, Frazz.

Posted by Earl at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may never have heard of Sheldon Adelson.  He's one of the quiet billionaires in the country today.

You may not agree with everything the man has done:

In 2007 Adelson founded Freedom's Watch, a group that advocates America's continued involvement in the war in Iraq, and is run and supported, in part, by former officials of the Bush administration.

I certainly don't in every case.

But the man does, occasionally, have his heart in the right place:

All too familiar with the gambles of war, Jimmy Kinsey, Kyle Riley and a few dozen fellow soldiers landed in the desert. But for these guys this Memorial Day, the most at stake is a few bucks.

The soldiers-turned-high rollers took a private jet to Las Vegas over the weekend for an all-expenses-paid getaway with all the perks normally saved for casinos' richest regulars.

They were greeted at the airport by Wayne Newton, chilled backstage with the guys from Blue Man Group and hobnobbed with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who runs Las Vegas Sands Corp. and paid for the trip.

The trip, organized by the Armed Forces Foundation, brought 40 wounded soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md., to the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

It's a nice gesture, of course, but I would certainly hope that this is not held up as an example of how all of our returning warriors are being cared for.

There is, as Kirk said, still a lot of work to to in that regard.

So let's get on that, OK?

Posted by Earl at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, yeah.  Memorial Day.

...So, hey I got a day off of work today.  I went to the park and listened to the speech.  I sat around.  Excellent.  Tomorrow life will be back to normal.  Whatever that is....

Every couple of weeks, at my job,  we have somebody come in looking for a job, who says,

"Yeah, I just got back from Iraq [or Afghanistan],"

and I say, "So you're looking for work?"

and he or she says, "Yeah, I've got to find something for the summer.  I might be deployed again in a couple of months."

I always really want to ask them, What is it like to be over there?  How do you feel about going back?  How do you feel about being back?

They never seem very eager to talk about it. 

If I press for details, hesitantly, I usually get something like this: "I did communications.  Like, when we have to call in support, I make sure the radios are working."  Or, "I'm a maintenance mechanic.  I work on jet engines."  Or, "Mostly patrols."

Never, "It was hell."  Never, "It was great." 

Just--"This is what I did."   

The women and men we have serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world are, as far as I can tell, the finest of our citizens.

All I can say from a southern Minnesota town on a Monday night in May, is that I dearly, dearly wish all of you a safe trip home. 

All I usually end up saying when I meet one of you folks is:

Thank you.

Posted by Chuck at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From CBS Sunday Morning:

Again, Thank You.

Earl, Kirk, and Chuck.

Posted by Earl at 05:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If only because she's proving herself to be such a tenacious candidate, QT:

Facts plus

News headline: "Clinton may take delegate fight to convention."

Blog headline: "Hillary Clinton: Obama can have the nomination when they pry it from my cold dead hands in Denver."

As we continue to investigate the subtle differences between the news business and the blog business.

Posted by Earl at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've never seen South Pacific but Frank has and knows how the stories about war can often be passed from conflict to conflict with only a few changes in details:

Watching “South Pacific” now, we’re forced to contemplate Iraq, which we’re otherwise pretty skilled at avoiding. Most of us don’t have family over there. Most of us long ago decided the war was a mistake and tuned out. Most of us have stopped listening to the president who ginned it up. This month, in case you missed it, he told an interviewer that he had made the ultimate sacrifice of giving up golf for the war’s duration because “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf.”

“South Pacific” reminds us that those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle. It increases our admiration for the selflessness of Americans fighting in Iraq. They, unlike their counterparts in World War II, do their duty despite answering to a commander in chief who has been both reckless and narcissistic. You can’t watch “South Pacific” without meditating on their sacrifices for this blunderer, whose wife last year claimed that “no one suffers more” over Iraq than she and her husband do.

"...those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle."  That can certainly be a problem once the leaders start showing certain...tendencies.

Have a safe holiday.

Posted by Earl at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Earl at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Maybe we should:

McCain: Well, in 2004, I expect to be campaigning for the reelection of President George W. Bush, and by 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there.

Bless this internet.

Posted by Earl at 06:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kirk sent me an article:

Audit finds lax oversight in contractor payments

An internal audit of some $8 billion paid to U.S. and Iraqi contractors found that nearly every transaction failed to comply with federal laws or regulations aimed at preventing fraud, in some cases lacking even basic invoices explaining how the money was spent.

Of the money paid during a five-year period — from 2001 through 2006 — $7.8 billion in payments skirted billing rules with some violations egregious enough to invite potential fraud, warned the Defense Department's inspector general.

The findings provided fresh fodder for anti-war Democrats, who say the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the problem of corruption and fraud by relying too heavily on contractors to manage the war.

Kirk: I disagree with the third paragraph.  The administration didn't turn a blind eye, they actively encouraged and fired whistleblowers.

I'm assuming that Kirk meant that the administration actively encouraged the lax oversight and got rid of people pointing out the obvious sacking of the U.S. Treasury.

True enough for me to post that alone, but Kirk probably realizes, himself, that it's all going according to plan.

The class war is over, the rich won, and they will continue their own plan for income and wealth redistribution on their own terms and for their own benefit.

Posted by Earl at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

Hell, I can even see her point in some ways though I believe optimistic hope for survival is called for at this point.

Strangely enough, even though there are and will be threats to Barack as long as he is alive, I'm not as worried about him at this point.

After all, Nixon is dead.

Update: Keith Olbermann is feeling a bit peeved about Hillary's remark.

There will be a Special Comment on this topic tonight...and judging by how agitated he seems early in the show tonight it is going to be a doozy.

Posted by Earl at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Or bad tv sitcom script?

You decide:

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

Our government investigating vegan terr'ists when the vegan terr'ists are merely a subgroup of a probable-near-majority of citizens who would want to protest the RNC convention for some reason or another.

As well as doing such a poor job of it.

Posted by Earl at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Until then, watch this:

Posted by Earl at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Honest.

Posted by Earl at 03:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, no, but maybe the rock could finally come down.

It seems like a dream, but Rove could finally be getting himself some payback:

(Washington, DC)-Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) issued a subpoena to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for testimony about the politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), including former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's case. Yesterday, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, sent a letter to the Committee expressing that Rove would not agree to testify voluntarily, per the Committee's previous requests.

"It is unfortunate that Mr. Rove has failed to cooperate with our requests," Conyers said.

"Although he does not seem the least bit hesitant to discuss these very issues weekly on cable television and in the print news media, Mr. Rove and his attorney have apparently concluded that a public hearing room would not be appropriate. Unfortunately, I have no choice today but to compel his testimony on these very important matters."

(via BradBlog/Emphasis mine)

Sworn testimony has been the thing to be avoided for the past 7 1/2 years, it seems.

I'm not saying it's true, but is it difficult at all to think that, with the vast web of lies spun by the current administration, it's possible that no one actually has the full story straight?

I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

P.S.  Dan Abrams has really taken an interest in this story and is recommended viewing for those interested.

Posted by Earl at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm looking at some numbers from the primaries and punching numbers into the computer.

There seems to be a trend, but I'll tell you about it later.

It's a good trend, though... 

Posted by Earl at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)