Write Your Own Caption

Bush: 'Yes I vetoed that stem cell research bill but that looks like a mighty comfy wheelchair you'll be spending the rest of your life in. Enjoy these Tootsie Rolls with your dad who I'm sending back to Iraq next week.'

Things that make you go 'hmmm...'

It was widely reported on Thursday that the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and fervent Bush supporter (who apparently speaks to Bush every Monday), Ted Haggard of Colorado Springs, has been accused of having a 3 year gay relationship with a hooker who came forward to expose the situation.

Despite staunch denials, Haggard announced that he'll step down temporarily, which seems like an odd move for a man who proclaims he's innocent of the allegations.

Hmmm...

Update: And speaking of those 'family values' types of Republicans...

Sheesh.

'School bus driver fired for giving Bush the finger'

Via CTV:

SEATTLE -- A school bus driver fired after she reportedly made an obscene gesture at U.S. President George W. Bush has filed a union grievance in an attempt to get her job back.

The 43-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was driving middle school children back to school after a zoo visit on June 16 when the president and Republican Representative Dave Reichert drove slowly by in a motorcade.

From the bus, the children waved; with the windows down in their car, Bush and Reichert waved back.

That's when the driver gave the president the finger, according to Reichert and Issaquah superintendent Janet Barry.

"The congressman hadn't seen it, but the president turned to him and said, 'That one's not a fan,''' said Reichert spokeswoman Kimberly Cadena.
[...]
Niegowski said the firing was not politically motivated.

"The bus driver was not terminated for making an obscene gesture at the president. The bus driver was terminated for making an obscene gesture in view of the students,'' Niegowski said. "That's not the role modeling we need for our students.''

You mean role modeling like this?

MacKay: Lebanon Evacuation Like a Mall at Christmas

You're a Canadian citizen in Lebanon when Israel is suddenly dropping bombs all around you. You seriously need help to get out of the country. You contact the Canadian Embassy and wait - not knowing how long it might take to escape to safety. You and your children are panicked. Fear not! What you're going through, according to Foreign Affairs minister Peter MacKay is just like what happens at a mall at Christmas time - minus the Santa, the decorations and the stores, of course.

Peter MacKay: worst Foreign Affairs minister ever.

Allen Camp E-mail Calls Webb a Pedophile

Okay, ummm, ouch...

Frank Schaeffer: I should be supporting Allen. Instead, I'm leaving the party.

I'm a Christian, a writer, a military parent and a registered Republican.

On all those counts, I was disgusted by an e-mail I just received that's being circulated by campaign supporters of Republican George Allen, who's trying to retain his Senate seat in Virginia.

The message goes like this: "First, it was the Catholic priests, then it was Mark Foley, and now Jim Webb, whose sleazy novels discuss sex between very young teenagers. ... Hmmm, sounds like a perverted pedophile to me! Pass the word that we do not need any more pedophiles in office."Democrat James Webb is a war hero and former Marine, wounded in Vietnam and winner of the Navy Cross. He was writing about class and military issues long before me and has articulated the issue of how the elites have dropped the ball on military service in his classic novel Fields of Fire. By the way, that's a book Tom Wolfe calls "the greatest of the Vietnam novels."

[...]

According to the Allen camp's logic, God would be a pedophile, too. After all, we Christians believe God inspired the Bible. And God-the-author chose to include the "sleazy" story about Lot offering to send out his young virgin daughters to be raped by the men of Sodom.

The Bible has masturbation scenes, rape, pedophilia and God's favorite man – King David – warming himself with a young virgin in his old age. He's the same man God tells us committed murder after he indulged his peeping Tom fantasies.

Lucky for God-the-author that He's not running against George Allen.

Amen to that!

I have no idea who Frank Schaeffer is but good for him for exposing yet another dirty Allen trick.

And is it any surprise that the fear-o-sphere is not only blaming the so-called 'nutroots' for this e-mail but that they're also attacking Frank Schaeffer? That blogger threw in everything but the kitchen sink into that post. Pathetic. That is the smell of desperation. I'm sure heads will be exploding next week when they lose the House and possibly the senate.

Update: Here's more on Frank Schaeffer.

The NYT Slams Bush

Because he deserves it...

The Great Divider

As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he’s settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can’t defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies.

Not that that's news...

In Mr. Bush’s world, America is making real progress in Iraq. In the real world, as Michael Gordon reported in yesterday’s Times, the index that generals use to track developments shows an inexorable slide toward chaos. In Mr. Bush’s world, his administration is marching arm in arm with Iraqi officials committed to democracy and to staving off civil war. In the real world, the prime minister of Iraq orders the removal of American checkpoints in Baghdad and abets the sectarian militias that are slicing and dicing their country.

And Iraq's Shiites along with American voters have had more than enough.

In Mr. Bush’s world, there are only two kinds of Americans: those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don’t. There are Americans who support the troops and Americans who don’t support the troops. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.

Mr. Bush has been pushing these divisive themes all over the nation, offering up the ludicrous notion the other day that if Democrats manage to control even one house of Congress, America will lose and the terrorists will win.

'A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.' -Edward Abbey

'It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.' - Voltaire

But he hit a particularly creepy low when he decided to distort a lame joke lamely delivered by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry warned college students that the punishment for not learning your lessons was to “get stuck in Iraq.” In context, it was obviously an attempt to disparage Mr. Bush’s intelligence. That’s impolitic and impolite, but it’s not as bad as Mr. Bush’s response. Knowing full well what Mr. Kerry meant, the president and his team cried out that the senator was disparaging the troops.

Bush's reaction calls for a word stronger than 'creepy', that's for damn sure.

...This is hardly the first time that Mr. Bush has played the politics of fear, anger and division; if he’s ever missed a chance to wave the bloody flag of 9/11, we can’t think of when. But Mr. Bush’s latest outbursts go way beyond that. They leave us wondering whether this president will ever be willing or able to make room for bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship in the two years he has left in office.

Well wonder no more. It isn't going to happen.

It's Crazy Week in Washington

Last week, when the VP of torture endorsed waterboarding, right-wing spinmeisters (including his cranky wife) were quick to come out and shout that Cheney doesn't support torture. Right. Poor Dick was misunderstood and dunking people in water while they're being interrogated ain't no big thang, is it? I mean, c',mon...

This week however, when John Kerry screwed up his joke about Bush, those same right-wing spinmeisters morphed back into the vultures they are and poked his eyes out like he was a fresh carcass in the desert. No misunderstandings there. Kerry deserved it, as far as Bush and his ugly, relentless flock were concerned.

Mouthpiece Tony Snow during Wednesday's WH press briefing:

Q But basically, when you cited the Vice President before as an example, what he said last week about a dunk in the water, some human rights groups interpret that to mean, the Vice President -- they interpret it that the Vice President was condoning water boarding and that he was condoning torture. The Vice President came out, spoke to reporters, and said, that's absolutely not what I meant. He never apologized to anyone if they took it wrong, or anything like that. And you basically said, look, people took it the wrong way, he did not condone that. John Kerry is now saying, that's not what I meant. Why won't you take him at his word, like you wanted the Vice President --

MR. SNOW: I'll tell you what I did, is I actually took the Vice President at his word and recited it verbatim. The question you've got to ask is, why are you trying to explain it away rather than ask the simple question?

Q I'm not trying to explain it away.

MR. SNOW: Well, it's --

Q You cited the example of the Vice President, and said, "last week you all jumped on him."

MR. SNOW: What did I do? I read the Vice President's exact words. And I'm reading -- look, Harold Ford has come out today and said, please -- I don't think he said, please -- but he said --

Q The Vice President's own words were -- he was asked a question about a dunk in the water, is that okay --

MR. SNOW: Then he said it's a no-brainer. And then he's explained that, and I read back the words precisely. So I've read back the words. Why doesn't Senator Kerry, rather than saying, I meant to put in the word, "us" -- and you try to put in "us" here, left out the word "us" -- and if you don't -- if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. Where does "us" fit in? You don't "us" get stuck? I don't understand. It just -- it doesn't scan here.

Q We're not here to explain his words. But you were saying the Vice President --

MR. SNOW: It's up to him to explain his words. And so what they've done now is said, he didn't say what he meant to say. Fine. Then just get out and say, I messed

-- not merely that I botched a line, follow it up, because apparently a lot of people are pretty ticked off about this, Ed. And what they say is, it came across as an insult to us, and the way you deal with it when you make an insult, just say you're sorry.

Snow is incredibly obtuse if he can't figure out where the word 'us' fits into what Kerry said:

"You do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well; and if you don't you get [us] stuck in Iraq."

Kerry also released this statement on Wednesday:

As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.

Regardless, disgruntled and delusional right-wingers will no doubt keep pushing the lie that Kerry insulted the troops. Snow even wrongly stated during his press conference that Kerry was 'the head' of the Democratic party. Can they be any more obviously desperate to deflect attention from their gross mismanagement and corruption? I don't think so.

Can we now focus on the fact that Bush said on Wednesday that he thinks Cheney and Rumsfeld 'are doing fantastic jobs' and that he plans to keep Rumsfeld on throughout his term as president? There's a gift, Democrats. Run with it. If anyone is insulting the troops, it's Bush by keeping the Worst Secretary of Defence Ever in his post as soldiers keep dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Write Your Own Caption

Bush: 'Bring my crown back when you're done, will ya?'

Random News & Views Roundup

- Another Republican blogger wakes up and smells the stench.

- War games in the Gulf: Just as I predicted, Iran is now responding with its own little show of testosterone.

- Meanwhile:

Israel warned on Tuesday that it might rethink its adherence to the cease-fire resolution that ended Lebanon war this summer, following a United Nations report that Syria was smuggling arms to Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Israel's IDF has been conducting surveillance flights over Lebanon as well in recent days. All of this military posturing, along with the Israeli government's impatience with the Lebanese government (which hasn't exactly had a very long time to deal with disarming Hezbollah since the recent UN resolution was passed), does nothing to foster any kind of trust for long-term peace in the Middle East. Why can't everybody (the US/Iranian/Syrian/Israeli governments) just sit down and talk? This machismo is ridiculous.

And, to add fuel to the fire, the Bush administration is now saying that the Syrian and Iranian governments are plotting to overthrow the Lebanese government. When WH mouthpiece Tony Snow was asked about this serious allegation on Wednesday, he said he can't offer any information about why Bushco beleives this to be true because that information is 'classified'. Right...

- Following Flaherty's announcement on Tuesday regarding income trusts, the TSX and the Canadian dollar dropped dramatically.

Canadian income trusts are popular with foreign investors, who might move their money elsewhere if they are forced to pay tax on Canadian trust holdings.

- Why does Canada need 100 tanks?

- New military watchdog report out today:

Canada's military watchdog says health concerns of soldiers exposed to toxic material while serving in the Gulf War were largely ignored, and he worries the situation isn't much better for troops deployed Afghanistan.

In a special report to be released today, called Heroism Exposed: An Investigation Into the Treatment of 1 Combat Engineer Regiment Kuwait Veterans, Yves Cote said he's troubled that legitimate concerns from Canadian Forces personnel deployed to Kuwait in 1991 weren't given the "weight and respect" they deserved. And the Ombudsman for National Defence and Canadian Forces said troops in Afghanistan aren't adequately alerted to environmental and health risks in the theatre of operations.

Not only that...during his press conference today Cote said the government doesn't even have up to date information about the soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan. You can read the government's press release here. "Toxic substances"? Like depleted uranium, perhaps? Why the hell has it taken this long to deal with these problems?

- Via The Province:

Stronach said, "Norman Spector's label hit new lows," adding that she was appalled at the precision of his slur.

"The precision"? Ummm, what?

My Little Rooster

Here's a pic of my little rooster grandherb from his first Halloween. He's 9 months old. All together now: 'Awwwww...'

(Click on the pic for the larger version.)