"Ah'm tryin tuh set the bar low for future preznits"Jobs, the economy, taxes and spending? These are really issues you wanna highlight your party's absolutely abyssmal handling of? The very same minorities your party has marginalized, and even demonized, over the past four decades? Oh, hell, I'm not even gonna bother with that one; it's just too easy. Rove is convinced that Senator Clinton (again, for him, the presumptive Democratic nominee) is "eminently beatable." This may, or may not be true; we'll certainly find out in a year's time. But, if he deems that any of the current GOPer frontrunners are up to the task, he is truly deranged. In much the way that Rove cannot bring himself to mention the name of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his bright shining lights of the Republican party tend to speak his name seldomly as well. Again in direct opposition to Rove's contention that "every presidential election is about change and the future, not the past," well, it seems that this current crop didn't get the memo, as they tend to fall all over themselves to bask in the retro-glow of Gipper Glory. No matter how much they wish to believe otherwise, Karl and the boys must dwell in the shadow of he who cannot be named, for that is the red meat for which the party faithful yearn. From promises to "double Guantanamo" to assurances that lowering taxes raises more money, revelling in a fantasy world from which their good sense can never possibly escape is the signature philosophy of the modern GOP. This is what you've sold Karl; this is what your party owns.
Via AmericaBlog, I was directed to serial traitor Karl Rove's newest paying gig, penning paens of praise for the nutty neocons in Newsweek.
...read on...
Karl is still a-strategizin' for the GOPers, and his latest offering to the party is how they can beat Hillary come November '08 (always assuming, of course, that she is actually the Democratic party's nominee). It's ignorable dribble, for the most part, but a few excerpts are necessary just to illustrate that these people have no reality but that which they create for themselves:Umm, anyone remember "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Ronald Reagan's famous question had almost nothing to do with the future, and everything to do with the past & the present. Essentially, Reagan was asking, "hey, why don't you elect me...what's the worst that could happen?"In fact, the entire Republican conservative philosophy has long been one of regression, not progression. Karl came of age during the ascendency of this regressive philosophy. Who the hell is he trying to kid?Emphasis mine. The Republican President? What's the matter Karl, has he truly become such an embarrassment to you and yours that you cannot bear to speak (or write) his name?
His name is George Walker Bush. You know, the man you've been selling to America for lo so many years? The man whose legacy your party will have hung around your necks like a lodestone for the next generation? Here's a reminder of better times, to jog your memory:
Tackle issues families care about and Republicans too often shy away from. Jobs, the economy, taxes and spending will be big issues this campaign...
Those of us in the Reality-Based Community do not need another example that the members of the Bush (Mis)Administration love power, but actually hate government. For those of you still on the fence here is yet another example...
...more on the flip... The Transportation Security Administration touts its programs to ensure security by using undercover operatives to test its airport screeners.
That's right, the TSA, that nun searching juggernaut, with an annual budget of nearly $5 billion dollars, decided the best way to deal with a dismal screening record was to hedge its bets, and pat itself on the back for a job well done.
The government routinely runs covert tests at airports to ensure that security measures in place are sufficient to stop a terrorist from bringing something dangerous onto an airplane. Alerting screeners when the undercover officer is coming through and what the person looks like would defeat the purpose.
But that's exactly what happened on April 28, 2006, according to an e-mail from a top TSA official who oversees security operations.
Hey guys, you're doing it wrong. The sure way to "prove" government cannot work, which is the ultimate neoconservative goal, is to continue your business as usual, and keep failing those screening inspections.
After all the RBC knows you have no interest in actually protecting the American people, whether airline passengers or sick children. Keep gaming the system, and you'll never shrink the size of government enough to "drown it in a bathtub."
In it's never-ending efforts to make sure your children's future income is spent as efficiently as possible, the Army is ensuring National Guardsmen returning from 22 months in Iraq do not qualify for full educational benefits under the G.I. bill. Those clever bean counters at the Pentagon deployed more than 1,100 of them for only 729 days… exactly one day short of the 730 days needed to guarantee thousands of dollars a year for college.
In it's never-ending efforts to make sure your children's future income is spent as efficiently as possible, the Army is ensuring National Guardsmen returning from 22 months in Iraq do not qualify for full educational benefits under the G.I. bill. Those clever bean counters at the Pentagon deployed more than 1,100 of them for only 729 days… exactly one day short of the 730 days needed to guarantee thousands of dollars a year for college.When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.
Hobot and Anderson must be some of those "phony soldiers" Rush spoke of this week.
1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.
"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."
Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.
Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.
"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.
[snip]
Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.
Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
[snip]
Senators Klobuchar and Coleman released a joint statement saying the Army secretary, Pete Geren, is looking into this personally, and they say Geren asked a review board to expedite its review so the matter could be solved by next semester.
Minnesota National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson said the soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice."
This is almost too precious, too perfect and too yummy to believe. Yes, Il Douche'™ has done it again, mangled the English language in ways almost too painful to convey. And this time, he did it at a rally for...education!!!
The Commander-in-Chief was at an event with school kids in New York City Wednesday. It was a photo op designed to show the importance of education.
And that's where his latest tongue twisting emerged. Talking about his education policy, Bush boldly told the crowd - which included some horrified English teachers - that "childrens do learn."
"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he made clear. It's worth noting that when the official transcript of the event was issued by the White House, the mistake had been corrected. It's not the first time the U.S. leader has left the grammar police grimacing. During his first run for the Oval Office, Bush famously asked "Is our children learning?"
If the query he posed on Wednesday is any indication, the answer appears to be definitely not.
Go sell crazy somewhere else, Jack. We're full up here."As president of the United States, I will get him, and we will enact justice against Osama bin Laden."
“Initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure.”
“We’re not going to repeat that mistake,” he said. “We’re tough, we’re
determined, we’re relentless. We will stay until the mission is done.”
In October 2002, Robert Grenier, a former director of the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence center, visited the new Kuwait City headquarters of Lt. Gen David McKiernan, who was already planning the Iraq invasion. Meeting in a sheetmetal warehouse, Mr. Grenier asked General McKiernan what his intelligence needs would be in Iraq.
The answer was simple. “They wanted as much as they could get,” Mr. Grenier said.
Throughout late 2002 and early 2003, Mr. Grenier said in an interview, “the best experienced, most qualified people who we had been using in Afghanistan shifted over to Iraq,” including the agency’s most skilled counterterrorism specialists and Middle East and paramilitary operatives. That reduced the United States’ influence over powerful Afghan warlords who were refusing to turn over to the central government tens of millions of dollars they had collected as customs payments at border crossings.
While the C.I.A. replaced officers shifted to Iraq, Mr. Grenier said, it did so with younger agents, who lacked the knowledge and influence of the veterans. “I think we could have done a lot more on the Afghan side if we had more experienced folks,” he said.
A former senior official of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which was running both wars, said that as the Iraq planning sped up, the military’s covert Special Mission Units, like Delta Force and Navy Seals Team Six, shifted to Iraq from Afghanistan.
So did aerial surveillance “platforms” like the Predator, a remotely piloted drone armed with Hellfire missiles that had been effective at identifying targets in the sparsely populated mountains of Afghanistan. Predators were not shifted directly from Afghanistan to Iraq, according to the former official, but as new Predators were produced, they went to Iraq.
“We were economizing in Afghanistan,” said the former official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. “The marginal return for one more platform in Afghanistan is so much greater than for one more in Iraq.”
Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.
U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.
But counterdrug proposals by some U.S. officials have met fierce resistance, including boosting the amount of forcible poppy field destruction in provinces that grow the most, officials said. The approach also would link millions of dollars in development aid to benchmarks on eradication; arrests and prosecutions of narcotraders, corrupt officials; and on alternative crop production.
[P]roponents call [for] an "enhanced carrot-and-stick approach" to
supplement existing anti-drug efforts. They are the focus of the new $475 million program outlined in a 995-page report, the release
of which has been postponed twice and may be again delayed due to disagreements,
officials said.
Counternarcotics agents at the State Department had wanted to release a 123-page summary of the strategy last month and then again last week, but were forced to hold off because of concerns it may not be feasible, the officials said.
The program represents a 13 percent increase over the $420 million in U.S. counternarcotics aid to Afghanistan last year. It would adopt a bold new approach to "coercive eradication" and set out criteria for local officials to receive development assistance based on their cooperation, the officials said. [all emphasis mine]
