FAKE

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms. Giles’s comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

Where’s the kerning squaders for truth now?

If reactionary conservatives weren’t dishonest they would have no other recognizable qualities. Fuckers.

Oh, and by the way, that backdoor bill of attainder that Congress tried to pass about ACORN? Ruled unconstitutional today. Suck on that, freepers.

Also, I want an apology from Jon Stewart for running so hard with this story.

Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs, dirty words and the demise of humanity, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin was amazing. His routines were those of a 2%er who managed to actually connect with the rest of the world. From religion to sex to politics to culture to plain reason, he was a veritable cornucopia of wit and humor.

In sum, I have this to say: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

Some favorite quotes.

Religion convinced the world that there’s an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there’s 10 things he doesn’t want you to do or else you’ll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! …And he needs money! He’s all powerful, but he can’t handle money!

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

Update: he got better as he got older. To a point. Just don’t read the later books.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the things you can trade in (I don’t know precisely what will come up; it’s a dynamically generated frame):

And their banner advertisement looks something like this:

Yet another thing that’s probably more Chartoo’s forte than mine, but I’m kind of excited about day trading in the presidential aspirations of Saint Rudy. I know. I need to get out more.

The biggest problem I had so far was actually getting money into the system – their security is quite a bit more comprehensive than the one-click universe we’ve been inhabiting. This is good in that I’m pretty confident any phishers aren’t going to be going there to take your money, but it can also be a drawback if you spot a sweet market opportunity for the avian flu’s arrival date in the U.S.

If you click the banner ad above, theoretically I get $50 if you both put some money in and do a bunch of trading over the next 90 days. If you just want to go to intrade.com and skip the lurve-giving to me part, I’m totally OK with that. I’ll just give you the puppy dog eyes and maybe sigh a little bit.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that the Department of the Army, per order of U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, has released to Judicial Watch approximately 100 pages of documents which detail the multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract awarded in 2003 by the Army to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. One document uncovered by Judicial Watch suggests the United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) may have publicly lied regarding the involvement of the Vice President’s office in awarding the contract.

In an email dated April 22, 2003, Carol Sanders of the USACE, writes, “Mr. Robert Andersen, Chief Counsel, USACE, participated in a 60 Minutes interview today in New York regarding the sole source award of the oil response contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root….Mr. Andersen…was able to make many of the points we had planned.” Sanders subsequently provided sound bites from the interview, including, “There was no contact whatsoever (with the VP office).”

This directly contradicts another email uncovered by Judicial Watch in 2004. The email, dated March 5, 2003, sent by an official of the Army Corps of Engineers whose name was redacted, stated, “We anticipate no issue [with the KBR deal] since the action has been coordinated w VP’s office.”

Read the emails. They’re just patently awful, and a sign of just how corrupt this government is. Using soldiers to cover for the asses of the powers behind the throne, who are lining their pockets with corrupt no-bid contracts given to incompetent contractors. This is the kind of government behavior you typically only see in despotisms or autocracies. Rarely does this pervasive, blatant corruption exist for any period of time in a democracy.

Hmm… I wonder what kind of government we have?

Bush: You gonna ask your question with shades on?
Wallsten: Yes…
Bush: But there’s no sun out here.
Wallsten: It depends on your perspective.
Bush: Touché.

The key bit of information here is that Wallsten is blind.

There’s no way Bush should not have known that, Wallsten’s been around for a while. He’s just defaulting back to his towel-snapping assholery in the form of jokes. What a dick.

Update now that I have cable, I saw the Daily Show cover this in depth yesterday. It was awesome.

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The key question the reporters have to ask the suddenly laconic Luskin is, “is there a sentence saying ‘provided Rove continues to cooperate’ in the letter?” As disappointed as I am that Rove isn’t going to spend a long time in an orange jumpsuit, I think it’s obvious that this is only true because he turned and said whatever he needed to say to keep his evilness out of jail.

Which means a frogmarch for Cheney is still a possibility.

Unlike, you know, Osama bin Laden.

Anyway, I didn’t feel I had anything to add on the issue that wasn’t already covered by other bloggers. But The Atlantic just published a wonderful article titled The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that is well worth a look. Even if much of the information is old, it never hurts to repeat the truth when combatting the propaganda.

Of note is not only his background precis:

Everyone I spoke with readily acknowledged that as a teenager al-Zarqawi had been a bully and a thug, a bootlegger and a heavy drinker, and even, allegedly, a pimp in Zarqa’s underworld. He was disruptive, constantly involved in brawls. When he was fifteen (according to his police record, about which I had been briefed in Amman), he participated in a robbery of a relative’s home, during which the relative was killed. Two years later, a year shy of graduation, he had dropped out of school. Then, in 1989, at the age of twenty-three, he traveled to Afghanistan.

What the Jordanians think

“If you want to understand who Zarqawi is,” a former Jordanian intelligence official had told me earlier, “you’ve got to understand the four major turning points in his life: his first trip to Afghanistan; then the prison years [from 1993 to 1999]; then his return to Afghanistan, when he really came into his own; and then Iraq.” He thought for a moment. “And, of course, the creativity of the Americans.”

And, finally, how he was a useful prop for Bush, first as a justification for the illegal, elective war he wanted, then as a bogeyman, and finally as a last, desperate attempt to boost his 33% approval rating (I’m editorializing and rephrasing, of course. Ms. Weaver does not say so directly and in any event it would be outside the scope of the article).

During my time in Jordan, I asked a number of officials what they considered to be the most curious aspect of the relationship between the U.S. and al-Zarqawi, other than the fact that the Bush administration had inflated him.

One of them said, “The six times you could have killed Zarqawi, and you didn’t.”

When Powell addressed the United Nations, he discussed the Ansar al-Islam camp near Khurmal, in northern Kurdistan, which he claimed was producing ricin and where al-Zarqawi was then based. On at least three occasions, between mid-2002 and the invasion of Iraq the following March, the Pentagon presented plans to the White House to destroy the Khurmal camp, according to a report published by TheWall Street Journal in October 2004. The White House either declined or simply ignored the request.

More recently, three times during the past year, the Jordanian intelligence service, which has a close liaison relationship with the CIA, provided the United States with information on al-Zarqawi’s whereabouts—first in Mosul, then in Ramadi. Each time, the Americans arrived too late.

As Wolcott says, the Jordanians were practically tearing their rotator cuffs trying to point out where Zarqawi was, and we would not listen.

So the 3rd season of the Al-Zarqawi Show ended with the protagonist being offed, and all I can wonder is … who’s going to be the star of the new show (just don’t mention Osama!)

the news that a committee of scholarly bootlickers has blackballed Juan Cole’s candidacy for a tenured professorship at Yale absolutely refuses to leave me in peace.

This may not seem like particularly noxious news, at least when compared to the stench of putrefying corpses hanging over Haditha, or the Nazi stab-in-the-back myths now being recycled in Right Blogistan, but it’s touched an extremely raw nerve with me – because of what it says about the age of fear and intellectual intimidation that we live in, because of the unadulterated vileness of the self-appointed commissars involved, and, not least, because I consider Juan Cole my friend, and a man who won’t take the time to speak up for a friend who’s being blacklisted is, as the Godfather might put it, less than a man.

Now, I don’t know Juan Cole. He and I aren’t friends, and he probably doesn’t need any defense from me. What I do know is that he is a fair-minded intellectual history professor who is an expert on the Middle East, fluent in the languages of the region. And english. Which is nice, since I don’t know those other languages.

In addition to his other pursuits, Professor Cole maintains a blog, focusing on the news out of Iraq and the region at large, gathered in large part from the news sources of the region and translated by Cole. Because he’s fair-minded, because he speaks the truth about things like Zarqawi and Ahmadinejad and the actual situation on the ground and Israel’s policies and how it affects Palestinians, he has been relentlessly attacked by the mouthbreathing pond scum of the right wing bigotsphere. It’s his view that Palestinians are people too, and whose rights are being infringed, that has brought the thermonuclear righty meltdown (see also, the uproar over the papers about AIPAC’s influence, etc.)

Cole doesn’t need our defense in any substantive way; he’s ably smote all of the fools who challenged him on factual or interpretive grounds (particularly Goldberg, a repeat ass kickee). Cole could probably use some moral and publicly-stated support, however, because you see, the vile, dishonest, cowardly, Stalinist cretins of the right have finally found a way they could hurt him: by working money angles to keep him from getting tenure at Yale. And it worked.

Tenured History Professor is, essentially, the pinnacle of the history professor profession. He is immensely qualified and would be a great addition to that campus. By all objective, reasonable, academic terms, he was a shoe-in.

But the righties have turned their slime machine onto the donor list of Yale. Libelling Cole with accusations of antisemitism and urging jewish donors to contact the school and protest.

In a “highly unusual” move, Cole has been denied tenure.

Cole knows about the conspiracy. In his typical even-handed way, this is what he said on the vote:

Cole, while refusing to comment on the tenure committee’s vote, told The Jewish Week he believes that the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity.

“The articles published in the Yale Standard, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the Washington Times, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, contained made-up quotes, inaccuracies, and false charges,” he said. “The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity.”

This is how you say “this is fucking ridiculous” in academic-speak. And thus, a good, honest man is denied a post for which he is emminently qualified.

So the anti-intellectualism, the closed, ignorant, propaganda arms of the right are in full display. What do they have? Money. Money and no morals or ethics. They can’t win in the war of ideas or in the war of facts, but they can abuse the structures of power and pull levers with their money in a way to make it miserable for the non-authoritarian cultists. Billmon has a decent rundown of the history prior to this nomination. The result is shocking and appalling. McCarthy would be proud. As is every person who fantasizes about the Jewish cabal running the world.

But what’s really bizarre about this business is the massive propaganda firepower being trained on one mild-mannered Middle East specialist with a blog. Just the thought of Juan Cole at Yale was enough to send the Rubins and the Mowbrays and the Powerliars into a full-blown conniption fit – like the lady elephants in Dumbo once the mouse shows up. This reaction reeks of fear, in much the same way as the panicked response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s recent paper on the Israel Lobby. It’s totally out of proportion to the political threat these Ivory Tower types would seem to pose to the great and powerful Oz.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

So if you get the chance, drop Professor Cole a note saying you support him. The forces of evil, ignorance, and darkness have won. Again. I’m tired of this shit.

The Senate almost voted to repeal the estate tax last fall, but Republican leaders postponed the vote after Hurricane Katrina. It’s easy to see why: the public might have made the connection between scenes of Americans abandoned in the Superdome and scenes of well-heeled senators voting huge tax breaks for their even wealthier campaign contributors.

But memories of Katrina have faded, and they’re about to try again. The Senate will probably vote this week. So it’s important to realize that there’s still a clear connection between tax breaks for the rich and failure to help Americans in need.

Any senator who votes to repeal the estate tax, or votes for a “compromise” that goes most of the way toward repeal, is in effect saying that increasing the wealth of people who are already in line to inherit millions or tens of millions is more important than taking care of fellow citizens who need a helping hand.
…
Who would benefit from this largess? The estate tax is overwhelmingly a tax on the very, very wealthy; only about one estate in 200 pays any tax at all. The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart.

Once again, the procedural vote will be the important one. If the vote for cloture succeeds then the bill will surely pass at an estimated cost to we, the People, of hundreds of millions of dollars. All for the benefit of herpes-infested nothings and antisemitic goons and messianic, prudish, sanctimoniously evil poverty profiteers.

This pandering to the base by the GOP is almost as sickening as the blatantly transparent bullshit W (et.al.) is spouting about supporting a Hate Amendment to the Constitution (side note: seriously, how mouth breathingly stupid are the bigots who vote GOP? Every 2 years, they pull out the same bigoted, nativist, mouthfrothing hate agenda as if they’re going to do something about it, and every 2 years these undead zombies pull the lever. And yet… nothing is ever done. Along with being hateful and inhuman, they’re all dumber than a bag of rocks.)

There are more than a couple senators and ’08 wannabe preznits who will vote for cloture and then against the bill on the full Senate floor. This is what Biden and Lieberman (among others) did on the execrable bankruptcy bill, and what Cantwell and Lieberman (among others) did on the scAlito nomination. This is what McCain will do. I’m sure Lieberman will right there with him.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong.

This echoes my thoughts almost precisely. The bookies, too, were betting on Kerry. The bookies!

I’m generally loathe to join in conspiracy theories, but I think it a likely truth that the last two national elections were stolen from we, the People. The scale of the corruption and antidemocratic evil is just so astounding that is almost incomprehinsible, and to quote Han Solo, “I can imagine a lot.” It may not be centrally directed (who needs to centrally direct when you’ve got willing, fanatical authoritarian participants in positions of power in every county? You read the bulletpoint memo and let them loose), but the corrupt effort is widespread, and on the state level pervasive, particularly as to intimidation and disenfranchisement via bureaucratic moves or lies (adding up to more than vote count fraud, though I have no studies to back me up as the subject is impossible to study).

However, as there’s no clenis involved and the fascists GOP holds all the reins of power, there will never be an investigation, nor will anyone be held accountable. Except the powerless and the small whose backs are going to be first against the wall, that is. The media hand-waves it all away without really looking at the issue. After all, what’s in it for them?

Kennedy’s article is the most important so far on our disenfranchisement, not necessarily due to the depth, but due to the publication it appears in – Rolling Stone. This is the widest reading yet and as close to mainstream as this will probably ever become. Hell, I may have covered this a couple times before (here and here), but Jane and Joe Schmoe have probably never even considered the issue.

Once the sheeple wake up and realize we’re living under the autocratic thumb of authoritarian cultists with no democratic legitimacy, well… I’m sure they’ll flip the channel right back to American Idol.

But a couple might not.

Update: Manjoo raises substantive issues with RFKjr’s article. RFKjr has been reliable in the past, but it is possible he overreached and possibly been dishonest. I’m looking forward to the reply.

Update 2: RFK responds. I find Manjoo’s overall points uncompelling and his rebuttal of the RFK response particularly weak. I think what we can all agree on is that something about the results from Ohio 2004 stinks like a frat house bathroom the night after a party. The particulars may not be precise, but we know something was up, as all the results went wildly in favor of the GOP beyond all reason or expectation, and the situation needs to be examined and fixed.

Furious black lawmakers, rallying behind Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), were pulled back from the brink of open revolt against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an emergency meeting with her Wednesday evening.

Jefferson is on tape taking and putting into his car’s trunk $90,000 worth of money that was serial number matched to the bills found in his freezer. He’s corrupt and he’s stupid and he needs to resign for the good of the party.

The CBC putting the interests of one of the members of their subset ahead of interests of the Democratic party – and let’s not forget the country – is really fucking stupid. On the political side, it will add legitimacy to the false equivalency bipartisan bullshit that the media will try to use in re: the Republican culture of corruption. DeLay took $400 million, Jefferson $90,000… but it’s not going to matter to the media with their “but the Democrats are corrupt too!” messaging. It is also bad for the party nationally as it reinforces the belief that all politicians are corrupt and the false image that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.

I’m not saying that the FBI sweep on his office was legitimate – it’s not, both on Unitary Executive bullshit grounds (even Hoover never thought he could raid a Congresscritter’s office) and it’s also almost certainly partisan and racially motivated (DeLay and Cunningham’s offices were never ransacked) – but supporting him on this small battle loses the war.

Jefferson is corrupt. Jefferson is harming the country and the party. He needs to go.

Yet again, Senate Democrats show that they have no more concern for the rule of law and for the excesses of this administration than Senate Republicans do. Due to their really pitiful passivity, they are every bit as much to blame for the excesses and abuses of the administration as the compliant Republicans are.

Even acknowledging their minority status, they have done a pathetic job as a minority party; acting more like sycophants or the fawning courtiers of the media than an actual legislative body.

Outside of Feingold, they’ve rolled over on every important decision in the past 6 years and they deserve all of the scorn you can give them. Bankruptcy, Iraq, the Supreme Court, wiretapping, Iraq, Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib, Iraq, confirmation hearings, Iraq. The sole win for them in the past half decade was Social Security. That’s it. GOP – 3 million, Dems -1.

Pathetic and shameful. When the history of the downfall of the United States into a theocratic despotism is written (written after the downfall of the despotism, of course… or by furriners), the complicity and credulity of the media and the complacency and cowardice of the one and only opposition party will take up many chapters.

Vichy. Quisling. 21st century Democratic party.

The only thing saving these sad sacks is that we don’t have a parliamentary system. That’s it. I don’t think “we’re not as bad as those assholes” makes for a good campaign slogan or a solid foundation of support, though. Do you?

After initially agreeing, Senator Lieberman has declined our invitation to participate in the MoveOn.org Political Action online primary for U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

The phrase ‘whiny little bitch’ comes to mind. In a completely gender-neutral sort of way, of course.

I think 33 percent is a pretty bad number for an incumbent senator to give up to a challenger nobody ever heard of. Certainly, the Lamont team members were staggering around like dazed lottery winners. “Pinch me,” Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan told a comrade. The Lieberman team was acting like they knew it all along. “Can we count or can we count?” Lieberman manager Sean Smith languidly told a reporter. He was unpersuasive. It may have been a number that tumbled out of their worst-case game theory, but it certainly was not a number they wanted.

The real number is lot worse for Lieberman than 33 percent. I don’t know how big the Lamont vote would get if you could tabulate the no-shows and the sleeper cells of delegates who plan to vote differently in the primary, but I do know it’s a bigger number. And the convention is full of party regulars, usually the easiest people to keep in line. Wisdom of the ages would suggest that the “amateur” voters are potentially much more rebellious.

Congrats to Lamont. He still has a primary to win, but with these numbers, it is highly likely that Lieberman is toast. Goodbye, Joe, you sanctimonious, sexist, prick. You will not be missed.

For those that don’t remember that Joe was the first person (not just Democrat) on the Senate floor to call for impeachment, for those that don’t remember Lieberman’s constant attempts to stifle free speech, for those that don’t remember Joe’s vote for cloture on the heinous bankruptcy bill, for those that don’t remember Joe’s vote for cloture with regards to scAlito, how about his support for rapists’ rights?

Lieberman said he believes hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims for “principled reasons” shouldn’t be forced to do so. “In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital,” he said.

Again, congratulations to the Lamont team. Keep on truckin’!

President Bush . . . has a positive job approval in just three of the 50 United States. This according to 50 separate but concurrent statewide public opinion polls conducted by SurveyUSA for its media clients across the country. Only residents of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho view the president favorably.

I’m amazed there are enough morons still around in any state to give him a majority approval anymore. You know, after the massive die-off from eating the bad batch of Goldstein paste.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Update: looks like Jason Leopold is not the most trustworthy of sources, so grains of salt. As it has now been two full business days in the week since this report came out, let’s just say it’s veracity is in doubt. For my part, I think it highly likely that Rove will be indicted in the near future. There are very few other possible explanations for Fitzgerald’s actions.

Here’s Hitch:

Aaaaand here’s Juan:

Christopher Hitchens owes me a big apology.

I belong to a private email discussion group called Gulf2000. It has academics, journalists and policy makers on it. It has a strict rule that messages appearing there will not be forwarded off the list. It is run, edited and moderated by former National Security Council staffer for Carter and Reagan, Gary Sick, now a political scientist at Columbia University. The “no-forwarding” rule is his, and is intended to allow the participants to converse about controversial matters without worrying about being in trouble. Also, in an informal email discussion, ideas evolve, you make mistakes and they get corrected, etc. It is a rough, rough draft.

Hitchens somehow hacked into the site, or joined and lurked, or had a crony pass him things. And he has now made my private email messages the subject of an attack on me in Slate. (I am not linking to the article because it is highly unethical and Slate does not deserve any direct traffic from my site for it.) Moreover, he did not even have the decency to quote the final outcome of the discussions.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that indicted former California Congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham may not have limited his good times to partying on a rented yacht. It turns out the FBI is currently investigating two defense contractors who allegedly provided Cunningham with free limousine service, free stays at hotel suites at the Watergate and the Westin Grand, and free prostitutes.

The two defense contractors who allegedly paid most of the bills, said the Journal, were Brent Wilkes, the founder of ADCS Inc., and Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc.; both firms profited greatly from their connections with Cunningham. The Journal also suggested that other lawmakers might be implicated. I’ve learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees—including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post. I’ve also been able to learn the name of the limousine service that was used to ferry the guests and other attendees to the parties: Shirlington Limousine and Transportation of Arlington, Virginia. Wilkes, I’ve learned, even hired Shirlington as his personal limousine service.

I shall dub thee Watergategate. The person who “now holds a powerful intelligence post” is Porter Goss, the head of the CIA, btw.

Some 1.2 million children under 18 were living in counties rendered disaster zones by Katrina. As many as 8 percent, or 100,000, are expected to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, according to one assessment.

Most experts say the toll is likely far higher. Of the first 1,000 children screened by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, 27 percent displayed symptoms of trauma, including nightmares, flashbacks, heightened anxiety and bedwetting, says Dr. Joy Osofsky, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at LSU’s Harris Center for Infant Mental Health.

George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

Howard Kaloogian is a GOP candidate running for office in California. He put up this bit picture on his website showing a photo from his “trip to Iraq” of “downtown Baghdad,” purporting to show how peaceful the whole thing is and how the MSM just wasn’t showing all the good news coming out of Iraq (JMM’s original post):

One problem: it wasn’t a picture of Iraq. It was a picture of Bakirkoy, a suburb of Istanbul. That’s Turkey to members of the reality based community.

Once again, we have a perfect example of today’s GOP in action: there is no self-serving action that is not worth lying, cheating, stealing, slandering, libelling, or breaking the rules for.

Update: more on Kaloogian and who exactly has their hands shoved up his mannequin hole. Short answer: Move America Forward

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

Which explains the conservative fixation on restraints, bondage, and man-on-dog sex. If you’re self-reliant, you don’t need the dog or the dog collar.

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, criticized by some evangelicals for comments about Venezuela’s president and Israel’s prime minister, lost a bid for re-election to the National Religious Broadcasters’ board of directors.

Interesting how some animals are more equal than others.

George Deutsch, and how he is the perfect characterization of the Bush administration. An ignorant, fundamentalist, lying zealot who harms the nation. And Deutsch is just a pimple on the right’s ass.

The American Taliban strikes again, this time the geezers at the Superbowl Halftime.

Bush’s close relationship with Jackoff Abraham.

The reanimated Egyptian zombie/waste of space Kate O’Beirne’s pearl clutching on Hardball over the politicization of Coretta Scott King’s funeral.

How McCain is a scary, crazy wanker, and how the media wants to suck his cock anyway. Obama’s our hope and McCain’s already trying to take him down… and Lieberman is helping him. More than help, actually. Lieberman not only sold Obama down the river, he sold tour packages for the ride.

Time, Inc.s aiding and abetting the furtherance of a criminal conspiracy from the White House, just as much as the NYT, WaPo, and Novakula did.

… and about 30 other things.

Oh, and I’m totally jonezing for some baseball right now.