CMoore.com

There are only 3 states with positive approval ratings for duhbya right now. Billmon calls them ‘Rump States’. I call them dead enders.

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.

The besotted blathering idiot goes and puts a hit piece on Juan Cole on Slate (AKA the new TNR, AKA Joe Lieberman Daily). Well, Juan Cole brings out the whuppin stick. Not that a bleary-eyed, whiskey-soaked Hitchens will be able to read anything besides the label on the scotch his RNC/AEI handlers are currently feeding him along with his hit pieces. What a waste of a formerly formidable mind.

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.

Republican Culture of Corruption

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.

If someone dictates the terms of something, say a contract, they are deciding the framework of that contract. Thus, the dictator is also the decider.

Dictator. Decider.

“I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation,” the president told reporters in the Rose Garden. “But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”

Decider. Dictator.

I was thinking today about many of the social changes that have occurred in the last 12 years or so (though the roots go much further back, but I’m dating it to the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994), and I was struck by the number of changes to our discourse and ideals. Primarily, I was struck by how some things that were once considered repugnant and whose practitioners or believers were considered the most vile, subhuman, and insane persons in the country… are now mainstream.

So I thought I’d make a little table summarizing what I was thinking:

and so on…

You betcha

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.

Bush on keeping Rummy

Bush: I say I listen to all voices but mine’s the final decision and Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job. He’s not only transforming the military, he’s fighting a war on terror – He’s helping us fight a war on terror. I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld. I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation but I’m the decider and I decide what is best and what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of defense.

These same voices are the one that tell him to wear a tutu, smear peanut butter all over his chest, and try to copulate with a Civil War era spitoon, but they are voices nonetheless. And they are speaking to him. Slowly. Using simple words.

Bush values loyalty above all things. Bubble boy can’t abide criticism and the entire Cheney administration is filled with yes persons and Cheney and Rummy. Cheney and Rummy aren’t yes men, but they’re sociopaths with the attendant self-preserving ability to shamelessly lie and fawn when needed. Well, it looks like Rummy’s rusty trombone job worked. Bush, you see, thinks that Cheney and Rummy are loyal… that is, when he’s not thinking about the pretty birds that go tweet.

So Tom Delay has decided not to run for Congress in the fall and has resigned.

Are you scratching your head just a little bit about this? Its not like Tom didn’t know that his Criminal activities were catching up with him when he ran and won in the Republican Primary just a few weeks ago. It was pretty obvious to everyone well before this that hanging on to his House seat was an uphill battle and he is a man running with a safe on his back. So, why run in the primary, and 4 weeks later pull out?

Ah, its that culture of corruption, and the planning of a master criminal. Guess what happens to the $1.3 million that Tom raised for his re-election campaign?? Why, he gets to hang on to it and legally transfer all of it over to his legal defense fund.

He needed to raise money for the defense fund. That was the bottom line. He wanted to make sure he could take care of himself in the court of law. Under federal campaign rules, any reelection money a lawmaker raises can be used to pay legal fees stemming from official duties.– John Feehery, a former Delay Aide

How right we were a decade or so ago when we referred to that Republican document as the Contract ON America.

Is really just a famewhore who would do and say anything to be preznit. Latest example: Jerry Falwell is no longer an agent of intolerance.

RUSSERT: Do you believe that Jerry Falwell is still an agent of intolerance?

MCCAIN: No, I don’t. I think that Jerry Falwell can explain how his views on this program when you have him on.

Why do people still love McCain? He’s in the pocket of the religious reich, he gives good quote but his actions don’t follow his words at all. Just as importantly, in 2008 he will be older than Reagan when Reagan took office as the oldest president ever.

McCain is a nothing. He’s the epitome of surface gleam. A pandering, weak-willed, appeasement monkey to whomever can get him that chair in the oval office.

I shall call him, Rambesus.

I thought Horsey captured the Republican Jesus perfectly, even better than the General, so I wanted to post it for posterity.

Today’s the last fiscal day of the fundraising quarter. If you can, now would be the best time possible to show your love for the Nedrenaline/desire to stop the Joementum.

For better or worse, the candidates that can raise more earlier get far more later as the people with money tend to wait and back the “winning” horses… and you get more money by showing that you can get more money. In any event, giving something, even just a little, in a primary has far more effect than in the general election. Your $10 is probably equal to 100 in the general. I gave a bit to Lamont and if you can, I encourage you to do so as well.

Lieberman must go. That Lamont seems like my kind of Democrat just makes it all the better.

Update: Lamont made it to 3,422 donors, well past the 3,000 goal. Good job!

is also the culture of lies.

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

Given the GOP’s nationalist, jingoist, reactionary, racist proposed bill this week that would make helping an 80 year old across the street illegal if she were an undocumented alien. This unamerican, unchristian, inhuman bill is one of the biggest disgraces of our recent congressional history.

Well, the immigrants and libs heard about it too.

Joining what some are calling the nation’s largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting “Si se puede!” (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.

Given our gilded age, I’m sure this will have as much effect as the worldwide demonstrations against the Iraq invasion. Don’t these GOoPers know who provides all the essential services they rely upon? They cook their meals, they drive the ambulances. They connect our calls. They guard us while we sleep. Do not… fuck with them.

Dick Cheney’s suite demands include a 68 degree temperature and the TV pre-set to the Faux News Channel.

And to think I always thought he liked his brains chilled. There’s probably a rider regarding the ph balance of his graveyard dirt that serves as a sleep/composting mound.

You can’t handle the Joementum!

McEnroe: You probably know that I wrote in the Currant last Sunday that if I had to vote in the primary right now I would, with some sorrow vote for Ned Lamont simply because you have kind of drifted so far towards the Bush Administration whose policies I don’t approve of very much. Tell me why I’m wrong, tell me why I should vote for you.

Lieberman: Well I…I think that your statement just then was as ridiculous and unfair as your column was. I was really upset by it. I don’t get to hear you a lot because I’m in Washington but if you’re saying that on the air really I hope your listeners are taking it with a grain of salt.

First off let me go to something that really bothered me. You have this line saying that I’ve come to a point where I’m saying that those who do not parrot my support of the war are unpatriotic and then you take TOTALLY out of context something that I said in a speech that I gave last December when I came back from Iraq and I urge you to go back and look at that whole speech.

McEnroe: Okay, tell me why…

Lieberman: Let me just finish this!

There’s more. Lieberman’s cracking and Ned Lamont’s going to beat him in the primary. Good. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving prick. The audio, for now, can be found on the WTIC site.