Swamp Sunrise

Navigation and screen load times within The Swamp seem faster than the old system.

Here's one for the press pool!
*********
The Mark Silva Pool Reporters Blues
(Or 'Free Breakfast')

Well I climbed about that Super-Connie♪
Oh so tired and pretty yawny
Just in time for that free breakfast of
Stale granola bars and warm V8

Well I missed a shower
and a good tooth brush
Why is the pilot so hush hush♫
To see ChiTown now would sure be great

We thought we would see New Europe
Get to enjoy some crepes and syrup
When a big ole wind done caught that Aeroplane

When I looked out the window of the Constellation
I truly noted with some consternation
That we had ended up in Baghdad air space!

That's right! In the Bag as it were
Shocked, awed, and a bit queasy...

There were fighters and missiles everywhere
An F16 here and a Tornado there
But nowhere to be seen was a free breakfast buffet cart!

About this time I started to complain♫
'Hey pilot, could you please explain
Just where the hell are my sausages and squeezed OJ?!

He say, 'don't you worry 'Mr. Brawny'
I'm gonna turn around this big old Connie
Have ya back to Europe in time for a big old lunch.'

So I just sat back and enjoyed the flak
After all, I'm just a ChiTrib hack
And thought about the joys of;
♪
A free,♫,,,,pool reporters,,,,♪,,brunch!!

(Bluesy play out)♬

The narrow posting box font is a pain in the keyboard.

From Joe Klein of Time magazine - no friend of conservatives. Swamp writers take note.

"But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn't move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed — especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable."

I've been away for a few days, and there are a few things I'd like to get off my chest.

Can we talk about the "liberal media?" Is this not the most tired and inane concept on the planet? Let's see what this so-called "liberal media bias was wrought:"

Whitewater/ Clinton Impeachment. Much attention has been paid to the fact that Monica Lewinsky had at the very best a tangential relationship to the Whitewater land deal http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/934276.stm . What I have never seen mentioned is the fact that even IF the allegations of impropriety brought against the Clintons were true (no wrongdoing was ever established despite special prosecutor Starr's best efforts), this should not be an impeachable offense anyway. The allegations go back as far as 1979, and if memory serves me, Mr. Clinton was elected president in 1992. Andrew Johnson (who was not elected president) was impeached over disagreements with Reconstruction, events that took place while he was in office. Richard Milhouse Nixon would have been impeached over the cover-up to the Watergate break in, an event that took place while he was in office. Setting aside the inherent silliness of impeaching a president because he lied about a personal affair, it would be nearly as silly and unprecedented to attempt to impeach him over an event that took place nearly a decade and a half before he took office (assuming, of course, that there is a "there" there). Yet the "liberal media" echoed this issue to the public ad nauseum, despite the fact that the public's appetite for ending the roaring 90's was never as strong as the "liberal media's."

The "liberal media" went along full-throat with the Lewinsky scandal, despite the fact that this supposedly liberal president (he would fairly be classified as, at best, slightly left of center) had approval ratings between 54% and 69% throughout the entire impeachment fiasco, despite the fact that there was never more than 40% support amongst the public for impeachment, and despite the fact that the utter frivolousness of the impeachment cost the GOP a significant share of seats in the 1998 midterms, an election that would traditionally see the president's party lose ground. So the "liberal media" was all for impeachment but the public was not. (In case anyone needed reminding, Mr. Clinton left office with the highest approval rating on record, 65%)

Then you look at the rank hypocrisy of the Dead-Enders who are all up in arms about the Scooter Libby prosecution. Note Wingnut Jerry White's nonsensical rantings diminishing the seriousness of perjury and invoking images of prosecutors run amok. All you need to do is replace Patrick Fitzgerald with Ken Starr and the situation is extremely similar, except of course that at least Prosecutor Fitzgerald was investigating a situation that was directly related to national security, whereas it would be a stretch to elevate Mr. Clinton's sexual proclivity to the level of "national security." Anyone with half a brain would have to admit that if you think Scooter Libby is getting a raw deal, than President Clinton certainly got an equally raw deal. Yet you rarely if ever see a Republican admit such an obvious truth.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson went on the record during impeachment saying that perjury and obstruction of justice are the benchmarks of our legal system, the founding principles of justice, and breaches thereof are amongst the gravest that can be committed as they undermine the fairness of the legal system. When Tom Delay was going through his legal issues, Mrs. Huthinson made very clear that she desperately hopes that the charges against Mr. Delay amount to more than "mere" perjury. Unfortunately, the only way you will ever hear blatant hypocrisy like this exposed is on the Daily Show, ironically the single best place to get the big picture analysis of the people and events that shape our lives.

Somalia. Quick test: which president sent troops into Somalia? If you guessed Bill Clinton, you'd be wrong. The intervention was begun by George HW Bush weeks before leaving office.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/etc/cron.html . Quick test, who wanted to "cut and run" faster from Somalia, President Clinton or the GOP Congress? If you guessed President Clinton, you'd be wrong. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/etc/cron.html
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/republicans-and-congress-war-powers.html Excerpt: "...it was actually Republican Senators who forced Clinton to withdraw troops by imposing troop withdrawal deadlines on him and threatening further restrictions on his ability to keep troops there. But if one goes back and reviews that debate, it is quite striking that Republicans back then certainly did not seem to believe that Congress lacked the ability to restrict the President's power to deploy troops. They argued exactly the opposite - that they had that power -- and they used it to force Clinton out of Somalia." When's the last time you heard the "liberal media" remind its patrons that the arguments the GOP is making about Iraq now are THE EXACT POLAR OPPOSITE arguments that they were making in regards to Somalia? And how often do you hear refuted the revisionist history that President Clinton "cut and ran" from Somalia?

9/11. How many times have you heard the "liberal media" mention the words Project for a New American Century, or most importantly, Operation Vigilante Guardian? (Preface: I'm not saying the the PNAC team "did" 9/11, only that the official story of what our government was and was not aware is, at best, only tangentially related ot the verifiable truth. Whether an act of commission or ommission, the security failures that took place on September 11, 2001 have never been fully explored, therefore it is very difficult to believe that the right solutions have been in place when the official story of what the problem was is so at odds with known security planning at the time)

Operation Vigilante Guardian. The official story of 9/11 is that we just couldn't be prepared for the type of attacks that were executed so effectively on that day. This is Grade A, verifiable, prime bull honky. Two months before 9/11, the G8 Summit in Genoa was ringed with anti-aircraft batteries to protect against what was considered a legitimate threat of hijacked planes being used as weapons to attack the Summit. http://www.prisonplanet.com/Italy_Tells_of_Threat_at_Genoa_Summit.htm

Furthermore, on September 11, 2001 multiple war games were taking place on the East Coast including drills that simulated a hijacked airliner being crashed into a government building. So its safe to say that one could have indeed anticipated that what occured on 9/11 was a "known unknown," to paraphrase PNAC signatory Donald Rumsfeld.

Thus, at the very least, Condoleeza Rice lied under oath when she said there was no indication "that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." This is verifiably and demonstrably false. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0408-04.htm Yet, note how the "liberal media," as exemplified by the oft-cited Washington Post, paints an utterly glowing impression of Rice's performance before the 9/11 Commission and fails to mention at any point that, though she was quite poised in the interview, her assertions are nonetheless verifiably and demonstrably false (Bruce, I hope you are reading this):
Cool, Calm Condoleezza Rice
By Tom Shales
Friday, April 9, 2004;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62757-2004Apr8.html . To this day, I have never heard the "liberal media" challenge Ms. Rice's assertions or the underlying thesis that the attacks were simply unpreventable.

Could the war games on 9/11 have actually damaged the nation's defenses on that day? The 9/11 Commission essentially laughs off the concept. NORAD jets were scrambled on average once very 4.3 days in 2001, yet on 9/11 not one jet is scrambled over the 2 hour period of the calamity? Was anyone ever fired for that failure? Has the "liberal media" EVER held the Bush Administration's feet to the fire over the events leading up to 9/11?

PNAC. Okay Wingnuts, roll your eyes, but PNAC quite clearly laid out the events that would be necessary to consolidate U.S. hegemony and create the impetus for securing Mideast oil supplies using military force long before September 11. It would take an alien invasion or "a new Pearl Harbor" to rally the world around the American cause. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100102_bush_advisors.html Lo and behold, 9 months into office, just such an event occurs, and with a precision of execution that a United States military commander would envy. Again, I am only suggesting that the governments actions were those of ommission, i.e. failure on a much grander and more profound scale than that which has ever been, so far as I know, acknowledged by the "liberal media." Again, how many times have you heard the "liberal media" remind you that the plan to invade Iraq was laid out by those who came to occupy the Bush Administration long before September 11, and that 9/11 and only 9/11 allowed this long sought-after plan to move forward? One final note of interest: the only players of any consequence in the Bush Administration who were NOT signatories to the Project for a New American Century were Colin Powell and Paul O'Neill, and if memory serves me, both of those competent gentlemen have long been off the payroll.

On conspiracy theories: at least those surrounding 9/11 make logical sense and the beneficiaries line up with the motives and vice versa. The tin-foil theories I've been hearing from the right are simply laughable. Take the ongoing references to Sandy Berger's. Here's a scathing partisan rant against Sandy Berger. I don't deny on any level that it doesn't look good. But take this from the article:

"Sadly, this story doesn't interest the Justice Department, which disposed of the criminal charges leniently based in part on false information from Berger. When faced with the fact that Berger had access to original documents on two occasions before Archives' employees became suspicious enough to start marking documents, the Justice Department declared with confidence that no documents had been taken - they asked Berger if he had taken anything during those visits, he said no, and they let the matter rest."

The Justice Department is currently run by Republicans, n'est pas? Why, exactly, would the GOP justice department go easy on a Democrat if they could nail his derriere to the wall, and perhaps, help to ease the political pickle they have gotten themselves into? Why, exactly, is the GOP supposedly protecting (D)Sandy Berger? I am anxiously awaiting the answer to this head-scratcher.

Wingnut Don B suggested several months ago that Osama Bin Laden was actually dead and alluded to reports by French and Russian intelligence services (so, in this case the French and Russians CAN be trusted??) but the "liberal media" just didn't want to report it because it would be good news for President Bush. John Dyslin, resident Loony spotter, saw nothing wrong with this theory and supported it full throat.

So let me get this straight: Osama Bin Laden is actually dead, and instead of holding a press conference and telling the world himself that Public Enemy #1 was no longer lurking, waiting to strike, the president was so impotent he needed the "liberal media" to be his bully pulpit for him. 'Cause, you know, the president just cannot find a microphone when he needs one these days. If Bin Laden was dead and the president wanted the public to know, he would tell us himself or have Mr. Cheney tell us. So if you want to see some conspiracy in this, the more logical thought would be (if you believe the inate silliness that Bin Laden's dead but no one bothered to tell us) that "The Sheik's" death wouldn't benefit Mr. Bush politically because A) he didn't do anything to hasten the man's death and therefore would not really get any credit for killing him or B) Bin Laden is better for the GOP politically alive than dead.

Do Republicans really believe that if Osama Bin Laden wanted John Kerry to be president because he would surrender the country to Al Qaeda, that he would be dumb enough to essentially endorse Kerry as his candidate in the 2004 election? Bin Laden is certainly evil but he ain't stupid; reverse psychology (which the U.S. has consistently fallen for in this "War on Terror") would dictate that if he wanted Kerry he'd endorse Bush and thus so revolt the public that they would support the other guy and vice versa. I think its safe to say that Al Qaeda is plenty satisfied with a cowboy president agrressively alienating our allies while squandering blood and treasure mediating a civil war over a millenium in the making. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/07/07_401.html

At least with the many 9/11 conspiracy theories, the motives and beneficiaries make logical sense. Who benefited most from 9/11? In my humble opinion, that would be the New World Order types who run the Bush Administration and Larry Silverstein, who, less than two months before September 11, leased the most prime real estate in the entire world that just so happened to have two of the world's worst buildings on it. If it weren't for the asbestos in the WTC towers, those buildings would have been redeveloped long ago. But that problem was solved, and enhanced by an unprecedented insurance payout (and a rebuffed attempt at a double dip by the mysterious Mr. Silverstein. If anyone is going to suggest the anti-Semitism card because Mr. Silverstein is a Jew, I am one as well)

One final note on the kind of questions the "liberal media" has failed to ask concerning 9/11. The 9/11 Commission reports that Vice President Cheney, who was in charge of the war game drills, reiterated the order to a subordinate ("THE ORDER STILL STANDS") that the plane being tracked toward the Pentagon should NOT be shot down. This from British MP Meacher http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3036meacher_cheney.html , and yet no one has ever dug into this intriguing statement. What would the Wingnuts say if Al Gore and Bill Clinton refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission and would only do so together so that their stories would be kept straight? I'm sure they would have applauded those Democrats' "solidarity."

Then you have Mr. Silverstein's on-air description of his order to "pull" never-mentioned WTC 7. Setting aside my intense credulity that a civilian such as Mr. Silverstein would ever have the authority to order the pulling (widely accepted construction terminology for a controlled demolition) of a building lease by Department of Defense, National Security Agency, IRS, FBI, Giuliani's New York Command Post, etc. There's the little detail of who actually "pulled" the building and how, exactly, an operation that would have taken 7-12 hours if not days (wiring a building of that size with precision explosives) could be completed in just a few hours. So far as I know, despite the fact that he was videotaped making this jawdropping (though apparently not to the "liberal media") assertion, no one has ever asked the exceedingly obvious follow up question.

And finally, in regards to the "liberal media," there's the entire Iraq War. Quick test: what publication did ardent war supporter Judith Miller work for? If you guessed that anti-American, pinko, Loony Left rag the New York Times you would be correct. The oft-cited "liberal media" outlets the Washington Post and New York Times editorialized almost exclusively on behalf of the decision to pre-emptively invade Iraq. Few if any cast doubts on the obvious lie that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program. And just for the record, in terms of WMD's, biological weapons are indiscriminate and thus nearly impossible to weaponize in a meaningful fashion, and chemical weapons haven't come very far from the mustard gases of WWI to the American-supplied weapons Sadam used against the Kurds in the 80's, a rather ironic casus belli in particular in light of the fact that we'd already been to war with Iraq since then. My point is, without the threat of "the smoking gun becoming a mushroom cloud," Americans would never have supported the war. Yet little, if anything, was done by the "liberal media" outfits to refute the propaganda.

Folks, there is clearly bias in some if not all reporting. But the concept that FACTS have a partisan bias is among the most insidious consequences of the rise of Fox News.

----------------------------------------

I'd love to get into the hypocrisy of those prominent Republicans who accused Mr. Clinton of "wagging the dog" when he retaliated against Bin Laden in '98, or those GOP Congressmen who consistently blocked Clinton Administration legislation designed to enhance the nation's terrorism fighting ability, or the failure of the Bush team to utilize any of the information the Clinton team handed them not "a plan," Rice infamously argued under questioning from former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, but instead "a series of actionable items" describing how to tackle al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or how the largest terror attack in American history took place on Bush's watch after he did literally nothing to lift a finger to stop it and yet he's considered by the "liberal media" a great terrorism fighter, or how laughable it would be to New Yorkers on September 10, 2001 that in the year 2008 Rudolph Giuliani would be the leading Republican candidate for president, etc. etc. Those topics will have to wait for a later date.

----------------------------------
I pray but highly doubt that this country will come to its senses and start coming together to talk about the issues, instead of hurling childish verbal grenades at anyone perceived as "them," which in the context of American discourse in the Bush Years/ Age of Terrorism, more often than not means administration critics more than our true enemies, Al Qaeda.

Dissent is patriotic. Elevating loyalty to one's party over loyalty to one's country is not. Liberals and conservatives both want what is best for the country, and have this nation's increased prosperity and well-being as their goals. Criticising the president is not nor will ever be the same as criticising the troops. America is still the greatest nation on Earth, but we could certainly learn a thing or two from nation's such as the Netherlands (internally: live and let live), Brazil (energy independence), Japan (greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency, technology), Scandinavia (social welfare floor), etc.

We are all in this together. There is nothing to fear accept fear itself. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

I posted this in two places last night, and neither of them made it up, so "liberal media" conspiracy theorists such as John D and co., get over yourselves. Posts get lost and it has nothing to do with anyone being out to get you. I'll try one more time:

I've been away for a few days, and there are a few things I'd like to get off my chest.

Can we talk about the "liberal media?" Is this not the most tired and inane concept on the planet? Let's see what this so-called "liberal media bias was wrought:"

Whitewater/ Clinton Impeachment. Much attention has been paid to the fact that Monica Lewinsky had at the very best a tangential relationship to the Whitewater land deal http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/934276.stm . What I have never seen mentioned is the fact that even IF the allegations of impropriety brought against the Clintons were true (no wrongdoing was ever established despite special prosecutor Starr's best efforts), this should not be an impeachable offense anyway. The allegations go back as far as 1979, and if memory serves me, Mr. Clinton was elected president in 1992. Andrew Johnson (who was not elected president) was impeached over disagreements with Reconstruction, events that took place while he was in office. Richard Milhouse Nixon would have been impeached over the cover-up to the Watergate break in, an event that took place while he was in office. Setting aside the inherent silliness of impeaching a president because he lied about a personal affair, it would be nearly as silly and unprecedented to attempt to impeach him over an event that took place nearly a decade and a half before he took office (assuming, of course, that there is a "there" there). Yet the "liberal media" echoed this issue to the public ad nauseum, despite the fact that the public's appetite for ending the roaring 90's was never as strong as the "liberal media's."

The "liberal media" went along full-throat with the Lewinsky scandal, despite the fact that this supposedly liberal president (he would fairly be classified as, at best, slightly left of center) had approval ratings between 54% and 69% throughout the entire impeachment fiasco, despite the fact that there was never more than 40% support amongst the public for impeachment, and despite the fact that the utter frivolousness of the impeachment cost the GOP a significant share of seats in the 1998 midterms, an election that would traditionally see the president's party lose ground. So the "liberal media" was all for impeachment but the public was not. (In case anyone needed reminding, Mr. Clinton left office with the highest approval rating on record, 65%)

Then you look at the rank hypocrisy of the Dead-Enders who are all up in arms about the Scooter Libby prosecution. Note Wingnut Jerry White's nonsensical rantings diminishing the seriousness of perjury and invoking images of prosecutors run amok. All you need to do is replace Patrick Fitzgerald with Ken Starr and the situation is extremely similar, except of course that at least Prosecutor Fitzgerald was investigating a situation that was directly related to national security, whereas it would be a stretch to elevate Mr. Clinton's sexual proclivity to the level of "national security." Anyone with half a brain would have to admit that if you think Scooter Libby is getting a raw deal, than President Clinton certainly got an equally raw deal. Yet you rarely if ever see a Republican admit such an obvious truth.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson went on the record during impeachment saying that perjury and obstruction of justice are the benchmarks of our legal system, the founding principles of justice, and breaches thereof are amongst the gravest that can be committed as they undermine the fairness of the legal system. When Tom Delay was going through his legal issues, Mrs. Huthinson made very clear that she desperately hopes that the charges against Mr. Delay amount to more than "mere" perjury. Unfortunately, the only way you will ever hear blatant hypocrisy like this exposed is on the Daily Show, ironically the single best place to get the big picture analysis of the people and events that shape our lives.

Somalia. Quick test: which president sent troops into Somalia? If you guessed Bill Clinton, you'd be wrong. The intervention was begun by George HW Bush weeks before leaving office.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/etc/cron.html . Quick test, who wanted to "cut and run" faster from Somalia, President Clinton or the GOP Congress? If you guessed President Clinton, you'd be wrong. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/etc/cron.html
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/republicans-and-congress-war-powers.html Excerpt: "...it was actually Republican Senators who forced Clinton to withdraw troops by imposing troop withdrawal deadlines on him and threatening further restrictions on his ability to keep troops there. But if one goes back and reviews that debate, it is quite striking that Republicans back then certainly did not seem to believe that Congress lacked the ability to restrict the President's power to deploy troops. They argued exactly the opposite - that they had that power -- and they used it to force Clinton out of Somalia." When's the last time you heard the "liberal media" remind its patrons that the arguments the GOP is making about Iraq now are THE EXACT POLAR OPPOSITE arguments that they were making in regards to Somalia? And how often do you hear refuted the revisionist history that President Clinton "cut and ran" from Somalia?

9/11. How many times have you heard the "liberal media" mention the words Project for a New American Century, or most importantly, Operation Vigilante Guardian? (Preface: I'm not saying the the PNAC team "did" 9/11, only that the official story of what our government was and was not aware is, at best, only tangentially related ot the verifiable truth. Whether an act of commission or ommission, the security failures that took place on September 11, 2001 have never been fully explored, therefore it is very difficult to believe that the right solutions have been in place when the official story of what the problem was is so at odds with known security planning at the time)

Operation Vigilante Guardian. The official story of 9/11 is that we just couldn't be prepared for the type of attacks that were executed so effectively on that day. This is Grade A, verifiable, prime bull honky. Two months before 9/11, the G8 Summit in Genoa was ringed with anti-aircraft batteries to protect against what was considered a legitimate threat of hijacked planes being used as weapons to attack the Summit. http://www.prisonplanet.com/Italy_Tells_of_Threat_at_Genoa_Summit.htm

Furthermore, on September 11, 2001 multiple war games were taking place on the East Coast including drills that simulated a hijacked airliner being crashed into a government building. So its safe to say that one could have indeed anticipated that what occured on 9/11 was a "known unknown," to paraphrase PNAC signatory Donald Rumsfeld.

Thus, at the very least, Condoleeza Rice lied under oath when she said there was no indication "that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." This is verifiably and demonstrably false. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0408-04.htm Yet, note how the "liberal media," as exemplified by the oft-cited Washington Post, paints an utterly glowing impression of Rice's performance before the 9/11 Commission and fails to mention at any point that, though she was quite poised in the interview, her assertions are nonetheless verifiably and demonstrably false (Bruce, I hope you are reading this):
Cool, Calm Condoleezza Rice
By Tom Shales
Friday, April 9, 2004;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62757-2004Apr8.html . To this day, I have never heard the "liberal media" challenge Ms. Rice's assertions or the underlying thesis that the attacks were simply unpreventable.

Could the war games on 9/11 have actually damaged the nation's defenses on that day? The 9/11 Commission essentially laughs off the concept. NORAD jets were scrambled on average once very 4.3 days in 2001, yet on 9/11 not one jet is scrambled over the 2 hour period of the calamity? Was anyone ever fired for that failure? Has the "liberal media" EVER held the Bush Administration's feet to the fire over the events leading up to 9/11?

PNAC. Okay Wingnuts, roll your eyes, but PNAC quite clearly laid out the events that would be necessary to consolidate U.S. hegemony and create the impetus for securing Mideast oil supplies using military force long before September 11. It would take an alien invasion or "a new Pearl Harbor" to rally the world around the American cause. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100102_bush_advisors.html Lo and behold, 9 months into office, just such an event occurs, and with a precision of execution that a United States military commander would envy. Again, I am only suggesting that the governments actions were those of ommission, i.e. failure on a much grander and more profound scale than that which has ever been, so far as I know, acknowledged by the "liberal media." Again, how many times have you heard the "liberal media" remind you that the plan to invade Iraq was laid out by those who came to occupy the Bush Administration long before September 11, and that 9/11 and only 9/11 allowed this long sought-after plan to move forward? One final note of interest: the only players of any consequence in the Bush Administration who were NOT signatories to the Project for a New American Century were Colin Powell and Paul O'Neill, and if memory serves me, both of those competent gentlemen have long been off the payroll.

On conspiracy theories: at least those surrounding 9/11 make logical sense and the beneficiaries line up with the motives and vice versa. The tin-foil theories I've been hearing from the right are simply laughable. Take the ongoing references to Sandy Berger's. Here's a scathing partisan rant against Sandy Berger. I don't deny on any level that it doesn't look good. But take this from the article:

"Sadly, this story doesn't interest the Justice Department, which disposed of the criminal charges leniently based in part on false information from Berger. When faced with the fact that Berger had access to original documents on two occasions before Archives' employees became suspicious enough to start marking documents, the Justice Department declared with confidence that no documents had been taken - they asked Berger if he had taken anything during those visits, he said no, and they let the matter rest."

The Justice Department is currently run by Republicans, n'est pas? Why, exactly, would the GOP justice department go easy on a Democrat if they could nail his derriere to the wall, and perhaps, help to ease the political pickle they have gotten themselves into? Why, exactly, is the GOP supposedly protecting (D)Sandy Berger? I am anxiously awaiting the answer to this head-scratcher.

Wingnut Don B suggested several months ago that Osama Bin Laden was actually dead and alluded to reports by French and Russian intelligence services (so, in this case the French and Russians CAN be trusted??) but the "liberal media" just didn't want to report it because it would be good news for President Bush. John Dyslin, resident Loony spotter, saw nothing wrong with this theory and supported it full throat.

So let me get this straight: Osama Bin Laden is actually dead, and instead of holding a press conference and telling the world himself that Public Enemy #1 was no longer lurking, waiting to strike, the president was so impotent he needed the "liberal media" to be his bully pulpit for him. 'Cause, you know, the president just cannot find a microphone when he needs one these days. If Bin Laden was dead and the president wanted the public to know, he would tell us himself or have Mr. Cheney tell us. So if you want to see some conspiracy in this, the more logical thought would be (if you believe the inate silliness that Bin Laden's dead but no one bothered to tell us) that "The Sheik's" death wouldn't benefit Mr. Bush politically because A) he didn't do anything to hasten the man's death and therefore would not really get any credit for killing him or B) Bin Laden is better for the GOP politically alive than dead.

Do Republicans really believe that if Osama Bin Laden wanted John Kerry to be president because he would surrender the country to Al Qaeda, that he would be dumb enough to essentially endorse Kerry as his candidate in the 2004 election? Bin Laden is certainly evil but he ain't stupid; reverse psychology (which the U.S. has consistently fallen for in this "War on Terror") would dictate that if he wanted Kerry he'd endorse Bush and thus so revolt the public that they would support the other guy and vice versa. I think its safe to say that Al Qaeda is plenty satisfied with a cowboy president agrressively alienating our allies while squandering blood and treasure mediating a civil war over a millenium in the making. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/07/07_401.html

At least with the many 9/11 conspiracy theories, the motives and beneficiaries make logical sense. Who benefited most from 9/11? In my humble opinion, that would be the New World Order types who run the Bush Administration and Larry Silverstein, who, less than two months before September 11, leased the most prime real estate in the entire world that just so happened to have two of the world's worst buildings on it. If it weren't for the asbestos in the WTC towers, those buildings would have been redeveloped long ago. But that problem was solved, and enhanced by an unprecedented insurance payout (and a rebuffed attempt at a double dip by the mysterious Mr. Silverstein. If anyone is going to suggest the anti-Semitism card because Mr. Silverstein is a Jew, I am one as well)

One final note on the kind of questions the "liberal media" has failed to ask concerning 9/11. The 9/11 Commission reports that Vice President Cheney, who was in charge of the war game drills, reiterated the order to a subordinate ("THE ORDER STILL STANDS") that the plane being tracked toward the Pentagon should NOT be shot down. This from British MP Meacher http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3036meacher_cheney.html , and yet no one has ever dug into this intriguing statement. What would the Wingnuts say if Al Gore and Bill Clinton refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission and would only do so together so that their stories would be kept straight? I'm sure they would have applauded those Democrats' "solidarity."

Then you have Mr. Silverstein's on-air description of his order to "pull" never-mentioned WTC 7. Setting aside my intense credulity that a civilian such as Mr. Silverstein would ever have the authority to order the pulling (widely accepted construction terminology for a controlled demolition) of a building lease by Department of Defense, National Security Agency, IRS, FBI, Giuliani's New York Command Post, etc. There's the little detail of who actually "pulled" the building and how, exactly, an operation that would have taken 7-12 hours if not days (wiring a building of that size with precision explosives) could be completed in just a few hours. So far as I know, despite the fact that he was videotaped making this jawdropping (though apparently not to the "liberal media") assertion, no one has ever asked the exceedingly obvious follow up question.

And finally, in regards to the "liberal media," there's the entire Iraq War. Quick test: what publication did ardent war supporter Judith Miller work for? If you guessed that anti-American, pinko, Loony Left rag the New York Times you would be correct. The oft-cited "liberal media" outlets the Washington Post and New York Times editorialized almost exclusively on behalf of the decision to pre-emptively invade Iraq. Few if any cast doubts on the obvious lie that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program. And just for the record, in terms of WMD's, biological weapons are indiscriminate and thus nearly impossible to weaponize in a meaningful fashion, and chemical weapons haven't come very far from the mustard gases of WWI to the American-supplied weapons Sadam used against the Kurds in the 80's, a rather ironic casus belli in particular in light of the fact that we'd already been to war with Iraq since then. My point is, without the threat of "the smoking gun becoming a mushroom cloud," Americans would never have supported the war. Yet little, if anything, was done by the "liberal media" outfits to refute the propaganda.

Folks, there is clearly bias in some if not all reporting. But the concept that FACTS have a partisan bias is among the most insidious consequences of the rise of Fox News.

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I'd love to get into the hypocrisy of those prominent Republicans who accused Mr. Clinton of "wagging the dog" when he retaliated against Bin Laden in '98, or those GOP Congressmen who consistently blocked Clinton Administration legislation designed to enhance the nation's terrorism fighting ability, or the failure of the Bush team to utilize any of the information the Clinton team handed them not "a plan," Rice infamously argued under questioning from former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, but instead "a series of actionable items" describing how to tackle al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or how the largest terror attack in American history took place on Bush's watch after he did literally nothing to lift a finger to stop it and yet he's considered by the "liberal media" a great terrorism fighter, or how laughable it would be to New Yorkers on September 10, 2001 that in the year 2008 Rudolph Giuliani would be the leading Republican candidate for president, etc. etc. Those topics will have to wait for a later date.

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I pray but highly doubt that this country will come to its senses and start coming together to talk about the issues, instead of hurling childish verbal grenades at anyone perceived as "them," which in the context of American discourse in the Bush Years/ Age of Terrorism, more often than not means administration critics more than our true enemies, Al Qaeda.

Dissent is patriotic. Elevating loyalty to one's party over loyalty to one's country is not. Liberals and conservatives both want what is best for the country, and have this nation's increased prosperity and well-being as their goals. Criticising the president is not nor will ever be the same as criticising the troops. America is still the greatest nation on Earth, but we could certainly learn a thing or two from nation's such as the Netherlands (internally: live and let live), Brazil (energy independence), Japan (greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency, technology), Scandinavia (social welfare floor), etc.

We are all in this together. There is nothing to fear accept fear itself. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Hehe, nice photo :)

Hi!
nice to meet you!