Catching Up...Again.

You know, I've really been dragging my feet lately on this blog, and I regularly feel guilty about it because it seems like every post lately has to do with catching up from the last time. However, I look at it this way: When I hear about this stuff - stuff like the things I'oll be writing about in this post - I like to let it sit in my brain for a little while so I can attempt to write something coherent, as opposed to blasting off on an unplanned rant that reads like a fever dream.

(I realize that some of you might feel like pointing out that most of my writing reads like a fever dream anyway, but I'll assume you mean that in a nice way and ask you to keep it to yourself.)

Anyway... Let's go to the replay.

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"Rummy, you're doin' a heckuvva job..."

In the wake of no less than seven retired military generals calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, President Bush today released a statement saying, in effect, that he fully stands behind Rummy and the job he's doing. Isn't that a nice little Easter egg for the guy?

It's a shame, though, because almost immediately afterward a new document came to light directly linking Rumsfeld to the torture of captives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Looks like the egg was rotten.

What really twists my nipples about this is that Rumsfeld has tried twice to resign from his job, but Dubya wouldn't accept it. Now he's got an opportunity for the exact thing he wanted, and he won't freakin' go away!

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"Special K" Street

Grover Norquist, according to The Hill, is trying to trademark the name "K Street Project" to keep Democrats and Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) from using it in a negative way. Here's a little background from that article:

Norquist said he founded the K Street Project in 1989 to bring ideological balance to lobbying firms. His group distributes weekly jobs bulletins by e-mail to 250 subscribers. This week’s bulletin is a 75-page dossier with positions at the Federal Election Commission, Merrill Lynch, the American Health Care Association, WellPoint and Home Depot.

Norquist said, “We argued to K Street — to trade associations, Fortune 500 companies, the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers — you should hire people who agree with you philosophically. That means, labor unions, you should hire liberals.”

But the phrase “K Street Project” has since come to encompass a nefarious practice
of Republican lawmakers pressuring groups to hire right-leaning employees; Rep.
Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was admonished by the House ethics committee for doing so in 1998.

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum has come under fire in his reelection race from Pennsylvania Treasurer Bob Casey Jr., his likely Democratic challenger, for hosting weekly meetings between Republican senators and lobbyists, another event that has come to be seen as part of K Street Project.

Norquist’s trademark application could take up to a year and a half to be processed.

In the meantime, DailyKos blogger mini mum suggested that "[s]ince it will take 18 months to process the application, I suggest someone photoshop the icon with a couple of streetwalkers under it..."

Okay. You asked for it:

(Photoshopped by yours truly.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Jack Abramoff part of the K Street deal, too?

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Libby Gives Cheney The Finger Fingers Cheney

This little tidbit comes from an article in the National Journal:

Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.

And Libby's testimony also points to Dubya, former press secretary Ari Fleischer, and, as always, Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove.

I think it's getting to a point where it would be easier to just list the people at the White House who weren't involved in some with with the CIA leak case. As best as I can tell, the list is as follows:

• Some of the kitchen staff
• Jenna Bush
• The lawn maintenance guy
• The Bush family's dog, Barney (unverified)

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Zacarias Moussaoui: What a Dickweed

Currently going through the death-penalty phase of his trial, would-be al-Qaida terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be tried in this country in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, says he's glad that people died on September 11th, 2001. He also has suggested that he and wannabe shoe-bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack yet another plane and crash it into the White House.

Already found guilty, Moussaoui is doing everything he can to get himself executed, his argument being that he would rather be executed "in battle" than die in a prison cell. My personal opinion is that he should be given life in prison for that reason alone. Why should this assclown be given the death he wants so badly, allowing him to portray himself as the martyr he so badly wants to be? Stick him in a box and let him rot. That'll learn him.

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The First Democrat to Throw His Hat into the 2008 Election is...

...some guy that almost nobody has ever heard of.

Mike Gravel is the first Democrat to announce that he will run for president in 2008.

Now, when I first read this, I, like I'm sure many of you who are reading this now are doing, immediately thought, "Who?" Fortunately, the dirth of information on these here "internets" and about two minutes of research reveals that Gravel actually does have a bit of a history about him. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about him:

Maurice Robert Gravel (born May 13, 1930 in Springfield, Massachusettes), better
known as Mike Gravel, was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Alaska for two terms, from 1969 to 1981. He is primarily known for having put into the public record a large portion of the Pentagon Papers by entering 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Senate subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, in 1971.

He is the first declared candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. (My emphasis.)

Ah... Well, that explains it. He's a former Democratic Senator from Alaska who hasn't held office for twenty-five years, and read parts of a report about the government's involvement in Vietnam to a subcommittee for the Committee on Public Works. Why hasn't this guy been elected president already? (Did you catch the subtle sarcasm in there?)
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Iran, Israel, and the Bomb

The really big story (as opposed to the continuous stream of scandal news surrounding the White House and Republicans in Congress) is that Dubya and Friends have turned their sights on Iran because they are enriching uranium. BushCo is convinced that Iran is trying to build nuclear (or "nukyular", if you're White House staff) weapons, insisting that they could have a nuke in days.

According to Juan Cole, professor of history at University of Michigan (GO BLUE!), this is not the case:

Iran Can Now Make glowing Mickey Mouse Watches

Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade."

The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.

The title says it all, I think. And there are others who believe that Iran is at least sixteen years away from being able to produce anything like a nuclear weapon.

On a related subject, while the U.S. actually has some support for the idea that Iran's attempts to enrich uranium might not just be for peaceful purposes, you would think that they would be doing everything they could to look as unthreatening and docile as possible.

You would think...

However, what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is doing may not qualify as "thinking," as such.

It seems that Ahmadinejad made a statement Friday about how he is looking forward to "annihilating" Israel. From the article:

Days after announcing that Iran had successfully enriched uranium, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called Israel a "rotten, dried tree"
that will be annihilated by "one storm."

Opening of at the opening ceremony of the Qods (Jerusalem) conference in Tehran on supporting the Palestinians, Ahmadinejad fired a series of verbal shots at Israel, saying it was a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated, and again questioning the validity of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews in World War II.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihiliation," Ahmadinejad said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm," he said.

This is not, of course, the first time that Ahmadinejad has made statements such as these. Last October, he said Israel should be "wiped off the map." He also said of the Holocaust, "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"

That guy needs a better speechwriter...

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And that wraps it up. I'll try to be a bit more regular about posting from now on.

All the best,
Derek
(DCF)