This would make me sick if I wasn't laughing so hard

The Seattle Times Has a great story about a conservative gone berzerk. David Horowitz has a book out called "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America." wherein he claims "We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. But if you thought they were all harmless, antiquated hippies, you'd be wrong."

He is picking on 101 of the "most liberal" acedemics on college campuses today and the list reads like Righard M. Nixon's famous "enemies list.." It contains the name of one of the UW's favorite teachers, David Barash.

Now I am indeed pissed on Professor Barash's behalf but I guess there's little need. As he says himself, "I was too young and inconsequential to make it to Nixon's enemy list 30 years ago, so I feel like I've arrived."

Poor David Horowitz, He's fallen off the turnip truck of logic. Perhaps he'll meet the other right wing wackos along the long road back to reality.

Dear God...

the Washington Post has claimed here that there have been three times the number of casualties in the sectarian violence than has been reported.

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.

there's more....

"After he came back from the evening prayer, the Mahdi Army broke into his house and asked him, 'Are you Khalid the Sunni infidel?' " one man at the morgue said, relating what were the last hours of his cousin, according to other relatives. "He replied yes and then they took him away."

The Mahdi army is the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtoda Al-Sadr.

They are dragging people from their homes and murdering them. What have we done?

The re-animated coprse of Social Security Privatization

Allan Sloan at Newsweek has an article today about the Social Security Privatization plan by the WH that will make your blood run cold if you have any sense of responsible government in you at all. Here's a quote:

Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.

His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.

If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone. Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union Message last week.

First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security," even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific legislation.

Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress "to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby-boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," adding that the commission would be bipartisan "and offer bipartisan solutions."

But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget.

"The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this." Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare.

I am really afraid to look into that budget too closely now. What else could lurk in the shadows? Perhaps the more important question is "What kind of government slips a fundamental change to the largest social program in the world into it's budget totally under the radar?"

I think you know what kind.

Turning the corner, moving in the right direction...

Whatever the administration euphamism is today the happy news out of Iraq just keeps coming:

Apparent Death Squad Is Linked to Iraqi Ministry

By Nelson Hernandez and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 17, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Feb. 16 -- U.S. and Iraqi authorities discovered an apparent death squad operating within the country's Interior Ministry last month when Iraqi troops prevented a group of highway patrol officers from killing a Sunni Arab man the officers had arrested, an American military spokesman said Thursday.

The 22 men, dressed in the camouflage uniforms of special police commandos, were stopped by chance at an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Baghdad, according to Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who gave a detailed account of the incident to the Chicago Tribune for an article published Thursday. When the soldiers asked the police what they were doing, they responded bluntly: They were going to execute their captive. Instead, they wound up in jail.

Yep, heading in the right direction all right...

Scariest Vice President EVER

Steve Clemons has a very disturbing article about a subject that is starting to get some notice on the liberal blogs today.This article takes on the Vice President's contention that he has the authority to selectively declassify information at his choosing and without any other oversight.

The upshot of this contiention is that Cheney authorized I. Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, to leak the name and occupation of Valerie Plame to reporters using a legal means given him by the President in executive order No. 13292. It is interesting to note that the executive order was signed only three months before this information became public.

Steve says that there is no intrinsic authority to declassify information implied in the executive order that is granted to the VP. There is authhority to classify information but not to declassify it.

It is telling that the administration is using this as a new line of defence after originally claiming that no leak of the name even occured. I have a new found loathing for this administration and it's tactics. Cheney is one scary dude.

What the hell is going on?

I have to ask, " How come the GOP is doing all of the Democrats work for them?" The gild must really be off the lilly now when the republicans are saying things like thisto Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

"I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think they're getting worse in Iraq, they're getting worse in Iran," -- Chuck Hagel (R-Neb)

I know that the war is a political hot potato but they're shooting at their own man here.

Here's the article from ABC News

Dick "straight shooter" Cheney

So I have been thinking about the Dick Cheney shooting incedent a lot now. I am amazed how much actually. I was originally of the mind that this was nothing more than an embarrassing accident, one that would be smoothed over within a day and would result in more business as usual. As it turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. CBS News is reporting on the growing GOP aggrivation with the V.P. I have to say that this fiasco has been handled worse than I have ever seen.

Here is where my head is at right now about this. Cheney had his accident and seriously injured a man that as far as we know was one of his best friends. I'm not going to say that there was antything wrong with that. It was an accident. It could have happened to any hunter and since Cheney has been hunting for all of his life it's possible that the law of averages just caught up to him. It wasn't the acccident that has me incredulous. It's the coverup.

I see no other way of describing what is going on here. This has all of the hallmarks of a classic political coverup. you have the stonewalling and misdirection, the blaming of the victim, and the information dissemination by proxies. All of this is happening when the best course of action would probably have been to just own up to the mistake and tell the american people that you are deeply sorry and are praying for the injured man. Heck I can even think that he could have rescued this thing up until yesterday by being honest and saying, "The reason I didn't come out and tell all of you is because I was embarrassed for my own actions. I am truly sorry and I have conveyed my apologies to the family of my friend and colleague." that is all that it would have taken and this thing would have become a footnote. A bizzare one to be sure but a footnote none the less.

That wasn't done. Cheney has forgotten how to be like most other humans. He lives indepentant of most of the rules of polite society. He lives in secret. Keeping his motives even secret from the president. So now the staff of te White House are going bonkers and the GOP are starting to wonder if he is the right guy for the job. The longer Cheney decides that he is above the fray on this the bigger the disconnect gets. He is proving to all that he is not in the least concerned with anyones agenda but his own. Perhaps this "Straight Shooter" is becoming a "Loose Cannon."

C.O.M.B.A.T.4CHRIST.com

I saw this at Jesus' General today. Looks like a real hoot.

You get all of your standard Christian teaching along with a whole load of combat tactical training to go along with it. Climbing tower, Rappelling, Marching, and lets not forget Firearms training too. Sure to please any youngster.

Yeah, the program is for kids. You gotta problem with that? Future school shooters need to know the proper way to reload. Once they figure out that Christ can't keep them from feeling alienated during high school they will have all of the tactical training they need to lay waste to the heathens that persecuted them; just as he persecuted their lord.

See you in the next life!

Department of Homeland Drug Smuggling

ABC News is reporting that two Air Marshalls have been using their positions to fly large amounts of cocaine across the country. Being an air marshall must not pay that well....

A real "Straight Shooter"

So, of course, it's already been all over the blogosphere but I need to send a shoutout to VP Dick Cheney for his fantastic work in popularising the safety rules of the NRA this weekend. Joshua Micah Marshall has a great rundown at TPM that makes some of the requisite hay of this situation. There are many more out there.

I wonder if there will be continuing invites to all of the NRA events? Do you think we need a new hunter safety czar?

That Ann Coulter... part 2

Once again she has created a very cute and not in the least bit offensive piece of fluff for her pious and loving readers. I will not link to it here as I have determined I will not link to any other racially and morally pure websites from now on. I will not give her any more readers than she can get on her own. She is sweet enough to get them with that sugar that drips off her pen each day.

Oh yeah, that and she is as crazy and hate filled as a shithouse rat with just the same ability to use logic. She should be driven off a cliff along with the rest of the right wing pundit class. Hee hee!

(Did I say that out loud?)

From the "WTF?!" Chronicles

I know, I know... Long time no blog. I have been really busy over here and have had precious little time for the content lately. I apologise. At the risk of giving up my liberal cred I just have to ask WTF?! to this article from CBS News about the first grader who was accused of sexual harassment in Brockton Mass.

I mean c'mon! He's 6! I have a 7 year old and I can tell you there's no sexual harassment going on at that age. There's plenty of good ol' fashioned regular harassment going on, of course. Boys are boys and harassment is going to occur but please lets not pretend that pre-sexualised children are in some way sexually harassing their classmates.

I may be a liberal but I'm not liberal enuogh to believe that.