A Little Guided Research From Tbogg:

We know that Saddam Hussein has Anthrax, as well as botulism and bubonic plague, because the Reagan Administration GAVE him the starter cultures. The emissary on that mission? None other than Donald Rumsfeld. Don't believe me? Type "Rumsfeld" + "Anthrax" + "Iraq" into your search engine.

Boy that Dick Cheney sure is a patriotic guy - he'd never give aide and support to our enemies, right? Think again. As CEO of Halliburton, he went around the UN embargo by using foreign subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump to rebuild Saddam Hussein's oil infrastructure just three years ago. Not only did he seek to do business with Mr.Hitler-with-a-bigger-mustache, he actually broke the law for the privilege! Estimates of the deal vary from between 23 and 78 million dollars, but Cheney's take amounted to approximately thirty pieces of silver (adjusted for inflation from 33 A.D.) Need proof? Type "Halliburton" +"Iraq" into your search engine.

Admiral John Poindexter, recently put in charge of going over your e-mails and credit card receipts, is a convicted felon who sold Stinger missiles to the Iranians, used the profits to fund an international terrorist organization, and then lied to congress about it. Along with the Stinger missiles, Poindexter also delivered to the Ayatollah a Bible and a key-shaped cake. Go ahead and and call us democrats as unpatriotic as you like, at least we didn't bake any cakes for the Ayatollah.

Too young to remember this? Keywords are "Poindexter" +"Iran".


Worried that you or a loved one may have to serve in the Persian Gulf? Take a tip from the President: "George Bush" + "AWOL"

To put all this in perspective, remember that Bill Clinton was hounded for six and a half years by the GOP over a two-bit Arkansas land deal where he actually lost money. Throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton was accused of practically every crime in the book except the one he was actually guilty of: not being a member of the Republican Party.

Let's face it, if any of these clowns had been democrats, the GOP wouldn't be putting them into high office, they'd be putting them to death. For their own sake, please encourage your local democratic party representatives to grow a spine. Quickly. Failing that, here's some advice from Billy Bragg: "Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman."

Finally, A Way To Shed All Those Unwanted Pounds You Gained During Immaculate Conception!

Just look.

Easy, Breezy, Beautiful Caseous

I bet you need your own slogan, too. Go ahead and generate one!

A Little Afternoon Disconnect...

Here are the first lines of three stories I have come across today.

WASHINGTON - Pledging to build a culture that respects life, President Bush (news - web sites) is declaring a National Sanctity of Human Life Day

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - As many as half a million Iraqis could require medical treatment as a result of serious injuries suffered in the early stages of a war on Iraq, U.N. emergency planners said in a document disclosed Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS - Rich nations are committing "mass murder by complacency" by failing to contribute enough money to defeat the AIDS (news - web sites) pandemic that is ravaging Africa and killing millions every year, a top U.N. official says

What can I say? Do you think that the Team Bush audibly snickers when it comes up with things like National Sanctity of Life Day? Oh, by the way, Bush did this last year around the same time. In a completely unrelated story, this is right around the anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Hmm.

If You Tell A Lie Enough Times...

The Bush administration has been working overtime to tie Iraq to Al Queda and it looks like they're making progress with the American people. Here's one question in a recent Knight-Ridder poll:

"As far as you know, how many of the September 11th terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens: most of them, some of them, just one, or none?"

Most of them 21%
Some of them 23%
Just one 6%
None 17%
Don't know 33%

Man, are we in trouble.

Other interesting questions & results here.

We're Number One!!!

Time just put out an international poll asking who really poses the greatest danger to world peace: Iraq, North Korea, or the US? Taks a guess at the results. Do you think that only North Koreans & Iraqis have responded so far?

Woah! Time for Ari Fleischer to announce another Bin Laden sighting!

Jan. 14: President Bush's job approval has slipped to 58 percent in a new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, the first time it has fallen below 60 percent in that poll since before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While still solid overall, his approval was down 5 points from a week ago.

More here.

Back In The Days of Feudalism...

WorldCom, known to many of us as the company that swallowed MCI long distance, has been in the news for misplacing $7 billion and filing for bankruptcy. This story, by Susan Pullam, Jared Sandberg and Deborah Soloman, details how the former CEO, Bernard J. Ebbers, got a whopper of a good-bye present: a $408 million loan at 2.3 percent interest, plus $1.5 million per year in lifetime salary.


Let me run that by you again: a man who was at the helm of a company that just up and lost $7 billion got a $408 million loan, plus $1.5 million in free cash each year. Let's pretend to spend that money for him:


? $408 million is the equivalent of: 204,000 fancy laptops, enough to give one to roughly one in 10 graduating high school seniors this year, or 2,000 new homes at their roughly $200,000 average price.


? $1.5 million a year equals: 345 average yearly payments of TANF (the post-reform welfare); 100 students' full tuition, board and fees at UCLA.


I hesitate to compare lost corporate cash to real world dollars. While we're more than happy to talk about "welfare queens" and "poverty pimps" (and yes, there are welfare cheats), we don't seem to hear the vast sucking sound of white-collar criminals hoovering out our economy. (Not to mention the estimated $12 billion in legal federal "corporate welfare.")

More here.

Slavery, feudalism, totalitarianism, caste & class systems, etc.....on a good day, I like to feel better about the world and how much progress we've made in these areas. Sure, all of them are still with us but I think that the majority of people on the planet would say that each is inherently a bad thing that we should continue to fight against them. Well, that's something, right? As a life form, that's something to be proud of. I hope that one day, the system of corporate feudalism will be looked at with the same backwards glance of relief. By corporate feudalism, I mean the clearly unjust and primative system of a small number of CEOs and other officers of a given corporation making 100 to 1000 to whatever times the vast multitude of wage slaves that support them on the bottom. Maybe we'll look back and think "barbarians." That would be progress, indeed.

This guy Digby just nails it on the whole President CEO Bush. It's an excellent analysis of Bush's decision making patterns.