Come Back Another Day

Also from the Seattle Times:

Cartoons are funny.

Ghosts Appear and Fade Away

From the Seattle Times:

[Vice] President Dick Cheney - Shooting his friends in the face, one metaphorical bullet at a time.

Night After Night My Heartbeat Shows the Fear

The Democrats, like Ann Coulter's boyfriends, want to pull out as fast as possible....

What?! You know, because all her boyfriends are Democrats. They're not? Oh...

The story:

Democrats in both the House and the Senate have rallied together to push for an complete troop withdrawal (that's what he said... nyuk nyuk nyuk - okay, I'll stop) by Fall of 2008.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, March 8 — Democratic leaders in the House and Senate began a new legislative push on Thursday for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2008, coalescing behind a fixed timetable to end the war.

The plan to establish a specific date for removing troops intensifies the confrontation with the administration at a time when Congress is scrutinizing President Bush’s request for nearly $100 billion in additional spending toward military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Republicans vowed to block the new Democratic effort, which they said amounted to micromanaging the war, and the White House immediately signaled its opposition.

“It would unnecessarily handcuff our generals on the ground, and it’s safe to say it’s a nonstarter for the president,” said Dan Bartlett, a senior White House adviser, speaking to reporters as he traveled with Mr. Bush to Latin America.

Speaking of Bush's trip to Latin America, his welcoming was much like it is here:

It's great being a liberator.

Anyway, The Democrats plan to attach the pullout plan to a war spending bill that the Administration requested for the wars in Afghanistan (remember that place?) and Iraq. Bush and the White House quickly threatened to veto, prompting Democrats to not give a crap. The pullout will be sooner, according to the plan, if the Iraqi Government doesn't fulfill its end of the agreement, strengthening its soldiers and keeping American soldiers out of danger.

Nancy Pelosi said that her biggest worry was that the far left wouldn't be on board, because the measure calls for a withdrawal in late 2008 rather than right this second, as is the oft-repeated desire of the liberal crowd, without driving away moderate democrats that want the generals not to "have their hands tied."

I choose to form an opinion when it happens.

Day After Day it Reappears

From Spiiderweb™:

Libby found "Not Guilty?" I know the joke is "Faux News" but I think the term "News" is way too strong. Keith Olbermann decided to refer to it as the "Fox Nothing Channel."

I think it's like MTV. It used to be music television, now it's 14 year old girl dating shows. Neil Cavuto can be the blond from Laguna Beach.

Thanks Spiiderweb™ for the picture. And in honor of your blog, today there will be multiple posts, each with a subject line from the lyrics of "Overkill" by Colin Hay.

Good Photo

I think this photo summarizes Walter Reed well. From EAPrez:

The Libby Chronicals

I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby was convicted 4 of five counts. 1 down, Karl Rove next:
Libocrat.com didn't report much on the Scooter Libby trial because it began long before this website was created. So I'll use this opportunity to plug other great websites with good information the trial news, current and past:

WorldMojo.com has info on the possible pardoning of Libby
pro2 has info on why outing Valerie Plame should, itself, be criminal.
Esoterically.net has a piece of an article about why Bush and Cheney should admit their roles in the outing of Valerie Plame
NoSimpleMatter has a little of the history of the scandal.
Archaica has a New York Times Article about the Libby aftermath.
Review This Online tells of the upcoming book.
Cody Lyon has a Democratic Game Plan.

Also check out: David Barillari, Renegade Waiter, MarcoSolo, and Amahchewahwah.

The Right Kind of Anger

By Kevin Baker of The Guardian [Photos Added]:

The American right is angry again. Ever since it narrowly lost control of Congress last November, American conservatives have taken to lashing out in all directions.

Within weeks of the election, rightwing publications were vilifying the authors of the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq as "surrender monkeys" and Israel-bashers. New books by movement intellectuals such as Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Bawer blame jihadist successes on, respectively, American popular culture and European appeasers. No less an authority than William F Buckley Jr, the longtime dean of the modern conservative movement, fulminates against "Defeatocrats" and "Vertebrate-challenged Europeans". And then there was Ann Coulter's tirade at this weekend's CPAC conference: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards," Coulter said towards the end of her speech. "But it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot', so I - so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."

What is going on? The right used to be able to take a punch. Its exemplar was Ronald Reagan, who shrugged off two failed runs for the presidency and made it to the White House by inventing conservatism with a smiley face. That aw-shucks grin could stretch wide enough to cover up everything - from contra death squads to the world's largest banking scandal. Reagan fundamentally altered the way the right presented itself to the world, transforming the clench-jawed negativity of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace into a sunny, optimistic faith in rugged individualism.

Reagan's cheerful chiding of liberals morphed into a vulgar but spirited style of political taunting under the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. Their brand of ridicule was originally so over the top that it often seemed to be satirizing itself, like professional wrestling, while still getting its core message across - a brilliantly effective way of taking down ponderous liberals in an America of all irony.

So why has the right reverted to its old, perpetually angry style of politics? I suspect the creeping disgruntlement has to do with the fact that conservatives have at last been confronted with the realities of their policies in Iraq.

Consider: For more than sixty years now, or ever since the start of the Cold War, the right has insisted that every major international dilemma could be solved merely by the application of American might and will. The Chinese Communists were to be vanquished by "unleashing" Chiang Kai-shek from the island of Formosa; the Korean War could be won by General MacArthur's suggestion to create "a belt of radioactive cobalt" between China and North Korea by dropping some fifty atomic bombs there. The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was to be "rolled back". Castro should have been removed by an American invasion, but failing that President Kennedy should have followed the advice of several of his Joint Chiefs of Staff and used the "opportunity" of the Cuban Missile Crisis to hit both the Soviets and the Chinese with a surprise, atomic attack. Vietnam should have been reduced to the proverbial "parking lot" or at least, according to Goldwater in the 1964 campaign, had its Ho Chi Minh trails cut with nuclear devices. Iran is once again being subjected to George W Bush's scabbard-rattling, and on and on.

Always and forever the right's response to a problem, anywhere in the world, has been to hit it with a two-by-four. This may have once been mere campaign foaming, but somewhere along the way American conservatives made the always fatal mistake of believing their own rhetoric. Under Bush, the right had the opportunity to act on its long-stated worldview for the first time, unfettered by any effective opposition. The results lie broken all around it, in the bloody chaos that is today's Iraq.

This is the end of the line for the right's free ride, for its long insistence on the application of military might, first, last, and always, without having to worry about the aftermath. As a result, the right has drifted into confusion, baffled about how to react to a world that does not, after all, respond to its bidding. In its childlike regression to the movement's early years, conservatives have once again decided simply to throw a tantrum and rail against their ever-expanding list of enemies, at home and abroad. And why not? We have all disappointed them terribly.

The Mission for 10,000

Chris Dodd's presidential website linked to me, making him the first Democratic presidential nominee to quote or reference my website on their weblog, as well as the first presidential candidate to support my quest to be more popular on technorati than Michelle Malkin. Although I received no traffic from the link, linking to me as a 0 of 0 percentage of winning you the presidency (since my blog started November of 2006). That means that for all anyone knows, referencing my site may be the difference between losing or winning the election. I'm looking at you Joe Biden.

Michelle Malkin is currently at 10,213 - so we're going to need to pick up the pace people. I need to see link after link, ping after ping. Obama, I know you can do this. Spread the word.

Exclusive Librocrat Report - Where Are All the Republicans?

For those that troll the newspapers nowadays, one things is blatantly missing: Where are all the news reports about Republican presidential candidates?

Despite the "hype" over McCain, Giuliani and Romney, the news these days is overwhelmingly about Democratic candidates and their positions, locations, speeches, etc. A big switch from November of 2006 when the news was about George Allen, Mark Foley, Hastert, and others - the news today is a pro and con match of the Democrats, complete with anger and love, resentment and appreciation.

The Washington page of the New York Times overwhelmingly references Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, with 5 articles referring to one of the three and zero articles about the Republican presidential nominees. MSNBC's politics page has similar numbers, with 13 articles designated to Democratic candidates while just 5 articles about Republican candidates.

This type of reporting is not limited to "liberal news." On the ultra conservative website "Right Wing News" (www.rightwingnews.com) Hillary Clinton is mentioned 8 times, Barack Obama was mentioned 6, and John Edwards was mentioned a whopping 21 times. On the Republican side (excluded is a posted conversation about the Republican nominees, which I count as 1 for each candidate since they repeat names not for article emphasis but rather to differentiate who they are complaining about in the conversation) Rudy Giuliani is mentioned only 2 times, McCain mentioned 4, and Mitt Romney mentioned just 3 times. All but 1 of those counted for each candidate was the result of a recent poll rather than an article about the candidate. Only 2 articles were about Republican candidates while near 10 were about the Democrats. The results were similar with Townhall.com's ratio of 6:1, Outside the Beltway 3:0. Michelle Malkin got the closest to even with 5:3, but 2 of her 3 articles were about the CPAC conference that she was blogging from. Even the Fox News front page was 3 to 1.

So what is the reason for the excessive focus on Democratic candidates? Is it the star line-up that the Democrats have to offer? The two stars for the Republican party, McCain and Giuliani, are losing their popularity with each passing day – McCain for referring to solder’s deaths as “wasted” and Giuliani for being a MAYOR WHO HAS DONE NOTHING EVER… excuse me, for being a too liberal for the conservative party.

Most likely it is the opposite. Rather than it being the star power of the Democrats it is the indifference towards the Republicans that keeps them out of the news. Liberals and Democrats simple don’t care, while Republicans and Conservatives are using their time to blast the popular Democratic candidates rather than boost the image of their own kind. Whatever the reason, without a good Republican candidate, Clinton and Obama are going to be used so often, they may as well be referred to as “Clobama” similar to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s popular nickname of “Bennifer.”

Although, personally, I’d like to refer to John McCain and Rudy Giuliani as “McLiani.” I could see that as being something that catches on. Maybe Mitt Romney and McCain can be "Romain" - like the lettuce (sans -e)? Or "Romniani?" "MittCain?" "Cainianey?"

Their names are incredibly lame.

Who is Chris Dodd?

While this site supports every Democratic candidate (can't we all just get along?), I've decided to dedicate a post to Chris Dodd, so that those out there who did not know he was running for president now have a reference for the important question: Who is Chris Dodd?

Chris Dodd is a Democratic Senator from Connecticut, alongside Independent Senator and ex-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman. Dodd has a bachelor's degree in English literature from Providence College, and a J.D. From the University of Louisville. He has served 5 consecutive terms as Senator, making him the longest running Connecticut Senator in the State's long history.

Chris Dodd is one of the more moderate members of Congress, but his views are not too conservative for liberal voters. According to his campaign website, www.chrisdodd.com, homeland security is his main platform and he is one of the only Democratic candidates that has a long voting history of troop support (ie, body armor, etc.). Dodd, along with 3 other senators, introduced the "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007," a comprehensive anti-torture bill with the support of the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch among many others. Dodd is a firm disbeliever in the "Guns for Everyone" philosophy of the NRA. He regrets voting for the Iraq war. He is vehemently pro-choice, scoring 100% by Naral on his pro-choice voting record.

He is anti-gay marriage, but voted "Yes" on adding sexual orientation to the definition of Hate Crimes. He supports a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for immigrants.

From his Senate site:

Connecticut’s Chris Dodd is a senior Democratic leader in the United States Senate. A respected legislator who works in a bipartisan fashion to better peoples’ lives, Chris Dodd is best known for his work to make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.

Senator Dodd is perhaps best known for bringing much-needed attention to children’s issues. He formed the first children’s caucus in the Senate and spent almost a decade fighting to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act, which has helped ensure that over 30 millions Americans don’t have to choose between the job they need and the family they love. He also authored and enacted landmark legislation to ensure that our nation provides better access to safe and affordable child care.

His focus on children may be his best asset. Many of the other candidates have been focusing on Iraq, or, in the case of Hillary Clinton, Iraq has become a primary focus of their candidacy even though there are so many other issues that could take precedence. Dodd's reputation is with children, not with foreign policy, so when all the candidates finally start turning towards the domestic issues he is going to have a solid platform from which to solidify himself, and make him a unique candidate in the face of the stars of the party.

Similarly, his lack of "stardom" may be a benefit to him as 2008 gets closer. It will be difficult for him to get the type of funding that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are going to muster, but he will also not get attacked with the same vigor that the two front runners will receive.

It will be interesting to see where Dodd ends up. Regardless of his current status, it takes some balls to put your name in the ring when there are three Democrats that were already in the running before the "running" even began. Best of luck to you, Dodd.

Fun with "Replace All"

I didn't do a great job on this one. I took an article about Sunni and Shiite violence in Iraq and Replaced Shiite with Republican, Sunni with Democrat, Moktada Al-Sadr with George Bush, Baghdad with Washington and so on. And edited accordingly. The original article can be found by clicking here, and it is a well written article about the State of Iraq. But below is my poor attempt at making it more humorous and about congress. It's supposed to be satirical. Enjoy.

WASHINGTON, March 3 — After centuries full of vibrant interaction, of marrying, sharing and Voting across sects and classes, Washington has become a capital of corrosive and violent borderlines. Aisles never crossed. Conversations never started. Doors never entered.

Democrats and Republicans in many States now interact almost exclusively with colleagues of the same sect. Democrats say they are afraid to visit hospitals because Republicans loyal to the President George W. Bush run the Health Ministry, while Republican politicians who used to climb into the back of pickup trucks for work across the Lincoln Memorial in Democratic Washington now take jobs only near home.

The goal of the new Washington security plan is to fix all of this — to fashion a peace that stitches the Country’s cleaved Partisanships back together. And three months into the effort, there are few signs of progress. The number of laws and resolutions passed daily across the capital has decreased to 20 or fewer from previous totals of 35 to 50.

But even in the Partisanships that are improving or are relatively calm, borders loom. Aisles once crossed without a thought in Washington are now bullet-riddled and abandoned danger zones, the front lines of a block-by-block war among Republican militias, Democrat insurgents, competing criminal gangs and Bush Cronies.

Some Americans who have been in both camps say Washington has come to resemble Sarajevo as it began to unravel in the 1990s, latticed with boundaries that are never openly indicated but are passed on in fearful whispers among neighbors who have suffered horrific losses.

Like jagged wounds, the boundaries mark histories of brutal violence. And for Congress, they underscore a vital question at the heart of the new plan: can scarred Partisanships ever heal?

The House of Representatives used to be wall-to-wall people: sidewalks were crammed with neoconservatives, and roads were snarled with energy efficient cars as horns honked. In the heart of Washington, The House of Representatives was known as the road to get from the Global Healthcare Initiatives on one side of the Country to Tax Breaks on the other.

But that has all changed. After seven years of fighting between Democrats and Republicans, Congress is now deserted and forsaken. On a recent afternoon, the only sign of life was a lone Representative working on a darkened podium, his efforts lighted by a single bulb.

Keith Ellison, a garrulous Democrat said he used to view the White House as a place to pass important legislation. Then a few months ago, Mr. Ellison received a threat. They told him, “You are a Democrat, and all Democrats are infidels and their women are prostitutes, so stop coming to Washington or you will be in deep trouble.”

He didn’t listen.

The next day, he was ridiculed on Fox News. Witnesses said a Republican congressman stereotyped him based on his religion as a way to promote his own “Christian values.”

On the other side of the aisle in Congress, lies a mirror image of anger and fear. The response is similar, too: old men with who view themselves as protectors, who justify violence as the reasonable response to Gay Marriage.

Congressman Chip Pickering, a conservative and religious militant with the Republican minority, said he did not hate all Democrats; one of his sisters who lives outside of Washington just married one.

In a recent interview, Mr. Pickering hardly looked fierce, at 5 feet 7 inches tall, wearing jeans and a gray sweater, with a short beard and sunken dark eyes. But he said he could be vicious when called upon because Democratic liberals and moderates in Congress had shown no respect for his pro-life agenda.

The partisan border now seems to define him. He said he lived alone, worked near his apartment by day and was a guard for the conservative agenda at night.

Washington’s relentless verbal violence has also created a deeper divide that may prove equally hard to eliminate: the line between the known and the stranger.

As the unfamiliar has become the dangerous, Congress has developed elaborate disguises to help them pass as members of the other sect: ruses like adopting conservative or liberal strategies with falsified voting records or developing elaborate fictional histories.

Even then, being a member of the same sect or a relative is no guarantee of safety in a Country, Congress says, where Republicans have attacked Republicans and Democrats have attacked Democrats out of frightened uncertainty over whom to trust.

Romney Off to a Roaring Stop

I may have used that title before.

Mitt Romney had a speech today appealing to conservatives... I will pause here for both your "shock" and "awe."

Although receiving an uncharacteristic amount of applause after his exit, his speech was followed up by Ann Coulter - known in liberal circles as the conservative succubus. Now, given the popularity of Coulter in Conservative and Satanic circles, you'd think this would be a good thing for the relatively unknown candidate.

Ah, but then you don't know Coulter.

After Romney's speech, Coulter decided it would be hilarious to refer to John Edwards as a "Faggot."

Oh, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA - He's a gay epithet. That joke is hilarious. Wow. Did you think of that all by yourself? What an original and funny quip! Wow. You must be brilliantly witty to think of such a clever one-liner. What a delightful and clever witticism. Wow. You should really do stand up. Really. I mean you are just so funny.


From Mediainfo:

NEW YORK In recent years she has suggested that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore have or may have homosexual tendencies. Now columnist/author Ann Coulter has targeted former senator (and current candidate for president) John Edwards.

Speaking today at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC) in Washington, D.C., Coulter closed her remarks with: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I -- so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

Audience members appeared startled, then many clapped, and she opened the floor to questions. The event was carried on C-SPAN.

Democratic Party chief Howard Dean weighed in later: "There is no place in political discourse for this kind of hate-filled and bigoted comments. While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on the issues, we should all be able to agree that this kind of vile rhetoric is out of bounds. The American people want a serious, thoughtful debate of the issues. Republicans -- including the Republican presidential candidates who shared the podium with Ann Coulter today -- should denounce her hateful remarks."

Even Michelle Malkin's website is on our side on this one:

The remarks also drew disapproval from some conservative commentators, such as Michelle Malkin. At her Hot Air site, in addition, regular "Bryan" wrote: "I’m no fan of John Edwards, but that’s just a stupid joke. It’s over the line. The laughter it generated across the room was more than a little annoying.
Last year it was 'raghead.' This year it’s calling John Edwards a 'faggot.' Two years in a row, Coulter has finished up an otherwise sharp CPAC routine with an obnoxious slur that liberals will fling at conservatives for years to come. Thanks, Ann."

We should all thank Ann Coulter for her spiteful, curiously homophobic (see: Ted Haggard) words all but guarantee that Romney can't win. So McCain is too old, Giuliani too liberal and now Romney too defamed. I can't wait to see what happens to Sam Brownback.

Conservapedia Makes World News

Not long ago I wrote a post about the conservative response to wikipedia's "liberal bias." A website called "Conservapedia." Click here to view that post. It's funny. I swear.

Anyway, despite its poor grammar and unfathomably bias and factually incorrect "information," Conservapedia has not only been a topic of numerous blogs, it has also become a world news story.

From the Guardian [Photos Added]:

It has been attacked many times in its short life, most notably by a former aide to Robert F Kennedy and the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica. But now the online reference site Wikipedia has a new foe: evangelical Christians.

A website founded by US religious activists aims to counter what they claim is "liberal bias" on Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia which has become one of the most popular sites on the web. The founders of Conservapedia.com say their site offers a "much-needed alternative" to Wikipedia, which they say is "increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American".

Article continues
Although entries on Wikipedia are open for anyone to edit, conservative campaigners say they are unable to make changes to articles on the site because of inherent bias by its global team of volunteer editors. Instead they have chosen to build a clone which they hope will promote Christian values.

"I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found that the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views," Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia, told the Guardian. "In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds - so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach."

Among his criticisms listed on Conservapedia, Mr Schlafly explains how many Wikipedia articles often use British spelling instead of American English and says that it "refuses" to give enough credit to Christianity for the Renaissance. "Facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored," he continues.

Mr Schlafly, a lawyer by day, is the son of a prominent American conservative, Phyllis Schlafly, renowned for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment. He says Conservapedia was created last November as a project for home-schooled children - and believes it could eventually become a reference for teachers in the US. "It is rapidly becoming one of the largest and most reliable online educational resources of its kind," he said...

Click here to read more.

In my previous post I listed the entry for "Fox News" along with its "sources." Below are some other entries, also courtesy of the Guardian:

How they compare:

Dinosaurs

Wikipedia, logo below

"Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years, first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia

"They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs."

US Democratic party

Wikipedia

"The party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention."

Conservapedia "The Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt for America's founding principles."

Wow...

United States Captures Taliban Leader - By Making Pakistan Do It

One of the most important Taliban leaders (named Mullah Obaidullah) was arrested today in Pakistan because of pressure from the United States. This pressure, aka Bush's only accomplishment in the "war on terror," Comes a mere 5 years into the invasion of Afghanistan.

For those of you that have forgotten, Afghanistan was the country the United States went to war with, but then we subsequently left without accomplishing anything because we had to go to war with this other guy who posted an "immanent threat" aka "had more oil."

Amazingly, this capture came just a few days after [Vice] President Dick Cheney almost got killed... er... visited the middle east to try to threaten... that is to say, urge, the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan to do more to fight terrorism.

Wow. Look what Cheney can accomplish when he simply shuts the hell up.

Nothing, really. But other people can accomplish something and he can take credit. So that's a plus. 5 bucks says they captured this guy before his visit and were waiting until he could come there to take the credit. Any takers? Anyone? You? No? 2 to 1 odds. No? Oh well, you made the right decision.

Technorati Rank - It's the Final Countdown

This blog has been online since November 29th, 2006 and already it is apparently tied for 136,736th in the world, according to technorati. Woo ha. Maybe even better, since some of my favorite blogs are unlisted on technorati. I think my goal in life will be to be more popular than Michelle Malkin. I have 29 blogs that link to me. She has 10,028. So only 10,000 more to go.

Hint Hint.... Give it your all people. Together, we can make this blog more popular than Michelle Malkin's.

Go Team!