Gone for Two Days

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for a short trip. So, barring any hilarious news stories like Cheney shooting someone else in the face (or, better, vice versa), I don't expect to post anything. So amuse yourselves below with some Iraq music videos I found on YouTube. Also, please scroll down to read other posts. I'm proud of my posts this past week, but I won't be around to promote them.

Feel free and comment so I know you were here.

Enjoy the videos:

Lysol for Bush

I'm not making this up:

Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
The Associated Press
Friday, March 9, 2007; 12:20 AM

GUATEMALA CITY -- Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

The week's events from around the world, captured in pictures.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites _ which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles _ would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting [sic] the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush "history's greatest killer" and "the devil."

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

I love the Mayans.

Ann Coulter - Wicked Witch

From Esoterically.net:

Ann Coulter... One small step for man, one giant leap backwards in evolution.

Newt Gingrich Admits Affair - DURING CLINTON IMPEACHMENT TRIALS

File this under: You gotta be f!@#ing kidding me.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

''The honest answer is yes,'' Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. ''There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards.''

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

''The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge,'' the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. ''I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials.''

Widely considered a mastermind of the Republican revolution that swept Congress in the 1994 elections, Gingrich remains wildly popular among many conservatives. He has repeatedly placed near the top of Republican presidential polls recently, even though he has not formed a campaign.

Gingrich has said he is waiting to see how the Republican field shapes up before deciding in the fall whether to run.

Reports of extramarital affairs have dogged him for years as a result of two messy divorces, but he has refused to discuss them publicly.

Gingrich, who frequently campaigned on family values issues, divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his attorneys acknowledged Gingrich's relationship with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is.

His first marriage, to his former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. Although Gingrich has said he doesn't remember it, Battley has said Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.

Gingrich married Marianne months after the divorce.

''There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them,'' he said in the interview. ''I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm ... not proud of.''

Gingrich's congressional career ended in 1998 when he abruptly resigned from Congress after poor showings from Republicans in elections and after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over charges that he used tax-exempt funding to advance his political goals.

What the hell is wrong with those people? Is every Republican in the United States a colossal hypocrite? Or is it only those who affect public policy? And he gave this speech to "Focus on the Family." Do they care? They'll probably blame the gays.

I still can't believe Kerry couldn't beat these guys.

Of Diving In too Deep, and Possibly The Complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
It's just overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

I had to give up on the Colin Hay Lyrics for today. You can watch the YouTube video of the Scrubs scene here:

Or check out the album here: Man at Work

In the interim, here are some images I generated:

I'd like to buy a vowel.

Can you solve the puzzle?

We have a mutual relationship

I Can't Get to Sleep, I Think About the Implications

My first post ever, the subject line was "Visualize Abstinence - Imagine Bush and Dick Out of the White House." I even made a shirt out of it. No one bought it.

I found this "Letter to the Editor" on the Seattle Times. I think it is worth reprinting:

Just as this administration has done since its inception, another loyal worker has been thrown to the lions in the name of the cause.

Add this to the most recent firings of the United States attorneys, replaced with White House toadies and contributors , to the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal, where one commander was fired, only to be replaced with the man who allowed the mess to happen. Incidentally, he is gone now too. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates obviously didn't get the memo about rewarding screwups[sic], not firing them.

Then we have the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby case, which has special significance as it shows the ends the president and vice president went to in the pursuit of evidence to back them up on the falling house of cards of the insurrection into Iraq.

Lying, corrupt and thinking himself above the law best describes Bush as his administration will fade into history. Unfortunately, as shown by the new secrecy commission's statements that it is OK to spy on Americans , they are going to throw everybody to the lions on the way out the door.

Time for impeachment. This is the real deal this time, not like the done-for-prime-time impeachment of Bill Clinton. This time, let's make it a double and get George Bush and Dick Cheney to go home.

--James Dunn, Marysville

Well said, James.

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.