For Dems only.

[NorthSideSox72]

Well, my pecking order before Dean's collapse went Dean, Clark, Edwards, Kerry, others.

That would be pretty much my order too, at the time.

 

Dean is a weee bit mad, but I still like his ideas. Clark and Edwards were also better than Kerry. Heck, I actually kinda liked the Ohio vegetarian too, but he wasn't going anywhere (and he had a few whacked out ideas).

[FlaSoxxJim]

From Raw Story:

 

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) has alleged in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that President Bush signed a version of the Budget Reconciliation Act that, in effect, did not pass the House of Representatives.

 

Further, Waxman says there is reason to believe that the Speaker of the House called President Bush before he signed the law, and alerted him that the version he was about to sign differed from the one that actually passed the House. If true, this would put the President in willful violation of the U.S. Constitution.

 

Full article:

 

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Congress...ident_0315.html

 

Excerpts from Waxman

Dear Mr. Card:

 

On February 8, 2006, President Bush signed into law a version of the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 that was different in substance from the version that passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Legal scholars have advised me that the substantive differences between the versions - which involve $2 billion in federal spending - mean that this bill did not meet the fundamental constitutional requirement that both Houses of Congress must pass any legislation signed into law by the President.

 

. . .

 

I understand that a call was made to the White House before the legislation was signed by the President advising the White House of the differences between the bills and seeking advice about how to proceed. My understanding is that the call was made either by the Speaker of the House to the President or by the senior staff of the Speaker to the senior staff of the President.

 

I would like to know whether my understanding is correct. If it is, the implications are serious.

 

. . .

[Balta1701]

Chris Matthews has accepted fees of about $35,000 for speeches he has given on behalf of health care related industries, in violation of MSNBC policy.

 

Edit: NBC is now saying that Matthews gave all of the money to charity, and doing otherwise would have gotten him fired. Better than their original "He wasn't there" defense.

Edited March 18, 2006 by Balta1701

[Balta1701]

6 months: Amount of time that House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-OH) has spent on privately funded travel junkets in the last six years, often to “golfing hotspots.”

[Balta1701]

Took em like 5 years to figure it out: AP headline: "Bush using Straw-Man Arguments in speeches"

[Queen Prawn]

Have you ever voted and then when the returns come in start to wonder, what the hell was the point of voting? I still will, every time, just have election days where I wonder why I bother.

 

Anyone that voted for Blag, can you tell me why you voted for him? Not one person I know that voted on the democratic ballot voted for him.

[Rex Kickass]

Outsider Dems have success in Illinois: see Barack Obama.

 

See Cegelis, who is in a very tight primary night with Tammy Duckworth - the candidate recruited by Rahm Emmanuel and Obama.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/electio...lstory#governor

[Rex Kickass]

 

Odd Fox News screen shot.

[YASNY]

 

Odd Fox News screen shot.

 

Hey! I see the DOW's up.

[Balta1701]

Wow.

 

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

 

I bet that contribution was tax deductible also.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Another journalistic coup for the Fox Braintrust.

 

Does Hollywood Treat Albinos Worse Than Conservatives?!?

 

Edited March 24, 2006 by FlaSoxxJim

[kapkomet]

Another journalistic coup for the Fox Braintrust. 

 

Does Hollywood Treat Albinos Worse Than Conservatives?!?

 

Uh oh, the dow is down. How about those Red-Tail Hawks on top of the great state of Texas' capital building?

[Balta1701]

Another journalistic coup for the Fox Braintrust. 

 

Does Hollywood Treat Albinos Worse Than Conservatives?!?

[Balta1701]

Step 1: Congress proposes reform bill to help stop companies from underfunding pensions (and passing the cost onto the federal government).

 

Step 2: Lobbyists!

 

Step 3: Congress Passes reform bill allowing companies to underfund pensions by an even greater amount than beforehand and pass the costs onto the Federal Government.

 

Step 4: Congress sees a temporary rise in tax revenues of about $10 billion or less for 3 years or so due to quirk in law. Deficits shrink slightly.

 

Step 5: Congress spends $100 billion or so in bailing out underfunded pensions. Net corporate welfare >$50 billion.

 

Beautiful.

Edited March 24, 2006 by Balta1701

[Balta1701]

Another Bush "Signing Statement" saying basically "I'll sign this law but won't follow it", this time with the Patriot Act.

 

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

 

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

 

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

 

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

 

Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "

[NorthSideSox72]

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

 

I'd love to hear Bush try to say that part in bold, for so many reasons.

[Balta1701]

Earlier this week, Mr. Bush once again presented the Iraqi City of Tall Afar as a success story...a place where the U.S. forces had launched a major operation and where the Iraqi Security forces were making this safe. Reuters managed to get a guy there without having him wind up dead, and while things have improved marginally since the last U.S. assault, the city is still in pretty bad shape.

 

U.S. President George W. Bush held up the northern town of Tal Afar this week as an example of progress being made in Iraq but many residents find it hard to share his optimism.

 

Bush said this week that Tal Afar has become 'a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq' after U.S.-led forces freed it from al Qaeda militants in a 2005 offensive....

 

Al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent violence has eased in Tal Afar since September's offensive but sectarian violence elsewhere in Iraq after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra last month raised fears among many people of civil war.

 

'I say that Bush is 100 percent a liar because the city of Tal Afar has become a ghost town rather than the example Bush spoke about,' said Ali Ibrahim, a Shi'ite Turkmen laborer.

 

It is hard to be sure who is behind violence that still troubles Tal Afar, 420 km (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad. A mortar round wounded six children playing in a street on Friday. Police said it was not clear who fired it.

 

Bush has been trying to convince a sceptical American public that he has a winning strategy for Iraq to counter fears that violence is spiralling into an all-out sectarian conflict.

 

'Thanks to coalition and Iraqi forces, the terrorists have now been driven out of that city,' he said of Tal Afar.

 

'Iraqi security forces are maintaining law and order, and we see the outlines of a free and secure Iraq that we and the Iraqi people have been fighting for,' he said. 'The success we're seeing in Tal Afar gives me confidence in the future of Iraq.'

 

Market bombings, roadside blasts and explosions are no longer the constant threat they were a year ago in Tal Afar. But there is still danger and the mood of many residents is grim.

 

A comprehensive sounding of local opinion was not possible.

 

But more than a dozen local people who spoke to a Reuters reporter on Friday said they had little faith in the future of their town, where the offensive fuelled sensitivities in an ethnically and religiously mixed region.

 

Sunni Turkmen Rafat Ahmed, 35, a shop owner said: 'As I'm talking now the Americans and the Iraqi army are surrounding my neighbourhood. If we leave our houses we could be arrested.'

 

The town's population of some 250,000 is dominated by Turkish-speaking ethnic Turkmen, about half Sunni Muslims and half Shi'ites. Most of the remaining 20 percent are Sunni Arabs.

 

The deployment last year of Iraqi troops, who were widely perceived locally as Shi'ite Arab outsiders, prompted the Sunni mayor of Tal Afar to tender his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation. The involvement of ethnic Kurdish forces was also a source of tension, local people said.

 

'Anyone who says Tal Afar is good and safe actually knows nothing because the reality is we are unsafe, even inside our houses, because we don't know when we'll be arrested,' said pensioner Abdul Karim al-Anizi, 60, a Shi'ite Turkmen.

 

Some of the anger is being directed back at the U.S. forces that pushed out the militants.

 

'The situation in Tal Afar is deteriorating and the smell of death is everywhere. People never know why they are killed. They only know that the Americans are the cause of their agonies,' said Hussein Mahmoud, a Shi'ite Turkmen university professor.

[YASNY]

Regarding posts like the one above, I'd sure like to see an accompanying link so I could

1. Know the source

2. Read the whole article instead of selected portions.

[Rex Kickass]

YAS, click on Reuters. The link is embedded in the text.

[Balta1701]

There's probably a hundred jokes I could come up with on this one...but Hell, they're not really needed.

 

A Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is bizarrely claiming that the former first lady has been spying in her bedroom window and flying helicopters over her house in the Hamptons, witnesses told The Post yesterday.

 

Former Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen "KT" McFarland stunned a crowd of Suffolk County Republicans on Thursday by saying:

 

"Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures," according to a prominent GOP activist who was at the event.

 

"She wasn't joking, she was very, very serious, and she also claimed that Clinton's people were taking pictures across the street from her house in Manhattan, taking pictures from an apartment across the street from her bedroom," added the eyewitness, who is not involved in the Senate race.

 

Suffolk County Republican Chairman Harry Withers, who hosted the reception in East Islip, confirmed McFarland's paranoid statements.

 

"Yes, she said that," Withers told The Post.

 

McFarland spokesman William O'Reilly responded that the GOP hopeful was just kidding around with her far-fetched claims.

 

"It was a joke, and people laughed," O'Reilly insisted.

 

But three witnesses who were present said nobody in the audience cracked a smile.

 

"The whole room sort of went silent when she said it," one person said.

 

"You could see peoples' jaws drop after she said it. A guy next to me just turned to me and said, 'I guess she didn't take her Xanax today,' " the witness added.

 

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson denied any spying was going on.

 

"We at the Hillary campaign wish Ms. McFarland the best and hope she gets the rest she needs," he said.

[Soxy]

Yikes, that lady needs more than a Xanax, more like a haldol.

[Balta1701]

Tom Delay's concealed handgun permit has been revoked.

[Balta1701]

John McCain once referred to Jerry Falwell as an "Agent of Intolerence". He also said "we embrace the fine members of the religious conservative community. But that does not mean that we will pander to their self-appointed leaders."

 

John McCain will be the graduation speaker at Falwell's Liberty University this year. Thank God he's not Pandering to their self-appointed leaders.

[Balta1701]

Fun story. Republican Congressional Candidate in CA Howard Kaloogian(for Duke Cunningham's seat) goes to Iraq. Comes back home. Says the media is distorting things in Iraq. Posts a picture on his website of happy people walking through the streets (no bombings, etc.)

 

Blogosphere takes a look at photo. A day or so of work. Candidate defends the photo as genuine. Photo disappears from website.

 

Photo location found...in Istanbul.

 

Candidate blames mistake on his webmaster.

 

Priceless.

[Balta1701]

Abramoff: 5 years, 10 months, pay back $21 million.