tdog

“They”, of course, are per se impeachable offenses signing statements, particularly the first one that the President has used all year, this associated with a military appropriations bill as duly observed by Signing Statement Chronicler Extraordinaire Charlie Savage. In some ways, the current signing statements are more oblique than some of his earlier statements, such as, in response to an affirmative torture ban passed by his own party: “That pussy-shit John McCain can kiss my ass, I’ll water-board any damned raghead terrorist that I feel like”. The current, kindler, gentler signing statement now reads “Consistent with my Constitutional duties and...

The Rudy laugh fest continues, what with reports that while Mayor (of my fair City), Giuliani arranged for his personal security detail to have his then adulterous tryst with his paramour Judy Nathan in the Hamptons paid for by the City out of various City agencies and funds under the ubiquitous title “security”. It’s one thing for former State Comptroller Alan Hevesi to hae been ridden out of town on a rail for using a State employee to drive his wife to the doctor, but Rudy used City cops to drive him to his mistress, and they had to be...

We get some helpful and hopeful news (c/o Bruce the Veep… who else?!) such as this item from the AP and this item from TPM Muckraker, that tell us essentially on a semi-official basis what we have known for years… this time, in the nature of “dreams with a deadline”. (Hint: it’s about Iraq.) We have known since the heady early days when the Bushmen wanted to call the Excellent Iraq AdventureTM “Operation Iraqi Liberation”, but Karl Rove himself had to scotch that because even Americans could figure out that if you called it “O.I.L.”, it would be hard to...

It’s been a while since I read my own comments about the gigantic protest march against the Iraq war in New York City on 15 February 2003, one of the coldest days I remember, at which hundreds of thousands turned out. I did not realize that I mentioned that the local “paper of record” suggested as many as 400,000 attended, which, ultimately, was my own best estimate; I just remember its insistence on treating the Republican Lord Mayor’s self-serving estimate at only 100,000 as if it were of equal importance. (In retrospect, I was too kind to Bush by… a...

No, I’m not sure whose plan “A” it is, given the apparent “surge” in violence in Iraq after a downturn of late, particularly after a Shiite group (naturally, the official story is that it is backed by bogeyman du jour Iran) appears to have admitted responsibility for a bombing in Central Baghdad that killed at least 15. Interestingly, the target was in a largely Shiite area, and had been previously attacked by Sunni insurgents; the current Shia on Shia attack was supposedly a misdirection to get the Shia residents to turn to their friendly neighborhood Shiite death squads for assistance....

Let’s see what we Americans have to give thanks for this year… our Dear Leader now has “the right” to lock any of us up at his sole (AND UNREVIEWABLE) whim… for “our security” you know. Dear Leader can listen in to any of our electronic communications, without one of those annoying warrants… heck, Dear Leader can order any of us to be tortured water-boarded (it’s for our own protection of course)… I could go on, and on (I’ll refrain from discussing, for example, matters fiscal, or environmental, or our overall security and moral standing position in the world). That...

For some surprisingly conciliatory (I’ll try to refrain from saying “good”) news coming out of the usual troublespots. First, it appears that Pervez (Our-Man-in-Islamabad), who is now going to Saudi Arabia, has released thousands of detained political prisoners, and has signaled some level of “softening” in that department– perhaps more will be released. No word that he would meet with former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif (whom Pervez deposed in the first place) while visiting Sharif’s exile situs of Saudi Arabia. Still… anything even a little calming in nucular-armed Pakistan is a good thing. And on the other side of the...

Almost certainly thanks to the the Army reports that desertions since 2003 are up around 80%. This comes at the same time that the Army’s usual 18% or so rate of early discharge, primarily for physical inability (and including other things, such as reporting oneself as gay) dropped to around 7%, as major military action (in the form of occupations) in Iraq and Afghanistan roll on. One would think that this would mean that the Army should be more exacting in its physical standards, rather than less. So… something has to give, and many soldiers have decided to vote with...

Mrs. TD.

Lindsay, writing at In These Times, asks the musical question: