Wednesday, March 21, 2007

White House V. Congress( and S.C.?)?

[Forgive me if I get a little label happy; this is just filled with a lot of stuff about what’s going on]

I’m doing a little happy jig as I listen to the Stones: Satisfaction which seems to be so apropos. I’m happy because I JUST read that congress has approved the subpoenas for Rove and others. This is AFTER the White House was soo nice and willing to ALLOW Rove and others ‘talk’ to congress- provided that a) it was behind closed doors; so b) there would be no records of it and c) Rove et. Al. would NOT be under oath… thus Rove could lie or ‘misremember’ stuff and not worried about sharing a jail cell with Libby.

Now I should mention as I write this- that I re-read the article and congress seems just to have APPROVED (with a voice vote so no paper trail to see who voted how) the subpoenas… so they have NOT been issued. Likewise as it mentions in the linked article, the White House could fight this all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Now as I get into my two cents, I first want to say that I would find it interesting if the Supreme Court gets involved. Because when it comes down to it- they can either side with W. (who has given several of them jobs) or they can keep themselves relevant and powerful. See if they vote merely on party lines… not only does W. get to keep his secrets… but the Supreme Court ends up legally saying that the Executive Branch is more powerful then the other two… which has been W.’s argument since he took office. HE,W.= Decider.

My next thought on the subject is to include this link, also got from Huffingtonpost, (really I don’t know why I bother posting this stuff considering it’s out there already from sites I link to)… that W. is a spin master of the highest degree. It talks about the power of language and how W. chooses his words VERY carefully. I thought it was in fact funny how the Metro (a ‘local’ free paper) had an article mentioning how W. didn’t want a “fishing expedition”. Now my first thought is well- yeah that’s what the American people want. See the loud thumping sound W. heard after the mid-term election, was the American people wanting ACCOUNTIBILITY from their government. So if congress ends up asking Rove a bunch of questions- that’s because Rove has a bunch of things to answer for.

This leads me to my next point in the story and how the repugs are trying to frame it; which is the Repug idea that you should RESPECT the office of the White House, even if you don’t respect the PERSON. However under Clinton- they felt that he was sullying the office with his personal business. A perfect example is this link with a quote from Snow about the Repug congress trying to get to the bottom of what was going on in Clinton’s White House. I still get sick when I realize that when Clinton was in power- the Repugs wanted to question the SECRET SERVICE on record- to find out what Clinton was doing behind closed doors… but who Cheney talks to about Energy Policy is ‘state secrets”. The Repugs double standard really makes me sick. And here’s a link that shows that Tony Snow himself is full of doublethink.

This then leads to something I read in the Times yesterday. I'm linking to Media Matters as it's where I just found on the web (and thus linkable)... The Repugs complain that Schumer, a democrat, is politicizing the debate over the AG’s firings. This made me want to laugh or burn the newspaper yesterday. The Repugs, after years of making policy political and now being found to make job performance POLITICAL are annoyed because they think that Schumer is supposedly using this policy crisis to get money/clot for the DNC. Huh, did the Repugs complain when W. ‘high jacked’ the Abraham Lincoln for his mission accomplish picture. This picture (which W. would have used in his 2004 campaign had the war gone ‘right’), had them turn the carrier around (and made the ship two days late getting into port) so that the press would get ‘just the right picture’… and this POLITICAL picture- was bought and paid for by OUR tax dollars- not the RNC.


Lastly- as I mentioned Doublethink a bit above- I want to tie W as Spin Master with Coutlergist. See s/he recently talked about the anti Hillary ad and pointed out that after reading 1984, she’d never be able to vote DEMOCRAT… and I was like HUH?! As I feel that W.’s talking points and message massaging is much more Big Brother (Stay the Course, Turning the Corner, Fighting them there… ad nausem.) Could go on but think I did during my recent review of 1984.

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Substance over Style

Ok, I've been meaning to post here that *I* am not really for Hillery or Obama. And I say that not because I'm anti-women or anti black... but because I think after W., a presidential canidate should STAND FOR SOMETHING. I think the main lesson of W. is NOT to vote for someone because you wouldn't mind having a beer with them, but to vote for them because they are bright and have a plan to do something important when they become president.
I've yet to here Hillery or Obama say that they are FOR this or AGAINST that- save for being against the repugs... which is a start, but all the Dems should be against W.( actually at this point I think all of this country should be against W.), they should have more things going on.
Like for instance we know that Hilliry and Obama are 'against' Iraq... but what are they ACTUALLY doing to stop the war?

That's why I'm posting this Biden video. I'm not saying I'm voting for Biden; merely that this video deserves a lookie loo...

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.


It was the great Steven Colbert who said "And reality has a well-known liberal bias." [ he did so last year at the White House Correspondents Dinner] ,And I almost shat bricks today laughing as I found out that the right has decided, once again, that Steven Colbert knows his stuff.

I found today Conservapedia. Conservapedia is suppose to be the right wing's answer to Wikipedia...
This made me laugh as I did NOT think that Wikipedia was the left's answer to ANYTHING. In fact the super intelligent Colbert also coined the phrase Wikiality which is "Reality as determined by general consensus rather than cold hard facts. If enough people say it is true, then it is true"( ubran dictionary- second definition of Wikiality).

So I guess the majority of people who use the internets are liberal- because IF anyone is able to change Wikipedia... but they STILL find it too liberal; then it follows that the group consenus is LIBERAL.

My foray into Conserapedia was short today- as comics and herocrack comes out today so the only page I checked out was their 'manifesto' where they complain about the libral bias of reality... I mean Wikipedia.
I could spend days ripping this appart. I mean they first start out with the fact that Wiki uses C.E.( Common Era) instead of A.D. Because they want EVERYONE to realize that the year 1 on their calendar is the year that Jesus was born. Because they first have to establish that Christans invented the calendar( no, wait that was like the greeks or romans... hence having two months named after pagens and none after the apostles). Second point was the fact that "Wikipedia's entry for the Renaissance denies any credit to Christianity, its primary inspiration." And no their third point is not asking for them to give credit to the Christans for the dark ages, witch burnings, or repressing science.
One of my favorite complaints was #13- "Edits to include facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored. " My first thought was again, gee maybe that's because MOST intelligent people believe in evolution.

Oh and a shout out to my Canadian peeps- because apparently reality also has British spelling- as #9( which I guess means it peeves them more then the evolutionary slant of wiki)
Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American. Look up "Most Favored Nation" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts the spelling to the British spelling "Most Favoured Nation." Look up "Division of labor" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts to the British spelling "Division of labour," then insists on the British spelling for "specialization" also.[9] Enter "Hapsburg" (the European ruling family) and Wikipedia automatically changes the spelling to Habsburg, even though the American spelling has always been "Hapsburg". Within entries British spellings appear in the silliest of places, even when the topic is American. Conservapedia favors American spellings of words.

And I get another chuckle out of them correcting the spelling for Habsburg. Geez don't those wikis know that how Americans spell something should trump THIERS, even if it it's THEIR last name

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Monday, March 05, 2007

And we hear from another '08 Repug canidate

I love this story...

Newty appears at CPAC( along with Coultergist and all the other '08 canidates) and he decides there should be an investigation on why NOLA citizens were STILL in the city. Now he's a repug, so he's not wondering why they couldn't get out or why it was reported that National Guardsmen actually FORCED them to stay( and didn't allow help in)... Newt is concerned because these citizens were too stupid to get out of the way of a huricane.

Sayth Newt:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.


Man, this makes me pretty sad- that people like Newt have a chance to be seriously considered to run for president. Actually what makes me sadder is that I'm willing to bet NO ONE at CPAC mentioned the war and how to solve it; which you know was actually pretty important in the '06 election.