DC Madam 1, Bush Official, 0

The Washington, D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, released her client lists to ABCNews, which I am sure has scared half of official Washington (and delighted the other half). I cannot wait for more names to come out. On Friday, State Department official (and Bush appointee) Randall Tobias resigned when he was outed as a client!

More to come, I hope!

An excerpt, from Yahoo! News::

Bush official resigns over escort links
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
Sat Apr 28, 8:10 AM ET

WASHINGTON – Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration’s foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring, said two people in a position to know the circumstances of his departure.

It was Tobias’ own decision to resign, according to one of the people, who said the issue came up only in the past day or so. The people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way.
Tobias submitted his resignation a day after he was interviewed by ABC News for an upcoming program about an alleged prostitution service run by the so-called D.C. Madam.

ABC reported on its Web site late Friday that Tobias confirmed that he had called the Pamela Martin and Associates escort service to have women come to his condo and give him massages. More recently, Tobias told the network, he has been using a service with Central American women.

Tobias, 65, who is married, told ABC News there had been “no sex” during the women’s visits to his condo. His name was on a list of clients given to ABC by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who owns the escort service and has been charged with running a prostitution ring in the nation’s capital.

…

Friday evening, the State Department put out a statement announcing Tobias’ resignation, saying he “informed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today that he must step down as Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator effective immediately.”

“He is returning to private life for personal reasons,” the statement said.

Tobias held two titles: director of U.S. foreign assistance and administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development. His rank was equivalent to deputy secretary of state.

Rice named Tobias to head the two programs in January 2006, and on Wednesday was at the White House, where President Bush praised his efforts coordinating global AIDS relief. Tobias had been the White House’s coordinator for global AIDS relief before taking the USAID post.

What A Difference Four Years Makes

Oh, Those Crazy Cats!

I am a sucker for good “crazy cat” videos!

Send-Up Of the News

This is THE BEST send-up of today’s media I have ever seen, especially the addiction of the networks to “breaking news.” Watch as this “story” changes throughout the broadcast! Absolutely brilliant. Stupid media.

It is from The Onion News Network.

4/28: Impeachment Rallies Around the Nation

On April 28, 2007, I will celebrate my 36th birthday. I will also celebrate National Impeachment Day, on which several groups will launch 100 actions around the nation calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney — in my opinion, the two greatest threats to American freedom in the world today, and the two men who have done more damage to American liberties than any other president and vice president in the history of the nation.

Such action will follow Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of impeachment articles in Congress today.

You can find more information at: Rawstory.com.

From the article:

People will call for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at over 100 actions planned across the country on Saturday, April 28.

The creative actions include rallies, banner drops on freeways, “guerrilla slide shows” on the sides of New York City buildings, skywriting, and “human murals” of people spelling out “IMPEACH!” with their bodies at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, Coney Island in New York, the foot of the Washington monument in Washington, D.C., and other locations.

“George Bush and Dick Cheney lied the nation into an illegal war of aggression, are spying on millions of innocent Americans, and have authorized the use of torture,” said Jacob Park, the national coordinator of the April 28 impeachment actions. “The time has come for all Americans–particularly our representatives in Congress–to decide where they we stand. To turn a blind eye to lying, spying, and torture makes a mockery of our most basic values and the very notion of democracy.”

I strongly support such measures, even though I know it will make Nancy Pelosi the next President of the United States!

I also came across an article in today’s online edition of the (UK) Guardian, by Naomi Wolf, which is relevent to this topic. She argues that the Bush Administration has moved us closer to fascism than any other administration in history. Please take a moment to check out her article.

Here are some relevent parts:

…
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government – the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors – we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security – remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” – didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year – when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – the president has the power to call any US citizen an “enemy combatant”. He has the power to define what “enemy combatant” means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define “enemy combatant” any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

10. Suspend the rule of law
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency – which the president now has enhanced powers to declare – he can send Michigan’s militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state’s governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears’s meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole’s baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: “A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night … Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition’.”

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act – which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch’s soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias’ power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

The full article has all the details. Don’t miss it!

SNL: “Twin Peaks”

I was and remain a huge fan of Twin Peaks (at least the first season and a half). I remember this episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by “Dale Cooper” himself. Enjoy!

Numbness and Tragedy

In 1996, I watched a PBS documentary on the space shuttle Challenger disaster, and I wept during the interviews with the children of Christa McAuliff. In 1999, while on the T in Boston, I read an account of the Columbine shooting in Newsweek. The story of a heroic teacher brought tears to my eyes.

On Friday, September 14th, 2001, I collapsed and cried for about four hours in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

Since that day, I have not wept upon hearing of similar tragedies. Not when the airplane crashed in Brooklyn, New York, a few weeks after 9/11. Not when the space shuttle Columbia exploded on re-entry in 2003. Not on the daily reports of mass slaughter in Baghdad. And not on the news of the Virginia Tech massacre on Monday.

Don’t misunderstand me — I feel awful for the people who were gunned down, and their families, and everyone who was affected by this terrible event. I am in no way minimizing that tragedy. But I don’t feel like crying. I think that since 9/11, my “tragedy-meter” either doesn’t work, or has a very high threshold. It is as if I have observed subsequent tragedies with the detachment of a scientist observing the interaction of molecules. Intellectually, I understand the horrors and devastation of such events; its just that there is not any emotion attached to them anymore. Intellectually, I know that I should feel something emotionally, but I don’t seem to have the capacity anymore.

I don’t know if it this is only due to the events of 9/11 or not. I suppose it is possible that such a change in my demeanor is entirely unrelated, and I have simply become less emotional as I age. Or not, I don’t know. There has been such a long train of bad news from so many fronts in the last five years that perhaps I reached my limit of emotional reactions at some point and did not realize it.

When I read about the shooting at Virginia Tech, I remember thinking, “Oh, that is awful.” And that was all. I read the article, and I then moved on to something else. Grading papers, as I recall.

This will probably get me into big trouble, but I feel bad (again, in an intellectual way) for Cho, too. It is obvious that he suffered from some sort of mental illness. From some of his statements released after the massacre, it seems as if he suffered some physical or sexual abuse, which can cause tremendous psychological damage in a person, with attendent rage. I am not excusing his actions, nor justifying them in any way, but I think that they are explicable.

The scale of the attacks on 9/11 seem to have robbed us of something intangible. Despite all of the rediculous hyperbole eminating from the White House these days — about victory and success in the so-called “war on terror” — I feel that by once again plunging America into a permanent state of war (as during the Cold War) George W. Bush, too, has robbed us of something intangible. Occasionally I feel like the citizens of Oceana in George Orwell’s “1984,” who no longer feel much of anything because of constant privation and war. [I'm not sure that this paragraph is all that clear; I myself am unclear on the connection, but I feel that it exists.]

Perhaps it is just me. I wonder if anyone else feels this way?

Banishing Alex Trebek

When “Family Guy” began, I was immediately a huge fan. I am no longer, particularly after “South Park” ripped the show to shreds. I have come to find the non-sequituer/flash-back structure annoying, as much as I originally enjoyed it.

There are, occasionally, moments that make me laugh out loud, like this one:

FOX News Makes You Dumb

According to a Pew Research Poll, the most informed viewers in the United States are those who watch “The Daily Show” and the “Colbert Report.” FOX News viewers are near the bottom. This is, of course, no surprise whatsoever — one never learns anything from propaganda. You can find the full article •here•.

According to Radar Magazine:

Contrary to Bill O’Reilly’s statements that The Daily Show’s demographic consists of “stoned slackers” and “dopey kids,” 54 percent of Stewartites got two out of three questions correct, while only 33 percent of Fox News viewers managed the same. These results back up a 2004 study which showed that Daily Show watchers are “smarter and more affluent” than those of the Factor. And they don’t secretly despise immigrants.

Congress Thinks You Are Stupid

Surprise, surprise. As glad as I am to have the Democrats in charge on Congress, not much has changed. Congressmen and women and STILL running around the globe on “junkets,” usually to vacation spots, on your dime. What a bunch of crooks.

You can find this full article •HERE•.

Here are the relevent parts, which should give you a good laugh!

Congressional junkets picking up steam

Apr 15, 2007 10:13 PM (2 hrs 8 mins ago)
by Charles Hurt, The Examiner

WASHINGTON – Congress is keeping Andrews Air Force base plenty busy this year ferrying lawmakers all over the globe at taxpayers’ expense. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi took his wife, nine Democrats and two Republicans – Reps. Dan Lungren of California and Mike Rogers of Alabama – on a whirlwind tour of the Caribbean last week. After stops in Honduras and Mexico, they stopped in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the delegation stayed at the five-star Caneel Bay resort.
…
[Note: this is my favorite bit!]

Thompson’s office said he toured the Caribbean because he now chairs the Homeland Security Committee and wanted to see vacation hot spots to “examine border security and port security.” Three other members of the delegation also brought along their spouses.

“They are going from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. everyday,” a committee spokeswoman told The Examiner. “They do not have down time.”

At the Caneel Bay resort, where room rates reach $1,100 per night, the spokeswoman said Thompson and his wife paid the “government rate.” But, according to the reservations department, Caneel Bay doesn’t “offer any government rates.”

After Caneel Bay, the group headed to Key West, Fla., for a “classified briefing on inter-jurisdictional agency task forces,” a Thompson spokeswoman said.

The Caribbean trip led by Engel, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, explored the “best practices for emergency disaster relief” and energy policy, according to his office.

Traveling with Engel and his wife were Reps. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Tex., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who went to Belgium in a delegation led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., earlier in the week, also joined Engel’s Caribbean trip. She brought her husband with her.

…

Frank’s trip to Belgium and London was related to his work as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, according to his office. The trip, which also included Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., was designed “to further understand the interrelationship between various issues related to the financial services regulatory structures” of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, according to Frank’s office.

Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., also led a trip to Belgium over the two-week Easter recess. In February, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, took a delegation there.

“We’re at war with Iraq and Afghanistan, but apparently our members see Belgium as our most urgent international destination,” scoffed one Republican member of Congress.

What a bunch of scumbag liars! These people really are incredible. Not only do they mismanage everything they touch — and I writing of both major parties here — the come up with such incredible lies to score a free vacation. Bring the revolution!

Bush Tells the Truth

For once: “…and neither do we.”

What a *&($)(^&$()$)**@(&(^(*&(&@#%!@%^#@))_$ idiot this guy is. If you voted for him, YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!

Teenagers Should Be Locked up

A human catapult.

Icy Roads in Portland

I can’t believed that people kept getting into their cars!!

Today’s (Southern) Parents Are Idiots #3

SWAT Team: Too Much Explosive