you make it sound like a bad thing...

The ongoing war between BillO and DKos is reaching hysterical levels.

And to think I was calling him "Lieberlips" for impractical reasons.

another one bites the dust...

Bill Walsh - 1931-2007

One of the gritty greats of the gridiron...

Jesus! They're droppin' like flies.

tom snyder smokes pot at party...

a sampling of tom snyder's charm... we'll not look upon his like again...

another one bites the dust...

Tom Snyder - 1936-2007
This one saddens. Fond memories of cohabitating with the brother in Disgusta back in the late 70s; the late nights, imbibing the herbal remedy and munching mushrooms w/mayonaisse.

He, an itinerant garage-band guitarman, and I, the part-time country-music D.J., religious in watching Tomorrow with Tom Snyder (followed by Overnight w/Linda Ellerbee and Lloyd Dobbins), made forever famous by Dan Ackroyd's impersonation of him on SNL.

Good times!

another one bites the dust...

Ingmar Bergman - 1918-2007

Maybe the greatest film director of all-time.

now we're talkin'...

The train, she be a pullin' away from the station...

From NBC's Mike Viqueira
A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow.

6-plus years is a long time to play defense. Time to get the ball back. Start throwin' some bombs!

And I'm so giddy, I'm mixing my metaphors silly (h/t to RawStory).

simpsonized...

I've been Simpsonized!

like grandfather, like grandson...

Prescott Bush in plot to overthrow the president?

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell House & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

So many angles from which to approach this. First thing that comes to mind is George H.W. Bush, the current occupant's old man and son of Hitler-lover Prescott. Interesting to me as so many used to call George Sr. "wimp". Given the givens here, I could only conclude him as a man who tried to be decent for much of his life, but was surrounded by scum from top to bottom to the side. (You remember Mama, yes? The vile harridan from Smith College?). And when you're a decent sort who wants nothing more than to get along, meanwhile all those around you brow-beat you mercilessly into kicking butt, well, you wimp out in compliance for little more than a moment's peace.

And then there's the grandson. Prescott would be proud.

----------
Update: Taking the psycho-sexual to the Nth degree here, what was it Freud said about the milqetoast Daddy and domineering Mommy?

That must be it: The president's gay!

little choice but to...

Conyers: Three More Reps. and I'll Impeach

[O]ne of the excuses citizens often hear from lots of Congress Members for not signing onto articles of impeachment is that not enough of their colleagues have signed on and therefore "we don't have the votes." Well that just changed.

Lord knows I've been back & forth on this issue: The emotional vs. the practical. Well, given the previous post, I'd now say the emotional is the practical.

It's time.

Get 'em gone!

(h/t to C&L)

and here's yer friday frolic...

Old-line Republican Warns 'Something's in the Works' to Trigger a Police State

"Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

I'd say this makes for a dandy follow-up to my comment about how the Oligarchy cannot allow the great unwashed to reverse its agenda of overwriting the last 70 years of the social order.

Here's more:

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said [former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Paul Craig] Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

Like the ancient proverb advises: Eat, drink & be merry...

----------
Update: Another sampling of that which may be "in the works":

Expanding Claim of Executive Authority, White House Official Tells Paper Staff Can't be Charged

George Mason University professor of public policy Mark J. Rozell called the administration's stance "astonishing" in the article.

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell told the reporter. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

manchuria is lovely this time of year...

Yo, John! You call that a concession speech?

“I’m not going to talk about my campaign anymore,” McCain said in a sharp tone. “I’m finished with talking about it. I’ve talked about it for two weeks. I will not discuss it or any aspect of it. Thank you.”

you make it sound like a bad thing...

Looking forward to the day I win the Lottery:

Flush with wealth from Broadcom Corp.'s 1998 public stock offering, computer chip magnate Henry T. Nicholas III made a few additions to his equestrian estate in Laguna Hills: hidden doors and secret levers, an underground grotto, tunnels and a 2,000-square-foot sports bar he called "Nick's Cafe."

But there was more, according to a claim made in court documents: plans for a "secret and convenient lair" with hidden entries for Nicholas to indulge his "manic obsession with prostitutes" and "addiction to cocaine and Ecstasy."

Personally I don't see it as either manic or obsessive so much as something to do.

for the girly-man in all of us...

Email sent to a pal who recently brought a Hi-Def TV into his bachelor's pad, and to whom I previously wondered if this meant he'd be buying new furniture to go with it (I believe I used the phrase "Feng Shui Hell", after which I haven't heard back in a couple of weeks):

"well, either you are on extended vacation or you were offended by my reference to 'feng shui hell', which was not to call your house a dump... the distinction being an empathy i may espouse toward another who may feel compelled to completely overhaul the status quo after bringing in so significant a consumer item, e.g., an hdtv, and marked by the way you had your living room set up for tv watching theretofore, i.e., at odds with the zen aspect of human -- nay, "manly" -- comfort of boob-tubing, again, e.g., in a couple of patent-leather lay-z-boys, say, and serviced by a babe-bot to forever bring you your beer and rub your feet; one, say, with whom you could have your way with thrice on sundays... ?"

Will keep you apprised.

right on time, i'd say...

Count me as one of those conspiracy theorists who believes that while Dubya and his Dick (or Dick and his sock puppet) didn't generate the attacks on 9/11, they did calculate the prospect, i.e., the intelligence warning Dubya received in Crawford on August 6th of that year, to be greatly beneficial to their radical plans to overwrite the last 70 years of social order in America -- so, in fact, they did nothing of significance to stop 9/11 from happening.

Keep that thought in mind as it looks now like we need a proper cover to bomb Iran now:

To American[s] who have grown skeptical of terrorism warnings, the professionals in the intelligence community say they understand. They also say this time, it could be for real.

And why not add a dash of martial law domestically while we're at it, eh? Suspend the Constitution -- like, officially now? Postpone all 2008 federal elections? I mean, we can't let the "great unwashed" reverse our best laid plans, now can we?

Stay tuned.

1975, as sinatra might say: it was a very good year...

No idea how I came across JoAnna Cameron's name, nor did I know it before today; or I probably did when I bowed down before the Goddess Isis on Saturday mornings way back when.

Not that I gave two gerbil-raisins about the plot or the production values, neither of which were worth note, but as a 16 year-old I was pret-ty-frea-kin' religious about this show -- and others that fed me the likes of Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith as Angels or Linda Carter as Wonderbuns.

Definitely beats Mass on Sundays.

Fellow adolescents in arrested development may recall her adventures appearing as inserts, sandwiched between episodes of the tedious Captain Marvel, he with the signature call more famously yawped by Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle: Shazam!

But who cares, eh? I just had to Google this teenager's crush, see what became of her.

Et voila!!



My, but how we've all grown!

of this i have no doubt...

Vitter's Madame: "Most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans."

“They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings—Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings—and these are the people who run our country.”

Please, oh please, let there be videos!

----------
Update: Vitter, the morals-espousing, hypocritical prig that he is, apparently was into wearing diapers.

----------
Update II: Meanwhile, back at the compound, Mrs. Vitter on being a different breed of cuckold:

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he’d had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston’s wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

Please, oh please, let there be videos!

perfect for a friday afternoon...

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE:

Never forget, America: Republicans invented the punch clock, Democrats invented the weekend.

file under "wow!"...

Keep in mind here that Betty Williams is the Nobel Peace Prize winner:

"Right now, I could kill George Bush," she said at the Adam's Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. "No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that."

About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush's removal from power.

For the record: Advocating the assassination of the president is not protected speech in America. But the vicera is not unlike when Sam Kinnison once said, "I do not advocate violence against women," and with a very toothsome grin added, "but I understand it."

another one bites the dust...

Lady Bird Johnson - 1913(?)-2007

AUSTIN, Texas - Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.

impeach already...

Jim Moran climbs aboard the Dreamweaver Trail (w/apologies to Gary Wright):

On Tuesday, a northern Virginia Democrat decided to add his support to a growing movement in the House of Representatives to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.

Meanwhile, this from a U.S. Senator:

Barbara Boxer: "Impeachment should be on the table" - Ed Schultz Show 7/11/07

One gets the sense the Obstruction/Impeachment brake-pads are giving way, especially now that Harriet Miers and Fredo Gonzalez have once again thumbed their noses at Congress, and in a most ostentatious manner. Repo Senators cannot stop a bill to Impeach arriving from the House. Although, whether a trial in the Senate can be filibustered remains to be seen. I suspect this site's attorney-at-large will have something on that shortly.

Naahm?

headline of the day...

Rawstory: New Orleans Madam Also Fingers Vitter

I'm tellin' you, you can't make this stuff up.

keeping humble...

Technorati's Top-100 blogs (Top-10 here):

1. Engadget
2. Boing Boing
3. Gizmodo
4. Techcrunch
5. Huffington Post
6. Life Hacker
7. Ars Technica
8. Daily Kos
9. PostSecret
10. TMZ.com
. . .
1,621,861. Barking Up Trees

joe wilson, call yer office...

h/t to DailyKos...

don't be so quick to snap up an iPhone...

Another example of consumer protection being a good thing (h/t to Open Left):

Our action urged Steve Jobs to unlock the iPhone from its monopolistic reliance on AT&T. Lots of people liked the action and it traveled around the blogosphere rapidly, particularly among activists who are concerned about AT&T's lead role in trying to eliminate net neutrality and its active cooperation with the Bush Administration in allowing the National Security Agency and others to listen in on our phone calls and review our emails without court oversight.

Personally I want one of them iPhones, although I intend to wait a bit -- for reasons practical (the price to go down) and philisophical (always wait a few generations for a better product). It is also assumed here that Apple will eventually open up the iPhone's interent accessability to beyond one evil empire corporation. But until they do that, I won't be getting an iPhone even if they were giving 'em away.

----------
Update: A more proactive approach:

It is in fact perfectly legal, according to a recent decision from the U.S. Register of Copyrights, for American consumers to unlock their phones for use on whatever network they would like. Apple is trying to take away that right by locking the iPhone to AT&T's network.

Sign this petition and add your name to the list of Americans calling on Steve Jobs, the President of Apple, to make the iPhone unlockable so that consumers can use it on networks other than AT&T. Then, forward the petition link on to some friends -- let's all remind Steve Jobs that the reason he's in business is because of us.

----------
Update II: Let loose the hounds!

Freeing the Apple device from AT&T is only a matter of time.

Early this morning, the worldwide crew of iPhone hackers who congregate on the IRC channel #iphone reported major progress in getting at the internals of Apple's once-locked-down new toy. They now have access to the filesystem -- or, in hacker argot, "we have owned the filesystem."

drink from the tap if ye must... and ye must...

Brother sends this link to an ABC report via Yahoo on the amount of energy consumed by the plastic bottling industry...

my kingdom for a pair of headphones...

Did the Karaoke thing for the first time last night at Uno in Harvard Square. First choice, but unavailable in the D.J.'s inventory, was "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" by The Four Seasons. So I opted on The Drifters' "Under The Boardwalk".

Acquittal! Nice round of applause, even though I was thrown off-key a coupla times. Damn Deej cranked the music while keeping the mike volume a little too low, such that a body had to really belt it out to hear himself (ergo, the post headline). It may not have been cognitive, but it was certainly dissonance.

Anyhoo, that's another checkmark on one of my life's ambitions. Now if I can only learn the guitar, I won't need the D.J.

merry fitzness...

Naahmy, who once had two blogs of his own but now clearly prefers throwing peanuts at mine (for which, I must say, I am honored), asks today:

Why would Leahy gang up on Fitzgerald when Fitz was carrying the Dem's water for them? After all, the polls were against commutation, and this gives the Dems an issue. Why would he then call Fitz' conduct into question, esp. when no rabid right wingers are? Isn't that biting the hand . . .?

It isn't clear where Naahm got the idea Fitz' conduct was being called into question (except by loyal Bushies). More like Fitz has a unique and well informed take as to the on-going corruption that is the Bush administration. To wit:

Schumer: One thing, and I've spoken to [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat] Leahy about this, that we're thinking about doing is calling Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, before us.

You know, he's not allowed to talk about what happened before the grand jury, but he did interview the president and the vice president, not before a grand jury, and [Fitzgerald] might have some very interesting things to say.

He issued a rare statement after the commutation that was very harsh in condemning it -- and with good reason. [...]

CBS: When would you like to see Mr. Fitzgerald come to Capitol Hill?

Schumer: Well, you know, this would be Sen. Leahy's call, but I talked to him about it yesterday and he seemed inclined to do it. It would be very interesting and we'd like to hear what he has to say. Obviously he can't talk about anything that occurred in the grand jury, but there's a lot else that he might be able to tell us. Because obviously, with the commutation of Libby, and with no one else meeting a criminal standard, but still something terrible being done in the name of an agent being leaked...we sure want to get more answers.

Simple.

libby's but a symptom of the disease...

Naahm de Plume, a.k.a., Commander Guy II, dares me to weigh in:

By lying about when he had heard something, in a context in which he had no meaningful role? Even the prosecutor admitted that Libby didn't out Plame. Yet Obama wants to demagogue the issue (obviously for all the people like the folks who turned out Pepper in Florida years ago, who were afraid of thespians and extroverts). This is why, IMHO, you cannot trust democrats with the judicial system. They are far more likely than Republicans to use it as a tool of policy implementation, and for political reasons.

Oy! Where to begin.

Perjury and obstruction of justice, I think -- I'm not a lawyer, are both felonies. And here is what the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said after Libby's sentence was commuted by the Decider (not to be confused with the Judge):

The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

"Meaningful role"? Is that, like, a legal argument? And get your facts straight. Libby entered into a conspiracy and did endeavor to out Valerie Plame, he just didn't beat Richard Armitage to the punch as to whom and when he told. Moreover he was convicted of lying under oath and obstructing justice, that in protecting the lead, if unindicted, co-conspirator of the treasonous act of outing an undercover CIA agent.

That traitor to his country is Dick Cheney.

I'll repeat that: Dick Cheney is a traitor to the United States of America.

I say that realizing, of course, how utterly meaningless the word "traitor" has been rendered; bandied about as it has been over the last 7 years, and primarily from those who cannot comprehend dissent as vital to a democracy. Moreover, if the Constitution has been rendered meaningless, as it apparently is now, how can one break any law where only might makes right and America is regressed unto a nation of men? And yet, there it is. The man is a traitor. There, I said it again!

Libby's crimes go directly to covering up the vice president's treason, and the jury found him without credibility as to when or about what he spoke to the Veep on the matter.

In turn, the Vice President acted with the knowledge and consent, as well as the depraved indifference, of the President via his hatchet man Karl Rove, who, by the way, missed an indictment himself and by the skin of this teeth.

You cannot trust Democrats with the judicial system? Sir, you say this on the heels of an ongoing and most vile malfeasance being perpetrated on "the judicial system," and wholly by Republicans (and Joe Lieberman), beginning with Bush v. Gore to the de facto elimination of FISA, not to mention Habeus Corpus, to extraordinary rendition, to water-boarding, to Alberto Gonzalez (both as White House Counsel and as Att'y General), to the continuing obstruction of justice by the president, maintaining the cover-up of his own role in committing this treason by way of pardoning Scooter Libby.

But if it's a legal mind you crave, I'm rather impressed with Glenn Greenwald's:

We have the country we have -- one in which our most powerful political leaders are literally beyond the reach of the law in every sense, where we casually invade and bomb and occupy countries that have not attacked us, where our moral standing in the world has collapsed with good reason, where we are viewed on every continent in the world as a rogue, dangerous and lawless nation -- because we are ruled by a Beltway elite and political press that is sickly and cowardly and slavish at its core.

I suspect you might wish at some point to rephrase your "cannot trust Democrats with the judicial system" because it implies you do trust Republicans. And I don't believe that to be the case, because only a complete idiot, or someone equivalently corrupt, could ever trust these Republicans.

And I like to think, old friend, that you are neither.

now ask ME... !!

Dig this:

President Bush is holding private meetings "over sodas and sparkling water" in which he asks trusted advisers -- "Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?"

See, Dubya's kind of trusted advisors can't be expected to say, "Why yes, Mr. President! You're disapproval ratings correspond precisely with the public's great antipathy toward you." Instead, the boy prez will get a pat on the head and a comforting "There! There!" And then they'll up his Ritalin.

For example:

"I find him serene," Kissinger said. "I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."

We war criminals gotta stick together, y'know?

madam, i think i love you...

Remember how Dubya insisted he'd bring "honor and dignity" back to the White House? His reference alluded to Bill Clinton's philandering as well as the renting-out of the Lincoln Bedroom to o'er n'er-do-wells, right? Well, the DC Madam is back in the news promising to release her 46-pounds of phone records to the public -- hell or high water:

Even if just 20 high-profile names are culled from her phone records, Palfrey says the White House would "implode" over the scandals.

"If what I'm saying is true and this goes to the heart of the Bush administration and the corruption the last several years, then yeah, I'll have an army behind me," Palfrey said.

Not wanting to pile on here... Okay, sure! I want to pile on. Ol' Texas Boot has been left with next to nothing to point to and call it his legacy now that the "honor & dignity" thing, i.e., as it pertains to SEX (because we all know he never had any honor, nor dignity, to begin with, did he, Commander Worf?), has now been driven into the shrubbery; the period to the Immigration Bill failure sentence.

Poppy & Babs must be so proud.