When I read the list of names of those appointed to the new Office of Congressional Ethics (more about that in a minute) and saw the former member of Congress and former head of the CIA, Porter Goss, as co-chairman, I wondered whether Nancy Pelosi had lost her mind or appointed him as a joke. What could she have been thinking?

As for the Office of Congressional Ethics, that's an oxymoron, since some of those who voted for the unconstitutional FISA bill received contributions from the telecoms that got immunity, which does rather make the office a laughingstock.<< MORE >>

Can McCain and his campaign be any more ignorant? Yes. They continue to flaunt their stupidity and hypocrisy every day.

Unfit for presidency? You betcha. Unfit for any office. Apparently so.<< MORE >>

Oh, yes, the minimum wage increased to $6.55 per hour. Isn't that just wonderful, whoop-dee-do! Actually, it's great that there is even this small increase but minimum wage workers still struggle.

What is the reality for those making minimum wage? << MORE >>

How blatant are Bush's politicized departments and agencies. Pretty flagrant Bushite Republican. Take for example the State Department.

The US Embassy in Berlin forbade US employees from attending Barack Obama's speech in that city.<< MORE >>

McConfused got himself into another kerfuffle about the surge. Ultimately, this supposed national security, foreign policy expert proved that he doesn't understand the surge among innumerable other foreign and national security issues.

He managed to dig himself deeper into his myopic hole of ignorance with a confused, convoluted explanation of surge and awakening that was mind boggling in its stupidity.

Then his campaign cancelled his press availability. Oops.<< MORE >>

Not only do we have a Bush politicized Pentagon, there appears to be a Christian proselytizing military, contrary to the Constitution and military rules.

What is with these Christian theocratic military commanders? They seem to be deliberately flouting separation of church and state.<< MORE >>

Just like Duby's bogus suitablility for the presidency, so to his ranch is Crawford was just one of the props in this worst presidency ever.

It was the stage for a fictional narrative of the Shrub as a rancher, a rancher who was actually afraid of horses and didn't have a ranch, much like his terms as presidency: all form, no substance except to eviscerate the Constitution, ignore the rule of law, create an imperial, authoritarian executive above any law, destroy the integrity of the US, and damage this country.<< MORE >>

McSame's hypocristy continues unabated. When he speaks, McHypocrite is confused or deliberately lying.

This time his blatant lies about the safety of offshore oil rigs during Hurricane Katrina, came home to roost on a personal level for him.<< MORE >>

I saw the Wall St. Journal article about the rich in the US getting richer and paying less in taxes. How lovely for them while the rest of us regular hardworking Americans with stagnant wages must take up the slack.

Instead of writing about it as I had planned, Jonathan Tasini already did a wonderful job so I'l post his excellent piece. Jonathan and I seem to both be channelling Joseph Welch today.<< MORE >>

Yes, health care coverage will be a major issue in the election.

However, which health care plan?<< MORE >>

McBush is big on the "do as I say, not as I do" school of conduct. He calls for running respectful campaigns but has repeatedly made disparaging comments about Barack Obama (while his wife has done the same regarding Michelle Obama). Bofh of these millionaires are apparently integrity challenged.

However, McSame's latest salvo of accusing and implying that Barack Obama is treasonous has crossed the line.<< MORE >>

McSame is either stupid or a liar which shows him unfit for the presidentcy. Only the "love McCain and protect his posterior" media like CBS, and myopic, die-hard McSame supporters continue claiming that he is an expert on foreign policy and national security.

He is far from it and actually dagerously ignorant about the facts, especially in the foreign policy areas of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. McBlunder's latest stupidity or lie should prove, once and for all, that McClueless' expertise is limited to prevaricating sound bites and campaign slogans, repeated ad nauseum<< MORE >>

Americans should be very concerned about the new FISA bill. A majority of members of the Senate and House of Representatives care nothing about the Constitution and decided to ignore their constitutional oath and tear apart the Fourth Amendments, in addition to kowtowing to telecom contributers by protecting them from accountability for breaking the law.

But there are organizations and individuals who believe in the Constitution and the protection of that living document that have banded together to challenge this anti-constitutional FISA bill.<< MORE >>

Barack Obama has got it right. Afghanistan, not Iraq, is the central front for the jihad terrorists, though it is actually Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda has become emboldened at the situation. However, is al-Qaeda sucking the US and NATO into a trap?<< MORE >>

In order to gain independence from foreign oil and fossil fuels, solar thermal power offers another solution.

While photovotaic cells generate electricity, solar themal power converts to heat which provides electricty. After more than a decade of not using this alternative energy source, it is now returning with a roar.

And this is great news for eliminating US use of and dependence on fossil fuels and reversing dangerous climate change.<< MORE >>

Shades of Slobodan Milosevic, captured Bosnian Serb war criminal, Radovan Karadzic, will defend himself at his trial at The Hague.

That fits in with his mind set that he will be found innocent of genocide and crimes against humanity because, contrary to all the evidence, he claims the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica didn't occur or these were not war crimes, just an inevitable result of the plan to create a Greater Serbia which unleashed Serbia's invasions of the sovereign republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, and the occupation of the first two where Serbia's army and Serbs living in those areas inflicted torture, rape, and murder on the Croats, Muslims, and non-Serbs in those independent republics.<< MORE >>

Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, Admiral Mike Mullen does it again.

Publicly intruding and trying to sway elections is a no-no for members of the military.

According to the Washington Post, "The Pentagon's top military officer said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to "dangerous consequences."<< MORE >>

In the seven years of this criminal Bush adminstration, the US has had three attorneys general without a shred of integrity, whose main duty was to protect Bush and the rest of his gang from accountability for their crimes. Ashcroft, Gonzalez, and now Mukasey have made it their primary responsibility to cover Bush and company's posteriors while managing a politicized, anti-Constitution Department of Justice.

Actually there is no justice at the Department of Justice, only Republican cronyism and criminality.<< MORE >>

McSame's campaign has released a crazy ad that implies that Obama is repsonsible for high gas prices. What a crock of cow pies!

It's the Republican administrations of Reagan, George H. W. and the Shrub that have inflicted this energy crisis on the American people.<< MORE >>

Now that the myth of McSame's foreign policy expertise has been skewered by his erroneous statements about Iraq, while Obama exhibits the wisdom and prescience of a foreign policy expert, McSame falls back, constantly, on the surge, the surge, the surge.

It appears that he and his campaign are bumbling and sputtering and this is all he can offer to the American people, a very weak, mistake filled message.<< MORE >>

The war criminal, Radovan Karadzic, has finally been captured.

Karadzic, who, like Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, another Serbian war criminal who died while on trial at The Hague, supported Milosevic and Serbia's illegal invasions of the sovereign republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the genocide and crimes against humanity that Serbs perpetrated to convert a mythical Greater Serbia into reality. The final result: Serbia was defeated and was reduced to a shadow of its former delusional self: a small, land-locked country with an appalling recent history.<< MORE >>

Shades of Nixon and spying on peace groups in the US.

This time the dirty deed was recent, 2005 and 2006, and done undercover by the Maryland State Police.<< MORE >>

When did the US become militaristic? When did it begin to embrace militarism? Did it just sneak up under the Bush militaristic, right wing, neocon administration?

Was a traditional belief in peace a lie that was smothered by exceedingly warmongering Reagan, Bush I and Bush II regimes?<< MORE >>

Sid McArrogant knows better than the Iraqis what's best for their country. This man has the ignorant audacity to deprecate Iraq's leaders with his contemptible statements.

McSame is definitely a faithful Bush brown noser salivating to head an imperialistic, authoritarian, thired Bush term where he can continue to occupy and dictate to Iraq while protecting the former Bush criminal administration.<< MORE >>

How ignorant is Sid McSame?  Plenty, but he and his campaign try and cover up his incompetence by touting his mythical foreign policy experience.

 

If the following is an example of that experience, it's proof that his ranking of fifth from the bottom in his US Naval Academy graduating class was well deserved disgrace.

 

From ThinkProgress: "Today on Good Morning America, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to call the situation in Afghanistan precarious and urgent, but admitted that "We have a lot of work to do." He warned of a “very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”

"Of course, Iraq is nowhere near Pakistan. In fact, Baghdad the capital of Iraq is over 1,500 miles from Pakistan's capital of Islamabad:

"Before McCain repeats his claim to "know how to win wars," he should probably look at a map." 

So much for his foreign policy experience.  McSame is unfit for the presidency

On the torture issue alone, members of the Bush adminstration and its high level torture team could be tried for war crimes. This is a warning that has been given by many organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But there are those Democrats, especially the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, that has blocked any impeachment proceedings, its members ignoring their oaths to the Constitution and the American people.<< MORE >>

Center, left, and right, labels that are flung by the media and inside the beltway denizens with myopic frequency. Actually, what is considered centrist in Washington is actually right and reactonary and what is considered left is the center.

The D.C. mind set is one of a Congress, White House and Supreme Court that are out of touch with the rest of the country. Congress leans right while the White House and the Supreme Court are right wing, conservative reactionary institutions under this administration.<< MORE >>

Seems like Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is diplomatically telling the Bush administration to go pound sand. Even after pressure from the Bushites with claims that Maliki was misinterpreted in a Der Spiegel interview, Maliki today reiterated his support for Obama's withdrawal timetable.

Looks like Bush and McSame's arrogant, imperial occupation dictatorship towards Iraq and its disdain for that country's sovereignty has been met by Iraqi leaders flying the middle finger.<< MORE >>

No surprise at the latest news from Bush's politicized Treasury Departmant. It's the typical flawed, make the situation worse Bushite MO.

Create a new regulatory agency whose head, appointed by the president and approved by Congress, has less power than current bank regulators. For an administration that has been trying to kill government of, by and for the people, it sure believes in using bureaucratic smoke and mirrors as a cover for its role in the mortgage catastrophe rather than applying existing regulatory laws or strengthening those laws to hold those accountable for perpetrating the crisis. << MORE >>

Yesterday, Iraq's prime minster, Nouri al-Maliki, in an interview with Der Spiegel, endorsed Barack Obama's 16 month timetable for US troop withdrawal.

However, after pressure from the Bush administration, a Maliki aide said that Maliki was "misinterpreted." Der Spiegel stands by its story.<< MORE >>

The AT&T Democratic Convention....say it ain't so! Sadly, it seems it is.

Perhaps that is why so many Democrats aborgated their oaths to the Constitution and stomped on the Fourth Amendment and gave telecoms like AT&T immunity for spying on Americans.<< MORE >>

Nine Afghani police were killed by international air strikes after mistakenly ID'd as Taliban.

This is supposed to be the 21st century with high tech doodads yet terrible errors keep occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It makes one wonder how effective military communications and other bragged about super modern equipment and materiel really are in such situtations.<< MORE >>

How low has the Bush regime taken the US?  It's pretty bad when even our traditional ally, Great Britain, doesn't trust what Americans tell them, and all because of the Bushite torture policies, which are war crimes.

When current and former attorneys general sit before Congressional committees and claim waterboarding isn't torture, it's past time for impeachment.

As The Guardian reports: "Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs' report to be published today claims. They also call for an immediate investigation into allegations that the UK government has itself 'outsourced' the torture of its own nationals to Pakistan.

"In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used 'waterboarding'. The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.

"Today's committee report said there were 'serious implications' of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. 'The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,' said the committee. 'We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US.'

"It also urges the government to press the US authorities for information on whether any American military flights landing in the UK were part of the 'rendition circuit', even if they did not have detainees on board at the time."

Bush and his regime have committed war crimes and destroyed the integrity of the United States.

And impeachment is still off the table.

Housing prices continue to tumble and it seems that the end of the fall is not in sight.

However, this is not surprising considering that "creative" mortgage lending by financial institutions to put billions more into their pockets included scamming home buyers with interest only payments that then ballooned, pushing unreliable ARM's, sub-prime duplicity, and other types of cheating, and in league with the real estate and homebuilding industries, artificially inflating home prices with blue sky appraisals. << MORE >>

Another crane collapse, this time in Houston, killing four workers and injuring seven. This follows the two deadly crane collapses in Manhattan this spring.

The Bush administration's politicized anti-worker Labor Department and anti-worker safety OSHA policies have contributed to the deaths and injuries of workers in these crane collapses.<< MORE >>

McSame is deceitful.  He and his claque have continued to say that Hurricane Katrina didn't cause any oil spills from offshore drilling, which is a lie. Hurricane Katrina caused major oil spills and destroyed and damaged offshore rigs.

 

As I wrote last month, "And Wonk Room weighs in: "In fact, the clear satellite evidence of major spills was borne out by final reports. In May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) published their offshore damage assessment:  113 platforms totally destroyed, and 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10" or larger diameter.

 

McSame's spokespersons and supporters like Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana who lied about the oil damage to his own state, persist in trying to deceive the American public about the issue.

 

Now, McSame moves from oil spillage to stating that oil rigs successfully survived Hurricane Katrina, another baldfaced lie.  The man is dishonest and is completely unfit for the presidency.

 

From ThinkProgress: "Yesterday, Nancy Pfotenhauer, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) senior policy adviser, claimed that she had been misinformed when she falsely stated that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita did not spill a drop of oil. Today, McCain made another misinformed argument, claiming that oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have survived, very successfully, the impacts of hurricanes:

Q: I've been listening to your comments around renewable resources solar, tide, and wind “ you've talked a lot about that, but you keep peppering your comments with offshore drilling. But I'm not sure what you think the impact on our environment is based on that.

A: Keep the microphone. I'm aware that off the coast of Louisiana and Texas there are oil rigs, as we well know, and those rigs have survived, very successfully, the impacts of hurricanes “hurricane Katrina as far as Louisiana is concerned.

McCain is wrong. According to press reports, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita tore through the Gulf of Mexico's offshore oil and gas fields, toppling production platforms, setting rigs adrift and rupturing pipelines. The U.S. Minerals Management Service reported that the hurricanes totally destroyed 113 offshore oil platforms.

The hurricanes cost Transocean, the largest offshore driller, about $135 million in repairs, downtime and equipment upgrades alone, and damage to offshore producers accounted for 77 percent of the oil industry's storm costs. One offshore rig, the Ocean Warwick, drifted 66 nautical miles before running aground.

Here are some photos of the success that McCain is touting:

What are Bush and McSame going to do now? Obama shows that he is a foreign policy leader and Dubya and Sid don't know what the hell they're doing.

Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki agrees with Obama's 16 month US troop withdrawal plan. Will Bush acquiesce or stubbornly continue his imperial occupation of Iraq? Will McSame play follow the leader with Bush or Obama since he doesn't have a logical foreign policy plan for Iraq or Afghanistan other than playing Bush's Simon says or deceitfully calling Obama's plans his own<< MORE >>

Hold the applause on the Bush regime sending a senior diplomat to international nuclear talks with Iran.

Bush's failed foreign policy hasn't suddenly blossomed into a diplomacy turnaround even though the Bushites are ironically seeming to be doing what Obama has called for: jawboning not warmongering.<< MORE >>

This Bushite Republican administration's economic catastrophe has caused a dramatic increase in business bankrupticies, primarily small businesses, which are the backbone of employment here in the US.

McCain and Phil Gramm's economic drivel and lies, trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, can't hide the fact that small businesses are hurting in this disastrous economy.<< MORE >>

You can get whiplash trying to follow the status of Phill Gramm as part of McCain's campaign.  On the bus, off the bus, on the bus, under the bus.  The latest update has Gramm abruptly resigning from the campaign just in time for the usual Friday late afternoon press dump.

As reported by MSNBC: "Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm resigned Friday from his role as Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign co-chairman, hoping to quiet the uproar that followed his comments that Americans had become a "nation of whiners" whose constant complaints about the U.S. economy show they are in a "mental recession."

This will change nothing as far as Gramm's influence on McCain regarding the enconomy.

And the two close friends can always have their usual tete-a-tetes so Gramm can make sure McCain, as poster boy for the Republican economic philosophy of the haves and have mores; the hell with the common good, is following the script to further damage the US economy for regular hardworking Americans.

McIdiot is supposed to be strong on national security?  Not with his loose, bumbling lips.

With people like him, who needs enemies?  This man is unfit for the presidency.

From TPM: "This is the lead on a story just out over the Reuters wire ...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator's trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials' visits to Iraq in advance.

"I believe that either today or tomorrow -- and I'm not privy to his schedule -- Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators" who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

"The Reuters piece hints at it. But if Obama is going to be in Iraq this weekend, this is a major breach on McCain's part. As a knowledgeable insider notes ...

If it is true that Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, it is a very serious mistake for McCain to have disclosed it publically. Even for run-of-the-mill CODELs the military gives guidance like, "Please strongly discourage Congressional offices from issuing press releases prior to their trips which mention their intent to travel to the AOR and/or the dates of that travel or their scheduled meetings. Such releases are a serious compromise to OPSEC." If Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, I can not begin to imagine how much this is complicating the security planning for the trip.

"It's known that Obama is leaving on his foreign trip this weekend and the Journal OpEd page this morning said that Obama could arrive in Iraq "as early as this weekend." And with a slew of reporters in tow, it's not exactly highly classified information. But there is a reason definite information about these sorts of trips aren't released in advance.

Hypothetically, maybe McCain was just guessing. But even so it would still be a serious lapse of judgment on his part."

From crude, anti-woman rape jokes to blabbing about when Obama is supposed to be in Iraq, McClueless has no sense of judgment or security.  It's only about him. Unfit as a senator, unfit for the presidency.

McHypocrite, the foreign policy and national security bumbler, didn't bother to attend any hearings on Afghanistan.

McSame can't be bothered with the people's business, only his own.<< MORE >>

What is the new orgnization, Health Care for America Now, doing? Hoping to create another layer of bureaucracy to deal with the private health coverage for profit that is the cause of health care disaster here in the United States?

When I wrote about it a few weeks, ago, I said that HCAN seemed to be a well meaning but misguided, self-aggrandizing organization that really didn't understand that there was already a bill, HR 676, single payer, Medicare for All, that would bring US health care into the 21st century and finally on par with all the other industrialized countries of the world.<< MORE >>

Just as the Shrub wants to tie the next president, Barack Obama's hands, on Iraq with the flawed security agreement that bypasses Congress, so too, does Dubya want to tie Obama's hands in regard to Russia and its president, Dmity Medvedev.

While Arbusto was schmoozing with Medvedev at the G-8 conference, Condi Rice was signing the anathema to Rushia missile defense agreement with the Czech Republic, visiting Bulgaria where the US has a military base and on to Georgia to discuss its joining NATO.<< MORE >>

Yes, no, yes, no, maybe yes, maybe no.....This has been the timeline of the so called security agreement hatched between Bush and Maliki many moons ago.

It is an agreement fabricated to deliberately bypass Congressional approval and the OK of the Iraqi parliament but had hit the inevitable snags of such a flawed compact.<< MORE >>

The saga of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac due to the bursting of the housing bubble created by the national avaricious, sky's the limit cabal of the real estate industry, including appraisors, developers, and the mortgage lending and investment institutions, continues.

All of these were aided and abetted by the deregulatory, hands off any way they can make it corporate profits policies of this criminal Bush administration.<< MORE >>

Think it's easy to bring a union into the workplace. In this land of the free there are supposedly laws to protect workers rights to unionize but it's smoke and mirrors.

Employers will harrass, intimidate and even fire employees who dare to talk "union."

But that will change with passage of the Employees Free Choice Act.<< MORE >>

J. Sid McSame seems to have cornered the market on hypocrisy. It should be his middle name. When his lips move he's lying. And he was especially so at the NAACP annual convention.

As I mentioned yesterday, he has consistently disparaged the organization, yet had the audacity to appear before its members.<< MORE >>

You see it during or after the US wins an international sporting event: US fans screaming, "We're number one!"

Next time, you can yell back, " No, we're not!<< MORE >>

Bush and McCain disparaged Barack Obama's for his realism that the US should be willing to talk before any, as McCain sang, "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."

These two ignorant troglodytes, Dubya with a completely failed, criminal administration and disastrous foreign policy, and McCain a Bush wannabe who claims foreign policy and national security experience....yeah, when pigs can fly, are pathetic examples of incompetent Republican hot air disasters.<< MORE >>