SO MUCH TROUBLE IN THE WORLD

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Kissenger of death

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year.




In Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the Watergate reporter also claims that Henry Kissenger is among those advising Mr. Bush.

Boy ... that is good news for our soldiers.

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” -- Henry Kissinger as quoted in the book “Kiss the Boys Goodbye"

Friday, September 29, 2006

Do they have archery?



I just got an idea for "Friday The 13th" Part XI.

"Obey your thirst" ... for comedy

Nobody is reading my blog anymore because I am going light on the comedy and heavy on the politics. Well ... This is one of the funniest videos I have seen on youtube.com in a long time.

I cannot believe that a hundred thousand of people will watch an actress pretending to be a home schooled teenager, but people miss this kind of stuff. I really think is a tragedy that this comedic audition only has 100 or so views. In fact, I have watched it at least ten times! This makes me laugh each and every time I watch it.

Please do yourself a favor and check this out. If you like it as much as I do, give it a five-star rating. If it gets a good rating average, it might make it to one of the Top 100 lists that people tune in to when they sign on to youtube. This piece needs to be seen by more people.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Condoleezza Rice is so full of shit

When pressed by Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview about what he did about al-Qaida, President Clinton forcefully stated, “So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy”




Then on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped into the heated debate, defending the Bush administration and herself by saying, “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida!”




Which begs the question ... What is this January 25, 2001, memo from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice?




Well ... to be fair ... it doesn't even mention the word "Strategy".

For that you would need to look to a document a month earlier ...
A December 2000 Paper: "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects".

Okay ... okay ... so they were given a thirteen page "strategy" and warned about "possible" things to look out for.

However, it's not like they received an August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US."



They only thing Condoleezza Rice is good at doing is shopping for $7500.00 worth of shoes while the residents of New Orleans are left to die in the streets and in their own homes.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Hot Air

In a new report released today, the US government’s top climatologist said that in 45 years the Earth will be hotter than at anytime during the past one million years. Greenhouse gases will unquestionably cause this temperature increase.




"Humans are now in control of the Earth's climate, for better or worse," NASA's James Hansen tells ABC news.



In response to this report, President Bush told the press corps that this is all part of his master plan. He went on to say that he is really concerned by the high price of oil recently, and its effect on the underprivileged citizens of this country. “This temperature increase will help the poor people keep their heating bills to a minimum.”

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Walter Cronkite would be proud

I got a chance to work with Walter Cronkite at CBS early this year. It was an honor I will not soon forget.

After watching these two video clips, I have a great deal of respect for Keith Olbermann.



Intelligence?

A grim assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

To many of us, this report is not news at all. For years, many of us have been talking about the impact that will be made by tens of thousands of civilan deaths in Iraq. Nearly 7,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in just the past two months, according to a UN report just released.

I really hope in the coming days that we will see one or more members of the White House press corps force Bush to address this official report. Come on Helen. Where are you when we need you badly?




National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence.

This intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

For more than two years, there has been major tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.




I have been reading the right wing blogs on this issue. They are in a tizzy trying to justify this official damaging assessment. Their reasoning is so stupid, I won’t even take the time to repeat it. If you want to read a typical argument against the report, you can find one here.

Perhaps the one argument that does have legs, which nobody seems to be mentioning, are past reports that have come out of this collective. Specifically, I refer to the one produced in October of 2002. A document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs (a.k.a. WMD). This was one of the major documents that fueled Bush’s reasoning to invade Iraq in the first place.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Or else!

WASHINGTON (Sept. 22) - President Bush said Friday at a White House news conference that he was "taken aback" by a purported U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in the fight against the Taliban and terrorism in general after the Sept. 11 attacks.




Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage allegedly made the threat to President Pervez Musharraf shortly after the September 11th attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.

A transparent threat of war was made to the President of another country, and our President had no idea it was made?

Here are the likely scenarios:

1) Bush is a complete idiot.

2) Bush has about as much to do with running the US government as Colonel Sanders has with running KFC.

3) Bush is lying, and "taken aback" is what Karl Rove told George to say through the mystery ipod which was strapped to his back.

4) All of the above.

Hint: The answer is almost always “D”


Regardless of what did really happen between Richard Armitage and President Musharraf in that room ...

A) The Taliban is still alive and well in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

B) Osama Bin Laden is still free.

C) Ayman al-Zawahiri is still free.

D) Mullah Omar is still free. (The guy has one good eye)

Good work guys ... good work.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

You are not ready



If you think Rockstar Games is in the crosshairs of Focus on the Family, wait till you see this.

Islamic Jihadists have created a videogame in which the goal is to hunt down and assassinate our beloved leader George W. Bush.

The game, "Night Of Bush Capturing", is circulating on Islamic message
boards and features six levels of play culminating in a gun battle with the
president himself.

My friend Greg sent me the link to this new video game.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Goodbye

A nice song from a nice movie about true love.



What greater love do we have than that which we have for our children?

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Sign of the times



"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
- Sinclair Lewis

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
- Hermann Goering

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Acceptable Loss

There is a very important commercial that I just watched on a cool blog I often read called It's my Right to be Left of the Center.

It deals with the type of body armor that was issued to our troops at the start of the "War on Terror".

It clearly demonstrates the duality of most conservatives in Washington. They are the first to see the need to rush young Americans to war. Then they will shortchange their safety by giving them lousy "bulletproof" vests and insufficiently armored Humvees.




These same "supported" troops were also allowed to be exposed to high levels of depleted uranium.

I hope the Republicans will accept the loss of Congress this year with the same grace.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Everybody's a critic



In the past few months I have made a few photomontages, and I put them on youtube. My purpose for making them was to demonstrate the massive amounts of grief being experienced by many innocent people on both sides of the Iraq War.

One of them called The Saddest Song I've Got is made up of Iraqis mourning their dead.

To be fair, I made a second one called One of These Mornings It centers on the many brave service men and women who have died, and their families who must suffer their absence.

All in all, I have received many very nice comments, but these videos have also attracted the ire of many young conservatives who see the videos as liberal propaganda. The pattern I have seen in these hate filled morons is hard to ignore. Here are a few of their profiles and the videos they do like to watch.

First there is Hoffs333

He likes to watch:

A music video called Break Stuff

A video called Big Bang


Then there is The Turbenator

Turbenator has a penchant for candy videos like Lollipop

And who can forget the classic Finest Ass Ever


Then I had the pleasure of meeting 21K

The video on his "favorites" list that jumped out at me was This One


The latest ... and certainly not the greatest was BaylorMG

He seems to get off watching Iraq combat videos

... and 9/11 World Trade Center jumper videos.

When that gets a bit heavy for him, he likes to top it off with the occasional Milli Vanilli video.

You really cannot make this shit up.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Special Thanks



It's tough to have your birthday on September 11th. The Newspaper forgoes the usual parade of celebrity pictures, and instead just says, "If you were born today ... you share a death day with over 3000 people at ground zero.

I would like to thank the many people who wished me a happy birthday as I watch George Bush fake emotion on CNN.

-Steve Fox ... for your very warm words
-Steve Kravec ... for your connection of my birthday to 9/11
-Steve and Michelle from UB ... for your very nice message. Also, for being evidence personified that sometimes things can work out in the end if you really love one another.

(So far ... a lot of Steves)

-Alyssa Ettinger for her festive feline e-card.

-My Grandparents for their feline e-card.

I may own a cat ... but I am really a dog person.

Thanks also for the 10-12 calls that woke me up repeatedly on one of my few days off. It was worth the loss of sleep.

My special thanks go out to all of you.

Signed ... an older Peter

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Good things come in small packages

For those of you sick and tired of watching Democrats Ned Lamont and Joseph “kiss their ass” Lieberman battle each other in Connecticut, I give you Rhode Island.




On September 12th The Republican Party will hold their Senatorial primary in Rhode Island. On one side is the very moderate incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee. His persistent challenger, and current mayor of Cranston, is Stephen Laffey.





The outcome on Tuesday could help determine whether the Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate.

In Connecticut, the Democratic Party is supporting the more liberal outsider against the moderate incumbent. In Rhode Island, Republicans are going to spend more than a million dollars in television ads to make sure that the more conservative challenger Stephen Laffey doesn’t stand a chance. One advertisement goes as far as to use a line Republicans have used in countless attacks against Democrats, mocking him as “tax-and-spend Steve Laffey.”

You might be asking yourself ... why would Elizabeth Dole, who runs the Republican Senate campaign committee, and Karl Rove support the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee?

After all Mr. Chafee has opposed many centerpiece Republican policies, from the war in Iraq to tax cuts to most restrictions on abortion. This week, he even helped force a delay on the confirmation of John R. Bolton as the United States ambassador to the United Nations.





The answer is found at the rotten core of politics. It’s not what someone stands for that really counts. In the end, it’s all about who has a better chance of winning the seat.


"It's so small, Rhode Island could kick the crap out of it in a war.”
-Dudley Moore in Arthur (1981)

Friday, September 08, 2006

We have ways of making you talk

Pentagon officials yesterday renounced the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Pictured below is from left, Stephen Leeder, deputy director of doctrine; Lt. Col. Jeff Jennings; Maj. Matt Garner; and Michael Banks, a judge advocate)




New policy will be adopted specifically forbidding U.S. troops from using forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and waterboarding to elicit information from detainees captured in ongoing wars.

Instead, all suspected international terrorists, al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi insurgents will be sat down and forced to watch 16-hour episodic marathons of “The Greatest American Hero”.





Higher-ups in the ACLU and Senator John McCain have gone on the record calling this new policy “jumping out of the pot and into the fire”.

The more things change ...



God help this country if someone sits at this desk who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Thursday, September 07, 2006

CRIKEY! CROCS RULE!


I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.
--Steve Irwin

I am a bit weary of all the political crap out there right now.

The Republicans are distancing themselves from Bush and his administration.

(Where were they when Richard "Dick" Cheney was giving away no bid contracts to Kellogg Brown & Root and Halliburton?)




(Where were they when this pathetic moron was entertaining fat oil executives as the Halliburton blob?)




The Clinton era Democrats are upset at ABC's "made for TV" movie about the lead up to 9/11

(Where were they when ABC's "Family Matters" made its debut?)




(Where was Sandy Berger when ABC's "Cop Rock" poisoned the TV dial?)




What really jumps out at me, and makes me very sad, is the death of Steve Irwin. My heart goes out to his wonderful wife Terri and his two great kids.




I have been lucky enough to have a chance to scuba dive with the type of stingray that killed Steve when I was in the Cayman Islands. You have more of a chance of being hit by lighting twice than to be killed by the barb on a stingray's tail. Australia has only ever seen only two stingray deaths (Including Steve's) in their recorded history.

This guy definitely was a character. Many people questioned his methods, but he certainly had a true love for all animals great and small. I really respect that.








If you have a passion, and a strong love for something, you are certainly doing something right. When you really take the time to think about it, passion for life and love are the two things that can never be fully corrupted in this world.

Sure ... you can have your heart broken. Like Steve, you might even have to give your life for what you love. However, what really is the alternative? Live your lives never taking any chances? The only thing that will guarantee you is that you will never feel the true highs of life, and that is truly a waste.

For those of you who don't agree, there will always be an opening as the Halliburton blob.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Poppycock

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.




“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.

This is very bad news for those who support the “War on Terror” and the two decade long “War on Drugs”

However, this is really good news for people who like poppy bagels.