Murdoch's New York Post

What the hell is going on here? The has to be the lowest point in the history of this rag. Take a look at the front page of Saturday's New York Post. The headline reads "TREASON". Apparently, the House of Representatives voting to disapprove of George the Liar's "plan" to surge is summed up this way: "COWARDS GIVE UP ON GIS - & GIVE IN TO EVIL"

Ralph Peters (who?) has written an article for the Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper. According to this halfwit, "We've reached a low point in the history of our government when a substantial number of legislators would welcome an American defeat in Iraq for domestic political advantage."

Yes, of course, that's exactly what this non-binding resolution does. It emboldens the enemy. We're "welcoming" defeat and in turn, "signaling our enemies that Congress wants them to win..." Is this moron serious? Just another hack stirring up the right wing propaganda and misleading the public of just what this vote was about.

Here's what the resolution states:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that _

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and
(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Well, after reading section 1, I'm not completely sure that is tantamount to treason. Is that what you'd call "providing aid and comfort to the enemy"? Where in this resolution does it say the funding will be cut? Where in this resolution does it tell you that the troops will be left out there to die?

And then this brainiac Peters, comes up with this: "And a word about those troops: It's going to come as a shock to the massive egos in Congress, but this resolution won't hurt morale - for the simple reason that our men and women in uniform have such low expectations of our politicians that they'll shrug this off as business as usual."

Well, which it is Repiglithans? Are we hurting morale or not? Are we "sending the wrong message to our troops" or do they even care what Congress thinks? These people make me sick.

All of this is moot, of course, because the Senate is filled with spineless, gutless Rethuglicans that won't even show up to vote. Yes, I'm talking about you, John McCain! What message does that send the troops, "Maverick"?

I happen to think that those who voted no to this resolution have just committed political suicide. They fell on their swords in the name of King George the Liar. Except for a few (17 Republicans in the House and 7 in the Senate), everyone else voted for in opposition of their constituency, the very people they were elected to represent. And I don't think the 70+% of Americans who are sick and tired of this illegal war in Iraq will soon forget how their "Representatives" voted come 2008.

You want to support the troops, you cowardly, bastards? How about sending our troops into Iraq with the proper equipment and body armor that you didn't feel like paying for the first time? How about sending our troops ARMORED Humvees instead of the death traps they have to ride in now? How embarrassing is it that the greatest fighting force in the world has to rummage for scrap metal in dumps to construct makeshift armor plating for their vehicles?!

Yes, the results of the vote on this resolution shows the world something, Mr. Peters. It shows the world how out of touch with reality people like you and George the Liar and the rest of his criminal administration are. It shows the world the disregard that this administration has for our troops by leaving them in harms way in the middle of a civil war; throwing another 20,000 into the meat grinder with no plan once they get there and no plan to get out; second, third, and fourth deployments of an already strained military, while trying to cut VA funding and veterans' benefits at home; leaving our borders and states unprotected with no National Guard.

It shows them a lot, Ralph. The world is watching and shaking their collective heads in disbelief at the ego, arrogance and stupidity of the murderer in the White House.

Priorities and Perspective

On Thursday, February 8th, we received shocking news of the death of 39 year old Anna Nicole Smith. Over the course of the following 48 hours, I learned more about Anna Nicole than I could have ever imagined.

Let's see, off the top of my head, here's what I remember:

She was born Vicki Lynn Hogan in Texas, kept the name "Smith" from her first marriage and had a son by her first husband. Her second marriage was to a billionaire 63 years her senior, and after his death she was involved in court battles over the inheritance with the billionaire's son (who has since also died). She had a crazy TV reality show after she'd gained tons of weight, was mostly incoherent during that time, but lost it all again and was a TrimSpa spokesperson. Her son died at age 20 while visiting her three days after she gave birth to a girl in September of 2006. He died in her hospital room from a drug overdose. Her third marriage was to Howard K. Stern (not the shock jock). And of course, her tragic end, dying in a Hollywood Hard Rock hotel (that's Hollywood, Florida). I'm not sure if this is all correct, but it's just what I can remember and I'm not going to fact check for accuracy, because to tell you the truth, I don't really care all that much.

My point is this: I've learned all this through osmosis. I didn't actively seek out this information, but there it was, hour after hour on every TV channel, news or otherwise. Are they now going to lay her in state in the Capitol Building while her husband, her ex-boyfriend and Zsa-Zsa Gabor's husband wait for DNA results to find out who her daughter's biological father really is?

Don't get me wrong, I do feel badly for her. It was a "live-fast-die-young" tragic end to a beautiful woman who, by all accounts, was a very sweet, sensitive person. But the same day that Anna Nicole Smith died, something else happened. Anyone? C'mon, take a guess.

Congress received a report from the Pentagon on their investigation into prewar intelligence which criticized civilian Pentagon officials for "conducting their own intelligence analysis to find links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda".

"Working under Douglas J. Feith, who at the time was under secretary of defense for policy, the group 'developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers'."

"Senator Levin, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the report a 'very strong condemnation' of the Pentagon’s activities.
'I think they sought this kind of intelligence. They made it clear they wanted any kind of possible connections, no matter how skimpy, and they got it,' he said. "

The above italized paragraphs come straight from the New York Times online. I say this because I had to look it up. I didn't know this off the top of my head like the Anna Nicole story, even though I think I should have. It wasn't drummed into my head over and over again like Anna Nicole.

I even tried to actively seek this information out when I first heard about it that day. I flipped to MSNBC to see if Chris Matthews would cover it on Hardball, but when I got there do you know what I found? Matthews was pre-empted by, you guessed it, BREAKING NEWS of the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I sat there, dumbfounded. I get 125 channels on Time-Warner cable and I couldn't find one of them dealing with Douglas Feith, or Donald Rumsfeld, or the Pentagon report, or Senator Levin or anything to do with breaking news of what our government did to sell us an illegal war in Iraq.

What does this say about our country as a society? The apathy and indifference is startling. Do we really not care about criminality running rampant in the White House, or 3,100 dead American soldiers, or thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians killed, or torture memos or Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo? What does it say about our society when 38 million people tune in to watch American Idol or the current water cooler talk is about the Prince halftime show at the Super Bowl, but no one knows that another helicopter went down in Iraq? No one knows that Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch admitted trying to shape the agenda for the war in Iraq.

Murdoch: "We tried. We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East."

Fair and balanced? We knew it wasn't and now Murdoch admits it. Did anyone hear about this? Is this not newsworthy? Perhaps, but what I'm really excited for are those DNA results so we can put this Anna Nicole thing on TV for another week... sigh.