That's a long flag.

You can see where it was photoshopped together.

Cloning tool. Those wrinkles do look familiar don't they?

Just saving some taxpayer money.

They would have had to special order a flag with stripes that long.

Just borrow it from one of those outrageously large lapel pins the pubes wear.

Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges


By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: October 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.


Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, is expected to announce by the end of the week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials in a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term. The case has put many in the White House on edge.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy. Other officials could also face charges in connection with the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in 2003.

On Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

I saw this shameless display. Unbelieveable.

President Bush said several weeks ago that Mr. Fitzgerald had handled the case in "a very dignified way," making it more difficult for Republicans to portray him negatively.

But allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case, one Republican with close ties to the White House said Sunday. Other people sympathetic to Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said that indicting them would amount to criminalizing politics and that Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand how Washington works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/politics...bTNJgQ0GEs+P2/A

Need I remind these scumbags, as I've heard soooooo often from their own rightwing mouthpieces, perjury IS a crime?

No, that's only when Democrats are in power.

harumph.

But this is just lame. Criminalizing politics? What you bet Hannity and Limpbag are using it too?

Obviously not. "I never told anyone to lie, not one time".

Well I could agree Rove has criminalized politics, Libby I don't know enough about to class with Rove. Turd Blossom is in a class all by his chubby little self. Any prick that runs around the white house announcing he's going to "fuck" someone "like they have never been fucked before" deserves a royal screwing.

Really that's not funny...



No, it's hilarious...

Yes, it's hilarious. I coughed coffee all over my screen.

And yes, that's EXACTLY what Jesus would do!

I thought Jesus was non-violent? Or is it just that lefty talk a good game non-violent?

Likely Jesus would cleanse, rather than smack.

But it wouldn't be as funny.

Jesus seems to have confined his violence to slapping shit-eating grins off Pharises. Slapping grins off devils seems to me to be a nice place to draw the "non-violent" line.

I mean, seriously, do you think DeLay's mom is proud of him? That Jesus thinks he should launder more money? That George Washington and Abe Lincoln are cheering him on from their graves? "Yea, team, buy it, buy it, buy it, MO' MONEY, MO' MONEY, YEA, TEAM?"

Tell you what, Jesus can slap DeLay if I can slap Howie Dean.

Be my guest! Can I slap him too?

Get in line. McCain's the only pol I've ever given a dime to. I guess that makes me part of the big money problem.

Me too. I've given him the max, every year since 1998.

About time for him to perform instead of talk.

He performs less than ever around here. I think he's too old and too Hollywood. Too bad, but I think he might as well go back to just worrying about his constituency.

Ain't gonna be prez.

Oh, he might, if Cheney gets indicted. By surprise. Something like "Commander in Chief", without the 3 fake "proving she's really tough" convenient national security emergencies.

Where's President Bartlett when we need him, dammit?

I like him... but it really got to me when he hugged Bush like he did... it was jUSt way too appeasing for even me to take.

And that brings to mind Bush holding the Saudi Prince's hand... what the hell was that?...

I guess I took it to be a local custom of some kind... but Bush jUSt doesn't strike me as the type to honor "foreign" local customs too much... hell, he was a bull in a china shop in London with his own kin.

I suffer from no delusions that McCain is a saint.

Just better than most of what's on offer right now.

Say... BTW... did ya'll catch when Gorbachev met the Pope several years ago... what the hell was that about...

They both rushed ahead of their security(which both sets freaked when they did it, leading me to believe it was totally unorchestrated:~) and hugged and kissed eachother on the lips...

I'm trying to google a story or pict on it... but can't find anything right away... seems like I was doing a lot of drugs back then... hmmmn...

That seems like a lifetime ago, when Gorbachov met the Pope.

Almost literally... still can't find anything but a lot of really weird strange stuff... sometimes I doubt my sanity...

Haa... I remember telling my buds that the Senate had crowned Moon the "King of the Universe"... LOL... they thought I was cracking up... till they read the links.

No, you're sane. Gorbachav met with the Pope, the Pope urged him to pursue glasnost, that dictatorship was a bad idea, that he should work with Reagan to find a new course for the Soviet Union.

You didn't imagine it, it was just before the internet.

I jUSt know that I remember watching it on the C-band... and almost falling off the couch... pacing around the house and going "what the hell was that?" over and over.

Yes, for reasons unknown, C-SPAN re-ran that oldie today. You didn't imagine it. Really.

He once took a whip to some folks, guess who? How non-violent was that?

Letters Show Frist Notified Of Stocks in 'Blind' Trusts
Documents Contradict Comments on Holdings

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A01

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.

Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents.



Since 2001, the trustees have written to Frist and the Senate 15 times detailing the sale of assets from or the contribution of assets to trusts of Frist and his family. The letters included notice of the addition of HCA shares worth $500,000 to $1 million in 2001 and HCA stock worth $750,000 to $1.5 million in 2002. The trust agreements require the trustees to inform Frist and the Senate whenever assets are added or sold.

The letters seem to undermine one of the major arguments the senator has used throughout his political career to rebut criticism of his ownership in HCA: that the stock was held in blind trusts beyond his control and that he had little idea of the extent of those holdings.

The extent of Frist's knowledge of the inner workings of his trusts and his family's health care company is related to a recently launched federal investigation of possible insider trading involving the liquidation this summer of Frist's HCA stock. Within weeks of Frist's decision to sell his holdings in June, HCA shares fell sharply because of a weak earnings report. Frist has said he possessed only publicly available and not "insider" information about the company when he directed the sale and, therefore, did nothing wrong.

Last week, Frist told reporters that he is "absolutely confident in the outcome" of the inquiries by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission because he "acted properly at every point." He declined to address specifics about the investigations but said he is providing information as quickly and fully as possible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5102301201.html

This scum is just like the corrupt Republican party. A bunch of rich, crooked, corporate power brokers setting the country up for their financial benefit. Note the similarities. Reform achieved or at least talked about in the 90s is being dismantled or totally ignored. Berlesconi and Bush are from the same mold.



Though Unpopular, Berlusconi Succeeds at Undoing 'Revolution'
Italian Leader's Critics Fear Return of Corruption, Inefficiency

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A14

ROME -- It was called the Italian Revolution. In the early 1990s, dozens of politicians and their business allies were tossed into jail by anti-corruption prosecutors. Political parties that had dominated the country's revolving-door governments for 50 years crumbled. Voters demanded -- and got -- electoral reforms designed to ensure relatively stable governments.

Less than a decade and a half later, the revolution is over. A steady counterattack over the past four years by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's wealthy and assertive prime minister, has nullified many of the laws that made such prosecutions possible. In one recent stroke, Berlusconi's coalition in Parliament this month erased electoral rules that grew out of the upheaval of the '90s and that many voters once hoped would reduce government shakiness and sleaze.

Many of Berlusconi's critics see symptoms of a reborn corrupt and inefficient state in a recent upsurge of organized crime and in scandals that have rocked the country's business sector.

Berlusconi himself has done well under the changes. He has declared that he entered politics to protect his business interests from antitrust moves and himself from prosecution for corruption. He once said: "If I, taking care of everyone's interests, also take care of my own, you can't talk about a conflict of interest."

"It is remarkable that, in serving his own interests, Berlusconi has had the effect of reversing the entire revolution," said Erik Jones, a professor of European studies at Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center. "He may be giving away big achievements for the narrowest of reasons."

Giovanni Sartori, a law professor and frequent critic of Berlusconi's government, said: "Berlusconi has governed strictly from a cost-benefit analysis of how he can serve himself. By his calculation, his job showed results."

Opponents call the new electoral ordinance a prime example of a head of government tailoring laws to his own needs. There was no wide public demand for such a change; it was a Berlusconi initiative, announced six months before national elections scheduled for April.

"This is not about reform," Sartori said. "This is about expediency."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5102301090.html

Berlesconi is a Republican clone. This is unbelieveable. Criminalizing politics.



The electoral law is only the latest reversal of the changes wrought in the early 1990s. Berlusconi's parliamentary coalition also passed a measure to decriminalize false accounting. In September, a judge ruled that because of the measure, charges against Berlusconi for alleged bogus bookkeeping dating to 1989 were no longer valid.

Maybe DeLay should try this.



He had been charged with transferring money to Bettino Craxi, then the prime minister, through an offshore account. Berlusconi's attorney, Gaetano Pecorella, said of the case's dismissal that "it was the expected verdict. The court applied the new law, which says that if false bookkeeping causes no important harm, it should not be punished."

Berlusconi's government also passed a law making it difficult for investigators to gather information from foreign governments on financial dealings abroad. Many of the probes of his businesses have extended beyond Italy's shores.

Charges against him for allegedly bribing a judge in the 1980s to get control of a food conglomerate were dismissed, but a longtime associate, former defense minister Cesare Previti, was convicted. His case is on appeal.

Berlusconi now intends to have a bill passed that would reduce the statute of limitations on the charge and free Previti from a possible 11-year sentence. Parliament plans to take up the so-called Save Previti bill this fall. A study by Italy's top appeals court estimates that 88 percent of all pending corruption and fraud cases would be thrown out if the bill passes.

Berlusconi accused prosecutors and judges of going after Previti for political reasons. "The aim of these judges is not to establish justice, but instead to strike at those who have a mandate to rule Italy," Berlusconi said after Previti's 2003 sentencing.

Sound familiar?

On Wednesday, he denied that the new laws were for his own advantage. "Not only are these wholly legitimate laws, but even if they weren't, they would number three or four out of 400 and therefore less than 1 percent," he told reporters.

Berlusconi said he would not give up his blunt political style. "I try not to be politically correct, or else I'll become the same as everyone else," he said.


Arrogant ass. Like most Republicans.

HA Ha!


Some not buying story of Frist sale


Paper reports Senate leader was told of HCA holdings in "blind trust"; at odds with earlier account.
October 24, 2005: 7:33 AM EDT


NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist received regular updates on his holdings in HCA, according to a published report, which would seem at odds with his earlier statements about his knowledge and control over his holdings.

The Washington Post reported Monday that trustees who controlled his holdings have written to Frist and the Senate 15 times since 2001 detailing the sale of assets from or the contribution of assets to trusts of Frist and his family. Those communications included notice of the addition of HCA (Research) shares worth $500,000 to $1 million in 2001 and HCA stock worth $750,000 to $1.5 million in 2002, according to the report.

Frist, who is widely reported to be weighing a run for president in 2008, is facing an investigation by both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission into his instructions to the trustee to sell all of its holdings of HCA stock in June. Within weeks of that sale, HCA shares fell sharply because of a weak earnings report.


http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/24/news/newsm...dex.htm?cnn=yes

This is a cartoon Tom Toles never inked, maybe he will tomorrow.

Repuslickans?

close....

Frist memo blames spending on terrorism

By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 24, 2005

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office is circulating a memorandum that largely blames sharp Republican spending increases on the war against terrorism, an argument the Republican Party's fiscal critics call an exaggeration and coverup.

The memo is the latest bid by the Republican leader to wage a counteroffensive against an escalating rebellion in conservative ranks over what budget hawks call a spending spree that betrays the party's historical commitment to smaller, limited government.

The Frist-ordered memorandum, drafted by senior aide Bill Hoagland, concedes there has been "unnecessary and wasteful spending" in the past five years by the Republican Congress: "In a $2.5 trillion budget how could there not be?"

But it argues that the "case can be made that government spending over the last 5 years has not been profligate, given the geopolitical situation." Mr. Hoagland pointed to two reasons for the increases.

First, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ensuing global war on terrorism that has cost $290 billion thus far, plus the $50 billion that was included in the defense bill passed by the Senate earlier this month. Second, Hurricane Katrina, "the worst natural disaster in this country's history," which has cost $71 billion.

Although the prescription drug bill "has become a symbol of federal spending out of control," Mr. Hoagland said, "the actual spending from that legislation ... [has] only now begun."

Federal spending has risen to nearly $2.5 trillion a year, which the memo calls "a large number obviously," but it notes that the U.S. has a $12.3 trillion economy and that "no other industrial nation's centralized government spends less than the United States, measured as a share of their economy."

Federal spending accounts for about 20.2 percent of the gross domestic product, less than the 22.2 percent of GDP it averaged in the 1980s and the 20.7 percent in the 1990s. Were it not for the defense spending increases since 2000, federal spending would be 19.2 percent of GDP, he added.

Brian M. Riedl, chief budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said the memo showed "that congressional leaders still do not grasp the depth and consequences of their historic spending spree."

A recent Heritage analysis of the budget's growth in the past five years found that government has expanded 33 percent and "has pushed federal spending to nearly $22,000 per household -- the most since World War II," Mr. Riedl said.

Contrary to the Senate memo, "defense is responsible for less than one-third of the $610 billion increase in spending since 2001," while spending on education rose by 100 percent, housing and commerce by 86 percent, community development by 71 percent, health research and regulation by 61 percent and veterans benefits by 51 percent, he said.

"Rather than make excuses for past excesses, lawmakers should instead focus on reining in runaway spending," Mr. Riedl said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20...12227-7544r.htm



Mr. Stevens's Tirade


Sunday, October 23, 2005; Page B06

ALASKA SEN. Ted Stevens threw the senatorial version of a hissy fit on the floor the other day. The issue was a proposal by his Republican colleague, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, to block $453 million earmarked for two Alaska bridges in the recent highway bill and instead use some of the money to rebuild the Interstate 10 bridge across Lake Ponchartrain wiped out by the recent hurricane. Mr. Stevens is one of the masters of the Senate at steering federal money in the direction of his state, but he was not going to stand for this reverse flow.

"I will put the Senate on notice -- and I don't kid people -- if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state and take money only from our state, I will resign from this body," Mr. Stevens vowed. Sounds awfully tempting to us -- but not, apparently, to Mr. Stevens's colleagues; the amendment failed 82 to 15.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5102201040.html

There's a half a billion.

The Mobile Register

Senate vote on pork shows wrong priorities
Monday, October 24, 2005

The U.S. Senate proved last week that most of its members are addicted to the most rancid pork imaginable when it overwhelmingly defeated two amendments to redirect misguided spending and use it for hurricane relief instead.

Alabama's senior Sen. Richard Shelby was one of the members who showed abominable judgment -- in contradiction of a theme he offered less than a month ago -- by refusing to cut the egregious pork.

On the other hand, Alabama's junior Sen. Jeff Sessions was one of the few lawmakers with the guts to stand up for principle, against wasteful spending. The two amendments were defeated 86-13 and 82-15, respectively, but Mr. Sessions was in the small minority who took the proper position.



Both amendments were offered by Oklahoma's conservative Sen. Tom Coburn. The first would have eliminated $450 million for two bridges in Alaska, including one from a town of 15,000 people to an island with a population of only 50 people -- and would have used $75 million of the savings to help fix the Interstate 10 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.

"So you can get perspective on this," said Sen. Coburn, "$230 million for 50 people, where there's a ferry service already running every 15 to 30 minutes that takes seven minutes to cross, is enough money to buy each one of them a Learjet."

But the nearly 82-year-old Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, one of the most successful pork barons in the history of Congress, threatened to resign his seat "and be taken out of here on a stretcher" if the bridge funding were killed.

There was no need for a stretcher, but his colleagues ought to have taken him up on his offer to resign and let Alaska's Republican governor appoint a replacement. The culture in Washington needs to change so that it is the profligate spenders of taxpayers' money, rather than the taxpayers' few, brave guardians, who are the ones seen as risking their power or their jobs.

The other Coburn amendment would have eliminated smaller local projects such as $500,000 for a sculpture park in Seattle, $200,000 for an animal shelter in Rhode Island, and $950,000 for a museum parking lot in Nebraska. It is a mystery why these items ever were included in a spending bill meant to cover transportation and housing.

The problem with these pork projects isn't that they are necessarily bad ideas, but that they have no business being funded from the federal treasury -- especially at a time of annual deficits exceeding $400 billion.

It was just last month that Alabama's Sen. Shelby pronounced himself willing to let Alabama delay many of the federal highway projects promised to it if other states' local projects were similarly curtailed. Well, the Coburn amendments offered Sen. Shelby a chance to begin that process -- but he flinched.

What a shame that he would turn a promise into nothing for the sake of a bridge to nowhere.


http://www.al.com/opinion/mobileregister/i...2570.xml&coll=3

Oh, that kind of Blind Trust.

Corrupt, Incompetent and 'Off Center'
[from the November 7, 2005 issue]


Here is the liberals' problem in a nutshell: More than 30 percent of Americans happily answer to the appellation "conservative," while 18 percent call themselves "liberal." And yet when questioned by pollsters, a super-majority of more than 60 percent take positions liberal in everything but name. Indeed, on many if not most issues, Americans hold views well to the left of those espoused by almost any national Democratic politician.
In a May survey published by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 65 percent of respondents said they favor providing health insurance to all Americans, even if it means raising taxes, and 86 percent said they favor raising the minimum wage. Seventy-seven percent said they believe the country "should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.'' A September Gallup Poll finds that 59 percent consider the Iraq War a mistake and 63 percent agree that US forces should be partially or completely withdrawn.

Nevertheless, extremist right-wingers, including a few apparent criminals, enjoy a stranglehold on our political system and media discourse. And so the majority views of the American people are treated with contempt by pundits and politicians alike. To give just a minor example, New York Times columnist David Brooks--the writer who best understands the dynamics of the contemporary Democratic Party, according to the smart boys at ABC's The Note--began a recent screed with the proclamation: "After a while, you get sick of the DeLays of the right and the Deans of the left." Note the implied equivalence between the corrupt and extreme Tom DeLay--who regularly compares the Environmental Protection Agency to the Nazis--and Howard Dean, a balanced-budget fiscal conservative and ally of the NRA whose "radical" position on Iraq now puts him to the right of most Americans. Or how about the treatment meted out by smarty-pants pundits to Al Gore, one of the few politicians who have given voice to majority American positions on the war, the environment and the dishonesty and ideological obsessions of the Bush Administration. Brooks termed him "unhinged." Fred Barnes said he was "nutty." Charles Krauthammer, speaking, he said, in his capacity as a psychiatrist, called him on "the edge of looniness."

Because right-wingers have been so adept at controlling the political discourse, they have succeeded in moving the Democrats rightward too. Brooks himself has pointed out that the conservative media have "cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out." In fact, all that's necessary to discredit an individual or an idea in the present poisoned atmosphere is to apply the label "liberal," which conservatives equate with "treason," "slander" and "treachery" (Ann Coulter); "idiocy" (Mona Charen); "Communism" (David Horowitz); inspiration for child murder (Newt Gingrich); Islamic terrorism (Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Horowitz again); and priestly pedophilia (Rick Santorum).

Even allowing for the possibility of mental and emotional unbalance on the part of some of those quoted above, the ground for these attacks has undoubtedly been seeded by liberals' mistakes. Back in 1991 Thomas and Mary Edsall published their revelatory work Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, in which they illustrated the cost of liberal hubris and political miscalculation. The combination of rising tax rates, judicially imposed integration, affirmative action and abortion laws, the redistribution programs of the Great Society and the occasionally violent excesses of leftist social movements--coupled with the brilliant exploitation of these disparate phenomena by a well-funded, well-disciplined conservative movement--laid the groundwork for the takeover of American politics by the right.

Now, fourteen years later, political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have published an equally illuminating investigation into the underlying dynamics of our present political predicament. Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy demonstrates just how badly Americans are served by media that accept the fundamental frame put forth by far-right Republicans. Did you know, for instance, that according to all available evidence, Americans have not grown more conservative in recent decades? (Lesley Stahl just stated that myth as a "fact" on The Colbert Report.) And what about the fact that in the 2004 election "moral issues" like gay marriage actually benefited Kerry, not Bush, by producing turnout? (In "What's the Matter With What's the Matter With Kansas?" Princeton professor Larry Bartels draws similar conclusions.)

Hacker and Pierson shine a light on the methods employed by the governing right-wing clique to maintain and expand their power without paying the price for their unpopular policies and base-focused system of rewards. Examining the 2001 tax cuts, the Bush energy plan, the Medicare drug bill and the deregulation of almost every industry that has a lobbying team and campaign-contribution budget, they expose tactics like "tailored disinformation," designed to confuse a poorly informed public; Mafia-like manipulation of the levers of power in the House, Senate and White House that not only defenestrates the Democratic opposition but cuts off their sources of financial support; and a network of "New Power Brokers," like the aforementioned DeLay, Grover Norquist and countless think tanks, media moguls, funders and lobbyists who work together to game the system at a level that is either too complicated or too boring to attract intelligent scrutiny. (If our leading political reporters were forced to address these authors' evidence or to stop mouthing the nonsense dominating their own stories, our politics would be transformed overnight.)

With leading Republicans looking at potential slammer time and Bush's approval rating in a tailspin, providence has given liberals an opportunity pregnant with possibility. Americans already share our values and no longer remain in thrall to the linguistic terror tactics of right-wing propagandists. What we need now is a liberal language to help people connect needs and desires to liberals' vision. I'll take up that challenge in my next column.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/alterman

I guess the Italian pricks want a return to the lupo knee-capping the reforms put an end to the need for. Good, I think knee-capping works better anyway. If they eff with your right to earn a descent living eff with their right to walk.

Disgusting.



It isn't the 'lefties' bring this up over and over.

The 'right' won't give up torture regardless of the fact that the country is overwhelmingly against it! What is their problem? Figgers it's Cheney.

Torture is as much a part of Bush's platform as huge tax cuts to the rich.