The Deets

It should come as no surprise to see articles coming out proving that Bush had his eye off the ball before 9-11. There have already been multiple books and plenty of testimony supporting this, but a little digging will bring up more and more examples to pile onto this obvious fact. Could 9-11 have been prevented? That’s a tough question to say yes to, but considering how much the FBI and CIA knew about terrorist threats to this country, a bit more diligence rather than a record month long vacation in August of 2001 certainly wouldn’t have hurt.

Yahoo! News - Bremer Faulted Bush Before Terror Attacks: “L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq (news - web sites), said in a speech six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration was ‘paying no attention’ to terrorism.

‘What they will do is stagger along until there’s a major incident and then suddenly say, ‘Oh my God, shouldn’t we be organized to deal with this,” Bremer said at a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001.

What should someone make of the Deputy Defense Secretary’s misstatement of the number dead American’s he sent to Iraq by 200 souls? Should we criticize him for not realizing how many American’s he previously justified sending to battle? Of course. But I’m looking for a silver lining here. Maybe Defense Secretary Paul the Chickenhawk Wolfowitz understated the number of dead because he really WISHED he wasn’t responsible for the deaths of so many American’s? If so, that would mean he acutually has a somewhat warm heart beating somewhere deep inside his body, and may finally be realizing how unfortunately disasterous his policies for Iraq have become.

Keep in mind that this is the same guy who admits the White House used WMDs to justify the war in Iraq not because they actually believed Iraq had them, but because it was an agreed upon way to justify invading a country that posed no immediate threat to the United States:
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s867453.htm

Yahoo! News - Pentagon’s No. 2 Flubs Iraq Casualties: “Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was asked about the toll at a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee. ‘It’s approximately 500, of which I can get the exact numbers approximately 350 are combat deaths,’ he responded “

Wayne Swickley getting to the heart of the matter in Tuesday’s Star Tribune:

Letters from readers: “The man responsible
I am extremely offended by the publication of photographs of the flag-draped coffins of American soldiers, and I wholeheartedly agree with the Pentagon that the individual responsible for this should be fired.
On Election Day, I intend to do my part to see to it that he is.
Wayne Swickley, New Hope.“

The competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is once again raising a point that liberal activists have missed too many times. Individuals can best shape their own world -– lawyers and the government don’’t need to try to fix all our problems. Soso Whaley, a female animal trainer from New Hampshire and adjunct fellow at the CEI, is out to demonstrate that eating fast food for 30 days will not harm to her health. To highlight her point, she plans to eat only at McDonalds -– and her goal is to lose 10 pounds in 30 days! According to today’s Washington Times, she has already lost 5 pounds.

The American government has already invaded so many parts of our lives that it’’s great to see someone highlighting the folly in our ways.

While George W Bush hid in Texas with his dad’s help, John Kerry hid in . . . Vietnam, patriotically fighting for George Bush’s America. This might make you wonder how the Bush campaign team has the gall to attack Kerry’s Vietnam record, but I think the following audio clip helps explain things. Bush doesn’t even realize that he didn’t fight in Vietnam!

Bush Lying about Being in Vietnam

To rule in a case involving a politically aligned hunting buddy is definitely bad, but when you do it time after time without remorse, the pattern of partiality becomes impossible to ignore. Even Rep. Pickering saw the conflict, thus skipped out on a hunting trip with his father and Justice Scalia in 2002.

Yahoo! News - Renewed Focus on Scalia Trip: “At the time, the redistricting battle drew little attention outside of Mississippi. Local papers and the Washington Post reported the Democrats’ outrage at what they considered political manipulation and pointed out the close relationship between Scalia and the Pickerings. And a closer look now at Scalia’s role shows that he distanced himself from one of his own states’ rights rulings in siding with Rep. Pickering. “

If you’re one of the 35 million people in this country who don’t know where their next meal is going to come from (up from 31 million in 1999), you might want to consider voting for a presidential candidate who acts compassionately rather than simply says he is.

Yahoo! News - THE WORKING POOR: “The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, reported recently that 43 million people are living in low-income working families with children. Other government data show the number of people living below the official poverty line grew by more than 3.5 million from 2000 to 2002, to 34.6 million. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture (news - web sites) reported that the number of Americans who don’t know where their next meal will come from–categorized as ‘food insecure’–jumped from 31 million to 35 million between 1999 and 2002. “

Apparently Gimpy prefers his air . . . clean. Here’s his take on coal burning in Minnesota:

It seems to me there is a BIG push almost exclusively in political circles (and outside of public forums) for coal-fueled power plants IN Minnesota. They are supposed to be higher-tech, cleaner-burning, yada yada, except they are not solving the emissions problem, only the visible emissions problem (meaning the greenhouse gases, those ozone and human killing emissions remain and being less visible means we don’t see the problem until it kills us).

Okay, so that is what comes out the ass-end of coal power…now here is a report that shows us the vomit that comes out the other end–

So, in addition to continuing existing strip mining, and opening mining in more and more pristine nature areas, now there is just a simple mega-cocktail the coal mining companies have been mixing up for decades and putting into flimsy martini glass thin containers, pocketing years and years of income and waiting for the spill to put them out of business whereupon they will declare bankruptcy, take their investment portfolio and walk away to let the US people clean up their greedy mess.

When will we learn–

1) wind and sun renewable energy, and

2) to simply turn off the energy gluttony.

Do we need another moveon.org commercial showing our cute young kids spooning up toxic coal slurry first, or can we just do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.