Nov. 1st '05: GSB Day
The Day the Democrats Grew Some Balls

Photo Courtesy of MSNBC
Above: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV, center) gestures as to what it looks like when he plays with his newly grown balls while Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY, left) and Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL, right) courteously pretend not to see. But you know they are both so ready to strike that pose right along with him.

Tuesday evening marked the long-awaited arrival of GSB Day, the day the Democrats in Congress finally grew some balls. Harry Reid invoked, for just the 53rd time ever, Senate Rule 21. What that means is the entire senate room was cleared out, phones pagers and blackberries left at the door, and the news media sent away, for a closed-door emergency meeting. No account of what precisely was said in the meeting is allowed to be made under penalty of being kicked out of the senate. Reid called this meeting (seconded immediately, I think but may be wrong, by Durbin) on the declaration that it is time to know the truth about the intelligence leading up to the Iraq war.

Pat Roberts, the other shithead senator from Kansas (the first being Sam Brownback, who campaigned for re-election last November on the platform of not having interfered with a Kansas state government plan to widen highways, and also having written the failed amendment to ban gay marriage - I really wish that were a joke because it would be hilarious), is in charge of the senate Intelligence Committee. He was running an internal investigation to find out if the Bush administration "deliberately misled" the public based on the intelligence they did or did not gather. Sounds like bull shit already doesn't it? The second phase of the investigation's report was supposed to come out before the November elections, gee I wonder why they didn't make that kind of a deadline. The problem is, according to Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), there's been no indication whatsoever that any progress at all has been made.

In the wake of Pat Fitzgerald's failure to make indictments about the CIA leak (which I posted here about on Friday if you'd like to scroll down), and could only get Libby on protecting his superiors by lying to the grand jury, Democrats in the Senate finally got fed up with the fact that none of these assholes at the top ever have to take responsibility for the shit they pull. The closed door meeting adjourned after about two hours of discussion, and now there is a 6 person bipartisan group that is to report back on the 14th of this month. Of course, the Republicans lost their shit completely.

Pat Roberts is being accused of intentionally stalling the investigation to protect the White House; Chris Bond (guess what party-Missouri) is claiming that the Democrats already signed documents agreeing to drop the subject because clearly there's nobody lying or full of shit even in the slightest working with the Bush administration. In fairness, that assclown is talking about the first phase of the investigation that simply stated that there were no "mistaken assumptions" as a result of "political pressure". No, there weren't any. Nobody was mistakenly assuming. They knew this shit wasn't true to begin with. That's where the whole lying part in phase two comes in that you guys never got around to finishing, get it? Incidentally Bond is also on the Intelligence Committee.

Senate Majority Leader (and rumored front-runner for the '08 Republican nod for the White House), Bill Frist, looked like he'd just opened the ark of the covenant like that dude at the end of that Indiana Jones movie. Except he wasn't horrified by the sight of a righteous and vengeful god so much as he was just really pissed off that he couldn't stop the Democrats from doing something. He claimed that the initiative Reid took was personally offending to him, was a slap in the face (because, clearly, this is all about Bill Frist), was an affront to the entire country, and was just plain wrong. Gee, I had always thought that insisting that the administration that campaigned on bringing integrity back to the White House would be held to a level of integrity. Even that it would be right to do so. Frist would know a lot about integrity by the way, he's currently under investigation for selling stock in his for profit hospital just before it tanked on the market. Yes that is just what those big business white collar crimes were all about, and no you weren't thinking of something else. By the way this man runs the majority party of the senate of the United States of America. He's a bigger ass than Martha Stewart, but I doubt the liberal news media is going to cover the story too closely.

Dr. Frist, I'm sorry, but you are the affront to the country, you probably deserve a good slap in the face, and you are just plain wrong.

Since ethics aren't by any means this guy's strong suit (lied about ever owning the stock he sold, lied about diagnosing Terri Schiavo over a TV screen after doing it on the senate floor, sold that fucking stock illegally, lied that he had any integrity for Democrats to violate, lied that ethics was the cause of his rage after Reid invoked rule 21, etc.) we have to wonder what the hell was actually pissing him off so badly. I think I may know. According to Frist himself, rule 21 can be ended once invoked by a simple majority vote. That means all they needed to do to shut down the Democrats' attempt here was stand up 51 people and that would be the end of it.

There are 55 Republican senators.

Frist couldn't get a majority vote to agree with him that this was a stunt and a waste of time. There are some people in the Republican party that apparently aren't so immoral and realize that the players in the congressional majority is protecting the White House (for example, Pat Roberts). They are just as fed up, and the thing is, they apparently weren't aware that Reid was going to do this. So the grand "stunt" that this has been spun in to was seen by people on both sides of the isle as entirely appropriate. So the minority party stood up, dropped a bombshell that would have been easy to knock down, and they won. Republicans, having no fucking clue what to do when they're not being granted mandates that don't exist, turned immediately back to Clinton-era tactics, and did what people like Ann Coulter claim only seething hate-filled liberals do: they started yelling and calling names.

Of course, the news media (being so liberally biased) will fall in line and agree with the Republicans that it was all a mere publicity stunt, but the Dems struck a real victory here. Happy GSB Day.

Avian Flu Strategy

Photo courtesy of CNN

Okay, so the header there is a little misleading. You may have read that, saw the photo of Bush cleverly taken at such an angle that you really have to squint to see that he's still making that smirk/twitch he does with the side of his mouth, and thought to yourself "wow, he gave a strategy to prepare for and fight against an avian flu pandemic?" If that was what happened when you saw those things, I apologize for misleading you. Hey that wasn't so hard to do. I wonder why he never apologizes for this shit... I had figured it just hurt too much, but nope!

After spending about half of his speech telling people in the audience what their jobs were at the NIH and then proceeding to try and make the rest of the audience shit a collective brick by telling horror stories of other pandemics (followed by the predicted "9/11 times a bazillion" line that made the avian flu the next, well, 9/11), the newly elected President (who is now a lame duck a year in to his first term.... that's historic too isn't it?) outlined the "strategy":

"Our strategy is designed to meet three critical goals: first, we must detect outbreaks that occur anywhere in the world; second, we must protect the American people by stockpiling vaccines and antiviral drugs, and improve our ability to rapidly produce new vaccines against a pandemic strain; and third, we must be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event that a pandemic reaches our shores."

Let's take a look here. First, we need to know who's sick. Gee that's a fuckin' showstopper of an idea. Next, we need to stockpile vaccine.... and then improve our ability to produce new ones? Just a guess but I think we'll focus on that in a minute here. Third, we need a new FEMA director who actually knows what the hell he's doing. Steel trap mind this guy has, no?

Let's go back to that second point. Keep in mind that at the end of the day he asked for $7.1 BILLION to get this plan off the ground. What exactly does it mean to improve our ability to produce new vaccines? We already have growing stockpiles. We are already trying to stockpile more. We just can't find a vaccine that actually works against the current strains of the avian flu. But does that mean that we are incapable of making new vaccines? Considering there's a pharmacy shelf of different ineffective vaccines I'd say we're pretty damn good at making them now... so what the hell is Bush talking about?

"...the cornerstone of our strategy is to develop new technologies that will allow us to produce new vaccines rapidly."

Oh... thanks for clearing that one up, George. The CORNERSTONE of the strategy is to research and develop currently non-existent technologies that will then allow us to produce other currently non-existent vaccines really fast. You guys know this thing might hit this winter right? Notice anything else missing in this "plan"? A WORKING VACCINE. The entire strategy assumes that we have one! This cornerstone is just about turning this shit out, but guess what it doesn't exist. THE STRATEGY TO COMBAT AVIAN FLU ASSUMES THAT WE HAVE ALREADY COMBATTED AVIAN FLU.

But.... why then $7.1 Billion requested for this strategy? Is it to buy a new FEMA director? Doubtful, and possibly illegal as if that would take it off the table with these guys. Could it be to figure out if people are actually sick? Some of the money probably goes there... George did you tell us how much by any chance? You did? Really...

"I've requested $251 million from Congress to help our foreign partners train local medical personnel, expand their surveillance and testing capacity, draw up preparedness plans, and take other vital actions to detect and contain outbreaks."

$251 million out of $7.1 billion? George, these numbers are starting to worry me. That leaves $6.8 billion... and the fact that there's an extra one million on the end of that seemingly arbitrary amount just has to be innocent. Where's the rest of this money going?

"And I'm asking that the Congress fund $1.2 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to purchase enough doses of this vaccine for manufacturers to vaccinate 20 million people."

$1.2 billion for "this vaccine", which vaccine? One that's currently in clinical trials. It may or may not work, just like all the rest. But god dammit let's get 20 million people inoculated with it. You know there's 280 million in the country, and as well know what the fucking word PANDEMIC means.... right? So $5.6 billion to go. Another $1 billion to "stockpile" what we have now. That means buy shit from the store that we know doesn't work. Another $2.8 billion to new research and development in pharmaceutical technologies. $583 million for "pandemic preparedness", wait isn't that what the first fucking $251 million was for?! That brings us to a grand total of $1.2 billion unaccounted for. What's worse than that is that the stockpiling and new research basically boils down to giving the fucking money to pharmaceutical companies and wishing them the best of luck. Unless Bill Frist thinks he can do a better job watching a TV and talking about his findings on the floor of the Senate (as he did with Terri Schiavo).

He's asking Congress to take $5.6 billion tax dollars that don't exist (we just recently stopped the growth of the deficit... I guess he's trying to get it a kick in the ass) and give it (in fairness, give $3.5 billion on paper, and probably that unaccounted $1.2 billion as well, totaling only $4.77 billion of the $5.6 billion) to Pfizer and Merck so that they can overhaul their production lines.

Why would they want to do that? Because they have a pharmacy shelf full of vaccines that don't work that they want to sell. Think those medicines are going off the market now with everyone scared to death of the bird flu? No, in fact, they should probably start making more of it since it will fly off the shelves so fast. Well it sure would be profitable if they could make it even faster, wouldn't it? Hey, send some people down to Washington and see if we can't get money just for coming up with that idea. We can? Holy fuckin' Moses we can get how much? God bless America!

Jesus in Judge's Robes

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press

As I claimed yesterday (or at least should have... honestly I can't remember), Bush nominated his mulligan on Harriet Miers today in an attempt to change the subject from the fact that his entire god damned administration is a bunch of corrupt sons of bitches that value their pockets and the sheer joy of power over any social value 51 million people claim to have voted for. Part of that plan was to nominate the most conservative Circuit Court judge available with an actual record of qualification. Guess why he'll be confirmed: that's right! He just loves babies!

What that means in foaming-at-the-mouth-jesus-sheep-speak is that the man hates abortions (they're allegedly sinful). My guess is that life begins at conception for him. This is impossible by the way just given the possibility of twinning in the zygote. Upon twinning we have two numerically distinct "lives", one of which just appeared at least two weeks after conception. So go ahead and beat yourself in the face with a bible made of concrete until you can't tell the time of day anymore, but you're not going to be able to just tell science that it is the devil's work so that you feel spiritually better about your own corrupt prospects of getting in to a heaven you know deep down you have no right to experience. Freedom of religion aside, Jesus is apparently huge in politics now even though we claim that he isn't.

Alito is the crazy-far-right's answer to human decency, and apparently is the best choice for a Supreme Court nominee Bush could find. This is funny of course because that's what he said about Miers: "The answer is yes. If she wasn't, I'd have picked someone else". But guess what, it took him all of four days to find someone better. So is Alito the best? Not unless Bush is a liar. Okay okay wasn't a big jump of logic for you either, huh? So Bush is a liar. Okay, but it took such a long time for Miers (who ran the search for a new Supreme Court nominee) to be chosen herself.... why so quickly for Alito? The answer is actually pretty simple: Bush needed someone just as crazy as his base.

The end result goes something like this: No Republican will vote against Alito for fear that Bush's base won't vote them in to the presidency if they ever run. No moderate will vote against Alito (i.e. that no talent ass clown Joe Lieberman) due to the bat shit insane belief that they actually matter in the political sphere anymore (Lieberman, I'm sure, still feels that he's presidential material). And, finally, no Democrat will by default vote against Alito either for fear of being painted a liberal (which is of course the best way to build your own image as a strong political figurehead right? Way to blow the '08 election already guys). Alito gets confirmed by something like 80-18 with 2 abstentions/no votes as if that made a shit of difference.

And so what happens now? Well, the short answer is that you should really brush up on your bible. Ironic in that Alito is a Catholic who supports the death penalty, a belief that is as abhorrent as voting Kerry according to the Catholic church. So don't expect some sort of moral compass from religion either, that shit's just used to get votes out of the base these days. Ready for some more hypocrisy? Of course you are, but guess what, this time it lasts for more than four to eight years.

Damage Control
Also known as lying...


In the wake of the hilariously terrible last week that the Bush administration had (which was brought to a merciful end by the coming of Sunday and the official ending of the week) hoped that the bad news would magically stop once Monday rolled around again. They may even try and give the news a push in the far-right direction.

We've heard rumors that there will be a replacement for Harriet Miers on Monday, which is sure to obfuscate the results of the CIA leak investigation just enough for the new party line of damage control to take root (thanks, if you're wondering, to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for this one):

"Apparently, they didn't violate the law in setting the record straight [setting the record straight refers to leaking a covert CIA operative's name, technically treason] ... The allegation is that when they told the grand jury about the process they made some misstatements and false allegations."

This came from CBS' Face the Nation by the way.

So the line the Republicans are towing now is that the investigation proved that committing treason is not illegal, and therefore nobody in the administration did anything wrong and are, in fact, fucking angels. Oh, but wait, there were indictments in the investigation... hmm that can't be easy to spin away from the news... what were they indictments? Were they misstatements and false allegations? Were they, as the defense of Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby will claim, simple cases of a shaky memory due to the massive work the job entails (a defense used by every administration under investigation since Watergate)? NOPE. FIVE COUNT 'EM FIVE FELONY CHARGES. One of them, gasp, basically alleges that Libby blocked the investigation from getting to anyone above him on the party food chain... basically taking a bullet for the vice president as if any amount of protection would keep that heart from exploding within the next decade. The Republican line on this one seems to claim bad memory and then get the hell away from Libby. Voila!

The bad part of all this is that they'll probably pull this off. The "fair and balanced" and "independent" and "fucking" liars at such "news" outlets as "FOX" (if that is their real name) claim as if it were the truth that there is "no underlying crime" in the investigation. What that means, of course, is that this investigation is a witch hunt akin to those terrible beasts that went after two adults who engaged in consensual sex during the last administration... oh wait they can't say that out loud can they... shit.... they were those terrible beasts that tried to slander and discredit one of the most successful presidencies we've ever had. If you aren't convinced of that by the way, go look up the murder mystery that involved the Clintons tying people to train tracks ala Snidely Wiplash. No joke. Okay, you're right, the Republican Party is a pretty funny joke.

FOX isn't the only place this happens. My favorite Republican, Lou Dobbs (I'm not kidding about this by the way, the guy's great despite his less than objective understanding of China), has had legal analysts on his "crazy liberal" CNN show who have claimed there is no crime as well. Frankly, this is how Nixon behaved. That's not a rant line from me, it's actually a pretty nice analogy from Chuck Schumer (Democratic Senator from New York):

"The real question for President Bush is going to be: is he going to be like Nixon — hunker down, get into the bunker, admit no mistakes ... or like Reagan, who actually admitted mistakes, did a midcourse correction and brought in new people, bipartisan people, people above ethical reproach, into the White House."
That one's actually from FOX News.

Which do you think will be chosen? Well it will most likely be uniquely BushII, which is laymen speak for Rove. The very existence of the problem will be brought in to question (as we've already seen), and then anyone detracting and believing in the existence of the problem will be slandered as seething hatemongers who clearly want the terrorists to win whatever the hell game it is that we think they're playing. What that also means is that Rove is now more powerful than you can possibly imagine, even more than Chuck Norris who is quite powerful.