Pollywogs!

Someone must have forgotten to pay their protection money to the media…

 http://www.washingtonpost.com…

But as his astonishing interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality. He seems to think that by asserting things that are simply untrue, he can make others believe they are so.  Maybe that works within the White House. But for the rest of us, it’s becoming a better bet to assume that everything — or almost everything — Cheney says is flat wrong.

…And former aide Cathie Martin’s testimony on Friday validated the most cynical conspiracy theories about how Cheney manipulates the press.

Ouch…first Bush, now Cheney…I wonder if they can hear the wolves howling at the gates yet…

…why is it everything that you say turns out to be wrong, and then you never admit to it even though we have it on tape?

From the wonderful Huffington Post…

“We have now had amendments that have been worth over 200 billion dollars… Amendments that have been offered. We’ve had amendments on education of 35 billion dollars. We’ve had health-savings amendments that will benefit people with average incomes of $112,000… We’ve had those kinds of amendments and we’re looking at the Kyl amendment at 3 billion dollars. But we still cannot get two dollars and fifteen cents — over two years. Over two years!

“What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more, are you asking, are you requiring?

“When does the greed stop, we ask the other side? That’s the question and that’s the issue.”

“Make no mistake about it — they have on the Republican side, 70 more amendments. 70 more amendments!” said Kennedy. “We have none. We’re prepared to vote now. 70 more amendments… ‘Oh yes, we want an increase in the minimum wage, we want this, we want that but… let’s have some other kinds of amendments that have virtually nothing to do with this.’”

“240 billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations. 36 billion dollars in tax breaks for small businesses. Increase in productivity — 42 percent over the last 10 years,” yelled Kennedy emotionally. “But do you think there’s any increase in the minimum wage? No. At 12 after five today, on Thursday, I speak for all of our Democrats and say we’re prepared to vote now. Now!”

“Do you have such disdain for hard-working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? Why don’t you just hold your amendments until other pieces of legislation? Why this volume of amendments on just the issue to try and raise the minimum wage? What is it about it that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? Something. Something! What is the price that the workers have to pay to get an increase? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?”

Boy, between this and Jim Webb calling out Bush on his State of the Union address, I’m actually slightly proud of some small parts of my government again:

In case you missed it, here’s a bit of what Webb said.

When one looks at the health of our economy, it’s almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it’s nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day. Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. . .

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy: that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.

And Webb, a Marine in Vietnam, offered a blistering attack on the Iraq adventure:

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command. . .and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable – and predicted – disarray that has followed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/…

IN THE FICTIONAL world of the hit show “24,” federal law enforcement agencies are pouring every last resource into the search for a nuclear terrorist in Los Angeles.

In the real world, federal agents apparently have so much free time that they can dress up in bulletproof vests and masks in order to raid clinics that serve patients battling cancer, AIDS and other diseases. That’s what happened last week as Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed 11 medical marijuana dispensaries throughout L.A. and West Hollywood. We can all rest easier knowing that lollipops, cookies, candies and candy bars laced with marijuana are in no danger of reaching seriously ill patients.

Enough said…but the article does go on…

I could go on and on about how bad laws don’t need to be enforced but instead need to repealed, how resources are squandered and potential tax revenue is lost, how the jails teem with otherwise harmless people who just liked to get high…

But man I am so baked right now, I’m just gonna sit back and listen to this Tom Petty and eat my Twinkie man, someone else can fight the system…all this stuff about sick people living in pain and misery is harshing my buzz man, why can’t those pigs just let them get high and eat dinner like a normal person, man…mmm, dinner…what was I sayin?

http://www.teambio.org/2007/01/we-only-spy…

And despite Pentagon officials claims that they aren’t interested in domestic groups (uh-huh), and that they aren’t monitoring them any more (yeah, right), other federal agencies like the DHS and FBI are keeping a watchful eye on these most dangerous of Americans.

Add this to the phone tapping and e-mail mining, library record checking, and postal surveillance, and by golly, we’re right there in that Orwell novel. Meanwhile, the real terrorists are living and planning in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Yeah, they’re only spying on the terrorists…it’s just that this administration considers anyone not falling in line with their idiocy to be a terrorist, a group that now includes over 60% of all Americans.

Boy, I feel safer everyday.

And here I find asshats calling the ACLU all types of bad names. Usually Republicans going on about those pinko commie terrorist ball cradling idiots at the ACLU…those kinds of asshats…

The Yahoo news story.

At least 186 antiwar protests in the United States have been monitored by the Pentagon’s domestic surveillance program, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which also found that the Defense Department collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in a single anti-terrorism database.

…

In response to the documents’ release, Pentagon officials said the material on antiwar groups should not have been collected.

“I don’t want it, we shouldn’t have had it, not interested in it,” Daniel Baur, the acting director of the Defense Department’s counterintelligence field activity unit, told the New York Times. “I don’t want to deal with it.”

Baur told the Times his agency is no longer monitoring peace groups.

Uh-huh…you collect information on over 200 protests and 3000 individuals, but it was all just a little mix-up. No worries, mate, you know us here in the Government, we’re on the up-and-up, You Can Trust Usâ„¢