Florida does it again!

Dont answer the red phone at 3 a.m.

Planet earth to President Bush...

Just when you think George Bush’s hubris has taken him to the pinnacle of dim-witted arrogance and insensitivity, he manages to take another giant step into his make believe world.

Speaking to a video conference of U.S. military and civilian personnel about Afghanistan, Bush said, "I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front line of helping this young democracy succeed."

Then, he added, "It must be exciting for you—in some ways romantic--- in some ways, you know---confronting danger."

Is he so dense—so incredibly venal—as to not realize the stark hypocrisy of a draft dodging little Chicken Hawk speaking in nostalgic context about "confronting danger"? Is he so stupid as not to realize there are those who are well aware of his being jumped ahead of 100 applicants so he could take pilot training and avoid service in Vietnam?

One must assume that Chicken Hawk Bush didn’t find much "exciting" or "romantic" about the prospects of serving in Vietnam when he was stationed in Alabama and skipping his training duties while working for a politician friend of his daddy’s.

Meanwhile, thousands of young men are being killed and maimed while serving second and third tours in the Chicken Hawk’s war in Iraq. Meanwhile Osama bin Laden and Al Quaida enjoy immunity along the Afghan-Pakistan border

...and Obama should apologize!

Tweedle Dumb supports Tweedle Dee

McCain cleaning up in the GOP primaries

teflon president

Quack at work

unintellgent design

Torture is in the eye of the beholder!

It depends on your definition change.

When a female friend recently asked why I preferred Barack Obama, my wife responded, "He just doesn’t like Hillary Clinton!"—relegating me to the cadre of male chauvinist Hillary antagonists. After 50 years of marriage, four daughters, and a United Nations Award for my cartoons supporting the equal rights amendment, she knows better than that—tho our friends may not.

However, gender (and racial)bias is cruising the campaign landscape. A good example is Hardball’s talking head, Chris Mathews who has left a wake of sexist, misogynist comments along his coverage of the campaign trail. (See Media Matters and Daily Kos)

My problem with Hillary Clinton as a candidate for President is that her political genesis is firmly rooted in "beltway" establishment mentality, when this nation desperately needs leadership that does not fear thinking out of the box and speaking frankly.

On the war on Iraq, she first explained her vote----embracing the "Saddam Hussein is a threat" theory of the neo-cons. When the majority of the country finally caught on to the Bush debacle, she embraced the "if I had known then, what I know now" beltway speak. At no time did she look the country in the eye to say she was wrong and that she regretted it. As recently as the Nevada debate, she parsed her explanation by blaming pentagon deception and by accepting Bush’s word that he had no intention of going to war. This at time when most of the Western world knew he was a serial liar!

Robert Johnson, a billionaire supporter of Clintons and founder of Black Entertainment Television -- made a snide allusion to Obama using drugs and compared him to Sydney Poitier in "Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner" during a speech in South Carolina. Johnson then denied the drug allusion.

Tim Russert , read a quote from Hillary Clinton in which she said she would not tolerate inappropriate behavior on the part of her supporters and would get rid of them. Then Russert asked if she planned to distance herself from Mr. Johnson. In a "beltway speak" moment she said that Johnson had explained his remark and she accepted it. Presumably, she "accepted" his denial that he said what everyone heard him say!


After six years of a lying, deceitful administration that has taken us into a unjustified war, that has denounced the Geneva Convention and embraced techniques of torture, that has done serious damage to our constitution and squandered the first budget surplus this nation has had in decades----we need someone who is NOT inherently inclined to triangulation, calculation and equivocation---no matter what their gender or race.

Bill Sanders

Loud and clear!

The Quack is still at it!

Benazir Bhotto death, the real question.

The critical assessment of what to make of the assassination of Benazir Bhotto is not to be found in the specifics of who facilitated this tragedy but rather in what facilitated this atrocity of warped behavior.

Aside from whatever flaws are attributed to her past, Ms. Bhutto was a charismatic, brave political leader, dedicated to a more democratic Pakistan. The price of her death is but the latest link in a long chain of abominations unwittingly launched by President George W. Bush and his gang of neo-cons who shared (and catered to) his arrogance, hubris and tunnel vision.

When this cynical cabal chose to abandon the real "war" on terrorism (Osama binLadin) to pursue a war of opportunity, using lies and deceit as justification—the dye was cast for a travesty of shameful and tragic events. Am I saying, or even implying that there is a direct line from the Bush gang’s actions to the specific death of Ms. Bhutto? Absolutely not!!

Rather the time-tragedy line is like a pinball lunched onto the slope of the game machine:

Ca Ching! No weapons of mass destruction. Ca Ching! No Al Quaida connection to Iraq. Ca Ching! Massive influx of Al Quaida and Islamic fanatics into Iraq as a result of the Bush invasion! Ca Ching! Four thousand Americans dead! Ca Ching! Over one million Iraqis dead. Ca Ching! Dramatic surge in global terrorist actions! Ca Ching! Osama binLaden, Taliban and Al Quaida preach with impunity from the safe haven of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

While the majority of the Pakistan population is moderately secular in orientation, there has developed a minority of hardcore Islamic fanatics who stalk the secular model of their country like a tiger who has caught the scent of blood. Can anyone seriously argue that the influence, aid and comfort given them by their philosophical brothers-in-fanaticism on the border has no influence on these local groups?

What difference does it make, whether it was home grown fanatics or foreign fanatics who shed Benazir Bhutto’s blood? They all drink from the same poisoned well of religious zealotry!

The question is:

A- would events have played out differently if the Bush gang had been really serious about going after the real terrorists—and , with adequate troops and zeal, taken the head of the Al Quaida viper?

B- would it have played out differently if Bush, et al had denied the Taliban sanctuary in the mountains of the Pakistan border?

One might argue that we have no crystal ball—and cannot know what might have happened. True. On the other hand, without A and B, we know what did happen!

Ca Ching!

No Balls

CIA Anti-American criminals

Whopperland's latest episode.

Bring in the clown

Imagine this!!

You are an American citizen on vacation in Thailand. You are arrested by local authorities on suspicion of being a member of the Freedom Revolution Underground Movement in Myanmar. It is a case of mistaken identity. You are turned over to the Myanmar Junta Secret Police who fly you to a “rendition” prison in the mountains of China where you are imprisoned and tortured for a year before being released in a remote section of Laos.

The American government strongly and officially protests. U.S. prosecutors issue warrants for the Myanmar Junta secret agents, charging them with kidnaping. You hire lawyers and seek redress in the Myanmar court system. The Myanmar Supreme Court upholds a lower court decision against you and dismisses the lawsuit on the grounds that trying the case might expose state secrets. While conceding you were likely kidnaped and tortured, the court decreed it must not interfere with the Junta’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.

That is what happened to a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnaped by the CIA and accused of having a relationship with Al Qaeda and the Islamic Brotherhood. It was the most extensively documented case of the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program in which terrorist suspects are abducted, sent to other countries in which torture is practiced.

In Mr. Khaled el-Masri’s case, he was flown to a “rendition” prison in Kabul, Afghanistan where he was kept for most of a year, in a small cell, shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated before finally being released.

A three judge panel for the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the case pointing out that while it was “difficult” it pit the search for truth “against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

So, this is what it has come down to. Acquiescence to the arrogant lawlessness and unconstitutional actions of the Bush White House has bestowed upon us the character and behavior of a third world dictatorship. Imagine that.

Sometimes Affirmative Action backfires!

With Clarence Thomas on the talking head TV circuit, hawking his autobiography, we are reminded that he is the legacy of papa George Bush who replaced a giant African American Supreme Court Justice (Thurgood Marshall) with a man of small legal stature who is a liar obsessed with paranoid conspiracy theories----a Justice so intimidated by lofty legal debate that he has yet to verbally participate in the dialog of a single case that has been before the Court of his tenure.

Those opposed to the Thomas confirmation included the NAACP, the Urban League, the National Bar Association, the National Organization of Women and many other African-American and Civil Rights organizations. His nomination raised an avalanche of questions about important issues and about truthfulness but only one question was needed to put Clarence Thomas in perspective: What was his feelings about the Roe v Wade decision on abortion?

Thomas testified that he was open-minded about abortion and that he had never discussed the merits of the case.

Does anyone believe that as a Yale law student, as an Assistant Attorney General in Missouri, as a U.S. Senate Legislative Assistant and as an Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights, Clarence Thomas never discussed the merits of one of the most controversial decisions in the history of the U. S. Supreme Court? If you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I will sell you for five dollars.

Of course, he could have been telling the truth when he said he was open-minded. He just didn’t explain it was open at both ends.