This Pretty Much Says It All

From The Olympian:

Fort Lewis, which this month has suffered its worst losses of the war, will no longer conduct individual memorial ceremonies for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, the post will hold one ceremony for all soldiers killed each month, the Fort Lewis acting commanding general, Brig. Gen. William Troy, wrote in a memo to commanders and staff last week.

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,” Troy wrote in the memo, according to a copy obtained by United for Peace Pierce County and posted on the group’s Web site. A post spokesman confirmed the policy change Tuesday. It will start in June.

DeLay Sets The Record Straight

From The New Yorker:

Earlier this year, [Tom DeLay] published a memoir called “No Retreat, No Surrender” * * * in which he claimed that as a young congressman he would on occasion drink ten to twelve Martinis at a time. In this period, he earned the nickname Hot Tub Tom. Then he found Jesus and, he said, stopped sinning. In the book, he freely confesses to committing adultery. “I had put my needs first,” he told me. “I was on the throne, not God. I had pushed God from His throne.”

In the book, DeLay criticizes Gingrich for, among other things, conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.) “Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment,” DeLay said. “You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets about your own adulterous affairs.” He added that the impeachment trial was another of his “proudest moments.” The difference between his own adultery and Gingrich’s, he said, “is that I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference.” He added, “Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.”

DeLay also added that "[t]he Schiavo case was one of my proudest moments in Congress."

You know, it is easy to laugh off DeLay and all the other extremist kooks who are just like him, but these are the kind of people who come out in droves for the GOP primaries. It should be a fun election season.

And speaking of right wing extremists, Bush now has a 28% approval rating:

In an April poll, Harris found that President Bush's popularity had sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, with 28% of U.S. adults giving his job performance positive ratings and 70% rating him negatively.

Can it go any lower? Probably.

The Mother Of All GOP Talking Points Bullshittery

I'm tired of this crap. Here is what Bush said recently with regard to the Iraq Debacle:

"I recognize there are a handful there, or some, who just say, `Get out, you know, it's just not worth it. Let's just leave.' I strongly disagree with that attitude. Most Americans do as well."

A handful? The truth is that most Americans support a withdrawal timetable. But BushCo's repeated attempts to "catapult the propaganda" on this issue are apparently working, at least as far as the Democrats in Congress are concerned.

God Needs To Stay The Hell Out Of GOP Politics

The last time God told a Republican to do something was four-and-a-half years ago, when God told Bush to invade Iraq. We all know how that turned out.

Well, God is now talking to Tom DeLay:

Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who resigned under indictment on campaign finance-related charges in Texas, also has grown dissatisfied with the president's stewardship of the conservative movement. DeLay told Goldberg that in coming years, when he is not fighting the Texas indictment, he plans to build a conservative grass-roots movement to rival MoveOn.org, insisting that divine inspiration brought him to that quest.

"God has spoken to me," DeLay said. "I listen to God, and what I've heard is that I'm supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican party, and I think we shouldn't be underestimated."

Wonderful.

Worst Political Advice Ever

I laughed when I read this:

In his upcoming political tell-all book, Bob Shrum alleges that John Kerry called him to ask for his political advice on the eve of the October 11, 2002, vote to authorize the Iraq invasion. Kerry was privately skeptical of the WMD claims and distrusting of the Bush Administration, Shrum writes, but Kerry adviser Jim Jordan told Kerry: "Go ahead and vote against it if you want, but you'll never be president of the United States." Shrum's implication is that despite his private doubts about the wisdom of the war, Kerry voted for it in response to political advice. Nonetheless, it is Jordan who emerges from the account looking the worst. Current Kerry aides say that his vote for the war was based on conviction.

Punishment For A Job Well Done

Did anyone out there catch Bill Moyers' excellent program called "Buying the War"? It aired a few weeks ago, and I think the best thing it did was to aggressively take on the BushCo talking point that "everybody thought Saddam had WMD."

One news organization that didn't buy in to that particular line of bullshit was the McClatchy Company. When the whole "let's invade Iraq!" deal started to gain momentum, McClatchy's reporters did something that you rarely see anymore -- they actually did some investigation. And their sources at the Pentagon and at CIA basically told them that Iraq and Saddam posed no threat to anyone.

So that's what they reported during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle, and now they are being punished for it (from Editor & Publisher):

Staffers at McClatchy's Washington, D.C., Bureau -- one of the few major news outlets skeptical of intelligence reports during the run-up to the war in Iraq -- claims it is now being punished for that coverage.

Bureau Chief John Walcott and current and former McClatchy Pentagon correspondents say they have not been allowed on the Defense Secretary's plane for at least three years, claiming the news company is being retaliated against for its reporting.

"It is because our coverage of Iraq policy has been quite critical," Walcott told E&P. He added, "I think the idea of public officials barring coverage by people they've decided they don't like is at best unprofessional, at worst undemocratic and petty." * * *

I know Congress has its plate pretty full these days, but I'd love to see an investigation with regard to Corporate Media's role in causing the U.S. to invade a country that posed no threat to us or anyone else.

Before the Iraq Debacle comes to an end, it will probably cost this country about $2 trillion and God knows how many lives. Needless to say, America cannot afford many more mistakes like that one, and the Press should be playing a huge role in stopping disasters like the Iraq Catastrophe before they start, not cheerleading them on.

And by the way, you really got to love this.

Check Out These Poll Results From CBS News

Via Kevin Drum:

76% believe the war is going badly.

63% support a timetable for withdrawal in 2008.

76% think the surge is either making things worse or having no impact.

Only 15% support open-ended funding. The rest either want to cut off funds completely or make them conditional on benchmarks.

Large pluralities trust Dems more on foreign policy (51%-31%) and on making decisions about the war (51%-33%).

Calling the Democrats spineless seems like gross understatement given these poll numbers.

The Democrats: Weak As Ever

The new Democratic Congress is a national embarrassment:

Flinching in the face of a veto threat, Democratic congressional leaders neared agreement with the Bush administration Tuesday on legislation to pay for the Iraq war without setting a timeline for troop withdrawal.

Several officials said the emerging compromise bill would cost about $120 billion, including as much as $8 billion for Democratic domestic priorities — originally resisted by the White House — such as disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina victims and farmers hurt by drought.

After a bruising veto struggle over war funding, congressional leaders in both political parties said they hoped the compromise would be cleared for President Bush's signature by Friday.

Despite the concession, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters that the legislation would be the first war-funding bill sent to Bush since the U.S. invasion of Iraq "where he won't get a blank check."

Reid and Pelosi must be taking political cowardice lessons from John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

Please Don't Go (With Update)

This made me a little sad:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is likely to resign before the Senate takes up a no-confidence resolution, according to Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. A vote on such a measure could come as early as this week.

"I have a sense ... that before the vote is taken, that Attorney General Gonzales may step down" because of the likelihood that such a resolution would pass, Specter said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "It is a very forceful, historical statement. ... And I think ... that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark."

Reading this made me a little sad because part of me wants Gonzo to stay right where he is. I feel this way because he is doing a shitload of damage to the Bush Administration -- which Jimmy Carter recently called "the worst in history" -- and it is important for this country that history does indeed view the Bush Regime as the worst ever because we must never go down this same road again.

But after Bush leaves office, there will undoubtedly be a big push by the Extreme Right to rehabilitate the Bush presidency -- after all, BushCo pretty much embraced and implemented every idiotic Right Wing idea in existence -- and leaving Gonzo in office until the end of Bush's term will make that rehabilitation effort far more difficult than it would be if Gonzales resigned.

But then I remembered that the office of Attorney General really does need to be above politics -- even John Ashcroft realized that -- so the best thing for the country right now would be a Gonzales resignation. It would be a good start, anyway.

This New York Times editorial summed up the situation nicely:

The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people’s homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures.

This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases.

Anyway, I am a bit conflicted here between embracing the short-term gain for the country that would result from Gonzo's resignation and the long-term benefit that would result if he stayed put.

UPDATE: I'm so f*#king tired of Democrats either apologizing for telling the truth or apologetically issuing "clarifications" when they tell the truth:

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Monday tempered his biting criticism of serving President George W. Bush after calling his administration "the worst in history."

Following a White House denunciation of Carter's original remarks, the Democratic former leader said he had intended to describe Bush as the worst president since scandal-plagued Richard Nixon.

"My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted. But I wasn't comparing the overall administration and certainly not talking personally about any president," Carter told NBC.

"I have been very careful and still am not to criticize any president personally," he said, while restating his opposition to Bush's policies on Iraq and the Middle East.

Wrong, Jimmy -- what you should have said is that your comment was misinterpreted, and that you didn't mean that Bush is the worst American president in history, but is the worst leader of any country in history.

That's how you respond when the corrupt bastards on the Extreme Right attack you for telling the truth -- you raise the stakes, and you never apologize.

It's Time For Congress to Put The Turd Into Bush's Pocket

From TPM Cafe:

The meeting between Dem Congressional leaders and the White House over how to resolve the Iraq war spending standoff has just ended, and it looks like things are at a serious impasse.

Dem leaders just said at their post-meeting press availability that the White House's negotiators rejected everything that Dems offered. A Dem offer of a war timetable that the President could actually waive -- that is, not follow? Rejected. A Dem offer to get rid of the pork in the supplemental? Also rejected.

Few additional details are yet available on what else exactly was offered and rejected, but it's clear that things are at a standstill right now. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just said on CNN, the difference between Democrats and the President is stark: Dems want accountability, the President wants none. "He will not accept any accountability or responsibility," Pelosi said.

Enough already. Send Bush a bill that imposes unwaivable timetables and tell the president that this is the last bill he'll be getting with regard to funding of the Iraq Catastrophe. Also tell him that if he does choose to veto this bill, then he should immediately order the military to start making plans to withdraw from Iraq before the money runs out.

Bush wants Congress to cut funding on Iraq so he can later blame the Democrats when we are forced to withdraw. That's fine with me. Let's just get the hell out.

If Ashcroft Opposed It, Then It Must Have Been Illegal As Hell

Ex-Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday and stated that he, John Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to resign back in March 2004 after Comey and Ashcroft refused to reauthorize BushCo's profoundly illegal domestic eavesdropping program.

The whole sorry story is laid out in this New York Times article. Andy Card and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales actually tried to do an end run around Comey, who at the time was Acting Attorney General while Ashcroft was in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery.

The article is a must-read from beginning to end, but I found this section to be the most chilling:

Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.

Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “ I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card quickly departed, but Mr. Comey said he soon got an angry phone call from Mr. Card, demanding that he come to the White House. Mr. Comey said he replied: “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States.” * * *

I thought I would never read anything that would actually improve my opinion of John Ashcroft, but there it is.

A Few Questions For The Corporate Media

I'm watching the Sunday morning politcal shows, and they keep talking about "the anti-war left" in America. What the hell is that? Two-thirds of the country oppose the Iraq War. Does that mean that two-thirds of the country are anti-war leftists? If that is the case, how did Bush "win" the last election?

And answer me this -- when did the Civil War in Iraq end? I completely missed that story. The reason I'm asking is that some CNN commentators stated this morning that Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Hasn't there been a civil war raging in that country for some time now?

Matt Davies

It Begins (Finally)

From Think Progress:

In a sign of the growing fissure between the White House and its congressional allies over the war, NBC News reports tonight that 11 Republican members of Congress pleaded yesterday with President Bush and his senior aides to change course in Iraq.

The group of Republicans was led by Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charlie Dent (R-PA), and the meeting included Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, and Tony Snow. One member of Congress called the discussion the “most unvarnished conversation they’ve ever had with the president,” and NBC’s Tim Russert said it “may have been a defining pivotal moment” in the Iraq debate.

One Republican actually told Bush that "[t]he word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President. There is no longer any credibility. It has to come from Gen. Petraeus." Another congressman asked Bush this question: "How can our sons and daughters spill their blood while the Iraqi government goes on vacation?"

That's a really good question, particularly given that "Iraq's maverick parliament speaker [Mahmoud al-Mashhadani] on Wednesday rejected U.S. criticism of the 275-seat legislature over its summer break plans, saying it amounted to unacceptable interference in Iraqi affairs as Vice President Dick Cheney was expected to take up the issue during a visit to Baghdad. * * *"

Last I heard, most Iraqis want the American occupation to end, and now they have the perfect tool to make that happen. Go on vacation. If the Iraqi parliament does that, then any support Bush has in Congress for this ongoing debacle will fall away faster than you can say 2008 General Election.

UPDATE: Here's more on this:

Participants in the Tuesday meeting among Bush, senior administration officials and 11 members of a moderate bloc of House Republicans said the lawmakers were unusually candid with the president, telling him that public support for the war is crumbling in their swing districts.

One told Bush that voters back home favored a withdrawal even if it meant the war was judged a loss. Rep. Tom Davis told Bush that the president's approval rating was at 5 percent in one section of his northern Virginia district.

The funny part about all of this is that we won the war. The invasion was successful. We achieved the goals of ridding Iraq of an evil dictator (Saddam's still dead, right?) and of WMD (there weren't any). It's time to bring our troops home.

Vegas Trip 2007

Linda and I just spent last weekend (Thursday through Sunday) in Vegas, and we had a lot of fun. Linda's friend Lisa joined us on Friday. Danimal, Todd, Erika, Mike, and Mike's Linda were also on the trip. All of us Bend folk took advantage of cheap airline tickets from Allegiant Air, which flies directly to Vegas from Central Oregon.

On Friday, Dan and I played in a tournament at Caesar's Palace with a field of 140 players. Caesar's has the largest poker room I've ever seen -- although I understand that The Mirage also has a large poker room -- and it was a very comfortable place to play (soft chairs, roomy tables, no smoking, great dealers, and fairly prompt drink service). The $80 buy-in got us 1500 in chips, and the $50 rebuy -- which you could take at anytime in the first 80 minutes of play regardless of stack size -- got you 3000 more chips, so the rebuy was pretty much mandatory.

The tourney was a blast -- the blinds went up every 40 minutes and you had plenty of chips (assuming you took the re-buy), so it was like playing a tourney on TV. It was a completely different experience from playing in tourneys where you feel rushed from the beginning to make moves.

Dan lasted about 3 hours and finished in the top 1/2, and I lasted about four hours and finished in the top 40 (both of us finished well out of the money, though -- only folks making it to the final table won money, with the winner taking home over $5,000). I got great cards for the first two hours -- including a near double-up on the second hand of the tourney when my A-J suited held up -- and was the chip leader at my table for a while, then lost the bulk of my stack when I called an all-in on the turn with trip aces but got beat by a straight.

After that, my only move for the last two hours was all-in, which worked every single time except for the last time (funny how that works). Dan won a monster hand playing his favorite pocket cards -- a 9-6, aka "sixty-nine" -- which must have infuriated the two players who busted out of the tourney when Dan hit his full house.

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that I stayed up into the wee hours the night before playing craps, so I was pretty tired once I got into the third hour of play or so. Next time, I'll try to get a good night's sleep before playing in it.

Gambling was so-so for me winnings-wise. I broke even on craps after that long Thursday night session, but got crushed on Friday, losing a total of $350 that day ($100 on craps, $20 at video poker, and $230 at live poker, which included the tourney buy-in and re-buy). But I won about $125 playing poker on Saturday and won $75 at craps on Sunday, so I lost only $150 for the trip. Danimal fared much better than I did. He won many hundreds of dollars playing $1/$2 no-limit at the Flamingo, where he and I did several JagerBombs on Saturday night while we were playing (which was like drinking cough syrup, something I gave up doing a long time ago ;).

Linda and Lisa hit a place called Tao on Saturday night, and saw lots of celebrities who were in town for the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight, including Will Farrell, P Diddy, and some famous basketball players whose names escape me.

This trip was much less frustrating than the last one, mostly because this time we were staying right in the middle of the strip at the Flamingo, so we didn't have to deal with long cab waits. Also, our plane out of Vegas didn't leave until late afternoon on Sunday, which meant that we were able to hang out on The Strip on Sunday morning/early afternoon. I got to play craps for about 90 minutes on Sunday, which was great because it gave me my first winning craps session in Vegas after a long drought.

A Bit Of A Double Standard?

OK, let me see if I got this straight -- it is treason for the Democrats to propose a timetable for withdrawal from the Iraq Debacle because it would embolden the enemy, but it is OK for the Republicans to say shit like this:

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has taken a hard line in Bush's favor, said Sunday, "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B."

If I were one of the Evildoers, I would read what Boehner had to say, and then just keep the attacks coming full throttle until September comes around -- you know, kind of like what they are doing right now. It just seems to me that the GOP has imposed a timetable of its own with regard to Iraq, yet they're not being called traitors.

Of course, the entire city of Baghdad could be reduced to rubble by September, but BushCo and its congressional apologists will find some little thing to hold up as a success ("Look! The sewer system remains virtually untouched!!!").

Rats Fleeing A Sinking Ship

From the AP:

Top members of President Bush's national security team are leaving in one of the earliest waves of departures from a second-term administration - nearly two years before Bush's time ends.

As rancor in the nation rises over handling of the war in Iraq, at least 20 senior aides have either retired or resigned from important posts at the White House, Pentagon and State Department in the past six months.

Some have left for lucrative positions in the private sector. Some have gone to academic or charitable institutions. The latest was Deputy National Security Adviser J.D. Crouch, who spoke favorably of Bush's policies as he announced he was leaving last week.

Turnover is normal as an administration nears its end, but "this is a high number," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and an expert on government.

George "Longshanks" Bush -- The Commander Guy

Our president said this at a press conference today on the issue of whether or not more U.S. troops might be needed in Iraq:

"The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm the commander guy."

OK, The Daily Show is going to have a field day with that comment. Who knows -- maybe Stewart and Company will treat us to another episode of "The Decider."

But as I read about Bush's comment, the image of the King Edward I character (aka "Longshanks") from the movie Braveheart popped into my head. Bush kind of reminds me of a dumb version of Longshanks. This exchange took place during the film's last major battle scene:

Longshanks: "Archers."

English Commander: "Beg your pardon sire, but won't we hit our own troops?"

Longshanks: "Yes... but we'll hit theirs as well. We have reserves... attack."

Sure, it was a pretty cold thing to rain arrows down on your own troops, but at least Longshanks did what he did to win a battle. And at least Longshanks had reserves. We don't.

Bush, however, is sacrificing our troops -- not in the hope that he can be victorious in Iraq -- but in the hope that he can extend the U.S occupation of Iraq until after he leaves office. I truly believe that Bush is terrified that our military involvement in the Iraq Debacle will end before his term is up.

You can't really blame him for feeling that way, though. Iraq will be his legacy whether he wants it to be or not; but can you imagine if history reflects that Bush was president both at the beginning and the end of the United States' military involvement there?

So he's not about to throw in the towel. And if a few thousand more troops have to die because of Bush's political cowardice, so be it. He doesn't care about stuff like that. And he claims we are the ones who hate the troops. I love it.

But to be fair, I don't think Bush hates the troops any more than the Longshanks character hated his troops in that movie. Bush just doesn't care in the least whether they live or die. That's why he doesn't go to any of the funerals. He didn't even go to any of the funerals during the days of "Mission Accomplished" when members of the Corporate Media were dutifully reporting on our "great victory" in Iraq.

But I kind of feel sorry for Bush. I really do. I can't imagine what it would be like to be president of the United States and to know that in all likelihood history will remember you as the worst U.S. president ever.

It's pretty sad, really.

Tony Blair's Sad Legacy

From The Independent:

Seven out of 10 people believe that Iraq will prove to be Tony Blair's most enduring legacy, according to an opinion poll for The Independent to mark the 10th anniversary today of the election victory that brought him to power.

As the Prime Minister prepares to announce his resignation next week, the survey by CommunicateResearch reveals that 69 per cent of the British public believe he will be remembered most for the Iraq war. Remarkably, his next highest "legacy rating" - just 9 per cent - is for his relationship with the American President, George Bush.

That's pretty bad to have those two things at the top of your legacy list, particularly given that that they are basically the same thing.

Uh, What Box Would That Be, CNN?

I watched a bit of CNN's coverage this afternoon of Bush's veto of the Iraq Debacle Funding Bill, and I heard CNN commentators say this more than once: "The Democrats are in a box on this issue."

OK, I freely admit that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but what the f*ck are they talking about? Last I heard, two-thirds of the country want the U.S. to get the hell out of Iraq. Are the CNN commentators suggesting that America's attitude about the Iraq Catastrophe will suddenly flip in the months ahead? If anything, the Iraq situation will only worsen as the year progresses.

I'll tell you who's in a box, and it's not Bush. He doesn't care. He'll be out of office in a little over a year and a half, and I'm certain that even he -- despite his extreme idiocy -- has figured out that he's going to go down as the worst American president ever and there is nothing he can do about it. His only hope is that we'll still be in Iraq when he leaves office -- then at least he'll be able to blame it all on somebody else.

No, the folks who are in the box are the GOP Congressmen and senators who have to run for reelection in 2008 and are still supporting Bush and his disastrous War in Iraq. They are the ones who are supremely hosed right now.

And speaking of Iraq, this is pretty good.

Satan's Attorney Had No Comment

This is funny:

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants.

The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials. The convention was held at Canyon View Junior High School.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do."

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as "Joe," said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because "they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. ... If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do."

Senator Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, spoke against the resolution, saying Larsen, whom he called a "true patriot and a close friend," was embarrassing the Republican Party.

"I agree with 95 percent of this resolution but it has some language that is divisive and not inspiring other people to its vision," he said. "This only gives fodder to the liberal media to give negative attention to the Republican Party."

Four Years Ago Today

I clearly remember where I was four years ago today when Bush landed on the aircraft carrier, pranced around the deck in a flight suit for a bit, and then delivered his now-infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. My wife and I -- along with a couple of friends -- were in a condo in Key Largo. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, mostly because I was convinced back then that Iraq was going to turn into the Mother of All Quagmires. I think I made the comment that "this will be recognized as the most foolish campaign stunt in history."

Well, I was right and wrong -- it was probably the most foolish-looking campaign stunt in history, but Bush did end up "winning" the 2004 election, so it apparently didn't hurt him as badly as I thought it would.