Sleater-Kinney Song Stuck in my head

[youtube width="250" height="197"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNpKjmNaJpQ[/youtube]

Could do worse. Sleater-Kinney is/was an amazing band that has been broken up now for the past two years. This weekend I was listening to some of their stuff and now this song is stuck in my head. Normally listening to it over and over again gets it out but that hasn’t worked. So I’m trying to spread the joy and maybe that will help.

Everything Else You Need Know, So Sit Down and Shut Up

• Obama Quits his Church. I’m disappointed that Obama would quit the church where he was married and where his daughters were baptized for political expediency.
• 5 Most Badass Presidents of All Time. I found this while reading 6 Most Badass Stunts Ever Pulled in the Name of Science. Read them both their awesome. (h/t Skepchick).
• Blog carnival for progressive Christians, read more at Fetch me my Axe. We wholly support progressive religions, Christian or otherwise, so looking forward to reading some good posts.
• Catholicism, leading the fight for equality for women.
• More “progress” in Iraq. Sunnis have withdrawn from the Iraqi government AGAIN after Maliki rejected their entire list of nominated ministers.
• We all like to give Congress a hard time but Crooks and Liars points out one thing they have done perfectly right, Social Security. So I’m joining them in giving Pelosi a nice big round of applause for keeping the Republicans from killing an important program.
• Really with the popular vote totals so close can we stop talking about them and focus on the only thing that actually counts, delegate count. Isn’t this like trying to argue who won the super bowl based on rushing yards and not the final score?

Video of the Day

Robert F. Kennedy: 80% of Republicans Are Just Uninformed Democrats.
[youtube width="500" height="394"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd6P8obJmjo[/youtube]

No NASA Has Not Found Aliens

Retrofitted Hubble

Everyone has been excited about a cryptic announcement made by NASA about “the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years”. NASA was waiting until the Hubble was modified but PZ Meyers had to ruin the fun. Creationists discovered Russell’s Teapot and are planning on putting into space.

The Rest of the News

• Republicans and the Bush Administration are once again backing big business over average Americans. This time its by fighting to prevent Kansas based Creekstone Farms from testing all of its meat for mad cow disease.
• Opponent not saying anything controversial? Then lie about it. Thats what Republicans are doing. Just ask Al Gore or Barack Obama.
• 18 year old resident of Austin openly lesbian Randi Shade easily defeated incumbent Jennifer Kim with 64% of the vote for Austin City Council.  (Thanks for the correction Dan)
• 82% of American’s now say that the country is seriously on the wrong track. Or if your an optimist 18% say things are going great.
• Leading Republican Roy Blunt agrees that McCain offering third Bush term on economic policy. (and 18% of Americans cheer?)
• 5 of the (at least) 112 lobbyists working inside John McCains campaign have been tied to ruthless dictators. 2 of those who represented the Burma regime in Myanmar have already quit the campaign. There is now a petition for the firing of 3 more here.
• The Bush Administration has been hyping Iran’s involvement in weapons for Iraq without evidence for a while now. Here is yet another article on how the media is covering up this lack of evidence.

Daily Video

Today’s video is from Brave New Films and it exposes once again the Republican Yacht Party’s true interests. In California Republicans are fighting to keep open a tax loophole that lets them buy yachts tax free. If closed this would bring in around 26 million to a state that is being forced to lay off teachers. Read More about this issue here.

Thanks for reading,
William ~ WWJV4.com

Now I have talked with enough blind and dumb as shit war supporters to never want to do so again. However on the plus side this exposure has led to me deciphering the “Republican Surge is Working Argument Flowchart” which I am sharing with you today. I have included the surge and two common arguments so you can see how it works, but its the same regardless of specifics. In fact I would say it applies to every argument you will ever have with a conservative.

Enjoy and feel free to use or modify this.

[youtube width="500" height="394"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suNqiAgE1kw[/youtube]

You know the problem with buying anything on an installment plan is that you end up paying way more than its worth and by the time you own it the thing is broken and worthless.  I say we return it and cut our losses while we still can.

[youtube width="500" height="394"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9FAfQ2imUw[/youtube]

McHenry recently got over feeling sick about a McCain presidency and is now a supporter. Think there will be any outrage from the conservatives for John McCain to disavow his Troop Hating comments? Me neither.

Can you imagine the outrage if a Democrat had said the same thing? The right wingers would be all over it. Instead since its a Republican were just now hearing about it from the liberal blogs while the mainstream media has remained silent. I’ll be updating this story in case the mainstream media covers this but there are a few networks I’m particularly interested in.

News Network Coverage:

• CBS – No Coverage So Far
• CNN – No Coverage So Far
• Fox – No Coverage So Far
• MSNBC – No Coverage So Far

Note that this is my first time trying out Google Alerts so I may miss something. If I do please post it in the comments. I may also be way off base and the mainstream media may jump on it now that the story has broken. I would be surprised but you never know.

UPDATE: Apparently McHenry was referring to a foreign contractor and not a US Soldier.  I don’t think this makes any difference though.  It’s not like the guy wasn’t following orders and risking his life just like our soldiers.

John McCain was busy last month

1. John McCain continues to break campaign finance laws that he wrote!
2. John McCain and his army of lobbyist buddies are responsible for European Airbus winning a contract over American Boeing. This move costs Boeing approximately 35 Billion and costs Americans about 3,800 jobs. I’m Sure the campaign contributions and being surrounded by the very lobbyists you promise to fight had nothing to do with it.
3. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has shown that he knows next to nothing about the economy, foreign policy, supporting the troops, the environment, Vaccines and Autism, Evolution, or Aids and Condoms. Knowing things is overrated, Bush doesn’t know anything and look how wonderful the past 7 years have been.
4. John McCain sought and won the endorsement of anti-Catholic hate monger John Hagee. John Hagee is known for calling the Catholic church the great whore and blaming hurricane Katrina on the gays.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

1. Barack Obama made the Speech of a Decade this month on race. Read Robert Creamer’s thoughts on why this speech is historic.
2. I’m writing up a story on the ongoing Obama vs. Clinton fight so you have to wait for that to hear more on these two.

Iraq War

1. The surge is a smashing and total success, thats why were not pulling out any more troops. I guess thats also why Iraqi casualties are at their highest level since last year and since the surge started 900 Americans have been killed.
2. Baghdad, which McCain described as being as dangerous as an American city last month, has exploded in violence when the cease fire with Muqtada al Sadr came to its inevitable conclusion. Don’t worry though, according to Bush this is a good thing.

Politics

1. The Republican economic theory continues its historic success and does not appear to be stopping anytime soon. Of course by success I mean rising unemployment and food stamps for poor people and government bail outs for rich people. Don’t you love Republican socialism.
2. “Curveball” the secret Iraqi informant upon whose word Bush and co. built their claims of Saddam’s weapons capability has been outed. More importantly he denies ever having made those claims. Surprisingly our mainstream media has ignored this story.
3. Another testament to Republican leadership, 21 countries are ranked as being more stable than the US. I’m sure this is Clinton’s fault somehow.

Religion

1. Apparently the Pittsburgh Steelers feel that domestic abuse is ok when its done for Jesus.
2. Parents pray while daughter dies. I’m a strong supporter of freedom of religion and all but no child should die because of the crazy ideas of their parents.
3. Students that attend private school with the assistance of public vouchers do not do any better than those attending “failing” public schools. Religious indoctrination and brainwashing are much greater however.

Other Stuff

1. Some experts are expecting tourism from conservatives to drop to the Netherlands and Japan. Not sure why.
2. Don’t listen to anyone who claims were not safer now than before 9/11.

Wow, has it been five years already? I mean, wow. It feels like it was just yesterday that we set out to remove the eminent threat posed by Saddam’s WMD’s bring down an ally of Al Qaeda instill democracy and free the Iraqi people invade Iraq and set up permanent occupation. On the other hand it feels like we have been together forever. You are a breath of cash life right into my military industrial complex heart. This may sound selfish but you have made me and my friends in the defense industry incredibly rich happy.

Five short wonderful years have passed since that incredible spring day and I wouldn’t change a thing. We set out to change the world together like a pair of love struck teenagers with not a care for strategy, regional history, culture, or anything else. Sure we made some mistakes like anyone else. Sure maybe we should have listened to Dick Cheney in 94′ when he said that invading Baghdad would be a quagmire. But then we would have never fallen in love. The important thing is we have stuck to our guns despite a strong effort by the liberals to expose the truth spread lies and we have come up with ever changing reasons for occupation never changed our story. We said things were going great in Iraq 5 years ago, and we’re still saying it today.

I want you to know that with you there is no mission or objective. I am not going to just use you to achieve a strategic national security interest and then move on like those others in the past. Our love is true and will burn as bright and clean and long as the oil under your beautiful soil. With you it’s different than with every other war. With them everything was so ordered and planned out, sure there was some spontaneity and excitement but it all felt so strategic. With you it’s just like the first day together every day. I can’t help but feel that even if we are blessed with McCain’s 100 years together nothing will ever change.

I would like to apologize for the way you have been treated at times. Some around us have claimed that you are too high maintenance and the trillions in debt are severely damaging America’s economic health. Some have claimed that the cost in lives and wounded is too great, or that I am sacrificing too much pursuing a reckless and unnecessary war. I say that love is worth any cost. So if being with you means another 4,000 dead American soldiers, 30,000 severely wounded soldiers, another million dead Iraqi’s, and displaces another 20% of Iraq I say that our love is worth it.

Five years may not sound like much against your centuries of conflict and inner turmoil, but you’re almost the longest relationship I have ever had. Sure I may have flirted with some other wars, and there is that whole Afghanistan thing that we won’t talk about, but they never meant anything. You know that you are always going to be the one that I build permanent bases and come home to. I just want you to know that no matter what, as long as there is a Republican in the White House, I have no exit strategy for our love.

Thanks for the past five wonderful years, I can’t wait to see what the next five, ten, fifty, or even one hundred years has in store. Sure you may feel like we still don’t understand you after all this time, but I know that we will be together for a very long time. So maybe our leaders like John McCain will never get the difference between Sunni and Shi’a, but your great oil reserves mystery is part of your charm.

I love you,

George

“The full economic costs of the war to the American taxpayers and the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense federal budget costs already reported,” said the 21-page draft report, obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.

The report argues that war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from “productive investment” by American businesses in the United States. It also says that the conflicts are pulling reservists and National Guardsmen away from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers that the report estimates at $1 billion to $2 billion.

Washington Post – 11/13/07 – ‘Hidden Costs’ Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say

This is expected to be presented to Congress later today, and from there we will see how seriously the Mainstream Media takes it. They have hardly blinked an eye at the current costs, but finding out that the actual costs may be well over a Trillion dollars is significantly different. One thing I would love to see the MSM take up is how our fiscally responsible president can waste 1.5 Trillion on an unnecessary war of choice but can’t spend a few Billion to provide health insurance to millions of our working class children.

Gotta love those nutty pro-lifers and their crazy priorities. War > Children. I’ll post more on this issue as the story unfolds.

* Notice: This story is pending editing but I wanted to push it out as Summer is running errands this morning. So don’t be surprised when all my spelling and grammar issues are fixed later On the bright side you get to see how much better my writing is after Summer fixes it. *

Before the invasion Bush told us ““Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament.” (( George W. Bush 3/6/2003 )) So a successful Iraqi mission would mean that Iraq would no longer have WMD. Got it. But wait, they never had WMD to begin with so weren’t we then successful by default?

Oh no, no, no once we were in Iraq our mission expanded. In fact George Bush said “Our forces have been given a clear mission: to end a regime that threatened its neighbors and the world with weapons of mass destruction and to free a people that had suffered far too long.” (( George W. Bush 4/13/2003 )) Now, Bush wasn’t very clear about when our troops were given this “clear mission” that very clearly differed enormously from the “mission” the American people and Congress had approved of.

It wasn’t long, however; until Bush declared “mission accomplished”. On May 1, 2003 on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush, and his prominent codpiece, told the American people that we had achieved success in Iraq and that major combat operations were ended. Yay! We were victorious, but wait, that was certainly not the end.

As I’m sure we all know too well, Iraq quickly fell apart and the “insurgency” began killing our soldiers faster and faster. Baghdad was torn apart among sectarian lines, Bush, who did not know the cultural differences among the Iraqi people, was going to have to again redefine our mission if we were truly going to be successful. So a year later Bush stated “We will see that Iraq is free and self-governing and democratic. We will accomplish our mission.” (( George W. Bush 5/4/2004 ))

With the increasing violence, turbulent political infighting, and broader divisions among Sunni and Shiite lines Iraq was quickly becoming a “quagmire”. It became obvious that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi soldiers and police would not be able to control their country anytime soon so Bush once again changed the definition of success by adding a new “mission”. “And our mission is clear there, as well, and that is to train the Iraqis so they can do the fighting; make sure they can stand up to defend their freedoms, which they want to do.” (( George W. Bush 6/2/2005 ))

As I told you in Part 1, not only was our mission and definition of success changing but the justifications for the war were changing as well. In order to keep up with the new reason to remain in Iraq, which was that it was a hot spot for international terrorism, our mission once again changed to keeping Iraq from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. “In the coming days, there will be considerable reflection on the removal of Saddam Hussein from power and our remaining mission in Iraq…By helping the Iraqi people build a free and representative government, we will deny the terrorists a safe haven to plan attacks against America.” (( George W. Bush 3/11/2006 ))

At the beginning of 2007, to justify the troop surge, Bush once again changed our mission in Iraq. We now had to provide a secure environment in which the Iraqi government could then effect change and take control of their own country. “In fact, we have a new strategy with a new mission: helping secure the population, especially in Baghdad. Our plan puts Iraqis in the lead.” (( George W. Bush 1/13/2007 ))

We now hear that the surge has been successful, violence is down, success is at hand. Of course, like everything else in regards to Iraq, there is debate over the statistics and the assertion that it is working on the security front. There is not debate, however; on if the surge is having any effect on the political front. It’s not. But don’t worry we have yet another “mission” this one perhaps the most vaguely worded and unmeasurable to date. “It’s a new mission. And David Petraeus is in Iraq carrying it out. Its goal is to help the Iraqis make progress toward reconciliation — to build a free nation that respects the rights of its people, upholds the rule of law, and is an ally against the extremists in this war.” (( George W. Bush 6/28/2007 ))

When one looks at the constantly evolving rhetoric, justifications, and definitions of “success” in Iraq it is confusing, it can be overwhelming and that is exactly what this administration wants. A population pushed into apathy by their deception, fear mongering, and overused rhetoric. That is the only way that this travesty could be allowed to be carried on for YEARS.

As citizens it is our responsibility to know what is going on in our government, especially when we have men and women dying for an unjustified, undefined, and unprepared for war. Our administration will tell you that to question their authority and policies is treasonous and emboldens the terrorists. I tell you that not to question them is dangerous, lazy, and threatens the very foundations of our country.