He can't blame Clinton for this one...so Cheney blames the little wife

Asked on Saturday whether he considered the United States to be an empire, Vice President Dick Cheney had the perfect dodge: Ask my wife.

Cheney is still lying misleading about WMDs and Hussein link to 9-11
Cheney's comments were aired Thursday in an interview with National Public Radio.

[Cheney] revived two controversial assertions about the war in Iraq Thursday, declaring there is "overwhelming evidence" that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Al-Qaida and that two trailers discovered after the war are proof of Iraq's biological weapons programs. "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government," Cheney said in the interview. "I am very confident that there was an established relationship there."

Cheney Cites Discredited Source as Proof of Iraq-al Qaeda Link

You remember that bogus article from Weekly Standard..yes?

One more Cheney beauty

The vice president said the Bush administration believes the deficit, recently forecast to reach $500 billion this year, is manageable.
"We think we've got it calibrated right and I wouldn't believe everything I read in Paul O'Neill's book."

RIGHT. Don't believe David Kay, who says there are no WMDs in Iraq. Don't believe Paul O'Neill who was told by Cheney that "deficits don't matter". Don't believe those empty trailers were devoid of bio-chem traces. Don't believe Dick knew anything about what the little wife was sticking inside that Caesar-wannabe-wacko Chrstmas card. Don't believe what you see...believe in Dick...believe in Dick.

I'm beginning to think Dick Cheney is insane.

Syracuse Post Standard:
A Father's Iraq Journal
Part One of an intriguing, informative, and unique series of diary entries from a man named Mike Lopercio is linked above. Native Central New Yorker Mike Lopercio spent a week traveling in Iraq where his son, Tony, has served since the start of the war. The Syracuse Post Standard has run a special series of these entries for the past six days.

"Before I'd arrived, I'd had my doubts-but now I knew. Over the course of one week I actually began to see things through Iraqi eyes. Our country is fighting a delicate diplomatic battle, solely with a brutish military machine. It's not only ineffective, it's counterproductive. I now know that it doesn't matter how many bad guys we catch. The fighting will go on, and our kids will stay here, and continue to die here, until we make the commitment to win the faith and trust of the good guys. That is something we clearly haven't figured out yet.
- Mike Lopercio

Part Two: » Island of Decadence
Part Three: » Iraqi Women's Lament
Part Four: » Rugged Road to Fallujah
Part Five: » In the Middle of Chaos
Part Six:» Emotional Farewell (to be linked soon)

HERE'S HOWARD DEAN!-SOUND BYTES/VIDEO! "WE WILL NOT GIVE UP! YEEHA!"


Man, oh, man..I love the man!

Zogby said Dean's fevered, arm-pumping speech after the caucuses on Monday "had no negative impact on young voters at all in New Hampshire."

THE PHONY "DEAN MELTDOWN"

SEE DAVE WINER'S TAKE ON THE DEAN SCREAM.

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SOUND BYTE / MP3s HERE:

• AC/DC Remix
• Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train (Dean's Aboard)
• Dancin' Dean
• Funk Mix
• Techno Mix
• Welcome to Dean's Jungle
• Revolutions
• Howard Dean MegaMix
• Extra Mix
• Capital Mix
• We Will Rock You
• Pretty Fly for a Dean Guy(FUN!)
• ElectroDean (VERY DANCEABLE!)
• Immigrant Song (HILARIOUS)

Bush "the deserter"?
Peter Jennings, stop dogging Wesley Clark!
Investigate the facts yourself if you want to know, you lazyboned chickenshite excuse for a journalist!
Stop wasting Democrats' precious debate time.

Howard and Judy Dean's neighbors:
Words of Support from those who truly know them

"It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor."
~ Eric Hoffer ~

In that case, Howard and Judy Dean are exceptional people.

Why are so many bloggers upset with the New York Times?
In the Salon article "Silence of the blogs", the question is asked: "Why did the New York Times ignore Baghdad blogger announcements and accounts of a big pro-democracy demonstration?"

Zeyad, the "gamer of Baghdad"....is famous in the international gaming community for his reports on gamer culture in Iraq. But he was also recently responsible for a furious stir online regarding the way news from Iraq is covered by the Western media....On Dec. 10, 2003, pro-democracy, anti-terrorist demonstrators peacefully flooded the streets of Baghdad. A coalition of Iraqis of many political parties and religious affiliations, tribes and ethnicities, young and old (including many students), demanded an end to attacks on civilians. They also demanded that Arab media stop depicting the Baathist and foreign jihadi culprits as members of some kind of just "resistance." Even the Al Jazeera network estimated them at over 10,000 strong. We know all this, not from reading any significant coverage of the event by the mainstream Western press (There was little to none). Rather I know it because an Iraqi who's been a computer user since childhood went out and reported on it himself. Zeyad's entry was linked to throughout the Web. But the so-called "paper of record," the New York Times, gave the event scarce coverage, and that enraged many leading lights of the blogosphere, especially those on the conservative or liberal hawkish end of the spectrum.

After 9-11, Americans woke up to foreign policy and international news. We realized it was far more important than tales of killer sharks and Gary Condit. If there is anything that will unite Americans across party-lines, it is the awakening to the media-problem in this country. Cable news is hopelessly ignorant. I had hoped the print-media was better, but I observe them degrading as well.
Overall, the problem with the New York Times and other major print-news outlets is not a case of the tired "liberal media" myth...nor is the mainstream print-media paticularly conservative. (Papers such as N.Y. Post and Washington Times not included in this discussion..they're very right-wing..we know it). It is primarily what Paul Krugman likes to call "the curse of even-handedness"...journalists try so hard to be "balanced" on every story that they wind up skewing anything close to the truth. Opinion and truth are getting to be inseparable bedmates...and the children they produce are the ugliest creatures I think I shall ever lay eyes upon. Ideological incest produces a retarded child of journalistic truth.
Many times, journalists are smug, arrogant, egotistical, condescending toward (or, negligently, not keeping up with the new, modern tradition of) internet bloggers. (*The salon article states that Baghdad bureau chief Susan Sachs and/or her staff are possibly not even aware of Iraq's postwar blogs*).
In some cases, journalists look non-democratic through professional negligence. Today's "big media" is most certainly corporate-agenda-driven. Sometimes it seems today's print journalists are simply not smart or intuitive enough to "score' the ever-evasive truth. That's the scariest thing to imagine. Is the American media truly hiring the best minds? I would think it would be healthy for American democracy to see federally-funded citizen-commissions (people like you and me) on media review, criticism, recommendations for change.

See Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds') take on the matter here.

Letter From Decorated CIA Vets to Dennis Hastert:
"Intelligence officers must never be turned into political punching bags"
Demand for Congress to hold Bush White House accountable
Go here to see the full text of a letter sent by former CIA officers to House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other key House leaders on Tuesday, calling for a congressional inquiry into the Valerie Plame case. (Subscription or one-day pass required)

Our fallen troops had no place in Bush's SOTU speech
I still can't get over this fact. I posted about it directly after hearing the speech. Colbert I. King talks about it here in his Washington Post column. The troops put their trust in their Commander-in-Chief. Some gave all. None got a moment of silence or respect last Tuesday in the State-of-the-Union speech watched by millions of Americans. What have we become?

"Last Tuesday night was an opportunity for George W. Bush to eulogize the fallen, a chance for him to tell their families what their sacrifices mean to the nation -- a time for the president to help heal broken hearts. That didn't happen....He delivered a line about "sorrow when one is lost," and shared a self-serving recollection of himself landing on the deck of a carrier in the Pacific Ocean and his Thanksgiving Day fly-in to Baghdad. There was also a pledge to supply the troops with all the resources they need to fight and win. But victims of the Iraq war, as well as their moms, dads, spouses, children, neighbors and friends, deserved more than what they got from the president. Instead of a moment of silence for those who have paid the ultimate price, they heard presidential pitches......
Tuesday was the time to tell U.S. families whose sons and daughters are losing their lives and limbs that their brave sacrifices still make sense....Instead, we got a Bush speech laying the groundwork for his quest for reelection.....A president who has been down in the trenches and seen people die would never have gone up to Capitol Hill in the midst of war and delivered the kind of State of the Union speech that the nation heard Tuesday night."