After three years and the death of more than 2,300 American soldiers ( amd 17,000 wounded ) in Iraq, Congress has yet to consider, debate and vote on alternatives to the President’s disastrous course.

Right now, in the House of Representitives there is a resolution sitting on the House floor – House Resolution 543. If it is signed by 218 members it would stop the House in its tracks and force them to debate on the Iraq war.

Then the congresscritters would be forced to take an up-or-down vote on any proposed alternatives to the “stay the course” non strategy of Bush Co.

Your voice – right now – can make a BIG difference.

The whole Valerie Plame deal is just the latest example of Bush Co’s modus operandi – they play up the intelligence that helps them justify their predefined plans and goals and they suppress the information that refutes their “truth”. While this may be business as usual in politics, it is no way to run a country.

Bush did not really “declassify” the NIE. Declassification of information follows a defined process which was not followed in this case. The president’s explanation of this fiasco sounded allot like Nixon’s “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal” line.

While what The President did is probably not technically illegal, think back about all those months of W talking about the leak like he didn’t know anything about it even though he was responsible for it. Doesn’t it piss you off that he was up there pretending he wanted to find the leakers – just like O.J. wants to find the real killers…

Joe Wilson pissed off Bush/Cheney by claiming the administration’s pre war intelligence (that they also cherry picked) was bad. They wanted to get back at him so they cherry picked certain classified information and gave it to Scooter so he could out Wilson’s wife and in the process sabotage an entire CIA front company that cost millions of dollars and many years to establish.

The bottom line is that they declassified intelligence and then leaked it to the press to discredit a political adversary, period.

After a couple of substandard shows tonight was good, this is why I watch Bill Maher.

Panelists: Ben Affleck, Bill Sammon & Sen. Joe Biden
Guests: Rep. Cynthia McKinney & Kevin Phillips

Opening bit: Save the Assistants Make a Call Foundation was average at best, but after that things started picking up

Classic Monologue: It is sad that our government produces a Scandal of Week, but true enough, and usually more then one. This week was Plamegate and the best line of the show: The Bush administration’s cherry picked intelligence was picked by illegals aliens. Also good was Ricky “Wedge Issue” Martin and the Crowd got “virtual fence” homeland security joke before Bill could get it out of his mouth. Sending your tax check straight to Haliburton was a winner as well.

McKinney: Seems to me that yesterday she saw which way the wind was blowing and “What else should I be, All apologies”…. I’ll agree with her, she is not a normal member of Congress. Bill nails the issue, it was all about ego not about race. McKinney was disingenuous – “I didn’t say it was a racial issue, but we do have racial problems”.

Bill Maher does his best “Russert” and starts the panel by asking Biden if he’s going to run for Presz, and shockingly we get a straight answer. Bill nails another issue – The problem Bush has about this leak dealio is that he’s been talking about the leak like he didn’t know about anything about it even though he was responsible for it. Of course Sammon tries to spin it but the bottom line is that Joe Wilson pissed off Cheney by claiming the administrations pre war intelligence was bad. Dick wanted to get back at him so he gave Scooter the okay to out his wife. They declassified intelligence and then leaked it to the press to discredit a political adversary.

Finally someone is talking about W’s signing statements. Sure, you can pass that law, hell I’ll even sign it, but I reserve right to torture people. Hopefully Biden is right, that American people have finally figured out what Bush Co. is all about.

Sorry Sammon, Tom “The Hammer” Delay- is not poster boy for left, he is the poster boy for corruption, cronyism, payoffs, etc.

Is it just me, or is Biden making allot of sense – Bush did squander an opportunity after 9/11 when he did not mobilize a willing US population to achieve consequential change. He didn’t ask us to sacrifice, to ration oil, etc. He told us to go shopping. Biden talks about asking George how he can make decisions without knowing the facts and W says “because of my instincts”. Bush does not collect the facts and make a decision, he goes with his gut and then prays he did the right thing while walking his dogs…

Manfleck doesn’t know the difference between morality and religion, I’ll try and help. You don’t need the latter to have the former, having the latter does not mean that you have the former, and the former is older then the latter.

Phillips was awesome in an understated way. He explains how religiosity supports the republicans as well as why that religiosity puts the U.S. on precipice of
downfall. He also explains why Bush had to avoid apocalypse question he got is Cleveland. I’ve got to get copy of his book American Theocracy.

Biden explains how fundamentalism has risen across all faiths – finally a politician who is not afraid to acquaint fundamentalism within faiths to another. Are the Dems’s listening? The people that believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old will never vote for you, so don’t even try to fish in that pond.

Funny, but true? You have to threaten to leave before people of middle eastern descent will make a deal? Sammon gives Republican talking points about what happens if we pull our troops out, but Biden right again – our troops are already avoiding sectarian conflict to a large degree. Sammon says that since we elected to go to war we now have to
stay and help them form a regional government – haven’t we been doing that?

Another good point is made, that there are really two different wars going on in Iraq. There is the war that the administration thinks it’s fighting – the war on terrorism and 500 year old war between Shiites and Sunnis. Biden comes off as someone that not only understands the issues but also offers ideas about how to move forward. The next time you hear a Republican say that the Dems have no ideas, take my word for it, at least one of them does.

The best of the New Rules was the Wife Swap – McKinney for Laura. Neo-Con please!

Huffington has a post that reprints an LA Times article where Tim Rutten panders to the Latino populace:

It’s been a while since a major American news organization treated an important national issue as irresponsibly as CNN now does immigration.

While is is highly ironic that this article is more irresponsible then anything that Lou Dobbs has said is interesting, I will set aside my love of irony and hatred of shills to write about something much more interesting in my opinion. The comments section on Huff-Po was at least evenly divided on the issue, and from my count more favorable to Lou Dobbs then to the Democratic immigration policy.

This is the first time that I can remember where the majority of the comments on a huff-po story don’t mimic the democratic party’s talking points.

Maybe there is hope.

It has become obvious to me that Dem’s don’t have OUR best interests at heart, and of course the Republicans don’t either. They are both most interested in keeping their positions of power. Period. Lou Dobbs is a flawed human being just like the rest of us, but, imho, he does speak to what he believes to be the truth and to what is in the best interests of the U.S.

And while that might not seem like all that much, compare that to the rest of the talking heads and it looks to me to be simply amazing.

As far as the immigration issue goes; the right, the left, and the latino community all have agendas – and of course they are all just spinning, pandering, and playing to their base. The two political parties have to serve both their masters – big business ( who wants that steady flow of cheap labor ) and voters. The latino population is exploding in this country, and if the demographic trends continue, will eventually become the majority in the U.S. Neither party can afford to alienate the largest voting block of the future so don’t look for either party to do anything substantive because if they did they would piss off both the Latino vote as well as corporate America.

The main problem in this debate is economic. Like everything else in a free-ish marketplace the law of supply and demand rules. When the supply of cheap labor is abundant wages will be depressed. The more illegal immigrants that come to the US the more wages are pushed down across the board.

I am sure that you have heard the “jobs Americans won’t do” bullshit many times if you have followed this debate at all – the reason that is bullshit is that there are only jobs that Americans won’t do at wages that are artificially low because of the availability of illegal workers that don’t cost employers ( in salary, taxes, insurance, paperwork, etc. ) as much as legal employees cost.

If those same jobs paid a living wage there would be plenty of Americans that would be willing to do them.

All of the positives that illegal immigrants bring to U.S. ( and to be sure there are benefits ) the depressed wages, the strain on our health care system and schools, the inability to know WHO is coming across the border, the criminal element, etc. all make the current system a net loss. The bills being passed around inside the beltway are not going to improve this situation.

Lou knows this, so do I. And it looks like the majority of the left leaning huff-po’ers do too.

Here is a real time revue of tonights Real Time with Bill Maher.

Opening bit:
Immigration; Banderos; predictable; funny premise so-so delivery.

Monologue:
Immigration Policies gone wild; Bills hits the highlights of the week – but it is largely forgettable. Best joke of the monologue is Bush sitting around the pool in Cancun and while watching the Girls on Spring brake utters I’d like to “tap that without a warrant”. Barry Bonds on Bill’s Mind too.

The first guest of the night was Jorge Ramos discussing immigration. Bill wonders why immigration is suddenly a big issue. I think it is because thousands of people are dying in Iraq and Bush Co. has got to change people’s focus. Bill asks Why is Mexico in such bad shape, why do Mexicans have to come here to try to provide for their families. The obvious answer is years of bad policies by and the corruption in the Mexican government. Jorge gives the pro legalization talking points.

Panelists: Erica Jong, Seth Green, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R)

Rohrabacher wants to let U.S. prisoners pick the fruit instead of immigrants because yea, that is what we need, for the government to have more incentive for building the prison industrial complex. To be sure some localities social services are collapsing under weight of illegal immigration and U.S. employers using cheap labor from south of the border drives down wages across board.

Are they ever going to stop talking about immigration.

Next the elective war memos; does anybody really believe Bush Co. didn’t manipulate the intel to fit into their already decided war plans? Rohrabacher does the republican bob and weave, floats like a butterfly as he avoids questions, changes subject, etc. The Roach Motel tactic, I have never heard it spun quite like that – We create a war in a country to suck in all the terrorists so we can kill them all there….

Erica, just a note, it’s always a hot day in Hell, at least as I understand the concept.

The second guest tonight was the irrepressible Robert Wuhl, we are looking forward to his upcoming show, “Assume the Position”; stories that made up America & the ones it made up. It’s too bad that Wuhl plays race card and is a Bonds apologist.

The best moment of the night is when Rohrabacher is completely speechless when asked if he would be defending Clinton if Bill had a My Pet Goat moment. Classic.

Another note: Rock n Roll & Levis brought down the Berlin wall, not Reagan.

How the Hell can Brazil (not to mention Iceland) become completely energy independent. Are they really that much more progressive then we are?

Seth Green gets a good laugh when he points out that we had build a new clock for the debt.

New Rules was as funny as it usually is; Sadaam as Hannibel Lector was good but My Pet Scapegoat wins for the best word play. Maher takes the religious right to task as only he can in the end of the show rant. I always want the lights to go down and have him say: “I don’t mean to go off on a rant here….”.

Good show, I’ve seen worse, but not a classic.

• Starting and then screwing up elective war in Iraq
• Hurricane Katrina response
• Dubai Ports International
• Amnesty / Guest Worker Program
• Social Security reform
• Prescription Drug Program
• Bin Laden alive and on the loose
• 5 Fold increase in the National Debt
• Trading Nuclear technology for Mangos
• Peeance Freeance

Michael Vlahos a member of the National Security Assessment team of the National Security Analysis Department at Johns Hopkins has written an amazing article that puts the current trouble with Iran and the Administration in a historical perpective:

Will we fight Iran? Another way to ask the question is: Will it be a war of choice? In other words, will war happen because we want it, and freely decide that this is the best outcome of policies we have approved? Or instead, will relentless stories — iron narratives already in place — force our hand? This is what happened in August 1914.

Long term readers will know that this type of post is not really my style, but I think that this article is so important that everyone should read it, so I feel it is my duty to help get the word out about it.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes – known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

– James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

BTW – this may be the best photo ever.

• “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” — George W Bush
• “I know what I don’t know, and to this day I don’t know technology and I don’t know accounting and finance.” — Bernie Ebbers
• “I have never used steroids. Period.” — Rafael Palmeiro
• “Israel must be wiped off the Map” — Mahmoud AhmadineJad
• “It’s not necessarily about what career you pick. It’s about how you do what you do.” — Cory Doctorow
• “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat” – Mark Felt
• “You literally have the weight of the world on your shoulders.” — Katie Couric
• “You got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — George W Bush
• “The President is a moron! I’m saying it. I don’t care.” — Kathy Griffin
• “So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.” — George Lucas/Senator Amidala

Okay, here it is, what you have all been waiting for – the This Damn Blog George W Bush Mash up. I guess there is no real point to it except to have a little fun, and I guess that is reason enough…

Listen to it, download it, memorize it – it will make you proud to be an american….