The Washington Post reported that the number of lobbyists has more than doubled (to some 35,000) since the Bush era began in 2000.

"We're making good progress in Iraq." - The idiot-in-chief at his first press conference in 4 months.

"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind" - Bill Moyers

"The greatest strategic disaster in United States history." - Lt. Gen. William Odom's (Reagan's NSA director) on Bush's attack of Iraq

So is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff, who spoke yesterday about how the Cheney/Rumsfeld "cabal" hijacked US foreign policy and "courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran."

"After getting a fumbling cipher like George W. Bush elected president, the powers-behind-the-throne must have believed they were untouchable and could get away with anything -- including lying about WMD, outing a CIA agent, and, perhaps, lying to a special prosecutor." - Arianna Huffington in her blog piece Plamegate: Worse than Watergate

The ripublican house of representatives want to permanently slash funding for basic health care, nutrition and education services for the poor.  Bush wants to slash $35 billion in cuts but top house ripublicans want to trump that by slashing $50 billion.   Worse yet, they want to Meanwhile, the same budget proposal calls for $70 billion in new tax breaks- the vast majority for the already rich.

FEMA plans to give billions of taxpayer money to to religious groups to  rebuild their schools and other facilities.  Undoubtly 99% of this money will be squandered on christian zealots in the regime's efforts to keep their "base" bought-off.  Meanwhile, the regime is using the disasters to fund another of their pet projects- vouchers.  A draft senate bill would give an astounding $6,000 to each displaced student's parents.  Along the same line, it wants to reimburse churchs and other religious groups for their hurricane relief aid.

59% of Americans believe it the regime blew it by attacking Iraq; 63% want the regime to withdraw its troops; only 21% think the regime will "win" it's war (whatever that means....); just 32% approve of the idiot-in-chief's handling of Iraq and only 39% approve of the idiot.   66% percent say the US is on the wrong track.  On this question, even Bush's base is finally souring on him- his fallen standings amoung some base groups:  white evangelicals-down 30%,  ripublican women-28%, southerners-26%, and suburban men-20%.

Many christian zealots have said their god sent Katrina to punish New Orleans.  They do not say why did their god's hurricane also destroyed so may christian churches and killed and harm so many christians.   They also do not poist a reason for their god hitting Texas with Rita.    Maybe he sent it as punishment for Texans support of Bush.

More than 80% of the $1.5 billion in contracts FEMA has awarded so far were without bidding or with limited competition.  We aleady know many if not most of the contracts were "awarded" to regime cronies.  Like what the regime is doing in Iraq, we'll surely find out that they've stolen more of our money.

The senate voted 90 to 9 for a provision in a defense-spending bill which bans the regime from "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment of it's prisioner.   This was a very, very rare case of senate ripublican's voting agains tthe regime's position.   Bush's mouthpiece said the idiot-in-chief woul veto the provision if it is included in the final bill.  This would deprive him of funding for his Dept. of Offense and would further tar him as a war criminal for his use of torture.  HORRAY!   Meanwhile, Cheney is demanding the house/senate conference committee add a provision which would legally authorize both torture and use of secret detention centers by the CIA.   This is ample evidence the regime- and especially Cheney- are a bunch of war criminals.

The GAO issued a scathing report stating the Bush regime violated federal law by giving "commentator" Armstrong Williams $186,000 of our tax money to spew the regime's covert propaganda about its "No Child Left Behind"  law.  The report also cited as illegal propaganda the regime's hiring actors to "report" via reading from scripts written by the regime then distributing the videos to TV stations as "independent" reports.  In addition, the GAO report said the use of taxpayer money by the regime to analyze news articles and opinions regarding how they towed the ripublican's line was also illegal.  This is yet another case of the Bush regime being revealed to be a bunch of criminals.  They should be prosceuted for repeatly and wantonly breaking the law.

The regime was touting a "breakthough" in it's talks with N. Korea until it was revealed to be a utter sham and yet another lie.  They said that N. Korea had agreed to quickly destroy it's nukes, quit building more of them and submit to inpsections in exchange for the promise of light water nuclear power reactor "at a future date".    The leader of N. Korea is warped but, quite unlike Bush, he is not stupid.  Who in the right minds would believe any promises made by the Bush regime to furnish a  reactor "at a future date"?   Why would a country Bush named as a member of an "axis of evil" disarm when one of the other axis members has already been attacked by Bush?  With Bush and his warmoungering neo-cons in charge, agreeing to disarm would be suicide.

Bush asked that we conserve fuel yet he and his vast entourage waste millions of gallons of fuel flying hither and yon to staged/phony PR events.  Even worse, his recently proposed increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards does essentially nothing.  They increase the puny current requirement of 22.2 mpg to only 24 mpg- and it doesn't even require that until 2011.   To put this in perspective, the increase saves only one month's of fuel over the next 20 years.   Worse of all, it continues to exempt the worse offenders- the Hummer, Excursion and the Suburban from any mileage standards.  This is totally and completely STUPID!    I say immediately place a huge gas guzzler tax on both new SUVs and existing ones.  Made the egomaniacs who drive these abortions pay thru their noses.

Agri-business' latest tool in it's campaign of lies is a 20 part video propoganda series entitled "America’s Heartland".  The fact that it's being funded by Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau Federation is all one needs to know to determine it is BS.   The worst part is that the sponsors want free air time on PBS stations to spew their lies and propoganda.

Three states have sued the regime for their gutting of the roadless rule which once protected almost one-third of old-growth national forests.  California, Oregon, and New Mexico sued the regime to protect their 90,000 square miles of virgin forest.

• When Miers was Bush's appointee to head the Texas State Lottery Commission, the lottery was accused by a former director of awarding multi-million dollar no-bid contracts to a technology firm represented by former Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes. Barnes has since said he helped Bush escape active duty in Vietnam, and the lottery director alleged that Barnes demanded, (and under Miers received) the lucrative public contracts to keep quiet about Bush's military service.
• As Governor, Bush signed a law blocking Texas consumers from collecting a $6 billion dollar judgment against car dealers for predatory lending and keeping secret kickbacks. The law firm Miers headed represented the auto dealers.
• Miers was hired as legal counsel on both Bush's gubanatorial campaigns.  Among other things, her research was used to persuade a local judge to  excuse then Governor Bush from jury duty, a civic task that would have forced him to disclose his 1976 arrest for drunken driving in Maine. He was then able to keep his arrest secret until late in the 2000 presidential campaign.

FLASH:  Miers withdraws!  This was apparently due to the lack of support by even reliable regime allies in the senate due to her utter lack of qualifications.  The rightwing nuts and religious zealots are claiming victory and demanding one of their kind be annointed.  It'll be interesting to see who Bush nominates now.  Will he try to appease his "base" by selecting an outright zealot or seek to lure back moderates by selecting someone half-way reasonable?  With his approval rating below and 39% and dropping fast, I'd bet on a moderate.

Bush hearing "god" and following his orders is clear evidence that he is insane.   His claim is very similar to David "Son Of Sam" Berkowicz's saying that his dog told him to murder his victims.  Berkowicz murdered far fewer people than Bush has yet he is locked way while Bush is free to prepetuate his wanton murders.  Bush should be removed from office immediately before his god tells him to do something even more disasterous than his attack on Iraq.

• "I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran. Generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back - we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it sometimes again. "
• “The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process.”
• “So you’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of defense and the vice president, and you’ve got a president who is not  versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.
• The Bush administration “made decisions in secret, and now I think it is paying the consequences of having made those decisions in secret. But far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.  You and I and every other citizen like us is paying the consequences, whether it is a response to (Hurricane) Katrina that was less than adequate certainly, or whether it is the situation in Iraq, which still goes unexplained.”
• Of Bush:  “When you put your feet up on a hassock and look at a man who’s won the Nobel Prize and is currently the president of South Korea, and tell him in a very insulting way that you don’t agree with his assessment of what’s necessary to be reconciled with the North, that’s not diplomacy, that’s cowboyism.”

For more info, check out:

Transcript of Wilkerson's talk
Cowboy president courts disaster, says Powell' man (Francis Harris, Daily Telegraph, 10/21/05)
Colonel Finally Saw Whites of Their Eyes (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 10/20/05)
Powell's ex-aide rips leaders (Timothy Phelps, Newsday, 10/20/05)

This bit of idiocy was was drafted, without any consultation with experts in the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman.  Hoffman is, of course,  yet another unqualified political crony/ rightwing nut which the regime appointed as deputy assistant secretary in the Dept. Interior.   Like many if not most of the regime's other appointments, he has no relevent experience or qualifications.  To the regime, his running the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo. and being an aide to Dick Cheney where obviously more than enough to "qualify" him for the job.

As if the above is not enough, the regime has started using a political loyalty test for picking all its upper civil service positions (GS-13 and up) at the National Park Service.  There are more than 1,000 of these mid-level management and supervisory positions.  All candidates for the positions must also be approved by a regime political appointee.  Undoubtably, this will be used to ensure only regime cronies with marching orders to destroy our parks get the jobs.  It also marks the first time in well over 100 years that political hacks have been given such approval power.   This is a very dangerous precedence.

He's concerned about avian flu after he alledgely read John Barry's book on the 1918 flu pandemic.  If he read anything, it was a brief monosylabic book report written by an underling.  The press should pepper him with questions about the book to demostrate he's once again lying and to show him for what he is- a lazy ignoramus.

He's "encouraging" development of a vaccine but there is no mention of stockpiling anti-viral drugs.  Less than 1% of the populace can be treated with the current stockpile of anit-viral drugs.  France and many other countries have already stockpiled enough drugs to treat all of their citizens.  Just as with Kartina, you can rest assured that the rich and powerful will be getting these drugs and it'll be the poor who suffer.   The regime is surely thinking of it's own self-survival when it wants to use the military to enforce (if not declare) "quarantines".  It'll definitely need the military to control the vast mobs of the poor and middle classes seeking their heads when it's revealed the greedy pigs have gotten the drugs.

The only way to motivate theses idiots is to somehow ensure no one in the Bush regime, members of congresss, or their families get any anti-viral drugs until everyone else in the US gets them.  Of course that will never happen.  In fact, they have very likely already received their anti-viral drugs.

Meanwhile, the regime is otherwise treating the coming pandemic much like it the pre-9-11 reports that america was going to be attacked and is responding to the coming pandemic just as it "responded" to Katrina.   The regime has alledgely been "working" on a repsonse plan ever since Bush stole the '00 election but, five years later, it still hasn't issued it.  What is known of the plan is that, like it did with Katrina, the regime seeks to shift responsibility for the coming disaster to state and local governments.  State and local public health organizations are widely recognized as being totally inadequate for fighting a flu pandemic- no thanks to the regime.   The plan is reported to include quarantine and travel restrictions which even the plan admits would be ineffective since they would only delay the pandemic in US by only a month or two.   This is because, unlike SARs, victims of the flu are contagious before they show any symptoms.   The plan's worst-case estimate (most likely a gross underestimate) is more than 1.9 million Americans would die, 8.5 million would need to be hospitalized and the direct cost would exceed $450 billion.   If the the regime thinks it's going to be shielded by another bogus plan and more PR spin from responsibility for the deaths of millions,  it's mistaken.  That sort of body-count would result in lynching of regime officials by vast mobs of survivors.  Blood will flow in the streets.

Meanwhile, the regime's official in charge of making sure America is ready is yet another regime crony.  He has no experience in public health.   Stewart Simonson prime qualification for the job is that he's a bud of former Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

The regime's troops have also posted gruesome photos of their Iraqi victims to a web site.   Look for the site to be busted by the regime.  The navy and marine corp have already locked-down web and email access by their peons in an effort to keep more of the the truth from oozing out.

Meanwhile, the regime still proscutes only grunt soldiers rather than the officers and civilian leaders (including Rummy and Bush!) who are truly and ultimately responsible for the torture and abuse.  Recent reports also indicate that the regime's military abuse "investigators" are much more interested in finding out who is spilling the beans on the regime's abuse, torture and other war crimes rather than investigating the actual abuses which have occurred and bringing ALL of those responsible to justice.

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The ACLU has won a court case which forces the regime to release photos and videos of torture and abuse which they are hiding.  It's no wonder why they refuse to release them- they are said to document abuse and torture even more heinous than that in the evidence it's already been forced to release.    Even ripublican congressidiots are repulsed but they are fighting to keep their regime's dirty works secret.

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The senate voted 90 to 9 for a provision in the military-industrial complex spending bill which bans the regime from "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment of it's prisioner.   This was a very, very rare case of senate ripublican's voting against the regime's position.   Bush's mouthpiece said the idiot-in-chief would veto the provision if it is included in the final bill.  This would deprive him of funding for his Dept. of Offense and it's corporate crooks and would further tar Bush as advocating war crimes.  HORRAY!   Meanwhile, the regime is aggressively seeking to get the senate to exempt the CIA from the proposed torture ban.  All of this provides yet more proof that the regime is a bunch of war criminals

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 'Frog-Marching' Bush to the Hague"  is a good piece which explains how Bush's lies and war crimes in Iraq set the stage for the abuses.  PBS's Frontline is broadcasting a similar piece (PS: my local station is not showing it....)

Tom Delay's removal as ripublican leader means Bush has lost a powerful and (giving the devil his due...) an effective ally in congress.  This does not bode well for Bush's plans to further defund programs which benefit the less fortunate and give yet more obscene tax cuts to the greedy rich and to corporations.  Delay's replacement is widely thought to be much less effective than "the Hammer" in making ripublicans tow the party line.  This also weakens their bumbling speaker of the house- Dennis Hastert.  Hastert couldn't even get his choice, David Dreier, selected for the leader slot due to rebellion from ripublicans.  The fact that  Dreier is widely reported to be a gay that's still in the closet probably played a big role in that.  Adding to a previous indictment for criminal conspiracy, Delay was indicted a second time for even more serious charges- conspiracy to violate the election law  and launder corporate money.  That could and should get him a punishment of life in prison.

Roy Blunt, the new ripublican leader in congress, has some of the same attributes of the criminal he replaced- Tom Delay.  In '03 he tried to quitely insert a last-minute provision into a homeland security bill which would have benefited Philip Morris.  This was an obvious pay-back for their huge contributions to his campaign coffers and for hiring both his girlfriend wife and his son as lobbyists.  Blunt is in bed with the same corrupt folks who supported Delay.   In '03, his PAC gave $94,000 to long-time Delay associate Jim Ellis who has been indicted in the same case as DeLay and for the same crime as Delay- conspiring to illegally channel corporate money to ripublican candidates in Texas.  Worst yet, he is still giving Ellis money.   (more).

Bill Frist is still dodging the press's questions on his his insider trading and his conflict of interest in owning tons of HCA stock while he voted the HCA line on bills affecting the corporation- and hence his stock and his insider trading.

Joseph Schmitz, the regime's inspector general at the Dept. Of Offense, is accused of blocking the investigation of a Bush appointee who illegally awarded Iraq reconstruction contracts to business cronies.

Timothy E. Flanigan was forced to has withdrawn his nomination as deputy attorney general.  Flanigan is yet another corporate crook and regime crony.  He was Tyco's  senior vice president and head lawyer.  He fled the corrupt corporation just a few weeks before indictments were handed down against two Tyco executives in '02.   He then worked directly under Alberto Gonzalez as his deputy where he helped craft the "legal" cover for the regime's torture policy whereby it was hoped Bush and the rest of his regime could escape punishment as war criminals.   If that was not enough,  Flanigan had direct dealings with Jack Abramoff who was hired by Tyco to defeat proposals for imposing tax penalties on firms - such as Tyco - that were incorporated in offshore banking havens to avoid paying US taxes on their loot.

Rove, Scooter and Cheney are prime suspects in the outing of CIA operative as pay-back to Joe Wilson for stating the regime was lying about Sadam seeking to obtain yellow cake from Niger.   FLASH: Scooter's been indicted for two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements, and one count of obstruction of justice.   The prosceutor says others remain under investigation.  This undoubtly includes Rove since the already released states he outed the agent and has already lied to the media and the public by stating he had no knowledge of the leak.

Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more.  There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You  can't start another war because you used up the army. And now,  darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family  nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The  cupboard's bare, the credit cards are maxed out.   No one's  speaking to you.   Mission accomplished.

Now it's time to do what  you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you  did with your military service and the oil company and the  baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next  fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you, as President,  could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's  a lot left  to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the  sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the  church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the  vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why?  Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so  poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal.  You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a  shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to  rising water and snakes.

"On your watch, we've  lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't  love this country.   I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

So, yes, God does speak to  you.   What he is saying is: "Take a hint."

My thoughts on the christian fundmentalist zealots' "intelligent design" turned into a long piece posted here.

Frog-Marching' Bush to the Hague  by Robert Parry:

Permanent Occupation by Rep. Barbara Lee.  Lee believes the regime has no plans to exit Iraq as evidenced by the huge permanent bases it is constructing there and that the bases are one thing that unifies all of Iraqis.
Survey Finds Gulf 'Dead Zone' Much Larger

Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Watch Page  Katrina was just one of the many disasters to affect the gulf region.  An on-going one is the huge (~4,800 square miles!) dead zone off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas caused by alge blooms from run-off.

Censored Stories from Project Censored- the 10 big stories the mainstream media ignored over the past year
by Camille T. Taiara

Science Under Siege by Tim Montague, posted as Rachel's Environmental & Health News #822, documents the corruption of sciece by the corporations and the Bush regime.

Scientific Integrity In Policymaking- Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science and a follow-up at
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/index.cfm