From the department of pukey talking points...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a democrat, hammered Bush yesterday. She basically called him a nicompoop:

"I believe that the president's leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience, in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers," she said.

Now the republican response was predictable:

"Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot sought to tie Pelosi's remarks to Kerry, who has been relatively quiet about recent events in Iraq. "Her remarks are now advancing a blame-America-first attitude that Kerry himself has come dangerously close to advocating," Racicot said in a statement."

Excuse me?? A "blame-america-first" attitude? What the heck is that? Someone needs to tell Mr. Raciot that Pelosi isn't talking about America. She is talking about President Bush. Nobody is blaming America. She certainly wouldn't direct her anger at say, all of us. I thought her remarks were pretty focused one of us, for example, George Bush.

I'd like to see a Kerry ad that addresses that point. It would be very easy to take the intellectual duplicity of a-blame-america-first statement apart at the seams and throw it back in Republican faces. We are Americans. Pelosi is an American. Bush is and American. You are American. I am not taking up my issues with the collective "America." I am taking them up with the idiots who are in the process of driving us over a cliff.

A man, A Plan, a Canard, Iraq!

Ooops...That's not a palindrome.

President Bush will announce his plans for a transition of power in Iraq on Monday. He will do it from the Army War College.

Now, it has always been a little too much for me to believe that the Bush administration has absolutely NO plans for the transition. But that is all one hears day after day. None of the senators, representatives, military experts, pundits or NGOs that I have seen or read have indicated that there is a plan. So I have concluded that they have a plan. However, I predict it will be a bad plan. I know, I know, that's negative thinking and we are a country of optimists. I am optimistic. I am optimistic that we will kick Senor Bush out in November. I do not hold out high hopes for his plan.

When selling a conservative, christian agenda...think India!

How about this gem? From the Hindustan Times:

Bush campaign ran from Noida call centre
KA Badarinath and Prerna K Mishra
New Delhi, May 16

"The political split in the US over outsourcing notwithstanding, till very recently the fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign for the Republican Party was done partly out of India. And this was handled by two call centres located in our own friendly neighbourhood in Noida and Gurgaon" more

Apparently, the $200 million bucks in George Bush's war chest isn't enough to hire an American.

When the military hammer can't find a nail

From Reuters:


U.S. Aircraft Reportedly Kills 40 Iraqis

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. aircraft fired on a house in the desert near the Syrian border Wednesday, and Iraqi officials said more than 40 people were killed, including children. The U.S. military said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria, but Iraqis said a helicopter had attacked a wedding party.

I would like to return to the notion that we are beyond the limits of a military solution in Iraq. I have heard many of the blowhard politicians and pundits this week continue to half-justify American abuses at Abu Ghraib by pointing to Nick Berg and the mutilation of four American contractors in Falluja. Invariably, the word "terrorist" is mentioned. Invariably, the diatribe ends with an exhortation to "stay the course," and that the actions "of a few bad apples" cannot be allowed to "sully the reputation of the peerless American military."

What is not mentioned is the price our military inflicts on the Iraqis. For the mutilated bodies of four contractors we laid siege to Falluja and killed over 700 civilians. Today, if true, we have attacked a wedding party and killed 40 civilians. In fact, Iraq Body Count puts the toll somewhere between 8,000 and 11,000 dead civilians as a result of our year there.

At some point we have to start asking ourselves how we look to the to the mothers and fathers and kids we are attempting to rule. We canot expect them to love us as we kill them. June 30 looms.

One down...

Minnesota's education commisar, Cheri Pierson Yecke, didn't pass the senate sniff test this week. Minnesota State Senators voted to replace her 35-31 along party lines. Every democrat voted to replace her. Every Republican voted to keep her.

During her controversial 15-month tenure, Yecke called for educational standards that eschewed what she called an "America-hating agenda." She mediated curriculum discussions in which key educational concepts were balanced against her desire to advocate a literal interpretation of scripture. She was, in one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twists so common these days, an education commissioner who was anti-public education. Minnesota is well shed of her. Nick Coleman, of the Star Tribune, says it well.

While Yecke's firing can be regarded as a small victory for the forces of reason in policy. This little example is a sign of the times. We are in the middle, or maybe the beginning, of a national family furniture-breaking fight in which both sides do not intend to take prisoners. It should give everybody pause for thought that Yecke was nearly confirmed. Minnesota was only 4 votes away from validating the beginning of the end of our much vaunted public schools.