Well, since the MSM won’t cover it, I’ll just join the BlogStream Media in covering it here in the blogosphere, and maybe eventually the anti-Bush, unfair, unbalanced, left-leaning, liberal, commie pinko MainStream Media will catch up.

Let’s talk about the Downing Street Memo, a highly classified British memo that indicates that President George W. Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The Downing Street “Memo” is actually a document containing meeting minutes transcribed during the British Prime Minister’s meeting on July 23, 2002 — a full eight
months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. The Times of London printed the text of this document on Sunday, May 1, 2005, but to date US media coverage has been limited. This site is intended to act as a resource for anyone who wants to understand the facts revealed in this document.

The contents of the memo are shocking. The minutes detail how our government did not believe Iraq was a greater threat than other nations; how intelligence was “fixed” to sell the case for war to the American public; and how the Bush Administration’s public assurances of “war as a last resort” were at odds with their privately stated intentions.

Read the rest of it at The Downing Street Memo.

Let’s Awaken the Mainstream Media. We need to get this story out there.

Zoe’s bedtime is 8:00 pm. That doesn’t mean she’s sleeping in there, however. Tonight’s non-sleep activity: Left-Coast Liberal Artwork. Beth found this on her pillow as she went to turn in tonight.

We’re so proud.

It occurs to me that my last entry will be completely lost on anyone for whom Reagan or later was the first President they remember.

Mine was Nixon. Man, I feel oooooolllllddddddd.

By William Branigin and David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 31, 2005; 6:33 PM

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

WTF? What happened to Linda Lovelace?

This week’s conservative panty-twist is over Nine Inch Nails’ foiled plan to perform at the MTV Movie Awards using “an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop.” MTV said thanks but no thanks, and Trent Reznor and NIN dropped out of the show.

So far, so good. But…

On several of the discussion boards I read, conservative wingnuts are frothing mad over Reznor daring to get up on stage and express his political opinions. They’re tiredtired!TIRED! of entertainers not being trained monkeys and just singing and dancing on cue, they want them to stop with the opinions and the criticism and the statements and the thinking and get back to just entertaining us.

And so they’re going to boycott Nine Inch Nails now! (Because NIN have so many Republican customers already — not.) And Dixie Chicks! And Springsteen! And Star Wars! And a bunch of other entertainers who have opinions! Because they’re tiredTired!TIRED! of having politics mixed into their entertainment, so they’re not going to reward that behavior any more! [Pout, stamp foot, whimper.]

So I wonder… Should Toby Keith be worried? Dennis Miller? Mel Gibson? Alan Jackson? And a host of other conservative-leaning entertainers?

I doubt it. Because if there’s one thing a conservative loves, it’s a double-standard.

Through all the recent gay marriage uproar, I’ve heaped nothing but ridicule on the conservative notion that Marriage needs defending against all those heathen gay buttfuckers (and pussylickers on the lesbian side) who want to get married. Beth and I are pretty solid in our marriage; we’re not going to end up divorced if Adam and Steve tie the knot next door, so I haven’t been able to understand how gays getting married contitutes any kind of threat to us.

Well. Texas, breeding ground of all things typically conservative and stupid, has shown me how. Lawmakers in the Texas House of Representatives and Senate have passed a constitutional amendment that would ban marriage completely:

Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage. (emphasis mine)

Reading this literally, it means marriage itself would be banned in Texas if this amendment goes through. If they can’t recognize a legal status identical to marriage, wouldn’t that mean … marriage? What’s more identical to marriage than marriage?

This goes to the Texas voters in November and I’ll be on pins and needles until then. If it passes in Texas, that could give it the momentum to pass in other places, too. If the conservatives have their way, we could end up seeing marriage banned outright across the entire country. Beth and I would have to get divorced. Zoe would come from a broken home. I’d have to start dating again. Ugh.

How ironic is that? The conservatives want to defend marriage against the unholy buttfuckers, but the threat is really the conservatives themselves.

Hmm…

Since I’m up on my political soapbox tonight…

I was reading The Red State describe his recent visit to New York and how strange it was to be in a city where there are more Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers than Bush stickers. He says, It is so unusual that someone told me that when they see Bush stickers on a car, they would knock on the driver’s windows and tell them “Hey, some asshole put a Bush sticker on your car. Do you want me to help you pull it off.”

I like that. Next time I’m out riding I’m going to knock on some car windows out here in California.

That ought to just about scare the shit out your standard stick-up-his-ass California Conservative, to have some big mean-looking bald biker with a thick hoop earring pull up next to him in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic, rev the throttle a few times ’til the noise rattles his fillings, eyeball him, and then start banging on his window yelling, “Hey! Hey!”

It’ll be major pucker-factor for the right wing that day; he’ll be picking his underwear out of his throat… Ha. Me likey.

…and of course right after I finally leap into the fray and say something about it, the Democrats roll over and cut a deal that gives the Republicans A) most of what they wanted, B) momentum, and C) ammunition to use against the Dems the next time the Repubs want to step over the line.

The Republicans were threatening to take the no-more-filibusters thing to a vote, and there’s a good chance they didn’t have the votes to win. There were actually Republicans who didn’t like the idea and who may well have voted against it. Clearer heads — and the Democrats — might have actually prevailed on this issue. So what did the Democrats do? They blinked. They agreed to a “compromise” that A) lets 3 of the 5 nominees they were filibustering go to a vote and B) basically ties their hands against filibustering future nominees.

Way to stand up, boys, way to stare them down.

As much as I despise the Republicans, I am even more embarrassed by the Democrats. And yet for someone like me who thinks we’re going to hell in a handbasket, they’re the only game in town because they’re the biggest of the not-GOP parties and thus have the best chance of prevailing. Sad, just sad.

Today’s Democratic party is a limp noodle, a clammy handshake, a soft boner. They’re the four-eyed outfielder afraid of the pop-fly ball, the dog that rolls over and pees on itself when confronted, the geek who gets wedgied and stuffed in his locker at Gym class. I could list analogies and metaphors about them for days and still not come close to explaining the contempt I feel for my party these days.

That’s why I like Howard Dean. He may be crazier than a shit-house rat but that motherfucker will stand up and say something. We need more politicians like him who are willing to stand up and call “Bullshit” and do what’s right. Playing not to offend clearly isn’t working, and in fact looking at what the Republicans are doing you could argue that offending people is what actually does work.

I’d give anything for a Democrat with a spine. And while I’m giving away the farm in exchange for vertebrae, I’d also give anything for a press that actually does their job. The Rethuglicans piss and moan about the “MSM” (MainStream Media, for those of you who aren’t sucking the Fox News MSM tit) and its supposed liberal bias, but in fact the press is as cowardly as the Dems have been about calling BushCo on their bullshit. If we had a press that was really telling the whole story instead of regurgitating White House news releases and talking points that they occasionally shade with obliquely critical adjectives, the Republicans would be frozen in their tracks at being caught with their hands in the cookie jar and the American people would be storming the White House with pitchforks and torches.

Up there at the top right of this page is my “About” section, where I have it set to cycle through a variety of descriptions. One of them is “Silent in Gehenna.” That’s the title of a short story by Harlan Ellison (one of my all-time favorite authors) about a revolutionary who ends up suspended in a cage with a bullhorn above a public street on an alien world, yelling at the aliens to “rise up, throw off the bonds of your oppressors” — and being ignored. He is the voice of their conscience and they don’t listen. That’s me in my political posts here: yelling the truth into a not-listening void.

In the headlines for weeks has been the showdown in the Senate over filibusters. It’s coming to a head today, with the Republicans working as hard as their crooked little rat brains can to find a way to get their way.

Summed up quite accurately and succinctly by the AP, the issue is this:

For decades, Senate rules have permitted opponents to block votes on judicial nominees by mounting a filibuster, a parliamentary device that can be stopped only by a 60-vote majority.

Now, frustrated by Democratic filibusters that thwarted 10 of Bush’s first-term appeals court nominees and threaten to block seven of them again, Frist and the Republicans hope to supersede that rule, by simple majority vote.

And as is their habit, the Republicans are lying about what’s going on. They’re casting this as a showdown brought on by Democrats taking unprecedented action: filibustering nominees — something that has never been done before!

That’s a lie. A total fabrication.

The Democrats are doing to some of Bush’s more extreme nominees exactly what the Republican’s did to some of Clinton’s back when the Republicans were the minority party. Filibusters are a Senate tradition that have been happening for so long that they made a movie about it back in 19-fucking-39: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart.

It was fine for them to do it when it served their purposes, but now that it’s being done to them they want to — surprise — change the rules to let them win. And of course they’re lying about it, and of course the Red State chowderheads and Fox News are gulping down the KoolAid as fast as they can and asking for more.

Frankly, I don’t care all that much about the filibuster issue, I just think it’s emblematic of what’s happening in GOP-land today: Win at all costs. Just win, baby, and cheat if you have to and steal if you can.

Florida’s actions in the 2000 Presidential election, Texas redistricting in 2003, the thief-in-the-night Ohio ballots last year, the “war” in Iraq, Osama bin Laden, WMDs, “saving” Social Security, etc, etc, etc. The Republicans have proven time and time again that they will stop at nothing to win. And still they have support. Still, there are sites like Instapundit pushing the lies, and hundreds of Insta-wannabes qouting him word for word. It’s baffling.

I swear, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a dream. These people lie, cheat and steal right out in the open — and they’re getting away with it! That’s why I’ve been so silent on the political front lately — I feel like I’m shouting into the void and nobody’s hearing me. It’s so obvious what BushCo is up to and it’s so baffling to me that otherwise intelligent people are actually supporting them! I challenge my conservative/Republican friends on why they support these idiots and they’re completely oblivious to the contradictory rationalizations coming out of their mouths. It’s as though they are willfully turning their brains off.

Feh, enough ranting, and I’m way off my original topic of the latest GOP thievery anyway. But what’s the point? I’ve pointed out the truth here time and time and time and time again and all I get are idiot responses from the conservatives out there that ignore the truth or change the subject. What’s the use? They’ve drunk deep of the KoolAid and don’t see — or care — where we’re heading.

Conservacrits are all a-twitter this year over merchants saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” (Because, you know, Christmas is the only holiday that occurs this time of year.) They think it means people want to kill Christmas. (Because Christianity is “under attack” here in the nation they say is a Christian nation with a Christian majority that was founded on Christianity. But it’s in jeopardy! It’s under attack! It’s fun to play the victim, innit?)

So for these concerned souls on Christmas Eve I offer a holiday greeting containing two of their favorite words. It’s a Christmas song immortalized by Bing Crosby, among others. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.