"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
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"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Saturday, August 14, 2004

The Greatest Contemporary American Patriot
Posted by Jill | 7:18 AM
And the only real journalist left in America. What does THAT say?

Jon Stewart. Speaking truth to power on Comedy Central, 11:00 PM Eastern Time, Monday-Thursday.

Just wanted to share.
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Friday, August 13, 2004

OK, tell me again why you think Bush supports the middle class. Go ahead. I dare you.
Posted by Jill | 5:33 PM
Read it and weep.


Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have SHIFTED federal tax payments FROM the richest Americans TO a wide swath of MIDDLE-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the presidential election campaign.

The CBO study, due to be released today, found that the WEALTHIEST 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes DROP from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The TOP 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share FALL to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent.

Over that same period, taxpayers with incomes from around $51,500 to around $75,600 saw their share of federal tax payments INCREASE. Households earning around $75,600 saw their tax burden JUMP THE MOST from 18.7 percent of all taxes to 19.5 percent.

[snip]

The conclusions are stark. The effective federal tax rate of the top 1 percent of taxpayers has fallen from 33.4 percent to 26.7 percent, a 20 percent drop. In contrast, the middle 20 percent of taxpayers -- whose incomes averaged $51,500 in 2001 -- saw their tax rates drop 9.3 percent. The poorest taxpayers saw their taxes fall 16 percent.

Republican aides on Capitol Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the tax cuts actually made federal income taxes -- as opposed to total taxes -- more equitable.


And I am Marie of Rumania.

I just got my property tax bill. My property taxes are going up $500 this year. How about yours?
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Hey Judy, how do those kneepads feel now?
Posted by Jill | 5:28 PM
Is it possible that there may yet be some justice in this country? Judith "Kneepads" Miller, that wonderful New York Times "reporter" (sic) whose chummy relationship with Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi led to many reports that bolstered the Bush Administration's case for war, has been subpoenaed by the grand jury trying to determine who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to the press.

"Also subpoenaed was NBC-TV's "Meet the Press'' host Tim Russert, who agreed to be interviewed under oath to avoid a court battle", sez the Associated Press.

Kneepads and "Timmeh!!" -- appearing before a grand jury. Schweet.
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Thursday, August 12, 2004

I want a world where this is unnecessary
Posted by Jill | 5:15 PM
NJ Governor James McGreevey, today:


Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

[snip]

Yet, from my early days in school, until the present day, I acknowledged some feelings, a certain sense that separated me from others. But because of my resolve, and also thinking that I was doing the right thing, I forced what I thought was an acceptable reality onto myself, a reality which is layered and layered with all the, quote, good things, and all the, quote, right things of typical adolescent and adult behavior.

At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.

And so my truth is that I am a gay American. And I am blessed to live in the greatest nation with the tradition of civil liberties, the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world, in a country which provides so much to its people.



Full transcript here.

First let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. McGreevey was already damaged goods, what with the hot and cold running scandals surrounding seemingly just about everyone around him. Last year at my first Dean Meetup, I told party regulars that they simply HAD to find someone other than McGreevey to nominate for governor next year because otherwise the next governor would be named "Bret Schundler."

So even before all this, McGreevey had to go.

I don't quite know what happened here. Atrios says rightly, "Either there is merit to the sexual harassment charges, or we've had a (previously) closeted governor resign over what amounted to an outing threat."

At the very least, McGreevey is guilty not just of the "Don't shit where you eat" rule, but quite possibly of thinking with the wrong head to the point of giving his lover a position for which he wasn't qualified. Regardless of the genders or sexual orientations of the people involved, this is just not smart.

But this isn't what the water carriers for the Republican party otherwise known as the Mainstream Media are going to focus on. They're going to focus exclusively on the gay angle, in an attempt to draw direct lines between unethical behavior and sexual orientation, and that would be not just unfortunate, but unfair.

Read McGreevey's farewell speech for yourself before you judge. Then imagine spending your entire life trying to be someone other than who you are. Imagine trying to fit into a society that reviles people like you. Imagine coming of age in the years before Stonewall, before gay pride. Imagine all this at the same time you're a Roman Catholic. What a terrible way to live.

Wouldn't it be better if, instead of forcing gay Americans into a box into which they don't fit, we could just accept people as they are? Wouldn't it be better to have a society in which people didn't have to feel ashamed of who they are and who they love? Wouldn't it be better if gay Americans could just be gay instead of having to come out on national television, with their partners in straight marriage in tow?

I'm a straight, white, suburban white woman, in a straight, white, suburban marriage. I have seen very dear friends take the same journey that James McGreevey has taken; a journey through doubt, lies, family trauma, and finally, self-knowledge and happness for the first time in their lives. I have other friends who want simply the same thing I have -- to have the bond they share with their partners recognized by the state so that they can enjoy the same rights I take for granted. Not one of these people threatens my marriage in any way. And they don't threaten yours either.

In a just world, McGreevey's revelation would help people to understand just how impossible and counterproductive "passing for straight" really is. In a just world, people would see the pain behind the governor's words. But we don't live in a just world. And so the baying dogs on the right will instead indulge their salacious fantasies, hounding this man and his family to the ends of the earth. Because that's what sells.
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"Every time I try to talk to someone it's 'sorry this' and 'forgive me that' and 'I'm not worthy'...
Posted by Jill | 9:03 AM
Today it's the Washington Post strutting down the runway in its hair shirt, finally admitting that its drumbeat-for-war coverage of George W. Bush's ill-conceived Excellent Iraq Adventure might not have been accurate.

Another nail in the coffin of American journalism, which only further confirms that Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are the only places to get real news.

Says Bob Woodward, as he flagellates himself with a cat o'nine tails:


"We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," Woodward said in an interview. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than widely believed. "Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page."


And this is half of the duo who brought down Nixon, a man whose sins seem minor by today's standards.

Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks goes on:

"The paper was not front-paging stuff...Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"


Yeah? Why fight the inevitable? Just lay back and enjoy it, right.

Perhaps the nearly 1000 families who have lost their children, spouses, or siblings in Iraq might question that judgment.

The fact of the matter is that the entire U.S. media recast itself as Pravda in the aftermath of 9/11. And we are paying the price today.

All of them, everyone from the obvious targets like Faux News to the SCLM, represented by WaPo and the New York Times, have the blood of our soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians on their hands because of their unwillingness to do their job.

Their mea culpas are just too damn late.
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Sellout of the Year
Posted by Jill | 10:07 AM
Some on the left are still deluding themselves about John McCain, as if he were some paper doll on which we can hang whatever clothes we want.

This tells you all you need to know about John McCain.

Anything can be said in the heat of a political race. But remember: The man McCain is embracing here had his henchmen spread rumors in South Carolina in 2000 that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter (who was only like eight years old at the time) was actually the product of a liaison with a black prostitute; and outed McCain's wife as a drug addict (she at one time was addicted to prescription drugs -- just Rush Limbaugh, a man the Rove machine just adores).

What kind of man, other than a complete political whore, embraces and endorses a man who smears his family?
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Sunday, August 08, 2004

R.I.P. The Electoral Process in the U.S. - First of a Series
Posted by Jill | 8:41 AM
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I've been barking about the touch-screen voting problem for the last three years. Anyone not familiar with this situation is hereby ordered to visit the following Web sites immediately:

Black Box Voting

Verified Voting

We already know that Florida's elections in the Jeb Bush era have been totally bogus, but what's astounding is how blatantly they're getting ready to do it again. First it was the infamous felons list that contained mostly African-American (read: Democratic) names, but NO Hispanic (read: Republican) names. Now a report has been issued which affirms that these so-called miracle voting machines, guaranteed to eliminate the undervote/overvote problem which confounded vote recounters in 2000, merely EXACERBATE the problem.

The Florida Division of Elections' report found that the rate of so-called undervotes, or blank or incomplete ballots, in the 2002 gubernatorial election was nearly three times higher in counties using touch-screen machines as in those with optical scan systems.

In the election, which incumbent Republican Gov. Jeb Bush won by a wide majority, more than 44,000 votes were ruled invalid because of undervotes, overvotes (when a voter chooses more than one candidate) or flawed absentee ballots, the report said.


Read on, McDuff.

Meanwhile, at the same time Jeb Bush is extolling the virtue of touch-screen voting, the state Republican party didn't get the message. They've sent a flyer out to Republican voters in Florida recommending that they use absentee ballots.

Once work about this got out, however, Jebbie must have sent Clemenza and Tessio to break someone's legs, because the Republican Party in Florida has since apologized for the flyer.

Although Florida is supposedly a swing state, does anyone really doubt that a loyal family soldier like Jeb Bush has things under control to deliver the state for his brother, no matter what the intent of the voters? Of more concern is Ohio, a TRUE swing state which for some bizarro reason is still leaning towards Bush, though only by a hair. The Family isn't taking any chances there either. Turns out that Hamilton County, Ohio election officials (and those in 20 other counties) are giving misleading information to ex-felons.

Hamilton County elections officials are providing "misleading and erroneous" voting information to ex-felons, a Cincinnati-area prisoner advocacy group said Tuesday.

The Prison Reform Advocacy Center surveyed 140 former state prison inmates and talked to all 88 county boards of elections. The group found that one in five ex-felons don't realize they can re-register to vote, and some election boards were unaware of the law.

"This is absolutely unacceptable that boards of elections that are supposed to know Ohio law ... are giving misleading, inconsistent and flat-out wrong information to ex-offenders," said David Singleton, executive director of the center.


At this point, I don't know that we can ever have any faith in how any election turns out ever again. As long as party hacks are permitted to run the process and count the votes and buy the voting machines, and as long as the process has no value, only the victory, we are no better than any other banana republic.
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Anyone Else See a Pattern Here?
Posted by Jill | 7:59 AM
So it looks like another "outing" from the Bush Administration, only this time it's not for revenge, it's simply for another (short-term) fear-generated poll boost.

Turns out that the Al Qaeda "mole" that the U.S. secretly arrested in July was working undercover to help authorities track down Al Qaeda militants in Britain and the U.S.

But when Bush started to struggle in the polls, and another Orange Alert was needed to boost his polls once again by scaring the bejeezus out of the American people (and pushing Democratic New York City that much closer to bankruptcy through budget-busting security measures), what's a REAL fight against Al Qaeda weighed against a few poll points?

LONDON (Reuters) - The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has SHOCKED security experts, who say the outing of the source may have SET BACK the war on terror.

Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources on Friday that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly in July, was working UNDER COVER to HELP the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

"After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz."

Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.

None of those reports mentioned at the time that Khan had been under cover helping the authorities catch al Qaeda suspects, and that his value in that regard was DESTROYED by making his name public.


Full story here.

And even MSNBC stops carrying Bush's water long enough to report on this.

It continues to astound me how any thinking person who isn't actually making money off the Iraq War can continue to support this bunch of cynical, vindictive, criminals.

UPDATE: Digby puts it far more succinctly:

If Bill Clinton could deal with the "wag the dog" nonsense while he was being impeached, I think these guys should be able to keep their fucking mouths shut when Howard Dean gives them a hard time on CNN.
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