Arianna Huffington takes SecDef Rumsfeld to task for just making shit up.

First Rummy bitches about people and the press not putting things in historical perspective, forgetting their history, then he unleashes a volley of claptrap "facts" that simply defy logic or a cursory google check:

"There's never been a popular war."  Wrong.  Support for WWII never went below 75%

"Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most hated people in the country."  Wrong.  FDR's approval during the war never went below 66%, disapproval didn't get above 25%.

"Harry Truman went out of office with 23% popularity in the polls." Wrong, he rebounded to 32% by the end and did go to historical lows at 23% but rebounded.  It's still pretty bad, even for a guy who used a couple of weapons of mass destruction.  But Rummy's boss was at 58% just before Iraq.  Truman's was at a dismal 37% before Korea -- which is where he was in February of the second year after getting reelected, not much above Bush's current 34%.  Bush dropped a lot more than Truman during their respective wars, and when you consider the near 90% approval Bush had at the end of 2001, free-fall would be a kind description.  Nixon was getting us out of Vietnam by this point in his presidency, but his rating was 24%.

"George Washington was almost fired."  Here's where Rummy really jumps the shark.  Washington was almost fired before there was even a United States.  To fire a sitting president you need to impeach him and Washington was never in any danger of that kind of disapproval while in office -- and popularity had nothing to do with Clinton's impeachment.  Slick Willie actually gained in popularity while the Republican hatchet men lined up to throw spit-balls at him.

But what is most amusing is not that Rumsfeld doesn't know what he doesn't know, but that he now is trying to make the whole nonsense unknowable:

Soon after I posted about Rummy's "biggest problem" quote and linked to the DoD website, the entire interview suddenly vanished from the site. It's disappeared from the list of recent transcripts, and the page where the interview once was is now completely blank.

True to form, Bush's wealthy enablers have once again bailed his butt out of the fire to save their own.

First Arbusto and Harken, the Rangers, countless screw ups from the Oval Office, and now Dubai Ports World is going to have a fire-sale and divest themselves of all US operations.

Anybody wanna buy a port on the cheap?

HT: firedoglake's excerpt of the Vanity Fair PDF

"Can't be Newt . . . he never met me. Oh, Newt! What's he doing there? Must be a Newt look-alike. I have more pictures of him than I have of my wife. Newt again! It's sick! I thought he never met me!"

Between this and watching the GOPers in Congress fall over themselves to spit in Bush's face over the Dubai Port crazyness, if I were having more fun I'd have to be twins.

Leave it to Chuck Schumer to tie the two together by adding a an amendment to block the port deal to the lobby-reform bill.   Veto that Shrubster.

Now the "Prom Queen and King" of country music, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, are piling on the Prez-Nit-Wit

Eric Boehlert at The Huffington Post

Hill, reportedly close to tears as she discussed the Katrina mess, labeled the fiasco "Bullshit" and announced "I fear for our country."

Personally, I don't usually give a rat's patoot what those two think, but a lot of people do.

Well done!  For their work on "Coingate, the Blade won the 72nd annual National Headliner Awards.

Toledo Blade, Denver photog, San Francisco radio station win top honors -- Newsday.com

The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, also won first place in investigative reporting for work by James Drew, Mike Wilkinson, Steve Eder, Christopher D. Kirkpatrick, Jim Tankersley and Joshua Boak. Their stories showed gross mismanagement of a $50 million investment by Ohio into rare coins.

That ought to look good next to the Pulizer they got a couple of years ago -- and they're still in the running for this year's.

New to the blogroll are skippy the bush kangaroo and American Agenda.

I don't make additions to the roll lightly.  I stopped using Blogrolling.com a while back when it started hanging and slowed down operations at the DispLib subterranean headquarters.

Every blog you see on the left is hand rolled and not added until it's reached its peak of perfection.  So give these guys some love.

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While you're clicking about, read this then explain to me how being put on blacklist by doing business with a company or person on the government's terrorist watchlist, knowingly or unknowingly, comports with the idea of due process.

Think about it.  You can be placed on this watchlist without any notion of judicial review, notice, a right to redress any error, completely at the whim of a government official.  Once on the list you can't even get a job because your name is on the wrong list.

How many stories do we hear every other week or so about someone unable to board a plane because they are on the terrorist watchlist?  Senator Ted Kennedy was on the list, and until he was removed, every bartender who poured him a Fuzzy Navel was violating the law.

Now tell me again how the ACLU, who are so pure in their stand on civil liberties, can in good conscious support this.  Last I looked, due process, some kind of legal procedure to redress mistakes or excesses ot the bureaucracy, was a civil liberty.

it's one thing to buy off the occasional journalist, or give them the rubber hose treatment, but when you can get the ACLU to take 30 (or half a million) pieces of silver, we are in deep shit.

But it wasn't my fault.  Our host, Blogdrive, was tinkering with the server and I wasn't able to post for about 20 hours.

Everyone who blogs has had server problems of one type or another.  For a site that only requires one ad at the top to remain a free server, I haven't seen anything out there in over two years that is superior.

Mind you, there are a lot of superior sites that don't charge much, but you get what you pay for in this life. I'll always be open to switching servers, and someday might be interested in paying for this hobby.  In the meantime, let me know if there is a free blog server out there with all the features I enjoy here -- reliable servers, simple url, wysiwyg post editors, trackback capable, permalinks, comments, completely configurable css layout, recent post quick links like I have at the top of the right hand sidebar, plus maybe a feature or two I don't have which will make the move worth while.

Yeah, being down for a day got my attention, so I'm shopping.

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UPDATE: Did I say one ad? The pricks seem to have slipped a google ad banner in on me.  Very clever, and unremovable too.  Yep, I'm shopping.

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OK, Okay, the mistery ad was crosslinking nonsence with the "dubya dashboard."  I'm still shopping, but not as pissed.

SAVE AIR AMERICA PHOENIX

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Limbaugh and O'Reilly are OK.

Wonkette reports that the military will allow our troops to access the web sites of right wing drug addicts, criminals and sex offenders like Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and Bill O'Reilly, but block Al Franken and even Wonkette.

• Wonkette – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.”
• Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) – OK
• Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
• Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) – OK
• ABC News “The Note” – OK
• Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
• G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) – OK
• Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies.”

That explains are so astoundingly misled about what they are doing over there.

Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11

Despite some problems with Zogby's troop poll, this amount of unanimity will not be explained away as a sampling error brought about by security concerns.

Our troops are being asked to die for a lie.


The unholy alliance of neoconservatives and the Christian right are doing everything they can to keep the sheep in line, even here at home.

Air America going off the air in Phoenix despite having taken their station from being unrated and unprofitable to #3 in the local market. It was quickly bought up by right-wingers who turned it into the area's eighth [ninth?] "Christian" station. (Avedon)

Full details here.

HUFF POST has the links for how to SAVE AIR AMERICA PHOENIX

Best:

(Sir?) George "Oscar Winner" Clooney was funnier than Stewart, Farrell and Carrell.

The fake attack ads were hilareous.

The "Duck!" Bjork joke had me on the floor.

The show only ran a half hour long -- I blame Bill Conti.

Keira Knightley - Perfect! Salma Hayek -- Bam! Just Bam! Halle Barry -- Yes! Even in flannel.

Ariana Huffington's blog coverage.

It only taking me 9 right guesses to win the family pool for most correct picks.

If you know Robert Altman's style, you "got" Lilly Tomlin and Merryl Streep -- that was harder than it looked (which was the point).

No matter how well deserved, when one film sweeps everything the Oscars are boring. This one had us guessing 'til the end.

Bust:

Was that a bow or was Charlize Theron growing a second head? Reese Witherspoon looked like she rolled around in shiney barbed wire. Baby puke yellow is nobody's color, not even Michele Williams. Naomi Watts: if your cat claws up your dress right before the red carpet, stop by the GAP and go for the Sharon Stone t-shirt look.

Pink TAB? Oy!

Stewart's "Tear down the Oscar statue and beat it with a shoe" joke -- just lame.

The slow motion dancing to the Crash song -- dumb.

Quit yer whining:

Brokeback already won a bunch of stuff, was nominated for everything, raised the profile of gay cowboys everywhere, and joins a very long list of fantastic films that were honored just to be nominated. Was it fair that Wizard of Oz was up against Gone With The Wind?

Dolly Parton is a wonderful talent -- a treasure. This was not one of her best songs (or dresses). I'm stll humming "It's hard our here for a pimp." The other two songs didn't even have my foot tapping -- and I am by no means a fan of hip-hop. This finally makes up for The Buddy Holly Story beating The Wiz. (Frank Baum never caught a break.) And don't get me started about "Blame Canada" getting robbed.

Two words: "Uma, Oprah." John Stewart did just fine.

If you were curious, the Toledo terrorists informant known as the "Trainer" is indeed in protective custody.  I rarely agree with Bob Franz about anything, but he nailed this one.  The media dug too deep in the wrong direction.

And speaking of the right side of the blogosphere, WHY DO YOU GUYS ALWAYS YELL?  Not just Bob, but Michele, and Professor Instalinker too. Hey folks, even Matt Drudge knows how to release his caps lock.  (And yes, Callahan, Maxspeak, and depending on who's posting Majority Report have this annoying habit too.)

For the record, Battlestar Galactica is the one show I will not miss now that West Wing moved to Sundays and is in its "last throes."

It's better to listen to Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and This Week on an iPod than watch on TV.  You don't need to see their lips move to tell if the politicians are lying.

Many ugly, albeit intelligent and talented talkers can be said to have a face for radio.  MarKOS has a voice for blogging.  Dude, drink a couple of shots of Jack and smoke no less than five cigaretts, (preferrably camels, non-filters) right before you appear on Air America again, please.  I can visualize your pocket protector as you squeak through my speakers.

I don't know what to think about the India nuke deal.  If I had faith that there was a philosophy behind our relations with other nations beyond proving that we have bigger dicks than everybody else, I might not be so suspect.  As is stands, I agree, Bush blinked.  However, I really don't see why we don't treat a nuclear India more like nuclear France, or China, instead of nuclear Pakistan, Korea and Iran  So I do get it, just don't trust it.

Pre-Nit-Wit probably had no idea they were talking about uranium and plutonium. When the negotiators told him about "New Clear", he must have thought is was some new window cleaning formula.  Certainly they weren't talking about "NuKe-Quew-Lar" weapons.  No wonder he told the Indians, "Fine, Whatever you guys want."  (He was probably bummed he wasn't dealing with the Cleveland Indians so he could throw in Sammy Sosa to sweeten the deal.)

When you are the world's most powerful man, you can make your own schedule.  What a dolt, he's still just playing a part and doing what he was told to do.  Wait till he finds out that the Taj Mahal is not just a big wigwam out on some reservation.  "Hey, ya'all can make as many of them nuke-u-lar thingies ya want.  But we're not gonna let you people have any whisky. That's where we draw the line."

My apologies to any and all Native Americans or firends of same who took offense to that last point.  I would apologize on behalf of the Prez-Nit-Wit, but he's not my fault.  In fact, the list of reasons to be pissed at him are legion.

She's still full of crap.

We are all Condi

we don't think anybody anticipated that things might happen while he was in office and he'd actually have to lead the country