The Heretik

SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE TM  Plus Nefarious Nightcap linkage  at Lefty's Lounge.

RUMSFELD PRIES his job out of Lieberman's paws.  REID RAPS lonely Lieberman right upside the head. Wisdom of The Monk .

NOT EXACTLY southern hospitality. MISTAKES were made.

THE LATEST in the War on Christmas Everything TM.  Make that the earliest. The war will  end continue when the Fat  Man  Lady Sings.

HOW DOES THAT JOHN LENNON SONG go?  All we are saying is give us a break peace a chance.  THEME? It is Friday Night.

And have a drink at Lefty's now.  Betty Blogger blathers and lathers up the foam at the mouth of your latte cup. Or something. Have a sip.

NEWS WITH OOZE

NEWS WITH OOZE TM  Plus nightcap linkage with your friendly nutjobs at Lefty's Lounge.
   
ANN COULTER WASN'T TALKING TO HERSELF I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.  ALSO Loofah lords it over Europe .  THE EUROS are coming. 

PATRIOT ACT? Backbone needed.  Rummy Out? Lieberman in?

AT SOME POINT LAST NIGHT men grew. PLUS BITCH and bitch slap. 

DROP A LINK and have a drink at Lefty's now.  Lefty Louise is pouring her heart out.

HOT FLASHES

NEWS WITH OOZE TM  Greatest Hits and misses. Plus shots in the dark at Lefty's Lounge Linkfest.
 
TOP BOTTOMFEEDING STORY Hillary Clinton leads charge on flagburning law. Tom Delays Greatest Hits and Misses

MILESTONES Remember Pearl Harbor. Fifty four years ago today.  Happy Birthday, Tom Waits.    The Heretik will forever be looking for the heart of Saturday night. Things looked deflated, but things often are not how they first seem.

SHOTS IN THE DARK: Rape and Plan B from Stacy X. C&L: A kiss is just kiss? Lefty's Lounge is open now. So leave a link and have a drink.

SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE TM  LAUNDRY DAY EDITION Delay's Money Laundering Charge Sticks, Conspiracy tossed also Brian Williams: Buy Your News and View plus HOT FLASHES.
 
DELAY LAWYER DECLARES MORAL VICTORY the state conspiracy law did not apply to the election code until a year after the 2002 elections.  The Heretik notes with relief Delay couldn't break a law that wasn't on the books yet.  He is trying to get off on the money laundering charge because the law shouldn't apply to money laundering by check.  Guess it's credit cards and cash only.  The judge wasn't down with Tom's payment plan.  In case you forgot, Dick Cheney is helping raise cash and is taking checks for Tom Delay's defense.  Bad move, Bad Dick. 

SHOT IN THE ASS AWARD [NBC's] Brian Williams told host Howard Kurtz that the Bush administration has "the right" to pay a columnist to tout its views in his column. Williams also condoned the "politiciz[ation]" of programming on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).[CNN transcript]  PSSST, BRIAN who will believe any of your opinion pieces now?
 

HOT FLASHES: Legal Genius flunks bar exam, gives new meaning to law practice. No schadenfreude here.  And here is your Dumbass of the Day. What does it take to be Mayor of New York?

FROM THE DC DESK of Ruth Neiman Marcus: It was the $1,260 thigh-high giraffe-print boots that started me thinking . . . What we need?  More puff pieces on the puffed up people in DC.  Even more on the money from Maha.

SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE tm with THE DIDN'T MEAN TO SCARE YOU EDITION with Bush's Fishy Immigration Update plus Miami Freaks Out Also Public Humiliation is in and breaking ThirtySeven Million Goes a Long Way for Abramoff
 
CATCH AND RELEASE will end as immigration policy.  No word on whether fish are still safe, but illegal immigrants beware.  Bush apparently thinks people are like fish.

This practice of catch and release has been the government's policy for decades. It is an unwise policy and we're going to end it. (Applause.) To help end catch and release, we need to increase the capacity in our detention facilities. Last month at the White House I signed legislation supported by the members of the Arizona delegation that will increase the number of beds in our detention facilities. We're also working to process illegal immigrants through the system more quickly, so we can return them home faster and free up bed space for others.

BUSH ALSO THINKS for now that sending Mexicans back to their home towns in Mexico will keep them from coming back.  Oy.  Where do you think the motivated Mexican comes from?  [White House transcript] [CNN] [Bloomberg] [Previous Heretik on this]

AND THE BLOGS GO NUTS Pudentilla at Skippy says: it wasn't an ad-lib, inadvertantly revealing the contempt awol feels for those not blessed by god, as he was, with a birth on third base. it's in the white house text of his comments on immigration. he's talking about human beings. the speechwriters were told to make a deliberate appeal to his racists base. in a previous century politicians employed such dehumanizing rhetoric.  THE MISSING WORD IS AMNESTY Joe Gandelman: Indeed the Bush plan does seem to be an attempt to do verbal gymnastics to avoid the use of the word "amnesty." FROM THE RIGHT Red State: Bush Misses Another Opportunity.  The Heretik is sure Bush will go fishing for another opportunity soon.

MIAMI COPS WILL FREAK OUT local residents to show terrorists we are unafraid, just a little jumpy.

Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez, who announced the program Monday, said as an example, officers might surround a bank, check the IDs of everyone going in and out, and hand out leaflets about terror threats.
"People are definitely going to notice it," he said. "We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears."

FRANK MESSAGE TO FRANK FERNANDEZ Surrounding a bank when terrorist aren’t there might take some resources away from where terrorists actually are. Talk Left says: Is this what we've become? Who said the terrorists didn't win the terror war?

THE HERETIK RESPONDS this is not what we have become, this is what Frank Fernandez has become.  We will only become this freaky freak show if we allow it to continue.

PUBLIC HUMILIATION old new punishment is back here with a vengeance.

[The Supreme Court] rejected Gementera's appeal Monday of a lower court's sentence that the San Francisco resident [Shawn Gementera] stand outside a post office for 100 hours wearing a sandwich board that reads: "I have stolen mail. This is my punishment."
In February 2003, Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco added the sandwich-board penalty to Gementera's sentence of two months in prison and three years of supervised release. Gementera had pleaded guilty to charges that he stole mail in San Francisco and nearby city of Burlingame in May 2001.

GUESS LOCKING him up in stocks and having people throw rotten food at him wasn’t an option?  Talk Left harps: Hester Prynne and the Scarlet "A" is A-Okay with our Supreme Court.

THIRTYSEVEN MILLION GOES A LONG WAY Lobbyist Jack Abramoff sought the help of U.S. Interior Department officials to save the job of an Indian leader under fire for $37 million in fees his tribe paid Abramoff and a partner, according to interviews and e-mails.

THE HERETIK NOTES members of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana who did not have access to millions of dollars in tribal money as Abramoff did had little chance against him. While Ambramoff um liberally spread his money in conservative Congressional circles, his former partner John Scanlon will be testifying soon.  Thirtyseven million may earn Abramoff and who knows who else short trips to the big house. 

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SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE tm featuring RETRO REVENGE AND LONELY FANTASIES EDITION Nixon Bush is lonely in the bunker. Is God with him?  Also New Vietnam Iraqi War Will Come from Air  Plus Leaks continue to splash. Plus Just in Time Slime: Dukes Out on Bribery Charges

THE PRESIDENT TRUSTS no one.  He feels betrayed?  Nixon? Yeah, and that other dick Cheney? Yeah, and Bush too. Reason to be “optimistic?"  "The President has always been willing to make changes," the senior aide said, "but not because someone in this town tells him to - NEVER!"

I DREAMED I SAW THE BOMBERS riding shotgun in the sky  . . Sy Hersh reports Bush will do push pull.  Pull out troops and push bombers to achieve peace with honor the mission in Vietnam Iraq.  As we bomb  Iraq back into the Stone Age lead Vietnam Iraq toward peace, we will respect other countries and not widen the war in Southeast Asia the Middle East. Secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia Syria and Iran are not planned.  The great news is we have won over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and the president is tough, in that lonely kind of way.

“We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me [Hirsch] . . . He continued, “We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004.” The war against the insurgency “may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win,” he said. “As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we’re set to go. There’s no sense that the world is caving in. We’re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message.” 

THE HERETIK IS MOST relieved.  He hasn't heard optimism like that since the war was a cakewalk.  And the war will pay for itself.  Somebody say oy.  And the eighty percent of people who are receptive to our message are not the Iraqis who want us out as soon as possible. Oy.

MORE ON AIR POWER Hersh and rhetoric at Body and Soul.  PLUS Blogenlust on the Cambodian Syrian angle.  VIETNAM? Who said Vietnam?  That is so like 2004. Or 1968.  Or 1972. Jed Babbin in The American Spectator: As hard as it is to think of Ted Kennedy as a political visionary, his April 2004 statement that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," was way before its time. 
UM, JED, THE HERETIK KNOWS lots of people who had that vision thing about Iraq before Ted (I Come from a Family of Visionaries) Kennedy.  Going into a land in Asia without a way out is an old idea, bud.  And the way you get out is by air.  Make the ground war and air war.  Less American bodies that way.  Oy.
 

HERSH AND BUSH UPDATE
WHEN THE PRESIDENT TALKS TO GOD it gets a little weird and perhaps confused as to what The Mission is and just who the mission is for.  From what Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker, the mission is for Bush and we the Americans but his instruments of God’s will.  Hersh was interviewed yesterday by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write, "Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding."
Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.
HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming.
They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

THE HERETIK SEES people are talking finally about a president who would talk for god?  Manifest Destiny doesn’t play well with people who you destine to make things manifest upon.

ADDITIONAL RECCOMENDED READING at Democratic Daily for analysis and links: It’s hard to be encouraged when we’re told that our nation’s leader is the “paranoid in chief.”

LAND O' LEAKS BUTTER TM
IN THE PRESS Bob Woodward continues his ascent descent. Woodward who used to get the shit by the scoop now looks more like a scoop of shit. Howard Kurtz on Woodward’s home turf WaPo steps in it: Woodward, 62, has found himself under fire not just over this incident but for his very approach to journalism. His unusual relationship with The Post, and whether he hoards newsworthy material for his books, have also come under fresh scrutiny. 

THE HERETIK ASKS whether what Woodward "reports" looks like is really journalism or hagiography?  What it smells like is not in doubt.

MORE ON THE MESS that is the press.  Huffington slams Woodward and Russert priorities in PlameOut: Stunning though it may seem, Russert really believes that the main problem raised by Judy Miller's and Bob Woodward's roles in Plamegate is: how does the press repair the damage done between journalists and anonymous sources?
Talk about missing the forest for the trees. But it's not surprising since Russert's, like Woodward's, first loyalty flows upward to the unnamed "senior administration sources."

MORE ON RUSSERT, Andrea Mitchell, and "the problem" Woodward faces from Tom Maguire: the occupants of the White House are under no obligation to spend hours with a person likely to pan them in their next book.  On Mitchell Maguire says: The lady doth protest too much.

THE HERETIK BELIEVES people forget even the most thoughtful writers at some point must admit they are in business.  If people don't want to deal with them, does that put people like Woodward and Mitchell out of business.  In Washington you are only as good as your last story.  No access, no story, no good.  At least for the book "author" who used to be a "journalist" who long ago was a mere "reporter."  Oy.  And Andrea Mitchell should have learned long ago it is easier to keep your story straight if it is the straight truth initially. Oy part two.

JUST IN TIME SLIME UPDATE 
Dukes (R-California) pleads guilty to taking bribes. $2.4 million can buy you  a House Subcommittee Chairman on Intelligence and Terrorisim?  How many others are out there who were bought? Dukes says he will "atone."  Shakespeare's Sister says: Aahhh, atonement.  The magical gift . . . All Spin Zone's Great Cranium declare: it's another brick out of the wall of the GOP culture of corruption. 

CORRUPTPION? The Heretik asks.  More like business as usual.  Pesky Apostrophe agrees:. . . what I’m struck by here is the sheer number of Republicans who are being indicted, convicted, and/or investigated for ethical and criminal violations...and the boldness of their attitude, insisting that they’ve done nothing wrong in a lot of cases. 

FROM THE GET IT while the getting is good (or bad) Department: Monk at the inimitable Inflatable Dartboard says:

I'm sorry, but that Jimmy Swaggart crap just doesn't fly with me. Not on the heels of his statement in July 2005 where he claims to have committed no "wrongdoing". He didn't stop there, his bravado allowed him to quip:"If I've done anything wrong, come get me."
Well, he's been gotten. He's 65 and looking at 10 years of jail time.
Anyone else notice that this isn't getting much in the way of airtime on the major news outlets?

THE HERETIK SEES GETTING it good has gotten to the bad. Get over to the Inflatable Dartboard to see what else is blowing up.

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SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE tm plus SCARY HOT NEWS FLASHES The Pentagon not too busy, wants to watch you too. Also The Return of the Nativist: Trent Lott Plus Can anyone make Coulter shut up? 

LIKE THE ARMY ISN'T BUSY ENOUGH ALREADY "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview.  Be afraid, be very afraid?  The Heretik can't wait to hear the usual response: Law abiding citizens have nothing to worry about. 
MORE ON THIS Hilzoy: This is serious.  The Heretik says serious is an understatement.  Gary Boatwright points to  Capitol Hill Blue on Bush moving TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness program over to the Pentagon.  The Heretik say count the 1984 Big Brother references.  Because they all apply.  Liberty Street goes Sixties Retro on the reference I SPY  The  Pentagon is gearing up to protect itself against the next threat in this age of terrorism: the American people.  The Heretik says I SPY?  Why do the official types always play us like we are lost in some Sixties McKrap television series.  I SPY?  Where are Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 from Get Smart?  Can the government get smart and stop paying out money to duplicate spy agencies?  At some point we will have enough spy agencies that they will spy on each other.  Or do we have that already?  Oy.  HOT FLASH Look for more We have met the enemy and he is us references.  Or is it We have met the enemy and he is Big Brother and he is us and we are all together . . .  Where is John Lennon when you need him.  The last time the government went hard this way, they tried to deport Lennon.  POW! Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal goes batty: Dude, where's my country. No, dude... SERIOUSLY, where's my country??? . . . Holy Crap, Batman! When the hell did this happen? And why wasn't it debated in Congress? . . . Can you say, Posse Comitatus? I knew you could.
This garbage started with the Patriot act, and now it's simply getting WAY out of control. You can't simply justify everything up to and including an unregulated police state in the name of the "war on terror."
The Heretik notes Jazz Shaw mixed movie references with Sixties TV show references while informing us.  This isn’t as bad a faux pas as mixing up spying on enemies and spying on citizens the government seeks with our neighbors informing on us.

EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE RACIST Senator Trent Lott could be Majority Leader again.  That will happen if the Republicans remain in the majority and the likes of John McCain get their wishes: "I will tell anyone that of all the majority leaders we've had in the United States Senate, I believe that Trent Lott was the finest leader we've had." thers say Mr. Lott seems liberated. "He's a free agent," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
"A happy warrior," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, adding, "I think he kind of relishes being a bomb thrower right now." The Heretik agrees.  What we need now is a free agent, happy warrior bomb thrower in the Senate.  But don’t we already have one of those in the White House?

SOMEBODY STOP Ann Coulter from embarassing herself further.  The muck is only so deep and you have about hit bottom.  How many times will Ann Coulter get away with multiplying our problems by resorting to the lowest common denominator?  She is obviously in a fevered delusional state and has stopped eating, but seems to think people will eat her McKrap TM forever.  Will someone please give aid and comfort to Ann and get her to eat this month?  Is an intervention needed?  What form should the intervention take?  Should a feeding tube be stuffed down Coulter's throat?  What is needed to help Ann out?

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SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE tm plus DUM DEM OF THE DAY Why New Mex Gov Bill Richardson won't get drafted for Prez And "Muslims" Amok. And don't miss The Doughboy rising.

NOT A MINOR league problem.  Pols like Richardson strike out with voters whenever they lie, whether is is about a baseball past or something more base. Captain Ed's surprise:  Balk. It's so Clinton.  More Moderate:  Might be passed ball.  Jazz riff and parody.  Oy, says The Heretik: Richardson Dem and Dum and full of um, I may have misspoke.

"MUSLIMS" RANSACK STORE  Oh (or is it oy?) reports say "suspected Muslims."  Suspects dressed like Muslims whom some Muslims don't think of as Muslims. Oy.

DOUGHBOY RISING Son of partisan hack hacks away at RINOS and DINOS.  Oh, no.  Is nuance making a comeback?  Will the son ever rise on the problem of nepotism?  Or will there just be more rolling in the dough, predictably to the right?  Somebody say Oy.  Oy. 

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A LATE Happy Thanksgiving!  Thanks for the turkey you served so generously.

SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE tm plus THE MEAN ISSUE: Jean Schmidt didn't "mean" it on Murtha.  Has yet to admit she never has meant anything ever.  And torture?  It means nothing.  Not until we define it.  Until it means nothing.

JEAN SCHMIDT in her own words.  Jean Schmidt is just "amazed at what a national story this has become."  Jean can't see why anyone would misinterpret her words.  Don't blame me. I'm just the messenger.  Jean is full of um Schmidt.  What her voters really care about is not Murtha. When will Schmidt attack Pentagon?  Phased pull out in Pentagon plans.  Three brigades out, one re-deployed in Kuwait? Sounds vaguely Murtha.

ABSOLUTE TORTURE Defining torture has its downsides. Was it Nietszche who said: If god is dead, everything is permitted?  An uplifting breath of fresh air on moral relativism.  Torture defined.  Relativism? What we have to do.  Me?  Absolutely right particularly at the end.  Relativism and absolutism.  A "Glib" Heretikal note:If we use the means of the lowest  common denominator, should we be surprised when our moral problems multiply?
AND IN A MORE MODERATE VOICE: why torture doesn't work?

FROM THE WHY CAN'T WE see George Bush's Briefs Department Waas on what was up with the September 21, 2001 PDB, the one that said there was no connection between Saddam and Osama.  The Circular File.

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SLIME TIME NEWS

NEWS WITH OOZE tm plus Cheney XXX Director's Cut: Cheney continues to mark X on war dissenters who must be nuts.  Cheney supporters go nuts over X on Cheney in CNN broadcast.

X ON CHENEY lasted less than fifteenth of second. Odd that? Hysteria?  Where were all these people way back when?  Is it all subliminable? Oh, and here is what Cheney said XXX.  God Bless Dick.  And yesterday's news still applies: Iraqis want a timetable for the United States getting out of Iraq. The NYT take. The Iraqis also want allegations of torture to be investigated and those responsible to be held accountable.  Not a good day to be a Dick, Cheney or otherwise.

RELATED  NY Times Bumiller Tip:  Always wade to the end to last graphs for point.  Cheerleading for White House has diminished as Pom Pom Princess continues slow move toward "reporting."  The metaphor we will see for days, if not weeks. Blumenthal: Mean Jean's Marine has been to sea before. 

LEAVING CHENEY BEHIND
NEW:BOMBS AWAY [AFP] Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera [via  Shakespeare's  Sister]
The Heretik notes Tony Blair reportedly talked Bush out of  it.  That could be the first time Bush ever listened to anybody.  MORE

NAMING NAMES John Rendon is The Man Who Sold the War.  More on Rendon.  This administration sees everything as a product and the marketing of every product can be "privatized."  Why should "truth" be any different?

POCKET CHANGE Mr. Scanlon also agreed to repay $19.6 million to his former Indian tribe lobbying clients.
The Tempest in a Teapot(Dome) TM is about to blow across the political landscape.  Imagine how much prosecutors must have on Abramoff partner John Scanlon to get him to pay out almost twenty million and take five years in the Big House?  Some big time politicians are going to go down soon.  The relationship of Abramoff and Scanlon to Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) will take some scrutiny. Ney apparently could not say nay to tempatation.  So what?  As Chairman of House Administration, Ney oversees the day-to-day operations of the US Capitol, and is known by other Congressmen as, "the Mayor of Capitol Hill". 
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