Bush's Integrity Is Questioned, According to Post-ABC Poll

"Is questioned"...ha! Well, it's about a year too late, fuckers, and certainly not the WaPo (or the NYT, or any other MSM outfit) that's been doing the "questioning."

A snapshot of the front page of washingtonpost.com today at 11:53am:

Post-ABC Poll
Public Supportive of Alito
Supreme Court nominee has 49 percent of public's approval, a new survey finds.
– Richard Morin 9:35 a.m. ET

So the first thing that occurs to me is, what if the Post's evidence and conclusion here were presented in a different way? (i.e., in the way in which evidence and conclusion are usually presented in a logical argument: evidence followed by conclusion.)

If you had this evidence:

Supreme Court nominee has 49 percent of public's approval, a new survey finds.

Could you make this conclusion?

Public Supportive of Alito

No, you’d make this conclusion:

Public Not Supportive of Alito

(Isn't 49 percent, like, less than 50 percent, which usually is the threshold that needs to be reached to make statements about what "the public" -- i.e. the majority of the public -- feels about something?)

Did the Post have a conclusion (Public Supportive of Alito) before it had its evidence (Supreme Court nominee has 49 percent of public's approval, a new survey finds)?

Am I missing something?

Arianna Huffington has been out in front of the Plamegate story for a long time. She grasped the absolute centrality of the Judith Miller scam before anyone else. I am still just beginning to understand the absolutely premeditated, cruelly mendacious, and blasphemously cynical nature of the crime she and Dick Cheney perpetrated together. At the risk of being repetitive, I'll link to and copy a good piece of Huffington's recent summary of what happened, and what Fitzgerald's investigation is really about. What must be understood is that the whole clusterfuck--EVERYTHING that unfolded between Spring 2002 and Spring 2003, including ALL of the news stories and television shows--was PLANNED by Dick Cheney. I don't know if I'm stating the obvious for the tenth time, or if I sound like a nutcase. But the whole shit-sandwich was ready-made before you ate it. The New York Times front page IS that powerful. And if you have a mole who is planting stories on it, you CAN create reality.

Here is the beginning of Huffington's summary:

Sunday Sept. 8, 2002 was a red letter day in the White House Iraq Group’s efforts to market the war. That was the day the administration’s war salesmen scored one of their biggest propaganda coups.

That morning, the New York Times ran a front page story co-written by Judy Miller about how Saddam was trying to get a hold of aluminum tubes to be used in building nuclear weapons.

Perfectly timed to coincide with this planted (and bogus) info, the administration blanketed the Sunday shows with its big guns -- who all used the New York Times’ credibility to bolster their case against Saddam and scare the American people.

Dick Cheney did Meet the Press, citing the Times story as evidence that Saddam was “actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons”. Condi Rice went on Wolf Blitzer and warned that the "smoking gun” in Iraq could turn out to be “a mushroom cloud”. Colin Powell on Fox News Sunday, Don Rumsfeld on Face the Nation, and Richard Meyers on This Week all made similar points, raising the specter of a nuked up Saddam. A month later, the House and Senate hastily authorized the administration to go to war.

Of course, the Plamegate investigation has revealed the political alchemy of turning crap into gold via a deadly game of neocon telephone tag. Cheney to Libby to Chalabi to Miller back to Libby for confirmation by “a senior administration official” (or is it “former Hill staffer”?)… then right to the front pages of the Times, which Cheney and Rice and Powell and Meyers and Rummy can wave around as “proof”.

Here's the rest. Huffington's online newspaper is always worth checking out.

Sign the MoveOn petition against ScAlito:

http://political.moveon.org/stopalito

(The petition states, of course, that as Democrats, we object on principle to having an Italian-American seated on the high court.)

If you are ever tempted to think that the fight for gay rights and against homophobia will be in any way secondary to other fronts in the coming civil war against Apocalyptic Judeo-Christian Fundamentalist Neo-Conservative Fascism, think again.

Digby has written great posts about this issue before, notably when he pointed out that American soldiers refer to any and all violence directed against male prisoners as "fucking." Now he makes another crucial point, which seems obvious when you think about it, but also grows in complexity when you try to consider the implications: there is clearly some sort of policy (formal or otherwise) that encourages soldiers to stick things up the asses of Muslim prisoners. Virtually every report that comes out about prisoner abuse mentions this particular abuse.

As Digby points out, this is nothing other than rape. It resembles the strategy of the Serbians who set up rape camps in Bosnia in order to terrorize the Muslim communities there. But our rape camps are for men.

This whole emphasis on anal rape may have some "strategic" rationale, perhaps cribbed from Israeli manuals on the use of sexual humiliation in the interrogation of Muslims. (Remember the Israelis who were employed by the "consulting" agencies that ran the "Military Intelligence operation" at Abu Ghraib.)

But I strongly believe that any "strategic" explanation for this pattern is merely a very thin veneer. It is really painfully obvious that our soldiers--and, probably more importantly, our military leaders, civilian and in uniform--get off on raping male prisoners. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush--of course they are obsessed with forcing objects up men's asses. How could they not be? Doing this is one of the most basic purposes, if not the primary motive, of the Iraq war.

Don't be fooled: just because a lot of language that appeals to our political sensibilities is currently, finally, circulating through the Media Death Machine, it's still the MDM, and it is not good for us.

From a new AP story on Plamegate and Bush's bad news, etc.:

The case cuts at the president's hard-earned credibility.

What credibility? WHAT credibility? Bush has never done anything but lie, whine, pule, permit the murder of American citizens, and loot the treasury.

In New York he stood on a pile of corpses created by him and vomited into a bullhorn. WHAT CREDIBILITY?

Update: I overlooked the very "words" this goddamned article opens with:

The building blocks of President Bush's career _ his credibility and image as a strong and competent leader _ have been severely undercut by self-inflicted wounds, leading close allies to fret about his presidency. They say he's lost his way.

Sorry--what exactly has been "severely undercut"?

from CNN:

Democrats close Senate to push war probe

It seems so obvious--why didn't someone think of it before? The best possible thing that this hijacked government can do is shut down. That's how the government's "effectiveness" can be regained. Do I sound like a libertarian? Well, so be it. Harry Reid is genius. I hope he keeps the Senate closed until either Bush is impeached or every last Democrat is voted out of office, whichever comes first.

From last Halloween:

OK, perhaps I overreacted about the Osama tape a little bit. Perhaps I owe an apology to certain friends who, out for nothing more than a pleasant pre-Halloween cavort last night, were instead subjected to rant declaring the Ultimate Triumph of the Bush-Osama-Devil-Christ in the form of Composite Deity, and my call for not only plagues of locusts, dust, frogs, snakes, cicadas, wasps, and so forth, but an apocalyptic flood of shit and fire to sweep over all America, bringing its citizens the Death they clearly craved.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Nope: turns out I didn't.

Also: the post-election bumper stickers were pretty good.

From Dobson's website (via AmericaBlog):

What to Do About Halloween

The Pumpkin Gospel

What you need:
• pumpkin
• newspapers
• sharp knife
• spoon
• large bowl
• candle
• matches
• Bible

What to do:

Prepare a place for your pumpkin carving. Set newspapers on a table and get out the knife, spoon and bowl. Cut an opening in the top of the pumpkin. Have your kids pull out all of the seeds and scrape out the inside of the pumpkin.

What to talk about:
• How is the stuff we pulled out of the pumpkin like sin in our heart? (They’re both yucky; sin is inside us; it’s sticky and smelly.)
• How is the way we cleaned out the pumpkin like the way Jesus cleans us out when we confess our sins? (All the yucky stuff is taken away; Jesus scoops out the sin.)

What to do:

Draw a happy face on the pumpkin, then use the sharp knife to carve it out. When you are finished, read aloud 2 Corinthians 5:17 and/or Ephesians 2:10.

What to talk about:
• How have we made this pumpkin a “new creation”? (It has a face now; it used to be just a pumpkin, but now it’s a jack-o’-lantern.)
• How do we become a new creation when Jesus comes into our hearts? (We learn to love Him more; we’re no longer filled with yucky stuff; we become God’s children.)

What to share:

When Jesus comes into our hearts, we become new creations, just as our pumpkin became a new creation. Read Matthew 5:14-16. Then light a candle and place it in the pumpkin. Turn off the room lights so everyone can see the candlelight coming through the pumpkin’s face.

What to talk about:

How is the way the candlelight comes through the pumpkin like the way God wants our light to shine? (God wants others to see how much we love Him; God wants our light to be seen by others.)

What to do:

Sing age-appropriate songs such as This Little Light of Mine (younger children) or Shine, Jesus, Shine (older children and teenagers.)

Excerpted from Holidays Family Nights Tool Chest.

Note: Some of the ideas in this activity were adapted from the children’s book The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs, published by Tommy Nelson (1995), and her article The Pumpkin Patch in Single-Parent Family (Focus on Family, October 1995).

A few days ago I received this press release by email. I assume it's real. Why wouldn't it be?

NEW BALL POINT PEN IS A POWERFUL PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERRENT TO TERROR AND HOLDS THE PROMISE OF ENDING SUICIDE BOMBINGS

LAS VEGAS, NV - October 25, 2005 - With global suicide bombings on the rise, more and more innocent lives are being destroyed. In response, Susblood Labs, LLC is introducing a quality writing instrument that contains a potent formulation including a non-toxic, cryogenically frozen porcine plasma (pig's blood) as a key component.

The ancient Islamic "Doctrine of Jihad" promises homicide bombers an eternity in paradise accompanied by seventy-two virgins in exchange for committing their deadly acts of suicidal terror. However, this same doctrine states that Muslim terrorists defiled by pig's blood will not enter paradise, but will instead spend eternity in hell, alone.

"Knowing that a fine mist of pig's blood will be sprinkled all over his body after his bomb explodes may well cause an Islamic terrorist to think twice before following through with his heinous act," says Dr. James Susblood, founder of Susblood Labs, LLC.

Just last year, pig's blood and other pork by-products were approved for use in Israel by the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court in an effort to dissuade homicide bombings.

"Our intent is to overcome the threat of terror with the promise of eternal damnation," says Dr. Susblood....

More.