Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

I just about dropped my Honey Nut Cheerios on the floor this morning while watching CNN’s interview with Rep. Robin Hayes from North Carolina.

When asked to comment on the President’s repeated 9/11 connection to Iraq during his primetime address last night, Rep. Hayes said, “Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11″.

When confronted on that statement (the fact that he was even confronted on the question is unusual from CNN in itself) he quipped, “I’m sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places.”.

I don’t know what’s more troubling about this, the fact that Rep. Hayes is Vice Chairman of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee in the House, that he’s privy to some intelligence he claims to have seen that no other congressperson has, or that he’s just a straight out liar.

The CIA has repeatedly said there was no connection between Saddamm and 9/11. The 9/11 commission report stated there was no connectin between the two. Even Senators from his own party - who would have access to the same intelligence he claims to have seen - don’t claim there is any connection.

There are still people out there like Rep. Hayes who continue to perpetuate the false claims that there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq as a reason to try to get support for the war. President Bush did it last night, and Rep. Hayes did it again this morning despite the facts which prove the exact opposite. Therefore, in light of his continued lieing, Rep. Robin Hayes is my GOP Moron of the Week.

Who knew?

If someone had just come out of a 4 year media blackhole and watched the President’s speech about Iraq tonight, they’d think that a bunch of Iraqi insurgents were the ones who caused 9/11. And that if we hadn’t started a war with Iraq, those nasty people would be over here in America killing us with their AK-47’s and IEDs.

Of course, back here on planet Earth, the CIA recently dismissed any ties between Iraq and Al Queda, yet the President continues to play the 9/11 card. How are we ever going to defeat the insurgents in Iraq if we can’t even be honest about who they are?

Things are going so badly in Iraq lately that the President and his handlers are putting him on primetime TV tonite to ‘re-sell’ his reasons for war to the American people.

After two years of ‘The insurgents are on the run’, ‘We’re making lots of progress’, and ‘Freedom is on the march and things are getting better’ comments from the administration, the American public has started the slow process of coming to realize that maybe the war in Iraq isn’t making us safer against terrorism, nor is there any sort of gameplan for our troops getting out.

So instead of reality show promos and ED treatment commercials tonight, we’re going to be getting the hard sell from a man who lives in a world detached from reality.

The advance reports about tonights speech - in which once again, troops are used as a patriotic prop for the President - have said it’s a ‘major policy speech’ despite any lack of new plans, changes in direction, or policy changes towards the war. What the speech tonite really is for the President is a chance to get on national TV for an hour in front of a bunch of flags and troops and tell us for the umpteenth million time that “Things are getting better” and “Freedoms progress is marching on to Liberty while Democracy wins the war on terra.”

If he really wanted to convince American’s that things are getting better in Iraq, or to feel more optimistic about the war, he’d actually offer something new, like a plan, instead of just trying to persuade us that the situation is getting better without offering anything tangible to back up his argument.

I suspect tonight’s speech will have about as much effect on people as any other commercial they see on TV at night. The pretty pictures and scripted message they’ve heard a thousand times before isn’t going to get much traction.

Especially when the reality of the situation directly contradicts what the salesman is pitching.

Just a small housekeeping note.. I’ve updated how the comments on my weblog work so that when you ‘post’ a comment, it automatically updates without a reload of the web page.

Bryan has an awesome how-to on his weblog about using AJAX to achieve the end result, and helped me out a lot in getting it working on my weblog. Web forms sure have come a long way!

Anyways, give them a try and many thanks again to web developer extraordinaire Bryan.

And with the lack of a clear plan for winning, a clear plan for leaving, or even a clear definition of what ’success’ really is, is it any surprise?

CNN/Gallup Poll out today:

“Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war with Iraq?”

Favor: 39%
Oppose: 59%

Who could forget Democrats offering ‘theraputic’ solace to terrorists after 9/11. Or, as Karl Rove, Pres. Bush’s #1 guy, said today:

“Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.”

Seriously, what a idiotic and just plain untrue thing to say.

Democrats - hell, the entire nation - joined together and put partisan politics aside to go after the organizations in Afghanistan who were responsible for 9/11. There’s not any question about that.

And yet, you have one of the most powerful men in the Republican party saying that Democrats just wanted to fold after the attacks and go to fucking counseling with the terrorists. That’s really just about the most idiotic and ridiculous things anyone could ever say.

Regardless, the White House is defending this guy saying “He’s just pointing out the philisophical differences between Republicans and Democrats.” What a line of bullshit.

Democrats forcfully advocated the creation of the Department of Homeland Security while President Bush and tough guy Karl Rove sought to stall it. Democrats were the first to push for an independant commission to study the failures of 9/11 intelligence, and Karl Rove and the Bush administration tried to stop the 9/11 Commission from doing its work (or being created in the first place).

Democrats said we should focus on the people who caused 9/11, and Karl Rove and the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq and take our attention away from the real threat of terrorism.

I can’t quite put in to words how angry I - and a lot of other people - are at this kind of gross misrepresentation by a guy like Karl Rove.

I don’t know what his purpose in saying something like that was, but everyone who remembers the days and weeks after 9/11 remembers a united country where we promised never to politicize the tradgedy that took place.

Rove and the Bush administration have broken that promise,
and someone needs to be held accountable for it. And I don’t mean he should be knocked down the totem poll from Assistant Chief of Staff or given a ‘Freedom Medal’ for his hard work, he should be canned from government policy all together.

I stumbled across the front page of the Webmonkey site today, and was surprised to discover that not only was there new content on the front page, but they were pushing out new content on a somewhat regular basis. It looks like they’ve got between 7 and 15 new articles up since the beginning of the year, even if you count Steve Champeon’s feeble and pointless article that tries to link the similarities between the ‘dot com bubble’ and the movie ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’. Get over the freakin dot com thing already.. it was five years ago people!

That article reminds me of reading some washed up boxer’s account of how great the glory years of his career were, the sole purpose of which is to talk about himself and wax poetic about a time that everyone involved else has long since moved on from. Let it go man…

Anyways, that got me thinking about something a friend mentioned a few weeks ago about evolt.org’s ‘upgrade’ that was in the works, so I shot over there to see how things are going and… well, they’re not.

The last article on their site is about how “in the next few days, the evolt.org site is on the move” to a new website and new hosting provider. Date written: March 22. Replace ‘next few days’ with ‘next few months’ and I guess they’re right on track or something. Yay.

I guess the ole ‘No leadership is better than strong leadership’ mantra they’ve been practicing for a few years is working out well.

Anyways… I took a look around the old site and saw that not much of anything has been going on for the past year or so. A few months back when they were planning their hosting move, the person who hosts their site just decided that he didn’t like that they were moving and refused to answer them or give them the database for the evolt site. It seemed to me that the people ‘running’ the site at that time didn’t want to upset the person hosting the site (for fear he might just not give them anything!) so they just let it go for fear of retaliation.

The thing that’s too bad is there are still a lot of people who are loyal to that site, but it’s not even close to where it used to be, and light years away from where it should be today. A shame.

I never thought I’d be talking about the day that a private web site like Webmonkey had more content and action than an open community driven site like evolt.

The Governor is going to be in (West) Milwaukee tomorrow the 24th at West Milwaukee Middle School Gymnasium (5104 W. Greenfield Ave) from 1:45pm to 3:00pm to talk about the state budget being proposed by GOP legislators and the negative impact it will have on schools in Wisconsin (hence the location).

This is going to be another ‘town hall’ style meeting and they’re usually attended by between 30-100 people, so it’s a great chance for regular citizens to talk directly to the Governor about things like the state budget.

Jenny and I had dinner with Bryan and Judy on Saturday evening and the topic briefly turned to the media obsession with reporting on missing white women.

It seems not a day goes by lately that we don’t hear about another missing person who usually fits the description of white, attractive, middle-upper class, and young. While I feel for the families of the missing women and hope they are found safely, I personally think the coverage of late has been totally slanted towards the profile above.

Today I stumbled across this piece that ran on the Early Show last week which pretty much confirmed what we were talking about, and the families of missing minority women and children are starting to ask why they aren’t getting the same attention.

One of the best examples I can remember is about three years ago when Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped. She was a child with blond hair and blue eyes who had been abducted from her home in Utah. It was a story that got national media attention for weeks, and eventually, her abductors were caught and she was found safe.

Around the same time that happened, a little black girl from Milwaukee named Alexis Paterson was reported missing although you’d be hard pressed to find anyone outside the Milwaukee area who has heard of her. Over three years later, she is still missing and you can’t help but wonder if the same level of media attention were focused on her case, would she have been found by now?

While I totally feel for the lose of everyone who is missing someone they love, I think it’s about time the media come to the realization that non-white women (and men) go missing too.

The state Assembly late Thursday narrowly passed a bill that would prohibit University of Wisconsin System health clinics from advertising, prescribing or dispensing the morning-after pill to students. JS Online

The vote passed by a margin of 49-41, and is certain to be vetoed by Gov. Doyle if it happens to pass the state Senate.

The thing that really gets me about this issue is how we’re increasingly seeing the Republican party, who used to stand for privacy rights and small government, trying to legislate what it thinks are the correct ‘moral values’. They’re being pushed by the radical right both here in Wisconsin and from groups outside the state who want nothing more than to send the state of women’s rights back to the 19th century.

And you can tell elected officials are being pushed on this issues becuase they clearly have no understanding of what they’re actually voting on. This is illustrated perfectly by Wauwautosa Rep. Leah Vukmi:

“This is about promoting bad choices, and the university shouldn’t be the taxpayer-funded vehicle for it.”

First off Rep. Vukmi, taxpayers didn’t fund the advertisment in question. UW Health services are funded by student fees, not taxpayer dollars. Please try to understand the situation before voting to eliminate it.

If you live in Wauwautosa, I’d recommend dropping her an email, as I have, pointing out the fact that she should be trying to legislate what the radical wing of her party considers a ‘bad choice’, and that she should understand the funding behind the issue before voting on it.

Email her at: rep.vukmir@legis.state.wi.us

Or lookup your own represenatives email address and let them know how you feel about their attempt to take away women’s reproductive rights.

Man, it’s been a rough week for President Bush.

Between a House Resolution that asks the President to put forth a time table for pulling out of Iraq, realization that his plans to privatize Social Security are deader than a lame duck, the press finally waking up to the ‘Downing Street Memo’ that pretty much proves the lies for war everyone has known all along, continued stalling of his radical nominee for the UN ambassadorship, and new CBS poll numbers that put his approval rating just two ticks above the 30th percentile, I think we’ll be hearing the alarm bells ringing from the general direction of the Department of Homeland Defense any day now!

Commmmmmon Orangutan Orange! Daddy needs a bump in the polls!