Who's the straight talker talking to?

Just remember, this is who the straight talking, straight shootin' rootin' tootin' Senator needs to crawl into bed with to get the Republican nomination in 2008. The cowboy may be different, but it's the same old black hats who own the ranch.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=1779141&page=1

Donation, Write off, Help your slacker kid.....

The Bush family has been gaming the system for years, so this should come as no surprise. But really, donating to Katrina relief but earmarking the money to your kid's scam company? Mama Bush to the rescue.....

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007978.php

-UF

Executive Power

I think one of the most important issues of the day revolves around the Bush Administration's ongoing efforts to inoculate the Executive Branch and the President from the normal check and balance procedures of the other arms of the Government.

Glen Greenwald discusses this in detail here. Read it. Your future freedoms may depend on it.

"But that theory of the Executive unconstrained by law is completely repulsive to the founding principles of the country, as well as to the promises made by the Founders in order to extract consent from a monarchy-fearing public to the creation of executive power vested in a single individual. The notion that all of that can be just whimsically tossed aside whenever the nation experiences external threats is as contrary to the country’s founding principles as it is dangerous."

-UF

3 years and counting......

Iraq. Here's the sad timeline in all it's incompetent glory....

http://www.thinkprogress.org/iraq-timeline

-UF

Quote for the day

"Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ... They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities."

-George Gerbner

Full lakes.....no worries for heavy SoCal water users

As I spend many a summer weekend on a very nice Sierra foothill lake, I'm happy to hear that we have some serious snowpack going on in the Northern Sierra. It's always nice to have a full lake. Of course, this means no worries for our SoCal brothers and sisters who live in what use to be a desert. SoCal agribusiness has it locked in at incredibly low pricies as well.

Maybe it's time for NorCal to start acting like an big oil company and start treating SoCal agribusiness to some "market driven pricing".

-UF

I love Jon Carroll

And you should too. This Bay Area columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle has been around forever and just keeps getting better and better. He's smart, insightful, funny, and very relevant.

Check out this recent column.

-UF

The public knows best?

So, should we think about censuring George W. ? It seems that even though the Democrats can't muster up the courage to confront the continued trampling of our Constitutional rights, the general public is starting to get the right idea.

Do you favor or oppose the United States Senate passing a resolution
censuring President George W. Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining court orders?

All Adults Yes 46% No 44% Undecided 10%

The Republican party is always talking about "personal responsibility and accountability" when trying to slash domestic support programs. Well, it's time to start holding some administration folks accountable for their unconstitutional behavior. Glen Greenwald makes a compelling case here.

Reality based reality?

How we doin' in Iraq? Is it playing out like we thought? Based on past history, can we feel good about predictions of success?

Sometimes it's good to just get all the facts we know rounded up in one place. From there you can compare said facts to the initial claims made and see how they line up. Mr. Murtha has done that, and in its simplicity, it's a very compelling argument against believing anything this current administration claims.

Read it here.

Separated at birth?

If you saw the Oscar telecast, that had to be the first thing to cross your mind while Dolly Parton was singing.

Very, very, scary.

-UF

The Rich get Richer......

Seems that the outrageous overbilling in Iraq by Halliburton and subsidiaries is going to be paid, even though a full audit requested otherwise. Looks like Cheney made sure this quail got shot.....

Money Quote;

"The Army announced this week it has decided to reimburse Halliburton for nearly all of the disputed costs in the more than $250 million in charges the Pentagon's own auditors had identified as excessive or unjustified.

According to the Pentagon's figures, it normally withholds an average of 66 percent of what the auditors recommend. In this case, the Pentagon wound up paying all but 3.8 percent of the disputed costs, a figure so far outside the norm it was noticed immediately. Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the New York Times, "To think that it's that near zero is ridiculous when you're talking these kinds of numbers."

You may recall Bunnatine Greenhouse, a senior civilian contracting official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who said the Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) contract was "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

Read it all from Molly Ivins here

-UF