CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.
Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.
Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a court hearing Friday that the White House "recently located and turned over" 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an article filed by the Associated Press Friday evening.That Friday was yesterday, my friends. Fitzmas delayed is Fitzmas denied? I don't think so.
If you're interested in listening to music that is quite good, original, and not found in any ordinary, average, everyday neighborhood cd store, you've come to the right place.As I post, President Bush is on Fox News delivering a speech in Indiana, looking jaunty and relaxed, repeating soundbites such as "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" and working that Determined Jaw as if he were personally going to grind terrorists between his back molars. He has to repeat himself ad nauseum because if he paused to reflect on the harm he's done and the horror he's unleashed he'd collapse like a paper cup crushed beneath a boot.
DOBBS: President Bush's family and members of the Bush administration have long-standing business connections with the United Arab Emirates, and those connections are raising new concerns and questions tonight in some quarters about why the president is defying his very own party leadership and his party in defending the Dubai port deal.From CNN today. A-men.
You may not have heard about it, but there's been a "Dickfest" going on over at firedoglake, a blog that is fast becoming one of my favorites. It seems that their comments section spawned a great deal of spontaneous poetry during last week's feeding frenzy over the Veep shooting an old guy down in Tex-ass. Enjoy some of the great submissions here.
"I have one final question, since that one wasn't answered. Is it appropriate for the vice president to have waited 14 hours after the incident before he spoke with local law enforcement officials? And do you think that an average citizen would have been accorded that same amount of time before having to answer questions about a shooting incident?Way to go, David!
Today Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. George Miller, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office report finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.
"The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising," said Rep. Waxman. "Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States."
What a day...Scooter and Cheney; Abramoff visits to Crawford..."Brownie discussing warnings about levees to the White House"; ex-CIA official accusation of misusing data to justify the Iraq war.Yes, Mrs. King's funeral was a sight to behold, wasn't it? I would have given ANYTHING to be in the audience for that. Just imagine what it would be like to have someone say...in front of the Chimp...that there were no WMD! And to be able to leap from your seat in applause? I'd give a lot to do that.
Good news just keeps coming. Did you see Coretta King's funeral highlights in the news the other day? The Chimp looked a a deer caught in headlights when speakers were taking jabs at him!
There is a reason members of the press corps don't grill Bush on issues like his credibility. But it's not (as many of my readers often complain) because they're craven.
It's the structure of the relationship. At a typical press conference, there are in fact quite a few tough questions. Consider last week's press conference, when the newest Los Angeles Times White House reporter, James Gerstenzang, asked Bush if his defense of domestic spying wasn't basically a variation on President Nixon's "When the President does it, then that means it is not illegal."
Typically, however, Bush didn't actually answer the question -- choosing to respond with some generic comments about his authority. And, like many tough questions, it was not aggressively followed up. Bush does not tolerate multiple questions from a single reporter, and other reporters are loathe to give up their questions to repeat one from a colleague.
As a mainline Episcopal priest, retired U.S. senator and diplomat, Danforth worships a humbler God and considers the right's certainty a sin. Legislating against gay marriage, for instance? "It's just cussedness." As he sees it, many Republican leaders have lost their bearings and, if they don't change, will lose their grip on power. Not to mention make the United States a meaner place.Alleluia, brother. You're on to something. Let's pray that others begin to see the light.
In October 2001, my husband and I visited Ground Zero in New York City during a very sad and solemn Columbus Day weekend. We hailed a taxi and drove through the almost freakishly deserted streets of Manhattan. Our cab driver, who was not native-born American (hmmmm, why does that detail matter?), described how one of the planes flew right over his head, practically straight down 5th Avenue on its way to the World Trade Center. It gave us chills, especially since the sky on this particular morning was just as bright and blue as it was on 9/11.NEW YORK - A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.
U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the collapse of the World Trade Center.
"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge said.
She called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking," saying the EPA chief knew that the fall of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air.
Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports
By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are
The winter Olympics will soon be upon us...and time for our favorite event: curling! Looking forward to trying to figure out what the hell these people are doing on the ice, with their brooms and their 'rocks.' 
