Howard Dean for president! Again.

The Inquirer reports today that our good friend Curt Weldon, who a few months ago looked like a sure thing to keep his seat in the House, has pulled most of his TV advertising. This news follows in the wake of another big time loser, Rick Santorum, pulling all of his over-the-air TV spots almost two weeks ago. In both cases the candidate has run out of money, a sign that the bagmen for the GOP smell blood in the water and aren't willing to throw good money after bad. The RNC, in a desperate attempt not to lose the whole enchilada, is moving money to closer races where they might have a chance of holding on. As of October 18 Weldon's campaign had $300,000, which is what is left of $2.6 million already spent in a losing cause. Joe Sestak, Weldon's challenger, had $1 million on hand as of the 18th. Obviously, his backers smell a winner and what's more amazing is that it looks like the DNC is actually doing a good job of winning -- for once.

This shouldn't really be a surprise, though, if you consider who is running the show now at the DNC. Call me crazy, but it looks like Howard Dean's 50-state strategy to win the Congress is working perfectly. The Dems are going to clean up in Pennsylvania and what's really astounding is that they're winning in races where they have no business even trying to compete. I know all these so called "centrist" Democrat types in the DNC hierarchy think Dean is some sort of screwball, but he's doing a hell of a job.

Gosh, just imagine where we'd be now if the brains-trust in the Party hadn't bailed on Dean back in 2004. I recall reading that Karl Rove was terrified of having to put W. up against Dean, but in the end he didn't have to worry, because those spineless cowards who ran the Party then played right into his hands. The way they ran the 2004 election, you would almost think they were working for Rove. Here you have a brilliant candidate who is firing up the base, raising tons of money on the internet -- on the internet -- and because he got a little excited in Iowa the Party pulls the rug out from under him. I remember walking out of the DuPont Circle Metro in January of 2003 and running into a kid handing out Dean literature, and the first thing I thought to myself was; 'who the hell is Howard Dean,' and the second thing was, 'wow, this guy is really on the ball.'

When Kerry got the nod from the Democratic establishment, you could just feel the air go right out of the campaign to unseat W. Sure, I could see Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers everywhere and signs in every window all over DC, but you just knew we were in for 4 more years of the boy-dictator. Instead of finally having a candidate people could get really hyped up for -- for once in our lives -- we wound up with another one of these gray, deadly boring, God-awful, wooden characters who we desperately hoped against all hope could figure out a way to beat the Rovian juggernaut. Obviously, we were all deluding ourselves, because John Kerry was perhaps even more of a zero than even Michael Dukakis was. (And that's saying something.)

[Note: I wrote on Wednesday that John Kerry was Harvard educated, I meant to write "Yale educated." My sincere apologies to all you Harvard graduates out there.]

Let's all hope and pray that in the '08 race the Party will see that Dean's strategy has worked, will give him the credit that's owed to him, and whatever else happens, will find a nominee for president who isn't Hillary. The GOP could nominate Jack Abramoff and he'd win against Hillary. If the GOP's main Party plank was painful dental surgery for every American, they'd win against Hillary. Every time I think of making another pointless trip into the voting booth (except for two times in 1992 and 96) and this time having to vote for that shrew, I just want to get my Canadian citizenship.

Loose nukes sinks ships.

So I read in the NYT that the right-wingers in Congress, who just can't let the story of Saddam's fictional WMD go, insisted on putting all his nuclear secrets on the internet for every aspiring terrorist and rogue nation to view, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Nice work guys! Yes, we're very much safer with these idiots in power.

According to the Times the government put the contents of some 48,000 boxes of Iraqi documents, seized after the invasion, on the internet for all to see at a web site with the very catchy name of “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal."

NYT: "The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs."

"The chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees [an oxymoron if I ever heard one] told the administration that wide analysis and translation of the documents -- most of them in Arabic -- would reinvigorate the search for evidence that Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. . . President Bush approved the site's creation after congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents' release."

So, let me get this straight; Senator Pat Roberts and Congressman Peter Hoekstra forced W. to put all of Saddam's nuclear and biological weapons secrets on a US government web site so anyone could just go there and read how to build a bomb. According to the Times, it took protests from European diplomats and scientists from the IAEA -- those dummies -- to get the government to take down the site. A "senior European diplomat" told the Times that the information on the site was "a cookbook" and a "physicist and former U.S. government arms scientist" called the material on the site, "very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data."

The best part is that much of this stuff wasn't translated into English, because 5 years after 9/11 we still don't have enough Arabic speakers working for the government to translate all if it. Imagine if we hadn't had anyone who could speak Japanese or German during WWII. After hearing about this, it's not too difficult to see why we're losing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and why OBL is still on the loose. These idiots couldn't find their asses with both hands.

It is ironic that this administration, which is the most secretive in the history of the America, is posting on the internet information on how to build the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time stamping documents from the Korean War at the National Archives "Top Secret." We can see how to make sarin gas, but no one is ever going to know which oil executives Cheney was showing maps of Iraq's oil fields to in 2001.

I don't know about you, but I think someone ought to go to jail for this outrageous breech of national security. If this isn't a smoking gun for the impeachment of the president and the Lord of Darkness, I don't know what is.

Of course, if that were to happen we'd have Nancy Pelosi as president, so maybe we ought to just let W. off with a warning.

Well, here we go again; here we have another one of George Bush's good buddies, another "true believer, " one of these "holier than thou" types, who's so concerned about what's going on behind the closed doors of your bedroom, falling from grace.

The AP reports: "Evangelist Ted Haggard admitted Friday that he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a gay prostitute who claims he was paid for drug-fueled trysts by the outspoken gay marriage opponent. . . Talking to reporters outside his house Friday, Haggard denied the sex allegations but said that he did buy meth from the man because he was curious. 'I bought it for myself but never used it,' he said. "I was tempted, but I never used it.'"

Is that the same as not inhaling? Of course, the timing of this is what it'
s all about. AP quotes "Brian Boals, a New Life member for 17 years" saying, "It's political, right before the elections." There's one born every minute, but there is some truth to this. Haggard's alleged playmate says," "It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex."

A religious hyprcrite! Imagine that! This is just so classic! Do you wanna' bet by the time of the election he'll be on his way to the same place Mark Foley is hiding out in?

This haggrd guy is a gooooood buddy of Bush's by the way. According to Jeff Sharlet in the Revealer, "Haggard talks to . . .Bush or his advisers every Monday" and opines that "no pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism."

Well, what do you know?

Read more about Haggrd from the perspective of an acctual believer who doesn't beleive ni Haggard.

Review of Ted Haggard's Beliefs and Associations

Desperate times: John Kerry is a dope.

Boy, how desperate are W. & Co.? Despite what Karl Rove claims --telling NPR's Robert Segal that he sees secret polls that show a sweeping GOP victory next week -- it's a clear sign of the GOP soiling its collective pants in abject desperation when W. has to go into the Republican heartland of Sugarland Texas to scare Party loyalists into coming out to vote. It seems the horrible truth is finally starting to sink in at the White House, and they're panicking. (Imagine if they had shown this much gumption when Iraqis started looting everything that wasn't nailed down back in 2003, instead of pooh poohing the whole situation as "stuff happens.")

Now it appears the only thing worse than Shiite fanatics who take their marching orders from Tehran ruling Iraq, is the Dems taking over both Houses of Congress for the final two years of W.s' term. Remember, if the Dems take Congress "the terrorists win and America loses."

Sorry Karl, the old fearmongering just isn't working anymore. And as if things couldn't get bleaker for the GOP, the latest New York Times/CBS polls shows that among potential voters, "33 percent said they planned to support Republicans, and 52 percent said they would vote for Democrats. . . Nearly 70 percent said Mr. Bush did not have a plan to end the war, and 80 percent said Mr. Bush's latest effort to rally public support for the conflict amounted to a change in language but not policy."

80% think W. is full of it. That's pretty stunning. You know what Lincoln said, 'you can fool all of the people some of the time etc.' It looks like Dorothy just looked behind the certain and . . .

Wait, not so fast! Here comes John Kerry to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Again:

"Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Nice work, John! He keeps doing this type of thing. [Is this some sort of Skull and Bones thing? 'You take this one and I get the next one?'] What I don't understand is what was on his mind when he realized he'd screwed up this little "joke" of his. He must have known it didn't come out right, why didn't he correct himself then and there? I understand having to go back and explain a joke makes it very unfunny, but Kerry is also very unfunny, so what's the diff?

This guy is Harvard educated isn't he? Hasn't he been in politics most of his adult life? What on earth is this man thinking? (If he was thinking he'd have a chance of ever getting the Democratic presidential nomination, that just went out the window. A detainee in Gitmo has a better chance of getting a Writ of Habeas Corpus than he does of ever becoming president.)

Of course, as bad as that was, W. went one better by going on Lush Bingbong's show -- the man who just made fun of Michael J. Fox' shaking from Parkinson's to say that -- get this -- "Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words."

Yes, one must be very careful with one's words; saying "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," might lead some to believe we should invade a country that is no threat to us, waste billions of dollars and lose 2,800 US troops.

Obviously, John Kerry is a dope, but a more or less harmless one. W. is the more dangerous dope. A mind trully is a terrible thing to waste.

Gallaudet students get what they want. Don't they always?

Wow, how lame is this?

The WaPo reports:

"The governing board of Gallaudet University revoked the appointment of the school's incoming president yesterday, giving in to the demands of students, faculty and others whose protests have kept the nation's premier school for the deaf in turmoil for the past month."

The campus erupted in celebration at the news that Jane Fernandez wouldn't become their president and the protesters, showing the level of maturity we've come to expect from them, then "shredded a large effigy of her and then set it on fire."

Yes, 'let the healing begin.'

But as if this shameful backdown wasn't embarrassing enough, student protest leaders said they had spoken to governing board members and they said the 134 or so protesters who were arrested and threatened with immediate expulsion won't be expelled after all.

The WaPo: "The board of trustees issued a statement saying that although they respected the right to free speech, 'individuals who violated the law and Gallaudet University's Code of Conduct will be held accountable.'

Oh, I'm so sure the punishment will be severe! As I understand it, Fernandez made some enemies as the university's provost over the years, which probably has more to do with this whole situation than anything to do with "oralism," so who is going to dare go after these kids now? If you don't do exactly as your told, they'll just go right out again and do the same thing, right?

After all, I'm sure there are members of the board of trustees who have hearing ghosts in their closets. "And when did your grand mother learn ASL?" You think that's crazy? Check out this quote from faculty member Ronald Ferris who told the that Fernandez "doesn't really feel us. she's very critical of deaf culture, because she married somebody who hears."

You see, at Gallaudet they talk a good game about discrimination, or "audism," but when it comes to their beloved "deaf community" you're not even allowed to marry a hearing person. If you don't grow up communicating in ASL from the womb, you're not really deaf. And if your have a cocklear implant, you're some sort of proponant of nazi eugenics.

Well, this ought to explain it all, for those of you not up on Audism and the "deaf community." I found this interesting passage at U.S.- Audism.org:

"It appears that the audist wants to 'fix or cure' deaf and hard of hearing people. This is a contradiction to the deaf and hard of hearing people and demonstrates a bias against the deaf and hard of hearing culture. Obviously, this promotes anger and outrage by the deaf and hard of hearing community. About 410 million to 631 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people all over the world who feel oppressed by the Audists. The deaf and hard of hearing community continue to attempt to promote quality education that allows the freedoms of choice to the deaf and hard of hearing people. To no longer allow the control over choices and demands of oralism to be pushed onto deaf and hard of hearing people it is imperative that key positions be held by the deaf and hard of hearing community." Apparently, grammer isn't at the top of the list when it comes to learnig english. Was this written by a Gallaudet graduate?]