The Do Nothing GOP Congress

The House will vote on a conservative-backed resolution “today or Thursday” that is expected to attack The New York Times for its recent disclosure of the government’s secret monitoring of Americans’ bank transactions.

And...

On the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said there was nothing the Senate could be doing that was more important than banning flag burning.

Really???

How's that immigration bill coming?

Terrorism has quadupled. Any useful thoughts on curbing that?

The investigation into the use of Iraq intel we've waited 3 years for?

Relief from high gas prices during this energy crisis?

How about the rising deficits?

Any headway on helping solve global warming?

Perhaps you could tell us what you're doing about 45 million Americans without health insurance?

How about the 37 million Americans living in poverty?

Any progress on fixing the chaos in Iraq?

How about inadequate cargo inspection?

Nope. Didn't have time to get to any of these because of the "important issues" of the day like flag burning, gay marriage, and attacking freedom of the press because the press FINALLY figured out Bush is a unqualified, dangerous fool.

Vote the GOP out in November 2006. They obviously aren't up to the job of governing this nation.

Cheney Makes a Fool of Himself AGAIN

"Withdrawing troops by a certain deadline -- a Democratic proposal knocked down in the Senate [last] Thursday -- is a 'terrible idea,' [Vice President Dick] Cheney said."
-- Chicago Sun-Times, 6/24/06

VERSUS

"The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say."
-- New York Times, 6/25/06

U.S. Senate votes: stay the course

The GOP warmongers are in for an awful surprise in November.

U.S. Senate votes: stay the course. The Senate has voted 60-39 against an amendment to begin redeploying U.S. forces out of Iraq by the end of 2006. See how your senators voted.

Grouped By Vote Position YEAs ---39
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---60
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN)
DeMint (R-SC)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Not Voting - 1
Rockefeller (D-WV)

http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congres s=109&session=2&vote=00182

Dubai Still Controls American Ports

CNN reports that Dubai is still controlling 22 US ports, and that Congress silently killed legislation that would have helped ensure the ports stay American-owned. Lou Dobbs thinks the Republican Congress and the Bush White House have played a fast one on the American people. Lou is right.

Dubai is one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Let's look at the UAE record on terrorism shall we:

The UAE was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.

According to the FBI, money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers through the UAE banking system.

After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden's bank accounts.

We bomb Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11, yet we hand UAE the keys to our ports.

That's the Bush Administration in action.

Bush Made North Korea the Problem It is Today

Bush's yee-hah foreign policy, where he shoots first and askes questions 3 years later, has made North Korea the mess it is now.

Jan. 29, 2002: Bush labels North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger," he says.

Dec. 12 2002: North Korea reactivates nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that were frozen under the 1994 deal with the United States.

Dec. 13 2002: North Korea asks the U.N. nuclear watchdog to remove monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities.

Dec. 14 2002: The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency urges North Korea to retract its decision to reactivate its nuclear facilities and abide by its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Dec. 21 2002: North Korea removes monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities

So there you go the cameras were in place the nuclear facilities were shut down, N. Korea was being monitored and everything was fine when CLINTON was dealing with this.

THEN Dubya comes along and starts shooting his mouth off like the arrogant ass he is and suddenly the nuclear facilities are reactivated, the cameras are removed and N. Korea is no longer being monitored.

Then of course he sent another arrogant ass with a big mouth to try to bully the North Koreans named JOHN BOLTON who insulted the N. Koreans so much he had to be pulled from the talks. That guy ias now our main "diplomat" at the United Nations...imagine that??

Let’s review the progress of North Korea’s nuclear program during the last three administrations:

1. George H. W. Bush: one to two bombs’ worth of plutonium

2. Bill Clinton: zero plutonium

3. George W. Bush: 4-6 nuclear weapons’ worth of plutonium

Anyone else see a pattern?

Another Big Difference

When DeLay was indicted the GOP changed the rules so that he could stay on all his committees. Previously, by law anyone under indictment could not sit on committees. The Democrats actually deal with their members when corruption arises. The GOP just encourages more corruption.

The House Democratic caucus voted tonight to strip Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) of his seat on the Ways & Means Committee. Jefferson is currently under criminal investigation for allegedly accepting bribes to help a technology company win several contracts and business deals. He had been asked to voluntarily give up the seat but refused.

And the Worst Comparison of the Day....

goes to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), encouraging his colleagues to vote for the sham Iraq resolution during today’s debate on the Iraq war:

"We in this Congress must show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United flight 93, the same sense of duty as the first responders who headed up the stairs of the Twin Towers. We must stand firm in our commitment to fight terrorism and the evil it inflicts around the world."

Gheesh...Talk about an inflated sense of self importance. I'm surprised he didn't hurt his back kissing his own ass like that.

Idiot of the Day: Ben Roethlisberger

If you are a professional athlete why would you be so stupid as to ride a motorcycle???

Roethlisberger
Winslow
Williams

On the positive side, if Roethlisberger got brain damage in the crash he could be a future GOP presidential candidate.

So let me get this straight....

There was enough money (let's all pretend the deficit doesn't exist la la la la la) to give a massive tax cut to the children of MILLIONAIRES inheriting money they didn't earn but there isn't even a fraction of what that would cost to keep Sesame Street on the air to educate everyone's children?

“House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs,” the Boston Globe reports.

That's some "logic" the GOP has got there.

Well...On to the next non-issue

Now that the Marriage Amendment is dead...again, the Republican Senate is now free to move on to other hot button social issues in its valiant attempt to avoid talking about rising deficits, global warming, chaos in Iraq, inadequate cargo inspection, and the other burning issues of the day that Republicans are incapable of confronting. Speaking of burning, the next non-issue Republicans will raise to distract voters is likely to be a recycled attempt to amend the Constitution to prohibit flag burning. Have you seen much flag burning in the U.S. lately?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain this...

US, Spain caught in Libya missile mixup
By Tito Drago

MADRID - The US government needs to explain why the missile shipment on a vessel intercepted a year ago on the high seas by the Spanish navy ended up in Libya, a spokesman from Spain's Defense Ministry said this week.

The official was referring to declarations made by sources from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Madrid daily El Mundo that claim 15 complete Scud missiles, a set of conventional warheads and 85 containers of chemical products - some 20 holding nitric acid - were ultimately delivered to Libya under a Washington decision.

The episode began on December 5, 2002, when US intelligence services informed Madrid about the route of a freighter named So San, which they suspected of trafficking weapons and which was, at the time, crossing a zone under Spain's authority in the Indian Ocean. Four days later, a Spanish frigate and warship intercepted the So San after ordering the captain to halt and firing warning shots. The vessel was found to be sailing under the Cambodian flag.

The weapons and chemicals came from North Korea and did not appear on the ship's manifest, which showed only that the merchant vessel was carrying bags of cement. After intercepting the freighter, Spain then handed the ship over to the US Navy. Immediate official explanations out of Washington and Madrid said the missiles might have been headed for the al-Qaeda network, which the US government holds responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. However, just hours later, the US administration took Spain by surprise by turning the So San over to Yemen, explaining that the cargo was actually a legal shipment of weapons purchased from North Korea by the Yemini government.

The handover was preceded by a telephone conversation between US Vice President Dick Cheney and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. When that conversation was made public, the White House justified the move by calling Yemen a friendly nation. So what initially came off as a brilliant Spanish military operation to prevent illegal trade in weapons of mass destruction was reduced to a suspected manipulation directed from Washington, with Madrid in the role of receiving and carrying out orders that were not very clear in their purpose.

The NATO sources cited in El Mundo said that at the time the shipment was intercepted, the United States was secretly negotiating the possibility that Libya would accept Saddam Hussein, then still president of Iraq, in exile. And Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who played the role of go-between during the Gulf War in 1991 by assisting in Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, had hopes of gaining access to the weapons.

"Gaddafi wanted the missiles and Yemen acted as intermediary. In the context of gestures with Libya, it was decided to look the other way, given that there was no international regulation that impeded it," said the newspaper, citing sources from the Pentagon.

Today, as it was a year ago, Madrid's reaction of disappointment regarding the United States' handling of the shipment was immediate, but not very explicit, because Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar continues to be a staunch, unconditional supporter of the policies of his US counterpart, President George W Bush.

As a result, the opposition United Left (IU) has announced that it will petition Defense Minister Federico Trillo to inform parliament about the country's participation, "past and present", in relation to the case of the weapons shipment. Madrid's handling of the issue "is one more demonstration of [Aznar's] erratic foreign policy and his troubling submission and total dependence on the policy marked by the US," IU general coordinator Gaspar Llamazares said. "The IU is highly concerned that Spain is extending political and commercial ties to a country that does not provide any democratic guarantees," such as Libya, he added.

Neither the Spanish government nor the opposition and civil-society organizations categorize the Gaddafi regime as terrorist and they agree on the need to facilitate his integration into the international community. In fact, Spain has not drawn up a list of countries it considers terrorist, noted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, but the United States has, and Libya, which figures on that list, is subject to a commercial and military embargo. No US company is authorized to sell weapons to Libya directly or indirectly, nor to facilitate the delivery of arms.

When the United Nations Security Council lifted sanctions against Libya, then-US ambassador James Cunningham abstained from the vote, stating that Washington did not want to give the idea that it believed Libya had done an about-face, because, said the ambassador, the country continued to try to obtain weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. But things appear to have changed radically, given that the weapons shipment intercepted by Spain, and which ended up in Libya, includes such arms.

Why was the US involved in brokering a deal to get WMD to Libya in 2002?

Why would Libya then turn around and give up these same weapons in 2003?

Seems awful strange that the US is involved in a weapons deal that allows WMD to go to Libya via Yemen and then 3 months later begins brokering a deal to eliminate WMD in Libya. We essentially provide them with WMD to take them away???!!!!