The world must apparently struggle along with one fewer white guy on the radio. Most of us already felt there was a surplus of rich, middle-aged, drunks and junkies on the air waves, but the rich white guy demographic that makes up the punditry will go through a period of ashes and sack cloth.

[I know that I’m supposed to refer to rich white guys who abuse drugs and alcohol as Mr. President…whoops chemical dependent, because they get to go to spas and call it rehabilitation, while non-rich, non-white people get thrown in jail, but screw them. I refused to act like I empathize with people who “can’t deal with fame and fortune,’ or to consider it as a better excuse than being poor and desperate.]

I know that it is going to be blamed on the vicious attacks of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who just couldn’t be satisfied with an apology, well, sorry, but Al and Jesse don’t have that kind of pull. As Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog notes, Al and Jesse have been going after rappers for two years without success.

So what happened?

[Read more →]

Chicago Dyke of Corrente has scored a major coup, an interview with Helen Thomas.

Go and read the wisdom of a real reporter.

A New York Times investigative report shows: In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

Voter fraud, tort reform, Social Security melt down – these are lies. They are lies to sell a political agenda and to screw “the little people.” They want to keep “the wrong people” from voting and institute internal passports, just like the Stalinists. They want to help their friends in the insurance industry and screw their enemies, the defense attorneys. They want to give access to the only large source of unplundered money the government holds to the financial markets, and to hell with the workers that money came from.

Every time there is an unbiased study on any of these issues the answer is always the same – there is no “there” there. The claims are bogus. The people making the claims cite anecdotes, not facts, and most don’t want to testify under oath.

The Associated Press has the results of the Pentagon’s review of the problems: Walter Reed review cites money woes, neglect

Money woes and Pentagon neglect are to blame for shoddy outpatient conditions and bureaucratic delays at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, an independent review has concluded.

The blistering report called for major changes in troop care and cautioned that problems probably extend to Army hospitals around the country.

[snip]

Citing lapses in leadership and oversight as main reasons for the problems, the nine-member independent group concluded that the Defense Department was, or should have been, aware of the widespread problems but neglected them because they knew Walter Reed was slated for eventual closure.

In addition, the Pentagon made problems worse by ordering a hold-down on costs and expenses — dubbed “efficiency wedges” — even as Walter Reed began experiencing an influx of thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two wars in progress and Rumsfeld recommends eliminating a major military hospital, and then cuts its funding. Rumsfeld was never interested in “supporting the troops,” he was interested in reducing the military to low-paid killers, with all of the money going to private companies that were Republan campaign supporters.

He was pushing to eliminate schools, hospitals, and grocery stores on military bases, and anything else that wasn’t directly involved in combat. He was attempting to implement the Soviet military dream of central control through a computer network.

Associated Press report on CNN: Leahy: Aides lying about White House-Justice e-mails

President Bush’s aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, a powerful Senate chairman said Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.

“They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

“You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers,” said Leahy, D-Vermont “Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”

You have the local copy in your e-mail program, the copy on the sending mail server, the copy on the receiving mail server, and the copy on the recipient’s computer. ISPs do tend to back-up and mirror servers. That doesn’t even take into consideration what a data recovery program can do with “deleted” information.

I don’t think the “Rose Mary Woods” defense is going to work.

The Associated Press obiturary is rather good.

He is an acquired taste that everyone should acquire. He had the proper respect for the absurd, and saw the world as it was, not as he wished it to be. He lived in the seeming hope that any biography would be filed under Fiction.

Fortunately they never succeeded in burning his books.