Saturday, April 01, 2006

Bush Pressures Jafaari to Step Aside
















That Jafar fella, didn't like him. Scared me, bad fella, gotta go...


Maybe that big blue genie could be prime minister...


Kaloogian for Congress


Howard Kaloogian



for Congress

I am Howard Kaloogian, and I am running for Congress. Last week, the liberal media decided to attack me for supposedly putting a picture taken in Istanbul up on my Web site and using it to show how great things are in Baghdad. They attack me rather than show all the wonderful things that are happening in Iraq and how our beloved president is spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have posted all of the photos from the trip below.

When we arrived in Baghdad, we were greeted warmly by the mayor.


We then boarded the new high-speed public transit train

to downtown Baghdad's busy central rail terminal.


It was exciting to walk through Baghdad's busy and bustling streets.

As you can clearly tell from the picture below, the electricity is up and running and the city's water supply is back to normal:


The stores are open and eager shoppers have their choice from abundant inventories

I witnessed the power of Baghdad's spirituality as I observed evening prayers at the city's most famous mosque:

Communications have also vastly improved since the fall of Hussein. Reflecting the economic growth in the country, cell towers have begun to spring up everywhere to support a new wireless communications network.


And finally, you see the excitement of education in Iraq's capital city. I snapped the photo below myself while on a wonderful walk through the lovely campus of Baghdad's Islamic University:

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, proof positive that we are making progress in Iraq and that the mainstream media chooses not to report the good news. Thanks for stopping by.

Howard

Friday, March 31, 2006

Guess Who?

Political Science 101
Hourly Examination

Question 1: Who said the following?

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.” ___________________________


Question 2: Who said the following?

“I think it’s also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn.” __________________

Eyes on your own papers, please.


Hourly Exam Answer Key

Question #1

Texas Governor George W. Bush, 1999


Question #2


Texas Governor George W. Bush, 1999

A timeline of GOP campaign themes







A Trib Letter--

But not one that I will necessarily mock, just criticize. The subject du jour, immigration. The correspondent writes:

Our two senators are a complete embarrasement [sic]. Their job is to vote according to the proportion of the people. They are failing to do that.

No, no, no, a thousand times no. Should elected representatives be mindful of the desires of their constituents? Of course. But should they slavishly obey the whims of public opinion? Never.

I am reminded of the words of Edmund Burke, a member of the British parliament, words that influenced members of the Continental Congress. He said in 1774 that "a representative owes the people not only his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion."

Agree or disagree with them, try and persuade them, vote against them next time, all that is fine. NEVER though ask a representative to surrender their judgment to public opinion.

The meaning of being a democracy is what, exactly?

"We support democracy, but that doesn't mean we have to support governments that get elected as a result of democracy," President Chimpy said.

From the pointless Washington Post, hat tip BartCop.

Be our guest, be our guest, be our guest....

Be our guest, be our guest, be our guest!

Guest workers, what a great idea---right?

Fearless Leader: I propose a new temporary-worker program to match willing foreign workers with willing employers when no Americans can be found to fill the job. This reform will be good for our economy, because employers will find needed workers in an honest and orderly system. A temporary-worker program will help protect our homeland, allowing border patrol and law enforcement to focus on true threats to our national security.

Haven't we seen this before?



OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but does anyone think that it is really a good idea to have a permanent underclass doing menial labor with no prospect of bettering themselves? In adition, just how offensive is the assertion that these "guests" will do the jobs that AMERICANS WON'T DO?

So we are now Kuwait? Germany bringing in poor Turks?

Remember the words of Justice Taney on sub-classes:

The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.


More Mencken

For some more right-on Mencken, see Schmidlap.

Mencken on Chimpy

Though dead for 50 years, it appears that H.L. Mencken was writing about Chimpy:

[H]e writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of pale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.



and his sheeple:

Such imbeciles do not want ideas-that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention. What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of threadbare phrases terrifically repeated, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures. As I say, they can't understand many words of more than two syllables, but that is not saying that they do not esteem such words. On the contrary, they like them and demand them. The roll of incomprehensible polysyllables enchants them. They like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery. Let that thunder sound, and they take all the rest on trust. If a sentence begins furiously and then peters into fatuity, they are still satisfied. If a phrase has punch in it, they do not ask that it also have a meaning. If a word slides off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, they are content and applaud it and wait for the next.

He concludes:

A tight fabric of ideas would weary and exasperate the audience; what it wants is simply a loud burble of words, a procession of phrases that roar, a series of whoops. This is what it got.


Racism by any other name

I get that there are many who oppose any sort of plan that would ever make it okay to emigrate illegally to the US. Some just get hung up on the word illegal. Some want to make it a story about national security (although, of course, that's a fallacious argument, since the worries about terrorists should have much more to do with unprotected borders than plans which allow those already here to become citizens).

And then there's the rest. The ones who have to attack people for waving the Mexican flag. The ones who have to attack people for not bothering to learn English, despite there being no national language. The ones who tell the immigrants that they are expected to come and learn our culture, not force us to adapt to theirs.

The racists. The bigots. The Republicans.

House Conservatives Blast Immigration Bill

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Thu Mar 30, 8:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON - House conservatives criticized President Bush, accused the Senate of fouling the air, said prisoners rather than illegal farm workers should pick America's crops and denounced the use of Mexican flags by protesters Thursday in a vehement attack on legislation to liberalize U.S. immigration laws.

"I say let the prisoners pick the fruits," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (news, bio, voting record) of California, one of more than a dozen Republicans who took turns condemning a Senate bill that offers an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants an opportunity for citizenship.

"Anybody that votes for an amnesty bill deserves to be branded with a scarlet letter A," said Rep. Steve King (news, bio, voting record) of Iowa, referring to a guest worker provision in the Senate measure.

Their news conference took place across the Capitol from the Senate, where supporters and critics of the legislation seemed determined to heed admonitions from both Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to conduct a dignified, civilized debate.

The House has passed legislation to tighten border security, while the Senate approach also includes provisions to regulate the flow of temporary workers into the country and control the legal fate of millions of illegal immigrants already here. Bush has broadly endorsed the Senate approach, saying he wants a comprehensive bill.
...
"I don't think he's concerned about alienating voters, he's not running for re-election," said Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. He said Republicans could lose the House and Senate over the immigration issue, and he said of the president: "I wish he'd think about the party and of course I also wish he'd think about the country."


That's my favorite part, btw, and a clearer statement of how Republicans think of America may not have been made. I wish he'd think about the party comes first, and oh yeah, the country would be nice, too. But it's about the party.

Anyway, continuing with the racism.

Referring to a wave of demonstrations in recent weeks, Rep. Virgil Goode (news, bio, voting record) of Virginia said, "I say if you are here illegally and want to fly the Mexican flag, go to Mexico and wave the American flag."

Rep. J.D. Hayworth (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona and others said Republicans would pay a price in the midterm elections if they vote for anything like the Senate legislation. "Many of those who have stood for the Republican Party for the last decade are not only angry. They will be absent in November," he said.


Sorry, another aside. Please stay home. But keep those mikes open if you're going to continue to say things like this.

Rohrabacher said Americans should be able to "smell the foul odor that's coming out of the U.S. Senate."

Asked a few moments later whether the same odor was emanating from the president, he said, "I have no comment."

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Stupidest man on the radio

Yup.

It is staggering how dense he is.

He said on the immigration issue that "America welcomes immigrants, America doesn't care where you come from."

Umm, Sean--the law:

"The total number of immigrant visas made available to natives of any single foreign state or dependent area under subsections (a) and (b) of section 203 in any fiscal year may not exceed 7 percent (in the case of a single foreign state) or 2 percent (in the case of a dependent area) of the total number of such visas made available under such subsections in that fiscal year."

Damn those facts!

I like blue

If only the House and Senate races could look like this in November.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Today's Chimpy-a-Looza

When governments are accountable to their own citizens, when people are free to speak and assemble, when minorities are protected, then justice prevails. And so does the cause of peace.

So--that is why we're screwed?

You understand that free elections are an instrument of change; yet they're only the first step.


No, "free" elections aren't a "first step"--they are part of an evolutionary process. That is why your phony "elections" are so much lipstick on so many pigs.

On September the 11th, 2001, we saw the violence and the hatred of a vicious enemy,

BINGO!!


That's what I said in my State of the Union the other day.

The OTHER DAY?? IT IS ALMOST APRIL????

Being addicted to oil is a problem for our economy. In a global economy, when burgeoning economies like India and China use more fossil fuels, it affects the price of gasoline here in America. In a world in which sometimes people have got the oil we need, or don't like us -- it's kind of a undiplomatic way of putting it -- it means we've got a national security issue.

Scooby Doo moment--what? So now EVERYTHING is "security."

Democracy is the only form of government where every person has a say in the governance of a country.

Cool, we should try it!


There's a lot of politics in Europe.

No shit, Sherlock?

Note this exchange:

Question: Would you support the regime of Gamal Mubarak if he takes over after President Mubarak?

Chimpy: That's a leading question. No? That's a question I don't answer question. I support a country which does not fear political movements, but is willing to compete with political movements. That's the kind of country I support.


In other words, you have no clue as to what he asked. Thanks for playing.

When people don't feel their voices are heard, they become resentful,

Ya think??

Our march, by the way, between revolution, liberation, and Constitution wasn't all that smooth either. And, frankly, our adhering to the full extent of the liberties embedded in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence took a while. I realize that when I talk to my Secretary of State. We were -- we had people enslaved in the United States for a century. It takes a while. It's hard work.

Emancipation--it's hard work. Oh, and by the way, Cheetah--it was a little more than a "century."

Iraq mothers want their children to grow up in a peaceful world. That's what mothers want all over the world.

Iraq mothers?? Oh, and by the way--if they want peace, why did you start a war?

I mean, there's got to be a direct correlation with someone's lifestyle, someone's standard of living, and a style of government. And that's one of the things that people who push freedom understand. I mean, there's got to be -- people got to see the direct benefits at some point in time about being free. One direct benefit is that there's not going to be a central government summarily pulling you out of society and killing you if need be. That's the biggest benefit.

What the hell does that mean?

I believe there ought to be three components to good immigration law. First of all, I hope we get a bill out of the Senate. There's one out of the House. It goes to what's called conference.

I think I saw that filmstrip in 8th grade....

Secondly, we've got to enforce -- and by the way, part of enforcing law means to make sure that when somebody is caught coming into our country illegally, they're not let back out in society. We had a real issue with detention beds, particularly for non-Mexican illegal people coming in. We'd catch people from Central America. And people worked hard. They spotted people being smuggled across. They were detained -- the people being smuggled across. They said, check in with your immigration officer in 15 days, and nobody did. And so now we've added a number of detention beds and are working for expedited removal procedures with the countries in Central America. As far as the Mexican folks sneaking in the border, they're sent back very quickly back into their country.

Dude..........this is good stuff....

Oh my God.

Where in the world is Howard Kaloogian?





This one is just too funny. Kudos to Josh Marshall over at talkingpointsmemo.com and others.

Howard Kaloogian, GOP contender for Duke Cunningham's seat, posted the following from his recent trip to "Iraq" show that things are all skittles and beer in Baghdad and the mean old media just isn't telling the story:



Unfortunately, the above is a photo of the very calm and peaceful ISTANBUL.

How studid does he think we are? If you are going to fake a relatively peaceful yet bustling Arab city, how about Cairo? But Istanbul? Memo to Howard. Below are the Turkish and Arabic alphabets. Notice any difference?



More America-hating from the far left--NOT.

So, who said the following about George's war?

"Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward. We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies."

With regard to the vice president and torture, who added "the only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does?"

Some tree-hugging, freedom-hating blame America liberal, of course--or perhaps it was Eric Haney, retired Sergeant Major and a founding member of Delta Force.

What a sweet lady

Barbara Bush steers donation cash to son's firm

HOUSTON -- Former first lady Barbara Bush gave money to a hurricane relief fund on the condition that it be spent to buy educational software from her son Neil's company.

The chief of staff of former President George H.W. Bush would not disclose the amount earmarked for purchases from Ignite Learning. Since Barbara Bush's gift, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight public schools with high numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the Houston Chronicle reported.

''Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools,'' Jean Becker said Thursday.

The money was donated to the Bush-Clinton Houston Hurricane Relief Fund, said Steve Maislin, president of the Greater Houston Community Foundation, which administers the fund. That fund has no connection to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, he said. Barbara Bush chose to promote Ignite because she supports her son and has genuine enthusiasm for his company's program, Becker said.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

More NOT fun with Pat

I usually enjoy poking fun at nonsensical gasbag Pat Robertson.

As I spent the last few days down in the bowels of the reddest part of Illinois, though, Robertson angered and disgusted me beyond humor and parody.

The vehicle? The innocuous "Parade" magazine in your Sunday paper, the "Personality Parade" section. For those of you that don't know, "Walter Scott" is the pen name of festering sore Edward Klein, who gave us "The Truth About Hillary." He asked psychoPat what miracle he was praying for. World peace? The end of hunger, floods, plagues, cancer, paralysis, infant mortality, etc.? No. He is praying for A CHANGE IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE SUPREME COURT.

Pat Robertson is praying for Ginsburg or Stephens to die, in the name of Jesus.

What Liberal Media?

First of all, the above is the title of an excellent book by Eric Alterman that documents everything we already know--well worth a read.

But yesterday A.M., down at my folks, I see the stupid-a-thon known as morning TV. "Good Morning Retard America" presents an expert to discuss the burning issue of immigration.

Their choice? Sean Hannity. Enough said.

The more things change....

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster."

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) 1920

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Shakes head

So I turned on Meet the Press this morning, and Condi "Oh dear lord please don't let 2008 be her versus Hillary" Rice was on, spewing mistruths and lies as everyone in that corrupt administration is biologically compelled to do.

Did you know that most Iraqis are still happy that we're there?

Did you know that the administration never tried to connect Saddam to 9/11?

Did you know that everyone thought Saddam had WMD's? (This, despite evidence that we knew that there were people reporting that he didn't.)

Did you know that it doesn't matter that he didn't? Because he was still a part of the dangerous middle east, and if we didn't invade, things wouldn't be as good as they are now.

Then I turned it off.