No really, what the hell is Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, issue. George Bush and the administration he represents has done nothing but lie to the American people and Congress, so Harry Reid is going to trust them to not recess appoint anyone while the Senate is on vacation?

Roll Call has…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has quietly shelved plans to hold the Senate in pro forma session this month after the White House agreed to refrain from making any executive appointments during the Senators’ August break.

If Reid is wrong, and Bush appoints anyone or anything, I will call for Reid to resign has his post as Majority Leader. As some had said Harry, if a person tells you he is a liar, believe him!

Well I am sure that the Republicans are kicking them selfs in the ass right now, because their witch hunt of Clinton for the most part blew the claim of Executive Privilege right out of the water. We are about to see if the government is real anymore, because the courts are going to get evolved, and people are going to have to choose to do their job, or Bush, and then we as Americans will know who stands for what…

From Forbes

President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

Bush’s attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor.

“With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation,” White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. “We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion.”

Thursday was the deadline for surrendering the documents. The White House also made clear that Miers and Taylor would not testify next month, as directed by the subpoenas, which were issued June 13. The stalemate could end up with House and Senate contempt citations and a battle in federal court over separation of powers.

Is this a case of the rats fleeing the sinking ship? White House budget director Rob Portman is resigning and is being replaced by another Republican hack, Jim Nussle. I am not sure what Jim knows about budgets, he was a Congressman who failed to get elected in Iowa as governor. He has been working to bring Iowa home for Rudy. Oddly I did not even know that the White House had a budget director given that all they do is spend it faster than we can print it.

I always tell you that the real news comes of Friday, especially in the afternoon. Today a little peek into the White House hit their site. George Bush has started to lawyer up for something, bring NINE new lawyers into the White House…

Here are the viatals taken right from the White House website (bolds are mine)

” The President has named J. Michael Farren to be Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President. Mr. Farren recently served as Corporate Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the Xerox Corporation… ”

” The President has named William Burck to be Deputy Assistant to the President and Special Counsel to the President. Mr. Burck recently served as Counselor to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice…”

” The President has named Emmet Flood to be Deputy Assistant to the President and Special Counsel to the President. Mr. Flood recently was a Partner at Williams & Connolly, LLP… ”

” The President has named Scott Coffina to be Associate Counsel to the President. Mr. Coffina recently served as a Partner at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads in Philadelphia…”

” The President has named Amy F. Dunathan to be Associate Counsel to the President. Ms. Dunathan recently served as an Associate at Wiley Rein & Fielding, LLP…”

” The President has named Francis Q. Hoang to be Associate Counsel to the President. Mr. Hoang recently served as an Associate at Williams & Connolly LLP…”

” The President has named Al Lambert to be Associate Counsel to the President. Mr. Lambert recently served as an Associate at Wiley Rein & Fielding, LLP…”

” The President has named Michael Purpura to be Associate Counsel to the President. Mr. Purpura recently served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice…”

” The President has named Kate Todd to be Associate Counsel to the President. Ms. Todd recently served as a Partner at Wiley Rein & Fielding, LLP…”

May 30, 2005, the discredited Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney said, “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”

Number of Americans troops that have dies from then to now: 1660

Why does anyone listen to this dick anymore?

American was once a proud beacon of human rights that the rest of the world looked up to, even strive to be, but those days are long over.  found in the Friday news dump was a report by the United Nations that the United States of America has broken international human rights laws.  This is what America has become under Bush, a nation that can now hold its head up prowd with the likes of North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, China, and even little Uzbekistan. I remember the day when the United States could chastise other countries for the slightest human rights violation because our hands were clean, because our laws went out of their way to protect the rights of individuals, I guess human rights is so pre-September 11 thinking.  According to the UN report the United States has broken the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty, a treaty signed by the United States.

the UN cited the United States’ use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is nothing more than a form of torture and inhumane treatment, a direct violation of international law (if you’ll recall in last week’s Republican debate every one of the candidates seemed eager to share with the sick right wing how eager they wear to break international law).  The UN went on to say that President Bush’s classification of people as “unlawful enemy combatants” is nothing more than a “description of convenience” and is not defined at any point under international law.  This is where we are in Bush’s America, and it sickens me that we have come this far, and we are going to let a group of evil son of a bitches flush everything this country is worked so hard for down the toilet.

I wonder if the Republicans regret their blind support for Bush? I mean honestly the man is such a stubborn ass, but even while the Republican leadership begging him to change course somewhere, anywhere he refuses. Bush doesn’t have a crap, he’s not up for reelection, all his friends are rich, and he will live comfortably for the rest of his life regardless of who is in office (as long as he can stave off indictment for war crimes). He has rejected the Democrats latest war funding offer which pretty much gives him exactly what he wants, and while the timetables were included, the Democrats inserted a clause that allows the “President” of the United States to ignore the if he wanted to. As far as I’m concernedthe Democrats folded and gave him what he wanted, unfortunately the douche bag is too stupid to see it.

don’t worry his numbers are looking so bad that the Republicans will not be able to raise enough money in heaven or earth to overcome the Bush debt. Right now I guarantee you there are conservative priests who are currently picketing in front of an abortion clinic who would not vote for a Republican.

Rasmussen has a great story on Bush’s numbers.

For the third straight day, the President’s Job Approval ratings are at the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. Just 34% of American adults Approve of the way that George W. Bush is performing his duties as President (see comments on comparing Approval Ratings from different polling firms).

This comes at a time when the nation’s investor confidence has fallen to a new low for 2007 and consumer confidence is near its low point for the year. Just 20% of Americans believe the economy is getting better while 62% say it is getting worse.

Confidence is also low when it comes to the overall War on Terror. Most Americans believe that history will judge the U.S. mission in Iraq a failure.

Yesterday, preliminary agreement was reached on immigration reform. Popular support for the legislation will depend on whether it is viewed primarily as a means for stopping the flow of illegal immigrants or as a means to provide amnesty for those who entered the country illegally. Political leaders from both parties have continually misread the public on this issue.

In the race to replace Bush, Senator Hillary Clinton (D) leads both former Senator Fred Thompson (R) and former Governor Mitt Romney (R) by three percentage points. John Edwards (D) now has a two-point advantage over Rudy Giuliani (R), but enjoys a larger lead of John McCain (R). Clinton and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani remain on top in races for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. Democrats have an 11-point edge in the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales can not stop getting caught in his own web of lies. At this point we have an Attorney General that has such poor credibility that I would not let him testify on my behalf if I got a traffic ticket.

He testified in front of Congress that there was no one else on the list of US Attorneys to be fired other than the ones that were fired, and yet today we find out that the real list had 26 attorneys on them (From here on out known as Exhibit A-Z) . He flat out lied to Congress. Right now the United State’s top law enforcement officer is about as trustworthy as a crackhead with a $100 bill.

Reuters

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, considered firing at least 26 U.S. attorneys during the period, the newspaper said, citing sources familiar with documents withheld from the public.

Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June.

This is on top of the newly released details on the clandestine operation in the dead of the night that then White House Conical Alberto Gonzales executed to try to get drugged out of his scull John Ashcroft (He was recovering from surgery) to sign off on the warrant-less wire tapping. Listen folks, uber hack John Ashcroft would not sign off on it, then you know it was bad.

This is the state of our once great nation under George Bush, we have no creditability across the globe, and now within our own boards we can not guarantee that Justice is not being used as a political tool. Man I miss America.

“World Bank officials say the bank’s board is completing an ‘exit strategy’ that will allow World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to resign this afternoon and ’still save some face’ over the issue of his efforts to seek a promotion and pay raise for his girlfriend at the bank.” I like the fact that even has he is being forced out he is making demands that it was not all his fault, that he was given bad advice about how he should use his power as president of the World Bank to give his girlfriend a raise. You know what Paul, I would think that you would have been smarter than this, I can so NO ONE, even a 10 year old not think for a second that this might look fishy. You can not really be this stupid can you?

But in try Bush Administration style, it’s someone else’s fault. Bush blames Americans for his messes, Rummy blamed the troops for Iraq, Alberto blames his staff for his mess, and now Paul blames the World Bank for catching him give his chick a raise. Cowards.

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As is common place in the Bush administration Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General of the United States showed his leadership skills by throwing his Deputy Attorney General under the bus. Forget the old days where “the buck stops here” nope, not to these people,  Alberto said, “At the end of day, the recommendations reflect the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names.” Sweet, the top cop in the US will not take responsibility for the things that happened under his watch.

Want more proof that the Bush administration refused to lead, and blames others for there failures, look at the quote today from World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said the boards findings were, “unbalanced and flawed”. Boo hoo, you used your position to get your girlfriend a raise, and it is someone else’s fault you got caught.

This administration, at every level is a bunch of 7 year olds, always looking for others to blame, and never taking responsibility for failures on their watch. Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, the economy, the War on Terror, all of them a mess, all of them someone else’s fault. For the love of god don’t elect another Republican, because they were the ones that were tasked with babysitting this adminitration, and choose to look the other way.

I would like nothing more than for Joe Lieberman to be recalled by the morons that elected him. This man is a hack in every definition of the word. Now the “Democrat” is doing fundraisers for Republicans, that is how great a dem he is, so great he is helping Republicans.

From the Washington Post Blog

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is never going to win any popularity contests among his party’s liberal base — a fact he seems decidedly unconcerned about despite his 2006 Democratic primary loss to Ned Lamont.

Not only has Lieberman endorsed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) — one of Democrats’ biggest targets in the 2008 cycle — but he’s planning to co-host a fundraiser for her on June 21 in Washington, D.C.

The event, which will be held in a Capitol Hill location still to be determined, will feature Lieberman and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — a very rare bipartisan fundraiser. Attendees are being asked to raise $3,000; $2,000 would come in the form of a political action committee donation while the other $1,000 would be a personal contribution, according to an electronic invite for the fundraiser obtained today by The Fix.

“Let’s try to make this a bi-partisan tour de force,” reads the invite.

“Senator Specter approached Senator Collins with the idea of doing a joint fundraising event with Senator Lieberman,” said Collins spokeswoman Jen Burita. “Both senators are colleagues with whom she works well and good friends, so we thought it was a great idea.”

If you read this blog, clearly you read others and you must know that there is a serious problem in the pet food industry. Melamine, a chemical used in manufacturing plastics, was mixed into wheat gluten, one gluten, and rice gluten from China and used to make petfood. The Chinese manufacturers mixed in the melamine into the glutens because the melamine interferes with the process used to test the level of protein in the product. In short the melamine makes a sub-standard product look like it has more protein than it does. Oh but it’s worse than that, in order to get the substandard gluten products into the USA the Chinese shipping company labeled the containers as “nonfood”which allows it to sneak past agriculture inspectors. Note to self: I can see anything into the country by labeling it a as “nonfood”.

This would be no big deal except for the fact that melamine, as previously stated, is a chemical used to manufacture plastics, not food, and dogs and cats have been dropping dead all over America. This is only the beginning of the story and what happens next is far worse than you could possibly imagine.

Most of the companies that were affected by the melamine in their food pulled the products from the shells so they cannot be bought by consumers, but I do not mean that they do not sell the product, they did, mostly to feed animals that would eventually end up in the US food supply. You heard me correctly, they pulled the petfood off the shelves so that you and I would not feed it to Fluffy, but then turned around and sold it to pig farmers and chicken farmers to feed their livestock that was in turn used to feed us. Thanks to the incompetence of the Department of Agriculture and the FDA under this administration this crisis went from bad to worse.

For the most part the FDA has told consumers that there is nothing wrong with the food supply, that eating a little bit of chemical use in the manufacture of plastics may not hurt you, but they’re not real sure, because no studies of actually ever been done on whether eating chemicals used in the manufacture of plastics is good for people. Now I’m not a scientist, but it doesn’t take a damn study to know that can’t be good for you. So what is the FDA done for the better part of three months as this crisis grows, virtually nothing.

The only thing protecting the American people on this issue has been the few reporters in the mainstream media, and a gross metric ton of bloggers. That they have been keeping this story at the top of news aggregators for well over a month. So on May 5, 2007 the FDA finally does something about a crisis that has the potential of killing human beings in America, they’ve put a hold on some 20 million chickens that have been fed the tainted food, so that they can run some tests on how poisonous melamine is to humans.

This is indicative of the ongoing failures of the Bush approach to business, un-regulate them and hope to God they do the right thing. Hope to God is not a policy I want my country to use in the regulation of the food supply. I do not trust corporations, I do not trust that they’ll do the right thing, and I think that when it comes to our food supply we should error on the side of caution always.

Newsweek has recently released its latest poll on George W. Bush’s approval rating, and it’s official, prison rape is more popular than our current “president”. In fact his approval rating is lower than any president’s approval rating in a generation. George W. Bush’s approval rating has slipped to 28% in the latest Newsweek poll, keep in mind Newsweek’s poll skews higher than most. To show how unpopular Bush is think about this little fact, in Thursday night’s Republican presidential candidates debate the 10 GOP candidates combined only use George Bush’s name one time, yet invoked Ronald Reagan’s name 19 times. The current crop of Republican candidates hope to God you forget the fact that our current president is a Republican and that voting for one of them basically means more of the same.

This is great news for Democrats because all of the major Democratic presidential candidates beat all of the Republican presidential candidates when asked by poll participants.

The only thing I think would help the GOP win in 2008 is if Bush were to find a cure for cancer at his ranch, without using stem cells, confessed that he is a drunk, in the war in Iraq, and demand that all the money stolen by his buddies during the chaos of war were returned, and even then that just might give the Republicans an even chance to win.

Well it is not really making it up, it is leaving it out. In order to make sure that the numbers look good, and that Republican talking heads have something to point to and say "See it's working" the administration had to leave out the scores of people who have dies because of car bombs. To Bush, those don't count.

From McClatchy (bolds are mine)

U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge's main goals.

"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.

Bush administration officials have pointed to a dramatic decline in one category of deaths - the bodies dumped daily in Baghdad streets, which officials call sectarian murders - as evidence that the security plan is working. Bush said this week that that number had declined by 50 percent, a number confirmed by statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.

But the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the same statistics show - up from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.

Wow, Bush does not give a shit about the rule of law.

From ThinkProgress

In a letter to the RNC, Emmet Flood, a special counsel to President Bush, “today again raised the possibility of an executive-privilege claim on e-mails and other documents from private e-mail accounts used by senior White House officials” but controlled by the RNC. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) called the request “extreme and unnecessary” and said it was “a clear attempt, on the Administration’s part, to delay this process and keep the wheels of Justice turning slowly.”