Georgia To Pray for Rain

ATLANTA (AP) -- What to do when the rain won't come? If you're Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, you pray. The governor will host a prayer service next week to ask for relief from the drought gripping the Southeast.
"The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power,'' Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said on Wednesday.

Perdue's office has sent out invitations to leaders from several faiths for the service, set for Tuesday. Perdue has several times mentioned the need for prayer -- along with water conservation -- as the state's drought crisis has worsened. Over the summer, he participated in day of prayer for agriculture at a gathering of the Georgia Farm Bureau in Macon, Ga.
Perdue, a Baptist, has enjoyed strong support from Georgia's Christian conservatives.

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I think that Georgia is being smitten by God for its general and wide-spread sinfulness. Rain will not come until each and every citizen of Georgia falls down on its knees and asks God for forgiveness.

Six Dems Hand Waterboarding AG Victory

Six Democrats voted in favor of Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General, giving Mr. Bush legal authority to continue waterbording torture.

The 6 were: Bayh of Indiana, Carper of Deleware, Feinstein of California, Landrieu of Louisiana, Nelson of Nebraska, and Schumer of New York.

What was their 'reasoning,' if any?

Guesses??

John Roberts Plays Softball on CNN

The man who hums, Bomb, bomb,bomb bomb Iran all waking hours was in a softball game this morning on CNN. Former [short-term] UN Ambassador and neocon John Bolton has a new book out with a befitting name for the jackass, Surrender is Not and Option. CNN's John Roberts lobbed one softball question after another to Bolton who knocked them all over the fence. What a pitiful display of pandering.

During the 'interview,' Bolton was shown a clip of Senator Chuck Hagel arguing against any attack on Iran; when it concluded Bolton dismissed it with one of the most juvenile debate tactics- a comment about Hitler.

Bolton brings with him a red flag background. Wikipedia lists these organizations to which he belongs:

American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Institute of East-West Dynamics, National Rifle Association, US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Council for National Policy (CNP).

Wow! pass the disinfectant.

Bolton is just one more neocon telling the naive governor how to run his foreign policy. We should have been alerted to this character a year before Shock 'n Awe when, in 2002, Bolton accused Cuba of transfers of biological weapons technology to rogue states and called on it "to fully comply with all of its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention."

Weapons of mass destruction: a preview of coming attractions.

Wikipedia also says this about Bolton:

Bolton is alleged by the Knight Ridder news agency to have been scheduled to tell the House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region. Knight Ridder reported that Bolton’s appearance was cancelled after CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated.

Bolton is also a prime suspect as the author of those infamous SOU words that Bush rattled off in 2003, the uranium from Africa lie.

I suppose Bolton chose CNN and John Roberts because he knew that the softball game would be so easy. Yet the disservice to the public displayed in that farce reminds us all of that same kowtowing that the media did for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice and the pre-emptive war.

I guess we're back to 2003 with just a slight, one-letter change of subject.

Sorry Condi, You Don't Get a Second Chance With War!

From Newsweek: Condi Rice, on being asked what went wrong in Iraq gave this soppy reply, ""I'll give you one with Iraq. If I had to do it all over again, we would have had the balance between center, local and provincial better. But that's the kind of thing you learn over time."

No you don't Ms Rice. You get it right the first time. There are no second guesses. If you and your cohorts didn't know how to 'do' a war, you shouldn't have started one.

Dumbass!

Step 1: Clean Water; Step 2 Health Care

...am I going way too far? Have I lost my senses? Is hope blinding reality?

The Bush Legacy: 25% of Homeless are Veterans

CNN reports: More than 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States are military veterans, although they represent only 11 percent of the civilian adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday. On any given night last year, nearly 196,000 veterans slept on the street, in a shelter or in transitional housing, the study by the Homelessness Research Institute found.

In other news this morning the GOP is playing politics with American vets, surprise, surprise. It seems that through some usual GOP maneuvering, they were able to extract the $65 billion, intended for veterans, out of the omnibus spending bill that will be sent to Bush. They feared he would veto it: too much money, apparently.

Odd isn't it that these Republicans support every dollar Bush asks for his war, but they don't want to spend it on the vets afterwards. Did I say, 'odd?' Forgive me, not 'odd' but rather typical. They and Bush like the macho, fighting men and women, the ones with actual blood on their faces; when these men and women are 'used-up' they drop off of the radar.

Typical of the new GOP, though. Take the abortion issue, around which they solidly gather, and another example of this faux-protectionism that they preach. They vigorously guard the developing fetus for those 9 months in utero, but after it is born, slap it on the ass and say, 'good luck, kid, you're on your own!'

Users and discard-ers. Politics trumps life.

Defrocked Priest's Funeral Full of Pomp

The Toledo Catholic Diocese never can shut the door on pedophile priests. This Catholic hierarchy is in continual denial and cover-up of priest sexual abuse. Today a defrocked priest was given a glorious funeral: it was celebrated by Bishop Donnelly and the school attached to the church was closed because the pastor did not know how large the crowd would be.

After the burial, all were invited to a country club to remember the priest who went astray. Claudi Vercellotti, SNAP local chapter leader said, "I'm not saying that people shouldn't pray for him and remember him, but honoring Neil Lucas like this almost looks like an attempt to negate what he did wrong,." Perhaps, Ms. Vercellotti, one could change your word 'negate' to 'cover-up' for a more accurate reading of the event.

Toledo has had more than its fair share of notoriety in this priest abuse scandal. The film, Twist of Faith, is but one episode in this sordid tale of hierarchical cover-up by the Catholic church in this diocese.

God-pimping Fails to Seat in Governor's Races in Miss and Ky

The hapless and crooked governor of Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher, pulled out the 10 Commandments in a last ditch hope that the voters would fall for his God-pimping and keep him in office. It didn't work; he lost badly. In Mississippi a fundamentalist challenger to Gov. Barbour who wanted to teach creationism in the schools of the state tried to woo voters. Voters rejected him soundly.

What does this say for the '08 election? Are these examples of what is to come when politicians try to wrap themselves around God in their pandering for votes?

U.S. in Decline

PetroChina overnight has becom the world's first trillion dollar company.
ExxonMobile, the US company, has yet to reach a trillion. Hello? Does
this ring an alarm bell? Is anyone this morning asking, "China? How is
it that China has the first trillion dollar company?" American Gov't policy
and American corporation greed have championed the idea that if the
US trades and sends American technology, business, factories, and labor
to China, the result will be the opening up of China to democracy, liberty,
and freedom. China will give up its communist government because of a
revolution of rising expectations of the Chinese people. China will join the
"peace-loving" capitalist countries of the world. Secretary of Defense, Gates,
has been in China this last week, asking the Chinese to roll back a new, large
increase in military spending. The chinese told him "to hit the road." Isn't
it comforting to know that all our trade deficit monies that we have sent to
China and all the manufacturing factories and associated jobs, all that money
and all the technology, China is using to greatly enlarge and modernize their
offensive military position. I wonder why and what power in the Pacific could
possibly be viewed as a threat. With chinese industry and manufacturing being
built daily on the backs of American laboring men and women and chinese gov't
wealthy increasing because of the unfair trade policies which forces the US to
borrow huge amounts of financial resources from China, the US and especially
the american middle class have lost. Both the Democrat and Republican Parties
have purposely and with intention set this into motion due to the Big Business
flow of money into each Party's coffers. They have taken us from a creditor
nation to a debtor nation and offer no way out. They have destroyed our
manufacturing base. They have watched all American income to be stagnant(no
growth, even for inflation) or decrease for 96% of all workers, 96%......What is
to be done?

No [All] Child Left Behind Going Down Sewer

Who could have imagined that President Bush’s 'signature domestic achievement' has met a dead end? Why not? Everything else he's touched has tarnished. The New York Times reports:

"The leaders ofthe Senate and House education committees are signaling that time has run out for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act this year, leaving prospects for rewriting it uncertain during the presidential campaign in 2008."

This defeat is a great win for American school children. No longer will they be subjected to teaching to the high-stakes testing. Perhaps teachers can now plan lessons appropriate for the children, lessons that both might enjoy.