...since George Bush took office, nearly 8 painful years ago.  That's a whopping 54 (and change) points a year!  4.5 points a month.  That's 1.05 points up a week!!!  Onward and upward baby.  I feel those profits in my pants now.  Heck of a job, Georgie!!!

Foreclosures -- UP!  Not just up, at an all-time high!!!!  Jobs, hell, come on down, we're givin em away!  6 straight months of job losses.  woohoo!

But the economy is strong, that's what I hear...

UPDATED: AS OF DOW CLOSE: okay, so it's a little more than 438 points over 8 years.  A little more. 469 as I write.  Huge difference. F me.  Anyone look at the economic calendar for next week?  We have retail sales figures (projected down 50%) PPI (down) Ben Bernanke speaks ("I believe in a strong dollar") IBD Business Optimism survey (anyone, Bueller, anyone?) Crude Inventories (wonder...) more Bernankespeak, FOMC minutes on interest rates, Housing Starts (um, projected down) so, things are pretty much looking gravy...

Buswheel bait... abnegate administration... removed Republicans... neocon nowheremen...

McNulty... Sampson... Rumsfeld... Wolfowitz...

Abjured assholes... notmyfault nabobs... unworthy usurpers... disavowed dysfunctionites... forsaken f@#wads... Please add your own if you are as far past digestive disgust as I...

Since this obviously was a Rove op, I have to assume that the fired USA's were replaced for practical political reasons.  In the Bush era, it's not enough to be Republican to remain in good standing -- one has to be "on board" with the Administration's goals and plans.  

So (forgive me) say you're Karl Rove, genius!, and you have this plan to cement a permanent Republican majority in power.

What good could it possibly be to have your very own USA stooge in the districts of Arkansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Michigan, California, Washington and Arizona?  Alarm bells are ringing...

"Bush's Latin America friendship tour draws protests."  

"No. 1 Enemy of Humanity" and "Get out Bush!" read signs carried by workers, students, peasants and other activists.

"It's nothing more than to say we want to be your friends," Bush said in an interview with Colombian television before he set out. "My trip is a chance to tell the people ... that the United States cares deeply about the human condition."

UPDATE: I could have sworn I read in another diary that irony is dead.

Where?  Tora Bora!  Where?  Tora Bora!  Where?  Tora Bora!  Rebel: 'We aided bin Laden escape'  Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed in a television interview broadcast Thursday that his fighters helped Osama bin Laden escape from the mountains of Toro Bora five years ago. CNN

Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister and leader of the Hezb-e-Islami militant group, told Pakistan's private Geo TV network that when the United States began its assault on the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001, some of his fighters moved bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and other associates to "a safe place" where he met them later.

I haven't seen anything on this here at dkos...

How odd it is that we tend to think in generalities.  100 years from now, historians will most likely call 2006 the year that Americans finally acquired mass common sense and turned on George Bush.  He has lost his rubber stamp to do anything he pleases, he has lost his impunity from oversight, he has lost his tone-deaf choir to which he preaches.

How odd that as this year changes, on this very last day, another number was hit.  3,000.  That is just a number and it has just a comma.  Most kossacks know why I've emphasized those 2 words.  Odd, how they somehow sail right over the heads of the GOP base.

Does this death mean anything more than any others.  I guess it does...

I'll lead with a movie quote, bonus points to anyone who can ID the film/speaker: "That's one of the great tragedies of this life - that the men who are most in need of a beating are generally enormous."

Speaker to be Pelosi has already said that impeachment is off the table.  And so, the men, if ever there were men forseen by our nation's founders who deserve impeachment, will continue to sleep soundly as they retire at 10pm each night, for the next 2 years.

I have a few predictions of what will happen...

I'm already sick to death of the punditocracy's labelling of this election as a "rebuke to Bush" and an ascendency of "conservative Democrats."

I have not seen anything in the platform of any major Democratic candidate who won in this election that smacked of "conservatism."  And "rebuke" is too kind and limited a word to describe what a majority of voters want to see given to Bush.  This is a wholesale head-pulling from the ass movement and intervention.

I'm celebrating, so give me this day.  Do not expect anything too deep or coherent from me at the moment.  Yes, sensibility rules today, and I'm dispensing with mine... for awhile.  In light of the analogies I've heard in the media, which are completely off the mark and suck, and raise my bile, I've decided to list a few of my own, on the jump...

Saddam verdict to come back ah guilty.  Hang-a by the neck until dead!  Not rifle squad like he want, we hang tough!  Gud for Gee-O-Pee.  Who woulda thought it come 2 days before American election?  Timing such a coincident?

Computer machine, make-a voting very niiice for Gee-O-Pee, eh?  Dozen missing smartcards in Tenhessee?  I find one, here, I have in pocket, I make-a sexy with many Gee-O-Pee big hats with my card... hehehe thats-a what they tell me.  Kitty Harris offer to make-a sexy with me, but Borat have standard.

I experience in vote by fiat.  Car... not!  

There are times when a DKos diary hits the target dead on.  

Wouldn't it be nice to "share" these diaries with others, not so Dkos-inclined, with one click?  Like youTube?

This diary by Hunter among others, seems to be such a candidate...  just a suggestion Mr. Webmaster, BANG, click, send it to friend and foe alike with a keystroke.  Am I off my barcalounger here?

"developing" story on Drudge claims ABC jumped gun to state Foley "contacts" with Pages did not amount to a crime as Page in question was actually 18.  

ABC RELEASED TRANSCRIPT OF CHAT BETWEEN FOLEY AND A MAN WHO WAS 18 AT THE TIME OF THE INSTANT MESSAGE EXCHANGE.... NETWORK GAVE IMPRESSION MESSAGE WAS TO 'UNDER AGE' TEEN... DEVELOPING...

'ONLINE GLITCH' LEADS TO IDENTITY OF FOLEY ACCUSER

Another damning report, another delay in its release.  A few leaks may cause the dam to burst, but this is part and parcel of a White House pattern.

Any report generated outside the White House that comes in with a critical view of White House policies will no doubt enter a twilight zone of spin, haze, fog, mirrors, rancor and lies.

The NIE will come piecemeal, until you are utterly confused about what it is you've heard.  It will come against White House will, at the appropriate day when you just may believe, it was released completely at the White House's will.  It will follow the pattern of other major damning reports that have come and gone, into the twilight zone...

There is nothing a network wants more for its shows than eyeballs.  TV is advertiser driven.  In essence, TV looks to pave highways that drive you past advertiser billboards.  "The medium is the message."

The Path to 9/11 appears to be so egregious to me that I have decided to eliminate ABC and all of its affiliated channels from my viewing selection.  Eliminate it entirely.  That's right, ABC, and its sisters will not pop up on my box even if I happen to channel surf for want of something to watch.  Ever.

This how-to diary applies to those with Time-Warner cable, and specifically my former Verizon/then Adelphia service.  If anyone else has the specifics on how to remove ABC from their channel selections on other cable services, i.e., Cox... please post in thread and I'll update this how-to special.  If you're ready to change the channel, please flip...

 

The Conference Board, a private research group, found that at the start of the summer, 40 percent of consumers had no plans to take a vacation over the next six months -- the lowest percentage recorded by the group in 28 years. (emphasis mine)

A survey by the Gallup Organization in May based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,003 adults found that 43 percent of respondents had no summer vacation plans. (emphasis mine)

So it's only 2 weeks until Labor Day, and I'm feeling guilty because I actually took a 6 day vacation.  In my defense, it was the only vacation longer than a 3-day weekend I've taken in 3 years.  According to the Times, Americans already short vacation time has shrunk even more in the Bush era.  Take a break, read more, post what you did...

Perhaps, it's the upcoming anniversary, or simply the newness of the release, that moved me, this morning, to listen to a sampling of the just released 9/11 tapes.

What I am struck by, on call after call from NY employees, whether it be EMS Bronx South, Fire Brooklyn Channel 05, EMS Conference Room Table, from units far and wide, on and off duty, are the pleas that came in as the nightmare unfolded on 9/11: "Let me go... please let me go down there... you need a boss on site?... we're open here... I want to go... I can help..." and it's all time-stamped, and you can hear that it's all within 5 minutes of the first hit on the WTC.

And then I contrast this with the actions of commander in chief George W., who knew of the nightmare even as he sat down in that classroom, and subsequently knew that it was getting worse.  And still he sat.  He sat he sat he sat.  And this year Bush "reorganized" priorities of the bin Laden unit, assembled in the Clinton years to hunt and terminate this monster.  Unfortunately, I offer nothing but fury...

I often wonder how "good Germans" felt as the Nazis took over German politics and the country's intentions.  How many were "on the money" with observations that Hitler's moves "would only lead to hell," yet in the end, did nothing.

I wonder because, right now, despite what has happened in Iraq, there is a drumbeat to move, unilaterally, against Iran.  And this has been on the table for over a year!  Seymour Hersh (who BTW, has been right a hell of a lot lately) has written about the neocons intentions well before they were voiced recently by tools like Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich.  

There was a time when I trusted my government, and the institutions in this country that gave me my government, but that is no longer the case.  Should we all go to sleep tonight, and wake up to the news tomorrow, that our country has bombed Iran into a hellish maelstrom of fire and death with a new campaign of "Shock, Awe & Stupor" I'm just curious, how far would the sane amongst you go?  Please take my poll.

Under a federal court settlement in place for close to a decade, private deer and elk hunts now staged on Santa Rosa Island, a public island off the Santa Barbara coast, must end by 2011 and the non-native game must be removed.  But San Diego-area Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter wants to keep the trophy animals on the island and allow military veterans to hunt them.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for paralyzed veterans and severely disabled veterans to have an opportunity for a high-quality outdoor experience," said Hunter, who chairs the Armed Services Committee.

Huting for sport is an issue that hits me as a debasement of humanity.  Ferrying paralyzed vets 40 miles offshore to an island with stocked non-native game, ready for kill shots, well, that just strikes me as another sign that the American human condition is in grave moral decline.  Or am I being too sensitive...

The saga of Joe Wilson illustrates the Bushworld views on diplomacy: career diplomats are mere tools of the administration, dispatched to solely establish cover, and then expendable at the administration's will.

As we plunge toward an Iranian war, following exactly the same mis-steps as we did with Iraq, I think it's necessary to name a phrase that sums up our foreign policy under the Bush doctrine: walk swaggeringly and wield a big stick.

But the ante's just been upped.  An attack on Iran will lead to a tripling of the price of oil. http://news.bbc.co.uk/...  Perhaps this will get some attention.