Here's to Mr. Throat

Mr. Deep Throat, anonymous no more.

Predictably, all the usual suspects are roundly denouncing him as a traitor. Hey, how could he be a traitor if we weren't At War With Terra?

He even looked kind of like Hal Holbrooke when younger...

From the APBB* files
*Awww, poor boo-BOO!

This just in:

Vice President Dick Cheney says he's offended by a human rights group's report criticizing conditions at the prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

All together now... awwwwwwwwwwwww, poor boo-boo!

Articles elsewhere

If you're looking to hear from the Prairie Angel, I have some recent articles posted elsewhere online. Here's an article on Shamanic Drumming

Here's the beginning of an aromatherapy primer

and here's an article on advertising your business with google ads.

Some more equal than others

This just in:

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - Everyone agrees that Ligaya Lagman is a Gold Star mother, part of the long line of mournful women whose sons or daughters gave their lives for their country.

Her 27-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman, was killed last year in Afghanistan when his unit came under fire during a mission to drive out remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida forces.

But the largest organization of these women, the American Gold Star Mothers Inc., has rejected Lagman, a Filipino, for membership because — though a permanent resident and a taxpayer — she is not a U.S. citizen.

“There’s nothing we can do because that’s what our organization says: You have to be an American citizen,” national President Ann Herd said Thursday. “We can’t go changing the rules every time the wind blows.”

"Every time the wind blows..."

I dunno, Doc. I'm just so tired all the time. I think my outrage-meter is broken or something.

Le Mot Juste

I award Kevin Drum the palm d'or for his capsulization of the state of the Newsweek-caused-riots idiocy: "So: kicked and thrown to the floor, yes, but not flushed down a toilet. Hooray for us!"

Keep breeding the cannon fodder

A little-known provision of the "No Child Left Behind" law (sorry, I can't NOT quote that ridiculous misnomer) requires all public high schools to provide contact information on all their students to military recruiters unless the parents sign an opt-out form. This is the Columbia Record Club method - you must take a positive action to PREVENT something from happening, rather than causing it to happen.

Now this from Minneapolis:

Pressured to meet quotas, some U.S. military recruiters have bent or broken the rules for enticing young people into the service. And on the eve of a day of atonement of sorts, CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta reports that a little-known provision in the federal No Child Left Behind law gives these recruiters a secret weapon when aiming to recruit high schoolers, and catch the attention of students as young as 14.

CBS News has reported that from asking teens to lie to their parents to guiding them through duping the drug-test system and forging documents, recruiters will go to many lengths to get young people to enlist. One Houston-area recruiter was caught on tape threatening jail time if a applicant didn't keep his appointment.

So in order to take a day to re-train Army recruiters in the ethics of enlisting, the entire Army recruitment system will stand down — or cease recruitment — Friday.

Threatening a teen with jail if he didn't keep an appointment??

If you know parents of high-school aged children, send them this link - Leave My Child Alone.

A Culture of Life?

Since we have such a pro-life prez, one would think that the abortion rate would be decreasing, no? Alas, no... This from the staunchly pro-life Glen Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary

Abortion was decreasing. When President Bush took office, the nation's abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4 percent decline during the 1990s. This was a steady decrease averaging 1.7 percent per year. (The data come from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher Institute's studies.)

Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.

...

Under Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.

For anyone familiar with why most women have abortions, this is no surprise:

Two-thirds of women who have abortions cite "inability to afford a child" as their primary reason (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life). In the Bush presidency, unemployment rates increased half again. Not since Herbert Hoover had there been a net loss of jobs during a presidency until the current administration. Average real incomes decreased, and for seven years the minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation. With less income, many prospective mothers fear another mouth to feed.

...

What does this tell us? Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative. Rhetoric is hollow, mere tinkling brass, without health care, insurance, jobs, child care and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need a president who will do something about jobs, health insurance and support for mothers.

Yeah, we need one, Glen. Too bad we got an empty suit instead.

Got your activist judges right here

Un-fucking-believable. From the Indianapolis Star:

An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.

Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.

Bradford refused to remove the provision after the 9-year-old boy's outraged parents, Thomas E. Jones Jr. and his ex-wife, Tammie U. Bristol, protested last fall.

...

The parents' Wiccan beliefs came to Bradford's attention in a confidential report prepared by the Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which provides recommendations to the court on child custody and visitation rights. Jones' son attends a local Catholic school.

"There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones' lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages," the bureau said in its report.

This is simply incredible. Both parents are Wiccan and both want the boy brought up in their joint religion. But because he's surrounded by Catholics, he, what? has to be Catholic? Or could they perhaps raise him to be Jewish? Or Buddhist? What's mainstream enough for this whacko?

I suggest that all Christians living in Muslim countries be forced to allow their children to be raised Muslim. How's that grab you, Judge Moron?

Oh, great.

Now kids have an excuse for ignoring their parents. "But, Ma... my frontal lobe is still developing."

More signs that US news reporting is in a death spiral

From Franken via Huffington:

Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Stunned, I went up to Susan Page of USA Today and her husband Carl Lubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, two veteran Washington political reporters, and told them about Allen’s ignorance of this huge scandal, which has no doubt contributed to hatred for America and the deaths of our troops. There’s less electricity in Iraq now than there was before we invaded Iraq.

Turns out that Page and Lubsdorf had also never heard of the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion. For a moment I thought that maybe I had been imagining things.

Tinfoil version: Perhaps they know very well where the 8.8 billion went.

Poor Kevin

Shorter Kevin Drum: The daily newspapers are in financial difficulties. Yet they are not doing the job they are paid to do. We must therefore withhold all valid criticism so that they will go -back- to doing real reporting.

Yeah, that'll work.

Comments are running about 99% against his thesis, btw. Nice to know that some readers not only care about the reliability of the news, but recognize a logical mishmash when they see it.

Wow. Must Read

Text of Galloway is here on Kos.

Read it all. My sister, who watched it live, says she was reminded of the Late Great Robert Shaw. To which I say, Coleman et al are going to need a bigger boat.

Two New Blogs

It's possible I've lost what's left of my mind. In any event, here are two new blogs.

Exhibit A: The Blogging of the Gods, Being a Retelling of the Classic Myths in the Style of Today's Political Blogs

Exhibit B: A Novel Undertaking, Being a More or Less Honest Account of My Would-Be Life as a Novelist.

Send warm thoughts and healing White Energy to the above address....

Yet another internet quiz

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