This MUST have been diaried but I couldn't find it so let me know if so and I will remove.

This exchange just slams George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and forces George H.W. Bush, Bush I, Bush 41, Mr. "wouldn't be prudent," to defend his son from a hostile arab audience.  Again, this exchange totally sums up how 80-90% of the world's population views George "nukular" W. Bush:

"We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he's doing all over the world," a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech.

Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.

A college student told Bush his belief that U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies and said globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush was having none of it.

[Link]

Energy independence from countries like Saudi Arabia where you have to pay to play, where you have to pay the Saudi royals golden Rolls-Royces in order to play in their country business-wise, is, to say the least, a good thing.

A new article in the Washington Post discusses the alternative energy industry juggernaut exploding across America, an industry growing yearly at a 35%-a-year clip; not bad for a bunch of tree-hugging hippies.  Just kidding.  Actually, this growing work force is actually made up all those fired workers side-lined by Beltway Pols' horrific NAFTA American job flight plan, hardly the typical granola-crunching, uptight liberal workers such your humble self-deprecating diary-writer.

Good, 53, used to work in a landscaping business, but like many people around the country he has found work in the alternative-energy industry. After two years, he said, "I could retire here."

More...

This story out of the UK is underscoring why the oil industry is utterly corrupted and why political bribery is the status quo, especially after the stunning revelations from the Republicans pay-for-play K-street Project; this story just shows how grotesque the situation has become, internationally now.

The corruption is so pervasive that it is a national security threat because it is Saudi Arabia that is source of the corruption, home to most of the 9/11 terrorists.

Saudi Arabia is threatening to suspend diplomatic ties with Britain unless Downing Street intervenes to block an investigation into a £60m “slush fund” allegedly set up for some members of its royal family.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...

Patrick Leahy unleashed the opening salvo in, as BushCo calls it, the "fight to the death" over Bush's unitary executive claims; he wants, along with other documents related to the formulation of their torture policies, AG Gonzales' torture memos and communications from when he called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, soon to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has requested the release of documents that outline the Bush Administration's interrogation policies.

The documents, which have long been thought to exist by observers and critics of America's national security policies, were confirmed to exist as the result of a still-pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU.

http://www.rawstory.com/...

Letter below:

I think some of the vegetarian groups have done more harm than good for their cause, as is the case with many single-issue groups.

While I respect those people's sincere beliefs and their right to be activists therein, they also need to learn to measure their effectiveness.

I say all that because vegetarianism could be a cure for many if not most of society's ills, starting with the health care crisis.

I cite from two recent articles below...

Bush is already attempting lame-duck overseas travel to make him look less like a hated war criminal but it won't work, especially when his bribes for the host country blow up in his face:

Prospects for Congressional approval of several free trade bills backed by the Bush administration were thrown into doubt today when House Republican leaders abruptly withdrew a Vietnam trade bill from consideration on the eve of President Bush's trip to Hanoi this week.

The failure of the Vietnam bill as Mr. Bush was preparing to leave on his trip was a deep disappointment and embarrassment for the White House, which had hoped that the president would hail its passage as a milestone in improvement in relations with a country where tens of thousands of Americans died more than 30 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Yes, the Establishment Democrats are absolutely SCRAMBLING to consolidate power around themselves, to pick up where they left off when they left the Democratic Party in the lurch after the 1994 bloodbath when they ran their own K-street project, and the party, into the ground.  

Well folks, the fight is on and time is short; Lanny's buddies, the lobbyists, are at this very moment trying to figure out exactly who in the new congressional leadership will be the easiest to corrupt, who will fall to their siren call this time around.

Yes the Establishment hacks, the repub-lite money-grubbing Beltway Dems, led by pundits disguised as democratic activists like Lanny Davis, have brandished their knives and are rabidly, crazily slashing at liberals, AKA the netroots, and our tremendous voice in politics:

I feel it is appropriate to call for Karl Rove's head (his resignation will do George) on behalf of the defeated Republicans who he comforted in recent days with his ultra-secret, Karl Rove-polls that only he and Dick in their undisclosed location were able to see and decipher, as per the well-discussed, combative interview he had with NPR:

"I see several things," Rove says. "I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races. And after all, this does come down to individual contests between individual candidates." [snip]

"Politics is a complex equation," Rove says.

http://www.npr.org/...

You see "several things" Karl in your ultra-secret "equation?"  Admit it you hack, you saw defeat and you damn well know it now and you knew it then.  What a liar.

Yes, if Karl doesn't resign, I hope the anticipated oversight by the new Dem majority in both houses of Congress starts with Karl Rove and his treasonous involvement with the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA NOC.

I can't believe that this hasn't been diaried per the search results; let me know otherwise.  

Bill O'Reilly is in some deep shit from announcing that he has seen abortion records, allegedly provided to him by the Kansas Attorney General, in an attempt to start up some shit on abortion for the election.  

But by so doing, he has abortion clinics after his ass, who are trying to get the Kansas Supreme Court to seize documents and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate O'Reilly and the Kansas AG.

Two abortion clinics asked the state's highest court Monday to investigate Attorney General Phill Kline and Fox television's Bill O'Reilly over O'Reilly's statements that he had obtained information from Kansas abortion records.

http://www.cbsnews.com/...

Read some more wingnuttery below:

[Breaking update: This relates to my diary originally entitled "Full-blown Iraqi civil war expected from Saddam death verdict" but this is bigger news than the fact that conventional civil war is expected after Saddam's verdict...

Anyhow, read this breathtaking article about how CheneyCo anticipated this chaos and still did this war on the cheap nevertheless:

The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

In its "Desert Crossing" games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by the George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

(LINK)

Original diary below...

FYI, Reynolds Foleygate timeline not panning out...

NRCC Communications Director Carl Forti and Reynolds then chief-of-staff Kirk Fordham both took part in the first call the evening of Wednesday, September 27, and one call the next day, Forti and other sources familiar with the call confirmed. Forti's involvement and the NRCC's role in the run-up to the Foley scandal add another link between the disgraced former congressman and Reynolds, who has said he knew only indirectly of questionable emails, and that he reported them to his House superiors. They also reflect another moment at which House GOP leadership was aware of concerns about Foley and pages.

Foley resigned on Sept 29th...

Reynolds himself wasn't asked about the Wednesday and Thursday discussions during the 40-minute press conference he gave on the subject October 2.

He said then he'd been told of months earlier - but hadn't seen - the first emails, which he described as "overly friendly chit-chat."

Apparently our buddy Murray Waas was involved in this scoop:

http://blogs.nydailynews.com/...

Bush and Co is now claiming all-of-a-sudden right before the election that Iran and Syria are "preparing plans to topple Lebanon's democratically elected government."  Is this Rove's promised help for the desperate Congressional repubs?

We all know that Bush can't talk very well so it's no wonder that Hadley avoids having Bush talking to anyone, much less to more educated people from countries like Iran and Syria who call us Satan and whatnot.

"Talking isn't a strategy," the president's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said in an interview late last week, before he headed to Iraq. "The issue is how can we condition the environment that that Iran and Syria will make a 180-degree turn," he said.

NYTimes article

So anyone wondering how Bush is going to respond to their buddy James Baker's "Iraq Study Group" results, Hadley just cleared that right up.  No Jim.  No, Bush will be "staying the course" because Dick Cheney tells him that it will make both of them look stupid to do otherwise.

This is big news and should serve to underscore Cheney and Bush's proclivity for lying, particularly in regards to their "progress in Iraq" lie.  The "progress" lie vigorously competes with the "WMD" lies.  

The British consulate in Basra will evacuate its heavily defended building in the next 24 hours over concerns for the safety of its staff.

Despite a large British military presence at the headquarters in Basra Palace, a private security assessment has advised the consul general and her staff to leave the building after experiencing regular mortar attacks in the last two months.

The move will be seen as a huge blow to progress in Iraq and has infuriated senior military commanders.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...

Screw the economy:  it's the oilmongering lies stupid.  We will make "progress" when we re-deploy and go after Al Qaeda, you know, the people that attacked us on 9/11.

Let me just get this nugget of hope out there for all the GOTVers and the anxious masses who might need some extra encouragement...

In Ohio, recent polls show that at least 70 percent of voters support an initiative to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.85 and index it to inflation. A coalition of labor unions, faith groups and liberal activists is working to pass it. [snip]

"We looked at the minimum wage as something that would make sense -- not only energizing the base but also the right and just thing to do," said Prentiss, one of the leaders of the Ohio minimum-wage effort. "It has the same ring for me as for people who are passionate about defining marriage between a man and a
woman."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

If this turns out to be fake, we can likely point to Clinton-hating wanna-be Republico-terrorists as the culprits.

If it turns out to be real, well, rightwing Republicans DID do the Oklahoma City bombing, the Olympic bombings, abortion clinic bombings, etc. etc. etc...

CBS 2 has learned that a suspicious white powder was delivered to President Bill Clinton's office in Harlem on Friday afternoon.

Sources said the incident happened at approximately 3:45 p.m. when an aide to the former president discovered a white powder in an envelope that had already been X-rayed. The NYPD is currently at Clinton's office, located on 125th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and investigators in hazardous materials suits are on the scene.

"There is a search to try to recover some sort of foreign substance," NYPD Sgt. Reginald Watkins told The Associated Press, adding that Secret Service agents were also at the building.

(LINK)

Bill was at home.  Let's hope this was fake. The anthrax attack from 2001, still unsolved, provoking even Republican Senators to demand answers 5 years later, was NOT fake however.