Today’s quick linx is brought to you by our beloved El Presidente, George W. “stands for worst” Bush, who recently attended the opening day indoctrination of the Washington National’s new stadium. While Bush stepped out on to the field, he was treated to a mixed reaction heavily dominated by loud booing. The major media virtually shunned the story, treating it like a sports story, while Obama’s low bowling score was trumpeted as the end all definition of why Obama was not a REAL man (one guy even said Obama should “stick to shooting hoops”), Liberal media my ass!

Our nation’s love of sports and hatred of politicians collided this week in what can only be called a humorous, yet somber moment for the United States.

If clip doesn’t work, click here to see the Daily Show Clip

Wow, you know your not liked when your booed at the opening pitch. I mean, by the 7th inning, enough beer has flown through the stadium to turn a polite, church going dad into a longshoreman willing …

While reading the headlines of war, recession, division and sadness, I found this little tidbit on the thriving success of a magazine targeted at the super wealthy. I thought this little tidbit was perfect for today’s QuickLinx.

Apparently there is a thriving industry around selling to people SO rich, they view the Robb Report as the damn Pennysaver. If you’re making at least $650,000 a year and/or own a private jet; than your target demographic matches Doubledown Media, who’s readership is so wealthy, your yacht must be at least 40 feet to read it.

Doubledown Media is the producer of such fine publications as Corporate Leader, Cigar Report, Private Air (a rag devoted to your own private airplane(s) and their latest periodical to hit the press, The Players Club (and btw, “playas” need not apply, that is, unless you have an impressive portfolio). While this fine group of well-minded, young upstarts are doing their duty in a nation at war and recession, they’re also answering to a higher service: making money and apparently more now than ever before.

“We’re seeing very rapid growth,” brags …

It’s been a long time since we had an Orange Alert huh? Remember those? Seemed like every time suspicions of the Bush Administration’s mishandling of 9-11 came up, or bad times in Iraq, or my absolute personal favorite, The Democratic Convention, we were all running to the store to buy duct tape and check our mail with anthrax proof gas masks.

An amazing coincidence?

Anyone with half a brain cell who actually paid attention to the Bush Administration’s complete and utter exploitation of the multi-colored Terror Alert Level System will not be shocked by accusations that Bush used it to his political advantage.

Keith Olbermann’s recent Nexus of Terror Timeline however, will still disgust you beyond belief. He lays down 17 minutes of Bush abuse on the issue of terrorism for nothing more than political gain. He reads off an overwhelming array of evidence, laid out in chronological order that details just how low the Bush Administration sunk to maintain political power in Washington.

Fear, fear and more fear will be one of Bush’s …

Leading Conservative thinker and FOX News resident right-wing pundit, William Kristol made a daring appearance on the Daily Show last night. While I always love to watch Mr. Stewart grill hypocritical righties with intelligent humor and intensely backhanded compliments, I found it was both satisfying and disturbing at the same time.

For those of you who don’t know Kristol, he’s the son (or spawn) of what many consider to be the Godfather of the modern conservative movement. He rose to his own heights (as a member of the top-tier) becoming editor of The Weekly Standard (ultra conservative rag) and a player in many think-tanks, including the Project for a New American Century (you remember, the guys who said a Pearl Harbor like event could be manipulated to get America into a war with Iraq). He is a self-described Neo-Con who has actively called for a War in Iraq since Bush I called of the dogs in 1991. To me, he is everything that is wrong with America as he represents the war-hawks, the industrialists, the wealthy elite and he gives fuel to the religious whack-jobs as well. He is …

Everywhere I look I see the news media ready to put up victory flags and declare the so-called “surge” a success. Just a few months ago, the Iraqi government was on the brink of collapse, civil war was not only inevitable, it was happening and Sen. John McCain couldn’t walk down the streets of a Baghdad market without a whole battalion to protect him. So this must mean that the “Liberal Media” was lying the whole time about Iraq right?

It all seemed too good to be true to me. That simply putting in a few thousand more troops was turning the tide in Iraq. Turns out, most of the success has had nothing to do with military engagements, and been attributed more to the actions of Sunnis, tired of infighting and tired of war and the collapse of the Mehdi Army (Sadr’s military force). Much of the success, such as in Anbar Province, has had nothing to do with the Surge at all.

So what, if it works, it works right? However, the success itself is somewhat a myth. Attacks are not down as much as the military as led to …

Since the Iraq War began, the United States has had a diminished role in world diplomacy. Meanwhile the rest of the world has chugged along, taking great advantage of Uncle Sam’s present status, ankle-deep in bloody dessert sand, and manipulated the distracted Bush White House to their advantage. This weekend proved how dramatically weak the U.S. President has become.

No one has taken greater advantage of this than Russian President, Vladamir Putin, who has returned strength and authority to his office. He’s limited the once free press, bullied opposition into hiding, even been accused of having a rival poisoned with radioactive material (remember that story?), all the while he grows more powerful by the day. Last week Putin checked Bush’s plan to install anti-ballistic-missile systems in former Soviet countries, by announcing Russia’s departure from the 1990 Conventional Weapons Treaty that limited the use of heavy conventional weapons in Europe. It is, a slap at Bush and a slap at Europe, who have become increasingly critical of Russia’s backslide toward a strongman government….

A new CBO (Congressional Budget Office) report estimates the projected cost of the Iraq War, assuming we stay till 2017, may reach as high as $2.4 Trillion! That’s a cost of $8,000 per man, women and child living in the United States. Higher than the cost, adjusted for inflation, than the Vietnam War!

So when someone tells you the war doesn’t matter. First tell them to look at this webpage, showing casualties of U.S. soldiers nearing 4,000 and civilians well over 100,000 confirmed, then tell them it will cost them $8,000 for every person in their family. That is the equivalent, by the way, of a $400 a month health insurance plan for 20 years.

Republicans like Bush love to spend money, they just don’t like spending it on the health and prosperity of the nation’s taxpaying citizens. They prefer to spend the money on tanks, bullets and killing the citizens of another nation. If Republicans are so good at business, you’d think they’d know a good investment when they saw one. Spend the money on healthier, happier, harder working citizens, or blow it all on …

Over sized mouth piece, Rush “to Judgment” Limbaugh, is, to be frank, as useful to the American discourse as a large bag of hot air. I have called him “the rash” in the past and the more I think about it, the more I see that this analogy is entirely accurate.

In past weeks the Rash lashed out at soldiers who spoke out against the war, calling them “phony soldiers”. Senate Democrats jumped on the opportunity and wrote him a letter (wow, sock it to em Dems [sarcasm]). A letter the bloated loud mouth auctioned off on EBay for a hefty sum, proceeds as you might expect, went to some right leaning charity that provides scholarship funds to the children of, specifically, Marines and Federal Law enforcement personnel (whatever that means) who are killed in the line of duty. The rumor mill has not been cranking out stories of typical Republican crookedness in regards to this charity, so we can give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they’re not funneling the money into some sort of slush fund to …

Virginia is becoming a blue state! Well that’s all right-wing divisive political strategy to begin with. However, by their own play book, they’re one election away from losing the grand old capital of the Confederacy to reasonably centrist Democratic candidates, or as Repubs call em, Communist, Left-Wing, Liberal, radicals.

Former governor and popular Democrat Mark Warner is so far ahead in the polls that it would take a force of macaca proportions to bring him down. Since this is the state that brought you George Allen and the great macaca collapse of 2006, I wouldn’t rule anything out.

If Virginia becomes a blue state, certainly the entire strategy of the Republican divisive culture war will begin to erode even further. While they play heavily on the heartland, their effectiveness in the South borrows from political plays first used immediately after the Civil War. The fear of government angle, was used for 100 years to scare poor white Southerners into fearing the big bad federal government from coming into their home counties and telling them that they couldn’t segregate a …

Solid evidence that Republicans are signaling an end to support for the Iraq War has emerged over this past week. Republican centrists and those in leadership positions have revealed serious discontent for the current war and are hinting at alternatives to long-term deployment.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the beginning phases will begin this year that will begin a long and slow withdrawal from Iraq. There will be no escalation beyond the surge. The surge is not showing significant results today and will likely not show them tomorrow. Republicans, who are now signaling that a September report of the Iraq Generals will make or break their future support for the Iraq conflict. It’s the opening, those who don’t wish to see the Republican Party die a painful death, are looking for, and that would constitute most of the elected Republican officials in office today outside of the White House.

Dick Cheney may not care about the Republican Party’s future, but for damn sure the rest of the party does.

The future of their party depends on ending this war. Therefore, being cynical and realistic here, I …

Just look at that face. Shrewd and decisive. A “decider” if you will.
But what other emotions can we pull from this face? Keeping in mind this is emotion #3 from a short list of prefab emotions, concocted to convince you of his enormous down-home-ness,

Honesty? You say? Well I think we know the answer to that question. Integrity? Hmmm, no not quite, considering half his cabinet is either been indicted, under investigation, should be indicted or living it up with hookers. Intelligence? Wow, not by a long shot.

Turns out, that’s the face of command.

Today our fearless leader declared, in his usual condescending tone: “The question is, ‘Who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders? As you know, my position is clear – I’m the commander guy”

Can’t you just see him, slouched over that podium, talking to us Americans as if we have a hard time pronouncing the word ‘transmission’. “You see here, my fellow Americans, you come from a country called America, and I, am your leader. Just call me the Commander in uhm… uhm.. uh..
ah hell just call me the Commander Guy!”

What a maroon!

Well I’ll give him one …

I found this interesting. Gonzales getting pummeled at a Senate hearing on his involvement in the U.S. Attorney scandals, by none other than Republican Arlen Specter. Granted Specter is really more of an independent or a Democrat at this point, he’s a traditional Republican in the truest sense, which shows you how far to the right the Republicans have gone.

Gonzales is trying to defend his position that charges members of the Bush Administration for leaning on numerous U.S. attorneys to act in the interest of political campaigns, including to drum up investigations against Democrats and to pull attorneys working on rape and murder cases to satisfy an illegal immigration Republican running in Southern California.

Here is a time line.

This is abuse of power if I’ve ever seen it. It is not unethical to fire attorneys because they are not doing their jobs, but to fire them because they are not helping Republicans get elected is not just a misuse of government resources, it sets a frightening precedent. If they use the U.S. attorneys for strictly partisan political ends, then how else will they use the law to further their cause? Where will it end?

___

Then the …

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

The Bush regime is so crooked, so backward, so prone to elitism that they can’t even stay out of trouble in places where its almost impossible to get into trouble.

Paul “the Where?” Wolfowitz is now caught in a scandal where he funneled a plush job and unjustifiable massive raises to a secret, Libyan-born lover. Sounds juicy doesn’t it?

Paul Wolfowitz was given the position of President of the World Bank as a thank you gift. A thank you for all the hard work he did to get this country to invade Iraq, but also a strategic maneuver. A Now that you’ve become a lightening rod, please take this well regarded, but quiet and out of the way, esteemed position where you can play with the lives of third world countries at your political will type of maneuver. Since Americans don’t care about the World Bank, it is supposed to be a quiet place where disgraced leaders, like Vietnam era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, can go to catch some R&R and even do some good in the world like combating the spread of diseases, a place to regain one’s lost soul.

Yet the werewolf …

Nasty Ann Coulter, the venomous foul mouthpiece of the Right, is coming under attack for plagiarism. Yes that’s right, her infamous new book, which no doubt will sell well to suckers who eat up her useless ramblings, is plagued with passages lifted literally word for word from other sources. Her work has also been called sloppy and lacking of academic merit, as she used passages completely out of context and intended to boost her credibility where credibility is severely lacking.

Ms. Coulter is famous now for railing on 9-11 widows as “harpies” who may have been divorced from their husbands anyway! She also told them all to shut up and sit quiet because she could not attack them! This unspeakable hypocrisy comes as she exploited the death of 9-11 victims anyway, using it as verbal ammunition to help propel this country in to a war it did not need. She says she can’t attack the widows, but apparently she can. Just as anyone in this country is free to use their fame to make naive and moronic statements. It is just simply sad that her books keep selling. Proving that one …

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is cracking his whip on slacking employees. No doubt do to the enormous decline in Fox News ratings. Last quarter alone, down 8%.

Probably because the Republicans are doing what they always do best, stick their fingers in their ears when reality hits the fan. I think they see they will be blamed for what is turning out to be a disaster of a war. I think they see that all their talk of big government and their fearless leader made government much, much bigger with Homeland Security and expanded war profits. I think they see that corruption, indictments, corporate welfare and war are not ways to bring “integrity back into the White House".

So they do what they always do best, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Well maybe the last one. Since we have already determined that corruption, indictments and corporate welfare are not good, perhaps they are evil, and some keep speaking in defense of it.

What a sad sort of events. That the party united behind Bush thought they would not only change America for good and make them good Christians, but …

The handwritten note Rockefeller wrote Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003

While American’s focus on the Iraq War, a Supreme Court justice is being decided. The Radical Wrong want to slip this anti-abortion pro-corporate crony through the system while no one is looking.

The Washington Post has a current blog on the prevailing views toward Alito. Check it out! You may even see the following comment:

It is absurd to assume that the America of ‘81 or even ‘85 is the same America today. Times have changed, and the polls suggest a noticeable shift in public opinion towards Roe v. Wade. The Democrats have every right to defend the majority viewpoint, and I would hope they would defend other controversial decisions that have become the law such as Miranda or civil rights laws.

The conservative right wing will pull out any excuse to achieve their objective. This LaRue article is another classic case of politics as usual and the constant focus on the tactical battle, rather than the overall strategy.

The bottom line is that the Radical Right want to overturn Roe v. Wade, and will stop at nothing to do so. The Democrats should stick to their guns and hold their ground on what is a law that most American’s have come to …

Our good old wacky right-wing nut job pal, Bill O’Reilly, in a recent rant on his National Radio Show, apparently invited Al Qaeda to attack San Francisco.

In a response to the city by the bay’s passing of a ballot measure which prohibited Armed Services recruiters from entering public schools, the right-wing pundit said “[I]f Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off-limits to you, except San Francisco.”

The clip was then censored from the transcript and delayed broadcasts. The O’Reilly team apparently tried to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Lucky for him, the major media is in the hands of the corporations who think along the same lines as his distorted views, as the story had no traction in the major media. If a Lefty had said anything in the same vain, they would have been stoned to death by the right leaning media.

However, a few outlets, such as MSNBC, did report the story.

O’Reilly then promised to target and even …