1487 +6=

1493

Two More Draped In Blue

Smuggled home in the dead of night
Tucked in blankets of red and white.

1487

Max Baucus Picture In USA Today

Dems not sold on Bush plan, despite courting

I would strongly advise any Senator or Congressperson regardless of their party not to get involved with this scam. Every story they tell crumbles and turns to dust under the slightest scrutiny.

They need a Democrat, and this is the lengths they have gone to so far:

• The president has barnstormed through eight states, including five whose Democratic senators he and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, consider ripe for the picking.

• The president has met with Senate and House Democrats to discuss Social Security 10 times since he was inaugurated five weeks ago.

• Top administration officials are calling Democratic senators continually. Among the lobbyists: Treasury Secretary John Snow; Allan Hubbard, Bush's new chief economic adviser; and budget director Joshua Bolten.

• The Republican National Committee is booking dozens of advocates on local talk-radio shows, driving supporters to congressional town hall meetings and circulating petitions in every state.

• The White House is coordinating with allied outside groups that plan to spend millions of dollars in advertising and outreach to support the plan. Lobbyists from the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a business coalition, have visited seven moderate Democratic senators or their staffs this month.

The people who want this want it bad and they are sliming and rolling on anyone and everyone who gets in their way. Republicans, Democrats, the AARP. It does not matter who you are or what you do; they are determined to have their way.

Did you know they are going after the AARP, and this is the toned down version?

It's all comming out of a tiny little office, ironically one that does fundraisers and advocacy for The Republican Governor's Association. The very same Republican Governors Association that spent so much money running malicious television ads against Brian Schweitzer last fall?

They are both shameless and brazen, they've got their dirty little fingers in everybody's pies!

What thinking person wouldn't steer as far around that as possible?

Revisiting The Good News

Remember the good old days right after we won the war?

The wisest of all occupational leaderships decided to let the little things like water, electricity, security and employment slide for the really important stuff like redesigning the flag.

Next wise choice, making the 'murican people feel good by having the soldiers add a few coats of paint to some schools when they weren't lobbying the folks back home to send candy bars and soccer balls.

So what if women and Christians have almost completely lost all their former rights in the new "Democratic" Iraq? They should focus on the beauty of the light blue flag.

Another One Gone

1485. That is 45 dead soldiers and an unknown number of wounded since Iraq officially became a "Democratic" country.

One Two

Draped in Red, White and Blue.

1484

Dumbest Nightline Ever

"The Tipping Point" Ted Koppel, Tom Friedman and Malcom Gladwell (?) in an ever lovin' delusional circle jerk grasping and fabricating to the beat of the band.

Rube a doob a lube

Three whores on the tube

Swept away with the uncontrollable virus of freedom no longer under occupation

Must See Video

Can you read the writing on the wall?

Property Rights And Eminent Domain Abuse

I hear people on the radio complaining about property rights when they can't do things they aren't zoned for all the time. It's time they learned that property rights really mean that you should be able to keep it or sell it as you see fit.

Right now everyone is talking about Kelo v New London because it is going before The Supreme Court. Unfortunately the citizens of New London aren't the first to be subjected to the heartache and hassle that a greedy government can dish out.

Dick and Nancy Saha of Coatesville, Pa. have been fighting their city to retain the property they poured decaded of love and hard work into since 1999 when they were informed that the city wanted to take their farm for a golf course! It's been a year since they updated their site, but the legal fight has used up most of their retirement savings.

Is this right? Bankrupting people and stealing their land is something that happens in other countries like India.

I sincerely hope the Court will uphold our right to own property and go on about the business of being American Citizens.

update

There is another notable case of people's property being plundered at bargain basement rates to benefit a few Texas Hats, among them our very own not yet President Bush.

Thanks to Riggsveda for the reminder and the hand delivered link.

I have a stack of court documents from Arlington that portray the "sordid and shocking tale" of the Rangers stadium, as one lawsuit puts it. Essentially, Mr. Bush and the owners' group he led bullied and misled the city into raising taxes to build a $200 million stadium that in effect would be handed over to the Rangers. As part of the deal, the city would even confiscate land from private owners so that the Rangers owners could engage in real estate speculation.

"It was a $200 million transfer to Bush and Rangers owners," complains Jim Runzheimer, an anti-tax campaigner in Arlington.

William Eastland, a leading Republican in Arlington, is also outraged, and puts it this way: "You're using public money for a private purpose." Mr. Eastland was a Bush delegate to the Republican National Convention in 2000 but still believes that the Bush group behaved shadily and against the public interest.

Local voters overwhelmingly approved the deal, so maybe we shouldn't get so exercised by star-struck local officials giving $200 million to rich baseball owners. But the most unseemly part of the deal was that Mr. Bush and the Rangers' owners conspired with city officials to seize private property that would be handed over to the Bush group.

"A group of wealthy and influential people threatened and traded their way into an unprecedented takeover of government power and private property in an awesome display of greed and avarice," charges a lawsuit by the landowners, in what strikes me as a fair recitation of events. Another suit charges that the deal "can only be described as astounding, unprecedented and blatantly illegal."

A copy of the secret agreement among Mr. Bush and the other Rangers owners shows that they intended to make money not just by running a baseball club but also by land speculation.

For example, one owner found a nice chunk of land and sent a memo suggesting that it "sounds like another condemnation candidate if you want to work the site into your master plan," according to the court documents. Another of the owners' internal memos casts a proprietary gaze on a property and declares: "We plan to condemn this land."

For a group of financiers to go around town admiring properties and deciding which to seize through the government power of condemnation so that they can acquire free land and speculate on it is appalling. Even Kazakhstan would blush at such practices.

Horace Kelton, for example, owned land that the Rangers wanted. The owners got Arlington to seize it, with the city paying less than $1.50 per square foot even though it had previously paid $10 a square foot for other land nearby.

"It was an extremely low price, and that's why we had a court case that lasted seven years," Mr. Kelton recalled.

Eventually, his family got $11 a square foot.

I'm One Sick Puppy

I've spent the last few days on mostly conservative sites, not the stupid hateful ones, just the ones where we may or may not have different opinions if so much of what they base their opinions wasn't cranked up in right wing think tanks. It is reassuring that they really are a lot more like us than the right wing instigators would have us believe.

I suspected it all along, the conservatives I know here really are hard working people who love their families and serve their communities just like we do. They are just too busy to spend their lives obsessing about the latest Rove Bomb and daily distraction.

Not me though. I am thoroughly and utterly obsesed with the idea that we could reclaim our country if we could get around the people who divide and conquer us for their own corporate payola.

So I took a break to see what the other Montana folks are talking about and what their friends are talking about and what the people they link to are talking about...

I found this, so we can maybe keep track of some of our local Iraqis. Sure I expect them to put the very best face on things so their friends and families won't worry so much, but don't we all do that to some extent?

I should have called it quits then or at least stopped to write the post where I thank everybody for SJ 19 through the committee with a 12-0 vote and a step closer to the full Senate. That would have been the reasonable thing to do but...

Damn internets. You go one place and then another and another until you find something so sickening and vile that you don't even go unless you are as deranged as I am. I laughed until I cried.

Coffin Commodities

Up by four.

Yes I am ticked off. How many families have to go through this because their government knowingly lied to them and continues to lie to them?

I see the people who are comming from and going to Iraq often enough to know they are not monsters and they are not stupid, either. Every single one of them that I have spoken to genuinely believes they are there to do a good thing.

I loathe the lies that took them and keeps them there.

I detest the helplessness I feel when I see their children and their families around town. The only thing I can ever say is that I am sorry and that I hope they can stay safe.

That's not even adequate, but I would not want to hurt the feelings of the ones most likely to pay the price.

HTML Gone Wild!

I thought that it was just me, that I couldn't access my links through this computer. It wasn't.

Thanks to the ever wonderful Riggsvedda for knowing that it is really okay to tell granny she's off her rocker and to Sally (or maybe it's Karen or Laura-I'm easily confused)to point out that I was not only off my rocker, but I was stark raving naked as well. eew!

Thanks for telling me. I fixed all of February's posts (I think, but my eyes are funky so let me know if I missed some.)

Most of all, thanks to all those cows who weren't having difficult births during the minute that it took Sally to figure out what my problem was.

Here We Go Again

Goodbye # 1478.

The Stench Of Failure

Only raised by one today. 1477.