GOP Rats jumping the USS Congress

Has anybody been paying attention this? I think we need like a chart showing the number of Republicans leaving public office, whether in handcuffs or in embarrassment.

Just ten minutes ago, I caught on Democratic Underground that the FBI raided the family business of Congress Rep Rick Renzi (R-AZ).

As a result of the raid, Renzi is stepping down from his seat on the House Intelligence Committee, according to a statement from his office obtained Thursday evening by Roll Call.

“Today, the FBI came to my family’s business to obtain documents related to their investigation,” Renzi said. “I view these actions as the first step in bringing out the truth. Until this matter is resolved, I will take a leave of absence from the House Intelligence Committee. I intend to fully cooperate with this investigation.”

Ewwps.

Yet, it was just the day before yesterday that the FBI raided the private home of Congressman John Doolittle (R-CA) in Northern Virginia.

Doolittle has been under fire for paying his wife’s company, Sierra Dominion, a 15 percent commission on all contributions that the company raised for Doolittle’s campaign committee and leadership PAC. Her only other clients were Abramoff’s former firm, Greenberg Traurig; Abramoff’s former restaurant Signatures; and the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, which Ed Buckham, a former chief of staff to ex-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), created.

Ewwps.

Yet, posted just last week – rumors have begun to fly around the resignation of US Senator “Pajama Pete” Domenici (R-NM). Nicknamed for the fact, Senator Demenici dials up US Attorney David Iglasias last Fall asking about legal investigations going on. Asking like he belonged on the Sopranos.  Domenici even got into the heavy breathing routine with the prosecutor.

During Congress’ recess in December, Domenici was the subject of gossipy news stories when he was sighted in a Senate hallway wearing loose-fitting pants some said looked like pajamas. He said they were hunting pants, but the state Democratic Party now refers to him as “Pajama Pete.”

Ewwps.

With Domenici leaving Congress, it’s another guaranteed seat for the Democrats.

So let’s all remember: “When you vote Republican…An Angel looses her wings”. Err…or was that “..You’re not being very Patriotic!”. Err..wait. No, that’s not right. It was: “When you vote Republican…You’re not supporting our troops!”

The E-mail dead-letter office

The past few weeks, the White House has been telling the Press Corps that they’ve magically “lost” some 5 million-odd email messages. Which is probably one of the most ludicrous statements ever made in public in relation to any computer network system. The more time flies, the more ridiculous the bag of excuses become and the most insulting to the very base of computer systems administration and computer engineering.

Let’s cut to the chase and ignore the Devil in all of those details. All of it’s irrelevant anyway. In a nutshell: Bush takes the White House in 2000 and the Republican National Convention gives some of his staff computer equipment such as notebook computers, Blackberries, PDA’s or whatever. The Presidential Records Act (1978) requires:

the president to preserve all presidential records, which are defined as those records relating to the “activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of [the president’s] constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties. . .”

So the law states that these White House staffers can use those RNC personal computers for anything BUT doing the job they’ve been assigned to do. If they wanna send an email to the RNC on why Republican Senator George Allen (R-PA) lost his election last November, they can use the RNC machine…no problem. But they don’t pay any attention to the law – but rather use whatever computer notebook is handy.

Dana Perino first showed up stating that they had lost email messages. Then she comes out to say that they’ve lost a lot of email messages, a stunning 5,000,000 of them to be guessed at. Then she shows up and says she just doesnt’ know what she’s talking about – there’s email lost, but everybody’s confused as to exactly what’s been lost.

CNN’s White House correspondent Ed Henry then pressed her on why she had earlier stated that RNC emails had been archived for a very long time when the White House now claims that those emails have been lost. On March 27, Perino said RNC archiving was “something that was in place” for years. Today, she backed off that statement and said, “We have developed a better understanding of how the RNC archived or did not archive certain e-mails.” She refused to further elaborate.

You see, here’s where they find themselves in the pinch. Since some of their data has been used on those RNC machines, the Democratically controlled Congress has a right to ask for that data – under the law. And if they’re allowed to rummage through RNC file servers…well, now you know why email messages are missing – err… allegedly missing.

And, again…this is all pure rubbish.

I’ve been a computer network engineer for about twenty seven years. I’ve managed email servers on Sun Solaris networks, on Microsoft based networks, Novell networks, even a few odd-ball networks….and guess what: “Saying we’ve lost email” is unacceptable under any circumstance.

Had a fire in the computer room? Unacceptable.

Had a hard drive crash? Unacceptable.

Contracted a virus? Nope! Not acceptable.

Had a computer hacker? Ooops… Umm… Not acceptable.

The New York Times:

“This sounds like the administration’s version of the dog ate my homework,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the dismissal of the prosecutors.

Senator Leahy happens to be correct, at least he’s being “nice”.

There is no reason for any lost data, under any circumstance. Whether you’re a professional computer systems administrator at a local pharmacy or a network engineer working in the White House. It’s called “a tape backup”. And if your latest tape backup is corrupt, you go back to the previous tape backup.

This tape backup unit is made by HP, it’s a nice little unit. You would use this on a machine with a few gigabytes of data.

However, this one is a great big backup system. It holds “terrabytes” of data. This is the kind of a backup system that the White House networks would be using.

These White House fools are claiming that they’ve lost 5 million email messages over the past three to four years. And yet they have no tape backups for this data?

Ummmmm…I don’t think so.

Sam Seder quits: Lionel gets tapped to take his place

Stephanie Miller is my favorite for my “Morning rush-hour“. Why would Air America pick an ambiguous person like “Lionel” to be a replacement? It doesn’t make sense.

My biggest complaint about Miller is that everything on her site is a “for pay”. Did you hear something this morning on her show that made you laugh? Go pay her some money to hear it again. That’s pretty boring.
But I digress. Lionel? AAR thinks Lionel will draw more listeners than Miller? Hrmmm…

The graphic is recognized.

Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

I’ve not stopped mourning the loss of Molly Ivins. I heard a dozen conversations on XM and AM radio about how Ivins would expect her readers to grow and learn from her work. Loosing Vonnegut is an added mourned loss. Now that we’ve lost Mr. Vonnegut, the pain simply increases.

Sasquatch sighted in the Washington DC area!

 

 

 

 

Well duh… It’s not me!

Click the Fruit Fly!!

cheeshe! what’s up with you?

Found on under a paintcan

I’ve been annoying a few fruit bowls in the kitchen and on the dining room table lately. Being busy means that your blog sucks, but that’s what happens anyway. In the meantime the world continues to go on with or without you and that’s just the way it goes. So here’s what I found underneath a paintcan; hopefully you’ll be able to live a bigger and heartier life because of it.

BILL’O (again)

Bill O’Reilly invites a retired USA colonel onto his show to discuss the Iranians who’ve taken British military hostage. Colonel Ann Wright answers his questions as they’re presented to her. BillO immediately jumps at the opportunity to point out that the retired Colonel has an opinion and an answer to the questions, and they’re not the responses he was hoping to hear. Typical of BillO, he attacks the woman verbally, and then he cuts her mike and holds her image muted while he squirms with delight that he gets to have the last word. Please don’t be squeemish: Go on ahead and watch the video, it’s about 3 minutes long and you get the idea that Colonel Wright has been punked.

Why anybody would even want to be on televison with BillO? Perhaps Colonel Wright deserves the embarrassment.

On the other hand: I do have to admire people like Bill O’Reilly; it’s stunning how well he demostrates his ability to Support Our Troops.

Monica-Gate version 2.0

Monica Goodling, a US Dept of Justice official is the liason between the Oval Office and US Attorney General’s office. She’s also a product of Regent University, that’s Pat Robertson and the 700 Club. So it’s safe to say that she’s really a liason between all three offices.

Two weeks ago, while the Gonzalez Lying to Congress case was just getting altitude in the media, Ms. Goodling was quick to aquire an attorney who was even quicker to tell the media that Ms. Goodling was planning on pleading the 5th Amendment.

“The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real,” said the lawyer, John Dowd.

Hrmm…What’s wrong with this picture?! Oh that’s right! Goodling’s attorney forgot! You can’t claim the 5th Amendment right to avoid indicting someone else. You can only plead the 5th to avoid incriminating yourself!(These Regent University students, they’re dumber after they graduate than they were before they were assigned a dorm room!)

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Sub-Committee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) had a short meet-n-greet today and fired off a letter explaining the rules to Goodling and her attorney.

As McJoan of DailyKos pointed out; the Republicans weren’t always so keen on that option of pleading the 5th. But of course, the 5th Amendment was only included in the US Constitution for the convenience of Republicans!

Bush lies to the people of the United States (again)

Aravosis, quickly becoming on of my favorite people on the Internet points out the obvious. In today’s speech to the U.S., Bush complained bitterly about how the Democrats in Congress shouldn’t be meddling in the affairs of war, giving him a bill filled with “pork”, blah blah blah.

But interesting is that Bush stated that the surge in troops was at the request of the generals on the ground in Iraq. And it’s Aravosis who points out that this is a bold-faced lie:

Bush just spoke to the nation, trying to convince the public to support his Iraq quagmire, and he claimed again that the surge, the escalation, was the idea of his commanders in the field, and he’s just following their advice.

In fact, all of the Joint Chiefs, the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, ALL opposed the surge.

In fact, everybody from the people in Iraq (including Maliki himself) have expressed their opposition to a surge in troops. The American people voted against anymore of this crap in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group has opposed anymore meddling in this Iraqi Civil War (that Bush started) and Congress have all expressed opposition to any continuance in this war of his.

Aravosis nails the last spike into the coffin with this tidbit:

And remember, it was just a few months ago, that the commanders on the ground were SO opposed to the surge that Bush came out and said, for the first time, that he WOULDN’T listen to commanders on the ground anymore.

Sweedish couple to name their newborn child “Metallica”

Michael and Karolina Tomaro are in a fight for their right to name their newborn baby girl “Metallica” after the legendary rock band. The Sweedish government’s tax office has refused to let them name the child with such an ugly moniker.

Lower office authorities have backed the couple’s right to name their child anything they want, however the Sweedish National Tax Board has refused to register the name. What’s even more bizarre about the story is that:

The couple was backed by the County Administrative Court in Goteborg, which ruled on March 13 that there was no reason to block the name. It also noted that there already is a woman in Sweden with Metallica as a middle name.

I love this story so much because I’m thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Frank Zappa naming their kid Moon Unit. In the phone book, you have to look up “Zappa, Moon Unit.” And here comes a listing for “Tomaro Metallica”.

I wonder what they’ll name their next kid. “Flock of Seagulls”? “Imperial Drag”? Oh! Oh! Let me!! Let me!

ehem: “Barenaked Ladies”!

Mormons to Cheney: Even we hate you now

Just back in December, I found the article discussing the fact that Southern Methodist University had told the Bush Administration that they will not allow the “Bush Library” to be built on their campus. SMU, Laura (“Pickles”) Bush’s alma matre, has been approached by the White House with the current Adminstration looking for an appropriate place to house massive amounts of quality editions of “My Pet Goat. SMU, not willing to be the embarrassment of academia by allowing the Bush Legacy to be a pox on their campus, has told the White House that they’re certainly not too interested in the prospect.

Now, Wonkette points to the fact that yet another religious university has begun to object to Darth Vader, the Vice President of the United States, from visiting their campus.

Brigham Young University, the fake college where kids from the Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints can go to receive their worthless degree without ever having to be exposed to a single idea contrary to their upbringing, has apparently inched itself closer to reality: they know Vice President Dick Cheney is an evil vampire hellbent on conquering the earth and eating our children.

To quote Wonkette’s quote who quoted:

The private university, which is owned by the Mormon church, has “a heavy emphasis on personal honesty and integrity in all we do,” said Warner Woodworth, a professor at BYU’s business school. “Cheney just doesn’t measure up.”

I think the Mormon church has finally shown their trump card: Buying the presidency via Mass Governor Mitt Romney makes it all the more important that they distance themselves from The Bush Co as quickly as possible.

It’s fascinating how quickly Jesus can hate you these days. There used to be a time when Jesus loved the Bush Administration. Now they’re treated like .. ehem “a leper”.

I think John Smith would probably turn over in his grave if he knew his disciples were acting like ordinary Christians.