Morgana this is a fantastic article. I cannot think of a better title for this election eve full moon than "Dark Waters." There is so much there is can wear out the astrologer's mind. I know you aren't well right now so I doubley thank you for this outstanding read on the Scorpio Full Moon.

I am attaching an article about the 2004 election and that John Kerry knew it and how we need to be more careful how much to trust the Democrats. I watched Rev. Haggard lie so effortlessly and convincingly and thought of our politicians and how much we want to believe the lie, whether in church or at the polls. Terrific article Morgana, very chilling.

http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=305

Be still my heart! Uhmm what a wonderful article, Morgana and what a wonderful response, Sally.
I have always loved my Scorpios and love the time of sun in scorpio. Cut right through the BS.
Big inapiration for me in Bernie Sanders-we could learn a lot from him about what we need and how to proceed. The first thing is don't believe a thing the glossy magazines, tv, radio push. they are all out to get us working for $5 an hour and hoping we all die early becuase we can't afford the doctor.
Margana I don't think I knew that you aren't well. Here is a Scorpio powered intention that you mend soon.

Clymela thanks for the energy boost. It's the creeping crud, I came down with it over Labor Day, thought I got over it and it knocked me back down again. My husband has homemade chicken soup on the stove cooking and I've a hot mug of green tea.
With all that is popping around the country one just goes, wow. What a messy end to the Piscean Age. How Haggard thought he wouldn't get busted is absolutely beyond me.
Well my popcorn will be ready and waiting election night. And I am excited, I am working for that Blue Wave, my Scorpio quiet reflective husband has been on the phones doing GOTV. Giving Bush another two years free reign is too much to contemplate.

That's a wonderful point, Clymela... we want very much... with all our hearts... for folks everywhere to be here, to be healthy, to be wanted, to be loved, to be cherished. That's the REAL human way of being. These critters who wish elsewise... well, just mebbe they ain't human. (Here's the face of dick purle... something you don't want to see at anytime... particularly at dusk while in a graveyard. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/05/conservative-richard-perl_n_33310.html There's something deeply WRONG with these people!)

Get better soon, Morgana!! You're wanted, loved & beautiful.

Bravo Morgana, you can sing for me any time!!

Thank you!

Something got ahold of the Piscean Age, too... it didn't manifest clearly or beautifully. What we got... at least in the west... was a bizarre yang anima in the persons of gay homophobic collective churchy Marys on a death rampage crushing a natural coming forth of yin energies inherent within everyone. We got this terrible drag-hag queen instead of a Queen of Heaven. We got this strange egoic creation of yang that had determined it was going to be ruler forever & ever & to hell with Universal Natural Process!

JoannaOregon you evoke images of Mother Nature, in the "don't mess with me" flavor. These folks really need to get over themselves.

That's the point, Morgana... the boyz DID mess with Mother Nature thruout the Pisces Age. "She" as Mother Nature, women, & the anima in men, was not allowed to have her age/day in the sun... er, the moon. And the usurpers apparently got away with it is the horror of it all. Did the collective Ego/yang get away with bucking natural law, or did it?! It's a very valid question on reality vs psychosis.

There's something deeply WRONG with these people!)

I'm afraid it's much worse than that Joanna O. They are downright SINISTER , or in Bush's lingo they would be described as EVIL, and what galls me is that they are all getting away with it - the neo-cons I mean.

Riverbend on Sadam's verdict:

When All Else Fails...
… Execute the dictator. It’s that simple. When American troops are being killed by the dozen, when the country you are occupying is threatening to break up into smaller countries, when you have militias and death squads roaming the streets and you’ve put a group of Mullahs in power- execute the dictator.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

GOP Must Go...from Pat Buchanan's magazine
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_11_20/feature.html

A little "au courant music" from Huntington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-hipp/meth-and-man-ass_b_33326.html

Dark waters, turbulent waters. Oh, Miz Morgana, you do so capture it beautifully. Thanks ever so much--and do recover quickly.

More from Huffington Post...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/04/haggards-muscle-stud-_n_33281.html

Haggard and the White House: Both Living in Denial (8 comments )

Let's face it: the Bush administration is sick. The fall of Ted Haggard is just the latest manifestation of the central disease of President Bush and his cohorts: the pathological refusal to accept reality, and the delusion that reality can be changed by rhetoric.

As Andrew Sullivan said last week on CNN, "this is not an election anymore, it's an intervention."

But while it's the administration that's sick, it's the whole country that's suffering.

How many more examples of this disease do we need? The insurgency is in its "last throes," we've "turned the corner" in Iraq, gutting Social Security would "save" it, global warming doesn't exist, evolution is just "a theory," Rumsfeld and Cheney are "doing a fantastic job" etc., etc., etc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/haggard-and-the-white-hou_b_33324.html

Just excellent Morgana. Dark waters is such an apt theme for these times.

Homeopathy did a lot to help me when I had the crud. That and Airborne. Sending you visualization of a shining golden aura health.

.............

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/11/06/scandal/

The Scandal Sheet

Don't just read it and weep -- pin it on your wall, fax it to Nancy Pelosi. A dozen reasons to throw the bums out of Washington.

By Mark Follman and Tracy Clark-Flory

...............

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/11/06/election_overview/

Can the Democrats stay afloat?

Although local and state polls still look gloomy for the GOP, two national surveys say the race is tightening.

By Walter Shapiro

.................

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/11/05/dems_close/

The Democrats' best slogan: "Bush lost the war"

He also lowered Paris Hilton's taxes and botched the job of finding Osama. A few last talking points to help the party win back Congress.
By Bill Maher

Comment

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bush and Blair have forfeited the moral authority to hang Saddam

The verdict on the former Iraqi dictator is just, but everything stinks about the process by which it has been reached

Max Hastings
Monday November 6, 2006
The Guardian

There can be no doubt about the moral justice of yesterday's Baghdad tribunal judgment on Saddam Hussein. He was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, chiefly Kurds and Shias, and arguably for many more killed in the Iran-Iraq war.
Yet it is quite another matter whether it is right or politically prudent to execute him, after the shambles of a trial that he has undergone. Washington was always determined that Saddam should die - but at the hands of his own people rather than those of Americans. George Bush's handling of this issue restores one's respect for Pontius Pilate. The president has achieved the almost impossible feat of generating some sympathy for Saddam, at least in Muslim societies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1940269,00.html

Saddam Hussein

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uncertain justice

Leader
Monday November 6, 2006
The Guardian

Not many people outside Iraq had ever heard of a little town called Dujail before Saddam Hussein stood trial for the crimes against humanity that were committed there when he was the unchallenged ruler of his country in 1982. Whatever else happened yesterday when he was sentenced to death for those crimes, he expressed not a hint of remorse for the 148 victims who were tortured and executed after a botched attempt on his life. Instead, he responded to the judge's words by posturing in the dock, shouting "Long live the Iraqi people", and denouncing the "invaders" and "traitors" who brought about his own demise in 2003.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1940254,00.html

Author accuses government of failure of leadership

Rory McCarthy
Monday November 6, 2006
The Guardian

David Grossman, one of Israel's most admired authors and a leading figure on the Israeli left, appeared in public for the first time since the death of his son in the Lebanon war to deliver an impassioned speech criticising the government for "hollow" leadership and for failing to negotiate with the Palestinians.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1940380,00.html

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last update - 09:40 05/11/2006
Neck-and-neck in trouble
By Zvi Bar'el

There seems to be a moment when any strong country, not to mention a world power, begins to choke on its own might. It is so strong, so armed to the teeth, and yet so helpless in the face of much smaller, almost primitive forces that frustration and disappointment alone feed its continued warfare, not strategy, not goals, and not prestige. Only stupefying inertia.

Two sister countries are now locked in such choke holds. The United States in Iraq, and Israel in the territories. Washington has ostensibly achieved everything it set out to in Iraq: Saddam Hussein was toppled, a new government was established by democratic elections, Iraq is no longer the strategic threat it was. And the result: total destruction. Because under the "new order" that has been set up, there is no country. It is as if someone planned its destruction so that it would, in any case, no longer be a threat.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=783713

This is a fantastic article. I hope you get a chance to give it a read.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A416100

Page Two: The Time of the Toad

The New McCarthyism, or why the way the Dixie Chicks incident passes into history matters

................

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/07/MNGAFHJJL91.DTL

Huge solar storms could zap Earth, scientists warn
Next sunspot cycle may disrupt power, communications

November 6, 2006

Bush Trumpets Verdict in Iraq as Some Polls Lift G.O.P. Spirit

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — President Bush on Sunday seized on the conviction of Saddam Hussein as a milestone in Iraq, seeking to rally Republican voters with the issue of national security as some polls suggested that his party might be making gains in the final hours of the campaign.

The White House said the timing of the announcement, two days before Election Day, had nothing to do with American politics and had been dictated by the Iraqi court. But Mr. Bush moved quickly to put it to use in what has been his central strategic imperative over the past week, trying to rouse Republican voters to turn out.

“Today we witnessed a landmark event in the history of Iraq: Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal,” Mr. Bush said to roars of approval in a hockey auditorium packed with supporters in Grand Island, Neb. “Saddam Hussein’s trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/us/politics/06vote.html?ei=5094&en=c3f87bb9a7234d62&hp=&ex=1162789200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

"bush Trumpets Verdict in Iraq as Some Polls Lift GOP Spirit"

Now THAT'S THE dumbest thing/article I've read all day...

Prowling Baghdad with a sidearm and a defective bulletproof-vest

By Mike Whitney

None of the people who started this war will ever be held accountable. In fact, the cabal of militarists, think-tank sycophants, and genocidal nutbars, who operate covertly behind the scenes, are probably devising their next bloodbath already. Unless we root them out, the cancer will persist.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15513.htm

===
Fourteen Senators Face Voters for the First Time since Authorizing Iraq War

By Stephen Zunes

It should be remembered that it was the Democrats who controlled the Senate in the fall of 2002 when the Senate voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. Majority leader Tom Daschle and assistant majority leader Harry Reid led the majority of their fellow Senate Democrats in voting to launch a war of aggression against a country that, despite their claims to the contrary, was no threat to the security of the United States.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15510.htm

===
Bush Plans Post-Election Call Up Of National Guard And Reserves

By Brent Budowsky

Plans are secretly underway for a suprise new call up of National Guard and Reserves to be announced sometime after the election.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15511.htm

Woe to the Republicans if they do somehow manage to retain control of Congress on Tuesday! As sure as the sun is hot and water is wet, they will come to regret it.

The public is finally starting to awaken and will blame the party in control of government over the past decade for everything that has gone wrong in this country, especially if it retains power without any real plan to address the real problems and issues facing the US. Saddam being put to death doesn't equate with having a living-wage job with benefits, something that too few Americans actually possess. Nor do the spectres of abortion and gay marriage equate for most Americans with an affordable college education, adequate health care or a reliable, comfortable retirement.

Therefore, another forced, narrow victory for a ideologue-dominated, out-of-touch GOP in 2006 could easily lead to a devestating rout in 2008 as public discontent boils over into rage at the lack of progress or solutions. If Republicans cling to power too long, they will be swept away into history by a nation having reached its' breaking point.

Neo if the GOP wins it will be on election fraud once again, including robocalls going on in some states. Morgana nailed it with "Dark Waters" for the Full Moon. Election day looks pretty bad as well, it's the mercury retrograde in scorp and squaring Neptune, along with Venus and the Sun. I don't like it at all.

Media Matters for today

http://mediamatters.org/

Although the republicans WILL steel as many votes as they can the question is, do enough Democrats vote to overwhelm their attempts. Do enough attempts get thwarted through the vigilance of the Democrats watching the polls - videotaping the proceedings, following the ballot boxes to their destinations, keeping close watch on the activities within the precincts, taking exit polls, etc. So much so that even if the republicans manage to steal it again there is ample evidence to use when the real investigations start.

Sunday, November 05, 2006
Limiting the Damage By PAUL KRUGMAN

November 6, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

President Bush isn’t on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.

There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that “this is not about the midterm elections.” But the editorial’s authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won’t fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won’t change strategy in Iraq; he won’t change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.

http://donkeyod.blogspot.com/2006/11/limiting-damage-by-paul-krugman.html

More than you want to know about Joe Lieberman

http://www.nedlamont.com/?s=truthaboutjoe

Morgana, this reminds me of Linda Goodman's lyrical music (Goobers especially). Like Laurie said, "you can sing for me anytime."

If someone else posted this, forgive me. . .but have any of you seen the robocall information? Rove is up to his dirty tricks again.

You'll have to scroll down, but the info is here and on democrats.com.

http://dailykos.com/

If you receive a robocall, you are being asked to mark down times and numbers of calls.

I would also suggest that we inform as many people as possible that this may be occuring.

LOL! There's a reason why there are never any photographs of the crowds when Bush is giving a speech. Here's why,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2588490

lunaoscura, that pic of Bush with the crowd is great ... just a thought ... Do you think they're paid "extras" and staged pics? I once went on a cattle call in Germany when I was a kid to be on the set of Rollerball. They had to fill the stadium with people rooting for the teams ... this pic reminded me of that. It was very boring and time consuming and they would tell us when to jump up and down and scream for the "heroe". Hhhuummmmmmmm. It's all perception management. Our government is one big illusion that is perpetuated on all of us. Yeah, there are some idiots out there ... but no where near enough to justify these 6 years and 3 elections.

Marta,

Your experience is right on. When you look at the picture there are people who are too young to vote, which means whole congregations were bussed in. The boredom is very real. If you think about it most people going to a rally or in the presence of an important figure, especially the President of the United States are enthralled just to look at him in person. And if they love the candidate they will just gaze at him in adoration. These people have been to so many of these rallies (remember they are all hand picked which means they get to go to Bush rallies over and over and over and listen to the same sound bites for hundreds and hundreds of times. Yikes! Some of them are probably ready to slit their wrists by now!

It looked to me that old wargeezer n' crazy george was just pasted into that pic... nobody's looking at it!

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20061105_gore_vidal_the_most_important_election_in_my_lifetime/

Gore Vidal - The Most Important Election in My Lifetime

Hey all

I uploaded the Mid-term Election chart with a few asteroids for flavor.

http://www.morganaseawalker.com/2006MEA.JPG

Who knows maybe that the people will make themselves heard.

Science fiction, anyone?

http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/ElectionSatelliteActivity.htm

hey Garry, from that article: “But it gets worse,” said Webb. “High-frequency transponder devices can listen to and see Americans through their own television screens via cable transmissions.”

I had heard about this years ago when the plasma screens came out, that they were equipped with something to allow transmissions.

Sally, check this out:
Rev. Moon and the black clergy
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611050349nov05,1,1588926.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

* Midterm Election Nov 7, 2006.

One of the most outstanding aspects dominating tomorrow's election is Saturn in Leo trine Pluto in Sagittarius. It is very close... 24/25. You couldn't have a better aspect for strong, inspired leadership. This indicates that no matter what majority emerges, tomorrow there will be some talented men & women elected all across the country in local govt, & hopefully, a touch in the national. We don't know who they are yet. They've been campaigning in towns/cities outside of the national media glare. And there are many newcomers.

Extreme ideology has had its day. Final Act. Pluto in Sagittarius. What these times have brought is a modicum of honesty to the political process, altho it's impossible to see right now. It will reflect in tomorrow's vote. People are beginning to realize the importance of philosophy & policy & are taking the first baby steps to conscientious voting, with even the courage to break longtime party loyalty.

The alluring Scorpio stellium is squaring the Saturn in Leo tomorrow, but lo & behold... the ruler, Pluto, is in that beautiful trine.
This is a very auspicious aspect.

In case you're wondering who will Win the House, Aunt Isabelle & little Zoe are just about to turn the [tarot] card & find out. ... http://www.raginguniverse.blogspot.com/

* November 20, 2006 Issue
The American Conservative

GOP Must Go

Next week Americans will vote for candidates who have spent much of their campaigns addressing state/local issues. But no future historian will linger over the ideas put forth for improving schools or directing funds to highway projects.

The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways: the American people endorsed the bush presidency or they did what they could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number of republicans & democrats elected to the House/Senate.

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen-—in America & the world at large—-as a decisive “No” vote on the bush [residency] is the best outcome. We need not dwell on gwbush’s failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens thru Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his [regime]’s endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept 11, 2001 with a great challenge, bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us & why-—thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, & he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer. ... http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_11_20/feature.html

Important!!! Info for reporting election fraud for immediate action

Hi all - pls get the word out to as many as you can. On CNN toniht, Howard Deansai d that if you see any sort of election fraud, do not leave the polling place, but call 1-888-Dem-vote to report it. He actually said that "someone would be there within minutes" to help. It is really worth passing this info along to as many people as you can via email, message board, word of mouth whatever. Even one reported incident could uncover the truth of a huge fraud.

Swamp

KEITH!!!

First, read the above post by Swamp and pass that number out to everyone you know. Second, don't expect to have accurate results tomorrow, the GOP and the Dems will contest every race with election fraud written on it's face. That said here are my picks.

Senate:

MO McCaskill (D)
Penn - Casey (D)
Ohio - Sharrod Brown (D)
MD - Cardin (D)
Tenn -Corker (R) (however, Tennessee had a huge amount of people who voted early and they don't know those results, but those could favor Ford so I wouldn't be surprised if Ford pulled it out.
Virginia - Webb (D)
CT - Lamont (D) this is a "Hail Mary" hope for Lamont, but I think it might be closer than the polls indicate. Lamont has a better Astro chart tomorrow.
RI - Chaffee (R) I don't think Whitehouse can pull it out now, Chaffee is well liked and really hasn't done anything to hurt RI
MT - Tester (D) MSNBC is calling it for Burns, but I think Tester will be the one standing at the end of the day, even if he isn't Burns faces criminal charges if he returns to Congress through the Abramhoff scandal

Several Governorships to the Dems. There are over 200 Representative races going on around the country and I think the Dems pick up some maybe even the 15 needed, however I have some concerns about them picking up a huge amount. Both the GOP and Dem are unusually charged during this mid-term election. The one ace is the amount of GOP disgusted with this administration and they might just stay home, also the evangelicals have been rocked and are emotionally vulnerable they could either come out in droves to show that they have not been destroyed by the Hubbard scandal, or they could spend the day in prayer and decide politics and religion don't mix and stay home.
This could be a particular problem in Colorado where they have two issues on the ballot related to legalizing gay rights and another making it a constitutional admendment that marriage is between a man and woman only. So we will have to wait and see how that goes.

There will be several "surprises" throughout the day, benefiting both parties. There are so many convoluted aspects to both parties (Democrats and GOP) it's hard to sort them out; however, there is a small but troublesome aspect for the GOP. Transiting Mars trines transiting Uranus, that Mars squares the GOP Natal Mercury and Uranus inconjuncts. Take that same aspect and moving it to the 2005 Inaugural chart and the transiting Uranus squares the Natal Moon and Mars inconjuncts. Unexpected upsets for the GOP over the next two days and more dirty tricks revealed.

Don't get too upset or excited over the wins and losses tomorrow because the end of the day doesn't mean the end.

Ceres on Neptune Morgana? Hmmm with all those squares and then Vesta in a trine, maybe it will be a good day for all the ladies running. What do you think?

Peg, that I saw that "Moon" minister a few months ago on a documentary, Moon is simply frightening and I cannot believe he has gotten this far. I remember the day in the 70's when parents would kidnap their kids away from his cult. There is some good news, Paraguay denied the Bush family immunity from war crimes. This is huge, for a little country like Paraguay to take this stand means they have someone or some country standing behind them that is more powerful than the Bush family. Very interesting.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2593583

Sun Myung Moon and his so-called Unification Church are either at or very, very near the bottom of the GOP "moral values" facade. Moon himself is truly a sick, twisted man, sexually so on a scale that would easily dwarf the likes of Haggard, Dobson, Foley and Rove.

But Moon has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media (he is part of it, after all, with his ownership of the right-wing Washington Times), and therefore, remains largely unknown to the Republican Party base. If they, and particularly the Christian Fundamentalists, came to truly know him, his sexual perversions, messianic complex, literally (brother Jesus failed, I AM the true Christ!), and his ties to the Bushes, I can't imagine that there would be anything less than a massive uproar against them all.

On Paraguay, perhaps it is a warning to the Bushes that they have overstepped their boundaries in the damage they have caused, and will not be allowed to run away from the consequences?

If you really want to dig a little deeper... We don't know what is actually taking place in the shadows. It could be that one of the "better factions" (and I would use caution in describing them as better) has begun to make its move to check and/or even overthrow the current reigning order, the faction that supports and has backed the Bushes.

Then again, it could simply be (and perhaps more likely so) that the "faction" backing the Bushes realizes that they -- the Bush Family -- have reached the limit of their usefulness, and has decided that they are now, or will shortly be, on their own to fend for themselves.

George Dubya obviously went overboard in Iraq, to the point that Poppy has become very concerned... enough so to send in his right hand "fix-it" man, James Baker to "clean up" the situation. I suspect that Poppy knows and has been "reminded" of the nature of the situation, and the real damage to the "business" that his son has caused.

Certainly, it will be interesting to see what Baker pulls off. Maybe the Jupiter energy/transits coming up a little later on for Duyba will coincide with some sort of a massive Mideast Peace agreement, which will probably just be a stabilizing, yet tenuous cover for some new oil arrangement?

If any of what I have said above is true, then Cheney and Rumsfeld will probably and rather shortly fall prey to extreme scandals and/or pressure to resign within the coming months, since they have both played the most quintessential roles in the Iraq debacle. Neither will last to 2008, in the process making room for perhaps McCain, Giuliani and/or perhaps Rice to take their places and more diplomatically and charismatically "smooth out" the final two years of Bush's stay at the White House.

Also something keep in mind, if Congress begins a shift back to the center with a Democratic victory in one or both houses, it will force Bush's White House, probably grudgingly so, back to the center as well, something that might be indicated by Giuliani or McCain taking Cheney's place.

Rove, I also suspect, could find himself largely undermined or marginalized for the last two years by a "reminder" of the implications of his own sexuality being revealed.

* Something's rotten in Israel - Latest drop in global corruption index yet another warning sign

The annual Global Corruption Report published by Transparency Internatl Mon ranked the level of public corruption in more than 100 countries - from the cleanest to the most corrupt. The Corruption Index doesn't rely on quantifiable data such as the number of people apprehended for crimes of corruption or the number of investigations carried out. It is based on public opinion polls/questionnaires filled in by experts. This is why Transparency Internatl has named it The Corruptions Perceptions Index. ...

... Why can't Israel achieve what Finland did? Why are we deteriorating while Finland is not?

Prime ministers under investigation

Look upwards and you'll find the answer. The distinction between what is permissible & what is not in the public service begins with the pm & the president - & is channeled down the ranks. When the leadership is tainted, it sticks to everyone. Deviations from the norms become new norms, the pursuit of personal gains becomes the game of the season, & walking on the edge of the law is viewed as sophistication & not as a mark of shame. ... http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3324938,00.html

In Finland, to the best of my knowledge, not a single president was forced to retire for accepting funds from a millionaire, and not a single president was accused of sexual harassment. In Finland, not a single prime minister in the last decade has been investigated on suspicion of corruption. In Israel, every prime minister in the last decade has been investigated - either on suspicion of blackmail, breach of trust, or for breaking the laws of election campaign funding.

* Something's rotten in Israel - Latest drop in global corruption index yet another warning sign

The annual Global Corruption Report published by Transparency Internatl Mon ranked the level of public corruption in more than 100 countries - from the cleanest to the most corrupt. The Corruption Index doesn't rely on quantifiable data such as the number of people apprehended for crimes of corruption or the number of investigations carried out. It is based on public opinion polls/questionnaires filled in by experts. This is why Transparency Internatl has named it The Corruptions Perceptions Index. ...

... Why can't Israel achieve what Finland did? Why are we deteriorating while Finland is not?

Prime ministers under investigation

Look upwards and you'll find the answer. The distinction between what is permissible & what is not in the public service begins with the pm & the president - & is channeled down the ranks. When the leadership is tainted, it sticks to everyone. Deviations from the norms become new norms, the pursuit of personal gains becomes the game of the season, & walking on the edge of the law is viewed as sophistication & not as a mark of shame.

In Finland, to the best of my knowledge, not a single president was forced to retire for accepting funds from a millionaire, & not a single president was accused of sexual harassment. In Finland, not a single pm in the last decade has been investigated on suspicion of corruption. In Israel, every pm in the last decade has been investigated - either on suspicion of blackmail, breach of trust, or for breaking the laws of election campaign funding. ... http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3324938,00.html

* Mrs Betty Bowers' Words of Christian Concern for Ted Haggard's Delicious Disgrace

Dear Brothers & Sisters in Delighted Snickers:

I suspect that this will be a rather uncomfortable weekend at the Ted Haggard tax-free mansion. You see, Rev Haggard is a vociferous spokesperson against gay marriage &, until yesterday, his wife probably had no idea she was actually in one.

Oh, I can hear some of you gals used to being around florists & Govs of NJ--& Texas--cackling. You think I'm selling the woman's intuition for pushily obvious queenery short. But if Haggard's unblinking congregation could sit & listen to such a liturgical Liberace week after week & not realize they were in the presence of someone who makes Barry Manilow in a full-length mink look butch, they really need to recalibrate their ability to detect prescription-strength doses of flamboyance. Because if you can't tell that Haggard is not just gay, but marabou mules wearing gay, you must have bought your refurbished Gaydar at the same kiosk Tom Cruise got his E-meter. ... http://bettybowers.com/nl_nov2006.html

Looks like the cons are going to receive a solid whipping from the american electorate, finally woke up like their predecessor Rip Van Winkle after 6 years of slumber. Let us uncork the champagne bottle in another 8 hours!

Live blog on voting in Ohio

http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/members

Check out the cnn.com poltical ticker...kentucky poll worker arrested for choking a voter!!! LOL

msnbc.com politics homepage has a map that shows by state where voters have reported the most prblems so far.

Goodness gracious, Sally, what's going on in Denver? http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4616285

Raven, funny it's the hot contested republican leaning states the ones they want to steal that are showing the problems.

The SJ Mercury News this morning was predicting the lowest voter turnout in Caifornia's history, I think they're going to be wrong.

I saw where CT has record turnout go Lamont!!!!

As usual the cons are ON with their FIX and stealing of elections, but this time the progressives/dem are not in deep slumber and are
counteracting pronto. Other point is that talk is very very cheap. More than 90% of generals and their soldiers are cowards as shown by latimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-balad7nov07.1.438471.print.story?...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-balad7nov07,1,438471,print.story?...

http://billmon.org/archives/002938.html

The Octopus

Like everybody else, I don't know what's going to happen today, but this election has already illuminated one critical truth: The modern GOP -- or, more specifically, the Axis of '70s Campus Republicans now running it -- really is just a criminal enterprise disguised as a political party.

Dirty tricks, large and small, are a sorry fact of life in American politics, but what the Republicans have done over the past few weeks -- the surrealist attack ads, the forged endorsements, the midnight robo calls, the arrest threats, the voter misinformation (did you know your polling station has been moved?) -- is sui generis, at least at the national level.

snip

If, by some fluke, the Democrats were to recapture the White House, they would be well advised to go after the Rovian machine in roughly the same manner that the Russian government went after the old Communist Party after the failed '91 coup. Personally, if it were up to me, I would declare the GOP an illegal organization (as the CPUSSR was) and let honest Republicans go regroup under a new, hopefully non-criminalized brand name -- like, say, the Detox Party.

That, of course, will never happen, but if the Dems don't turn the full weight of the FBI, the DoJ and the IRS loose on the Rovians the very first chance they get, they'll just be asking for it. The Octopus will have it tentacles wrapped around throats again so fast it will make their tiny little brains pop.

And next time, they might not be so easy to peel off.

I totally agree, Pat C. Wondering if it is the Octopus or the Stingray with poisonous tail?

Only problem with that whole darn'd scenario for Dem's is that the FBI, DoJ and IRS are in Bush's pocket. Like asking the fox to investigate the hen house.

Vote flipping in Missouri

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/nov/07/mo_sen_machine_records_dem_vote_for_gop

Raj, when they told us that democracy required vigilance, they wern't kidding at all!

How about Mercury being retrograde during this election? It's bound to cause all manner of problems... I think it will be ages before we get to the bottom of this election (we may never, of course as the waters are so, so murky (as Morgana beautifully pointed out).

In order, we're going to have Venus, Mercury, Sun and Mars squaring Neptune over the coming week(s) - with Neptune on Aquarius 18: A Man Unmasked at a Masquerade. Fingers crossed that the 'Man is Unmasked' and, as Olbermann suggested, we'd even get the receipt for the Emperor's new clothes.

Tell me about dark waters! With this stellium in Scorpio on my own natal Scorpio stellium, the squares and oppositions, Neptune is also squaring my natal Neptune, Uranus is on my ascendant...I have about had it. I've been through the wringer since '98-'99 and 2000 was no picnic with all the energy in Taurus that year. Is there any relief in sight????

One might take the long range view that this election is merely the opening act in a dramatic, revolutionary saga that will play out over much of the next decade.

In that sense, it's unlikely that anything will truly be settled this evening, or in the immediate days and weeks to follow.

The only thing that is likely to become more apparent will be the gradual awakening of the masses, and the rebirth of the liberal/progressive faction that will square off (literally) with the regressive conservatives/neo-cons about the future direction of this country and the world.

This will all come to a head during the upcoming Uranus-Pluto Square from 2012-2015 as both sides become even more radicalized. However, that which is new, forward-looking and acting must ultimately prevail over the ways and structures of old.

Put another way, a number of individuals in power stand to lose most if not everything they have attained, particularly if they earned it by deceitful and dishonorable methods.

Personally, I can't imagine the GOP surviving this transit, but the Dems have much to answer for as well. It could be that both parties are totally swept away and abolished in favor of an entirely new or different political structure. Only time will tell.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/7/1804/35652

DNC EXIT POLL NUMBERS

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/7/1804/35652

DNC EXIT POLL NUMBERS

I'm not sure how I double posted, but I must have done something. My apologies.

NeoBuckeye, that sounds pretty spot on. I don't expect things to suddenly change, but I expect change to be on the move. Also watch the Velvet Revolution as women rise to political power.

U.S. SERVICE ACADEMY GRADUATES UNITE AGAINST ILLEGAL IRAQ WAR;

JOINT ANTI-WAR WEST POINTERS IN NEW ORGANIZATION

New York (October 25, 2006) The overwhelming response by alumni of United States service academies to the anti-war efforts of West Point Graduates Against the War (http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org) has resulted in a combined arms organization of former and current land, sea, and air officers united against the war in Iraq.

The new organization, Service Academy Graduates Against the War http://www.sagaw.org, was established by three West Pointers, William Cross, James Ryan, and Joseph Wojcik, all 1962 USMA graduates and cofounders of the former organization. They were joined in the new endeavor by Dud Hendrick, a 1963 United States Naval Academy graduate and Terry Symens-Bucher, an alumnus of the United States Air Force Academy, class of 1975.

The new grassroots organization calls on graduates of all service academies to speak out against the destruction of the honor of the United States and the dissipation of its military caused by the deceitful policies of the present administration.

It also calls for the impeachment of the president of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The founding alumni and their fellow service academy graduate members, instilled with the service academy codes of honor, believe a fundamental respect for truth is a basic and lifelong attribute of character. To that end, they have united to speak out against the deceitful behavior of the government of the United States and its widely kn own malefactors. At issue is the lying, cheating, stealing, delivering evasive statements and quibbling which has put vast numbers of innocent people in deadly peril and disgracefully diminished the integrity of the United States.

"660,000 people slaughtered," said James Ryan, "and still no one in the US government is held accountable for this crime against humanity." The new web site painstakingly documents the illegality of the assault on Iraq, and documents the lies and subterfuge perpetrated by the president of the United States and his subordinates.

"All service academy grads should be concerned about the illegality of orders premised on the lies of the president," said Dud Hendrick, US Naval Academy graduate. "We also serve to protect our fighting men and women from being subject to illegal and immoral orders."

Membership in Service Academy Graduates Against the W ar is open to all alumni of United States service academies, as well as widows, widowers, parents, children, and grandchildren of deceased graduates. Non-graduates may enroll as "Honor Guard" supporters.

http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3748

Meltdown in Orange County

Interesting demographic in Virginia

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/VA/S/01/epolls.0.html

I went to vote today in my voter place and the electronic machine was broken down. And this is a DEM area! So we did paper ballots (we always do anyway) but how they will count them now I don't know. First time I've ever seen this happen. There were a lot of people there, more than I've ever seen before.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/07/BAGROM7KQ27.DTL

Blew my mind...the SF Chronicle already has an article up on the problems with the electronic machines....exactly what happened with me. It has been happening all day all over the Bay Area.

Judi, we had one electronic voting machine, only 1 person had used it by noon. There were plenty of paper ballots and 10 stations. And the place was packed and we're rural.

Lynda, here is a list from Bob Fritakis of Democrats.com of the things going on with the Mercury retro elections...http://www.democrats.com/election-problems-galore

Hey Morgana, this is just crazy wild, no? I've never ever seen anything this crazy.

But at least the worst of the rethug heads have rolled!

Wild ride tonight, wild wild wild. The talking heads are spinning like tops, never seen so many change their spots so quickly.

Blackwell concedes... Strickland wins!

I'm being mindful of Mercury Rx here, so I post this with some reservation.

Blackwell's concession speech is live on Ohio TV now. Boy, he looks pissed...

NeoB--Toast! Toast to Victory! Both K. Blackwell and K. Harris went down--two key people who helped create (from the electoral process side of things) the mess we're in now. Toast! Toast! (I'm holding a teacup aloft here and hope you'll join me in whatever you've got.)

The typo (or Freudian slip) in the first line of this article gave me the giggles.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Observer_Fox_polls_show_gains_for_1107.html

I need chocolate.

I've got a cup of green tea, Shy. Here's to the future! ;-) *clink*

Was watching Strickland's acceptance speech... they just cut away from it. Oh well. Good feelings here in Ohio tonight!

Tomorrow, the real work begins. But tonight, we can celebrate... a little bit.

I agree, NeoB, that the real work begins and that it's going to be v-e-r-r-r-r-r-y interesting. But at least we now have something to work with (a house majority answerable to us) rather than a bunch of corporate-boughts.
Yep. And .

And two of the most despicable people on the planet are history. Katherine Harris and Blackwell.

I'll bet Bush's first speech will be about everyone working together in a bi-partisan way. He's suddenly going to become the uniter again.

Don't know what happened there, NeoB. I was trying to do a teacup *clink*, which didn't work. Yeah, we got lots of work to do. And the work is to once again raise high, far above the reach of all enemies, our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Onward!

Nancy Pelosi

sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Oooooh this is exciting.

It's just been called that the Dems takeover the House! Yay Nancy P, you go girl! How's this for a Merc retro flip, now the repugs are worrying about electronic voter fraud. Very ironic. Here in Maryland, repug gov Ehrlich had a massive robocall a few weeks ago to ask all of his supporters request absentee ballots. About 160,000 we're sent out. Ehrhlich has been expressing worry about electronic voting machines for months, so I think this is his ploy to throw a wrench into what is shaping up to be his loss. With the retrograde energy in mind, watch a huge flurry of lawsuits come from the repugs. They will challenge every loss. They'll do anyting to de-rail our American process of elective government, the hypocrites!!!!

Ahh to edgy to eat my popcorn, what a show!!!

Swamp

We should send her roses like they did with Barbara Boxer.

It's certainly a start, shy and everyone!

Maybe it's just me, but I feel something electric in the air tonight, here in Ohio -- Uranus conjuct Ohio's natal Sun, no doubt. The polls were packed, and this is the first time I can ever remember actually having to wait in a line to vote.

The now Senator-elect Sherrod Brown gave his acceptance speech at Cleveland Public Hall, complete with confetti descending from the rafters... Probably the first truly upbeat political event to take place in Cleveland since John Kerry's "Election Eve" rally back in 2004. But this time, there is no question about our victory.

Doesn't look like we will win the Senate tonight. But the House alone is enough to give Bush and Rove nightmares. They certainly aren't happy tonight, nor should they be. For the first time in six years they are going to face something that they haven't had to face until now: accountability.

NeoB, Shy, let's also celebrate the end of Rick "man on dog" Santorum, too, (he said cautiously)!

Latest CNN: Virginia

Webb
1,143,756 50%

Allen
1,141,030 49%

Nancy Pelosi will make history as the 52nd Speaker of the House -- and the first ever female. She will also be third in the line of succession, behind the President and the Vice President.

Oh, and DeLay’s seat went to a Democrat.

:-D

WEBB DECLARES VICTORY!!!

The Swamp Forecast

I have believed all along that busco/rove bought off John MCain with a certain promise. Remember the awful, slimy negative rumor milling they pulled on McCain about having a black child etc, (this was a 3rd world orphan that his family generously adopted). You could see it in McCain’s face before and after 9/11, he despised Bush and often spoke out against Bush. It got really bad before the 2004 elections, when suddenly McCain started being a huge bush cheerleader with nauseating full hug photo ops at every turn. Whether you like McCain or not he was never one for taking long moonlit walks with the shrub, and dissed him publicly constantly. What caused the sudden reversal? I believe McCain was told to shut up, get in bush’s corner, and when Cheney inevitably resigns due to ill health, McCain will be appointed veep, skyrocketing his 2008 ambitions I predict that now that the 2006 elections are over, Cheney is out and McCain is in. HOWEVER, if bushco reneges, I think there’ll be hell to pay from McCain.

Watch and see!! Does anyone have a bead on this from a chart standpoint?

Swamp

McCaskill claims VICTORY!!

Swamp, I'm sure McCain was told he had to wait his turn, and they had punished him for not waiting.

And the Sabian Symbol for the Sun today: Scorpio 16: A Girl's Face Breaking into a Smile.

:)

perhaps some of you might be interested in this:
--------
On Wednesday morning, Mercury will pass directly in front of the sun. This rare event, called a transit, will start at 9:12 a.m. and last about five hours.

University of Hawaii astronomers will use special telescopes at the summits of Haleakala on Maui and Mauna Kea on The Big Island to transmit live images of the transit over the Internet as a "Mercury Transit Hawaiian Style" Webcast.

To view the event live online, go to astroday.net/MercTransit06.html

The Webcast will include real-time images of the transit from professional and amateur astronomers in a variety of wavelengths of light, including white light, hydrogen-alpha and calcium-K.
http://www.astroday.net/MercTransit06.html

((((Lynda)))) What a lovely gift. Thank you!

Raven, don't worry about the Stellium in Scorpio, it's not as bad as the one in 1993/1994. I have a stellium in Scorpio and not this isn't a fun time for Scorpio's or Taurus, but you have to look every day for how you can make it work for you. With Saturn it's just keep your nose to the grindstone and there will be rewards when it passes, and with Neptune make sure to make notes everyday so you don't lose or forget the important things. Lots of people are struggling with these aspects and most at least 99 percent will survive. I am counting on being in the 99 percent, hope you are too.

The only shocker astrologically for me tonight was it really looked like Chaffee would win, and I didn't expect Lamont to lose so badly, the GOP really turned out for Joe, but he has a difficult New Year ahead of him, but no matter Lamont is out and this was his best shot. Herold Ford will be back and will win again, so will Steele of Maryland.

Although Montana has not declared I do think Tester will win and if he doesn't he needs a recount. I also think Webb will still stand as the victor after the recount. I think the country really won with Claire McCaskill and it will be a double win if Tester's lead holds. Nancy Pelosi is going to go through a period of letting her new found position and sought after media presence go to her head for a few months and there will be a come down to that by her fellow congressmen.

All in all, I think I am more numb tonight than I was after 2004, I feel like "ok we're here, now what do we do?" This will be amazing.

America is back on track. Good night. ;-)

Sally-I had a similar reaction. I prayed that we all of us are equal to this gift.
For me I continue to see Bernie Sanders as an example of what I would want to see: realization that we can do more if all of us have access to resources. Already this AM the corporate media on my YAHOO page had planted a story that the world markets are worried that the Dems won't be so business friendly. HMMM! How wonderf ul if the Dems could manage to be less business friendly.

Garry, is that a pun you posted up there at 5:51? Hahahahahaha.

I think the election was a much bigger spanking for the GOP than the results show. We must get rid of the electronic voting machines if we want to have a democracy.

Well; from the land of the sleeping, who voted in again the Senator for Death, by 71%, ( Snowe protects battleship construction!) instead of the Senator for Life, Health, Organic food, Jean Hay Bright, I'm happy for the country, not happy with the people I walk among daily!
Think of it, we could have had a majority in the Senate!
At least the Newjerseyites were too smart to fall for that nasty last minute granndstand play of padlocking the Repug headquarters & blaming Menendez! ANd the Pennsylvanians threw out Santorum with relish!
Did you see..............Pelosi wore lavender for the victory speech & Shumer & Reid both sported PURPLE ties! ( a subtle visual message sent!!!
On my way to get my computer finally! I'll be grateful for a direct mercury on the 18th. ( Will the fact that it was retrograde, upset last nights results?
QOP

Deval Patrick's acceptance speech was magnificent. Here's a transcript, via the Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/politics/candidates/articles/2006/11/08/transcript_of_deval_patricks_acceptance/

An excerpt:

You see in common how broken our civic life and how fractured our communities are. You see in common that the poor are in terrible shape and the middle class are one month away from being poor. And you know that government by gimmick and sound bite isn’t working. You know that we deserve better and we are better than that. And for a chance at a better and more hopeful future, you built bridges some of you never thought could be built across all kinds of differences -- and then you crossed them.

You are business executives looking for a better margin and artists looking to be valued. You are college kids in search of a career and high school drop-outs looking for a way forward. You are young mothers trying to balance work and child care and grandmothers trying to hold on to the family home. You are farmers and fishing families wondering whether there is a future in livelihoods that built this Commonwealth and union members wondering why there is so little work when there is so much to do. And the magic is that you have come together not just for your own dreams and your own aspirations, but for each others’.

Congratulations Democrats!!!

One more time!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BxxUuWJqg0&eurl=

From Robert Glenn Plotner:

JEFFERSON LIVES

As the country, the Constitution, the checks and balances seemed on their deathbed, a last breath away from tyranny, from the institutionalization of fear and propaganda as an accepted means of governance, our Democratic Republic exhaled what might have been its final breath and said instead, "Thomas Jefferson lives."

The force behind the dam was too great, the yearning for accountability too acute to stem the attempts to divert us, the people, from reclaiming our American history, our American principles, and our country's future. Those that stood waiting in the dark to poison us against each other for their gain or to steal away ballots in the night could not find their footing when the flood gates opened. Try to make up the math as they might, the waters washed away the ink of their funny numbers as much as it was freed to wash away the stain of their phony virtue.

They Republicans never got it. They saw the cracks develop in the dam, but never tried to fix it. Rather, they were undermined by the things they didn't dare to repair for it was those very things that had brought them power to begin with. The very festering underbelly that was their undoing was also their network, their scaffold, and their enforcer of Washington control... the deception and slander and arrogance and hypocrisy, backdoor deals, midnight clauses, signing statements, cover-ups, secret meetings, earmarks, misdirection, demagoguery and deceit. Like Ted Stevens contemptuous pork, in the end, Rove's dream of a permanent majority was a bridge to nowhere.

As their public approval recoiled from them, rather than self-examination and correction, instead they only injected more of the same into the mid-term elections... the robocalls, the push polls, the misdirection, the threats, the race baiting and homophobia, the questioning of patriotism, the mocking of dignity and decency, the machine failures and vote flips, the challenge lists, the disenfranchisement, the manufactured last minute stunts, all designed to divert and siphon and steal another election and keep rule through insularity, division, and abuse of power. They were certain it would work again as it had worked so often before. In a few races, the dance still duped the faithful. But this time, the more they parsed their slurs, the more they paraded false patriotism over simple slips, the more they aped disease as if it were a joke, the more the man in the suit was exposed for who he really was, a hypocrite and liar clinging to power through intimidation, and the public wasn't buying the shtick anymore.

Perhaps they were finally done in by their false morality as their "Adam & Steve" bashing turned into "Adam & Steve & Tom & Ted." Perhaps it was David Kuo's timely revelation of false prophets in the White House. Perhaps it was George Allen stepping in the maccaca of his own past. Perhaps it was Limbaugh's swinish sneer at Michael J. Fox and all those afflicted with a disease for which they dared hope for cure. Perhaps it was the morose contempt with which they grandstanded upon Terry Schiavo and her husband. Perhaps it was the way they coldly watched an American city drown in order to free it of its disproportionately poor and black and Democratic votes. Perhaps it was the Libby-Rove-Cheney plot to expose an American agent as a political vendetta. Perhaps it was the stubborn, inept morass of Iraq and the lies and the diversion that put us there without end and without oversight, the draining of the swamp that has been nothing but a draining of the treasury. Perhaps it was the buy-offs by Abramoff and DeLay and the oil companies and Halliburton and on and on and on...

No, it was all of that and more. It was also the heroes of the blogosphere who held patriotic vigilance in the one last and yet threatened stand of liberty, VelvetRevolution, Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and so many others. It was the volunteers, callers, and canvassers. It was those who simply got fed up with keeping quiet and made it all right for others to dissent. It was Olbermann and Democracy Now and Bill Freaking Moyers, god bless him. It was independent media and independent journalists and writers from Mark Crispin Miller to John Dean to Robert Greenwald to all those in-between who stood up and called the charlatans to account before there was any accountability to be found. It was all these things that put them on notice that their tactics were known and would be recorded and broadcast for all to see and who did just that as this election began and kept it from Machiavelli's court. It was all of these things that sheltered liberty's tenuous flame as the gale howled around her.

Whether or not it was founding providence that led us to this moment or whether it was the mix of fortitude and fortune revealing the vice behind the virtue, blowing off the facade like so many rotten shingles loosed in Hurricane Katrina, we have arrived at this moment with a burden. Remember how close we've come to losing her, America, liberty, the democratic republic. Remember the peril we've felt in our hearts as the Bill of Rights was redacted piece by piece as if the Executive were using a line item veto. Remember that this was just yesterday. That threat is still present and still real. And as we recover her, do not relent. To those upon whom we place our hope in the new congress, make certain that Thomas Jefferson lives.

Robert Glenn Plotner

This is the greatest birthday present I have ever had! Happy birthday to all of us!!

Happy Birthday Pat C and "I think the election was a much bigger spanking for the GOP than the results show. We must get rid of the electronic voting machines if we want to have a democracy" you are absolutely 100 percent correct. If the national GOP wants to know what is going on all they have to do is look at the pickups of Dem Governors, it was huge. The media spin and GOP spin is just happening in their little world, the people out here are moving ahead without them.

RUMMY TO RESIGN! Trying to avoid impeachment and/or war crimes charges, perhaps?

I'll be.... Donald Rumsfeld, resigning.

Wow, wonder what would have happened had the Repubs won last night?

Rummy is toast! I cannot stop doing the happy dance.

Happy Birthday to All.

Does anyone know anything about this Robert Gates, former head of the CIA, who is slated to replace Rumsfeld?

MotherJones.com / News / MoJo Blog

Bio of Defense Secretary Bob Gates
11/08/06 10:12 AM

More from Mother Jones on this later, but as a public service, here is the bio of Bob Gates, the man President Bush just named the next Defense Secretary:

Dr. Robert M. Gates is the 22nd President of Texas A&M University, the nation's seventh largest university and an institution recognized internationally for its teaching, research and public service. He assumed the presidency of the land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant university on August 1, 2002. Dr. Gates served as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999-2001.

He served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 until 1993. In this position, he headed all foreign intelligence agencies of the United States and directed the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Gates is the only career officer in CIA's history to rise from entry-level employee to Director. He served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1986 until 1989 and as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser at The White House from January 20, 1989 until November 6, 1991 for President George H.W. Bush.

Dr. Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/11/2859_bio_of_defense.html

Thank you Sally! Best birtday ever!

So much work left to do, but in the mean time let the good times roll!

Gates was born Sept. 25, 1943 in Wichita, KS

I don't know anything about his record and I am sure we will hear about him, but I will tell you that my daughter said when Bush announced him as a potential replacement, "that won't work Mercury is retrograde and Denver started testing their emergency system just as Bush announced him" sirens were going off. So we will see. Gates has alot of Leo in his Chart and he has a Saturn/Mercury square being aspected by Pluto now and over the next year. We will see if he's confirmed.

Chapter 16
Robert M. Gates

Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA's deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran/contra activities or his responses to official inquiries.

The Investigation

Gates was an early subject of Independent Counsel's investigation, but the investigation of Gates intensified in the spring of 1991 as part of a larger inquiry into the Iran/contra activities of CIA officials. This investigation received an additional impetus in May 1991, when President Bush nominated Gates to be director of central intelligence (DCI). The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested in a letter to the Independent Counsel on May 15, 1991, any information that would ``significantly bear on the fitness'' of Gates for the CIA post.

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_16.htm

Robert M. Gates
AKA Robert Michael Gates

Born: 25-Sep-1943
Birthplace: Wichita, KS

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Government

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: CIA Director, 1991-93

Wife: Becky Gates (two children)

http://www.nndb.com/people/129/000055961/

Seems to me he tried to commit suicide during the
Iran Contra investigations.

Congratulations are in order for all here who sent their positive thoughts towards acheiving a victory for the Dems, and it was a sweeping one at that! Yippee!!!!!! Hope they win the Senate too. Best news - Rumsfeld's resignation.
Worst news - Lieberman's win. He did it with the help of the Jewish Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg who lent his own staff to assist Lieberman's campaign.

Hope the Dems make the most of their wins to secure a Presidential victory in 2008. Onward, and upward! I don't want them to cut Bush any slack, even though he's beginning to sound conciliatory, now that he sees the writing on the wall!

Everybody, run to your tv now at 1:39pm EST and watch mr chimp melting down in a big way in front of the press and eating his own. freudian slips galore and odd out there behavior, omg!!!!!!!!!! odder than ususla that is, he is flying on his own,

One more thing. Israel used the cover of the elections to massacre more Palestinians in the Gaza yesterday.

Here are 47 NYTimes on Gates...

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/senate/index.html?offset=0&&&&&query=GATES,%20ROBERT%20M&field=per&match=exact

Dammit Bhakti, you made me spew my lunch with laughter! Big meltdown??? I am at work without a TV! Oh well, I'm sure it will be all over the news tonight.

Sally, I was numb, but not anymore! It look's like that 'earthquake' hit DC and the 'angry mobs with their pitchforks' were out yesterday! And if you forward to January, it looks like the schrub may be taken out with the rest of the trash.

Talk about some serious collective Karma being unleashed!

Please everyone, focus on a Webb victory in Virginia.

Happy B-Day Pat C, Sally and all the other Scorpios out there!

The announcement came during moon 29 Gemini, does that last anaretic degree mean the finality of an issue? The info sheet in my archives says that the 29 anaretic degree with the Moon is about unpacking emotions, communication the truth. With the Gemini 29 moon Little Chimp was an unrobed cornered pitbull monkey dissing the press corps, taking patronizing condescending shots at them. And Karl Rove too.
Also what does the Sabian Symbol mean?

Still doing the happy dance!

Rumsfeld, GONE! What a shock! But in light of the election, maybe it shouldn't be. What a massive blow to Bush's stubborn "stay the course" stance on Iraq, and essentially everything else!

So now, Cheney absolutely must be next to go. He's been the other ringleader in the Iraq quagmire.

That, and I'm sure Bush, or at least GOP leaders, will be looking to someone more positive, popular -- and more moderate (McCain or Giuliani?) -- to boost his numbers and better position the Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008.

I'm sure this will also only strengthen James Baker's hand by orders of magnitude in bringing Iraq and the Mideast back to a "favorable status" for the "company". Cheney's obstructionist barrier has, at last, been broken through.

This just gets more and more interesting by the minute. Maybe Rove will be next to go? After all, his vision of a permanent Republican Majority has been shattered, and his propaganda finally revealed and repudiated for the complete and total trash that it is. What a beautiful day!

29 Gemini The Fist Mockingbird of Spring Sings From the Treetop

Happy Birthday Pat....and guess what, my email has been down since last night....so I can't recieve email even tho I can go online.....it is making me mad!

And rumsey has resigned, only 3 years too LATE....

it is raining and blowing and I have to leave for my art studio class...hope my email is back up soon, or at least by the time I get home....

Thank you Cybear!

Thank you Judi! Stay warm.

Sally, Congratualtions! You were right on the money except for Lamont & Chaffe.Not bad, batting
750. I have to crow too. My sixth sense has proved
right so far,lunaoscura. I also said that saddam verdict will be a BIG YARN for a nov surprise. Did
say to uncork the champage in 8 hours! Now, for the other shoes to fall like 30 years ago of dick
and sparrow, let the games, I mean investigations
begin for this dick and his puppet knucklehead-thief to be impeached or before the eleventh hour,
like cowards do- RESIGN! Already 60 year cycle has
been repeated(last time Dems snatched repug seats
in both house and senate without losing any themselves was 1946!)

Neo, I can see both Cheney and Rove resigning soon....like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

Rah Raj! thanks for the info! Listened briefly to Thom Hartman this morning (explaining about Federalist pres John Adams and how he threw EVERYONE including the town drunk into jail if they dared to say anything negative about him or Abigail.....and how some of these guys were in prison for 2 years until Jefferson was elected....at which point, he released all of the offenders. Hartman said that Adams was who Bush was modeling himself on. Explains the Federalist society types! Also explains why Jefferson WON....the country was appalled at the Adams 'model'....just like they were yesterday.

He also mentioned that Emmanuel (the DLC purse strings holder (who ONLY funded Democrats who were conservative, not any of the Progressives) is going to be a force to contend with, as he has now made these new dems beholden to his power....so Nancy, who is a tough bird, will need all the insight she can get now. Emmanuel is also taking credit for the '50 state' campaign....which was Howard Dean's idea, not his....

So despite all the jublilation over the 'people having spoken' there will be much down the road to beware of.

Ha! and when flipping channels looking for election news this morning, came across Pat Robertson on split screen with Tom DeLay, saying to him that he really 'missed his hand in things' over the last year. GAG.....

After a very,very long time tuned in for a few minutes to those rotten wing radio of laura b.. to
see how much whining and crying over splilt milk?
she says the dems asked for it and got it, as if it is a punishment. But this knucklehead rotten wing b... can't realize that she and her rotten ilk asked for it too last night BUT did not get what they wished for!

Speaking of looking down the road.....

After Governor Schwarzenegger's commanding re-election victory, some Democrats are wondering whether his next political target will be Barbara Boxer's senate seat in 2010. Matier & Ross.

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/

Or will the GOP just throw him right into '08 pres race? Oh, wait...they have to change that dang ammendment about being born in the USA....

Raj, I was reading a blog which was a link from Raw Story....and all these righties were talking about the dirty rotten evil dangerous dems....boy! scared they are....

as if the rethugs hadn't brought this on all by their lonesome selves...

I said back in late August or September that I felt the energy of the country change....I posted something about feeling 'enough is enough'....and that was even BEFORE Mark Foleygate....it was the 'dragon awakening'.....I mean, people in this country are pretty forgiving but at some point, the line in the sand gets crossed and then....this is what happens. (either way, either party)

Agreed, don't cut any slack off that knucklehead
humpty dumpty.It is all crocodile tears from him
just like saddam's after his sentence. This thief
belongs to same kith and kin. First he was all compassionate. That's why he flouted all geneva convention to torture and gautanamo bay. So beware
of his croc tears etc.etc.

"Everyone knew that this election was going to be bad for the Republicans -- the question was just how bad. (Pombo losing) really is the exclamation point," said Brian Klunk, chairman of the political science department at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/08/MNG9LM8JDV4.DTL&type=politics

My happy dance is Richard Pombo losing his seat...well...this is his swan song now (he has had the seat 3 terms, so this is almost the best thing about anything that happened in CA. He was a true thug, and I suspect when the Abramoff investigation starts, he will be sweating big bullets for his part of it. What is amazing is that it took redistricting of the area after 2000 census to actually make the area less a repub safety zone.

There is one unfinished job still left. Sending
macacaw allen to obscurity. Will happen anytime
in a day or two.This is that shameless macacaw of Virgina.

Yeah right, crying crocodile tears while on a plane to Paraguay.

What great day! Literally ate a huge bowl of popcorn to celebrate, my stomach hurts but it's worth it ;)

Here's a good blow by blow and truly funny thread about chimperorer's press conference.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.phpaz=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2638398&mesg_id=2638398

ROBERT PARRY, Robrtparry@aol.com

Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek and is the founder and editor of ConsortiumNews.com. He has written extensively about Robert Gates:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost2.html

Parry said today: "There have been suspicions that Gates was involved with secret dealings with both Iran and Iraq during the 1980s. Those allegations should be assessed now, before he becomes Secretary of Defense." Parry is author of the books "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'" and "Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN, via Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com,

http://www.impeachbushbook.com

Holtzman has been a Congresswoman and the district attorney of Brooklyn; she was a member of the House panel that impeached Richard Nixon. She is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of the forthcoming book "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens."

Holtzman comments that the departure of Rumsfeld is an attempt to stem public anger which could lead to impeachment.

Has anyone looked at the chart(s) to see whether Webb can hold onto his victory even after a recount?

I woke up and it felt like a new day! Hooray! My bro called and asked, Happy? You betcha! Heard Bush on the radio, sounded like the typical bully who's been cornered and his bluff called and all his props taken away and now doesn't know what to say or do. Back to the first 9 months of his ill-fated reign, when he was a do nothing sitting duck. At that time everybody was openly questioning what a dweeb he was and what was he doing there. It was felt that he wasn't getting anything done. Well, it's the old adage, be careful of what you wish for 'cause you might get it! Look at all the mischief he's gotten into since 9/11. JEEZ!

On another note, not to sour anything, but in spite of our euforia, this is not the time to let down our guard. Now, more than ever have the stakes risen. Now that the dems are in charge, ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL BE LAIN AT THEIR FEET AND THEY WILL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. Especially a false flag manuever. Remember, they (the DEMS) don't control the administration, the military or anything. So it would be difficult for them to stop anything that Bush might have planned.

Having said that, it's still a HAPPY DAY! The air feels different!

* Dobson Quits Haggard Counseling Team http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/dobson-quits-haggard-counseling-team/20061107212009990005?cid=505

The Church Lady would say: "Ain't that special?!" I imagine we'll be watching all kinds of rt-wring freaks dropping out of mainstream like red bloat flies by a blast of cold air.

Anybody who had ANY connection the Iran/Contra scandal is very bad news for the country and should NOT be replacing Rumsfeld. Another mole. He shouldn't be confirmed and the DEMS shouldn't cave on this.

I'm baaaaack! Hooray! Comments after I've read all the lovely posts!
QOP

I agree Marta. I see yesterday as a skirmish. The real battles will take place over the next 2 years. Dems need to be sqeaky clean, focused and by all means, strong.

Hopefully Darth Cheney's comment about another 'terrorist attack' if the Dems take over was just talk and not a signal.

Welcome back Pat!!

..........

From Mark Crispin Miller: Tom Harkin on Robert Gates, 11/07/91

From John Gideon:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1991_cr/s911107-gates.htm
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD

GATES NOMINATION (Senate – November 07, 1991)

[Page: S16305]

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. President, at the outset of the confirmation hearings, I had serious reservations about the nominee. The confirmation hearings only raised more questions and greater doubts. Questions and doubts about Mr. Gates’ past activities, managerial style, judgment, lapses in memory and analytical abilities. Questions and doubts about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair and in providing military intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; and questions and doubts about whether he will be able to remove the ideological blinders reflected in his writings and speeches or whether Mr. Gates is so rooted in the past, that he will not be able to lead the Agency into the post-cold war era. Because of these concerns, I have concluded that Mr. Gates is not the right person for the important job of overseeing our intelligence operations in this New World.

Mr. President, Robert Gates is a career Soviet analyst and former Deputy Director of the CIA who was wrong about what CIA analyst Harold Ford described as `the central analytic target of the past few years: the probable fortunes of the USSR and the Soviet European bloc.’ And I believe that the committee report points out one possible reason why the CIA failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to testimony, Mr. Gates was busy pursuing hypotheses and making unsubstantiated arguments attempting to show Soviet expansion in the Third World, instead of looking for or paying attention to facts that pointed in the opposite direction. Why? Why, as Mentor Moynihan has pointed out, was the CIA able to tell Presidents everything about the Soviet Union except the fact that it was falling apart?

Mr. Gates was also wrong about the Soviet threat to Iran in 1985. The 1985 Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stressed possible Soviet inroads into Iran. Gates admits that the analysis was an anomaly. It was a clear departure from previous analyses and almost immediately proven wrong by subsequent events. Gates was involved in preparing that analysis. According to Hal Ford, whose testimony the nominee never refuted, Gates leaned heavily on the Iran Estimate, in effect, `insisting on his own views and discouraging dissent.’ What was the result? The 1985 estimate was skewed and contributed to the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Reagan administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

Mr. President, Graham Fuller, the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, suggested that the 1985 SNIE estimate was based on intuition in the absence of hard evidence. I agree there is nothing wrong with preparing worse case scenarios or using `intuition’ as opposed to hard evidence in the preparation of analysis, provided it is made clear to policymakers that the finished analysis is based on intuition and not hard evidence. It is the job of the CIA to sort out fact from fiction, not convert one into the other.

Much more…

Steve Judd

9 November

Between the last full Moon of the old and the first new Moon of the new, it’s Mercury retrograde to boot, and aren’t things happening? Firstly, all the UK government cabinet except Teflon Tony get invited by the police to write down exactly what they knew about the loans for honours scandal, and then we hear that nice Mr. Rumsfeld is going on extended holiday – is it Cuba he’s off to? And the curse of Neptune against Mercury retrograde strikes in Virginia’s Senatorial race – I suspect this may take a long drawn out time to settle. Meanwhile, here in the real world, today is a brilliant day for making things happen, there’s an active Grand Trine all day, make it real.

Happy Birthday Pat C,
Wasn't Bob Gates mentioned in The unauthorized Biography of George H W Bush? posted here a while back? Of course I've lost it. All bookmarks are gone with the re-install!
Lynda, can you post the link to the sabian symbols again, please. I can open Int. Expl. & copy bookmarks from the G3, although I can not connect it to the Internet, but that list preceeds the posting of sabian symbols..
Bhakti, I knew that was going to be a GOOD press conference, but was in the classroom at the time, so far no rerun, they have too much new material.
( Maybe Cspan late or early am?)
QOP

ISRAELI SPY RING PROBE WIDENS

INVESTIGATION FOCUSES ON RANKING CONGRESSWOMAN

By Richard Walker

While two executives of the powerful Israeli lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) await trial on charges of spying against the United States, the FBI has now broadened its investigation to look at whether the group tried to strike a deal with a leading member of Congress. In particular, federal investigators wish to know if AIPAC tried to reach a shady arrangement with Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

According to a recent report in a mainstream magazine, the alleged deal was that, in the event Democrats took control of Congress, AIPAC would lobby for Harman, now a member of the House Intelligence Committee, to become the chair of that committee. In return, she would be expected to press the White House and Justice Department to go easy on Keith Weisman and Steven Rosen, the two former AIPAC executives soon to be tried for espionage.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/israeli_spy_ring_probe.html

Hi Pat

Sure here's the links:

http://sabiansymbols.typepad.com/ - this is my blog... I recently did the November full moon and

this is my site with the Sabian Oracle on it:

www.sabiansymbols.com

Glad to hear you're up and running again. BTW, I have the exact same issue: I've just done the new hard drive thing and things are all over the place. I forgot to copy across my bookmarks (dang!)

Hi PatC
Happy birthday from DownUnder! Of course, your Sun degree is ALSO The Girl's Face Breaking Into a Smile... seems the universe set up the elections in line with you getting to smile more broadly once again!! :)

On the BBC news tonight, the news commentator described Bush as "reeling" from the Republican defeat. Haha. He was also wondering whether Rummy was pushed, or did he jump?

And even in the face of resounding opposition to the Iraq war from the electorate, the President as well as Rummy are still being their usual arrogant selves. They never admit that they were wrong about anything, and neither he nor Bush ever uses the word "blame" when it applies to them.
Bush also said that he was considering replacing Rummy even before the election. But did he not say about a week before the election, that Rumsfeld will remain in office until the end of his Presidency? So which is it? Anyway, whether he jumped, or was pushed, his demise was long overdue.

Webb takes Virginia!!!! Dems control both the Senate and House!!!

PARTY! PARTY! PARTY!

The day just gets better and better!

All this seems too good to be true!

Here's the link.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_el_se/democrats_senate

Happy Dance!!!

Bush's stubborness and false bravado reminds me of the fool who stumbles over his own feet and falls flat on his face only to jump up and claim that he meant to do that.

Watching CNN Headline News late this after and heard: "Democrats take control of House, etc.; First woman to be Speaker of the House, etc.; Rumsfeld to step down, etc.; It appears Democrats will control the Senate, etc.; MERCURY is crossing the Sun" (with a photograph of the large Sun with a small speck (Mercury) moving across it) "this happens about 13 times a century." Interesting set of headlines, yes?

Mercury is about 8 degrees from opposition with Uranus right now, I believe. And the opposition will be exact this coming week. And here is our bright blue Earth right in the middle. More surprises to come, I betcha.

I do so enjoy the articles here and the interesting and informative comments. Am still borrowing computer time whenever I can, but hope to be online regularly again pretty soon.

Happy Fall and Holidays to all.

Oh, Barbara! How wonderful to hear from you, particularly the likelihood that you will be regularly contributing soon. And happy, happy holidays to you, too!

With Pelosi as Speaker, it is quite possible, I suppose, that when bushadruggie & v-rezaholic are pushed out ala Nixon/Agnew, Pelosi could be President of the US within the next two years. That would be really nice.

And to cap off a perfect ( almost, I'm still a little cynical.......) day,
now that my computer has been fixed I CAN GET ONTO SALON!!!!!
And Anderson Cooper is going to replay Bush's speech today!
QOP

Yes, the real work begins now. And we will be bitching about Nancy Pelosi soon enough. But frankly, I am very, very relieved and happy today.
I want to unearth the lies which got us here, not so much because I want to see the chimp squirm, but to alert the whole country as to what is possible when you elect liars. We MUST stay informed...from farmers in nowhere to bus boys to idiot pundits. And the press...they are still pissing me off. Watch them kiss the Democrats' asses.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Pat C. Thanks for bringing us good luck! Thanks for being a voice of wisdom, sanity and intelligence. Wishing you perfect health,happiness, peace, love & success.

In June 1999 GWB announced he would be running for the Presidency of the US. I happened to be watching the news that night and saw the clip and I had a complete visceral reaction, I thought I was going to throw up and I had to stop myself from screaming NOOOOOOOOO, not him. I had no idea why I had such a reaction, but in all this time I've not stopped feeling that same anxiety, fear and almost loathing of these people. Today for the first time in all these years I don't feel that inner anxiety. It's amazing and I've talked to others with the same sense of relief, like Democracy has been given a reprieve from destruction. No doubt there will be other things we need to moniter in our government and we need to be alert to them. I don't want to give my power away to people who would destroy instead of build.

This article was so poignant to me. We live in America and are only dimly aware of the anger and disgust of the rest of the world toward us since the beginning of this administration. The impact of a morally and ethically bankrupt America on other countries is huge. No one has stepped up to the plate to fill the yawning cavern of decency and high standards,inspiration and leadership that the United States filled. We created a hole for the rest of the world when George Bush became President. When I saw this simple headling in the Guardian, I literally began crying. The article isn't sad but the relief they feel is the same relief I feel today and I didn't realize how much I had been living without hope. This is the Article by the Guardian

THANK YOU AMERICA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1942796,00.html

Sally,

Like you, for the first time in a long time, I'm proud of my country again. It was wonderful waking up today!

Me too Sally,
We who have a "heightened sense of awareness" immediately recognized the evil and misdirection right from the beginning!
It is nice to awaken in the morning with a feeling of relief finally!
I still havn
t seen the press conference from yesterday, did Helen Thomas, ask any interesting questions?
QOP

No Helen, Pat Q. Little Lord Pissypants was giving it to the male reporters this time. They kinda gave it back, more interesting to watch the way guys can be so cruel to each other. Unfortunately, it leaks onto the women who usually take it (having to be oh so 'nice' or else called a b*&#$% for fighting back). The male reporters kept kickin *'s nuts and ya know what world?..* had it coming, finally 'bout time. No more Emperor robes. The energy wave of the feminine energy we've all discussed is the NOW. Be Happy!

Good article in the Guardian, though I disagree on one point. I don't consider Rumsfeld solely responsible for the diasaster in Iraq. He could never have succeeded in implementing his plans without the aid and abettance of Cheney. Cheney and his OVP cronies made the case for the war in the first place and Cheney had enough influence to grant Rumsfeld carte blanche. The blame, in my opinion, is equally divided by two.

Thanks Bhakti!
I'm happy! The computer is set up next to the TV!
Still a few wrinkles to fix........Tech was admiring of the new Canon printer, so looking forward to learning how to use it.
But I'm hanging in here for the B speech before lunch today! ( Before I take the car to the mechanic!) While finishing a little card painting.)

I have a theory that Pelosi will be able to wrap B around her little finger..........Just as long as she watches her back ( of the neck in the suprise massage area!)

AND.........Is that footage of Senior B striding across the rose garden lawn with Gates, ( CNN) OLD footage or is it today?
They are talking about the Baker/Hamilton commission...............
QOP

I guess there's not one among 'em with any decency. Just look at this guy Gates! Look at some of his major accomplishments (including OBL):

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/9/34541/0328

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/11/08/election/print.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fall of the house of kitsch

Like Haggard and other GOP cultural warriors, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were empty historical characters -- faux "war heroes" who trafficked in style over substance.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Nov. 08, 2006 | The cultural crackup of conservatism preceded the final political result. For weeks before Election Day, prominent figures on the right threw themselves into their culture war only to be left in the trenches battered, scorned and disoriented. They were unable to shield themselves through their usual practices. Their prevarications were easily penetrated; derision hurled at their targets backfired; hypocrisy was fully exposed. These self-destructive performances were hardly peripheral to the campaign but instead at the heart of it.

The Bush administration and the Republican Congress could not defend themselves on their public record and urgently needed to change the subject. They required new fields of combat -- not the Iraq war, certainly not convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham, investigated Rep. Mark Foley or indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. So they launched offensives on Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease, Jim Webb's novels and gay marriage. Yet battle-hardened cultural warriors -- Rush Limbaugh, Lynne Cheney and the Rev. Ted Haggard, among others -- did not find themselves triumphant as in the 2004 campaign, but unexpectedly wounded at their own hands.

November 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

A Come-to-Daddy Moment

By MAUREEN DOWD
Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they’re taking it back.

They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical.

In a scene that might be called “Murder on the Oval Express,” Rummy turned up dead with so many knives in him that it’s impossible to say who actually finished off the man billed as Washington’s most skilled infighter. (Poppy? Scowcroft? Baker? Laura? Condi? The Silver Fox? Retired generals? Serving generals? Future generals? Troops returning to Iraq for the umpteenth time without a decent strategy? Democrats? Republicans? Joe Lieberman?)

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/opinion/09dowd.html?pagewanted=print

Sally! You were right, re: a literary giant passing. Ed Bradley just died.

CBS newsman Ed Bradley dead at 65

By FRAZIER MOORE
AP Television Writer
Published November 9, 2006, 11:51 AM CST

NEW YORK -- Ed Bradley, the award-winning CBS newsman who has been a correspondent for "60 Minutes" since 1981, died Thursday. He was 65.

Bradley died of leukemia at Mount Sinai, CBS News announced.

Bradley's consummate skills as a broadcast journalist and his distinctive body of work were recognized with numerous awards, including 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till.

He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Three of his Emmys came at the 2003 awards: a lifetime achievement Emmy; one for a 2002 "60 Minutes" report on brain cancer patients and for a "60 Minutes II" report about sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Bradley grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece. "I was told, 'You can be anything you want, kid,"' he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

After graduating from Cheney State College, he launched his career as a DJ and news reporter for a Philadelphia radio station in 1963, moving to New York's WCBS radio four years later.

He joined CBS News as a stringer in the Paris bureau in 1971, transferring a year later to the Saigon bureau during the Vietnam War; he was wounded while on assignment in Cambodia. Bradley moved to the Washington bureau in June 1974, 14 months after he was named a CBS News correspondent.

He later returned to Vietnam, covering the fall of that country and Cambodia.

Sally, Great Guardian article! Hopefully the world knows the truth now, that we are not a nation of brainwashed sheep. Be thankful that you have had to deal with the boy king for only the past 6 years. Think about all of us Liberal and Democratic Texans who have had to deal with him for 11. It has been a long, dark experience but....Yesterday was such a relief! The energy shift is amazing. It feels like the oppressive fog that has been surrounding the earth for the past 6 years has lifted and the sun has finally came out. There's massive amounts of work to be done and many changes to be made that will not happen overnight, but at least we are getting the train back on track.

Maureen Dowd MADE MY DAY! Fabulous, biting, article!

Yes Cybear we do have massive amounts of work to be done yet!
My Dem. buddy up in Bangor, ( who has been more active in this campaign, just e-mailed me.......The DLC, DCCC, DNC, ALL REFUSED HELP TO JEAN HAY BRIGHT! ( She's a "dirty word" progressive!)
So the centrist Dems still have an agenda.......
QOP

Rejoice all progressives.Yesterday, I mentioned
the unfinished business, today it's successfully
finished business - getting the shameless, arrogant, liar of evangelicals, who had extremely
high ambition of occupying WH, by crook or fluke
from 2008 - macacaw of Virginia has been cast into
the sutbin of garbage where he rightly belongs.The
evanelicals LOST 2 of their favorites in the con
derailment - rick santorum of PA and this macacaw of Virginia. Good riddance.

Check the Democratic charts for 2008, Sally. Seems
like a progressive will occupy the WH from 2009, the way things have turned out after the recent
political tsunami!

We all certainly did focus on macacaw's demise in
Virginia, Pat C.I certainly did and we WON.

The possible scenario for 2008 may shape up like this. Honorable Harry Reid (our man) has said that
days of do-nothing congress are over.'We're ready to get to work on changing course in Iraq to raising minimum wage to fixing health care crisis to making country energy independent'. The response from cons will be anti and knucklehead
thief will be for VETO. Again in 2008, the elctorate will be MAD and elect a progressive to
WH in 2008.

http://dwb.sacbee.com/24hour/politics/story/3413362p-12539622c.html

Arabs react to U.S. election results

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Angered by the Iraq war and new violence in Gaza, some Arabs reacted harshly Wednesday to the drubbing of President Bush's party, saying the Republicans paid for failed U.S. policies across the Middle East. In Israel, on the other hand, some analysts worried that political infighting between Democrats and Republicans in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election might distract the Americans from looming crises in the Middle East, chief among them the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

"Israelis perceive the Iranian threat as imminent," said Prof. Menahem Blondheim of Hebrew University. "Without political support at home and in his party and among American public, a decisive military or diplomatic move against Iran seems less and less likely."

Most governments across the region had no official comment on the election results, but critics of the U.S. role were blunt.

"I was really thrilled when I learned that the Democrats won in Congress," said Mohammed Ali, a Cairo auto parts salesman. "They are far better than the Republicans led by Bush, who destroyed everything everywhere. Look at Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon."

"President Bush is no longer acceptable worldwide," said Suleiman Hadad, a lawmaker in Syria, whose autocratic government has been shunned by the U.S.

Even in pro-Western Jordan, newspaper editor Nabil al-Sharif said many Arabs believe U.S. policies under Bush are "dangerous to the region and to the world."

"We are delighted that the American voters have at least disassociated themselves from these dangerous policies," he said.

Iranian state television said in a commentary that the Republicans suffered losses because of "Bush's wrong strategy in the Middle East" as well as "financial corruption in the United States."

More...

Raj, thank you so much for your focus!! I can't tell you how much that one means to me!

Thank you all for your warm and much appreciated birthday wishes. This bar none, the best birthday I've had, ever.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/11/cnn-tells-youtube-to-pull-down-video.html

CNN tells YouTube to pull down video outing GOP party head Ken Mehlman

You can still see it here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/08/censored-by-cnn-bill-mah_n_33701.html

Vital point to make is anyone notice, so called
'Poll Pundits' were so slanted towards the rotten
wing all through the media, even NPR, ABC, PBS
(even so called Mara of NPR & FOX, she is so btchy
deriding the progressives saying Dems will be lucky to take 3 Sen seats away;also the self proclaimed cokie roberts saying 4 Sen seats max.)
Not a single one had the GUTS or Bold to say that
these corrupt repugs are washed up completely,
that electorate are NO longer falling for FEAR
tactics, comparing Dems to osamas etc. and to say
the corrupt washed up cons are going to lose BIG
and will LOSE the Senate. Not a single ONE of these self proclaimed experts. These are despicable ones NOT pundits!

from the Guardian article:
For six years, latterly with the backing of both houses of a markedly conservative Republican Congress, George Bush has led an American administration that has played an unprecedentedly negative and polarising role in the world's affairs.
------
I say that, if you look at history of this country, the worst offenses have been committed by the Republican conservatives (our late entry into WWII is one example, the turning away from what was happening in Europe by the elite wealthy of this country).... every war, for instance, was made worse by the military industrial and congressional complex (in Vietnam, it was the Dems, but it was STILL the same group of power brokering)....the old men with lots of power and money. It wasn't until the younger generations rebelled that things were made more progressive. (And the younger generation in this election came out to the tune of 2 Million Voters who were online voters or people who were ASKED to vote, and they made the difference) Of course, what always happens is that it slips back again to the conservatives as steam runs out of the progressives. Or another way that doesn't work, which the Dems are guilty of in the past....owning all three branches of government. It didn't work for Dems and it didn't work for Repubs. Human beings just can't be trusted with all power in one sector. Which our founding fathers sure knew!

------
The new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be the Armani-clad San Francisco leftwinger of the caricaturists' dreams but she heads a caucus that will demand caution on some of the baby-boomer liberal generation's pet subjects.
-------
Well...she's no left winger....that is just a label. But the analyses seems to be what is accurate.

http://www.democrats.com/impeachforchange-launch

If you are interested in the Bob Gates bkg, here is the info....tie into Ollie North...bottom of page...

I certainly hope that the Dems don't listen to all the repugs who are starting to cry about investigating or impeaching chimp and friends....because if the adults really are in charge, it needs to be done.

Raj, I heard a commentator (Scarborough maybe) say that G. Macaca Allen who had presidential asperations is permanently dead in the water. This is pretty overwhelming (Newt has never come back from his missteps either). Sure gives one great glee to know the aspects did happen and that karma does happen as a result.

JudiGem, if you'll go to the link I posted a bit earlier, you'll find that Gates had a lot to do with setting up OBL, too! What a great choice, huh?

Poor guy...just found out there ARE consequences to stupidity...Pat C, I am sure you will like this one from Huffpo:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/09/senior-staffer-allen-sh_n_33747.html
Senior Staffer: Allen "Shell-Shocked," Sequestered In His Home...
: Virginia Senate Race
As the canvassing continues in Virginia, Sen. George Allen, R-Virginia, is sequestered in his home, "shell shocked," and going through "a nightmare," during this period of limbo, a senior Allen staffer tells CNN.

In a conference call with his senate staff and regional representatives Wednesday afternoon, the Virginia senator "didn't concede but he was clearly not emboldened to fight this," according to the staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

and from a comment on this page:

George Allen conceded for TWO reasons...

ONE is that he had fewer votes in one of the nation's most tightly controlled state election processes. But the OTHER reason is very interesting...

Well placed sources in Richmond and in Washington, have suggested that Mr. Allen was in fact URGED TO CONCEDE NOW because there is sufficient evidence that he and/or his campaign may be implicated in a continuing investigation.

Federal and state election laws were broken during the last few days of the campaign. The Virginia State Board of Elections filed a formal complaint and is working with the FBI.

The FBI will not close the investigation into Republican voter intimidation tactics simply because Mr. Allen has conceded the election.

Stay tuned sore losers, sometimes justice is served twice!

Shylurker, got a funny email today with that old pic of the younger Bumsfield shaking hands with Saddam and saying 'boy what a sh***ty day! and Saddam saying something like 'you got that right.'

Cockroaches need to be stepped on to be erradicated.

This is a good start.

But also, RIP, Ed Bradley...you were WAY too young to make this exit. But at least it was knowing America was bouncing back....

ANother thing to watch...the Supremes started the abortion debate again....this one will be really important to follow.

Roberts Court Faces First Abortion Cases

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/110806WA.shtml

In their confirmation hearings last year, John Roberts and Samuel Alito sidestepped pointed questions about whether they would overturn abortion precedents. Now, a year later, the country is about to get some answers. Wednesday, the US Supreme Court takes up two cases challenging the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

Superbug Brought Back by Iraq War Casualties

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/110806HB.shtml

Injured soldiers returning from Iraq have brought back a superbug that has been linked with outbreaks in NHS hospitals where they have been treated, a health minister has confirmed. The links between casualties brought back from Iraq and outbreaks in the NHS have caused alarm within the health service and led to renewed demands for more dedicated wards for Britain's armed forces to enable wounded soldiers to be isolated more effectively.

Apparently this guy's a real wing-dinger. More on Gates:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2667453

My gawd! He's involved in the voting machine industry! :-#

Wanna see some real sour pusses? To lose all that power, more than could have possibly even dreamed of so completely must be a real hard pill to swallow. It's what they all look like their doing. Swallowing it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2952183

Well, OK, since Garry hasn't posted anything recently along these lines, I'll try. All totally speculative, of course. Poppy has reached into his sack of scary henchmen (with fascinating pasts), and has pulled Ol' Oil Slick Jim out to go and sit in the WH with the assignment of rescuing Jr. Well, Ol' Oil Slick Jim is in charge of Poppy's prez papers, etc., in Tx, so Ol' Oil Slick Jim knows lots and lots of stuff. And, perhaps, knows where to find really hot stuff in and around DC and, you know, neutralize it? More recently, Poppy sends this guy Gates. Now, this guy has a fascinating past of juicy entanglements (BCCI, Iran-Contra, OBL, etc.) which are easily documented. But Poppy sends him anyway. What is his mission?

(I bought a whole new package of tin-foil today and decided to put it to some use.)

Latest message from Matthew: "US election results in universal context; moving out of third density thinking; how love-light works" http://www.matthewbooks.com/mm/anmviewer.asp?a=64&z=2

Well Shy,
Here's Madsen's take on ole Gateleg.
Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates in position to know about Iran-Contra scandal. The Final Report of Judge Lawrence Walsh, the Independent Counsel for Iran-Contra Matters, issued on Aug. 4, 1993, concluded, "Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA's deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities."
http://waynemadsenreport.com/

They're all starting to look like charicatures!
QOP

Thanks so much, Pat QOP. Perty soon the Dems will have subpoena power. So, I'm stretching here (not my best Rosemary Woods stretch, but I'm working on it, and the tinfoil does kinda hurt my head), so what is Gates' mission? Sitting there in the Pentagon, he's gonna have access to lots and lots of stuff. Dunno, just tin-foil talkin'.

Chart of Nancy Pelosi, new speaker of the House & new president if bushadruggie/v-rezaholic resign or are impeached during the next two years. http://astrodynamics.blogspot.com/2006/11/meet-nancy-pelosi.html

And this!
Robert Parry's blog
The Secret World of Robert Gates
by Robert Parry

Robert Gates, George W. Bu| Nov 9 2006 - 11:23pm |
Home » blogs » Robert Parry's blog
The Secret World of Robert Gates
by Robert Parry | Nov 9 2006 - 11:23pm | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Robert Parry

Robert Gates, George W. Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family's inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.

The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers - three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director - and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.

If Bush's timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates's past.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/2845

QOP

Just when we thought we could relax a bit (and the guy is credible!):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=415514&in_

these military/ CIA guys are being put in place for a reason you know. The Dems were allowed to win because Pelosi/ Murtha will start in on the 2nd amendment. The economy will crash, the troops will come home, and martial law will begin. Look for Clark's name to appear very frequently.

I think if people are going to claim the Republicans 'allowed' the Democrats to win that they please back it up with some facts. I don't think that claim passes the smell test. The implications are that Rove somehow masterminded all the scandals, manipulated THINKING Americans into voting the way he wanted - which was for Republicans to lose the elections - and made sure the war went from very bad to catastrophically bad. Are these bloggers also claiming that they rigged the voting machines so the Democrats would win, but they're so good at their manipulations that they made it look like there was a huge turnout of voters who were against Bush and his policies, but that in reality there wasn't any such thing? And all just to lull us into a false sense of security?

All that astrology showing they're having big problems and we're supposed to believe their recent resounding defeat was all made to happen deliberately by Bush and Rove? They must be superhuman masterminds indeed!

Indeed Peg!
Cspan HAS A BLOOMSBERG CORRESPONDANT ON THIS AM. Tony Cappicio, Clueless young pup! He said Alf Landon was a New Dealer!?
Keep shouting, write letters. McCaskill is favoring voting for Bolton! Contact her!
With that notion in mind, I was startled this afternoon, when in a conversation with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball," Democratic Senator-elect Claire McCaskill of Missouri, stated that she would consider confirming George W. Bush's contentious and slimy recess appointee, John Bolton, as United States' Ambassador to the United Nations.

http://smirkingchimp.com/
QOP

no claim was made lunaoscura that it was a gift from the Republicans. Bush and Rove have orders to follow, too.

http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/11/10/dean_dems/

Howard Dean Vindicated

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/washington/10gates.html

Echoes of 1991

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_re_us/inquest_for_a_warrior_5

Startling findings in Tillman probe

Hey Shy--
I haven't found anything like that to post lately, but a guess is that this new/old Bush 41 guy Gates is, at the every least, running a phalanx of shredders 24/7 and maybe that was his job in the previous Bushleague "games"....I'll see what I can dig up and post it later....

Corporatism is now being seriously challenged by a new populism. This populism cuts across the normal political divide in surprising ways. Tax policy, public spending, legal rights, immigration, environment, civil liberties, government secrecy, healthcare, campaign financing, trade policies, public debt, minimum wage, outsourcing, media concentration, anti-monopoly policies, government contracting, worker rights, foreign policy, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seriously driven by the financial and political power of the largest corporations. Small businesses, workers, consumers, small investors, taxpayers and the poor are all being negatively impacted by the Corporate Agenda on these and many other issues.

Under the Bush Republicans, large corporations have completely captured our federal government and almost all the major media outlets. The middle-class in America has seen their lifestyles undermined by the greed and power of the Corporatists. A real backlash has developed. It can be seen by numerous ballot initiatives, candidacies and growing grassroots organizations.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/532

Who will bring democracy to Tibet?

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/398

The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama

snip

The failure of the United States to in any serious way advocate for the independence -- let alone the cultural and religious preservation -- of Tibet puts the lie to any Bush claim to want to spread democracy and freedom. Bush won't lift a finger to prevent the destruction of the Tibetan way of life and monastic tradition. It is a culture of peace and harmony, being ravaged by Chinese torture, destruction and colonization.

And yet, because they have no oil -- and because Bush's corporate buddies profit from their relation with China, the White House does nothing to prevent the ongoing imperial "Chinification" of Tibet.

More...

book review

I'll write to McCaskill but I'm not panicking yet. She doesn't take office until January and Bush wants to ram Bolton's nomination through before then. If it comes to a vote before the recess, Missouri still has Jim Talent to depend on to rubber stamp Bush. Hopefully, Claire meant that she would consider Bolton and then vote NO.

Mehlman stepping down as Republican Committee Chair

POSTED: 10:08 p.m. EST, November 9, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman announced he is going to step down at the end of the year.

The White House is already searching for a replacement or replacements to lead the party into the 2008 presidential campaign cycle, sources tell CNN.

Two sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mehlman has made clear to close associates for some time he was likely to leave after the 2006 elections -- and that there is no dissatisfaction with his performance in the midterm cycle.

One name that has come up as a possible replacement is outgoing Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who just lost a U.S. Senate race.

One of the sources, though, said a more likely scenario is for Steele to join the Bush administration in another capacity after the first of the year when a few members of the Bush Cabinet and other senior officials are expected to leave.

One scenario under discussion, should Mehlman leave, according to two of the sources, is to split the RNC leadership duties, a model both parties have used at times in the past.

Under this approach, a party operative would be brought in to run day-to-day affairs, and a prominent Republican, most likely a former officeholder, would be named general chairman.

The name most talked about to run the day-to-day operation in such an approach is Maria Cino, a veteran Republican strategist who currently serves as deputy transportation secretary.

Eric Francis:

Mercury Transit of the Sun

Now that I have that off my chest, Tuesday and Wednesday were certainly interesting days astrologically. I would go so far as to say they were promising and in many ways completely strange. From a distance, however, it did not look too hopeful -- it all looked very slippery to me. I guess it's just a matter of who slipped.

Retrograde Mercury in Scorpio made an exact conjunction to Venus in Scorpio. This was exactly 90 degrees from Neptune in Aquarius -- the cosmic happy pill we've all been swallowing since the late 1990s, sending a little shockwave through that energy pattern. Simultaneously, everything aligned on another plane of space: Venus and Mercury were parallel Neptune (somewhat like an exact conjunction, but subtler); and the next day, Mercury crossed the disk of the Sun, called a transit (a parallel plus a conjunction simultaneously). Each one of these events is rare; putting them together is extraordinary, and something extraordinary happened.

For Aries Point fans, the focus of this activity was right at the center of the fixed signs, which are on a 90-degree harmonic with the first degree of the zodiac. In other words, the midpoint of the fixed signs is directly connected to the beginning of the cardinal signs. So the superaspect involving the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Neptune also picked up the Aries Point, amplifying its effects many times. I completely missed this, the total sum, before the fact, and have only put it together in the past couple of days.

[Think of it this way: 1 Aries is 45 degrees from 15 Taurus, a semi-square (much like a square). That puts the two into a high-energy relationship. Thus, the 1 Aries, 1 Cancer, 1 Libra and 1 Capricorn (collectively, the "Aries Point") are all related to 15 Taurus, 15 Leo, 15 Scorpio and 15 Aquarius, the heart of the fixed cross. Tuesday's astrology occurred at around 15 Scorpio and 15 Aquarius, relating it directly to the Aries Point. The operative aspects are semi-square (45 degrees) and sesquiquadrate (135 degrees). Thank you Madalyn at Astrolabe for explaining the Uranian astrology to me.]

Of all these events, the Mercury transit of the Sun is the one that points to the beginning of a new era, particularly given where it was placed in relation to the Aries Point. Think of Mercury etching a line across the Sun, or as Mercury eclipsing the Sun. The small meets the great; the Mercury boomerang that has been thrown at us again and has again finally came back and clocked the King (the Sun) on the head.

Consider that at every defining moment of the Bush administration, Mercury has been the most prominent planet, and the alignments have been strikingly well timed and precise. The two events we're most familiar with were the election of 2000 and the coup d'etat of Sept. 11.

With the first, Mercury stationed direct in the last degree of Libra the night of the 2000 election, just as the polls closed in Florida. Bush, who lost the popular vote and should have lost the electoral vote, won the presidency.

With the second, Mercury was rising, exact to the degree, in Libra, just as the Sept. 11 incident manifested. An event that required the governments negligence to happen at all became the weapon used against us over and over again.

These are old examples -- but they are salient, and they fit a much larger pattern. The sequence of events Tuesday into Wednesday fits the pattern closely, with a grouping of exact aspects tightly focused on Mercury at center stage.

Lieberman: Call Me a Democrat

- - - - - - - - - - - -

November 10,2006 | WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joe Lieberman, who won re-election as an independent, has a message for his Senate colleagues in the next Congress: Call me a Democrat.

The three-term Connecticut lawmaker defied party leaders when he launched his independent bid after losing to Democrat Ned Lamont in the August primary. During the campaign, he vowed to be an "independent-minded Democrat" if he were re-elected. In Tuesday's election, Lieberman won strong GOP support and given the closely divided Senate, Republicans are expected to court him.

So will he count as a Democrat or an independent who caucuses with the majority Democrats? In an e-mail message late Thursday, Lieberman spokesman Dan Gerstein said the senator will begin his new term as a Democrat.

With the Democratic takeover of the Senate, Lieberman is in line to become chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In a post-election news conference, Lieberman said he was reassured by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid that he would retain his seniority when the new Senate convenes.

Recent picture of Poppy & Gates:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2675393

This guy Steele is just another specimen from the bottom of that old barrel:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001979.php

Steve Bell is at it again..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/archive/0,,1284265,00.html

run cursor over pictures to see what they are

http://www.guardian.co.uk/dayinpictures/page/0,,1945001,00.html

(yawn) Surprise, surprise, another Al-CIA(DUH!) tape shows up right after a big Dem win....does anybody still give half a shizzle about this fearmongering BS?

This time they promise not to stop until they "blow up the White House" (double yawn--KKKArl, you're out of ideas, pal--give it up!)

Oh well, just in case you feel like a few yuks, you can read the accompanying Associated Propaganda piece, faithfully transcribed from Turd Blossom's DICtation(oops, sorry, another inappropraite pun):

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061110/D8LAAU182.html

Fiore's take...

http://www.sfgate.com/comics/fiore/

I just wonder how lieberman cachets its balls into any pants other than a specially made pair with an extraordinarily ample codpiece.

Sidney Blumenthal

American Revolution 2006
(4 comments )
The concession by George Allen, confirming that James Webb has won in Virginia, a victory that gives the Democrats a majority in the Senate, completes the party's sweep of both houses of the Congress and ratifies the repudiation of President Bush and his policies, especially in the Iraq war.

Bush's radical presidency was the number one issue in the mid-term elections.

Republican candidates lived in fear that they would receive calls from the White House suggesting that the president wanted to campaign for them. His last minute blitz in Montana on behalf of Senator Conrad Burns seemed momentarily to lift the beleaguered incumbent, but virtually the moment Air Force One departed the Republican sank once again, this time for good. In Florida, the Republican candidate for governor, Charles Crist, fled upon the president's arrival at a rally on his behalf in the state capital of Tallahassee. Crist's disloyalty and rudeness, leaving Bush in the lurch, was the better part of wisdom. Crist, like other Republicans caught in the storm, managed to survive only by avoiding him. The once eagerly sought presidential photo-op had become the kiss of death.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sidney-blumenthal/american-revolution-2006_b_33808.html?view=print

CHARGES AGAINST RUMMY AND GONZO HIT THE MSM!!!! Possibly why Rummy was really dumed?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html

From Wayne Madsen, apparently Snarly is next on the chopping block....(I apologize for the length of this post, y'all!)

November 10/11/12, 2006 -- According to Washington insiders, there are moves afoot to dump Vice President Dick Cheney and replace him with either John McCain or Rudolph Giuliani prior to the 2008 presidential election. Whoever succeeds Cheney will be able to campaign for the presidency with the perks that come with being an incumbent Vice President.

Since the increasingly-besieged Cheney has signaled he has no intention of voluntarily stepping down, the strategy by the Bush camp may be to force him out by presenting evidence before Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald that it was Cheney who was responsible for the compromise of CIA non-proliferation covert officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm.

Observers note the unusual professional relationship between Fitzgerald and Karl Rove's defense attorney Robert Luskin. Insiders believe that Fitzgerald may be proffered a carefully crafted deal by Luskin whereby Rove will testify to Cheney's primary role in the outing of Mrs. Wilson and her firm. The sealed indictment of Rove will then be retired permanently. If such a deal is worked out, Fitzgerald may then offer a deal to Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former Chief of Staff, to also testify against Cheney. With such double-barreled testimony, President Bush will then be compelled to ask Cheney for his resignation or face a very nasty and public indictment.

The game plan appears to be what DC insider Sally Quinn foresaw in her Washington Post op-ed last month, an article that suggested she has spoken extensively to a Donald Rumsfeld who was aware of his impending firing. The op-ed stated that Rumsfeld would not be the scapegoat for Iraq and planned to resign shortly after the election. Quinn, seemingly channeling Rumsfeld, stated that after Rumsfeld left, there will be only two scapegoats left: Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. The article concluded by asking which person would be served up as the official scapegoat for Iraq.

This editor wrote, "based on the arrival of James Baker and a coterie of George H. W. Bush old hands on the scene to bail out Dubya, it is clear that the Bush family does not intend to allow one of its own to be declared scapegoat."

With word from White House sources that Cheney was opposed to the sacking of his old mentor Rumsfeld and even more resistant to the naming of Bush family loyalist Robert Gates to take his place, it is clear that Cheney doesnot want to be placed in a position of exposure. However, even Cheney neo-con allies like Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, sensing that Cheney is the designated scapegoat, have bellowed about the Iraq war being a mistake and are now distancing themselves from the Cheney group, once the most powerful operating cell within the Bush administration.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=138042

Real Democrats

Oops I meant "dumped" at 7:51 above.

cast your vote!

MSNBC Should bush be impeached?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/

Ya know, if Cheney is forced to resign, Bush can appoint a new VP (a la Gerald Ford). Then if Bush is removed from office, that new VP becomes Pres and would probably run in 08. In that case, it might be very difficult to vote him out.

Hi, did ya'll think Halloween was over? Are you for gun control? Do ya'll think we should keep the middle east destablised so what we spend on oil they'll reinvest in arms or "stable" US bonds? Do you believe to understand politics you follow the money? Have a look at this advert: http://www.safemoneyreport.com/report_pickup/43/index.asp?i=816553&t=43&sc=G100&ec=63823&gc=

snip....The military build-up by Israel's prime enemy in the region — Hezbollah — is massive in scope.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. government estimated Iran gave Hezbollah up to $100 million a year in financial assistance.

Meanwhile, Israel is the largest annual recipient of U.S. military funding — more than $2 billion a year.

Seventy-five percent of the military financing support is used to buy defense equipment made in the United States. That's $1.7 billion in 2006 alone. Moreover, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies for 99% of its military purchases.

A key point: If the U.S. defense industry gets this much business based on the military build-up to help sponsor Israel, without direct involvement in the Middle East conflict, imagine the spending that is likely if the U.S. and other nations are dragged into the conflict!

snip....defense-related companies are packing on serious profits and their share prices are zooming higher.

Year-to-date, for example:
Northrop Grumman (NOC), up 17%
Boeing Co. (BA), up 18%
United Technologies (UTX), up 21%
Rockwell Collins Inc. (COL), up 26%
Raytheon (RTN), up 28%
General Dynamics (GD), up 37%, and
Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), up 41%

snip.....Japan, the world's second-largest economy, spends an estimated $44 billion on defense, making it the fourth-largest military budget in the world.

Now, Japan's cabinet has endorsed a bill that would upgrade the country's Defense Agency to a full-fledged ministry, giving it more clout and a bigger piece of the budget.

The big shift: It's now more likely that Japan will revise its pacifist constitution to give its Self-Defense Forces a larger role. And the prospect of a re-militarized Japan is already causing increased tensions throughout the region, especially with China, North Korea and South Korea...End snips

When guns were invented you no longer had to look your enemy in the eye. War became impersonal to a degree. Now you needn't hate any enemy. Just buy stock for yer portfolio. Money is more important than lives, isn't it?.........When Pluto holds court in Capricorn, discovery will go here....Rant off!.........Oops,forgot to state the obvious: Bush and Cheney PR bit players....PPS: Could ya tell this kinda stuff makes me cranky, reeeeeeal cranky......Think I'll cheer myself up by watching Dr Strangelove........bye

http://billmon.org/archives/002957.html

Proctological Exam
It looks like the folks at Halliburton better get ready to bend over and drop them:

Rep. Ike Skelton knows what he will do in one of his first acts as chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the Democratic-led House: resurrect the subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
The panel was disbanded by the Republicans after they won control of Congress in 1994. Now, Skelton (D-Mo.) intends to use it as a forum to probe Pentagon spending and the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war.
Skelton: (pulls on rubber glove) This is going to hurt -- a lot.

..................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ike_Skelton

Ike Skelton

Now, if we could impeach them both at the same time.......I'd definitely go for that!! (at least after the new Congress is sworn in)

Notice how Cheney seems to be very quiet? His progressed Sun is at 16+ Aries, the Sabian Symbol for which is: Two Prim Spinsters Sitting in Silence... he sure seems to be digesting what's going on. I wonder what goes on in his brain? Perhaps it's too frightening to even consider...

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/11/10/134326/75

James Carville:

Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.
The candidate being floated to replace Dean? Harold Ford.

Says James Carville, one of the anti-Deaniacs, "Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day. Now probably Harold Ford wants to stay in Tennessee. I just appointed myself his campaign manager."

Can you believe these people???? Sally, any comments on if this is going to be a problem for Dean? With friends like these who needs enemies???

No rest for the weary!

Hi dromero
Oh, Howard Dean, seems he can't take a trick!

Interestingly, his progressed Moon right now is at Cancer 26: Guests are Reading in the Library of a Luxurious Home and in about two weeks time it moves onto Cancer 27: A Furious Storm in a Canyon Filled With Valuable Homes...

both degree Symbols deal with 'money' 'luxury', obviously 'being connected' as one is 'luxurious' and the other 'valuable'.

It looks interesting in his future as Pluto is going to go over his Jupiter when it ingresses into Capricorn. His Jupiter is on the first degree: Capricorn 1: An Indian Chief Claims Power and Recognition From the Assembled Tribe...

perhaps his time is coming? At the moment his progresed Sun is at Capricorn 25: An Oriental Rug Dealer - he's got to wheel and deal better than he's been doing, obviously!

In a few years time his progressed Sun will hit Capricorn 27: A Mountain Pilgrimage... I see this degree again and again in the charts of those who run for prominent public office...

Lynda, this will be of real interest then.

Fitst Gore, now Dean.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1945410,00.html
Labour drafts in US election architect for ‘our midterms’

Howard Dean to advise party on campaigning strategy ahead of key May vote

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.gates10nov10,0,3393156.story

Wrong man to replace Rumsfeld

..........

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/11/10/DDGALM59DT1.DTL

JON CARROLL

Because I'm a kindly fellow, I'm going to give you one minute more to rejoice about the election returns. Yes, the Bush-Cheney military-industrial-evil complex finally took one on the chin, and it made a very satisfying sound. People who were afraid that Karl Rove had magic witchy-witchy electoral powers were relieved. And some pretty nasty individuals (Richard Pombo, Rick Santorum) had one or more sleepless nights, and although we are much too evolved humans to take pleasure in that, we can take pleasure in the fact that less evolved people will take pleasure in this discomfiture of villains.
OK, playtime is over. Nothing has changed. Same president, same policies, same corruption, same continuing embarrassments.
First, a lot of those losing Republican incumbents will immediately move down K Street and become lobbyists. They will make substantially more money, and they will get to do essentially the same job: They will write the laws that govern our nation.
The Bush administration has long ago committed itself to an imperial presidency, in which the most important official document is the signing statement. The president will continue to do whatever he wants to do, or whatever he is told to do, depending on your current organizational theory of the White Bunker. If Congress passes something he doesn't like, he will veto it.

More...

Garry, like rats jumping off a sinking ship, so the NeoCons all now point to Cheney while denying that they had any responsibility themselves for creating the quagmire in Iraq. It would figure.

That article pretty much echoes my post above -- About how Bush Sr's Mob would see to it that Cheney takes "The Big Fall" in place of Junior, with a charismatic, widely-respected figure such as John McCain or Rudy Giuliani taking his place as VP. This would naturally be to "smooth over" public hard feelings and anger about being deceived, as well as the doubt that would immediately emerge about Bush's ability to continue to govern in the wake of such a devestating "scandal" come to light.

I'm still not so sure that Rove gets off easy. He's about as equally responsible as Cheney, Rumsfeld and the NeoCons for our present sorry state of affairs and the poisonous state of politics right now in the US, if not moreso, since he actually had to sell this trash, and found a way to do it. This election proved the fundamental weakness in his methodology: that the public will eventually become so tired and fed up with aggressive fear and smear tactics that they see right through them and vote accordingly.

Rove is as much a lame duck as Bush now, and will probably hereafter be marginalized. Whatever role he may continue to play for the remainder of the Bush II regime will probably not entirely be of his own volition. Baker's hand may be apparent, whether Rove likes it or (most probably) not.

With Pluto in Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius, we saw power to all things Big, Boastful and Extremely Rich -- in big-ticket item taste, if not in actual bank account terms. One of the key hallmarks of this era has obviously been the explosion of McMansion and Faux Chateau construction well out into the hinterlands of our urban cores.

Now, with Pluto heading towards Saturn-ruled Capricorn, big and gaudy must shortly give way to that which is smaller, efficient and practical.

With slow-moving Pluto, we always seem to be able to count upon "messenger events" that signal the shift in energy just prior to the actual ingress. Thus behold... the "Katrina Cottage!"

--

Stylish cottage for Katrina country is a big hit

A well-designed home for under $50,000? This tiny house designed for the battered Gulf Coast will be sold by Lowe's, and is expected to draw buyers from all over.
By Ron Scherer, The Christian Science Monitor

A model home in Ocean Springs, Miss., that gives Katrina's displaced an alternative to trailer living is starting to take the country by storm.

The Katrina cottage -- with living quarters about the size of a McMansion bathroom -- is now appealing to people well beyond the flood plain. Californians want to build one in their backyards to use for rental income to help with the mortgage payment. Modestly paid kayakers in Colorado see it as a way to finally afford a house. Elsewhere, people envision building one so a parent can live nearby.

A new niche
Flying in the face of a "big house" trend, designers of these tiny abodes seem to have found a new housing niche. Some experts cite an interest by some Americans in downsizing their habitats, a reaction to the supersized home, and note the challenge of heating and cooling a big house at a time when family budgets are flat. Others note that changing demographics -- more empty nesters and single adults -- may mean a timely debut of the Lilliputian homes.

"It's resonating with people because it's a market that did not exist," says Marianne Cusato, a New York-based designer who drew up the plans for the Katrina cottage. "In the past, you had to go either to an apartment or a trailer."

Commercialization of the concept is limited -- but that is about to change. Late this year, perhaps as soon as this month, Lowe's, a national hardware and building-supply company, intends to begin selling the plans and materials for four models in 30 stores in the Gulf Coast region.

The "Lowe's Katrina Cottage" offerings range from a two-bedroom, 544-square-foot model to a three-bedroom, 936-square-foot house. The cottages will cost $45 to $55 per square foot to build, Lowe's estimates, meaning the smallest would run about $27,200 and the largest $46,800. Estimates do not include the cost of the foundation, heating and cooling, and labor.

"We're starting on the Gulf Coast, where the original idea came from, but as soon as we feel the logistics are worked out we could go national," says Cusato, whose Web site has received more than 7,000 inquiries since January. "We want to be sure that when we say it's available, we're 100% sure we can deliver."

A concept that could spread
If Lowe's is successful, it's likely other companies will offer their own designs. "There is such a huge opportunity, when you talk about the number of houses that need to be built in Mississippi and Louisiana, that I think a lot of folks are looking at this type of concept," says Dan Tresch, director of governmental affairs at James Hardy Building Products, which provides the siding for Cusato's cottages.

(Much more... with pictures: http://realestate.msn.com/buying/Article_CSM.aspx?cp-documentid=1209895>1=8800)

Did I mention that they are Hurricane Resistant up to mid Category 4/140 MPH winds?

I'm all for these. God knows, I could work three jobs for the next 20 years with all my college debt and not even own so much as a piece of one of those ridiculous suburban McMansion monstrosities popping up everywhere. Plus it would be nice to actually own a home, even a very small one, rather than tossing money into the void each month to pay apartment rent.

A lot of late Generation Xers and Generation Y, the up and coming Pluto in Libra and Scorpio groups, have been totally locked out of home ownership by the real estate bubble scheme. This could really be a nice break for us; a chance to actually get started and grab onto something stable.

Go back and read the predictions from a vedic astrologer that were posted here before the election:
www.galacticcenter.org/predictions_november_2006.htm
(Sorry cant get it to link - - you'll have to copy and paste)
These were the only predictions that i can recall that got it right.

Here's the link OB

http://www.galacticcenter.org/predictions_november_2006.htm

Hello Buckeye,
Can you say Levitown? I can't recall when that concept was put in place, in PA ( Bucks County?) and NJ northwest of Trenton. That one was built when I was in High School (50's) Affordable housing for moderate income people. I wonder how the planets line up on this concept?
I hope Lowe's has factored in alternative energy use as well as hurricane strength.
My log cabin in NJ was roof tree, due east west.
The sun came in the south side windows all winter, warming it, the porch on the west and north sides kept it cool in summer. ( I met the nephew of the builder and it was by design not unintentional!)
So when house hunting in Maine I carried a compass.........NOT ONE of the 20 houses I looked at were east west! The problem? The points of land all run southwest /northeast,the early builders were more interested in lining up the front of the house foursquare to the road running past. On the shortest days of winter when the sun sets at 3:30 up here, it is shining on the south west corner of the house instead of coming in any window! The woodshed ( windowless) was built across the south side!!!! I have solved that by dragging home 2 7' tall windows from a demolition site and having them installed in the south side of what is now my studio! There3 was no back door either......if you wanted to go to the backyard, you had to exit the fornt and walk around........although I see evidence that there was an outhouse off the back of the woodshed, which probably then exited out to the back....ugh!
It's curious, many Mainer's as a group seem to be tone deaf to the environment. ( One of the most beautiful environments in the entire country!
I live 30 miles away from any Mac Donalds, yet I constantly find Big Mac boxes and Cups on the roadside out front!????
And they returned Olympia to the Senate?????? How can I affect the kids here????? Part of my mission.
QOP

AFT Calls on Republican Senatorial Comm. to Rescind 'Sexual Orientation' Policy, Says Pro-'Gay' Political Correctness Led to Sen. Allen's Loss

Contact: Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth, 630-546-4439

NAPERVILLE, Ill., Nov. 10 /Christian Newswire/
-- Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today called on the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to rescind its “sexual orientation” policy as inconsistent with the GOP’s professed pro-family values, and said pro-“gay” Political Correctness contributed to Sen. George Allen’s narrow loss for re-election in Virginia.

LaBarbera also called on all homosexual staff in both major parties to be open about their lifestyle in the interest of full disclosure to the public and each Member’s constituents.

http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/658581483.html

Colbert's salute to 12 years of Republican
majority...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x4489

Steve Judd

Thought For the Day

Thought for the weekend

Rummy’s gone, half the British cabinet are ‘under investigation’ – two nil to the good guys, methinks. But now the Moon is in Leo all weekend, steadily approaching Saturn, and it’s a more sedate time. As an astrologer/eschatologist, it’s my attempts to second guess the future that give me an edge sometimes. (Other times I look a complete idiot, but hey!-) And I’m looking at the configurations that are coming up in the second week of December in early Sagittarius, and what they do to anyone with a lot of powerful planets in early Gemini – let’s pick anyone at random, oh, Tony Blair, what a coincidence - and I’m trying to think back, have the UK police ever actually arrested a Prime Minister whilst he’s still in office? Four weeks ago this was a thousand to one. Now it’s a hundred to one. The noose is tightening all round the world. Oh yes – the Sun/Mercury conjunction of a few days ago. See it here.

Somehing to look forward to...

http://www.2012theodyssey.com/index.html

If anyone wants to know what exactly Nancy Pelosi put into place in such an incredibly short time, here is Marc Sandalow's piece on her:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/10/MNG2TMA8FR1.DTL&hw=Nancy+Pelosi&sn=002&sc=902

ELECTION AFTERMATH
How Pelosi propelled Democrats to power
As minority leader, she got members to stick together, recruited moderates as candidates and raised millions of dollars

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061110/ap_on_go_co/democrats_oversight_1

Waxman set to probe areas of Bush gov't

Enjoy Rummy! Really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmLToYe8nRo

I like Howard Dean's Sabian symbols, Linda. Thank you so much for posting them. With the Clintons/ Carville et al. trying their damndest to control this election and this new grassroots direction, Dr. Dean is going to need all his wits about him, along with our support.

Do go check this out, Peg. Kos is busy buryin' Carville:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/11/121144/11

JoannaO, that post on Lieberman is priceless. Hahahaha.

thanks Shy, I've been following it. Glad Kos is right out front on this. So many pundits to marginalize, so little time.

http://www.stariq.com/MarketWeek.htm

The USA mid-term national elections are now over, and it was truly a Mercury retrograde event. The Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in a sweep that surprised almost everybody. But what was more surprising was that several equity markets the world over made new multi-year highs following the election, and even the U.S. markets closed up fort he week.

In Europe, every index we track made at least a new 5-year high last week. In the case of the Swiss stock index, it posted a new all-time high. Yet each of these indices made those new highs under falling momentum indicators, which creates a bearish technical condition. It is as if fewer people (the level of the momentum indicator) are holding up more weight (the price of the index). That can’t go on much longer before the weight of this market comes crashing down. The fact that it happens—and after an election that changes the control of the United States Congress—is typical of Mercury retrograde and a Neptune station, where things do not unfold in a rational manner. Yes, I know all the arguments as to why the markets rallied, but as a Financial Astrologer who understands the nature of a heightened Mercury-Neptune influence, I also know that what you see and what you hear are not to be relied upon. The market will come to its senses shortly, and then you will hear the same explanation as to why it is falling as you heard as to why it is rising—the reality of the election results.

More….

On election night Carville looked very, very sick, as if he had cancer or something....

I think he's very unhappy in his life with you know who.

So What If Hillary Is Machiavellian—
We Need ‘Princess’
I’m Ready to Take Dive—Why Don’t You Join Me? If You Like Obama, Enjoy!

By: Ron Rosenbaum
Date: 11/13/2006
Page: 1

Let’s just do it. Let’s get it over with. For better or worse. It can’t be as bad as some suppose. It might turn out to be better than we could imagine. Let’s bow to the inevitable. Let’s make Hillary President.

As I write, the votes for the midterm election haven’t been counted, but whatever the results, we are going to be staring in the face of maybe two straight years of 24/7 talk about Hillary Clinton, her virtues and vices, a woman President and what that will mean, yada, yada, yada, ad infinitum.

Can you bear it? Are we going to learn anything new from it? Is there any aspect of it that hasn’t been beaten to death with discussion and debate already? Isn’t there some way we can just get it over with, just give way to the unstoppable force of nature that is the junior Senator from New York?

http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=13658&ic=Ron+Rosenbaum

None of the above reflects my opinions...

G.O.P. Campaign Tactics
Reveal True Character

By: Joe Conason
Date: 11/13/2006
Page: 5

What exactly is wrong with the Republicans?

Today, that question applies not to their rigidly right-wing ideology, nor to their routine betrayal of their rigidly right-wing ideology, nor even to their weird sexual hang-ups and hypocrisy, fascinating as all of those topics may be. Instead, on the day after Election Day, what is at issue is the bad nature of the Republican political class—meaning the party officials, the consultants, and the elected officials who oversee both—and the poisoning of America’s democratic process by their habitual misconduct.

http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=13675&ic=Joe+Conason

Fun Mark Morford... http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/11/10/notes111006.DTL&type=printable

Carville is looking for a job for himself for money and fame. His wife may have to spend all her money on lawyers. Some one has to feed the kids.bjt

Carville is looking for a job for himself for money and fame. His wife may have to spend all her money on lawyers. Some one has to feed the kids.bjt

November 12, 2006
2006: The Year of the ‘Macaca’
By FRANK RICH
OF course, the “thumpin’ ” was all about Iraq. But let us not forget Katrina. It was the collision of the twin White House calamities in August 2005 that foretold the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush.

Back then, the full measure of the man finally snapped into focus for most Americans, sending his poll numbers into the 30s for the first time. The country saw that the president who had spurned a grieving wartime mother camping out in the sweltering heat of Crawford was the same guy who had been unable to recognize the depth of the suffering in New Orleans’s fetid Superdome. This brand of leadership was not the “compassionate conservatism” that had been sold in all those photo ops with African-American schoolchildren. This was callous conservatism, if not just plain mean.

It’s the kind of conservatism that remains silent when Rush Limbaugh does a mocking impersonation of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s symptoms to score partisan points. It’s the kind of conservatism that talks of humane immigration reform but looks the other way when candidates demonize foreigners as predatory animals. It’s the kind of conservatism that pays lip service to “tolerance” but stalls for days before taking down a campaign ad caricaturing an African-American candidate as a sexual magnet for white women.

This kind of politics is now officially out of fashion. Harold Ford did lose his race in Tennessee, but by less than three points in a region that has not sent a black man to the Senate since Reconstruction. Only 36 years old and hugely talented, he will rise again even as the last vestiges of Jim Crow tactics continue to fade and Willie Horton ads countenanced by a national political party join the Bush dynasty in history’s dustbin.

Elsewhere, the 2006 returns more often than not confirmed that Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, are far better people than this cynical White House takes them for. This election was not a rebuke merely of the reckless fiasco in Iraq but also of the divisive ideology that had come to define the Bush-Rove-DeLay era. This was the year that Americans said a decisive no to the politics of “macaca” just as firmly as they did to pre-emptive war and Congressional corruption.

For all of Mr. Limbaugh’s supposed clout, his nasty efforts did not defeat the ballot measure supporting stem-cell research in his native state, Missouri. The measure squeaked through, helping the Democratic senatorial candidate knock out the Republican incumbent. (The other stem-cell advocates endorsed by Mr. Fox in campaign ads, in Maryland and Wisconsin, also won.) Arizona voters, despite their proximity to the Mexican border, defeated two of the crudest immigrant-bashing demagogues running for Congress, including one who ran an ad depicting immigrants menacing a JonBenet Ramsey look-alike. (Reasserting its Goldwater conservative roots, Arizona also appears to be the first state to reject an amendment banning same-sex marriage.) Nationwide, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote fell from 44 percent in 2004 to 29 percent this year. Hispanics aren’t buying Mr. Bush’s broken-Spanish shtick anymore; they saw that the president, despite his nuanced take on immigration, never stood up forcefully to the nativists in his own camp when it counted most, in an election year.

But for those who’ve been sickened by the Bush-Rove brand of politics, surely the happiest result of 2006 was saved for last: Jim Webb’s ousting of Senator George Allen in Virginia. It is all too fitting that this race would be the one that put the Democrats over the top in the Senate. Mr. Allen was the slickest form of Bush-Rove conservative, complete with a strategist who’d helped orchestrate the Swift Boating of John Kerry. Mr. Allen was on a fast track to carry that banner into the White House once Mr. Bush was gone. His demise was so sudden and so unlikely that it seems like a fairy tale come true.

As recently as April 2005, hard as it is to believe now, Mr. Allen was chosen in a National Journal survey of Beltway insiders as the most likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Political pros saw him as a cross between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush whose “affable” conservatism and (contrived) good-old-boy persona were catnip to voters. His Senate campaign this year was a mere formality; he began with a double-digit lead.

That all ended famously on Aug. 11, when Mr. Allen, appearing before a crowd of white supporters in rural Virginia, insulted a 20-year-old Webb campaign worker of Indian descent who was tracking him with a video camera. After belittling the dark-skinned man as “macaca, or whatever his name is,” Mr. Allen added, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”

The moment became a signature cultural event of the political year because the Webb campaign posted the video clip on YouTube.com, the wildly popular site that most politicians, to their peril, had not yet heard about from their children. Unlike unedited bloggorhea, which can take longer to slog through than Old Media print, YouTube is all video snippets all the time; the one-minute macaca clip spread through the national body politic like a rabid virus. Nonetheless it took more than a week for Mr. Allen to recognize the magnitude of the problem and apologize to the object of his ridicule. Then he compounded the damage by making a fool of himself on camera once more, this time angrily denying what proved to be accurate speculation that his mother was a closeted Jew. It was a Mel Gibson meltdown that couldn’t be blamed on the bottle.

Mr. Allen has a history of racial insensitivity. He used to display a Confederate flag in his living room and, bizarrely enough, a noose in his office for sentimental reasons that he could never satisfactorily explain. His defense in the macaca incident was that he had no idea that the word, the term for a genus of monkey, had any racial connotation. But even if he were telling the truth — even if Mr. Allen were not a racist — his non-macaca words were just as damning. “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia” was unmistakably meant to demean the young man as an unwashed immigrant, whatever his race. It was a typical example of the us-versus-them stridency that has defined the truculent Bush-Rove fearmongering: you’re either with us or you’re a traitor, possibly with the terrorists.

As it happened, the “macaca” who provoked the senator’s self-destruction, S. R. Sidarth, was not an immigrant but the son of immigrants. He was born in Washington’s Virginia suburbs to well-off parents (his father is a mortgage broker) and is the high-achieving graduate of a magnet high school, a tournament chess player, a former intern for Joe Lieberman, a devoted member of his faith (Hindu) and, currently, a senior at the University of Virginia. He is even a football jock like Mr. Allen. In other words, he is an exemplary young American who didn’t need to be “welcomed” to his native country by anyone. The Sidarths are typical of the families who have abetted the rapid growth of northern Virginia in recent years, much as immigrants have always built and renewed our nation. They, not Mr. Allen with his nostalgia for the Confederate “heritage,” are America’s future. It is indeed just such northern Virginians who have been tinting the once reliably red commonwealth purple.

Though the senator’s behavior was toxic, the Bush-Rove establishment rewarded it. Its auxiliaries from talk radio, the blogosphere and the Wall Street Journal opinion page echoed the Allen campaign’s complaint that the incident was inflated by the news media, especially The Washington Post. Once it became clear that Mr. Allen was in serious trouble, conservative pundits mainly faulted him for running an “awful campaign,” not for being an awful person.

The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen’s defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of “faith.”

Perhaps the most interesting finding in the exit polls Tuesday was that the base did turn out for Mr. Rove: white evangelicals voted in roughly the same numbers as in 2004, and 71 percent of them voted Republican, hardly a mass desertion from the 78 percent of last time. But his party was routed anyway. It was the end of the road for the boy genius and his can’t-miss strategy that Washington sycophants predicted could lead to a permanent Republican majority.

What a week this was! Here’s to the voters of both parties who drove a stake into the heart of our political darkness. If you’ll forgive me for paraphrasing George Allen: Welcome back, everyone, to the world of real America.

What exactly is wrong with the Republicans?
I had a brush with one of James Tobin's minions in the Bangor Repug Headquarters.
Infuriated by the Rez's shouts of "Dems. will raise taxes" I called to tell my story of levy of my property tax rebate 2 weeks after the 2004 Selection. The young Repug volunteer, Proud Mother of 3 Three ( count them) children, who I'm sure was blonde, nails done, 2 names ( They ALL DO. Kelly Ann, Lee Ann,......) Immediately she turned the conversation away from the huge tax benefits the wealthy 1% are getting to the high taxes in Maine. "Maine has the hightest taxes IN THE COUNTRY" NOT TRUE! I still know people in NJ,
My property taxes are only about 1/2 as much as my original taxes in NJ before they more than doubled in 11 years, on 3/4 of an acre, more land. But then my income is 2 1/2 times less than it was then!
Obviously "miss steel head has never traveled much. While I was telling her how Tom Kean as Governor had taxed me right out of my native state.
She WOULD NOT LISTEN, but just kept running her mouth, sounding like a computerized, "Chatty Cathy "doll! until I hung up on her!
That was scary! I might have had one of her kids in my art classes at the Bangor Y. ( On second thought, they probably start ROTC classes at the age of 8, rather than art!)
On a happier note. I went to the local hardware store to buy bricks to finish my walk in the front.
( background..........under new ownership, it has dropped a lot of the old hardware store merchandise, in favor of serving the Mcmansion crowd, $1,000. stainless, car sized outdoor grills, fancy very expensive tiles etc.Laura Ashley paint line; goodby floor paint color I used in my bathroom.........forgetabout touch ups!)
I have had bitter contentious verbal battles with one of the clerks (who ran for Repug office several years ago)
He waited on me yesterday, giving me prices and names of bricks, before I went out to the yard to choose the kind I liked. " Old White" was the lowest in price, and the one I was going to get; UNTIL I saw it, it wasn't white....2 sides were black! I chose another and went back in........Saying to him
"Old White must be a Republican brick because in fact it is black not white!"
That brought forth a huge belly laugh from him, which speaks volumes about the changed atmospere!

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
By Adam Zagorin
Time Magazine

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111106D.shtml
I heard it first on Deutsch Workld News Journal the other night!
QOP

Neo, keep an eye on another potential source of housing: those old suburban 50-60's homes. As the Greatest Generation dies off, those homes will be inherited by their Boomer kids. But the Greatest Generation has lived so long, the early Boomers-'46-'51 are approaching retirement and empty nests themselves. They don't want to take care of a big yard, which is why downtown lofts are suddenly becoming so popular. These homes have to go to somebody-and a lot of Jones, Gen X, and Y kids are going to find themselves inheritance homeowners if the inheritance taxes aren't too high. Big Bro and Big Sis may have initially been left the home, but Big Bro and Big Sis may not want to live in a place not really designed for convenient Senior living and that costs a lot to heat and cool, has too many bedrooms and baths, and isn't conveniently located near interesting stuff. So the house sale becomes in-family transfer of assets for some agreed-upon price.

Israel official: Strike on Iran possible

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

Fri Nov 10, 12:17 PM ET

The deputy defense minister suggested Friday that Israel might be forced to launch a military strike against Iran's disputed nuclear program — the clearest statement yet of such a possibility from a high-ranking official.

"I am not advocating an Israeli pre-emptive military action against Iran and I am aware of its possible repercussions," Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, a former general, said in comments published Friday in The Jerusalem Post. "I consider it a last resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort."

Sneh's comments did not necessarily reflect the view of Israel's government or of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.

Olmert, who was arriving in Washington on Sunday, said he was confident in the U.S. handling of the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program. The Bush administration and other nations say is a cover for developing atomic weapons, but Tehran says the program is peaceful.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061110/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_iran_nuclear&printer=1

Israel official: Strike on Iran possible

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

Fri Nov 10, 12:17 PM ET

The deputy defense minister suggested Friday that Israel might be forced to launch a military strike against Iran's disputed nuclear program — the clearest statement yet of such a possibility from a high-ranking official.

"I am not advocating an Israeli pre-emptive military action against Iran and I am aware of its possible repercussions," Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, a former general, said in comments published Friday in The Jerusalem Post. "I consider it a last resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort."

Sneh's comments did not necessarily reflect the view of Israel's government or of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.

Olmert, who was arriving in Washington on Sunday, said he was confident in the U.S. handling of the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program. The Bush administration and other nations say is a cover for developing atomic weapons, but Tehran says the program is peaceful.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061110/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_iran_nuclear&printer=1

Voice of the White House November 9, 2006

TBR News.org – November 9, 2006

“ My brother-in-law is a professional military officer, stationed in the Washington area and from him I learned over lunch today that Israel has finally determined to launch what they consider to be a pre-emptive military strike against Iran’s capacity to manufacture and, most especially, to deliver an atomic weapon against Israel.

I was told that Israel is desolated by the neutering of Bush’s ability to support this attack.

Congress is now seen as a block to Bush’s militant plans and so the decision is being formulated not only in Tel Aviv but also in Washington to “materially assist” an Israeli attack with satellite intelligence, very sophisticated weaponry and high level intelligence sharing.

American troops are not to be involved but Bush and Cheney are planning to do everything possible to “actively support” this action.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=5481

Outrage at London sting by US spies

By CHRISTOPHER LEAKE, Mail on Sunday

Last updated at 21:41pm on 11th November 2006

Reader comments (27)

It seems as if George Bush's secret agents can now arrest Britons here and fly them over the Atlantic to face trial.
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Outrage at London sting by US spies
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NEWS HOMEPAGE
Undercover American agents are staging secret 'sting' operations in Britain against criminal and terrorist suspects they want to extradite to the US.

• Comment: Beware: George Bush's secret agents can now arrrest us in our own country

In a recent operation, agents from America's Department of Homeland Security set up a suspect by posing as dealers wanting to illegally sell night-vision goggles for export to Iran.

The spies arranged a series of clandestine meetings in London hotels, which they secretly filmed as evidence. It is thought to be the first time American agents have been caught using such sting tactics in Britain.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=415889&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Olmert: Ahmadinejad must be stopped

Ahead of flight to Washington, prime minister tells Newsweek: Iran will pay dearly if it fails to cooperate with international demands. Olmert calls Lebanon war ‘“strategic, military and political success’, says ‘anxious to open dialogue with Abbas
Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – Iran must understand that if it fails to cooperate with the international community, it will “pay dearly”, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview with the US weekly Newsweek on the eve of his Washington visit. Olmert addressed the Iranian threat, emphasized his will to renew dialogue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and warned the Americans against a hasty exit from Iraq.

“This is the first time in many years that the official leader of a major nation with more than 70 million citizens has talked publicly and officially of the liquidation of another nation that is a member of the United Nations,” Olmert told Newsweek.

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3326834,00.html

November 12, 2006
In Gates Selection, White House Hopes to Close Rift Between State and Defense

By DAVID E. SANGER and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — President Bush selected Robert M. Gates as his new defense secretary in part to close a long-running rift between the Defense Department and the State Department that has hobbled progress on Iraq, keeping the two agencies at odds on issues ranging from reconstruction to detaining terrorism suspects, according to White House officials and members of Mr. Gates’s inner circle.

While Mr. Gates, a former director of central intelligence, had long been considered for a variety of roles, over the past two months Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, quietly steered the White House toward replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld with Mr. Gates, who had worked closely with Ms. Rice under the first President Bush. One senior participant in those discussions, who declined to be identified by name while talking about internal deliberations, said, “everyone realizes that we don’t have much time to get this right” and the first step is to get “everyone driving on the same track.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/washington/12gates.html?pagewanted=print

Cartoons

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/11/10/jd061110.gif

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/11/10/wpnan061110.gif

http://britainandamerica.typepad.com/britain_and_america/images/chomepunch.gif

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinion/ssi/images/Toles/c_11122006_520.gif

This article, if accurate, is scary. I don’t like the implications one little bit. Is our ‘democracy’ that much of a sham? Are we that gullible?

Cheney’s Revenge

By Mike Whitney

11/12/06 “Information Clearing House”——When Dick Cheney woke up on Wednesday mourning, his entire world had changed. The House and Senate was in control of the Democrats, Bush Senior’s buddy Robert Gates had taken over at the Pentagon, and his most-trusted ally, Don Rumsfeld, had been thrown overboard.

Cheney knows that the story about a “Democratic sweep” is utter nonsense. He knows who operates the voting machines and how get the results he wants. The normal procedures for rigging the election were simply put on hold.

He also knows that the Justice Dept had sent out over 80 attorneys to various parts of the country where the Republicans anticipated legal challenges after the elections, but there were no legal challenges. Someone decided that there would be no fight at all, even in the close senatorial races where recounts might have made a difference.

more

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15582.htm

This article doesn’t help either.

The Republicans Took a Dive

By Ezekiel Jones

11/12/06 “”SFTS””——The whole thing could have been a Frank Capra movie.
An evil cabal seizes control of the Republic through means so ruthless and clever that they remind many of the Nazis’ rise to total power in 1930s Germany. They invade countries on false pretenses as a cowering opposition party supports the wars before it opposes them Clause by clause, the Constiution is shredded by Newspeak laws like the “Patriot Act” and the “Military Commisisons Act.”

At first, the people were fooled. They believed it when their leaders told them that their safety required endless wars and a police state. But freedom turned out to be harder to extinguish than the evil warmongers had imagined. What began as a still, small voice on the “Internets” was echoed by a few brave comedians and commentators until a deafening roar was heard on an election day “thumpin’” that transformed the fearsome bullies into whimpering cowards.

All that’s left is for Jimmy Stewart (or is it Jon?) to utter the closing speech about how good is always stronger than evil.

Or not.

What explains the curious decline from the high—powered Republican machine that could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in 2000, 2002 and 2004 to the broken down jalopy of 2006 that blew control of both houses of Congress?

More specifically:

Why did the Republicans leave so many ethically-challenged Republicans in the line-up—people like DeLay, Foley, Sherwood, Weldon, Ney and Burns—until it was too late to even replace them on the ballot?
Why didn’t Republicans use their vaunted Right Wing Noise Machine to counterattack corrupt incumbent Democrats?
Where was the “Diebold factor” on election day when a mere change of 50,000 votes spread across 20 districts would have denied Democrats the House and a few thousand in Virginia or Montana would have held the Senate?
Why did George Bush promise that Rumsfeld would remain as Secretary of Defense until the bitter end and then fire him the day after the election when that might have saved the Republican majorities?
There are non-tin foil hat explanations for each on its own:

more

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15585.htm

Good finds Shadowhawk, and they don't help my innate paranoia, esp. when you consider the 2004
election. Best guesses say that vote count was off by as much as 9 MILLION votes so 50,000 would be a mere pittance. It makes me think the neocons were set up and then double-crossed by the Bush 41 NWO cabal. Fits with their modus operandi, anyway.

Meanwhile, here's another take on it:

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/bitch_slapping_.html

More of the same idea from another author:

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/191/32/

I just read in the Sydney Morning Herald about Iraqi men who are having their names and telephone numbers tattooed on their bodies because there's so many bodies in the morgues that very little time and energy is spent on each one. Obviously, identification would make it easier on everyone... HOWEVER, if people weren't dying at such a rate, these people wouldn't be looking at the fact that they might die.

What a shockingly terrible thing that's been happening to Iraq for so many years. Those poor people. Just for the record, I'll state here again that I went to Iraq in 1976 and loved it, really loved it... it is a beautiful country and the people are very welcoming, friendly and generous... jeez, what a debacle this is! (major understatement).

Here's alittle humor........

Hey diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The donkey jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And Haliburton ran away with all the silverware!

Baa, baa, black box,
Have you any votes?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Three big totes.
One for the Master,
And one for the Dame,
And none for the little twerp
Who lives down the lane.

Girlie men are now passe,
Bipartisanship, it rules the day;
But what we ask both day and night,
Is Arnie left or is he right?

All around the Dubya Bush,
The donkey chased the weasel.
The donkey thought 'twas all in fun.
Pop! goes the weasel.

Funky Frilly Foley,
Runs through the town,
Upstairs and downstairs,
In his nightgown,
Rapping at the window,
Crying through the lock,
"Are the pages in their beds,
For now it's ten o'clock?"

lots more at............( 4th comment down after the article)
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/552
QOP