I told you so

If somebody goes on record admitting that you were right and they were wrong, scratch them off your shit list and /move on/. Don't keep giving them shit about it. That's childish. It takes a lot of cojones to admit you made a mistake, and a lot less people are likely to do it if they think that we're going to hate them regardless.
William F. Buckley, Andrew Sullivan, etc, are coming out against Bush and getting nothing but flack, and that is a goddamn shame. Mark my words, if Ann Coltier came out against this war, I still probably wouldn't be a fan, but I'd mail her my lucky "Bush Lied" sign and be done with it.

Mr. Congeniality

I've got to start remembering to bring sunscreen to these rallies. I am crispity as hell.
Anyway, if you were in the position to choose an Interior Secretary, what kind of qualities would you be looking for? I don't know about you, but charm isn't really high on my list. Why? Because I'm looking for an interior secretary, not a drinking buddy. I wouldn't want a guy who's a complete jerk, because then he'd be hard to work with, but beyond that? Who cares.
George W. Bush has something in common with the people who elected him: he seems to believe that a candidate's personality is an important deciding factor, so important that it makes up for serious performance problems. That's why he's going with Dirk Kempthorne, a man known mostly for being a real nice guy.

Don't worry Paul, I'm not talking about you.

We all have that friend. You know the one: that friend who never learns. That guy who always throwing his money into crazy get-rich-quick schemes, or that girl who dates loser after loser after loser. The friend who keeps complaining about the same problems, year after year.
Well, Donald Rumsfeld or Harriet Miers or somebody needs to take President Bush aside and tell him hey, Georgie, you might want to re-think the pre-emptive war doctrine. I know it's fun, but look at the track record: when has it ever worked?

Uni***sal H**lth C*re

(Also known as the eighth dirty word.)

So I was reading this article, about different governor's approaches to solving the health care crisis. There's two main approaches: trying to get more people covered, and reducing costs. The first one, championed by the Democratic governors, mostly focused on getting coverage for their state's children. Gov. Blagojevich, for example, is guarunteeing every child in Illinois health insurance. The GOP governors tended toward plans resembling Pres. Bush's "savings account" plan, which would reduce costs to the state (but increase costs to us).
The justification? "Advocates say these changes will restrain healthcare costs by increasing competition and making Medicaid recipients more sensitive to the services they use."
You know those Medicaid recipients. Always going to the doctor when they don't have to.

No blood for oil?

Yeah, I know I said I'd try to be more regular, but this whole full-time student thing is really throwing a wrench into things. Anyway, I thought I'd put this out there: if you were going to an anti-war march this Saturday, what would you put on your sign? I was thinking "no blood for oil" but that's kind of unoriginal.

Not that groupies wouldn't be nice.

I wish I were president. Not for the power, not for the groupies, but for the ability to get away with shit that no other person on earth can get away with.
Bush screwed up on the Dubai deal. He should've said "oops, my bad!" and backed down. Americans are a pretty forgiving lot. We'd have 'vetched about it for a couple of weeks and then went back to debating the pros and cons of torture.
But what does he do? He complains that 70% of the American population's opposition to the Dubai deal is ruining his diplomacy with the UAE. Never mind that what we're getting upset about is that they bypassed the mandatory investigation. It doesn't matter if it's a middle eastern company or our very own Halliburton.

Back from the grave

I didn't die or get arrested or get thrown out of school or become a scientologist. I was gone, but now I'm back.
I've been following the Dubai case for a couple of weeks now, and I think I've figured out what is going on. This isn't about Republicans versus Democrats. This isn't even about outsourcing national security to a country with diplomatic ties to the Taliban. This is about how much you trust this president.
And people are increasingly standing up and saying that they don't. 70% of Americans oppose the port deal, and most senators and reps. also oppose.