The World is a Safer Place...no, wait...ah...

Ricin, anyone? Saw an update on C-Span last night, here's the Reuter's article.

Meanwhile, Bush's budget is almost $500 Billion in the hole, and he refuses to add in the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--but the document sure has some pretty pictures (check the link provided by Bad Attitudes).

Speaking of Bad Attitudes, they pointed to Jeanne D'Arc's comment and link with the compliment "Blogging at it's minimalist best." Indeed. You simply won't believe what you're reading. Is it possible that Hell is expecting mild to chilly temperatures?

Fanatical Apathy has his own "News Round Up," covering several issues, including Bush's call for an investigation into "intelligence failures" regarding WMD. To paraphrase Mr. Felber, Bush will discover the answer to the question of "what didn't he know and when didn't he know it?"

While I missed Janet Jackson's exposure on Sunday (restroom break) there was another boob on the screen earlier in the day. It reminded me of something I saw a few years back: Dubya attended Hunter Thompson's Super Bowl party back in 1974 (right around the time he missed his National Guard physical, grounding him as a pilot, and with some speculation as to whether or not this was to avoid random drug testing). Anyway, here's what Thompson said about Bush:

"I can't be expected to remember what every drug-addled yuppie hanger-oner who wanted to get close to me during a football game twenty-five years ago digested. There were so many dope fiends milling about, I don't remember what some Yalie named Bush, whose father was a factotum in the Nixon Administration, was doing. But he strikes me as the sort of person I would have thrown out of the room. A rich, beer-drunk yahoo with a big allowance who passes out in your bathtup....I don't want to become the Deep Drug Throat....I won't do it." --Politex, 5/20/00

Balta has a link to a Findlaw article by John Dean that is well-worth reading. It provides an update on the Valerie Plame investigation--remember that? Neither does the sheep-like media, apparently...

While at Balta's site, hit the main page and take a look at some of the things he links to, in particular two stories that came from the New York Times, one concerning--surprise--Halliburton once again caught with grubby fingers in the till, this time to the tune of $16 million dollars in overcharges for food service contracting (but what's a few million dollars in corporate welfare between friends?).

The other story concerns the abysmal planning that went into Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL--oh, wait--make that Operation Iraqi Freedom). When your plan doesn't call for having support troops, i.e., supply convoys, mechanics, Military Police, etc., etc., you might well run into a situation where the soldiers you do have on the ground will be simply overwhelmed by the myriad of tasks that an occupying army must do, in addition to, you know, fighting a war.

Of course, given that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld (who at least served in the peacetime military), Wolfowitz, et al, never actually went into combat, is it any wonder that they didn't take all this into consideration?

Final note: sorry for the low volume of posts yesterday. Sometime work requires that I actually have to...work...looks like it might be that way today as well, but I might be able to sneak something in here or there.