Who gave John a spine transplant?

Where the hell was THIS John Kerry during last years campaign? If he had that sort of fire in his belly last year, we might be complaining about President Kerry's difficulty in getting things like universal health care thru congress, or the speed of the Iraq withdrawal...

I am sure he thinks he is running again in '08. Got news for him-nobody cares, and no self respecting liberal will put him up again in primary. We tried "electibility" last time- this time, lets try something like, say, character. (Clark in 08!)

Bush Agenda is All But Dead

It’s Official! The Bush Agenda is all but dead!

No, really. That is the headline on the front of the American Spectator, one of the biggest right wing voices out there. Even the most hard right conservative activists are throwing in the towel on this bunch of incompetent hacks.

Perhaps they read one of the many biographies of G.W. Bush out thatthatt chronicle how he has failed at every other thing job he ever had and run every business he has been involved with into the ground (National Guard Service, Harkin Oil, Arbusto Oil, The State of Texas) The only time he has been successful is when his Daddy's friends stepped in and saved his ass, as they did with the Texas Rangers deal. Unfortunately , the business he is running into the ground now is the USA.

Everyone serves a purpose in life. W's seems to be to serve as an example of what leadership DOESN'T look like.

Gulf Coast Wage Cut Act

This is old news, but significant. One of the VERY FIRST THINGS that President Bush did was to sign an act that allowed contractors that get federal money to rebuild the Gulf Coast region to pay substandard wages to the workers they hire. Really. If they had called it the "Gulf Coast Wage Cut Act" I doubt it would have gone under the radar so easily- but it was instead they called it "a temporay suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act", making most people think it had to do with pig farming I suppose...

Now, this doesn’t make a lot of sense from a lot of standpoints- you want to stimulate the economy in the region, people need money to spend, so they can buy clothes, food, new furniture, etc. Which they can’t do if they are being paid $8 or $9 dollars an hour. The only people that make out well from this ruling are the large corporate interests, like, say Halliburton (Surprise!)

Give credit where credit is due- the Bush team are honest crooks. Once bought, they stay bought.

Party of family values, indeed.

What a lovely day it is today

Here I am, blue in the reddest of red states (Kansas)... But it's a perfect autumn day, and all is well in the outrageoverload household.

Just for giggles, do this

1) Go to www.google.com
2) Type in the word "failure" (no quotation marks, just type failure)
3) Hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button

and see what you get. It brought a smile, albiet a slightly painful one to my face. (after all, we ALL have to live with this failure)

Everyone enjoy the weekend!

Who's in charge?!?

from todays NY times front page story

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.

WTF? Last I knew, Rove (in addtion to being Bush's brain and between outing covert CIA agents to the press for political revenge) was the White House chief POLITICAL officer. I guess that it shows that these bozo's have no concept of actually DOING anything- it's all about politics and appearances. God help those poor people from the faith based "compassionate conservitism" that is about to land on them. Although if you are part of the Bush cronyism network, I bet you will make out great. Maybe it's time to buy Halliburton stock?

Rotten all the way down the line

So I was talking with my wife last night (actually, it was more along the lines of she mentioned something on the news and I went off on a rant in far more depth than she ever wanted to know). Anyway, I forget the actual topic at the moment, but my conclusion was that we are generally screwed as long as Bush is the Prez. And she said something very telling: “yeah, but I don’t want Cheney to be president” And it hit me. No matter how far down the chain of command we go, it’s still bad- it even gets worse. The line of succession looks like this:

President: G.W. Bush
Vice Pres: Dick Cheney
Speaker of the House: Dennis Hastert
Pres. Pro Temp of the Senate: Ted Stevens/Alaska
Sec. of State: Condi Rice
Sec. Treasury: John Snow
Sec. Defense: Donald Rumsfeld

Cronyism, ideologues and incompetents all the way down the line.

So, getting rid of Bush AND Cheney (and Rove, can’t forget Bush’s Brain) is not enough. As we saw recently in the Katrina Debacle, the tree is rotten all the way through, bottom to top.

This nation needs the opposition party to capture at least one house of Congress (Some party, Lord knows it probably won’t be the “let me lay down and have you walk all over me Democrats” we have in charge of the party now)

Because no matter how deep we go in the current administration, it’s rotten.

One of the best and worst things about blogging is that there are so very many talented people out there writing about the issues that it's hard to have an original thought and get it down before somebody else has said it even better. This Molly Ivins column is a perfect example. This picture is just this icing on the cake, so to speak. Although I didn't think that our Great Leader had his thumb in his mouth during the hurricane Katrina crisis, I assumed he had it stuck somewhere lower on his anatomy

This is how I am feeling right now. I named this blog "Outrage Overload" for a reason... the constant assault on every front is just too much to deal with, and obviously far too much for our so call "liberal" mainstream media to cope with. We have the ongoing idiocy in Iraq, the total debacle on the Gulf Coast, the supreme court about the tilt off the far right deep end, the federal budget so far in the red you need infrared goggles to see it anymore (see this post on Daily Kos for detail) And that's leaving out all the nonsense with the crooks and liars in the House (Delay, Santorum, etc) , traitors in the White House who out CIA agents... ARRGH! It must have been easier in the 60's- the focus was against the war in Vietnam. An single, obvious issue that affected everyone because of the draft. And Civil rights. Two huge issues where the obvious, moral and correct side was clear. I can't imagine that anyone truly in their heart of hearts could have believed that the Vietnam war was a good thing, especially by the late 60's, or that Jim Crow and racism were right.. I know, by the time I am in my 40's I am supposed to be past that sort of romantic naivete. But at least then people paid some attention and were engaged in the issues, one side or the other. Today, with the flood of information available at anyone's fingertips on any issue you can imagine, the most common response of most people to what is going on is Apathy. Go along to get along, nothing you can do about it... Pathetic. I wonder if we are ever going to wake up as a country about any issue again?

Living in a Dilbert World

Some personal info (not to personal, no need to hide this post from the kids) about me.
I used to be a rather well paid trainer for IBM, way back when. Then, after a few years under the grand old Bush economy, IBM started shedding jobs like a old English sheep dog in August in Arizona... Seems that all our jobs can be done better in India, China or Brazil (excuse me, I mistyped- I meant to say all our jobs can be CHEAPER in India, China or Brazil) Anyway, I was "invited" to be part of an IBM "Resource Action"- otherwise know as being downsized, RIFFED, laid off, etc. I spent the better part of a year looking for a new position. (13 months of unemployment with a short 12 week contract in that whole time) I found a new position at what looked like a GREAT company in March of this year

Looks are deceiving... The project I was hired into is a disaster on wheels... If this project were a ship, it would be the HMS Titanic. It's on its 3rd set of managers, the vendor can't find their ass with both hands and a flashlight and top staff are jumping like lemmings on crack. And on Monday of this week, what is left of the project team was told that our team was being eliminated and we would be "given the opportunity to apply for new positions that are being created" If we don't get a new position by 12/31/05, out the door we go.

I just got hired, now I have to reapply for my job again. I'll probably be told I'm not qualified enough to do the job I currently do. I swear, I can't laugh at Dilbert anymore, it's just too much like reality.

No connection to reality-none

On Marketplace on 9/4/05, Barbara Bush said:

"Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to
Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of
scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is
so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Words fail me... Working very well for them? These people have lost their homes, belongings, jobs, pets, many have lost family. This is working well? Living in a stadium without a pot to piss in is "working very well for them"? Perhaps she should actually go meet some of these people, give a little chuckle and ask how well it's working out for them. I'm sure the will fill her in on exactly how well it's working for them.

Bitch. And we can see with her son, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

They are consistent, repulsive as it may be

Give the White House credit for being consistent:

CongressDaily today: "[White House spokesman Trent] Duffy asserted that the vast spending that would be required to address the hurricane's impact adds to the need to change Social Security, which threatens to strain the budget in coming years."

Last I heard, the presidents "Privitazation" plan would add billions to the deficit in the short term. How does INCREASING our debt, straining the budget even further in the short term HELP?

Any excuse, no matter how feeble to rip away at the strands of our frayed social safety net. These people are repulsive.

Economy taking on water

Confirming my thoughts- this just in from the Christian Science Monitor: >US economy takes big hit A few points that jump out from this article:

“The prevailing view now is that Katrina will curb the nation's economic growth - which has been running at an annualized rate of more than 3 percent - by perhaps 0.5 percent in the second half of 2005. Then, the economy could get a Katrina stimulus, as rebuilding gets under way in earnest early in the new year.”

Strikes me that that .05 percent from 3 percent is a 17% hit to the national economy. That seems pretty serious by anyone’s measurements.

"In our preliminary analysis, employment levels will not be back to pre- hurricane levels for another six to seven years" in New Orleans

That’s just New Orleans. They are not even looking at Mississippi or Alabama, and they don’t even get into the impact on the farm states of having the 5th largest port in world shut down.

There are some really rough times coming down the pike.

Penny foolish, Pound foolish- just plain foolish!

The old saying goes "Penny Wise, Pound Foolish" I have to wonder: Does our Great Leader spend any time kicking himself over the fact that he could have spent 70 million to save the levees in NOLA and it would have saved what is looking to be 150 BILLION dollars in recovery? On the other hand, this gives the Bush administration the excuse to throw any pretensions of fiscal responsiblilty out the window. Reduce the budget deficit? Not in my or my children’s lifetimes… Between the debacle in Iraq and the destruction of the Gulf coast, coupled with the Bush revenue transfer from the poor and middle class to millionaires, the U.S. will be bankrupt debtor nation within the decade, unless we establish a reasonable reform to the tax code that DOESN'T involve giving away the store to the rich and corporations.

George Bush and O.J.

So our great leader is planning to “investigate” what went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina, and lead it himself. I might suggest that he get in touch with O.J. Simpson- perhaps he and O.J. could both figure out who was responsible for both crimes with the simple application of a FREAKIN MIRROR!

Just when you think the Right Wing can't get any LESS Compassionate

Unreal - Rick Santorum on TV saying that we should FINE the people who stayed in New Orleans http://media.vmsnews.com/MonitoringReports/090605/549440/H000361890/

Let's look into fines for all those people who had the nerve to die there too...

I am disgusted beyond belief.

No Incompetence Goes Unrewarded...

Just heard on the news that Scott McClellan stated in todays press conference that Michael Brown's job is secure. My question is: How did somebody whose primary job experience is as a HORSE SHOW COMMISSIONER get the job as the head of FEMA? I mean, horse shows can be rough, but I've never seen one that was a national diaster... I smell another medal of freedom coming.

Real Gas Prices

This is pretty much how I've felt about gas prices the last week and some. How we went from 2.50 a gallon to 3.27 in 4 days is beyond me. The same gas is is in the station storage tanks, so how come it went up 26 cents a gallon between 8:00 in the morning and 1:00 in the afternoon? And our president's words of wisdom? "Don't buy gas if you don't need it"

Profound. Except I don't purchase gasoline for pleasure... it's not like choosing to pass on a snickers bar today. I, like everyone else I know buys gasoline because it need it to make my car go. If I had one of the promised "magic hydrogen cars" I could run my car on tap water. But since my car is what takes me to my job, and my kids to school and their activities, gasoline is not an optional purchase- it's required.

Mr. President, what planet do you live on where purchasing gasoline is a optional item? Oh, the imaginary planet with the magic hydrogen cars, I forgot.

Welcome to my blog! Come on in, clear a spot, stay a while.

Welcome to my blog- a brief, most likely unsettling opportunity to peek into the roiling, simmering pot that is my brain after the last 5 years of Bush incompetence. I will be expounding on topics great and small, with a heavy focus on politics - because as the debaucles in Iraq and New Orleans have come to show, politics is personal - it affects all of us.