Official White House proclamation:
The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as “Loyalty Day.” This Loyalty Day, and throughout the year, I ask all Americans to join me in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2007, as Loyalty Day. I call upon the people of the United States to participate in this national observance and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day as a symbol of pride in our Nation.
DEAR GEORGE
WE’VE GOT YOUR OIL. IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN, SEND $12 BILLION IN UNMARKED $100 BILLS. CASH ONLY AND DON’T TRY ANY FUNNY STUFF.
YOURS, HALLIBURTON AND FRIENDS
First we had an election landslide against the Republicans, in which the Iraq war was the #1 concern of voters.
Then we had an Iraq Study Group. It was described by the mainstream media as “bipartisan”. Here’s what “bipartisan” actually means:
Chairman James A. Baker III—Chief of Staff, Reagan; Secretary of State, Bush I. Co-chairman Lee H. Hamilton—allegedly a Democrat. As chair of a previous Select Committee, he chose not to investigate Reagan or Bush I for their roles in the Iran-Contra scandal.
A (Reagan-loving) social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University ran a study encouraging psychiatric outpatients to vote.
When he went back and analyzed his data, he discovered that there’s a direct statistical correlation between how psychotic a person is, and how likely they are to vote for George W Bush.
In the interests of balance I should say that the reverse inference has yet to be demonstrated statistically, and is merely anecdotally true.
For some time now, in place of the usual lorem ipsum text, I’ve been using the following text:
Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised.
Guardian:
Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus, is to be banned from travelling to the EU and US after riot police in Minsk arrested hundreds of opposition activists protesting against the results of last weekend’s elections.
Meanwhile on Newsday:
“We are concerned that false police statements may have tainted hundreds of cases of people arrested at the two largest mass arrests during the convention,” NYCLU attorney Christopher Dunn wrote to New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
An interesting article in NY Magazine discusses conspiracy theories and the secret history of 9/11.
As well as mentioning a few of the suspicious facts about what happened that day, it cites a score to categorize just how far along the conspiracy theory path you are: the HOP level.
Me, I’m about a Level 3.5. Everyone has to have a theory, and here’s mine:
Consider the October surprise conspiracy. Whether that conspiracy is true or not, the Iran-Contra scandal is at the level of documented fact, and it’s hard to deny that the sudden freeing of the hostages immediately after Reagan took office was a vital popularity boost for an otherwise unpopular president.
President Bush was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the President if he would like to lead the discussion on the word “tragedy”.
So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a “tragedy”. One little boy stood up and offered:
“If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy”.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Bush played the guitar while New Orleans drowned. And now this:
The good news is—and it’s hard for some to see it now—that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house—he’s lost his entire house— there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.
With Ashcroft’s departure, George W. Bush has a chance to make a symbolic gesture towards uniting the nation. Instead, he has chosen Alberto Gonzales as the new Attorney General.
That’s the Alberto Gonzales who wrote the memo urging that the president declare the US exempt from the Geneva Convention, because otherwise US behavior could lead to war crimes prosecutions. If you had any doubt that a vote for the Bush administration would be rewarding those who supported torture, that doubt should now be dispelled.