Spring has sprung and we're all heading out for picnics, swims, sails - - so please leave the plastic at home! In fact, please learn to do without and encourage your local businesses, town councils, county boards and institutions to cut back, pick up and recycle.

The latest from the plastic dump formerly known as the Pacific Ocean:

Nearly two million Laysan albatrosses live here and researchers have come to the staggering conclusion that every single one contains some quantity of plastic.

Where is this? Midway Island, as reported in this BBC News story

But you know, it seems so - - well I’ll just say it: it seems so OLD.

As a rank-and-file member of the Baby Boom, just consider how many hours I’ve viddied, oh me brothers. 37,000? 59,000? 100,000 hours of television?

Consider the ocean of bullshit that represents. (Although, I will admit there have been plenty of pretty good commercials.)

But also the window on the world. The promise, the diversity of our living planet and the unpredictable people who’ve pranced and strutted across the viewport.

I’ve loved TV, I admit it. Loved and lost the love, it seems.

Oh boy! 50 billion greenbacks for new nukes!

How much you got in that there Energy Bill for solar? Wind? Geothermal? Tidal? Co-generation?
How about for Conservation? Retrofitting America’s leaky doors, windows attics and basements? Research on new automotive fuels?

Oh, here’s some funds for all that: $7 billion for renewable energy. Hmm, so all those other forms of independence-supporting energy will get 12% of the pie, while nukes will draw on a suitably robust, manly, nuclear 88%.

I didn't say give him bullets.

Just ship his worthless, traitorous ass straight to the FUBAR hellhole he helped make into the suppurating reality that is draining life and freedom out of this world and this America.

You want to commute his sentence, Bush-Cheney?

D.C. to Baghdad, one-way. How's THAT for a commute.

Happy Independence Day, and let's IMPEACH the entire verminous clot of them.

This is a serious diary. Doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. But if you want to go straight to the payoff, it’s down below at soft energy path and getting off the grid.

Now, then – the question! Your electric bill.

Never mind how many kilowatt hours you use, don’t bother breaking down the impenetrable thicket of "basic fixed service charges," transmission charge, distribution/customer charge, distribution/energy charge, transition charge, energy conservation charge, renewable energy charge, therm conversion factor, sales tax, or even the dreaded "default service tariff cost adjustment factors."

Never &@#%$*^# mind that!

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Democratic Party leaders are under personal and collective smear attack by American Greetings Corp. - - a supposedly wholesome, tradtional company providing good cheer for generations.

We can't let their sleazy, unfair, sick and stupid attack stand.

Please read on - - AND TAKE ACTION TODAY!

(Happy Valentine's Day in the meantime!)

Just felt it might be helpful to start a new thread with some close, point-by-point refutation of the major Snow Job we are getting, America!

The sum-up in the Guardian article

is this:

Four-point strategy

· [1] Increase US troop levels by up to 20,000 to secure Baghdad and allow redeployments elsewhere in Iraq

· [2] Focus on regional cooperation with international conference and/or direct diplomatic involvement of countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

· [3] Revive reconciliation process between Sunni, Shia and others

· [4] Increased resources from Congress to fund training and equipment of Iraqi security forces

Below, I offer a take on each:

Current White House propaganda has Bush suggesting we might be in a Tet-like situation in Iraq now. Discussion over what he is trying to put across with this remark ranges from "He means the media is painting a misleading picture of failure" to "He is admitting we are seeing a peak in violence, but hinting it will pass."

But there is a big difference.  

Tet -- that was a major attack on Saigon by North Vietnamese regular army forces, in a nation divided in half many years before the arrival of the U.S. military.

I think the Iraq quagmire now is something else altogether. I think it is the carving up of what was -- prior to U.S. invasion -- a nation, into warring factions. Madly armed and well-funded factions. Carving up into a half-dozen mini-states, each one itself riven by violent local factions, and undermined by regional influences.

more...

E.J. Dionne in the WaPo reports:

State Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Long Island Republican who has spent nearly three decades in the legislature, also worries that the coalition of "Reagan Democrats" that D'Amato helped build -- "they were Irish, Italian and Polish Democrats and some Jews" -- is a thing of the past. "I believe that Bush has destroyed that whole thing," Hannon says. "It's not here any longer in the Northeast."

FIVE House seats in NY may switch to DEM this cycle - - not a bad stake.

more...

Top 2ND B:2 S:2 O:0
Jeff Kent singles on a line drive to center fielder Carlos Beltran.  

Top 2ND B:2 S:2 O:0
J.  D.   Drew singles on a soft ground ball to pitcher John Maine.    Jeff Kent to 2nd.  

Top 2ND B:2 S:1 O:2
Russell Martin singles on a fly ball to right fielder Shawn Green.    Russell Martin to 2nd.  Double play, right fielder Shawn Green to second baseman Jose Valentin to catcher Paul Lo Duca.   Jeff Kent out at home.   Drew out at home.    Russell Martin to 2nd on the throw.

Hunh?!? I gotta lay off the sauce!  

The reporter found and spoke with 4 of them, in Toronto (posted at RawStory).

They seem to be your basic combat-vets-turned-conscientious-objectors. Some have earned combat decorations. They each remarked on the same key points: mama didn't raise no wanton murderer, hated to see friends turn into agents of evil, if I was Iraqi I would resist this insanity...

more on flip

Those were the words of a soldier testifying at a military hearing that will determine on courts martial or other actions stemming from the Mahmoudiya (near Baghdad) rape and murder, reported CNN.

But the Commander-in-Chief said something different, in a July 25 "press availability," posted on the White House webzone called Renewal in IRAQ:
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Try this, from his column on CNN.com:
"And never before has our nation's largest constituent group -- some 200 million middle-class Americans -- been without representation in our nation's capital."

Dobbs sums up: "a third-world country is what we will be if our elected officials don't soon come to their senses."

Today is no different: this time it is Christopher Hitchens and Slate that are violating journalistic ethics and basically warmongering.

Yet it is different in one way: Juan is FIRED UP.

After defending his position and noting how his rightwing opponents are way off base...  (more after jump)

The word "trust" is being volleyed about on The News Hour, with Jim Lehrer asking why the right wing won't just "trust" W on Miers - - and David Brooks agreeing that the Christian Right was told by Bush 41 "Trust Me" and may have felt deceived, and now again are told by W "Trust Me" and apparently their well of trust seems to be depleted!  Hmm. Well if not their trust and solidarity, then what of their mercy and pity?

I just can't catch a break with my base...

This
 is as close to "Out Now" as we are likely to get in this world!  It also sounds like a more sensible way to: a) give the National Guard a major break, and b) use armed forces vs. terrorism.

More below.

three to one!

Poll and more below fold

Is it asking too much to at least get our money's worth from the career disinformationists who our tax dollars so lavishly employ?  I realize things are tough over there, but how about some pride in workmanship, you guys and gals in the Green Zone?

A Baghdad dispatch from CNN shows that U.S. military press releases covering two different guerrilla attacks separated by more than a week contained exactly the same quote.  One conclusion: either the Iraqi citizen "who preferred not to be identified" was a staffer reading from a script, or he simply doesn't exist.

Judge for yourself.
(more below the fold)