When do we get to tear down his statue? Clear Channel is actively transforming George W Bush into Saddam Hussein, thanks to giant public displays of the face of the "leader," according to Blue Lemur.

Wake up, municipalities! This one's simple. Outlaw any unpaid outdoor political advertising originating with the advertising distributor. Or just ban billboards outright. That's what rich communities do!

You gave Clear Channel this pulpit, and you can take it away.

{ 9:40 AM }

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Happy Thanksgiving! Prediction: Dubya won't be flying around the world with his Halliburton turkey this year:

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The first time Jose Ramirez saw a human body ripped apart by a rocket, it took hours for him to regain his composure. Nothing in his training as a Navy medical corpsman had prepared him for the sight of the dead Marine brought in September to the military field hospital outside Fallujah.

"I walked around in shock," said Ramirez, 26, of San Antonio, a Navy petty officer third class attached to Bravo Surgical Company. "I've seen people die before on the emergency room table. But what I was trying not to do, what I was trained not to do, is look at the patient with tunnel vision. It reminded me that I had to get prepared."

Two months later, when the first wounded American and Iraqi troops arrived at the hospital after storming Fallujah, Ramirez had braced for the worst.

"It doesn't hit me when I'm working on a patient. But after we're cleaning up, and I see the blood on the floor or I see someone bagging a piece of arm or leg, I know it's going to be in my mind for the rest of my life," Ramirez said.

Fifty-one U.S. troops have been killed and 425 wounded since the ground assault on this insurgent stronghold began on Nov. 8.

Happy Thanksgiving to our troops, from everyone in the Bush administration, Republican congressional leaders, Halliburton, Antonin Scalia, and those 31 Red States!

{ 9:21 AM }

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Hey Darleen! Two questions for your superiors: (1) Why does Dragon Lady Darleen Druyun get off with such a light sentence relative to Martha Stewart? And (2), will you take Bush officials Air Force Secretary James Roche, Robin Cleveland, associate director at the Office of Management and Budget, and Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisitions, Marvin Sambur, down with you?

(And a big shout-out to our many friends and visitors from Lockheed Martin, who are obviously looking to spin this story to their advantage.)

{ 5:17 PM }

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Bush the murderer. It's odd that when a kid wears a t-shirt comparing Bush to a terrorist he gets in big trouble, but when Fred Barnes compares Bush to an insurgent, he gets published in the Wall Street Journal:

The scheming in Washington as President Bush prepares for his second term is easily explained. It's the insurgents versus the Washington establishment, and the insurgents are winning.

Mr. Bush finds himself in the unusual position -- for a president, anyway -- as leader of the insurgents. Unlike other presidents who came to Washington with bold plans, Mr. Bush has not been housebroken by establishment forces. Even Ronald Reagan made peace with Washington. Mr. Bush hasn't. He wants to impose a breathtakingly conservative agenda in his second term, one that has prompted cries of protest from establishment figures like David Gergen, aide to four presidents, and the voice of the Beltway, the Washington Post.

[...]

If Mr. Bush is anxious his insurgency might fail, he hasn't let on. On the contrary, he exudes confidence that, despite the establishment, he'll succeed in his second term. Mr. Bush did make one bow to the establishment last week. He showed up in a tuxedo at the British embassy for a party honoring Ms. Rice. "One tux a term," a White House official said. "That's our idea of outreach to the Washington community."

The title of the article is "Bush the Insurgent." As far as cute pundit metaphors are concerned, Barnes laid a big rotten egg.

Is this the way conservatives support our troops — by comparing their commander-in-chief favorably to their enemy?

{ 9:05 AM }

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The devil inside. Christian shorts are in a bunch, not only because of the lewdness of Western society, but also because of the right-wing purveyor of all that juicy lewdness:

Conservative Christian groups across the country are protesting a film about the life of sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey, calling it a Hollywood whitewash of the man they hold largely responsible for the sexual revolution and a panoply of related ills, from high divorce rates to AIDS and child abuse.

[...]

"For those who think of people of faith as poor, uneducated and easy to command, I'm sure it would be amusing to see people praying outside of theaters," said Focus on the Family* spokeswoman Kristi Hamrick. "But we want to have a serious intellectual conversation about who Kinsey was and what he did."

[...]

[Robert] Knight [director of the conservative Culture and Family Institute in Washington] acknowledged, however, that some opponents of the Kinsey film may be reluctant to try to punish its distributor, Fox Searchlight, owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

"Fox has a schizophrenic personality. Conservatives appreciate Fox news channel for bringing balance, but the Fox entertainment network, on the other hand, has clearly been the leader in driving TV into the sewer with its non-stop sexual emphasis," he said.

Fox isn't the only one with the schizophrenic personality. If Christians consider Murdoch's combination of pro-Bush messaging for political power and pro-sex messaging for commercial power to be "balance," then they will have even more difficulty with the word "integrity."

If you want to "have a serious intellectual conversation about who Kinsey was and what he did," consider speaking with someone other than these folks.

*"Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based broadcasting empire of psychologist James Dobson, has been working for nearly two years -- ever since it learned that director Bill Condon was planning to make the film -- to enlist scholars outside the evangelical Christian community to help 'debunk' Kinsey's research, Hamrick said."

{ 9:42 AM }

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