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The dynasty replaces Donald Rumsfeld. A new variation on military inexperience arrives in the form of Robert Gates:

He arrives at the post with a résumé burnished during the administration of Bush's father, whom he served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is long on analytical and bureaucratic achievement and short on direct policymaking — foreign or domestic — or any military connections. [...]

He finally got the top job in 1991 after President George H.W. Bush tabbed him. The second confirmation process did not go much more easily than the first.

He did manage to gain approval, albeit while receiving the most nay votes of any intelligence-director nominee. He was criticized in testimony for "politicizing" his intelligence analysis to fit his hard-line, anti-Soviet feelings or prevailing White House attitudes...

Politicizing intelligence analysis? Is this guy related to Cheney too?

{ 9:06 AM }

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This government didn't work... I want my money back. Time to starting thinking about how we want to structure our refund for the hundreds of billions of dollars we lent the Republicans in tax relief for the wealthy, corporate mercenary profiteering in Iraq, not to mention the outright windfalls enjoyed by all the major oil companies.

But the energy plutocrats won't let us get off this easy. American voters will need to be punished for their insubordinate defiance. Gas prices should start zooming upward again soon — expect prices at the pump to go back up by Baby Jesus's birthday and recordbreaking new high prices for gasoline by Memorial Day 2007.

{ 1:21 PM }

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Thoughts for Election Day.



I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible -- Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, "the kingdom of God is within man" -- not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!!

— Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator

{ 1:37 PM }

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