Articles I’ve read over the past week, but haven’t posted due to business or laziness or something.

“I salute to you Commander – and I sneeze – ‘Cause I have Now – an Allergy – To your policies it seems – Where have we gone wrong, America? – Mr. Lincoln we can´t seem – to find you anywhere – out of the millions – From the deserts – To the mountains – Over prairies – To the shores – Is this just the – Madness of King George – Yo George – Is this just the Madness of King George – Yo George – Well you – have the whole Nation – on all fours.”

Those are the lyrics to the Tori Amos song “Yo George,” the first track on her most recent record American Doll Posse. They seemed appropriate for this:

President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war: Oh my god, don’t you feel so sorry for him, wallowing in his regret? Consider:

…[H]e expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”. He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”. He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

Basically, he regrets wearing his maniacal glee on his sleeve. Everybody pat his head and make him feel better. Anyone who still believes a word the man says is…yes, a moron.

That, of course, doesn’t really square with the fact that, according to his ghostwriter, George W. Bush was already thinking about attacking Iraq in 1999, two years before 9/11, back when he was a lowly executioner in Texas:

“It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work – and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war – has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush’s unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters – well before he became president.

(…)

The notion that President Bush held unrealistic or naïve views about the consequences of war was further advanced recently by a Bush supporter, the evangelist Pat Robertson, who revealed that Bush had told him the Iraq invasion would yield no casualties. In addition, in recent days, high-ranking US military officials have complained that the White House did not provide them with adequate resources for the task at hand.

You know, it’s really bad when Pat Robertson looks sane compared to the President of the United States. That’s how far we’ve fallen. Jesus…

Speaking of George W. Bush killing people, it turns out that some of the “special weapons” we’ve been using in Iraq are causing babies to be born sick and deformed at rates never before seen. Awesome, George. That doesn’t sound like “life begins in the womb” to me!

Guess which former Bush cabinet member might be voting for Barack Obama? Colin Powell. Oh, and Al Gore finally endorsed Obama. Way to take a risk, Al.

Another military organization, the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), has endorsed Jim Webb’s 21st Century GI Bill, rather than John McCain’s, because John McCain’s is a half-assed attempt to make it look like he cares, but he doesn’t, so, goodbye, John.

Tired of paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline? The Energy Department would like to tell you to fuck off.

Lawmakers Say Capitol Computers Hacked by Chinese. That’s great.

Speaking of the Chinese, have you heard that they’re drilling for oil just 60 miles of the coast of Florida? Wouldn’t that be crazy, if true? Trouble is, it’s a big fat lie. (Republicans lying? NO!)

As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba’s shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is “akin to urban legend,” said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

“China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period,” said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon’s research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production.

Facts, schmacts. Never really have been important to the Republican party, now have they? They just trust that most of their voters will keep the wool firmly planted over their eyes so that they can pursue their real agenda. (Hint: It has nothing to do with protecting America, supporting troops, stopping abortion, or stopping gays.)

As predicted, the new wave of restrictive, unconstitutional voter ID laws that have passed lately are having consequences FAR BEYOND stopping black people and the poor from voting (yes, that’s really what it’s about, let’s cut the bullshit, Christie):

In 2004, Arizona passed one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws, requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Now a 97 year old woman who recently moved to the Phoenix area finds she is no longer eligible to cast a ballot.

“It’s my constitutional right to be able to vote,” insists Shirley Preiss. Decked out in a US flag hat and shirt, Preiss told News 5, “I’m a legal American. I’m born here.”

According to Art Levine at the Huffington Post, “She was born at home in Clinton, Kentucky in 1910, before women had the right to vote, and never had a birth certificate. Shirley has voted in every presidential election since FDR first ran in 1932, and proudly describes herself as a ‘died-in-the-wool Democrat.’ After living in Arizona for two years, she was eagerly looking forward to casting her ballot in the February primary for the first major woman candidate for President, Hillary Clinton. But lacking a birth certificate or even elementary school records to prove she’s a native-born American citizen, the state of Arizona’s bureaucrats determined that this former school-teacher who taught generations of Americans shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush just can’t go around detaining people arbitrarily, even if they ARE brown and have funny names:

In a stinging rebuke to President Bush’s anti-terror policies, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.

Bush said he strongly disagreed with the decision _ the third time the court has repudiated him on the detainees _ and suggested he might seek yet another law to keep terror suspects locked up at the prison camp, even as his presidency winds down.

That’s what it looks like when a court Does Its Job. Of course, Scalia whined his way through the dissent, but Scalia has trouble interpreting the instructions for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese without fucking it up, so whatever. (I’ve heard Scalia might also have trouble using his flowbee, too.) Predictably, John McCain had a temper tantrum because he’s a cranky old fuck who doesn’t understand the Constitution, and Barack Obama agreed that the ruling is important for preserving the American institutions and frameworks that we supposedly hold dear. This is why we’re going to elect Barack Obama president in November. McCain can still win the election in January, like he’s asked…we’ll set something else up for him. President of the pills Cindy stole from her own charity. McCain Wins!

And finally, Frank Makers Brace For Summer Wiener War

Punchline unnecessary.