I would like to thank the coalition, led by the United States, for the sacrifices they have provided in the process of the liberation of Iraq.--At his first appearance as Iraq's new prime minister last Tuesday, Iyad Allawi switched from Arabic to English to say that

I'd bet ya' haven't heard that one before. The latest from Iraq as told by our own media sources? Quagmire!!!!

From Manchester (England) Online:

MANCHESTER music legend Morrissey sparked controversy when he announced Ronald Reagan's death live on stage during a concert - and then declared he wished it was George Bush who had died instead.

Thousands of fans at Dublin Castle, in Ireland, cheered when the ex-Smiths frontman made the announcement that the former American president, who had battled with Alzheimer's Disease, had passed away.

And an even bigger cheer followed when Morrissey - who is no stranger to controversy - then said he wished it had been the current President, George W Bush, who had died.

Morrissey? Who? Is he a former under-secretary or something? Maybe he should write a book and then hawk it on Sixty Minutes. So now we're wishing people dead? If I was on the other side of the political stripe right now, I'd be reluctant to admit to it. The abject hate being displayed by so many is way past sickening already.

From CNN.com:

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a resolution on the June 30 transfer of power in Iraq.

The U.S.- and British-backed resolution gives additional international support to the new interim Iraqi government and adds more international support for the U.S.-led coalition force.

All 15 members of the council voted for the resolution.

"There were some who said we'd never get one," President Bush said of the resolution earlier Tuesday during a photo opportunity at the G-8 economic summit in the southern U.S. state of Georgia.

I know this is completely distressing to the hate-filled, seething ding-dongs normally referred to as Democrats, but they'll get over it after they stop bashing an ex-President that recently stopped breathing.

I can't wait to here how Kevin Lynn will somehow spin this as yet another negative for our president. Come on Kev, think hard.

Oh, and, when Bush suggested that NATO take on an increased role in Iraq...France was the lone objector. What else is new?

Check this from Neal Boortz:

When are we going to stop pandering to France? Does France belong at the G8 conference? Does France really make a difference in world affairs? If, as some claim, we are really a family of nations, then France is the mildly-retarded younger sister that just needs to be taken care of, not paid attention to.

Here! Here! You daffy American pigdog.

From the e-mail inbox:

*******Mark,
Wilkes Barre has an information radio station ..1620 a.m. It list garbage pickup dates, crime watch meetings and other important city information. Most people have a radio so it is a good source for information.
CXXX*******

Yeah, I know, WPUU. Hee-hee. I'm wondering, is there any way that the city might consider selling that to me? Ah, my very own low power AM station. Just imagine that. Wilkes-Barre would never, ever be the same. Thank God! Oops. Check that sh*t. Thank Allah! Or...I'd get shot.

Well, there it is, kiddies. Tune into WPUU, get the latest curbside pick up info, and stop all of your funking whining already. Allah H. Great! I swear, I think the phones at Help Line have been ringing off the freaking hook ever since Leighton decided to deep-six the stupid city calendars. Get a life, you curb-dwellars!!! You know, If Tom McGroarty was still our mayor, we'd all have a spiffy new calendar. And we'd still be residing in the officially recognized asshole of the state.

Patience, kiddies. Tune in, rid yourselves of the empty Steg bottles and sweep the gutter out front.

From the forum page:

what ever happened? -- TO ETHEL, 10:36:47 06/09/04 Wed [1]

your wit is missed....

I hear that. Ethel? Where are you?

WILK was a freaking hoot today. Lemme see. In the space of almost six hours, I heard Ronald Reagon called a draft-dodger, a wife-dumper, a treasonist and a murderer. He was blamed for the AIDS epidemic as well as poverty, homelessness and making the rich risher at the expense of the poor. Sound eerily familiar? They only thing missing was some blowhard accusing him of being AWOL from the USO during 1944. If you tuned in during the middle of this shameless assault on yet another decent man, you'd have thought the Greens, the creeps and the easily duped maroons calling the station were merely repeating the latest charges dredged up against GW by a semi-sober Ted Kennedy. You know, Ronald Reagan: Evil Incarnate.

Let's do this. Recent Democrat Presidents 101.

Jimmy Carter should have never graced the White House. Does anyone take issue with that? What didn't go awry during his failed presidency that could be aptly described as a maelstrom driven by complete incompetance? He's a very affable public policy imbecile that really has no business opening his yap in public after bringing this country to it's knees in only four short years. He seems like a nice man, but he should have stuck to harvesting peanuts.

Bill Clinton was a shameless huckster that escaped from a trailer park in the middle of a swamp that never appeared on a map. He campaigned for eight consecutive years when he could have been providing effective leadership. He gave eloquent speech after eloquent speech followed by complete inaction. He did nothing of note, rode out the dot com boom for all it was worth and managed to disgrace himself in between his incessant chuckles. He'd probably be a blast at a party and such, but he was the last person that deserved our trust.

Now...you dummies in the socialist party are offering us the most evasive person ever to seek the presidency. He's both for and against everything and his position on the most important issues of the day 'nuances' depending on which group he happens to be twisting in front of today. This is the same man that once said, "Our democracy is a farce; it is not the best in the world." He's stiff, he's arrogant, and he wears his pomposity on his sleeve when he thinks the cameras aren't looking. He's as clueless as clueless gets.

That ought to drag Ethel out of retirement.

With all of that said, remember, I am a registered Republican that changed my party affiliation to vote for a few local Democrats. I'm not some partisan myrmidon; I'm a guy that wants to vote for the best available candidate, no matter what party he, or she calls home.

Recent Republican Presidents 101 (As told by the seemingly feeble-minded folks that puppet whatever they hear repeated over and over).

Bush, Bush, Reagan and Nixon...pick a few hundred thousand handy accusations. They killed babies. Starved the elderly. Starved children. Endorsed illiteracy. Caused diseases. Annoyed our (In name only) allies. Dumped their wives. Dodged the draft. Went AWOL. Tried to hijack the constitution. Lied, lied, lied and lied. Cut welfare to help the rich. Went to war for oil. Cut taxes to help the already rich rich. Tried to outlaw being anything but white folk. Conspired to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Caused the deaths of 79 billion innocent people worldwide. Tried to eliminate school lunches. And sold arms to South Yemen to fund disco.

I'll stop right there, but do any of you pseudo-political analysts realize how utterly stupid you all sound to those of us still capable of being somewhat objective and open-minded? I'm not a completely partisan hack, it's just that the last few folks your side offered up were and are complete pretenders in well over their heads. And I challenge anyone to e-mail me their extremely short list of the major, certifiable accomplishments credited to either Carter, Clinton or the Waffler.

Reagan died. There's not a damn thing in the world anyone recently denied their psychotropic drugs can do to him now except accuse him of all sorts of unspeakable and untrue horrors. May he rest in peace provided that the half-wits pumped up on mis-guided vitriol don't object en masse and demand his post-mortem impeachment.

Get a f**king grip, people.

Let's see here. Today we were treated to a heat advisory AND...a pollen alert. I don't know how I would have survived the day without those dutiful warnings.

The 'Bush lied' crowd is way off base

Michael Barone

June 7, 2004

The "BUSH LIED" crowd keeps trumpeting that we have found no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (We did find sarin in one shell lobbed at occupation forces.) But Bob Woodward in "Plan of Attack" informs us that George Tenet, who announced his resignation as CIA director on June 3, told George W. Bush that the case for Iraqi possession of WMDs was a "slam dunk." That was the conclusion as well of every other competent intelligence agency in the world.

Tenet was right. Given that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction, indeed was developing nuclear weapons before the 1991 Gulf War, and given that Saddam's regime had not accounted for WMDs he had possessed, any prudent intelligence agency would have to have concluded that he still had them. Moreover, there was no evidence that could have been obtained which would have convinced a prudent intelligence agency that Saddam did not possess them. This argument wasn't made in the run-up to the war because Colin Powell and Tony Blair convinced George W. Bush to agree to a round of United Nations inspections. But the U.N. inspectors couldn't prove that Saddam didn't have WMDs. Given his past behavior, we had no basis for concluding he didn't.

And we had no way of being sure that he would not arm Al Qaeda with them. That is the conclusion of Stephen Hayes's The Connection: How Al Qaeda's Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. It is conventional wisdom around Washington, retailed by Richard Clarke, Sen. Carl Levin and Newsweek. But, as Hayes demonstrates, this conventional wisdom is wrong.

As George Tenet testified in October 2002, there were contacts going back to the early 1990s between agents of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Clarke, when he served in the Clinton administration, said the same thing, as did many others in the Clinton administration. Czech officials believe that Sept. 11 hijacker Muhammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in August 2001. Hayes also reveals that in January 2000 Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, acting under orders from Iraqi intelligence, accompanied two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to a meeting in Malaysia that the CIA has concluded was a planning session for the assault on the U.S.S. Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks.

As Hayes is careful to note, some of the evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties is questionable. Intelligence evidence often is. But it is interesting that many who criticize Bush for not "connecting the dots" before Sept. 11 are also criticizing those who connect the dots on Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. These critics seem to believe that Saddam Hussein's regime should have been considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But foreign policy is not bound by the rules of a criminal court, and Saddam's previous behavior entitled us to regard him as guilty until proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.

So put yourself in the position of George W. Bush in late 2002 and early 2003. You must assume that Hussein has or can produce weapons of mass destruction. And you know that Iraqi agents have met with Al Qaeda operatives. You know that both Iraq and Al Qaeda want to inflict maximum damage on the United States. You have had great success in eliminating Al Qaeda operatives, but you know that you haven't got them all. So the only way to protect the United States is to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was, as Hayes said at an American Enterprise Institute panel last week, a "no brainer."

It is interesting to ponder what those who continue to insist that "BUSH LIED" (and that there was no danger from collusion between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein) would have said if Bill Clinton had done what George W. Bush did in Iraq -- which is consistent with much of Clinton's rhetoric. Almost certainly they would have agreed, as some of them did in the Clinton years, that there was a danger from Iraqi WMDs and Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda. That they take the opposite view now is evidence not that they are right but that they are filled with partisan venom.

Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report

Me gotta go. It was refreshing to see that the forum was quiet the day after the hose dudes got together with their union honchos. I encourage everyone to have at it on that page, but you guys need to huddle up for a spell rather than launching anonymous salvos at each other on the internet. Unit cohesiveness comes to mind.

Get this, kiddies. My next-door neighbor is now employed by the City of Wilkes-Barre. 10-4. Tom Leighton went and found himself another qualified professional. Is a degree in civil engineering enough for the folks with SAYSO set up on their speed dial? We shall see.

Later