Utah is saved! Bush Drilling Leases Scrapped.

Hooray for Obama.  Hooray for us.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday canceled leases to drill for gas and oil on 77 parcels of public land in Utah.

The leases, which cover more than 100,000 acres, including lands near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, were auctioned in the last weeks of the Bush administration. They were among 11th-hour actions taken by the Bush Interior Department that have been criticized by environmental groups and are being reviewed by Obama officials.

In a news conference, Mr. Salazar said that after a review of the leases he concluded that the Bush administration had “rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our greatest national icons, some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes” without proper scientific review or consultation.

READ ON...

Bush in photos...

A fascinating slideshow and interview with photographers follow the Presidency of W. Some are iconic, like the infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. Some show W in typical Yale-cowboy mode. But many reveal raw emotion and are disturbing intimate... it's worth a look. VIEW THE PHOTOS.

Photos –– Top: Bush being told of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center while in a classroom, Sep 2001. Bottom: Bush looking wrought, preparing to say goodbye to his staff, Jan 2009.

Iraq shows Bush their... SOLE?

By CLEMENTE LISI.

A sofa-sized shoe monument was unveiled today in Tikrit - the hometown of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - in honor of the Iraqi journalist who threw his footwear at Bush last month during a Baghdad new conference.

Iraqi artist Laith al-Amari told Britain's Sky News that his copper and fiberglass sculpture is an homage to the pride of the Iraqi people and "not a political work."

He also said journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi serves as "a source of pride for all Iraqis."

The sculpture also includes a poem dedicated to al-Zeidi and mentions the virtues of being "able to tell the truth out loud."

Al-Zeidi shouted in Arabic on Dec. 14 as he pulled off his shoes and heaved them at Bush.

"This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," screamed al-Zeidi, who was working for an Egyptian TV station.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

On Environment: Ahhhnold and Obama and now officially BFFs

The New York TImes reports President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday evening.

You may remember last year that the Governator wanted to set higher standards for California, but the W Administration shot it down, but it appears that is yet another Bush reversal we can be thankful for. And Schwarzenegger, a Republican, continues to lead the country in environmental action. I hope he runs for Senate when his final term is up.

Inauguration at 1,474 megapixels... you have to see this.

Amazing...You can manipulate the image and zoom in and out. For example, in the zoom below, Dubbya doesn't look too happy at what Barry just said:

The photographer, David Bergman explains the process:

My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.

Play with the image at: How I Made a 1,474-Megapixel Photo During President Obama’s Inaugural Address

Thanks to Bob Cesca's Blog for this awesome link.

ATTACK OF THE DRONES: Obama spills first blood of his Presidency. (Not counting John McCain, of course.)

It official, folks. The President killed his first people... hopefully they were the Al Queda kind.

Huffington Reports:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Suspected U.S. missiles killed 18 people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border Friday, security officials said, the first attacks on the al-Qaida stronghold since President Barack Obama took office.

At least five foreign militants were among those killed in the strikes by unmanned aircraft in two parts of the frontier region, an intelligence official said without naming them. There was no information on the identities of the others.

Pakistan's leaders had expressed hope Obama might halt the strikes, but few observers expected he would end a tactic that U.S. officials say has killed several top al-Qaida operatives and is denying the terrorist network a long-held safe haven.

I don't love that this is going on, but with Pakistan being what it is (basically the mountains seems pretty lawless) and the disarray in their government, we don't have many options. I don't think the State Department is going to solve it with diplomacy. Plus, it allows the Pakistani government to officially protest these actions while secretly giving it the green light. That's my guess. This was started under the Bush administration and still seems the most logical way to go.

Video: Bush booed at Inauguration

Courtesy of iReports. I don't know how I feel about this. I'm very torn. It's well earned (and protected by our right to free speech) but is it the appropriate place? In an online discussion, I attributed this to 8 years of people feeling like the President wasn't listening to them. When that happens, and they finally get the chance to speak their mind directly, it's not pretty. On the other hand, it's not exactly the bipartisan way of moving forward. Still...

It begins: Rahm Emmanuel halts Bush's final legislation

MSNBC has reported that Rahm Emanuel, just 6 hours into the Presidency of Obama, halted all the legislation Bush tried to push through in the final weeks of his Administration.

I was hoping this could be done within 4 hours, but I guess 6 is okay.

Protesters lob shoes toward White House on Bush's last day

Awesome...

President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn.

Before launching the operation live, the shoe-chuckers took target practice in Dupont Circle on a 20-foot-tall blow up doll of the outgoing president, decked out in the flight suit he wore aboard the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier.]

The target practice on the giant Bush doll began around 11:00 in the morning and was still going five hours later, as thousands of people walking through the circle stopped to pick up a shoe and wing it at the outgoing president. Some threw fastballs like al-Zaidi. Others tied several together in an attempt to land them on Bush's long Pinocchio-esque nose. Children took part. ("Okay. One more shoe, kids," said one parent.) Some folks simply walked up to the doll and kicked it in the shins. It fell over at one point and people rushed it, beating it with shoes.

Marching down Connecticut Avenue with handfuls of footwear, the group of about a hundred was on the receiving end of enthusiastic honks, thumbs-up and waves from people in the street.

"It's not that I hate [Bush]," one protestor clarified. "I don't hate him personally. I hate what he has done to this country."

Once all the shoes had been tossed onto the White House lawn, the officers collected them and piled them into the back of a small truck. "The next person who throws them gets arrested," said one, though the entire pile had already been thrown.

As the protesters headed back toward Dupont Circle, a Secret Service agent left them with a parting observation.

"You all won," he said.

FULL STORY: HUFF

Bye Bye Bush!

In celebration of the end of the "Bush" era, a New York spa is giving 40% off on Brazilian waxing.


This should sent W's approval rating up a few points!

Laura, the line forms to the left. Get it? Left? I'm awesome.

Thoughts on "The United States has gone seven years without a terrorist attack on our soil."

George Bush gave his farewell address tonight.  Most of it was you may expect; a listing of what his perceived successes were, some examples of inspirational people, and some parting words of American strength and courage through his eyes.

Most notably, in his list of accomplishes, he notes "The United States has gone seven years without a terrorist attack on our soil."

I've heard this time and time again in the past few weeks.  Every TV and radio talk show has been doing Bush recaps, and these shows invariably have two "experts": 

1. An angry "liberal type" painfully recalling every blunder Bush has made in great detail.


2. A tired-sounding, accepting "conservative type" who doesn't argue the blunders much, but says "Well, yeah, but the United States has gone seven years without a terrorist attack on our soil."

I think the intention is that should be the argument killer.  It implies that he has prevented many other such attacks, secretly intercepted and silently neutralized, while we slept, never to be mentioned in public.  The means may not have been pretty, but it's all justified because he kept you safe in the end.  If we disagree with his methods, it's just because we just don't know the classified horrors that he saved us from.  

If we did know all this, we'd see what a savior he was, and wouldn't we all feel like assholes for giving him a hard time?

Additionally, it makes W come off as a martyr who was heroically willing to toss himself on the fire of history to save us all.  We hate him, but he loves us, and is willing to pay the price of our 70% disapproval rating if it means America is safe.

The problem is this doesn't appear to hold up to deep thought.

1. If there were instances of large scale, imminent attacks that Bush's people had thwarted, wouldn't we have heard something of them?  With the amount of leaks in this Administration, it seems that good news would have surely come out, especially in light of the miserable approval rating Bush has seen consistently.


2. While attacks on American soil have indeed been nil since 9/11, that event in itself was on Bush's watch, and it is known that he was warned of the attack, but did not respond to it. This is a bit like claiming credit for not having another levee failure in a metropolitan area since Katrina.


3. Terrorist attacks have proliferated throughout the world, we are keeping the homeland secure, but at the expense of the rest of the world, which has been under attack from London to Spain to India. 

But what I don't hear much of is what I consider most important:

Bin Laden clearly stated his tactical mission was to "bleed America to the point of bankruptcy," citing that "We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupted and was forced to withdraw in defeat." In this context, another Al Queda attack isn't necessary even if they could, as the $500,000 investment they made for perpetrating 9/11 is still yielding profits.  

His first attack is still in progress.

By the way, Bush did admit to some small fault in his speech.  He said "There are things I would have done differently, if given the chance."

Indeed.  Now get out.

Further reading: 

Bin Laden's 2004 Recording where he discusses his tactics

Roughly Drafted Magazine: Osama Bin Laden's dream of US economic collapse.

The stolen 2004 election? Investigation into Karl Rove's IT hacker suspicious death continues...

Under-reported but important, investigations into the suspicious death of Mike Connell still continue. As mentioned in a previous post (LINK) Mike Connell was a top Republican party Internet strategist who was under investigation on allegations that he was involved in possible tampering with the counting of Ohio ballots in the 2004 presidential election. He died in a plane crash on Dec. 19 after multiple sources reported that his life was in danger from Karl Rove, the alleged architect of the election grab, after it was clear Connell was ready to start talking to authorities.

Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio investigator who took Connell's original deposition and is investigating the crash spoke to news site Between The Lines:

...we believe that the criminal activity that we've identified and we have plenty of evidence to support it. You know, it starts not with the Republican Party, it starts with Karl Rove. The first target of this conspiracy is John McCain's campaign in South Carolina in the 2000 primary. So it's really a criminal enterprise, rather than a Republican enterprise.

I'd encourage any readers to get acquainted with this story, as it doesn't appear to be on the radar of corporate media services as it should be. As it involves the direct theft of votes that decided the 2004 election, it is critical we flush out this situation and either bring the guilty to justice or prove it false and trash it. Either way, it needs to be presented to the public.

Read the transcript, listen to Real Audio or MP3 of the interview.

More Links:

In-depth interview with Cliff Arneback, conducted by Scott Harris, Counterpoint, Dec. 29, 2008

Rolling Stone: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Video from Michael Connell Plane Crash

Velvet Underground: 1/7/09: Connell Investigation Intensifies

Breaking news: Bush to waste another 15 minutes of prime-time to defend record.

Georgie is going to talk on Thursday to the nation. Let's call it his "The Past 8 Years Haven't Been A Disaster/Legacy Building Speech."

If he interrupts a brand new "Two and a Half Men" to tell me he ain't such a bad dude and we'll only know what a great job he did in a hundred years, I'll be mighty upset.

Read more

P.S. Looking forward to stop endlessly bitching about this man, but I will do so for no other reason to prevent him from remaking himself as a decent President.

Final Press Conference: President Bush doesn't understand what the word "disappointment" means

Excellent comment by Bob Cesca regarding Bush's last offical press conference (held today) before he finally goes away:

"As always, President Bush's utter lack of humility and his inability to fully grasp how he personally failed on numerous occasions is just staggering.  For example:"

(Go 20 secs in)

"'Not finding weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment.' No, no. We feel "disappointment" when there's no more ice cream. Or when our favorite sports team loses an important whatever. Not finding -- rather, deliberately ignoring the fact that there weren't any weapons in the first place but going to war anyway -- wasn't a disappointment. It was one of the biggest, most expensive, most damaging foreign policy disasters in American history."

Read the whole thing at BOB CESCA'S AWESOME BLOG!

As an aside, it appears turn out for this event was not as good as the White House expected.  While the announcements specified only "one correspondent per organization" and standing "room only for non-seat holders", the last 2 of the 7 rows were empty, and needed to be filled by White House interns.

Just sad.  Appropriate, but sad.

I DARE YOU TO PLAY THESE TWO VIDEOS AT THE SAME TIME

Both our current and future leaders released some videos recently... I will show you both.





If this Barney thing was made with tax payer dollars, I am going to lose my shit.

Bush's initial reaction to the meltdown...

As reported in the New York Times

It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group.

The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money.

Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history.

Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.

“How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”

Simply fascinating. Oddly, reminds me of a line from Lord of the Rings. Enjoy!

Your chance to toss a shoe at the President!

All the fun of beaning a Buster Brown off of W's noggin without the 15 years in an Egyptian prison!

PLAY IT NOW!

Stop Bush from selling off Utah's red rock wilderness

Actor Robert Redford is mobilizing a campaign against Bush's Giveaway gift of America's Redrock Wilderness to big energy.

Redford states in the Huffington Post:

"In three days, this Friday, 110,000 acres of majestic Utah wild lands go on the auction block, to be sold to the highest bidders in the oil and gas industry. It's a last-ditch effort by a corrupt administration to further enrich its friends in the dirty fuels business. If they succeed, they'll leave a wasteland behind them."

If you agree, you GO HERE and send a message to the Obama transition team, your Congressperson and you Senators and tell them your wishes.

Iraqi Fun Fact: Tossing shoes is a way of honoring national hero

Did you know that Curly was a Suni? Check it out:

Iraqi Throws Shoes At Bush During Press Conference – "This is a goodbye kiss, you dog!"

An Iraqi television journalist hurled two shoes at President Bush on Sunday during a joint news conference Bush was holding with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to mark the signing of a U.S.-Iraq security agreement.



Bush had just finished his prepared remarks in which he said the security agreement was made possible by the U.S. surge of troops earlier this year, whhen the journalist, Muthathar al Zaidi pulled his shoes off and hurled them at the president. "This is a goodbye kiss, you dog," Zaidi shouted.

Bush dodged the shoes and was not struck. Bodyguards quickly wrestled Zaidi to the floor and hauled him, kicking and screaming, from the room. Two other Iraqi journalists were briefly detained after one of them called Zaidi's actions "courageous."

CNN notes that this is considered an insult among Muslims.

The White House transcript from the news conference labels the incident an "audience interruption."

President Bush said. "Okay, everybody calm down for a minute."

Then, indicating Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the president continued: "First of all, thank you for apologizing on behalf of the Iraqi people. It doesn't bother me. And if you want some — if you want the facts, it's a size 10 shoe that he threw. (Laughter.) Thank you for your concern, do not worry about it."

"I don't know what the guy said, but I saw his sole," he joked.

Not bad on that last pun, actually. I'll giggle at that while my house gets foreclosed.

STORY