John McCain, married to a filthy-rich heiress, a guy who owns like eleven houses throughout the world and doesn't pay taxes on them, has decided that His Big Thing is that he's gonna spend OUR money to "win" in Iraq.

Republican John McCain, addressing fellow veterans of foreign wars in Orlando today, is telling them that both he and Democratic rival Barack Obama plan to bring U.S. forces home from the war in Iraq - "the great difference is that I intend to win it first.''

Let's see, the world's lone superpower, the country that spends 50% of the world's military budgets combined, has just spent more years trying to "win" in Iraq than it took to win World War Two.

But McCain can do it.  He knows he can do it.  The different will be "HIM" at the helm!  What kind of monumental, psychopathically monstrous EGO does this man have?

Wow, Faux really blew it here, bringing in a 12 year old Ossetian girl "hero" to talk about how bad the Russian aggression was, first-hand, only to have the girl stop the flow of the interview and point out that her ordeal was caused by Georgian troops, and she thanks the Russians who helped her escape.

Over the bump is the link ....

Facts:

George Bush once again misused his office as the head of the world's greatest superpower and helped start another war.

How?

So my boss at work, in this big corporation where I slave away regularly, murdered my son.

I'm really angry about it, but you know what?  I just got promoted to the boss's job, and the boss is retiring, so it's really not so bad!

Now that I'm in charge, I can replace all of his cronies, including the guys who covered up my son's murder, and the people who actually helped him do the deed.

It's all okay now, because they're out.  And I'm in.

Okay, I know the Edwards story is a huge distraction, but I have to wonder about the timing, considering that the Biggest Story That Could Send Bush and Cheney To Jail broke on the same day:

The gist: "The White House had concocted a fake letter" from Saddam Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, "backdated to July 1, 2001," that said Mohammad Atta, the believed leader of the 9/11 attacks, had trained in Iraq. The CIA was supposedly told to make it happen.

Suskind's assertions are powerful, and they were promptly rebutted, not only by former CIA Director George Tenet, but also by one of Suskind's own sources, former Tenet deputy Robert Richer.

But wait, that's just the backstory.  The Big Damning Story -- the one that got lost in the Friday hubbub (gosh what a surprise) -- is over the bump ...

It's hard to believe, but the case against Ivins, as far as being the "Anthrax Killer" just keeps getting worse.  And more embarrassing to the FBI.

Now it turns out that the FBI was offering Big Bucks, millions of dollars, for people to turn on Ivins and report incriminating stories about him.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.

It gets worse ....

I know there's a thread going, but it's got over 500 comments and my computer can't even handle that many, and I'm sure others' can't as well.

I just have to share this:  This bizarre case is getting even MORE bizarre as the government displays more and more desperation in trying to make their case.  

Get a load of this headline from the AP:

Sorority may link anthrax suspect to NJ letters

Sounds promising, no?  A lonely scientist obsessed with sorority girls?  Right?  

Wrong.  This is such a desperately smelly red herring tossed our way once again all I can think of is "they must think we're really stupid".  

So I'm off today, not having to work, and it's great.  Hanging out at home, trying to get caught up on everything happening in the world ....

And I stumbled across a chart.  About the economy.  About our current financial situation.

And I had to stare at it for a while to even figure it out.  Because it didn't look like most charts.  I couldn't see the usual ups-and-downs, the fluctuations that you normally see in charts.

What is the chart?  And why will it make your hair stand on end?

It's a chart that shows the level of borrowing, by banks, from the Federal Reserve.  Econ 101 tells us that money is created in our society by the loaning of money from the Fed.  In other words, money is created through the creation of debt.

So this definitely falls into the "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" category.  The woman who, upon being the first Speaker of the House, has completely disgraced herself, her position, her place in history, by playing "see no evil, hear no evil" with regards to The Most Corrupt and Criminal President In History, has once again decided we all must be really fucking stupid:

Pelosi told "The View" today that she'd impeach Bush if anybody knew of a crime he'd committed.

Does this make you feel sick?   It does me.  

Hey Nancy.  Guess what?  We're not that stupid, and you're a goddamn liar.  

For a truly breathtaking (and accurate) view of the news headlines, I like to go over to Life After The Oil Crash dot com and get a bracing, non-candy-coated view of where our economy, and civilization, are headed.

You'll be shocked at the headlines, all of which are from major economic sources like the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, etc., showing the truly epic scope of the current economic nightmare.  

One article that struck me especially hard lately was the one which this diary will be about.

It basically says this:  At some point, the price of oil will consume 100% of the world's income.   This articule postulates that $300 a barrel for oil is the point at which so much of the world's income will be spent merely buying oil that the entire economy will come to a screeching halt.  And we'll be looking over the "smoldering ruins of the world's economy."

So this is what it's come to here?  Are people here DELUSIONAL?  

Can't people here separate what they see actors doing on TV from REALITY?

Right now, the McCain Heebie Jeebies video diary is at the top of the recommended list.

Can someone please explain why?

At least the "bad teeth" diary was about something real -- McCain's somewhat yellowed teeth.  

This one is based in some sort of utter delusional nonsense -- that somehow McCain playing a creepy husband in a skit on SNL is somehow indicative of his true charter.

Are those of you who recommended this divorced from reality?  Please explain!

This just up on Americablog.com:

Why is McCain getting $58,000 a year in disability income?
John Aravosis (DC)    

First off, I find it fascinating that John McCain, who is refusing to vote for the GI Bill for our troops because "it's too generous," is himself getting $58,000 a year, tax-free, from the US government for his military service. Had McCain been getting that amount every year since Vietnam, that would total $2,000,000 for the man who isn't into overgenerous government. I just find that interesting.

Holy wheelchairs, Batman!

If you check my diary history here, you'll see several on how the administration and their propaganda machine is reading from a prepared script re: "let's attack Iran".

Well today there are several new sources claiming that Bush will attack Iran before his term is out.  One of them says he's going to do it especially if a Democrat wins the nomination.   But the other is Rush Limbaugh, boasting of special insider knowledge:

Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh boasted about his insider access and told a caller that important Bush donors had assured him the President would attack Iran soon ...

Yeah sure it's a great thing that Hillary has finally gotten caught up on her third grade math, but while we're all nice and distracted by that, Bush is making the moves to steal Iraq for good.  And we're talking a permanent act of piracy, a literal lockdown of another foreign country, something unprecedented (as far as I know) in American history, and something none of us, or any of our elected representatives, have had any say in.  Oh yeah, and it'll cost a damn fortune.  Forever.

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

Isn't that special?  Heck, make me a damn contractor and send me to Iraq!  I can get 100% immunity for anything I do!  WHOO HEE!

Yup, guys like Newt Gingrich know what's good for America.  More terror attacks.

"This is ... one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration," Gingrich continued. "The more successful they've been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we're in danger. And therefore, the better they've done at making sure there isn't an attack, the easier it is to say, 'Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.' And it's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us."

What a patriotic Republican hero this man is!  It's a shame he didn't run for President!

Call me cynical and burned-out, but the whole Snotty McClellan "story" has left me unmoved.    Mainly because, well, it's old news.   Bush lied?  Yawn ....  

So what DID piss me off about this?   Well, I'll tell you:  Nancy Pelosi's response:

"''This war is a big lie. It was a lie to begin with..and it continues to be a lie.."

Whoa, whoa, Nancy, slow down here.  It looks to me that you are admitted your own guilt.   Are you not obligated, required by law as Speaker of the House, to pursue justice where laws have been broken by the executive branch?   Yet formerly you told us that no investigation would take place, that impeachment was "off the table", in effect that Justice would not be served, no matter what crimes were committed.  

Isn't this analagous to a if a judge were to say, at a murder trial, that he had already decided to find the defendant not guilty, regardless of what evidence was presented?

Well, look who's decided that high oil prices aren't just the result of speculators:

LONDON (AFP) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Wednesday that the world faced an era-defining oil "shock" that required urgent action, as European leaders struggled to contain growing protests over soaring fuel prices.

"It is now understood that a global shock on this scale requires global solutions," Brown wrote in The Guardian newspaper.

And there's someone else who's not happy about it either -- the CEO of Dow Chemical.  More on that over the bump.  

Today, Alternet published an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy", which states the plain damn simple truth about this mess America is in right now.   I'm amazed nobody here has diaried it yet (I did a search but found nothing.)

At any rate, here's a little sampler:

. . . the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that "freedom" simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege -- the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs -- is as subversive as Benedict Arnold's betrayal of the Revolution he had once served.

Wow.  Just wow.  More over the break