Can't these people see that this woman is incompetent?

Maybe they just want another one:

Their names are varied: Team Condi. Rice for America. The Draft Rice movement. Condistas.

But this disparate group of Internet gurus, politics junkies and Hillary haters shares a common goal: Elect Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice president in 2008.

[snip]

Similar Web sites from Seattle to West Sand Lake, N.Y., from Magna, Utah, to Cedarville, Ohio, have cropped up, touting Rice's credentials, marketing T-shirts, bobblehead dolls and "I Like Rice" buttons, and soliciting donations.

The Miami-based Americans for Dr. Rice political action committee has gone further, establishing state-level chapters in key political battleground states, including Ohio and Florida, and putting state chairs in place around the country. A second PAC, Rice for America, emerged in Greensboro, N.C., in July - though neither has yet reported any income or spending to the Federal Election Commission.

[snip]

"Nothing happens by chance in politics. Absolutely zero," said Bruce Newman, a DePaul University professor and expert in political marketing. "Everything is driven by marketing, by polling, by market research, and by very careful analysis of voters' preferences."

Newman, author of "The Marketing of the President: Political Marketing as Campaign Strategy," said the emergence of a grass-roots movement surrounding Rice will allow voters to feel they played a role in her candidacy - though he believes she is clearly being groomed as the political successor to Bush in light of Vice President Dick Cheney's health problems and unpopularity.

"The people running the Bush administration, and pushing for the geopolitical repositioning we're seeing take place around the world, would be happy to see that kind of person keep political power down the road," he said.

Backers like Rice for her intelligence, poise, self-reliance (she would also be America's first single president), values, and ability to carry on Bush's international agenda.

Oh, swell. Someone else to carry Bush's agenda of endless war with no plan, no strategy, and no effect other than alienating the entire world. Who on earth do they think will vote for this:

Steve, I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking. (Condoleeza Rice, press briefing, May 16, 2002)

And on the impending Iraq war:

We're going to seek a peaceful solution to this. We think that one is possible [CBS, 10/20/02].

We all want very much to see this resolved in a peaceful way. [Briefing, 11/21/02].

We are still in a diplomatic phase here. [ABC, 3/9/03]

Richard Haas, Directory of Policy Planning at the State Department:

“We're going to seek a peaceful solution to this. We think that one is possible” [CBS, 10/20/02]. Then in November of 2002, she said, “We all want very much to see this resolved in a peaceful way” [Briefing, 11/21/02]. In March of 2003, she claimed “we are still in a diplomatic phase here” [ABC, 3/9/03]

The woman is a flat out, bald-faced liar. Just because we currently have a president who simply cannot tell the truth doesn't mean we want another one. And I don't care if she's a woman, and I don't care that she's black. A liar is a liar is a liar, and an idiot is an idiot. And Condoleeza Rice is both -- and profoundly UNQUALIFIED to be president.

The conservative way: focusing like a laser beam on the really important issues

While Republicans and their frothing, mad dog minions are obsessing about gay marriage, flag burning, the so-called "values agenda"; and while they've been exhorting their minions to call for the execution of journalists and shrieking about the liberal plot to steal Superman and calling John Murtha a traitor and just generally hiding under their beds trembling in sheer pee-in-your-pants Fear of Terrorists, a real threat has been right under their noses, ignored completely by them:

- North Korea will respond to a pre-emptive U.S. military attack with an "annihilating strike and a nuclear war," the state-run media said Monday, heightening its antagonistic rhetoric.

The Korean Central News Agency, citing an unidentified Rodong Sinmun newspaper "analyst," accused the United States of increasing military pressure on the isolated communist state.

The North Korean threat of retaliation, which is often voiced by its state-controlled media, comes amid U.S. official reports that Pyongyang has shown signs of preparing for a test of a long-range missile.

"The army and people of the DPRK are now in full preparedness to answer a pre-emptive attack with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent," the report said. DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The report accused Washington of escalating military pressure on the country with war exercises, a massive arms buildup and aerial espionage by basing new spy planes in South Korea.

You want to be scared? Be scared of what President God's Own Anointed Messenger of Armageddon decides to do with North Korea.

These are the people who are deciding whether the internet will remain public

I bring you the telecom industry's Useful Idiot, Sen. Ted Stevens:

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a violation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

Aren't you reassured that the people making the decisions about whether Verizon can refuse to allow you to view the web site where your kids are posting photos of your grandchildren are so well-versed in the technologies they oversee?

I didn't think so.

If Sen. Stevens understood the way them intarweb thingies work, he'd know where to go to find out how them intarweb thingies work.

"...our frequest guest commentator, the Right-Wing Nutcase"

Tom Tomorrow gets it right again. (Nonsubscribers will have to sit through an ad, but trust me, it's worth it.)

Wingnuttia lives up to its name

Glenn Greenwald reports on the right wing meltdown over the New York Times.

Some journalist is going to show up with a bullet in his or her head one of these days because some crazy decided to act on what Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz, and others are exhorting the wackos to do.

When even Mrs. Greenspan has had enough, and the Wall Street Journal is sticking up for the New York Times, you know that we are having a "Does Macy's tell Gimbels" moment and that the mouth-frothers have overdone it:

MS. MITCHELL: Let me, let me show you a Wall Street Journal editorial--a very unusual editorial--that was in the paper on Friday. It said that "The problem with The New York Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that The Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it." John, I don't want to really put you on the spot here, but I am. Your paper's news columns also ran this story, and here you have this editorial. It really is a really sharp conflict.

MR. HARWOOD: Couple of points on that. First of all, that editorial wasn't kidding when they said there's a separation between the news and the editorial pages at The Wall Street Journal.

MS. MITCHELL: That's for sure.

MR. SAFIRE: Same with us.

MR. HARWOOD: Secondly, there is a very large gap between the ideological outlook and philosophy of The New York Times editorial page and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. There is not a large ideological gap between the news staffs of those two places, and why would there be? Some of the top people of The New York Times were hired from The Wall Street Journal. What I found shocking about the editorial was the assertion that The New York Times did not act in good faith in making that judgment. I don't know anybody on the news staff of The Wall Street Journal that believes that. I certainly don't. (Emphasis mine.)

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Vervet for pointing us to Glenn Greenwald's update on the New York Times travel section article. Turns out Rumsfeld gave permission for the photos to be taken and used. So, wingnuts, I guess Rumsfeld is a traitor in your eyes too now, eh? Sorry, you'll have to find another reason for the annihilation of everyone who doesn't agree with your delusional worldview.

Bono, call your lawyer

Oh, the humanity.

Sunday Kitchen Blogging -- the before pictures

Not much progress on the kitchen front, mostly because my time has been spent so far in decluttering the kitchen -- no small task, as anyone who's ever been to my house can attest.

The first step, to commence tomorrow, will be painting the ceiling. With any luck at all, this will be smooth sailing, and NOT like the last two rooms I painted, in which priming the ceiling resulted in bubbling -- the result of latex paint used a long time ago over oil-based paint. That little adventure resulted in days of scraping sheets of old paint off the ceilings -- not fun.

Ceiling painting is the worst part of the job because it's boring, as well as being overhead. It's made easier by the use of the HomeRight PaintStick, a "seen on TV" product that actually works as advertised. The cleanup is hugely time-consuming, which largely offsets any time you save in actual painting, but the reduction in drips and spatters makes it more than worth it.

Here is what we're dealing with:



Note the hideous, cheap "wood-grain" laminate cabinet doors, and the way the veneers from the LAST reface job 25 years ago are falling off due to dried-out glue. Don't even ask about the wall color; it was my first venture into walls that aren't white, and I wanted green. I still like green, so I'm experimenting, as you can see:



The "work area" of the kitchen, which is 9'6" wide by 17' long, will have along the soffit the Arts & Crafts wall border shown in the photo. This will also set off nicely the light oak cabinet doors, which you can see here (design 200). I bought all these supplies two years ago, so of course dark cabinets are now coming back into style. But I like the warm look of oak, so oak it is. The buff color in the photos is what the rest of the walls will be. It's not easy to get an arts & crafts look in a 1950's cape, but I'm going to do my damnedest. Ideally we'll get to a passing resemblance to this or this.

Of course none of this addresses the hideous yellow countertop yet, or the even worse vinyl floor (which I will show you for your taunting pleasure tomorrow), but one step at a time.

So what makes me think I can do a better job with cabinet refacing than the so-called "professionals" who did this last time?

Well, aside from personal investment in the workmanship, I have this book, along with the tools cited therein, which purport to make the job easier. And I had the good people at Kitchen Doors Online to help me over the phone with planning and measuring.

So over the next few weeks or months, interspersed with the political rants, you'll get to see if I can actually do this.