The important word for the day is "SAFE,"which means you DON'T drink and drive. Even if you "just" have a drink or two, on the wayhome some sober-but-inattentive ass could screw up and crash into you but if the cop smells alcohol on you it's going to go down as YOUR fault, so why risk that? If you screw up tonight, (let's say you're lucky and you DON'T kill or injure anyone with your dumb-ass wreck, you're going to spend the night in jail with people who are stranger than Republicans and you'd better be built like a linebacker because the strong OWN the weak in jail. Once you get somebody to bail your drunk-ass out, you have to pay the bondsman, the towing company, court costs, a hefty fine, your outrageous lawyer's bill, car repairs and you'll have your license possibly suspended and you'll almost certainly have to go to drunk driving school and you now have a permanent police record which puts your job and future jobs at risk and it just keeps getting worse. If you're recently divorced, you could lose custody of your kids and that's a whole lot of trouble to go thru to save car fare. So don't screw-up and get behind the wheel, even if you"always do" and you've always made it home OK. We're in for the night.I bought some wine for Mrs Bart and some vodka for me. The luckiest cat in America has some new luxury catnip to play with while we channel surf for good music and hot babes and Kathy Griffin will be tormenting that whore Anderson Cooper LIVE, which is a crazy thing to do. Whose idea was it to give Kathy Griffin a live mic? Koresh help us if somebody mentions the handjobs who call themselves "the Christian Right" to her. So stay out of cars if you can and FOR SURE don't drive because it could cost you everything. New page Wednesday and I should apologize now for what my Razorbacks and my Sooners do to poor Missouri and that hapless West Virginia team. ... and we all survived another year, bart

Something that I have not been able to get out of my mind in the past few days is the assassination of Benazir Bhuto. The thing that has been nagging me is to what extent this might be our fault. I really feel that Musharraf had her killed. Perhaps if Bush had not been so buddy-buddy with this criminal we would not have seen the death of the rightful leader of Pakistan again and again on the news.Also, if we assume that Musharraf is telling the truth (which I doubt) and Al Quaeda did arrange her death, would catching Osama bin Laden instead of letting him get away again and again saved Bhuto's life?Another possibility, though more controversial, is that Bush had a hand in this. Given what we know of his disregard for human life, would this be such a surprise?

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 31, 2007

Yesterday The Times published a highly informative chart laying out the positions of the presidential candidates on major issues. It was, I'd argue, a useful reality check for those who believe that the next president can somehow usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation. For what the chart made clear was the extent to which Democrats and Republicans live in separate moral and intellectual universes. On one side, the Democrats are all promising to get out of Iraq and offering strongly progressive policies on taxes, health care and the environment. That's understandable: the public hates the war, and public opinion seems to be running in a progressive direction. What seems harder to understand is what's happening on the other side — the degree to which almost all the Republicans have chosen to align themselves closely with the unpopular policies of an unpopular president. And I'm not just talking about their continuing enthusiasm for the Iraq war. The G.O.P. candidates are equally supportive of Bush economic policies. Why would politicians support Bushonomics? After all, the public is very unhappy with the state of the economy, for good reason. The "Bush boom," such as it was, bypassed most Americans — median family income, adjusted for inflation, has stagnated in the Bush years, and so have the real earnings of the typical worker. Meanwhile, insecurity has increased, with a declining fraction of Americans receiving health insurance from their employers. Read More Here

Bill Boyarsky, TruthDig, December 26, 2007 DES MOINES, Iowa - This may be the last place in America where political journalists are embraced as heroes. Usually these reporters, particularly those in the mainstream media, take hits from academia and a growing number of media critics. In Iowa, they are eagerly welcomed when they show up to cover the state's unique system of selecting presidential nominees. The reason is simple: The media is a co-conspirator in a con, the Iowa caucuses. I covered the first highly publicized Iowa caucuses in 1976, when unknown Jimmy Carter finished ahead of all the Democratic candidates and went on to win the Democratic presidential nomination and the presidency. We reporters found the unfamiliar system a welcome change from what we usually covered. Iowans were friendly and eager to talk, and the caucuses were peculiar but intriguing. After the caucuses, I moved on to the next stop, the New Hampshire primary, not giving any more thought to the Iowa system. That's a reporter for you: Out of sight, out of mind. In the intervening years, my career took a turn toward covering city councils, boards of supervisors, fixers, angry community leaders, lobbyists and the rest of the cast that makes local politics compelling. Down in the muck of real politics, I became more cynical. I learned that everybody has an angle, and you have to understand the system to know it for what it is. As I prepared to fly to Iowa on this current assignment, I wondered if I'd be able to figure out what the angle was for caucus participants. I talked to a lot of people here, but oddly enough, I learned more from Iowa's State Historical Museum, where there is a large display that explains a lot about the caucuses. Read More Here

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 28, 2007 While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan. But recently we crossed an important watershed: we now import more manufactured goods from the third world than from other advanced economies. That is, a majority of our industrial trade is now with countries that are much poorer than we are and that pay their workers much lower wages. For the world economy as a whole - and especially for poorer nations - growing trade between high-wage and low-wage countries is a very good thing. Above all, it offers backward economies their best hope of moving up the income ladder. But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with third world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade very difficult. Let's talk for a moment about the economics. Read More Here

from breadwithcircus.com Benazir Bhutto knew who was out to get her. She fingers the likely suspects in this interview recorded on November 2nd. Pay particular attention to what she says 2:15 into the video. Bhutto names her likely killer.

Christmas a Lead Weight: In early December, MSNBC reported that the Consumer Action Council was warning that 35 percent of the toys on American shelves contained lead or other toxic substances -- how many of those items are going to end up poisoning some poor kid and leaving him or her with mush for brains? Does Mattel care? They'll probably just issue a dumbed-down Barbie (if that's possible) that the lead-retarded kids can identify with -- "Let's have fun! Why don't you feed me and change my adult diaper?" Speaking of the Xmas shopping season, it was even more of a dud than last year, as the US economy slowly slides its way to a full-blown depression. As the AP reported December 26th:

"The nation's retailers slashed prices further Wednesday in hopes that a post-Christmas shopping rush will salvage holiday sales that, so far, have fallen below even modest expectations. They're waiting in particular for legions of shoppers armed with gift cards to snap up bargains and buy new merchandise that has just hit store shelves." [...] "Meanwhile a broad gauge of consumer spending released by Mastercard Advisors -- a division of the credit card company -- that includes estimates for spending by check and cash, reported Tuesday an increase of 3.6 percent from Nov. 23 to Dec. 24, the low end of expectations. That compared with a 6.6 percent gain in the year-ago period. Excluding gas purchases, holiday sales were up only 2.4 percent." -- "After Christmas, shops try to lure scrooges," AP, Dec. 26, 2007.

Next crisis on the block joining the housing collapse? Credit industry failures as strapped families can't pay their ballooning credit card debt racked up during the holidays. Save that coal you got in your stocking -- you may need it for heat. (Read a great piece on this looming crisis by Danny Schechter here.) -- Rudy Giuliani goes into the hospital overnight for "flu-like symptoms" and a tremendous headache? Huh? What healthy adult male spends the night in the doc shop for that? Aside from a testament to Rudy's rich-man health insurance -- no average American would be able to cajole their HMO into paying for an overnight hospital stay with the flu and a headache: "Take two aspirins and drink plenty of fluids -- and stay home!" -- this sounds, even to People Who Only Play Doctors On TV, like he had at least a mild stroke. Considering the baffling nature of some of his recent TV ads, like that bizarre 'Christmas fruitcake' flopperoo, perhaps he's had more than one. Forget the Grover Cleveland Official Campaign Denials that he's fine -- Rudy may be dropping out of the race for health reasons any day now. No doubt the G-Man is under a lot of pressure after pissing away a thirty-point lead with his obnoxious personality and shady past. Adding to his other ethical problems, he now is accused of peddling his reputation to prevent prosecutions of the makers of OxyContin for lying to the public. -- New Conspiracy Theory: Could it be that the Big Media is intentionally prolonging the writer's strike to keep the late night talk shows, as well as the irreverent slice-and-dice satirizations on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, in reruns and therefore unable to jape the GOP candidates and the White House? (Too many Americans, to our national discredit, get their 'news' from the talk shows.) Hard to imagine, but then so is Junior as president. -- Finally, Lou Dobbs: Rather than prove he's not a racist, perhaps TV's most rabid anti-illegal immigrant ranter -- he now seems to devote half of his show to his eye-rolling ravings on the subject -- merely married a Mexican woman to torture her.

“Otherwise, the grant money might dry up.” “... polar bears—whose numbers have tripled in recent years.” “... the East Antarctic ice cap is currently gaining about 45 billion tons of ice per year.” Arctic Warming, Antarctic Cooling? by Dennis Avery Issue 97 - December 12, 2007 The global warming alarmists are at it again, shrieking about “ice melt at the Poles.” “The relentless grip of the Arctic Ocean that defied man for centuries is melting away,” warned Doug Struck in the Washington Post. “The sea ice reaches only half as far as it did 50 years ago. In the summer of 2006, it shrank to a record low. This summer, the ice pulled back even more, by an area nearly the size of Alaska.” NASA’s James Hansen keeps claiming that CO2 is “pushing the climate past its tipping point.” British banks are sending “volunteers” to the Arctic to see for themselves the loss of sea ice, and to view the “endangered” polar bears—whose numbers have tripled in recent years. Ho hum. Just another day at the scare factory. Point one: We’ve known for 20 years about the earth’s moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle, which we discovered in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores. The ice shows seven previous global warmings in the past 12,000 years. Two of these—8,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago—were, for many centuries, substantially warmer than today. The Greenland and Antarctic ice caps didn’t melt. Point two: This can’t be global warming. 1) The Arctic was also warm in the 1920s; the Russians say it happens every 70 years or so. 2) The Antarctic Ice is now at a modern high. The Antarctic has been cooling since the 1960s, according to Peter Doran’s 2002 paper in Nature. Thanks to warming’s additional snowfall, the East Antarctic ice cap is currently gaining about 45 billion tons of ice per year. Neels Reeh of the University of Denmark says that another 1 degree C of warming would melt enough Greenland ice to raise sea levels perhaps half an inch per year—but added ice in the Antarctic would lower sea level almost that much. The net increase has been six inches per century, and it isn’t expected to change. Why not? Cliff Ollier, well-known geoscientist from the University of Western Australia, writes to say that Hansen is just a climate modeler who doesn’t understand either ice caps or their melting. He thinks the whole ice cap melting thing is a figment of the climate modelers’ computerized imaginations, conjured up to ensure that we’re properly frightened of global warming. Otherwise, the grant money might dry up. If the media only reported facts, who would be frightened about sea levels rising at the current rate of six inches per century? Who’d be frightened by the earth warming just two-tenths of a degree C over the past 70- years? Ice caps don’t melt from the surface down, they melt only at the edges. Once the edges are melted, further ice loss depends on the uphill weight of the ice built up over previous centuries. The ice flows—reluctantly because it’s so cold—on the warmer ice at its base, with the upper, brittle ice carried downhill by its own weight. When a chunk of ice reaches the edge of the cap it falls off—and the AP writes a news story. That’s neither melting nor collapse. The Greenland ice cap is 2–3 kilometers deep and much of its ice lies inside a basin that won’t slide off. Its undisturbed ice dates back at least 105,000 years. The temperatures over the ice are well below freezing, at about -30 degrees C in the north, and -20 degrees C in the south. The Antarctic ice cores date back more than 760,000 years, in the coldest place on earth. The lowest recorded temperature was -89 C at Vostok in 1983. The highest Vostok temperature taken was -19 C in 1992—still far below freezing. By the way, even the southernmost polar bear population is doing fine in the Davis Strait, with higher numbers and some of the largest bears yet seen. Dennis Avery was a senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, where he won the national intelligence medal of achievement. He is the co-author, with atmosphericphysicist FredSinger, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1500 Years, available from Rowman & Littlefield. Readers may write him at the Center for Global Food Issues ( www.cgfi.org) post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421.

Robert Parry, Consortium News, December 28, 2007 The chaos spreading across nuclear-armed Pakistan after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is part of the price for the Bush administration's duplicity about al-Qaeda's priorities, including the old canard that the terrorist group regards Iraq as the “central front” in its global war against the West. Through repetition of this claim - often accompanied by George W. Bush's home-spun advice about the need to listen to what the enemy says - millions of Americans believe that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders consider Iraq the key battlefield. However, intelligence evidence, gathered from intercepted al-Qaeda communications, indicate that bin Laden's high command views Iraq as a valuable diversion for U.S. military strength, not the "central front." For instance, as the Iraq War was heating up in 2005, a letter attributed to al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri asked if the embattled al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq might be able to spare $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze facing the group's top leaders in hiding, presumably inside Pakistan near the Afghan border. Instead of money going from Pakistan to Iraq, the cash was flowing the opposite way. U.S. intelligence analysts recognized that this was not the way one would normally treat a "central front." Read More Here

I suck at predicting things but I am committing these to paper,(sort of), so next year we will see how good a prognosticator I am.  So here it is an off the wall list of predictions for 2008. We will have another major infrastructure failure ala Ohio bridge collapse and the MSM will forget about it as soon as the good pictures are gone, ala Ohio.  Does anybody remember Katrina? Is New Orleans back? Is Afghanistan safe yet?  Reality is what the MSM tells you it is and it better damn come with good visuals, because if it doesn’t, it does not sell magazines papers or viewers. Florida will be hit with a category 5 hurricane and we will find out that FEMA is even less prepared than they were for Katrina. Fidel Castro will die.  Nothing will change. We will find out that the famous Florida Cubans know it’s more profitable to complain about the fate of their island than actually doing anything about it. There is a better than 90% chance Hugo Chavez will suffer another coup or assassination attempt and a better than 50% chance it will succeed.  If it does succeed we can expect that the regional allies will complain loudly, but other than increasing their distrust of US regional power, nothing will happen.  Venezuela will go back to being a corrupt country run by crooks for the chosen few.  If it does not succeed we will know exactly how radical Hugo Chavez can be, forming stronger alliances with Iran, Cuba, China, regional partners and possibly cutting off Venezuela oil to the US market.  Cutting off the oil will be very difficult, as Citgo is a wholly owned Venezuelan company, but the Chinese may make it worthwhile. The Kurds, after being attacked by US regional ally Turkey, and remembering being abandoned by Bush I and now Bush II, will turn on our troops in Iraq, thus losing our only ally in the country. Pakistan will become more militantly Muslim and ruled by an ever weaker, in name only, US ally. The concerns we had about Iran and nuclear weapons will shift strongly towards Pakistan. Israel and the Palestinians will again come up with another grand peace initiative.  Then they will continue killing each other with each side claiming victimhood.  In short, at least one thing is constant, not good, but constant. Afghanistan will again have a record opium crop while our puppet and our soldiers will be hunkered down in their mansion and bases. The Dollar will continue in a free fall reaching a low of $.50 to the Euro. Real Estate values will continue in a free fall with the only bright spot being Europeans buying up properties in resort areas as the Japanese did in the 80’s. Fuel prices will continue soaring and increasing the cost of goods.  While the CPI does not take into account the price of fuel and groceries, these prices will continue to rise and have a real inflationary affect on the economy.  We will reach a very serious recession which will feel like a depression. Gold will be the next bubble that people will fall back on.  Just like the internet boom, then the housing boom, it will be promoted very heavily and the price will rise steeply, and then just like other bubbles, the big guys will take their profits and leave the little guy holding the empty bag.  The big guys will be on to the next bubble they can exploit. Elections if they happen:  John Edwards will be democratic candidate with Osama or Richardson as the VP nominee.  There is no way to tell who will be the Republican nominee, they all suck.  They suck so much they may give a new meaning to the word suck. I have previously discounted Mike Bloomberg as a candidate.  I was mistaken.  I was thinking about primaries and his need to file in time for the primaries.  He is an independent he can jump in at any time, and he will.  Mike is running and Chuck Hagel is his VP nominee.  This is as much about ego as anything that ever came down the pike.  But believe it, this guy is a serious contender.  He could spend a billion dollars and still be a billionaire.  Nobody else can do that.  It does not hurt that he is a reasonable guy.  He is the mayor of a very liberal city and manages to have very high approval ratings despite some missteps.  If he runs the sexual harassment lawsuits at his firm will pursue him, but as in NYC, I doubt they will seriously harm his chances. So, prediction?  The Democratic nominee will not gain enough electoral votes to win the Electoral College, Mike will not either; the Republican nominee will be trounced.  There will emerge a third political party in America, the Republican Party will go the way of the Bull Moose, The Wigs and Know Nothings.  The Democratic Party is weak with very weak leadership. If this election is decided in congress as I expect it will be, Mike Bloomberg will win. This may actually be a desirable result. With a very weak Republican Party, and a new, also weak party looking for members this may be the opportunity Democrats are looking for to split the party.  True Democrats need a true strong party, not the weak alliance of progressives, Blue Dogs and Joe Liberman that continually undermine party strength. A new Democratic Party may actually take the initiative and make Harry and Nancy as irrelevant as they want to be. The real news as told by the MSM in 2008: That missing Aruba girl will be spotted in a bathroom in Tennessee.  Would not have been spotted except her stall was out of paper and she made a scene. Britney Spears impregnated by an alien.  She thought he was Mexican or from another place in Europe. Tom Cruise drops Scientology and wants to run for Pope.  He figures he has about 20 million to spend on the campaign.  Katie is already designing pointy hats for him. Barbara Walters and Larry King get hitched, but quickly divorce after they realize they both love to talk but can’t stand the sound of each other’s voice. Dolly Parton dies and donates her breasts to science, with the stipulation that they would be mounted at Dollywood after science was done with them. NY, the girl from the reality show, breaks up Dr. Phil’s marriage.  He claims the devil made him do it. Elvis found living in a bungalow outside Las Vegas with Tara Reid.  No comment was available as Elvis had peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth and could not speak.  Tara could not be resuscitated for the interview. Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton announce they are a couple and wish to adopt a rich baby as they are running out of cash.  Christina Onassis, thought a little old, said to be considering the offer. Happy New Year

 It had to be a mistake. Did Dr. Peabody set the Wayback Machine wrong? Did an Angel slip on a celestial banana peel and interfere with the second coming? (There is a Gannon joke there somewhere, of this Scribe is sure.) Just past Christmas, just before what he hoped really WOULD be a “New” Year, Jesus went… POP! And appeared on the set of CSI. “Stop! Stop! Who is that smelly guy who just appeared on set!” “But I came here to deliver my Father’s message of love and forgiveness…” “Damn, stupid hippies. Don’t you guys know all the media is under the influence of Murdoch now? Anything, young, new and politically incorrect must be slaughtered in its crib! Get this Liberal scum outta here.” And the next thing he knew a big boot kicked him out the door. With the help of an invisibility shield borrowed from The Holy Ghost... (Wouldn't want to pay THAT late fee, would ya?) ...and a large amount of bribes in the form of water coolers zapped and refilled with wine so Security outside the set was too drunk to pay attention, Jesus started to visit sets. He could hear the occasional “Jesus Loves Me This I Know” being sung… poorly. Wine can do that to the vocal chords. POP! Onto the set of the O’Lielly Factor… “Who’s this pinhead?” “I’m the Prince of Peace.” “Don’t you know the 60s are over? “’60s?’ No, no, no I bring you a message of…” “SHUT OFF HIS MICROPHONE, SHUT OFF HIS MICROPHONE…” “Verily, I say unto you, you should turn the other…” “I say to you… YOU’RE OUTTA HERE!” Jesus, once again, was outside another heathen temple of Rupert, rubbing his bum where it had hit the sidewalk. Of course it instantly healed. “Maybe our message is lost here, Father.” So, POP! He was on stage. He started to preach, until Simon interrupted. “That’s the worst preaching I’ve heard in my life. Have you thought of celestial cleaning toilets for a living? Besides, we only do one type of entertainment here.” “But shouldn’t we love all the….” “You obviously know NOTHING about marketing and humiliating people for vast amounts of cash…” So, yes… you guessed right dear reader, once again, security on set had left him sore and healing himself. “Now I have to bribe another set of security guards outside the set. Wish they’d give me enough time to do it ON set. Oh, well… the Lord’s work… I mean MY work, is never done. Guess I’ll need to start by moving in a mysterious way again. (Of course, as we all know, divine bowel movements are even more mysterious… but there are some things best left unknown, right?) So he… POPPED! …outside a building with a sign saying “The reason for the season is JESUS!” “Ah, Father, I think we’ve found some followers, maybe new disciples…” A few minutes later after finally getting as tired of all the pimping of the flock as he did the greedy moneychangers: as in trying to get them to give up their life savings while declaring Junior was doing God’s work, Christians had to be Neo-Cons and anyone who disagreed with King Junior was in league with the devil… “Perhaps, I say unto you, you misunderstood my message, and my parables. I preached of…” Sore and healing himself again, outside this theocratic den of inequity, he asked his Father if, maybe this one time, he could spare a few lightning bolts and bring down an Old Testament case of butt woopin on their pathetic tails. No answer. “OK, I guess that means, ‘No.’ But what SHOULD I do?” The answer in the voice no human, other than his Son, can really hear… (Though Michael Jackson and quite a few priests DO think they hear God singing… “JESUS! Love the Little Children!”) …came back with a somewhat nasally boom. (He had a cold when a bird of peace, named “Enza,” flew up his nose: as in “In-Flew-Enza.”)… “Forgive them, my Son, for they know not what they do.” “What about this Junior guy they worship who claims you tell him what to do.” “No, not him. He’s just a really, REALLY dangerous dumb-fuck. I've got plans for HIM.” Scribe hopes you’ve had a happy Ho-D-Ho, Ho, and you will have a really special New Year, and we ALL have a lot less of that Neo-Con "miracle:" how, when someone dares to disagree, they produce the endless supply of WHINE. So, New Years, let’s toast to the hope that we get all the political HOS out of the White House and into prison in 08.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide bombing that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, a party aide and a military official said."At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto's party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack.A senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, confirmed that Bhutto had died. Her supporters at the hospital began chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog," referring to Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf. Some of them smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears.

Bhutto is dead. You can think whatever you will about her, but no matter what else she was, no matter how truly pure she was to the cause of democracy, she was a symbol of opposition and she's been removed. This is a bad thing.

Bush Junior: "All I Want For Christmas is My Three Front War" Dick Cheney: "(It's Lovely Weather for a) Slay Ride" Ann Coulter: "Goy to the World" Rudy Giuliani: "Rudolph the Long-Nosed Reign-Deer" Sean Hannity: "The Little War-Drummer Boy" Mike Huckabee: "(I'm Dreaming of) White Christians" Duncan Hunter: "Nasty the Low Man" Joe Lieberman: "Missile Joe and Folly" Rush Limbaugh: "Ding Dong! Merrily I'm High" John McCain: "I'll Be Home Next Christmas" Michael Mukasey: "My Nuts Roasting On An Open Fire..." Rupert Murdoch: "Deck the Halls (with Bags of Money)" Bill O'Reilly: "Do You Hear What I Hear?" Mitt Romney: "Have Yourself a Mormon Little Christian" Fred Thompson: "(Walking in a) Winter Blunderland" Congressional Republicans: "A King Is Born on High" Closeted Gay Christopublicans: "O Come All Ye Unfaithful" Neocon Talk Shows: "Unsilent Right" Wall Street Investors: "Jingo Bears"