Joe Conason has the same question I do.

So, when does the compassion part kick in exactly?

A sure sign that you might have an issue with compassion is that you need to create a seperate agenda to include it with the rest your initiatives. You well never hear the words Compassionate Democrat or Compassionate Liberal. We don't need the qualifiers because the compassion is a given, which is why the way this administration congratulates itself on its "compassion" is ludicrous.

Not to mention hypocritical.

The State Department has discontinued financing for a small but well-regarded AIDS program for African and Asian refugees because it contends that one of the groups involved in the project supports forced abortions and involuntary sterilization in China, officials said this week.

The decision to end the financing has raised a furor among AIDS and refugee groups. Relief workers fear that officials are bowing to pressure from anti-abortion factions within the Bush administration and allowing politics to interfere with desperately needed AIDS programs, assertions that the State Department denies.

The group, Marie Stopes International, offers abortion counseling and services.

State Department officials acknowledge that they have no evidence to suggest that Marie Stopes is involved in forced abortions or involuntary sterilization, and the group itself says it has been trying to end forced abortions in China and to expand voluntary family planning.

Oh but wait till you get to the end.

The State Department gave $1 million to cover the first year of the project and offered to finance the six other relief organizations involved in the program for a second year if they agreed to end their partnership with Marie Stopes.

The groups, known collectively as the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium, declined the government's offer, saying they would not divide the organization because of "baseless allegations." The groups include the International Rescue Committee, CARE, the American Refugee Committee, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, John Snow International and Columbia University's department of population and family health.

"We were disappointed that for reasons of solidarity with Marie Stopes that they should refuse our money," said the State Department official. "We had hoped they would show more humanitarian statesmanship than that."

If you are shocked and dismayed at this you are probably a perfectly nice person and will almost definitely go to heaven. You are also stupid. It's been over two and a half years. Face it. There is no compassion here, just narrow-minded politics barely disguised as compassion. If you can't see that yet you deserve to be stuck with this guy for another four years.

Karl Rove guilty of serious security breach ala Kim Philby

Mark Kleiman tells us Joseph Wilson blows the whistle on Rove at a forum held in Washington state to discuss the mishandling of intelligence information that lead the US to war. Wilson's wife was outed by "White House sources" as a CIA operative in attempt to intimidate Wilson after he wrote an op-ed piece for the NYT dismissing the Iraq/Niger/yellowcake assertions made by Bush in his SOTU. Kleiman also gives good backstory on the whole thing.

At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.

Of course, the mainstream media is away from its desk on this one, probably covering brush clearage in Crawford, TX

Who ya gonna call?

If you're a soldier in the US Army who collapsed in 130-degree heat in Iraq, fell into a coma, nearly died of heart failure, who returned to Roxbury, MA only to face homelessness, Ted Kennedy is THE man.

In the past two weeks, the Army has promised to ship her possessions back from Germany, she's seen doctors at the veterans' hospital, and she's been told to expect her first disability check next month. But the help, she said, only came after the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy intervened. For example, she said, the Army refused to fly her brother and sister to Germany to bring her daughter home. Then the senator's office called and suddenly a flight was offered.
''Was that a coincidence?'' Turner said. ''I don't think so.'' Veterans' officials, both nationally and locally, now know about her case and vow to make it a priority.

What happened to all of that patriotic goodwill? Vannessa Turner couldn't get assistance from the goddamn US Army, for Christsakes, until the last liberal holding public office intervened.
Read the article, it says vets account for 23% of our homeless population. That's just unacceptable. Maybe this is why tours of duty are being extended to one year or longer. The fucking government can't guarantee some of these folks will have homes when they return.

Can we make a case for committing right-wingers en masse?

This probably won’t fly, especially coming from such a well-known partisan like myself (nearly 2,000 hits! Woo Hoo! I know, no-one reads me), but that’s no reason to reject the proposal outright. And to be fair I’m not suggesting we commit all conservatives and Republicans. I’m sure there are many red-state types are as dismayed as I at the current state of affairs. But let’s face it; as a party, Republicans have totally lost touch with reality.

Let’s look at the evidence.

The Flypaper Theory: I should probably keep my trap shut on this one, but it seems to me that the logic in this argument is—well—not there. But don’t take my word on it. Josh has thought about it more and is considerably smarter than me.

Now, we've already had the 'flypaper' theory: that guerilla attacks against American troops are a good thing because we're pulling 'the terrorists' out of the woodwork and attacking them on our own terms. And now we have what I guess we could call the 'paradoxically positive mass-casualty terrorism event' theory: that mass-casualty terrorism events show the success of our policy since they are a sign 'the terrorists' are becoming desperate.

Yes, you do have to read it more than once ‘cause the sheer bland gall of that statement kind of ricochets off the common sense modules of your brain. I not only share Josh’s skepticism but take it a step further. Isn’t there something slightly manic about this way of thinking? Don’t psychotics rationalize violence with mock logic? What other kind of person could look at a mass bombing and say, “This is actually pretty good.” I could say more but I don’t know anything about psychology really. Moving on.

Religious Fanaticism: George “God Made Me President” W. has made it safe for religious whack jobs everywhere to come out of the closet. Take the case of Justice Moore in Alabama. One would think that the monument was actually THE Ten Commandments, superglue and all. This suit is more than tenacious. It’s obsessive and likely to end his career. I don’t know what the medical term might be for this but I know crazy when I see it.

California Recall: Do I really have to deconstruct this? Batshit insane, every last one of them.

Fox News vs. Al Franken: This is the best of the bunch. Before, I would have willing to dismiss this as simply Fox News and Bill O’Reilly being candy-assed spoiled children. But when you are candy-assed and spoiled to the tune of $61 million…well what can I say? Obsessive, paranoid, deluded, can we throw these people a Thorazine kegger?

I could go on but what good what it do? Coulter, Tucker, Friedman. It might be funny for a little while but it would get repetitive. And jesting aside it’s not all that funny. Let it never be said that this blog discriminates against the insane. I’m not after them because they are crazy people. I’m after them because the are crazy people with air time and expense accounts. So let’s start a letter writing campaign, raise some money, circulate a petition. Commit the Right-wing Crazies. Can I get an “Amen?”