I’ll see your fail and raise you $6 mil

Say what you like about bAdmin., it’s really creative when it comes to finding ways to blow your cash (via The Washington Post):

The Justice Department agreed yesterday to pay biological-weapons expert Steven J. Hatfill a settlement valued at $5.85 million to drop a lawsuit he filed after then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft named him a “person of interest” in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks.

Translation: If we give you some money will you please stop kicking our asses?

The agreement, in which the government did not admit wrongdoing, ended a five-year legal saga.

Yeah, yeah. We’re long past the point where we expect The Chimperor’s idea of government to admit wrongdoing. And in case you’re wondering, they whipped out the checkbook because they were feeling generous. Honest.

The only surprising thing about this shindig:

1. They actually agreed to pay up.

2. They didn’t grab a random brown guy at the start and pin the whole mess on him.

Hatfill’s home was searched, he was followed and his conversations were wiretapped. He lost his job as an instructor at Louisiana State University and, he said, his reputation was tarnished.

And yet John “Torture” Yoo still has a gig at U.C. Berkley’s school of law.

I have to wonder. If the DoJ didn’t have their fReichtard Affirmative Action program would they have gotten into this mess in the first place?

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the investigation of the anthrax attacks continues.

“This investigation remains among the department’s highest law enforcement priorities,” he said.

Uh-huh. Right after you finish populating the place with the Bible Zombies of Armageddon you’ll get right on it.

Bite me.

Hatfill demonstrates the best way to spank the DoJ.

Blink

2003 - Yipee-ki-yay motherfucker (via The Washington Post):

“We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea,” the president said confidently in May 2003, three weeks after declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq. “We will not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.”

2008 - Kim Jong Il obtains photos of the Bush/Gannon meetings:

In the end, Bush settled for far less. Way short of his grand goal, Bush instead can claim only inching, agonizing progress toward getting the unpredictable government in North Korea to peel back the lid of secrecy about a nuclear weapons program that startled the world and brought together a coalition of five nations - Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States - to put pressure on Pyongyang.

North Korea is one of the brightest neon WTF? signs that’s hung over BushCo since the Subhuman Cowboy decided to go invade Iraq on the word of a pathological liar kindred spirit. Remember when North Korea tested a nuke? No, remember when North Korea tossed out the inspectors and fired up the reactors and sent us the tapes?

[Crickets chirp]

Here’s what The Chimp in Chief had to say when North Korea wrote “Stick it up your axis of evil,” on a bomb and flicked the switch:

Last night the government of North Korea proclaimed to the world that it had conducted a nuclear test. We’re working to confirm North Korea’s claim. Nonetheless, such a claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The United States condemns this provocative act. Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond.

That’s the first of five paragraphs. Five paragraphs of an swaggering bully realizing he’s run up against a bigger bully. Because bAdmin. couldn’t do much about it, could they? Sanctions are great, but you need other nations to make that effective. War? But, but, North Korea has a huge army and ours was already tied up looking for Mr. Pretzledent’s legacy. Now here’s the funny part: If pResident Psychopath hadn’t barged into Iraq, he wouldn’t have looked 1/10th as fucking stupid when NoKo tested a nuke.

Now even Ambassador Walrus is pissed at him:

“It’s shameful,” John Bolton, Bush’s former U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, said of the president’s decision. “This represents the final collapse of Bush’s foreign policy.”

He said the North had gained “political and economic legitimacy” by Bush’s concession and there was clear evidence North Korea has aided Syria and Iran. “To take North Korea off that list makes a mockery of the president’s notion that cooperating with terrorism means you’ll be treated as if you’re part of the terrorist network,” Bolton said.

Or, the list as conceived by Li’l Bush was a mockery of how foreign relations are conducted.

207 days.

Introducing the GMC Flop Sweat

Strange and frankly inappropriate shit makes me laugh, so I got a chuckle out of this example of everything that has been wrong with the U.S. auto industry since about March of 1949 (via The Financial Times):

General Motors rolled out fresh incentives on Monday in an attempt to staunch plummeting sales of gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles, pick-up trucks and other slow-selling models.

The Detroit-based carmaker said it would offer interest-free financing for up to six years – an unusually long period for such promotions – on vehicles such as the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs, the big Hummer and the Chevrolet Silverado pick-up [This nifty tool provides a wee hint as to why sales are sluggish -ed].

Hey, yeah! Because if people don’t want something, the thing to do is sweeten the deal on the something they don’t want. Because … um. Well look, you don’t want to buy a foreign car, do ya? And uh … the price of gas can’t keep going up forever, can it?

Affirmative Action - fRightWing Style

Remember when your parents told you that if you studied hard and applied yourself you could achieve anything? Yeah, they were wrong about that too.

Turns out all you had to do was memorize a two simple phrases:

1. Homosectualls are icky!

2. Roe v. Wade is worser than the Holocaust!

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The Carpetbagger Report provides a full, foul-language free, review of the fuckery.

New York Times article.

209 days, bitches.

How doth the little busy Dick

Improve each shining hour?

He helps to trash the GOP;

With his evil glower.

Vice President Dick Cheney came to Middle Georgia [Hum a few bars of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" here -ed.] for a couple of hours Monday, raising more than $100,000 for congressional hopeful and retired Warner Robins Air Logistics Center Commander Rick Goddard.

Is this a Pb dirigible which I see before me?

In other non-news, devout Bushphiles are still bug fucking crazy:

“He just asked a name,” Bill Paschall said of the encounter. “I told him I was retired Navy, 34 years service, and he thanked me for that. I think he was secretary of defense (while I was in the Navy).

“He’s a good guy,” Paschall said. “I think he’s smart. He makes decent, rational decisions.”

Benefit of the doubt time: Cthcheny had his lawyer pluggin’ blunderbus on him.