E-freakin-ormous Sandy Claus

But shouldn’t these people have been shopping?

Bush’s surge has already begun, fools…

You thought he was THINKING about something? George W. Bush?

He’s already got the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne, from Ft. Bragg, packing their bags.

He decided long before Santa came down the chimney, and put off the announcement just to fool the leering press and those Americans who are under the delusion that we might, oh, reconsider a horrendously failed policy.

The Pentagon is expected to send 3,500 troops into Kuwait to stand ready for use in
Iraq, senior defense officials said on Tuesday as the Bush administration weighs adjusting force levels in the war.

The “call-forward” force was requested by Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of the military command responsible for the Middle East, and must be approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

According to one official, Abizaid’s request came before Gates’ fact-finding trip last week to Iraq to assess possible alternative strategies…

He’s the Cheneocon puppet War President Decider, and he ISN”T GONNA CHANGE. GET OVER IT.

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Bush forced to admit polar bears are threatened

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The Washington Post is reporting that the polar bear will be listed as a threatened species. The principle threat to these giant predators is, of course, global warming and the disappearance of the summer ice pack.
Don’t think for a minute that this represents some warm and fuzzy impulse by Buscheney and Co. The lede is buried in the story:

By submitting the proposal today, the Interior Department is meeting a deadline under a legal settlement with three environmental advocacy groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace — that argue the government has not responded quickly enough to the polar bear’s plight. The department has been examining the status of polar bears for more than two years.

NRDC senior attorney Andrew Wetzler, one of the lawyers who filed suit against the administration, welcomed the proposal for listing.

“It’s such a loud recognition that global warming is real,” Wetzler said. “It is rapidly threatening the polar bear and, in fact, an entire ecosystem with utter destruction.”

From the NRDC press release:

The conservation organizations Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Greenpeace sued the Bush administration in December 2005, because the government had ignored a petition to protect the polar bear. In response, the USF&WS completed the required first “90-day finding” in February 2006, and found that protection of polar bears “may be warranted,” and commenced a full status review of the species. The proposed listing is the result of that scientific study.

Before the proposed rule can be finalized, it will be subject to another round of public comments. Thus far the government has received more than 200,000 comments in support of listing the polar bear, including letters from eminent polar bear experts, climate scientists, and more than 35 members of Congress.

Congratulations to the NRDC, Greenpeace, CBD, and to the thousands of concerned citizens who made this happen. To Buscheney, my Christmas present is a festive Bronx cheer.

And a reminder to Dear Leader: these guys aren’t done with you yet.

Those guys who do the yard, they could do the wars, too, right?

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The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks, including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and put more immigrants on a faster track to U.S. citizenship if they volunteer, according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens’ serving in the U.S. military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans’ willingness to serve in uniform.

The idea of signing up residents who are seeking U.S. citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.

The Pentagon has evidently been thinking about this plan for some time:

Currently, Pentagon policy stipulates that only immigrants legally residing in the United States are eligible to enlist. There are about 30,000 noncitizens who serve in the U.S. armed forces, making up about 2 percent of the active-duty force, according to statistics from the military and the Council on Foreign Relations. About 100 such noncitizens have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent change in U.S. law, however, gave the Pentagon authority to bring immigrants to the United States if it determines it is vital to national security. So far, the Pentagon has not taken advantage of it, but the calls are growing to use this new authority.

Sorry, but this idea of using foreign nationals to fight our wars fails on so many levels. If we don’t feel the need ourselves to fight in Bush’s wars, that’s a pretty good sign that everybody knows that the wars were fighting in are not crucial, or self-defense. …this is just empire juice. It’s way over the line. And it’s not just the mercenary issue. Or the language issue. It is racist at its core, and would actually encourage more Bushlike military adventures.

It’s truly un-American and just trash. Like the American Enterprise Institute that’s serving it up.