Fearless on my breath...

Thers at Whiskey Fire on Rove as Newsweek political pundit:

If Rove had gotten that permanent Republican majority that we heard so much about in the earlier years of this wretched new American century, would he be writing Newsweek columns and online WSJ editorials? I kind of doubt it, myself. He'd be kickin' it Ming the Merciless style, lolling about on a throne of infant skulls while being constantly masturbated by high-tech NASA stroke-bots, granting audiences to party potentates, lickspittles, and courtiers, each seeking desperately to curry his favor or indulge his whims. I'm sure the Fox News green room is nice and all, but it's not like that.

The mental image is both apt and deeply, deeply disturbing...

BWAHAHA:

State Rep. Bob Allen was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a local park after offering to perform a sex act on an undercover officer in exchange for $20, police said.

Ok so the blowjob-er was offering to pay the blowjob-ee for the honor of sucking said person's cock? How sad, how unutterably sad do you have to be to actually have to pay people to accept oral sex from you?

Allen, R-Merritt Island, was booked into the Brevard County jail in Sharpes on a charge of solicitation to commit prostitution, a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in the county jail and a $500 fine.
[...]
Titusville police were at Veteran’s Memorial Park on East Broad Street on a burglary detail when they noticed an unshaven man acting suspicious, going in and out of the restroom three times, said Lt. Todd Hutchinson.

An undercover officer decided to go into one of the bathroom stalls, Hutchinson said. Moments later, Allen knocked on the stall door and offered to perform oral sex on the officer for $20, according to the police spokesman.

But wait, it gets funnier:

State Rep. Bob Allen, a co-chair of Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Florida campaign, is expected to address Thursday charges that he offered to perform oral sex on an undercover male police officer for $20.

Allen, who sponsored a failed bill that would have tightened the state’s prohibition on public sex, scheduled a news conference at his lawyer’s office to discuss Wednesday’s arrest. A spokeswoman for Allen declined further comment.

You know I'm almost starting to feel sorry for John McCain...almost. I mean I knew he was desperate for cash, but this is going a bit far. And it's almost like these guys require hypocrisy much like oxygen. "No public sex for thee, but plenty for me!"

PSA to the other Republican closet cases: Guys, look, you're not happy, your beard- er, wives aren't happy and ultimately you're going to get caught doing something stupid in a public restroom or when your boy toy blabs to the press about your meth and massage parties. It's going to happen, there's just no way to keep this kind of thing entirely under wraps these days.

Just fucking come out already, you're not fooling anyone and really the rest of us are just going to continue pointing and laughing each time one of you is caught with his pants around his ankles. Seriously, these days we just take a quick look at whatever bills you guys are sponsoring and we know you're doing the exact opposite in your private life. It's almost too easy.

I smell a Medal of Freedom coming on...

A proposal to keep seriously wounded vets from falling through the cracks of the bureaucracy was shelved in 2005 when Jim Nicholson took over as the secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, according to the former VA employee who was responsible for tracking war casualties.

As a result, seriously wounded veterans continued to face long delays for health care and benefit payments after being discharged from the military, says former VA program manager Paul Sullivan.

The program, called the Contingency Tracking System, had been approved by Nicholson's predecessor but died once Nicholson took over the VA, Sullivan told ABC News.

Sullivan said he was told the cost of the system -- less than $1 million to build and requiring a handful of staff to maintain -- was prohibitive.

When asked about the Contingency Tracking System at the White House Wednesday, Nicholson told ABC News, "I'm not sure I know what program you're referring to." He added that "when the VA gets patients...we instantly create an electronic medical record for them."

In testimony before Congress today, a VA official confirmed that its current tracking system still depends on paper files and lacks the ability to download Department of Defense records into its computers, a key flaw originally identified as leading to veterans getting lost between the cracks.

[...]

Yesterday, President Bush put VA Secretary Nicholson in charge of an interagency task force to determine what can be done to deliver benefits and health care now to thousands of wounded vets who have struggled to receive care.

But wait, it gets better...

The committee wants to learn more about a letter written in September by Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi to Weightman.

The memorandum “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel,’” the committee’s letter states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The letter said Walter Reed also awarded a five-year, $120-million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

They also found that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed had drooped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, 2007, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with only 50 private workers.

“The conditions that have been described at Walter Reed are disgraceful,” the letter states. “Part of our mission on the Oversight Committee is to investigate what led to the breakdown in services. It would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.”

The letter said the Defense Department “systemically” tried to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for facilities management, patient care and guard duty – a process that began in 2000.

“But the push to privatize support services there accelerated under President Bush’s ‘competitive sourcing’ initiative, which was launched in 2002,” the letter states.

During the year between awarding the contract to IAP and when the company started, “skilled government workers apparently began leaving Walter Reed in droves,” the letter states. “The memorandum also indicates that officials at the highest levels of Walter Reed and the U.S. Army Medical Command were informed about the dangers of privatization, but appeared to do little to prevent them.”

I'm sorry, someone remind me, which party is it that's supposed to support the troops?

Sweet Jesus, this is the kind of shit that makes me want to punch the next Republican I see in the face:

The House took 140 hours of sworn testimony to get to the bottom of whether Clinton had misused the White House Christmas-card list for political purposes, but only 12 hours on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

See this is why I need an animated icon of Zuko snorting fire, because good god would it be appropriate here.