lots of sh*t going on

All from First Draft :

Uh, What About This Crisis?

Why is our president spending so much time (and so much of our money) trying to convince Americans that the Social Security trust fund faces a HUGE FUCKING CRISIS which he claims will not begin to be a problem for another 12 years and his Social Security trustees claim will not become a HUGE FUCKING CRISIS for 36 years?

Why does he seem unconcerned about another HUGE FUCKING CRISIS that one of his own advisors says our economy and those of all other developed nations will face in the next three years?

One of the world's leading energy analysts yesterday called for an independent assessment of global oil reserves because he believed that Middle Eastern countries may have far less than officially stated and that oil prices could double to more than $100 a barrel within three years, triggering economic collapse.

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''Soft Patch'' is the new Bush Boom

Orders for manufactured goods took a steep dive last month, the biggest decline in more than two years. This marks the third straight month of declines, the worst performance since the first Dubya Recession of 2001. Although analysts predicted a 0.3% increase in March, orders fell by 2.8%.

It gets worse: February's numbers were revised from the initially reported +0.3%down to -0.2%. Watch the Dow drop accordingly today.

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Rummy Sez: We're Losing The War

Oh my, looks like Don Rumsfeld went for candid when he should have tried gruff.

Asked during the briefing "are we winning" the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not directly respond.

"The United States and the coalition forces, in my personal view, will not be the thing that will defeat the insurgency," Rumsfeld said.

"So, therefore, winning or losing is not the issue for 'we,' in my view, in the traditional, conventional context of using the word 'winning' and 'losing' in a war. The people that are going to defeat that insurgency are going to be the Iraqis."

Rummy's confused response sent Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Richard Myers into a sputtering attempt at damage control.

After Rumsfeld finished, Myers interjected, "I'm going to say this: I think we are winning, OK? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time."

But even Gen. Myers had to admit that U.S. forces have made absolutely no progress over the past year.

Iraq's insurgency remains undiminished in its capabilities in the past year despite U.S.-led efforts to crush the rebels, the top American general said on Tuesday.

"I think their capacity stays about the same," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Iraq's insurgents during a Pentagon briefing. "And where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago."
[snip]
Myers said rebels are staging 50 or 60 attacks a day in Iraq after the number had dipped to about 40 daily. He said the number of daily attacks is about the same as a year ago.

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Uncle! Uncle! Unnncllleeeeeee!!!

House Republicans cry "uncle" on their DeLay-hugging ethics rules.

House Republican leaders, acknowledging that ethics disputes are taking a heavy toll on the party's image, decided yesterday to rescind a controversial rule change that led to the three-month shutdown of the ethics committee, according to officials who participated in the talks.

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