Just to put the icing on the cake for you here, House Speaker Dennis Hastert knew of these "inappropriate" emails from the congressman to pages months ago and simply slapped him on the wrist, told him never to do it again and went skipping down the hall to his office, all in the name of, "Oh my God, it's way too close to the elections for this to leak out." After the media got a hold of the story, of course, Hastert is acting outraged, calling Foley disgusting and getting the state of Florida and the FBI involved.  I think Hastert needs to take a good look in the mirror. Being a perpetrator of something this horrific is one thing, being the enabler to a perpetrator as Hastert has been is abhorrant and, of course, the one thing we can always count on, Bush claims to have never known anything about it.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the violence has continued to increase more and more each day, as we all sit back and listen to Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney talk about how they're just getting ready to purchase summer homes over in Baghdad because things are so damn chipper. Bob Woodward has once again rocked the world with his new book "State of Denial", it of course goes much further than what Bush so graciously allowed us to view when the NIE was partially released, which said, and I quote, "The war in Iraq has exacerbated terrorism making America, in fact, less safe than it was before the invasion of Iraq and before 9/11. Snow's attempt to spin this was amusing at best, as I sat watching Tony Snow trying to spin the same question over and over again.  And when I say that I mean it. I was watching it live on CNN and even they broke from it after the same question about safety in the US had been spun 10 ways from Sunday and still said the same thing, WE ARE NOT SAFER. Three out of five people in Iraq would like us, now grasp this firmly folks, either KILLED or out of their country, at least half a million Iraqi's have been displaced from their homes. In the months of July and August their were more than 3000 Iraqi civilians killed and now, in September, 6000 more. So, while Kalilzhad claims it's all sectarian violence and that terrorism has been weakened, Major Gen. William Caldwell says this past week was the worst yet for all types of violence and for the death toll in Iraq, hmm..wonder who we should believe, Kalilzhad who still has a little spot of excrement on his forehead after removing it from Bush's lower orifice or the guy with boots on the ground with nothing to lose but his job for speaking out and more of his troops. Our troops. Our Americans fighting a meaningless war, yet losing precious lives, more and more each day. It's hard to believe there are people out there that will still stand behind this administration when hell, even Rumsfeld won't return Condi Rice's calls any longer.  Should we worry?  Nahhhhhh..I'm sure Bush will keep us safe and sound and if you are the least bit concerned about Bush and our safety, don't be!.  He has Kissinger to advise him now and we all know what a fantastic job he did in Vietnam! All I can say is, once again we have taken our eye off the ball because as Bush holds hands with Musharaff and Karzai and talks about how we all need to hold hands, be brothers and have cookies and milk together, Iran is sitting back laughing in our faces.  As long as they can distract us with the use of other countries, they will. In the meantime, that uranium just gets richer and those same countries we are courting are spending their leisure time in a summit in Havana basically deemed the "We Aren't Putting Up with America's Imperialist Bullshit Attitiude Any Longer" summit. I actually think they should have invited Bush, he could have given them more ammo, if not verbally..well then, actually.  To end this show on a bit of a lighter note, many kudos to President Clinton for reverting to "I'm mad as hell & i'm not going to take it anymore". I was enthralled as I always am with his speaking.  This time, by the way he defended himself in an elegant manner, with verve and integrity. More than anything and most of all with the truth.  There my friends, are several words strung together in one sentence involving this particular president - "verve and truth and integrity", we will NEVER be able to use as long as this administration is in power. May the higher powers help us all. (If Kool-Aid is involved my gut feeling is to pass.)