I've been working on a rather important story since I've returned home. You'll recognize it when you see it. Hopefully very soon. So apologies in the meantime for things having slowed down here a bit since my return. Plus, the good David Edwards, Winter Patriot and Joseph Cannon all deserve a bit of a break since pulling extra long Guest Blogging duty in the wake of my unexpectedly long summer "vacation". Hopefully they will each continue to contribute here, however, after a bit of a well-deserved rest. They are welcome any time and I can't thank them all enough for their tremendous work here while I was on the road. Especially since I'll soon be heading out for it again to make my way up to participate in the National Summit to Save Our Elections in Portland along with Thom Hartmann, Bob Koehler, Jesse Jackson Jr. and other illuminaries too numerous to mention at the end of the month.

Beyond that, I can't seem to get this E.J. Dionne piece from yesterday's WaPo out of my mind. Though Dionne may be jumping the gun a bit (anything and everything could happen any day now), his epitaph for the "End of the Bush Era" seems to be right on target. Or at least provide a bit of welcome and smart perspective to an America in trouble, but perhaps soon on the mend. Perhaps.

Here's a few key grafs, though I recommend you read the whole thing if you haven't already:

As I said (twice) read it all.

Every now and again, we like to remind BRAD BLOG readers how the wingnuts --- from the "mainstream" Washington Times to the top nutcase blogs like "Little Green Footballs" and "Powerline Blog" to the expected spinners at Fox "News" --- love to grab onto a lie, avoid bothering to check a single fact, and shove it down America's throat as if it had any basis in reality. Which all results in the actual mainstream corporate media like ABC and CNN repeating the horseshit as if it was actually true.

Case in point, courtesy of Media Matters (via this morning's Al Franken show), is the falsehood repeated over and over again in the wingnut media and beyond about the "2000 school buses" that could have been used to evacuate everyone in New Orleans who needed evacuation, but sat instead in a parking lot unused.

Turns out, the city of New Orleans actually owns only 324 school buses, 70 of which are broken down (according to September 5, 2003, article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune) plus another 364 city owned public transit RTA buses. Bringing the total available fleet in New Orleans to less than 700. The Times-Picayune reported on July 8 in an article headlined "RTA buses would be used for evacuation: But plan still falls far short of needs" that "Even if the entire fleet was used, the buses would carry only about 22,000 people out of the city --- far short of the 134,000 people estimated to be without cars in a recent University of New Orleans study."

No excuses here for those available buses which were not being used (Mayor Ray Nagin has claimed they didn't have enough drivers for them, but we haven't verified that one way or another at this time.) Nonetheless, the wingnuts repeated the nonsense about "2000 unused school buses" over and over again as if it was based in reality.

So where did the wingnuts version of "reality" begin this time? The story apparently began (little surprise) when it was used in a Sep. 6 column by Washington Times managing editor-and-liar-in-chief, Wesley Pruden. He wrote instructed followers to say:

That claim was quickly and unsurprisingly linked by the popular wingnut blogs Power Line and Little Green Footballs, both of whom have shown an utter inability, day after day, month after month, year after year, to check a single fact, or do anything other than repeat one Republican talking point after another. Hence, they are both very popular amongst the faith-based Bush dead-ender crowd. That's what they're paid for.

Of course, Sean Hannity then raced to the airwaves that same evening to dutifully repeat the misinformation to Fox "News" viewers on Hannity & Colmes:

The next night on Hannity & Colmes, Newt Gingrich was called upon to continue spreading the misinfo:

In fact, the number of buses required to evacuate the city's approximately 100,000 elderly and disabled, according to the New York Times on Sep. 4, was 2,000, but as their article responsibly noted, that 2,000 number was "far more than New Orleans possessed."

Never mind responsibility and reality, though. Back to the wingnuts and the so-called myth of the "Liberal Media".

By last Sunday, Sep 11, the lie had become mainstream "reality" as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's national security writer Jack Kelly wondered:

...And then the deed was finally done --- as Wingnut Horseshit becomes Conventional Wisdom --- on last Sunday morning's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Gingrich was the guest, but it was "Liberal Media" elitist, Stephanopolous who made certain the lie got out to all of America across the ABC Television Network:

Not bad for a week's work. Mr. Rove and his America-Hating friends have certainly earned their pay check over the past week.

Kudos to Media Matters for their detailed tracking of all of this. And if you stop by over there (where all the audio and video is also available) be sure to check out how the Fox and Friends wingnuts also keep spinning the nonsense of when Gov. Blanco declared a state of emergency and those "Liberals" at CBS who repeated it thereafter, how the entire media gave a free pass to Bush's "dodged a bullet" claim about the levees, how O'Reilly is spinning numbers to trick America into believing that Bush is better on poverty than Clinton was, and oh, so many documented, out and out Right Wing lies we'd need about 2,000 unused school buses full of bloggers to report them all.

Today, for the first time in five years, George W. Bush took responsibility. For anything. AP was there to note this extraordinary moment in the history of mankind.

In related news, Hell reported record cold temperatures today and a small pig was spotted hovering over Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

As well, BRAD BLOG readers are urged to be on the lookout for four horsemen riding together and said to be mounted each on one white, one black, one red and one pale or ashen horse. Please report any such sightings immediately to FEMA or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so that swift action may be taken. They're doing a heckuva job. Thank you.

From AP via Jesse at Stakeholder who has more:

Announcing that it is "time for Congress to exercise its duty to oversee the Executive Branch," the ranking minority member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers has just released a press statement announcing that four different U.S. House Committees will be voting on resolutions within the next week to request information on the outing of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

Conyers describes the issue as a matter of "criminal and ethical misconduct" done "for political reasons, to retaliate against the operative's husband for successfully challenging the President's claim that Iraq had sought nuclear materials in Africa."

The resolutions will be forced to come to a vote in the House Judiciary, International Relations, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee.

Conyers also calls former Attorney General John Ashcroft on the carpet for initially dragging his feet on the investigation and for remaining involved in it as it moved forward despite Ashcroft's "long-standing ties to Karl Rove."

UPDATE: On ConyersBlog, he also adds this:

The complete press release, along with scheduled dates and Internet URL's for watching and/or listening to the debates on the four separate resolutions in the four separate House committees follow...

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis has all the skinny and more first-hand photos of all of those Americans who gathered yesterday in DC on the 4th Anniversary of 9/11 to support George W. Bush and his War. The event was sponsored by the Pentagon, and attended by...probably...several!

Officially named by the Defense Department as the "America Supports You Freedom Walk", Seattle Times claimed that "about 1500" participated, though apparently photos of the gathering are nearly non-existant and some families of 9/11 victims have had it...

(Hat tip Kira, and all the BRAD BLOG commenters requesting more info on this event.)

UPDATE: Reverend Mykeru (otherwise known as Michael Cortese) sets out on an Operation Yellow Elephant mission in search of new army recruits at the Pentagon-sponsored (your tax dollars at work!) fenced-in, no-media-allowed, registration-required "Freedom Walk". Video here. Additional details on the day here. Well done, Rev. Myk!

(Hat tip BRAD BLOG commenter, NewYorker!)

This item came across the AP wires as we were on our final leg back to Los Angeles yesterday. I happened to catch the original headline as "Soldier Not Killed in Action in Iraq; Kin Not Told". I was surprised and saddened, upon clicking to read the full story, to learn that the "soldier" in question just happens to have been 1st Lt. Kenneth Michael Ballard, the only child of Karen Meredith, a Gold Star Mom who we interviewed on The BRAD SHOW [MP3] and got to know a bit while in Crawford, TX.

He was killed in Iraq on Memorial Day 2004...His mother was told it was an accident only last Friday...

The full article also recalls the Army's failure to give the real story to the parents of the NFL's Pat Tillman after he had been used as a poster-boy by the Army and the Bush Administration for his sacrifice. It was more than a year after being killed in Afghanistan before Tillman's parents were given the real skinny on how their son died. One wonders, had not Meredith made a bit of a media figure of herself through her public support of Cindy Sheehan in Crawford and beyond, whether the story of the bungling of her son's death would have made a headline anywhere. Which makes one wonder just how many other families --- who have not become known to the media --- likely have similar stories of incompetencies from "the army we have."

I have been honored to wear a duplicate dog tag of 1st Lt. Kenneth Ballard --- in memory of both him and the thousands of others pointlessly killed in this ridiculous war --- since her mother gave one to us in Crawford. I was sorry to learn that there was even more reason to be troubled by his death yesterday.

Hopefully Karen's burden is made slightly easier knowing that there are thousands of us out here who do give a damn about both her, and the sacrifice that she and her son have made for this country. I think of both of them now every day...

(NOTE TO BUSH APOLOGISTS, DEAD-ENDERS AND OPPORTUNISTS: The above article is critical of the Army's bureaucratic power structure, not those who are putting their life on the line every day for your "President's" war. You can save your cynical, appalling and divisive "Support the Troops!" sloganeering and propagandizing for those who are too stupid to tell the difference between a Chinese-made car magnet on the back of your SUV and true support for the men and women of our armed forces who put their lives on the line on behalf of this country. We support them no end. We wish you'd become one of them --- if you still support this idiotic war --- instead of acting like you actually support them. If you actually did support those folks, you'd be calling for the same accountability from the same abusive and incompetent officials that The BRAD BLOG has been calling for for months on end. And may God bless America.)

Another fine selection from amongst our 50+ hours of LIVE broadcasting recently on the ground in Crawford, Texas will be reBRADcast on both Saturday and Sunday. The IBC Radio Network tells us they will be looping the program all day and night on both days, so you should be able to jump in any time! It'll certainly be up and rolling by our usual 7pm ET starting time.

Amongst the folks to be featured: Truthout.org's ace Cindy Sheehan blogger SCOTT GALINDEZ, organizer of the upcoming massive Sep. 24-26 rallies in D.C., LESLIE CAGAN of United for Peace and Justice, Iraq Vet PATRICK RESTA with an important message for George W. Bush and a live ceremony and interview with DENNIS BANKS, co-founder of the American Indian Movement. Plus one kick-ass --- and windy --- song from Camp Casey's default soundboard operator, JESSE DYEN. All that and much more from our Monday, 8/28 "Operation Noble Cause" broadcast from Camp Casey II.

I should finally be off the road by the end of this weekend. A bit more than a month after having been sidetracked from what what was to have been --- in Gilligan parlance --- just "a three hour tour". Nonetheless, there will likely be more Saturday night "encore reBRADcasts" in store for the next several weeks...The reasons for that to become clear (hopefully) in the not-too-distant future...Until then, please enjoy the show...

(And yes, we'll still accept help for gas money for the last leg of our trip home.)

The truth eventually makes its way out...

Glad that Powell is beginning to come clean. Though somehow, we have a feeling that speech ended up being much more painful for hundreds of thousands of Americans and Iraqis who will never be able to shake the "pain" caused by Powell's inability to stand up for his country instead of his blind "loyalty" to his boss.

By the way, Powell additionally acknowledges that he's never seen any connection between Saddam and 9/11. We mention that just for you Bush Dead-Enders out there. As well, the article goes on to discuss Powell's "loyalty" to the "President" instead of the country...

Uh...Here we go again...Your old boss knew, Mr. Powell!

...Not to mention your more recent boss, Dick Cheney, who said at the time that invading Iraq would get the United States "bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

Then again, who could have imagined anyone flying planes into building in New York or forseen the levees breeching in New Orleans?

Sigh...And so it goes in the New American Century...

(Blogged by Brad, from somewhere in Arizona)

1) When Days Inn says they offer High-Speed Wireless Internet in their rooms, they don't mean that it actually works. Three different Days Inns over the last three weeks in three different states have been maddeningly disappointing in that regard. None of those Days Inns has offered a refund or even a discount for their inability to deliver what they'd promised.

2) BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger, Joseph Cannon is a genius. Evil genius perhaps, but genius nonetheless. Proof.

3) George W. Bush performed flawlessly in every respect in his response to Hurricane Katrina. Every American can be justifiably bursting with pride in his great leadershipt. His ability to keep our country safe and secure --- precisely as he'd promised so many times in the past --- has never been more perfectly exemplified than in the last two weeks.

4) Out "in the wilds" there is no Internet (information), only Fake Conservative Talk Radio (lies).

5) Talk Radio is 98% Fake Conservative. 1% Actual Conservative. 1% neither of the above.

6) Fake Conservatives on Talk Radio have a remarkable ability to lie in lockstep and with alarming effectiveness across a 24 hour broadcast day (several layers deep in most markets).

7) Americans who listen to Fake Conservatives on the radio are remarkably gullible and ever-surprisingly effective at parrotting what they've heard on the radio even when they are parrotting demonstrable lies and insipid spin. Such Americans are also masters of self-delusion.

8) Trolls and Bush Apologists of all stripes are welcome to post comments on The BRAD BLOG. Unlike most wingnut blogs, we welcome all points of view. Such trolls are not, however, allowed to post under different names or (more importantly) deliver personal attacks towards other commenters. That would include the repeated sad use of calling other commenters "socialists". Not that there's anything particular wrong with being a socialist, but when such language is meant as an attempt at some kind of perjorative with not a shred of supporting evidence to support said name-calling, its nothing more than a sad attempt at a personal attack.

9) The continued inability to follow the rules outlined in #8 will be grounds for having such comments deleted and/or the authors of said comments banned permanently at the discretion of myself or Official BRAD BLOG Concierge, Winter Patriot.

10) Falsely representing oneself as "a troop fighting in Iraq" will bring the same punishment as those violate the rules described in #8. After spending so many weeks and months speaking with actual such troops, and the families of those who've lost their lives fighting that ridiculous War for real, I'm especially sensitive to those jerks who would impersonate same.

11) I am remarkably generous. Please don't push me.

12) There are mountains in Northwest Texas. Beautiful ones. I previously had no idea.

13) Despite Winter Patriot's Open "Impeachment" Thread here and a commenter named Bob's words about my having called for the Impeachment of George W. Bush, I'm not sure I actually ever have. Not publicly anyway. Not that I recall. Not that I'm against it.

14) BRAD BLOG Guest Bloggers David Edwards and Winter Patriot are not only great bloggers, they are tireless patriots and world-class human beings. Top-notch. As good as anyone could find. Anywhere.

15) For those wondering when I might reply to their email or return to full-time BRAD BLOGGING here, please see #1 once more and then count days with me until I'm finally off the road (only to leave again in a few weeks, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...if it's not under water). Shouldn't be long now...Hopefully those who don't receive a reply will understand, I now receive nearly 1000 messages a day, and it's difficult --- if not impossible --- to read them all, let alone reply to all of them. But I'll do my best. Thanks for understanding.

Wholly hell this is a big state! We're still working our way westward and may stop in the mountains if we can find any (we hear rumors there are some in NW Texas) to cool off for a day or three along the way.

So the bulk of the BRADBLOGGING will be done by our fine bevy of Guest Bloggers who will be paid double for their extended duty.

Speaking of which, any opinions on how you all like the generally increased amount of BRAD BLOG items in my general absense now that we've got the GB's cranking it out with a bit more regularity than I do when I'm running the usual one-man-band here? Should we continue with the additional voices even when I'm finally back? Your thoughts are appreciated...

IBC Radio is replaying our "Operation Noble Cause" coverage from Crawford, Texas continuously all weekend long. Or so I'm told...Enjoy.

The filter is gone. This is the No Spin Zone...

Listen all the way to the end to Mayor Ray Nagin. Heartbreaking.