I think I thought I didn't know but it appears I don't...know...I think.

The Thought Plickens...Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald already deserves a medal for his attempts to penetrate this administrations pathological secretiveness. Jason Leopold of Truthout, who is doing the finest reporting on this matter in the Zoos opinion, has summarized the case so far HERE.

So who is in the pic? He's one Robert Joseph, currently the Under Secretary for Arms Control but formerly the Director of Nonproliferation at the National Security Council. According to Leopold, "Joseph is responsible for placing the infamous "sixteen words" about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from Niger in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address." Ah, thickens indeed...he has reportedly been named by witnesses as a possible source of the leaking of Valerie Plames name to journalists. REMINDER: This investigation is about the leaking of an active undercover CIA agent by members to the Bush administration. We here at the Zoo have already reported that an internal CIA damage-assessment characterizes the damage done by the leak as 'severe' and the time-frame it would take to repair the damage in the neighborhood of a decade...oh yeah, Plame was working on Iran...

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I know. Tough stuff but here's some good news. WE'RE NUMBER 1!!! Woohooo...12.7 % of Americans live below the poverty line, that's a whopping 37 million people...That makes us TOPS in the developed world...so next time some French bastard tells you America is a second rate, first world country...you look him in his eye and tell him, "We're #1 Froggie"...Here's some other fun facts:

· There are 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. That figure has increased by five million since President George W. Bush came to power.
· The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.
· Almost a quarter of all black Americans live below the poverty line; 22 per cent of Hispanics fall below it. But for whites the figure is just 8.6 per cent.
· There are 46 million Americans without health insurance.
· There are 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone.

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I see that Pops wrote a fairly scathing indictment of Israel yesterday. Pops and I don't always see eye to eye on the Israeli/ Palenstinian issue but in fairness I thought I'd provide an Israeli voice. HERE is a link to an editorial from HAARETZ.com, a well-known Jewish media outlet. It's penned by Yossi Sarid and in it he asks the question: Who do I think is the most terrifying and repulsive of all of the politicians in the world?

His answer may surprise you. After conceding that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pretty scary he says that the Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney is the most 'terrifying and repulsive' politician on earth. His reasons?

"So far, the Cheney revolution has given rise to Hamas in the territories, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the most fanatic faction in Iran, the most extreme Shi'ites in Iraq, who are also making the Sunnis more extreme, the Taliban in recovering Afghanistan and the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Assad's seat in Syria is stable. Even the head of Israel's Shin Bet was secretly recorded as saying that "as Israelis, we actually long for Saddam Hussein." Terror spans and chokes the world, and even wages war against us in caricatures. "

Hell, I'm convinced:) That's a pretty terrifying and repulsive record...

Stay Naked.

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