Archives
2008
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Heh! Kinda
funny how invading Iraq was supposed
to produce a strong ally to Israel in the heart of the
Mideast. Oops!
Juan Cole translates
Grand Ayatollah
Sistani's Fatwa on Gaza, noting that:
...the
Neoconservatives argued for putting the Shiites in control of
Iraq on the grounds that, as a religious minority themselves, they
would be more sympathetic to Israel
D'oh!
Very interesting
commentary on how the left blogosphere has reacted to the
Gaza fighting. Appears to be a real sea change in how Israel is
perceived. Joe Klein BTW, was condemned, quite rightly I thought, for
failing to represent the left in the run-up to the Iraq War, but he's
really redeemed himself by opening up the national conversation about
Israel.
Fascinating
question from David
"The New Tim Russert" Gregory to the Foreign Minister of
Israel.
Is it acceptable to
Israel for Hamas to remain in power in Gaza?
My understanding is that Hamas was elected and
therefore enjoys some sort of status in President
Bush's eyes. Or is that just for American allies?
I respond to a letter
in the Inky concerning warrantless surveillance and the
eternal question of "Does human nature change over the centuries?" (My
answer to that question was "No.")
Whuuh? You
expected Bush to
cut his final vacation short just to deal with a war in which
hundreds have died?!?!? Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!
Lots of questions
about Michael Connell, Karl Rove's IT guy, who oversaw several
elections, many of which produced highly questionable
results.
Fannie Mae's 10-person
Board of Directors makes $160,000
per person, per year!!!! Which might be okay if they had, say, not been
sleeping through the $8 Trillion
housing bubble or the collapse of Fannie Mae.
Right now, the WaPo is hollering about workers making $27 an hour,
these directors make $320 an hour and somehow the
WaPo is silent on them.
Truly stupid
pieces by traditional media outlets that try
and pretend that only Democrats get fawnng adulation pieces
from their fellow traditional media folks. Of course, they skip right
past actual
fawning coverage
of Republicans (And yikes! This featured 2002 piece from Time Magazine
reads like Stalinist agitprop in the cold light of today).
Hoo-boy, do I
hope this
rule
goes nowhere! The Bush Administration has just approved a rule allowing
medical personnel to make decisions regarding the lives of complete
strangers, decisions that they are in no way competent to make (See: Terri
Schiavo).
A reprint
showing how Peggy Noonan gauged G.W. Bush's honesty
and trustworthiness shortly before the 2000 election. The
uranium story cited here shows that Noonan has zero
ability to gauge such issues.
It also shows that Bush & Co are criminals
who should be in prison!
President-elect
Obama explains why he supports having Rick Warren give the invocation
at the inaugural. Admirable
sentiments, but not very convincing. Warren is a
conservative who
strongly disagrees with Obama on gay rights, reproductive rights,
foreign policy, and modern science.
If Warren were there to debate in some way, it might be justifiable to
include him. But he's not there for that. Inclusiveness is fine, but
this seems a tad over the line of acceptable. Further
arguments. A lefty blogger explains
to a traditional news reporter, slowly and using lots of
little words, why having Warren give the invocation is a bad idea.
Update: Further
commentary.
Yup, now that
we're running down the clock and we're near te end of Bush's term in
office (Yay!) we're now getting revised
accounts as to what a great President he's been all these
years. *Choke* I think the official term is "Gag me with a spoon!" And here's
a really good one. Despite having, y'know, been the President
for eight years of disaster after disaster, somehow,
none of the disasters are his fault!
Update: Oh yeesh! Now SecState Rice
is claiming that the Bush
Administration utilized the UN more than any other
administration. Oh, and there was no
waste of money in Iraq. These claims are just too silly to
even comment on.
Further update: Rush Limbaugh's
brother David condemns
Obama's announced intention to cleanse America's image abroad, claiming
that our image is just fine.
Will
Obama's team release the full story of their contacts with Patrick
Fitzgerald's team concerning the Governor Blagojevitch scandal? No.
Fitzgerald has asked them not to.
The Iraqi
reporter/shoe thrower is turning out to have made himself quite
popular in Iraq.
NSA
whistleblower revealed! The guy who
discovered the illegal NSA wiretaps
and told the NY Times, which then took from Spring 2004 to very late
2005 to reveal it to the public, and only then because the book author
was going to reveal it anyway.
Frances Frago Townsend has an interesting
complaint on the issue.
Update: some
speculation on how Tamm's case may be affecting the
warrantless wiretapping case.
Yeah, yeah,
I'm a wet blanket and a spoilsport, but I can't say I really approve of
throwing
shoes, even at an evil war criminal. I mean, I understand
it, but still...
Credit where
credit's due, Colin Powell makes
a good speech and points Republican Party in good direction.
The
Obama-Blagojevich connection. Seems awfully
doubtful there IS much of one. No question the traditional
media is trying very strenuously to
create at least the appearance of one. John Dean speaks from
his Watergate experience and recommends getting all
the facts out, sooner rather than later.
Well, Bush
shows his usual
class and sensitivity. The Obama family wanted to move
...into the Blair
House before Jan. 5, so that daughters Malia and Sasha could
start classes on time at Sidwell Friends School in Washington.
An anonymous Whte House spokesperson said "[T]here were previously
scheduled events and guests that couldn't be displaced." Ri-i-ight!
Stay classy George!
Hard to make
much more of a comment to this
than "Duh." A panel blames the abuses of detainees on the
chain of command, not upon the ordinary grunts.
David Horowitz
of FrontPage
Magazine (The link is to an unusually sensible blog post of
his), writes the following in a fundraising email:
The
Freedom
Center will not stand by and
watch the
left advance deeper into government, popular culture, and higher
education. Nor will we allow it to snatch defeat out of the
jaws of
victory in Iraq or hamstring our military in Afghanistan.
Erm, lemme see, how does one begin? Well, the left
has already advanced deeply into the culture, so
FrontPage is a bit
late on that. "Jaws of victory"?!?! Nuh-uh. Nothing of the kind. Once
the US leaves Iraq, the Iraqis are fully prepared to make oil contracts
with
the Chinese, not the Americans. The American-Iraqi Status
of Forces agreement won't be ratified until the middle of
next year. And Shiites and Sunnis have not
made peace with each
other.
Peggy Noonan
claims that "At Least Bush Kept Us Safe"
for the last several years, at least of course, since
9-11 and since Katrina and of course not
including London and other places which have suffered bombings. The
piece (Lengthy at 34 kilobytes) then counts all of
the many ways in which Bush has failed
to "keep us safe."
The AP tries, desperately,
furiously and unsuccessfully, to link President-Elect Obama
to the scandal of IL Governor Rod Blagojevich trying to sell Obama's
old Senate seat.
Update: Time Magazine refers
to Pat Fitzgerald saying that Obama is not involved: "...it's never
good news when a top-notch prosecutor has
to go out of his way to distance them from a front-page scandal." And why
does PatFitz have to distance Obama from the Blagojevich
scandal?!?!? Could it be because the media is irresponsibly
trying to connect Obama to the scandal without any evidence?!?!?
Probably half
of the US soldiers who died in Iraq did so because their
thin-skinned, improperly-armored vehicles were hit with a mine or an
IED.
DoD (Department of
Defense) was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised
explosive devices (IEDs)...
Yet DoD did not develop requirements for, fund, or acquire MRAP-type
vehicles for low-intensity conflicts that involved mines and IEDs...
Bush tries to whitewash
history to divert people from the fact of his utter moral
bankruptcy.
Freedom's
Watch, the group headed by Ari Fleisher and that spent $15 million on
an ad campaign is
no more.
So endeth the most
overhyped, overrated, and underwhelming political project since the
presidential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.
Freedom's Watch spent $30 million on TV ads and Democrats gained
eight Senate seats and 24 House seats.
As President
Bush refuses
to argue in a face-to-face manner and as Juan Cole is a
blogger, Cole has to argue about Mideast policy by blogging. One other
problem with the same Bush speech is that, yes, Bush verbally rejected
a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, but he only drew that distinction long
after the Iraq War had begun. In other words, he
drew that distinction only after
it had served its purpose.
SecState Rice celebrates
the invasion of Iraq
as Iraq is "at the center of Middle East politics as a bulwark against
Iran." Erm, slight problem with that assessment as Iraq is now in the
hands of a Shiite goverment friendly to Iran. Other than that, yeah,
it's a "great strategic achievement."
Bush will have
his Presidential Library at Southern
Methodist University. It:
will be completely
independent from the academic governance of the
university. It will reportedly “sponsor research and programs designed
to promote the vision of the president” and “celebrate” Bush’s
presidency.
Why is it going to be on the grounds of, and associated with, SMU if
SMU will not have any say in its "academic governance"? That sounds
like a loser of a proposition for SMU and a straight win for
Bush's Library. Bush gets to run the library any way he pleases, but
SMU
gets the hit on their reputation. I guess they stand to make lots of
cash from the deal. Still sounds like a pretty crappy deal for SMU.
The pollster
Zogby is absolutely destroying
his credibility! He published an apples-to -oranges poll that compared
current questions about the McCain campaign to decades-old questions
about Obama & Biden. Zogby is "standing by" the poll, thereby
sinking himself along with his client.
Happy, happy,
joy, joy!!! The Obama Transition Team has announced that ALL political
appointees in the Foreign Service will
be relieved of their duties on January 20th! NONE of them
will stay on.
*Sigh* Okay,
how do we explain why it's
not all right for Bush to pardon Scooter Libby for commiting
the felony of outing a CIA agent who, BTW, was working on
the issue of Weapos of Mass Destruction. Scooter
Libby is a criminal.
If Bush & Co want to go to turn themselves in
and go to jail in place of Scooter, well yee-hah! In that case, sure!
But if they want to remain free, then no!
Far better that Scooter rot in jail (No, he's not
in jail because of Bush's intervention) than that his buddies be completely
off the hook.
Bush's
"confession" over the allegedly unsatisfactory
intel before the start of the Iraq War is grossly,
pathetically unsatisfactory. As usual, Bush just blames
everyone else for his own failures.
President-Elect
Obama's approach to filling out his Cabinet sounds
eminently sensible and marks a huge
departure from the last eight years.
"I assembled this
team because I am a strong believer in strong
personalities and strong opinions. I believe that's how the best
decisions are made."
Yee-hah to that!
Amazingly, but unfortunately, predictably,
the press corps seems determined
to "gin
up" scandals.
November
WaPo publishes
dreadfully misinforming editorial, describing a completely
unreconizable picture of Iraq over the past several years.
The Nation documented
way back in April 2003 that
Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, who continues to be featured frequently by NBC
News as an objective analyst ... opines about war policies in which he
has a substantial (and concealed) financial stake.
The NY Times' David Barstow covered the story again in April
2008, covers it again November 2008 and notes that NBC News has still
refused to note McCaffrey's conflict of interest.
Update: NBC and General McCaffrey undertake
a coordinated
PR effort to defend their good names.
First Lady
Laura Bush gives
herself points for how much she loves the women of
Afghanistan. Problem: It was clear to me back in December
2002 that Afghanistan was not reconstructed or rebuilt. Sure enough, it
was only a matter of time before the Taliban reassembled and began
attacking. Afghan women are now no better off than they were before the
US invaded that country.
Former SecDef
Rumsfeld is writing his memoir that, predictably, says "I was right in
my strategy for Iraq!"
Of course, he
wrote so many memos taking so many positions
on so many subjects, they were called "snowflakes" by his overwhelmed
subordnates. So whatever position happened to be the right one years
later, you can bet he's got a memo that takes just that position.
Given the
choice between
being successful and being ideologically consistent,
Reagan and the younger Bush have been polar opposites.
Marvelous
news! John Brennan, a
torture advocate who withdrew his support for that but loudly supported
"enhanced interrogation tactics" and rendition, has
been refused any
high-level national security position! And the blogs were
credited for pushing the Obama transition team away from supporting
him.
It's
truly disgusting to see millionaire pundits hardly saying a word about
executives who pull in hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in
bonuses, spreading
the vicious smear that auto workers make $70 an hour (The
average wage is $25, auto
workers make $30).
Many
Republicans and traditional media people are adopting an odd
definition as to what Obama meant by "change." It seems to be
a definition that ignores the distinctions between "insiders"
and "Republicans."
For some odd
reason, the press corps is being
accused
of being excessively pro-Obama. Not really sure what their evidence is
and gee, it sure would have been nice had someone brought this
interesting little factoid up during
the campaign. The press corps also seems very confused about
whether they want information
about appointments or not.
Senator
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and the American Association for the Advancement
of Science are
demanding that "burrowing" cease and desist immediately. They
list several specific examples.
Marvelous news
on the appointments front! Obama appears to be choosing really good
people. Digby
reproduces
some real "Truth, justice & the American way" rhetoric from the
Attorney General appointee. Punchline: the guy who reprinted
this
stuff in the first place was trying to criticize him!
Someone else has mild
reservations, but essentially approves.
Woo hoo! The progressive
Representative Henry Waxman beats out the "Blue Dog" Rep.
John Dingell.
New Homeland
Security chair has Constitutional
Law background!
"Truth,
justice & the American way" triumph! Five innocent detainees at
Guantanamo have been ordered freed.
"Burrowing"
appears to be the latest method to frustrate the new administration and
to make it more difficult to achieve liberal goals. It's a process of
transferring a
political appointee to a protected career position.. One
problem is that the
appointee may not be qualified for the new position.
But there's evidence
that the burrowing under Bush has been extensive,
and hasn't just been confined to the administration's waning days.
More
extensive examination of the issue.
Interview
transcript. Funny
stuff! Guy being interviewed starts losing it at the fifth
question and is swearing by the end. Summary
of poll questions. Lots of just plain false suggestions.
Liberal
bloggers "speculating"
about Hillary Clinton and the Secretary of State job? But mindless,
evidence-free speculation is a traditional
media speciality. Bloggers
don't really do that.
Weekly
Standard writes
a plea to keep Missile Defense going. Is it really worth it
to do so? Major problem is that it's impossible to tell how truly
effective the program is until a new and critical team takes over the
testing. Otherwise, there's simply no way to tell.
So, now that
the US has agreed to
be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, just how firm is that agreement?
With Press Secretary Dana Perino talking
about mere "aspirational
dates" and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral
Mullen talking about the withdrawal being "conditions
-based," the agreement doesn't seem very firm at all.
WaPo Ombudsman
again frets
over all of the "Liberal Bias" the WaPo contains. She's very sorry and
promises to do better.
The US is
discussing the worthless
boondoggle known as Star Wars/SDI/Missile Defense. We need to
contact
the President-Elect and encourage him to shut it down.
Also, the sub-group within the My Barack Obama
site that encouraged (unsuccessfully) Obama to preserve FISA is regrouping
and plotting strategy.
Facebook for Philadelphia
to oppose California's Proposition 8. They conducted a rally on November
15th and claimed that 5000 were there.
Kewl! The
first YouTube-style
presidential address. Well, okay, Obama is just the
President-Elect so far, but hey, it's all good.
A suggestion
for what to do with
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that are innocent,
in a way that will keep them from returning to the battlefield. I would
recommend that America truly and decisively reject the prison there as
an unequivocally immoral thing that no Americans approve of. That would
then convince the prisoners tht Gitmo is rejected by the American
people.
It's pieces
like this
piece 'o crud that really make me appreciate how good
writers will use quotes and links to back
up what they say!!! This writer has absolutely no
clue that people might want to know "What exactly is the evidence
that you're basing all of these wild, unhinged assertions
on?!?!"
Yes, I'm very
disappointed that our new President-Elect is backing
the idea of allowing Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to retain
his current chairmanship of Homeland Security. I absolutely
guarantee that the decision will come back and bite the
Democratic Party in the $#@!
Hoo-boy!
Wingnuttery ahoy! We've got Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) comparing Obama's
“civilian national security force,” to
Hitler!!!1!@@!! He later "dialed to back" after both
Georgia Senators expressed dismay.
Hempstead police, after using horses against peaceful
protesters from the IVAW, charge
IVAW with "Disorderly Conduct."
Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!! Newt
Gingrich wants to run the Republican National Committee! Love
it! That's almost as good as Governor
Palin for President!
Kofinis:
Sarah Palin is like that crazy relative who comes over and doesn't want
to leave.
Oh, and here's a good one:
Christie: Voters did
not decide that on Tuesday. It was a very close
election. I mean -- 52 percent, you can't say that he had a mandate.
Uh, scooz me, but
Obama won 66.3 million votes to McCain's 57.9, which actually
rounds off closer to 53%. When Bush declared
a mandate with only 50.7%
of the vote, yes, I would say Obama very definitely
won a mandate!
And this
is just, like, whoooo!
Obama thinks he is a
good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he
speaks. ... President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a
lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking
publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision...
Wow! That's not even mockable, that's so lacking in reality. Has this
guy even heard
of a "Bushism"?
Atrios makes
an extremely
good point about how there's criticism and there's criticism.
Sometimes one is a friendly critic who wants the
person or project to succeed and sometimes one is a hostile
critic who doesn't. Tom Friedman is clearly a friendly
critic of the Iraq War and so yes, he does bear
some responsibilty for the consequences.
The WaPo
Ombudsman takes a look at her paper's campaign coverage and concludes
it was tilted to favor Obama. I point out
that McCain ran a campaign of demagoguery and name-calling,
meaning that a straight "bean-counting" tells us next to nothing.
Ombudsman Howell arrives
at no conclusions concerning the content
of the various Op-Eds she bean-counts so assiduously.
Is there some
way to prevent criminals
such as Karl Rove & Tom DeLay from making TV appearances? Or at
least some way to precede their appearances with an honest description
of their crimes?
Yee-haw!!!
Sarah Palin looks to be the permanent
Republican figurehead for hard-line rightwingers! Yes, we'll
have Palin "to kick around" for many moons to come. You can help! Here's
a petition by Michelle Malkin to support Palin's hard-line
positions with. Here's
a liberal endorsement for that petition.
Just why did
McCain fail to seize the presidency? For all of the claims that McCain
and the Republican Party were substantively different from Bush,
it's really not clear where, exactly, they actually differed.
One extremely good point is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's acceptace
of Barack Obama's timetable for the withdrawal of American
troops from Iraq back in July basically neutered McCain's perceived
advantage.
Ah! Sweetness,
light & sunshine! Barack
Obama wins decisively! Right wing smears getting
a lot less traction than they used to. As to Matt Drudge?
Bwah-hah-hah!!! Poor
Drudge is in very bad shape compared to the guy who "rules
our world" back in 2004.
From 16
October to 31 October, six
cases are examined where prominent media figures have
compared Obama to Hitler or his campaign to the Nazi
Party. And yes, victimization
is a major theme of conservative media
criticism.
The major
telcos are, once
again,
trying to kill off "net neutrality." This is the concept that all net
users must be treated equally. Companies can't pick and choose whose
content gets favored access. Fach
sheet (23 page PDF) shows why net neutrality is essential to
protecting regular citizens. The
case between Comcast & BitTorrent is probably the
highest-profile case we've seen recently.
October
Uh! Mah! Gawd!
The stupid!!! It HURTS!!! Governor Palin thinks
her 1st Amendments rights are being violated because people
are disagreeing with her and saying things that she doesn't like.
McCain
campaign launches
ugly and frankly, racist, attack on Palestinian
Professor. Karl Rove of course approves the attack and Drudge
features it on his website.
McCain
campaign speaks of the need to get America off of using Mideast oil so
much, but doesn't have any realistic, concrete plans for doing anything
about that.
Two things
about the helicopter assault on an alleged al Qaeda target in Syria on
26 October - 1. In
a piece published on 28 October,
the targets killed are still referred to as "unverified," meaning that
the US has yet to produce physical evidence that they really did attack
a genuine threat. 2. Syria has requested assistance in guarding their
"450-mile long desert border with Iraq, but the Americans
refused." [emphasis added]
*Sigh*! And
just why
are US troops in Iraq
again? If only two steps of the five-step "surge" plan are complete and
if the US will not intervene in case of Iraqi civil war, what in the
heck are US troops "in harm's way" for?!?!?
Yeesh, what a
bunch of whiners! A Republican journalist whines
about the "lack of balance" in today's journalism (That ol' "liberal
media" bugaboo) and Republicans in general "worrying"
(The term is "concern troll") about the presidency, the House and the
Senate all being in the hands of just one
party!*!!1! That is, of course, just
the situation that Republicans enjoyed from 2001 to 2006.
A member of
our peace group warns darkly:
There aren't too
many of
these
articles YET, but, some are beginning to pop up.
It's entitled: "McCain guarantees victory" and cites the pollster
Zogby, to which Daily
Kos responds:
...despite Zogby's
breathless "it's getting CLOSER!", it's not clear that that's true in
any meaningful way.
In the meantime, Kos has a very
cheerful piece on Alan Greenspan, the novelist Ayn Rand and
the "Epic Failure" of Republican conservatism. They also have
a kewl
landslide diagram and pix of Obama's 100,000
person rally in Denver.
No, Fannie Mae
& Freddie Mac are
not to blame for the housing crisis.
Iraq reneges
on security agreement with US. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki seems to
think he
can run his own country without
assistance from the US [/snark]! Seeing as continued occupation is
supported by neither country, it's hard to see how anyone
would fight to keep US troops there.
McCain
campaign worker Ashley Todd allegedly mutilated by black male Obama
supporter who drew a "B" into her cheek with a knife
(Amazingly,
without breaking her skin). Turns
out this was a hoax. "Journalist" Matt
Drudge
"breathlessly reported" it and the McCain campaign picked up the story
as well. What's that you say? Did the McCain campaign do any
fact-checking? Ha, ha, ha! No,
of course not.
Return of the "Mayberry
Machiavellis"
in the McCain campaign. It's difficult to come up with any real policy
differences between McCain and Bush for the very good reason that his
staff doesn't pay much attention to policy details.
Good heavens!
WHAT
does this even MEAN!?!?!
...a
Vice President has a
really great job, because not only are
they there to support the President agenda, ... But also, they're in
charge of the
United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get
in there
with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes that
will make
life better... [emphasis added]
Huh!?!?! WHAT is Governor Palin talking
about!?!?! Does this person
have a clue as to what it is
that a VP does?!?!?
Chris Matthews tries asking McCain aide Nancy Pfotenhauer and can't
get a coherent reply.
Hey, John
McCain gets an endorsemet! Not,
er, exactly one he wanted, but hey, y'know? Al Qaeda
evaluates McCain as "impetuous" and decides that that's just
the quality they want in a US President!
Now, to be
fair, Governor
Palin's wardrobe money doesn't come from taxpayers, it comes
from the Republican Party, so Democrats & independents don't
pay anything, but dude!!!!! $150,000!?!?!?!
As Jane Hamsher points out:
I've made entire
movies where the budget to clothe the whole cast was less
than that. [emphasis in original]
Also:
ABC’s wardrobe
guidelines allow $4200 per prime time show for female
characters, so “do the math”, it’s the equivalent of 29 prime time
shows.
Yeah well,
Governor Palin is scheduled to do a 15 minute interview with CNN, but
their choice of interviewers leaves much to be desired. This
is a fellow who decided even before he investigated Troopergate
that there was no story there. Turns out actually, there
was.
Update:
"...Griffin allowed her to openly lie about a number of issues without
any interruption or challenge..."
I did a paper
on Star Wars/SDI/Missile Defense back during the late 1980s. What
a frackin' waste of the taxpayers' money!!! It's a 50-year
old program (The period from the ABM treaty to Reagan's revival was an
"on spec" period) that has yet
to produce a usable weapon. Fortunately, the
latest study says the whole program needs to be taken "back
to the garage for some serious repairs."
Colin Powell
endorses Barack
Obama. We lefties don't particularly like Powell as he helped
get
the Iraq War started, but he may appeal to more moderate, centrist
voters and actually
did say some very good, pro-American things about Muslims.
What's really
amazing about the traditional media here is how unmoored
they are
from any real standards. Especially amazing is how someone wants the
presidential candidates to tell everybody how they feel about God, but
as Governor Palin subscribes to an unusual "flavor" of Christianity,
the McCain campaign is anxious to NOT have her be questioned about God.
Conservatives don't appear to recognize the problem.
Wow! Ranting
and raving! Governor Palin looks
here like Mussolini himself! And yeah, it's hard to
categorize this as anything
but the statement of a complete snob.
Good for the
Obama campaign! They've requested
an investigation into smears on ACORN, smears which have, quite
predictably, resulted in violence.
Local
columnist bemoans what "the fates" have done to the campaign of "poor"
John McCain. Defends
McCain against the charge of wanting "Bush's third
term." Problem: Barack Obama has proposed ending the Iraq War,
something that's costing the US Treasury $10 billion a month. What
savings has McCain offered that's even a fraction of that?
About a year
ago, Michelle
Malkin and many other right-wingers were verbally assaulting
and hectoring and hassling a family and their 12-year old son
over the boy's televised statement on the SCHIP program. Their given
reason?
[T]he office of
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, ... asked: "Could the Dems
really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?"
Turned out the family was precisely
what they said they were and that they were fully
entitled to support the SCHIP program.
Now that McCain has made a complete
cluster---- of the life of his chosen hero, Joseph
Wurzelbacher, we
get Malkin fuming that:
The left's political
plumbers are attacking the messenger, rummaging through his
personal life...
[emphasis added]
Yeah, it sure is awful when bloggers go rummaging through someone's
personal life. Kind of amazing that what was perfectly
acceptable a year ago is completely unfair today.
Update: Yup! It's
Michelle Malkin again!
Now she's taken the lead in forcing the University of Nebraska
to
cancel an invitation to William Ayers to speak on 15 November. Can't ya
just smell that love of freedom? That love of free discourse and
debate?
Hard to get a
more
definitive verdict on the third and last debate between
Obama and McCain than this:
CBS poll of undecided
voters:
Who won the
debate?
McCain
(R) 22
Obama (D) 53
McCain doesn't
appear to think that the health of women is an importan component
of the abortion debate. In fact, he doesn't seem to think women are
important at all. Obama's answer was pitch-perfect.
Keith
Olbermann on the screaming,
frenzied crowds at McCain-Palin rallies:
Obviously, Senator,
you haven’t heard your own speeches, and Gov.
Palin’s, and what people shout during them. And you haven’t heard your
state GOP Chair in Virginia, Jeffrey Frederick, giving talking points
to 30 of your field-operatives heading out to canvass voters in
Gainesville, Virginia, with a reporter present, telling them to try to
forge a connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden to
emphasize bombings and terrorism.
Juan Cole
gives us a capsule
history of the last 30 years, concentrating on how the
Republican Party and Reagan's coalition of the Religious Right and the
big-money people has shaped America.
Al Jazeera
does a report on McCain supporters spewing
all sorts of nonsense about Obama. Very sad that America
looks so bad to foreign countries.
The level of sheer racism
and hatred in the McCain rallies is really reaching
dangerous
levels. Michelle Malkin notes
the video at first link and says:
Let’s
talk about “insane rage” and “violent escalation.” This is insane rage
— Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass...”
Er, well, okay, but Madonna is not part of the Obama campaign.
When Palin accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists,"
she is saying that as a part of the McCain campaign.
Just a bit of a difference there.
Governor Sarah
Palin charged with "abusing
power" to such an extent that even
the traditional media reports it!
Heh! McCain tries to pretend that his administration will
be above such things.
Update: Report
is ignored in numerous quarters.
NBC's "Meet the
Press," ABC's
"This Week," and CNN's "Late Edition" ignored the story altogether
Worrisome
signs that Sarah Palin's & John McCain's speeches are inciting
people to violence, or at the very least, to violent
language. Of course, right-wingers see the traditional media as hopelessly
biased in favor of Obama and the Democrats. Interesting
YouTube, where people
try to avoid using inflammatory language, but where they
clearly feel it.
Update: McCain finds it difficult to "dial it back" and to calm
his followers down. Funny how that happens!
'Fraid to say,
this
is not surprising news. Two NSA whistleblowers go onto ABC
News and reveal that, surprise, surprise, the "Terrorist Surveillance
Program" was not a
well-crafted, highly-targeted program and that many, many people who
had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism were
surveilled.
I guess women
haven't come that far after all, at
least not on Fox News. A news reader complains that a
Newsweek cover of Governor Palin was, get this, NOT
retouched! Yes that's right, she was expecting Newsweek to
retouch all of Palin's facial imperfections.
Amusing to see
how small websites can get the current state of the presidential race
right, but big
media websites can't seem to do that. As a group, the big
sites refuse to admit that Obama is poised to win well over the 270
votes needed to win.
Bush cuts off
aid to African countries because they
might practice contraception.
Of course, due to this "pro-life" policy, African women now have a much
greater chance of dying while giving birth.
Heh! Mark
Halperin of "The Page" in Time Magazine considers
Matt Drudge to be an important and influential person. Rather
difficult to see why he thinks that as Obama has opened up a significant
lead in the past few weeks and, as Drudge is a Republican,
quite obviously, he had nothing to do with that.
Obama wins
second debate with McCain without
breaking a sweat. McCain sounded like a grumpy, tired old man
fussing about whether Obama announced his intention to invade
Pakistan, if that proved necessary,
to get bin Laden. Obama appeared more comfortable and relaxed than he
did at the last debate. Funny, but McCain had a full 90 minutes to
repeat Palin's attacks on Obama and didn't say a
word.
According to
the David Horowitz website "Discover
the Network,"
Barack Obama's connections to William Ayers (Whose last acts of
violence were in 1972, when Obama was eight years old) are, well,
pretty darned unimpressive. The two of them were on the same board of
directors 1999-2002. Yes, Ayers has made some really hating comments
about the Bush Administration, but if that
were a crime, many, many millions of us would be
in jail!
The McCain campaign has decided to make
an issue of the Ayers connection anyway.
The connections of McCain & Palin, on the other hand, are wide and deep.
Daily Kos counts three
highly questionable associates for McCain and two for Palin.
Update: McCain campaign sending out very
muddled, confused message on Ayers.
Wow! It's hard to know how to even parody such a
blatant falsehood.
Obama speaks
at Abington High School football field.
On the
Vice-Presidential debate, I
had to chuckle at this one: [Palin] "went toe-to-toe with a
guy who's run for president twice, and she held her own"
Wel-l-l-l, "CNN vote of debate watchers: Biden 51, Palin 36
CBS poll of undecideds: Biden 46, Palin 21"
So, uh, no.
CNN
transcript.
Bail-out bill passes
Senate 74-25, both Obama & McCain vote "Aye."
What's been
about the silliest claim of the campaign (And believe me, it has lots
of competition!) has been the one about Alaska being in some sort of
danger from Russian aircraft:
“Putin rears his
head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America."
Thankfully and unsurprisingly,
the Air Force confirms that, no, no Russian plane has violated US
airspace over Alaska during Palin's term as Alaska's
Governor.
September
The
bail-out bill failed by a vote of 228 against to only 205
for. 60% of Democrats voted yes on the bill, but only
33% of Republicans did so. Breakdown:
65R 140D - yes, 133R 95D - no. Stock market promptly tanks, losing 777
points, 7% or $1.1 trillion in value.
An examination as to who
is to blame for the economic crisis.
188 kilobyte
PDF of the House Discussion Draft
Bill for the bailout.
Based on Speaker
Pelosi's summary, it looks to be a reasonably good plan. It's
"the largest
single non-defense expenditure ever is about to pass into
law."
John McCain's very
bad week. Saturday Night Live's hilarious
takedown of Governor Sarah Palin.
This seriously
calls for letters! MSNBC correspondent Kelly
Norah O'Donell makes a series
of highly edited, selective quotations
in order to make a very dishonest and partisan point. She claims that
Obama appears to be in such hearty, full-throated agreement with McCain
that it puzzles her what Obama's disagreement is. No mystery at all IF
one looks at the full quotations. Addresses for MSNBC, MSNBC's Senior Vice
President, News, and President,
NBC News.
Obama wins
the debate!!! My
own reaction. No game
changers, but people notice McCain's refusal
to make eye contact. Speaking on the "surge," Obama points out that the
war didn't start in 2007.
So John McCain
allegedly "suspended" his campaign. But does
he actually do so? It was especially silly for MSNBC to both
have a McCain adviser attacking Obama on one of their shows and
to run the announcement that he was suspending his campaign.
Huh?!?! Foreign
countries aren't willing to help the US out of its fiscal
jam? German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminds
the US that:
she had pushed for
steps to boost the transparency of hedge funds
during Germany’s presidency of the Group of Eight last
year. ”We got
things moving [last year], but we didn’t get enough support, especially
in the
United States and Britain.”
After the Iraq War had been launched, a UN
debate
made it quite clear that the US had done a very poor job of reconciling
countries to US actions. We're now seeing the results of such
"steamroller" action.
Heh! Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson
tries to "walk back" the demand that he be able to dispose of
$700 billion in whatever way he gol durn jolly well pleases. Original
wording:
Sec. 8.
Review.
Decisions by the
Secretary
pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable
and committed
to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by
any court of law or
any administrative agency. [emphases added]
And now:
Paulson insisted over
and over during today’s hearing that he “wanted” and “welcomed”
oversight.
William Greider thinks the bail-out plan is an "historic
swindle." Robert Reich weighs
in.
It's actually (grimly) hilarious to see conservatives now doing a
complete 180o on philosophies they've
held very firmly and unwaveringly for the past eight years.
Opposition rapidly
growing to "Treasury Secretary Paulson’s unconditional,
blank-check
bailout plan." We're seeing encouraging
signs of spinal columns among Democrats, helped along by the
fact
that Republicans don't seem to like the plan much either. Natcherly, McCain
has all sorts of ties to the corporate lobbyists who got us
into
this mess.
Wow! Did our
president
really have that
shaky a grasp of how the national economy works before
entering the
Oval Office?!?!?
Can the Bush
Administration
be trusted to spend the $700 billion they're asking for to bail the US
out of yet another financial crisis?
Um,
no. The piece looks at several dramatic failures of
control,
discipline and oversight, but what's really staggering is $10 billion wasted
on Iraqi
reconstruction. The July
08 report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq says that
$50
billion had been spent on reconstruction. Three inspectors told Congress
in Feb 07
that one-fifth of that amount had either been lost or was very poorly
tracked.
Al Jazeera
shows videotape
of truck
ramming into security gate at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel and
shows
truck burning.
The following explosion left a 30
foot crater.
Hilarious pair
of pieces: Dodgy Journalism: Time's
Michael Scherer debates strawman, loses
followed by: Michael
Scherer debates Michael Scherer, loses
Oh, and Scherer
Wanks About
Renewable Energy
The question was whether John McCain supports privatizing Social
Security. Scherer argued that no, McCain was not suggesting that.
So what does McCain then tell all of us? Why,
of course he's for that!
Amazingly,
upon the very
day that Admiral Mullen was assuring Pakistan that the US respected its
sovereignty, a
US
drone attack killed at least six Pakistanis. Yes, this
incident is
related to the loss of confidence in US financial markets. It
demonstrates to the world that the solemn word of the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff (by law the highest ranking military officer
overall in the United States Armed Forces) is worthless. Not good. Not
good at all.
Bush tries to
make it
appear as though the current economic crisis was a unanticipated
"bolt out of the blue." (And yeah,
we've heard that
one before.) Unfortunately, there was nothing mysterious or
unanticipated about it. The housing
bubble has been a problem for quite some time and very little
was
done to correct it.
Wow! Has a
Vice-Presidential candidate ever
out-drawn a Presidential candidate before? Keep in mind
though,
Sarah Palin's approval ratings for voters as a whole have cratered
from +17 points on 11 Sept to -4 on 18 Sept.
"adolescent
criminal (in
mentality if not age)"
hacked
into Sarah Palin's semi-official Yahoo email account. Two
points to
remember: 1. Palin received an official government email
account
that's much harder to hack into and chose instead to do official Alaska
business on a non-secure email account and 2.
Funny how
right-wingers are all upset at how people are snooping into
private emails, but didn't seem to give a damn about our
government violating FISA and the Fourth Amendment to do the same.
"Angler,"
the new book on Vice-President Cheney, answers a question I've long
had. White House Counselor (Later Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales
and Chief of Staff Andrew Card went to confront a very ill Attorney
General John Ashcroft to get him to sign off on the warrantless
wiretapping program. My question was "Why was there a
confrontation, followed by a threat of mass resignations, at
that
particular time?" Turns out that's
how long it took
for the NSAs General Counsel and the NSAs Inspector General to piece
together just what the program did and to conclude that it
was
illegal.
Right-wingers
have been
crowing
and whooping about Governor Sarah Palin and how she was going to save
McCain's campaign. Welllll, not so fast there! Seems she's now in "favorability
free fall," with her favorability rating dropping from +17 on
September 11 to +4 on the 15th. This coincides with the horrified
discovery of the traditional media that McCain is (*Gasp!!!*)
a
liar!!!
Update: The traditional
media's failure
to, 1. adopt a "theme" or "storyline" of McCain and Palin lying
(Something Hillary Clinton got hammered for when she fibbed about
coming under fire in Bosnia) and 2. their meaningless, idiotic stories
("Lipstick" got mentioned 350+ times, "Fannie Mae" only 230 times) have
combined to leave them utterly helpless and toothless.
No, the Bush
Doctrine that
ABC Newsperson Charlie
Gibson asked Sarah Palin about is not
a simple, straightfoward, clear-cut doctrine.
There have in fact been many versions of it. But no one prior to this
ever seemed to have any trouble with it when asked about it. Obama
and McCain both answered correctly and immediately when they
were
questioned on it.
What
exactly does it mean to be "pro-life"? Does it really mean anything
beyond the fact that one is against women controlling their own bodies?
Clearly,
it
doesn't mean that one respects life in general, as we see by
US
military policy in Afghanistan.
Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!
Palin's
latest rally in Alaska drew about 1000 people. An
anti-Palin rally drew 1400!!!
John Dean
considers Palin unqualified
to fill
the office of the Presidency should the 72-year old McCain be
unable to fulfill his term in office.
Palin's
failure to
recognize even the very name
"Bush Doctrine" (The idea that the US can and should launch preventive
wars to head off possible future threats) shows that she is manifestly
unqualified to be the Vice-President.
Naturally, traditional media people don't consider her
lack of familiarity with the doctrine on which the
Iraq War is
based to be disqualifying.
YouTube on
McCain's smears,
lies and distortions. The spirit of
Karl Rove
and his late mentor Lee Atwater live! You can donate to the makers of
this film here.
A number of items
on the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. Remember, due to his age,
McCain would have a 1/6th chance of not being able to complete a
four-year term.
Charles Gibson
- co-host of ABCs Good Morning America, will be
interviewing Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. As to the
format of the show:
The only interviews
that are done this way are lifestyle and celebrity
interviews. And it's pretty clear that that is what this will be.
The Free Press
of Detroit MI asks voters how they appraise the AK Governor/VP
candidate Palin - not
terriby impressed. Palin gets marks for being a good speaker,
but not for delivering any clear idea as to how a 1st McCain term would
not just be a 3rd Bush term.
So the McCain team has apparently decided that Palin is best used as a "stealth
candidate" and to keep her under wraps for the duration,
appearing only in friendly forums like closed-door fundraisers and Fox
News.
Y'know, one
can only say "Oops!" so many times. Monica Goodling at the
Department of Justice made consistent use of “PPO Non-Career
Appointment Forms” (PPO is the acronym
for
“Presidential Personnel Office”) for DOJ
"career" candidates. When challenged on this blatant
disregard of
the rules:
Goodling responded
that they were given the PPO form by mistake. This
response shows that Goodling was aware that it was improper for career
candidates to complete a political form.
Unfortunately,
after
the McCain campaign uses songs they haven't
asked to use
and would not
have received permission to use in any event, it's pretty clear that,
as with Monica Goodling and the career DOJ applicants, the McCain
campaign is not
making use of copyrighted songs accidentally, they're stealing songs
deliberately, intentionally and with
malice aforethought.
How
conveeeenient! All of the sudden,
the Republican
Party is completely free of sexism! Just
in time for them to defend their Vice-Presidential
nominee from justified criticisms of her policies! Funny how all
of the sudden, history is re-written so that Hillary Clinton
and other Democratic women have never suffered any
sexist attacks at all.
Conditions in
St Paul are getting worse
and worse for protesters. Physical beatings are getting way
out of control.
The idea that just
because someone is pointing a camera at you, you
have the right to take the camera away or destroy the film or the tape
– which is something we’ve had documented – you know, that’s not part
of policing.
Evaluation of
Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK),McCain's running mate - Lots of love
from regular Alaskans and from the hard-core religious
right. Not much good to say about her from the point of view
of science, the environment, sexuality education or corruption. BTW,
it's unfair to compare her to Dan Quayle, the elder George Bush's VP,
unfair to Quayle, that is.
AP has a
serious Ron
Fournier problem. Looks like they're going to defend him
anyway.
Joe Lieberman
in early
August:
I'm not gonna to go
to that convention -- the Republican convention -- and spend my time
attacking Barack Obama.
Sept 2nd:
When others wanted
to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, when Barack
Obama
was voting to cut off funding for our
troops...
Militariztion
of Twin Cities, reporter Amy Goodman arrested. Raids have
been conducted on "suspected
protesters" since Aug 30th. Amy Goodman has been reporting
for Democracy Now! for almost 20 years and was
arrested for trying to defend her co-workers. Greenwald:
Beginning last
night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever
seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of
9/11 -- with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents
marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters,
shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees
and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various
buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear
gassed and injured.
TwinCities
Indymedia
Hurricane
Gustav: is New Orleans prepared? Wish we could say "yes," but there doesn't
appear to have been much improvement over the past three
years.
August
Major problem
with the Russia-Georgia
situation appears to be that
...it demonstrated
that the United States could not or would not defend
Georgia, despite the widespread international impression that
Washington, after having trained Georgia’s troops and showily displayed
the Saakashvili government as its protege, was in some way implicated
in the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, and on the Russian soldiers
legally there as “peacekeepers.”
The Democatic
2004 candidate, John Kerry, plays
off the words of "Senator McCain" against those of "Candidate
McCain." Good stuff!
Harriet Miers
and Joshua Bolten MUST
appear before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions! To
which we can only say GOOD! Enough of these
scofflaws deciding which rules they like and don't like and which laws
they'll obey!
Sampling of
International reactions to pick of Biden
as prospective VP:
Sudan plus Iraqi Sunnis & Shiites don't like his proposed plans
for
their countries. Iraqi Kurds like him, Israel, India, Ireland and Iran
all like him. Turkey can live with him and Germany is
ambivalent.
*Sigh!*
There's simply no two ways about it. Members
of the media just LOVE
John McCain!
McCain says America should reinstate the draft. Media people claim
(falsely) that he didn't say that. Media people claim the
Georgia-Russia conflict showed how "tough" McCain was. Actually, it
showed that he couldn't wait
to blow up the world!
Britain's MI5
conducts a lengthy survey of domestic terrorists and
concludes that profiling
is useless.
...those who become
terrorists "are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single
demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to
violent extremism".
Ah-HA! Now we
know! The Church of England reveals the truth.
The reason that people have left the church is due to Buffy
the Vampire Slayer! Yeah, seriously. The idea is that she
represents the religion of Wicca, which is seducing women away with a
message of female empowerment.
VetVoice
comments on John McCain's tendency
to refer people to his Vietnam POW experience as his
all-purpose answer to just about any uncomfortable question.
Hilarious
look at all
of the various ways that right-wingers have tried to smear
Obama (And its still only August!)
So, it's
looking like the US
is discussing withdrawal by 2011 after all. And the exact
plan the negotiaters appear to be considering?
Yee-hah!!! Rachel
Maddow gets tapped to do an MSNBC show!!! Between her, Jon
Stewart, Steven Colbert and Keith Olbermann, that makes four
liberals on the teevee! Woo-hoo!
Pensite
Review has a real chin-stroker of an evaluation:
It’s interesting
that it’s happening now, so close to the election.
We expect to see any number of right-wing blogs hollering "Aaugh! Another
liberal on the teevee?!?!?
Update: the New Republic is
very concerned that this destroys the objectivity
of MSNBC.
South Ossetia review:
The story of how a
16-year, low-grade conflict
over who should rule two small, mountainous regions in the Caucasus
erupted into the most serious post-cold-war showdown between the United
States and Russia is one of miscalculation, missed signals and
overreaching...
People are
mocking commentator Cokie Roberts for making the utterly stupid
statement that Hawaii
is some sort of foreign country. Well, to provincial
East Coast elites, I guess it is.
In a very
sensible and prudent decision, Turkey
refuses to allow US warships to travel through the Bosporus
and the Dardanelles,
the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas,
to carry out what the US claims are merely
relief operations.
Attorney
General Michael Mukasey has
requested new powers for the FBI, powers which they have
decisively shown they're not competent to handle.
South Ossetia
war update: Georgia
has actually been a US satellite for awhile now. conflict
with Russia was only a matter of time.
...add in the
tireless US promotion of Georgia as a pro-western,
anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to bring Georgia
into Nato,...
...under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a fully fledged US
satellite. Georgia's forces are armed and trained by the US and Israel.
In an
excellent and very hopeful contrast to the Kerry campaign of 2004, the
Obama campaign is taking the Jerome Corsi "Swiftboating" book with absolute,
deathly seriousness. It appears that Obama knows full well
that the traditional media is not
his friend.
Well, looks
like the South
Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia [map]
is on again! The current truce was negotiated with President Nicolas
Sarkozy of France, but apparently broke down when Russia kept up the
attack.
There is considerable evidence of lengthy
US - Israeli planning that preceded the war. Currently, the
fear is that Bush may be doubling
down and increasing the US commitment.
Allegedly, Russia has bargained
with the US to trade off Georgia's independence for sanctions
on Iran. We'll have to wait and see on that one.
$%#@&%!!!
And just why did we
vote Democrats into the majority in 2006?!?!? Speaker
Pelosi has now decided that, in addition to such sensible
energy policies as:
...a requirement
that electricity be produced from renewable sources such
as wind and solar energy and the release of some oil from the nation’s
Strategic Petroleum Reserve...
she also wants to
allow offshore drilling!!! In 2006, we asked for and got more
Democrats. What we need this year is better
Democrats!
The South
Ossetia conflict
between Russia and Georgia is now over and Georgia seems to have gotten
disillusoned with the ability of the West to pull its' chestnuts out of
the fire.
The BBC
and Just
World News contribute post-mortems. The fact that
the US is heavily
overstretched by the Iraq War and was thus unable to
respond effectively was a big problem. Besides which, the US loss
of moral credibility over that war and Guantanamo left it
pretty much irrelevant.
The
Guardian appears to feel that Russia deserves some blame, but
that there's plenty
of blame to be spread to Georgia. Detailed
timelines and corporate media reactions.
Update: Of course now,
after the crisis is over, SecState
Rice is headed over there.
Voter fraud
(Not vote fraud, where the government makes it
difficult to vote, but voter fraud, where an
individual appears to be a legitimate voter while he or she is not) -
not a problem in real life, but
something that Republicans are pushing very hard
as 1. Obama is counting heavily on new voters and 2.
Republicans
realize they have to even the electoral odds somehow.
Conflict
between Georgia (borders on the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains)
and Russia. Russia is
the formally-appointed peacekeeper
for the region that includes Georgia, so it's not like Russia is
(legally) the aggressor. It's of course popular to take the "David vs
Goliath" position when observing a small country vs a large one, but
that may not be the case here.
Jane Mayer
discusses her
book "The Dark Side," about the War on Terror. Interesting
answer to 911Truth theory (That 9-11 was an inside
job):
...there
was a tremendous sense of guilt
inside
the Bush White House and various highest places because they dropped
the ball on 9/11, as Clarke said.
------
...
they felt they had to show that they
were
in charge like nobody's business afterwards because they missed this,
and they had 12 opportunities...
The
FBI case against Bruce Ivins is
looking shakier
and shakier.
Had some
extensive email conversations with conservatives recently that
I think are of some interest. Number 1 (PDF
- 70+ kilobytes)
and I've appended extra comments to Number 2 (PDF - roughly 200 kilobytes).
I think these conversations are worthwhile to the extent that one can
make one's speech shed light instead of heat, but it really helps when
both people have a fair amount of understanding between them to begin
with. A condition that I don't think was really present in
either
case.
Wow! Media
people are starting
to realize John McCain doesn't walk on water!!! Yippee!
[F]ormer top
government scientist,
Bruce
E. Ivins, who died Tuesday [29 July] of an apparent suicide.
The government just a month ago disposed of the case of another
government scientist Steven Hatfill, which apparently cleared the way
to accuse Ivins. Many,
many questions are raised with the new accusation. We need a full-scale
Congressional investigation. We especially need to inquire
about the role played by ABC
News.
NY Times Book
Review reviews Jane
Myers' new book on the torture policies of the Bush
Administration. Vice-President Cheney appears to be the primary actor
here, Bush appears to play a peripheral role.
"To a man
who's only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" - both
campaigns are determined to solve the Afghanistan problem by
sending more troops,
But greater US
attacks and more US troops in Afghanistan aren't the answer.
The piece concludes:
So let's let India
and the new government of Pakistan handle their own problems.
-----
...they'll do better without heavy-handed US threats, which only aid
extremists and ultranationalists.
July
A conservative
and I were having an email conversation and the guy waxes lyrical about
the legal theory called "Original
intent" and how wonderful it is. My question is "How
seriously do conservatives take it in real time?" Welllll, not
so much, it turns out.
Federal precedent
dating as far back as 1807 contemplates that even the Executive is
bound to comply with duly issued subpoenas.
On what basis is the Bush Administration fighting the subpoenas of
Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten?
The Executive cannot
identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes
absolute immunity for senior presidential advisors in this or any other
context.
But they're claiming "absolute immunity" anyway. In other
words, when it comes to the day-to-day actions of this administration,
the "Original intent" theory is completely irrelevant.
Lawyer Jack Balkin is very
impressed with the decision.
Well, lots of damning
testimony about Monica Goodling's actions in picking and
choosing who could fill jobs at the Justice Department. Unfortunately,
it doesn't look like anyone will be going to jail. This is quite
serious as there's a reason that being selective
about the politics of people there is so utterly and blatantly illegal.
Despite the fact that a culture
of partisanship prevailed,
former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims he slept
through the whole thing. Of course, it's very
highly likely that Gonzales was hired for the AG
job precisely
to politicize the office. Problem is, if citizens get the
impression that
things like ones' sexual orientation are important to whether
one receives justice, that discredits the entire system of
justice in the US.
Unsurprising
news of the week: Media
harder on Obama than McCain.
Lefty blogs
noted how McCain
was treated by Katie Couric's show on CBS News (NY
Times covered it, but left gaps in explanation). Now, CNN’s
Reliable Sources picks up the story!
Jane Mayer
discusses the
extremely bad effects the War on Terror has had upon the soul
of America.
A discussion of how the US view of the law for the last seven-plus
years has pretty
much destroyed America's credibility. The US lectures Russia
and ends up looking pathetically stupid.
Is the "Surge"
in Iraq a meaningful element of the larger strategy there? Katie Couric
interviews John
McCain and Barack
Obama, editing McCain's answer to be less embarrassing to him
and being very, very obtuse with Obama.
Yes,
there certainly was a reduction in violence in Iraq and General
Petraeus and the "Surge" certainly have something to do with that, but
no, there's
really no evidence that either of them were game-changers.
BTW, Iyad Allawi, the former Prime Minister of Iraq, really
doesn't think so either.
Glenn Beck is not
precisely advocating genocide, but it's hard to see what else
he could mean.
...if you’re sitting
down and you’re talking to people, as [Barack Obama] has said
that he wants to do, and try to bring everybody together, you
cannot
bring people together that have
extremist ideology. […] You do not get into bed with
people that want to destroy you and run you into the sea.
[emphases added]
It's hard to see what else he could mean by this, other than that all
Palestinians must cease to exist. Keep in mind this guy recently
substituted for Larry King, an honor that one would think
CNN would reserve for people they really liked.
WaPo spins the
story of Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki agreeing
that US troops should be out of Iraq sometime in 2010 as
though their positions were somehow inconsistent with each
others.
Whuuh?!?!? Drudge
doesn't rule the world of the WaPo and the NY Times? They
make independent editorial
decisions?!?!
Attorney
General Michael Mukasey suggested that the
problem of military detainees could be decided by new legislation.
Problem #1: The courts are perfectly capable of hearing the cases at
issue. Problem #2: The Geneva Conventions and the Constitution already
comprehensively cover all of the relevant issues.
There's simply no need to come up with any
further laws.
Some people
are just professional
umbrage-takers. They just go through their material, looking
and looking
and looking
for something,
anything
to get offended about.
The US seems
intent on tossing
out any leverage it might possibly have over the Maliki
government of Iraq by insisting, over the objections of the highly
nationalistic Iraqis, on remaining at all costs in Iraq. The really
amusing aspect is that Maliki
is agreeing with the campaign position of Obama and not
that of McCain.
Via e-mail, a
prominent Republican strategist who occasionally
provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, "We're fucked."
Why, according
to Speaker Pelosi, are oil prices so high?
The price
of oil is… is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their
protectors in the United States Senate.
WaPo utterly
disgraces itself with an op-ed stating that the problem with
environmentalists is that
...many
environmental leaders seem unpracticed at coalition-building. They
tend to be conventionally, if not radically, liberal. They sometimes
express a deep distrust for capitalism and hostility to the extractive
industries.
Erm, the reason that environmentalists have not
been building broad and deep coalitions is that there is already
a national consensus that the extractive
industries are wrong!
The really
important question about the New Yorker cover (Showing Barack Obama as
a Muslim and his wife Michelle as a gun-toting militant) is "How did
conservatives view it?" Answer, in
pretty much the way bloggers thought they would, as a "true
picture" as to how the couple really is. As Atrios
said, this "... doesn't make the New Yorker public enemy #1, just makes
them idiots of the week."
Heh. Now we know
that Obama is right on his withdrawal plan from Iraq! Michael O'Hanlon isn't
just angry, he's livid over the plan. His main criticism is
that Obama wants to pull out
— regardless of what
the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is
happening on the ground —
which is actually
a very popular position among the American people.
In an email
correspondence with a conservative, the fellow asked me how I justified
supporting the Inky columnist Trudy Rubin. I replied "Rubin ain't no Molly Ivins."
As if to prove that, Rubin produces an, uh, interesting column today.
She suggested that Iraq was a problem for Barack Obama, ignoring
the fact that it's a major problem for
his rival McCain and her
suggestion that "...Iran and
the United States [want] to fight their battles on Iraqi soil" is just
plain bizarre. There's simply no evidence that either a vacuum would
be created by an
American withdrawal or that such a vacuum would be filled by Iran.
So now the
Bush Administration wants to reach a deal with Maliki bypassing
the Iraqi Parliament as well as the US Congress.
"He is trying to
figure out, just as we did, how you can set up an
agreement between the two and have it be legally binding," one official
said, "but not go through the legislative body."
Hang it up, guys! You've lost. I mean, c'mon, if you have to bypass both
legislative bodies to get an agreement, then that agreement won't be
worth the paper it's written on.
So legendary
journalist I.
F. Stone
got most of his scoops by digging through government records and by
quizzing reporters who had official access. He didn't have official
access and didn't go to press conferences himself and yet scooped the
press corps time and time again. How do reporters do when
they have plentiful, generous official access
to the McCain campaign? Well, er, um, not so hot, actually. The
American people would benefit by knowing the answers to many, many very
important questions that the reporters on McCain's campaign
bus/plane somehow never seem to get around to asking.
Traditional
media figure asks his exclusively
conservative panel if Obama has "lost his glow" at a time
when Obama's poll numbers are increasing and at a
time when McCain is stumbling. Ya think we could
perhaps ask McCain about his adviser's comment that
America's economic problems are all mental?
Huh? Maybe?
Here's an amusing
one: Mark Penn (Who supervised Hillary Clinton's failed
Democratic primary campaign) and Karen Hughes (Who supervised
Bush's failed attempt to market America
to the Muslim world) now team up to rescue "corporations in
crisis." Yeah, I'll buy stock in that
"neat adventure."
McCain engages
in eliminationist
language. Apparently, he thinks it's just hilarious
to speak of the mass killing of Iranian citizens. The really
sad part is that:
Reporters
Dismiss McCain’s Iran ‘Joke’ As Part Of His ‘Real Guy’ Persona
I mean, Good Lord people! Don't we have any
standards of morality left?!?!?
Well, the
Democrats lived
down to our worst
expectations by caving
in on FISA. The piece at this
link
expresses puzzlement as to how "caving in" can be interpreted by
Democrats as "showing strength," but they seem to believe that it does.
Jane Hamsher of FDL has some good
words of wisdom for how to respond (And it's not
to put all our chips on Ralph Nader).
Ooh! Very
serious news!
Sounds like the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani may oppose Bush's
proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that's intended to
allow US troops to remain in Iraq after the UN mandate expires at the
end of 2008. Very, very bad
news for Americans who wish for US troops to remain in Iraq
for, essentially, forever (*cough* McCain *cough*)
The BBC runs a
show "debunking" 9-11 Truth theories. Results
are more amusing than convincing.
Jonah Goldberg
compares Obama's
suggested student national service (50 hours a year for high
school students, 100 hours a year for college students) to...get this...slavery!!1!1!
As though students have never been required to do anything prior to
this.
I can't wait for
Jonah Goldberg's sudden discovery that some children are told -- told!!
-- to clean their
rooms.
Prime Minister
Nouri
al -Maliki of Iraq appears
to want the US to go home! US, of course, says
"Don't be silly, we're not going anywhere." Actually, the full
statement was:
In a rebuff to the
Mr al-Maliki the Pentagon said any timetable would be
articifical and withdrawal would depend on conditions on the ground.
Close enough. BTW, American citizens
couldn't care less
what "conditions on the ground" are, they want US troops to come home
by majorities of 55% to 65%, depending on who's doing the
polling.
Hmm. Very,
very interesting!
Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security both now
and back when Hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans, can't seem to find has
calendar for 30 Aug 05!
A columnist
from our local paper writes a love letter to John McCain. My answer.
Mr Ferris essentially argued that McCain has not changed his position
on immigration due to his unyielding sense of right and wrong. My
reading is that McCain's position is a bit more flexible than that and
that his stand on the issue has changed more over time than Ferris'
view suggests.
Sweden
appears to have passed a law similar to what Bush & Co would
like for the US. Swedes
aren't very happy about it. Businesspeople especially are
displeased as their customers are going to feel their privacy has been
lost.
Oh,
pu-u-u-leeeezze! The summer sun must
be getting to some people:
Wouldn't George W.
Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher?
I have a hard time thinking of people less
qualified!
Controversial
piece in the Inquirer gets lots and lots of online comments. Examination of
two letters in response.
A number of rather highly
suspicious things concerning the return of Ingrid Betancourt
from a several-year long captivity in South America. Also: Was McCain the
bagman?
Obama explains
his position on FISA (3316 comments as of 11:30pm 5 Jul,
piece was posted at 5:00pm 3 Jul). Assessment
as to how useful and truthful his explanation is. Conclusion: inadequate.
The subsection
of the MyBarackObama site that urges Obama not
to support the current FISA bill is now the largest subsite
there. [Warning, if you want to sign up for
the sub-site, it allows one to choose "daily digest" vs
"individual messages," as the digest contains up to 100+ messages per
day, I recommend "daily digest."]
Survey of the
North Korean nuclear cluster**** where Kim Jong Il got pretty
much everything he wanted
in exchange for pretty much nothing. The US got some pretty pictures of
a cooling tower being destroyed, but the hard-line right-wingers are
right, as John Bolton said: “I think it’s actually a clear victory for
North Korea."
So, it turns
out that "harsh interrogation practices" (i.e. torture) that
the US was using on prisoners was based on Chinese
communist torture manuals! Uh, slight problem with that.
Those techniques weren't designed to produce
truth, they were designed to get false confessions.
I've been
having an email
conversation with a conservative who says (Among many other things):
"My big issue is less govt." Well, what exactly does that mean in
practice? This
piece estimates that the US needs to spend at least $1
trillion
in order to bring our transportation infrastructure back into shape
after a quarter-century of Republican "small government" philosophy.
That's the meaning of small, cheap government!
June
It really,
really helps to put
Wesley Clark's words in context before concluding that he
made a boo-boo. 'Cause yeah, "The
Village" is sure going at that comment! Hissy
fits galore!
No! The
Iraq War was about oil?!?! Geddoudahere!!! Nah, really?!?!
Number of
good, deepthink
posts on the tension
between Barack Obama's position
on FISA and support
for his candidacy
on the left generally. Here's the group profile of the MyBarackObama
subgroup that asks Obama not to support the FISA bill (HR 6304)
as it now stands:
Senator Obama - we
are a proud group of your supporters who believe in
your call for hope and a new kind of politics. Please reject the
politics of fear on national security, vote against this bill and lead
other Democrats to do the same!
[The sub-site allows one to choose "daily digest" vs
"individual messages," as the digest contains up to 100+ messages per
day, I recommend "daily digest."]
My personal take on Presidential candidates is that we have to see our
relationship with them as a partnership. He does something wrong, we
say so. Something right, we say so. Praise and blame as they're
deserved. Let's not toss out the baby with the bathwater and dump
somebody who is better than the opposition, especially
when the opposition has the traditional media firmly
in his corner.
Six U.S. Senators
maintained
their
refusal to support the troops by
voting against the new GI Bill yesterday. One (John McCain)
refused to support the
troops by simply not voting.
My last post
was a tad
premature. FISA
isn't completely done for. There will be a vote on July 8th. Remember:
The Democrats passed
the
FISA
bill,
which provides immunity for the telecoms that cooperated with the
National Security Agency's illegal surveillance over the past six
years. This bill, which when signed means we will never know the extent
of the Bush White House's violation of our civil liberties, is expected
to be adopted by the Senate. Barack Obama has promised to sign it in
the name of national security. The bill gives the U.S. government a
license to eavesdrop on our phone calls and e-mails. It demolishes our
right to privacy.
It endangers the work of journalists,
human rights
workers, crusading lawyers and whistle-blowers who attempt to expose
abuses the government seeks to hide.
Contact your Senators!!!
Well, FISA's
pretty much done
for. Senate voted for cloture, which is the really critical
vote. There's a slim
possiblity that things could
turn around, but frankly, it seems to be all over except for
some kabuki preening and prancing.
The ACLU
presents "Major David J. R.
Frakt's Closing
Argument in Favor of Dismissal of the Case Against Mohammad
Jawad." Strongly recommended reading! The last
four paragraphs are especially heartening. Makes me proud to be an
American!
Oo-er! Not
really sure what this
means! Russia gets involved in Afghanistan?!?!?
Wow! How can
the Bush Administration be any less
competent?!?!? The fellow who was put in charge of
an Arabic-language TV station couldn't
speak Arabic! As a result, the station was transmitting
merrily away and he had no idea what was being
said over the air! And gee, wow, surprise, surprise,
the station said a lot of stuff they shouldn't
have been saying.
David Broder
makes an infuriating
argument:
“McCain
benefits from a
long-established reputation as a man who says what he believes,” writes
Broder. “His shifts in
position that have occurred in this campaign seem not to have damaged
that aura." (emphasis in blog post)
Well, duh! "The Village" (Popular blog
name for the Washington DC press corps) runs nothing but favorable news
about McCain. They positively refuse to run
anything negative about the man!
Worrisome bill
making its way through Congress.
H.
Con. Res. 362
Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to
international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital
national security interests of the United States by Iran's pursuit of
nuclear weapons and regional hegemony, and for other purposes.
More
details
Anne Ewing says:
Basic
intent is to authorize a blockade and search policy in the waters
around Iran without U.N participation, which could be construed as very
provocative, and might precipitate fighting. Since
Ahmadinejad is on
very shaky ground at home, what is the point here?
it
is very early in the process and
the bill might not go anywhere at all, but the sponsorship is alarming.
As of 21 June, the bill has 146 co-sponsors.
Best explanation
I've seen for Barack Obama's surrender
on FISA. Good
comment:
Either way, no good
comes from lending uncritical support to a
political leader, or cheering them on when they do bad and destructive
things, or using twisted rationalizations to justify their full-scale
assault on your core political values.
And let's please remember: No, the FISA bill voted in on the 20th of
June was not a meaningful compromise as the other side got all
they wanted while our side got nothing.
Obama went back on his core argument. His claim was that we had to find
a new way to talk about national security. This was not
the way to do it.
Wall St
Journal serves up a big,
steaming pile of nonsense concerning the Boumediene
case (That gives habeas corpus rights to
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay).
And very, very interesting. Prisoners have been held at Gitmo for a
number of
years, but now that the evidence to hold them may have to undergo review
by civilian courts, all
of the sudden,
US asks to rewrite
evidence against Guantanamo detainees ahead of court review
Gee! Amazing how that happens!
Looks like the
court in charge of hearing habeas corpus
petitions from Guantanamo Bay prisoners isn't
wasting any time getting the roughly 200 cases ready for
trial.
Rush Limbaugh
describes what
makes Iowa's response to its' flooding different from New
Orleans in late August 2005. Problem is, his description:
I don’t see a bunch
of people running around waving guns at
helicopters, I don’t see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I
don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street.
didn't happen in New Orleans! These problems
existed only in the overactive imaginations of
overly paranoid white people!
A World Public
Opinion poll says that Bush is
trusted to do the right thing
by just 2%. That's double the number who trust Pervez Musharraf
(Pakistan), two-thirds the score that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran at 3%)
got, but less than half of those who trust Vladimir Putin (Russia at
5%) and Hu Jintao (China, also at 5%).
On Friday, 890
Afghanis broke
free from jail, 390 of them were Taliban. Afghanistan is threatening to
go into Pakistan to retrieve the escapees. Pakistan is less
than thrilled about the prospect.
The proposed
SOFA for Iraq is pretty
much dead, thank goodness! Booman Tribune awards its own Wanker
of the Day award to the WaPo, which confuses Iraq with Japan
& South Korea.
Happy, happy,
joy, joy!! The US Constitution is affirmed!
Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay do indeed have habeas corpus
rights, thus
affirming a 900-year-old right. Bush's right-wing
revolution appears dead. That
doesn't mean the prisoners all get to go free, of course.
Reaction in
Iraq to the
proposed US bases in that country:
...the US is
lowering the number of bases it wants from 58 to "the low
dozens" and says it is willing to compromise on legal immunity for
foreign contractors...
-----------
The new deal between Iraq and the US is in theory a "status of forces
agreement", which the US already has with more than 80 other countries,
but, in practice, it is a manoeuvre by the US administration to avoid
calling the agreement a treaty which, under US law, would then have to
be submitted to the Senate.
A look at the fundamentally
deceptive terms used by the US to describe what it seeks in
Iraq.
Dennis
Kucinich read
out his impeachment resolution for four hours on the 11th.
Several groups endorsed his resolution. Asked on the 13th about where
it goes from here, Kucinich
replies:
We can’t let this
president wage war and kill more people in violation
of international law, in violation of the Geneva Convention[s]. His
conduct has been totally in alignment with violating the Nuremberg
Principles. We need to hold him to account.
*Sigh!* Oh
well, Barack
Obama says:
Look. I am a
pro-growth, free-market guy.
I love the market.
More evidence that Obama and McCain see eye-to-eye
on economic issues.
Does that mean that there's no difference between the candidates?
Looking at the decision on habeas corpus
rights
for Guantanamo prisoners, no, the difference between them is absolutely
night and day. Yes, we should support Obama for president despite
his economic views.
US wants
the ability to "...
define what is an
aggression on Iraq..." In other words, to justify an
attack on Iran after having decided that something or other they did
constitutes aggression. Negotiations are outright
collapsing.
Granted,
I'm a bit of a computer geek, but this is pretty amazing. McCain
doesn't do his own computing, he leaves that up to his wife. Okay,
fine. Gotta delegate a few things, but he
doesn't even know whether she uses a Mac or a PC! Y'know, a
president has to be somewhat
literate on computers!
Rep
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) presents
a five-hour speech on his resolution to impeach Bush (Clerks
of the House had to read it all again, taking another
five hours). Resolution referred to committee by 251-166 vote.
The Senate's
Phase 2 report - how our local paper covered it (Not well).
VP Cheney's
daughter Liz threatens
Iran. Says: "The
time for diplomacy here is rapidly coming to an end.“
Fox News wonders
...whatever happened
to the recession? I thought we were in a recession; you don’t hear
that. It hasn’t happened.
'Fraid to tell ya, but with five straight
months of job losses, we are definitely
in a recession!
Seriously now,
people, Iran
is not a threat. The comparison of Iran to Nazi Germany is
just plain ridiculous.
John McCain's secret
plan to win in November: Get 25% of the African-American
vote! Of course, Bush's share of that vote was an anemic 11%!
The reviews of
Hillary Clinton's concession speech reminds me of the Shakespeare
line:
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it.
According to the Carpetbagger
Report, Clinton's speech was superb:
If there was any
doubt about the grace and class we’d see from her
today, Hillary Clinton showed this afternoon what she’s really made of.
I’ve been watching her for years, and this was as great as I’ve seen
her, ending on a high note.
Heck, Clinton goes even further and adopts
Obama's rhetoric! Still further congratulations.
McCain flip-flops
on whether or not it's okay for the President to break the
law. Apparently, it's a bad thing as a general principle, but okay when
it comes to warrantless wiretapping.
Another reason
as to why there should be term limits for pundits - David Broder, the
"dean" of the press corps, comments on Bush's many crimes, including
the illegal
propaganda that he carried out over the course of many years:
You'll have to
forgive me, but I am reluctant to see every big policy dispute turned
into a criminal or impeachable affair.
Erm, 'scuse me, but propaganda, giving American
citizens what purports to be news or opinion without telling
them that it comes directly from the government, is illegal
according to the Appropriations Acts and the Anti-Deficiency
Act.
Despite the brave
talk from die-hard Hillary
Clinton supporters, Clinton announced
that she was
suspending
her campaign and supporting Barack Obama for President. She's scheduled
to make the announcement Saturday in New York state.
Obama finally wraps
it up! He's now the first African-American major party
candidate ever. DLC is of course annoyed because they're
going down the tubes right along with Hillary Clinton.
Clinton offers
to be vice-president. Ugh! I'd rather see her promoted to Supreme Court
Justice or some prominent cabinet position than to the vice-presidency.
Having her as VP would conflict with Obama's message of change and
would drag in all of the 90s baggage, all the DLCs failed strategies,
yuck!
Excellent advice
on how Obama should approach his upcoming visit to Iraq.
1. Try to meet with a broad range of leaders, including Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani.
2. Visit the Iraqi exile community in Jordan.
3. Focus on what Iraqis want rather than just on
hollow, meaningless platitudes about "victory" (Which no one seems to
be able to define anyway).
4. Above all, avoid the "Dukakis trap," no wearing of any type of
military garb.
Msy
Is Barack
Obama an "apostate"?
In other words, was he a Muslim at any point in his life and did he
then reject Islam in favor of Christianity? Do Muslims in any of the 40
nation-states that have Muslim governments even regard
Obama as an apostate? The answer to all three questions is an
unequivocal "No."
McCain, the
"experienced one," "the professional," "the expert," flubs
a point on troop strength in Iraq,
stating that troops were now down to "pre-surge levels." Er, not quite.
Troop strength was 130,000 before the "surge" and is 155,000 now.
Update:
Obama slams McCain:
...you'd think that
Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake
and move on. But he couldn't do that. Instead, he dug in. And the
disturbing thing is that we've seen this movie before -- a leader who
pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course...
McClatchey
Newspapers responds to McClellan's candor and criticism of the press
corps by confirming that, yes, we have a corrupt
and decadent press corps that miserably failed the American
people.
Awhile back, a
blogger looked at the Politico's admission of error and I
wondered how sincere their admission was and how much would
actually change there. Well, according
to the same blogger, not much. One of their head people, Mike
Allen was asked about his phrase "left wing haters" and he responded:
"...you can call them 'critics' or 'skeptics' or 'opponents' or
whatever."
'Cuz, y'know, it's all the same.
Especially amusing was the assertion
by one of their columnists, Daniel Paul Kuhn, that
"GOP operatives were excited about the prospects of McCain winning in a
'blowout.' "
Um, okay. Considering that Michelle
Obama oudrew both Bush & McCain in
McCain's home state, su-u-ure, that's likely.
Bush ‘Plans
Iran Air Strike by August’
from Asia Times. Bush Administration wants to follow up last
September's declaration that the Quds Force of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is a terrorist unit by bombing the
IRGC headquarters.
Former White
House spokesperson Scott McClellan writes
a harsh history of his fomer employer. A blogger tries to
figure out when
a reported meeting took place. McClellan tries
mightily to absolve Bush of any wrongdoing, but
that's just impossible as Bush had to have known what was
going on.
Update: Jessica Yellin confirms that there
was heavy corporate pressure applied to tell pro-Bush,
pro-war stories.
*Sigh!* Poor Rachael
Ray,
Dunkin' Donuts spokesperson, wore what the company described as a
"black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design," but Michelle Malkin
described it as a "...keffiyeh...the traditional scarf of Arab men that
has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad." Dunkin' Donuts
surrendered and pulled the ad where Ms Ray wore the offending
item.
Update: Dunkin' Donuts contact
information and further historical information on the
kaffiyah/keffiyah.
Truly, truly
repugnant and disgusting! Fox News person "jokingly"
"confuses" Obama and Osama and then suggests she'd
like to see both of them dead.
Full
contact information here.
Karl Rove issues
non-denial denial.
George Stephanopoulos discusses the Don Siegelman selective prosecution
case and (to Rove) "He says your fingerprints were all over it." What's
really puzzling is why
the press corps seems to think Rove is some sort of genius or
why they even consider him to be someone they want their names
associated with.
Indiana's voter
ID law,
approved by the Supreme Court on 28 April is declared by legal scholar
Jeffery Toobin to be "...a very clear attempt by Republicans to stop
Democrats from voting." Adding: "The real agenda was to help
Republicans."
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!!!
President Bush and Senator John McCain were
going to hold a joint fundraiser
at the Phoenix AZ Convention Center. Lack of interest
resulted in
too few ticket sales, which led to the fear that protesters would
outnumber attendees. The event was moved to a private residence.
First Lady
Laura Bush, the Myanmar/Burma junta and their dealings with Cylcone
Nargis - an update: Laura Bush backs down a bit on her
criticism
of the junta, but still very brittle and defensive about her earlier
comments, points out that other countries have been critical as well.
Well yes Mrs Bush, but your husband has already started a
war based on lies about how he had to protect America,
meaning
other nations are hyper-sensitive about Americans who criticize them!
''For the
humanitarian purpose, you have to put politics aside and
say unequivocally that we want to help,'' said Joel Charny, vice
president for policy at Refugees International, a Washington-based
advocacy group. ''We know the Burmese generals are going to be
suspicious. We shouldn't be taking an approach that's going to make it
more likely that backs get up and doors remain closed."
I have to say
I completely agree with this. I find it absolutely sickening for
someone on a national TV show to
call the other Democratic presidential candidate a "bitch"
and to have all the other guests act as if nothing out of the ordinary
just occurred. What is wrong
with these people?!?!?
Now this
is truly silly! Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of 75,000. The event also
included a band, The Decembrists (No, I've never heard of them either),
so a fellow from the right-wing Media Research Center wonders darkly
"How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear
the band?"
Well, let's see, the last concert the band played (May
3rd) was to a room that held a little under 800 people. An upcoming
concert where the band will share the venue with two other bands will
play to about 8000. So the answer then, is "Not many."
Jerusalem Post
describes how Bush
wants to attack Iran before his term is up. Includes White
House denial. Also from the JPost: Russian
envoy is very unenthusiastic about a nuclear-armed Iran, but
neither does he like the idea of a joint US/Israeli attack on that
country. He also strongly urges that the IAEA be kept engaged and
active inside Iran.
A look at just
how powerful Iran's president is. (Hint: Not very)
Oh, good
grief! Hillary Clinton quotes Karl
Rove's endorsement of her!
Hang it up HRC, you've lost!
Daily Kos concluded back
in February that she couldn't possibly win. Look
at the crowd Obama's getting and tell me that HRC still has a
chance.
White House
transcript of interview that got
the President really, really upset. Video
of same. The White House's intemperate
reaction. The reaction
against NBC News
stands out for its angry tone and its accusation that
the news division deceptively and deceitfully edited the president's
words.
Keith Olbermann's broadside
against Bush may have be one of the factors upsetting him.
FEC deadlock,
after five months, finally
broken! The Federal Election Commission has been without any
authority to resolve campaign laws being broken because they haven't
had a quorum. Hans von Spakovsky has been the problem as Democrats have
absolutely refused to seat him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was
unusually blunt:
Democrats stood
united in their opposition to von Spakovsky because of
his long and well-documented history of working to suppress the rights
of minorities and the elderly to vote. He was not qualified
to hold any
position of trust in our government.
[emphasis added]
Von Spakovsky withdrew his nomination to the FEC.
A reporter
from the WaPo reveals
his true stance on "Saint" John "Maverick" McCain. During an online
chat, after 5 out of 11 questions centered on McCain, Jonathan
Weisman said:
Oy, what’s with all
the McCain questions? Anyone wondering about those Miley Cyrus photos
anymore?
Later, when a more comfortable question came in:
Ah, thank goodness
someone in chatting land is a Republican.
Not that there's anything with reporters having political preferences.
It's just good for us citizens to know that so that we know where
they're
coming from.
Man! Good
news breaking out all over!!
Well, the US thought
that it could present evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq. Oops!
Turns out that the weapons captured in Karbala and Basra that the US
thought came from Iran actually don't. The US media has prevented the
US government from being embarrassed, though.
But for the media
blackout of the story, the large EFP discovery in Karbala would have
further undermined the credibility of the US military's line on Iran's
export of the EFPs to Iraqi fighters.
Apparently understanding the potential political difficulties that the
Karbala EFP find could present, Bergner omitted any reference to them
in his otherwise accurate accounting of the Karbala weapons
Excellent
overview of just what it is that the US is facing in Iraq. Iraq
is not a state, there are and will be no "turning points" and
without a militia that's personally loyal to him, Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki is essentially a figurehead. What we're facing there is
called Fourth
Generation Warfare (4GW). What's really sad is that America's
"enemy," Muqtada al-Sadr, is actually Iraq's best hope for eventually
coalescing into a state.
Why IS
gas so expensive these days? Not that the media will tell you this, but
it's
the war. The deficits created by fighting a war on a credit
card is the main culprit.
Okay, Homeland
Security, specifically Customs, is getting way,
wa-a-a-ay outta control!
An Italian fellow who had a romantic relationship with an American
woman and was visiting for the umpteenh time was detained because
Customs suspected he was trying to work illegally inside the US! By
detained, we mean he was kept locked away for 10 days!!
The absolutely ludicrous aspect is that they told the American woman
that he had to be kept incommunicado from her because he
feared an assassination attempt from Italy!!!
Naturally, he's denied he ever said anything of the sort. Oh, and
Customs can download any electronic data you're carrying and keep it
forever.
Representative
John Conyers (D-MI, Judiciary Committee Chairman) wants citizens to
join him in declaring that attacking
Iran = impeachment.
Right-wing
blogger claims that lefties
are ignoring Bush's warning
that disaster will follow an American withdrawal from Iraq. Problem is
of course, that all of the dire warnings he presents are entirely
hypothetical and unprovable until after a withdrawal actually occurs. A
lot of the dire warnings concern events that are occurring anyway, like
the refugee crisis that's swamping nearby countries.
In an insult
to every man and woman who truly sacrificed for the Iraq War, Bush
claims to have given up golf "for the duration."
Actually, he appears to have quit for medical reasons, but he has shown
an astonishing
capacity for not understanding the real meaning of sacrifice.
Reality check
- yes, the presidential contest is important, but there are deep,
serious issues the next president must face, no matter who it
is. But keep in mind that, despite the Republican attempt at
"rebranding," they're
the same old party that's been behind GW Bush for the past 7+
years.
*Sigh!* Doug
Feith, the "stupidest
[effing] guy on the face of the planet,"
writes a book in which he attempts to pass off a revisionist history of
the last few years, especially late 2002-early 2003, the six months
before the Iraq War. Best rebuttal, of course, is the record of the 935 Bush
Administration lies
that preceded the Iraq War.
Very
interesting commentary on the Bush Administration and their attitude on
rhetoric
vs reality. Yeah, they really seemed to have thought they
could just sorta wave their hands and make their own reality.
Bush’s emphasis on
the inherent
hunger for freedom is
powerful. ... It
puts his liberal opponents in a tight spot, because it is awkward for
them to object to the kind of sweeping universalism they have always
embraced. ...
The problem with Bush’s freedom rhetoric is that it
appears to not be true.
The media and
the electorate - is
the Clinton-supporting electorate annoyed
with the media's declaration that Obama has won the nomination? Sure
looks that way. The blog Crooks & Liars says: "The on-line
community is solidly behind Obama," (So am I, says your wemaster Rich)
so it's good to keep in mind that Clinton supporters have been highly
reactive to signs that Clinton is being
disrespected.
So it looks
like the Republicans will have their own "Ralph Nader 2000" this
election cycle. Bob
Barr is running on the Libertarian ticket! Yee Hah! Go, Bob,
go!!
Sadr City,
Baghdad to be "cleansed"?
Are Bush and Petraeus preparing another Second Battle of
Fallujah? That's the one that started immediately after the
2004 election and that turned Fallujah into a reeking charnel-house.
Update on Burma/Myanmar
in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. The junta is handling things better
than US
commentators think.
John Holmes, the
former British ambassador to France... said
co-operation from Myanmar authorities was "reasonable and heading in
the right direction."
How the
television news military analyst program worked. A look at how the
analysts dealt with the Guantanamo
Bay prisoner PR problem that arose with Amnesty International's report
on conditions there. CNN sent a military analyst down to Gitmo, where
he spent a grand total of three hours looking
into the situation and then declared that prisoners were being
well-treated and had nothing to complain about.
Essentially, the military reported on the military and gave itself a
clean bill of health.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promises
hearings into the situation.
Good summary
of the
fighting in Lebanon and how it came to happen. The official
Lebanese government, dominated by Sunni Muslims & the Druze,
demanded that Hezbollah (Which represents Lebanon's Shiites.
Lebanese Christians are split between the two.) surrender the
fiber-optic phone grid that they had built in reponse to Israel jamming
their cell phones during the 2006 war. This appears to be a typical Bush
Administration negotiating approach. "Give up what it is that
gives you an advantage in return for nothing." Hezbollah responded by
taking over Beirut, the Lebanese Army backed Hezbollah, things have now
settled down a bit with the central government having been embarrassed
and weakened.
A reminder of
some long-ago history: The Bush Administration was adamantly opposed to
the International Criminal Court (ICC) long
before the Iraq war began.
According to the records, President Bush signed the Executive Order
authorizing torture in February 2002 and then officially pulled out of
the ICC in May 2002.
The House
Judiciary Committee is preparing
to question several Bush Administration members on policies
concerning torture. The
ACLU has a page set up for citizens to contribute questions
the House can ask. Committee discovers that there is no "ticking time bomb"
that justifies torture.
The Burmese /
Myanmar government defends
itself against Laura Bush's criticisms:
"Ye Htut, a Burmese
government spokesman, also accused the first lady
of politicizing the tragedy. 'I would like to say that what we are
doing is better than the Bush administration response to the Katrina
storm in 2005, if you compare the resources of the two countries,' he
told reporters."
The link where one can contribute to the relief effort is here.
Is Laura playing the part of GeeDubya Bush's beard?
The Inky
presents a very incomplete and sanitized version of First Lady Laura
Bush's remarks on the Myanmar junta's moral failings that led to the
deaths of over 10,000 citizens (As of 11:50pm
on 7 May, the official toll was 22,500, but that number could
grow to as high as 100,000). Dan Froomkin of the WaPo gives us the
complete version. Hooo-weee! If I were a member of that
junta, I'd be SO
annoyed at having this moralistic scold lecturing me from several
thousand miles away!! Ooh! Would that tick me off!!!
And for her to immedately switch over to talking about her daughter's
wedding...wooo!
I
have nothing good to say about Myanmar's junta, but there's a way to
get influence and leverage and instead, the Bushes demonstrate all the
grace and subtlety of a charging rhinoceros!
Michael Gordon
of the NY
Times charges that Iran is killing American soldiers in Iraq
by training Iraqi insurgents, using Hezbollah personnel as trainers.
Problem: ALL of the
information is second-hand, NONE
of the information is verified by non-deeply-compromised sources.
Yeesh! Even
Joe Lieberman is unable to find out what the governmen is up
to concerning their plans for the internet. Apparently, the government
wants to:
...be
able to turn the net into a controllable, monitorable and trackable
pre-internet AOL-type service...
Seriously, the
fact that Republicans lost a seat in Louisiana, a seat
they've held since 1974, and that they had poured
about $1 million into scary, scary ads that screamed about
how Cazayoux was "too liberal" and how he "supported higher taxes" and
how he was connected to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama,
means that it looks like that
dog just don't hunt no more. In fact, linking candidates to
President Bush seems to be the kiss
of death for them.
The 50+ year
old* Star Wars/Missile Defense/ABM/Whatever
program proceeds merrily
along with spokespeople
refusing to answer questions about whether or not the program
actually works.
"…. I'm sure, Mr.
Chairman, you would not want us to transmit in an
open hearing to enemies around the world – Iran and North Korea – any
kind of data that they could take advantage of in trying to overcome
the system for the future," Gen. Obering replied. "I know you wouldn't
want to do that."
*This is assuming that the period from the 1972 ABM
Treaty
to Reagan's 1983 revival of "Star Wars" can be counted as an "on spec"
period, where private companies kept spending on the program,
anticipating a revival of it.
Well, well,
well! One of the
George Bushes, either te elder or the younger, purchased a 100,000 acre
ranch down in Paraguay in 2006. Insurance, perhaps? Someplace to go if
people suggested holding the younger Bush accountable for his many
crimes? In any event, it seems the Bushes
may not be as safe
from the international community as Klaus Barbie, Josef Mengele and
Adolf Eichmann were. Paraguay is now being run by "a former Roman
Catholic Bishop with leftist, populist tendencies, Fernando Lugo." Yup,
must be a lot of unhappiness and panicking in the White House!
On 24 Apr, it
was reported that the networks used retired generals as on-air military
analysts without admitting that they were still working for
the Pentagon. On 7 May, the
black-out continues.
Amazingly
enough, FISA appears to be an issue again, no thanks to the Blue
Dog Democrats. Blogs are busy raising money
to run ads in the districts of the worst of them.
Aw now, this
is truly
sad.
Nelson Mandela of South Africa found out he was on the terrorist watch
list and had to appeal to SecState Rice to get permission to enter the
US. Apparently, the designation is based on 20-25 year old information
and the list hasn't been adjustd to reflect political reality. The really
bad part of the story is that AIPAC is concerned that getting onto the
list should be a permanent
designation as they don't want members of Hamas ever
getting taken off the list.
Seems former
Governor Don Siegelman is also on a watch list
and also has restricted travel privileges. The author used a list for
determining whether a person in Russia is suffering corrupt political
persecution and Siegelman's rating is off the charts.
April
Wow! Hard to
believe that a government lawyer could put forth such an utterly
corrupt and administration-serving argument. Legal
analysis that demands careful reading in full.
Fierce fighting
in Baghdad.
TEHRAN,
April 30 (Xinhua) -- Iran had totally removed
U.S. dollars in the country's oil transactions, an Oil Ministry
official said on Wednesday.
Very
questionable piece on the Iranian general who commands the Quds Force
(A group that was denounced by Bush in February 2007.
Bush's very first accusation was that Iran is supplying IEDs to Iraqi
insurgents, a highly
questionable charge.) that starts off reasonably enough but quickly
descends into flat-out disinformation.
Concerning
Russ Feingold's (D-WI) hearing
on secret laws, specifically John Yoo's memo on torture:
J. WILLIAM LEONARD:
Would like to focus most of his testimony of the
OLC memo that was discussed earlier. Classification of this document
was the worst abuse of classification that he can recall in his long
career -- it had no impact on sources, methods or other national
security concerns, it was pure legal analysis. Classifying this was an
abuse of power, and it was appallingly done by the Deputy at the OLC
who has the power within the government to make those sorts of
decisions.
Republican rebuttal:
DAVID RIVKIN: I want
to put the so-called "secret law" into its proper
context. Blah blah blah long-term war with scary terrorists booga booga
booga.
Initial
reactions on Supreme Court's voter suppression approval - C&L01
C&L02
Marvelous
piece by Elizabeth
Edwards on presidential campaign and how journalists have
covered it (Very poorly).
At the White
House Correspondents Association dinner, Bush takes a "victory lap." But what is
the victory he's celebrating?
A Wall St
Journal editorial tries to argue that John
Yoo's legal torture opinion is inconsistent with
international law, but not with US domestic law. Wrong
answer! Torture violates all kinds of
laws going back many centuries. Very interesting
sentence:
Criminal
investigators may well conclude that this act joined John Yoo
in a joint criminal enterprise
with the persons who devised and pushed
implementation of the torture policies. [emphasis added]
John McCain is
not just breaking one pledge, he's
breaking two! He pledged not to use corporate jets (He uses
one belonging to his wife's company) and he pledged to pay the full
going rate (He pays first-class regular airline fare, about half as
much as his private-jet airfare actually costs).
Very interestingly, he's been using a private jet since last summer for
his campaign travel and nobody from the traditional media
has noticed?!?!?
"Informed
reader" examines the case that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor was
"nearly complete." The verdict: Not
very likely.
Lot's of
choices out there!
Six-term Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney is running for president on the Green
Party ticket and Cindy Sheehan is running for Speaker
Nancy Pelosi's seat.
Good piece on
the slightly
-below-the-surface qualities that separate
Barack Obama from Hillary Clinton. I especially agreed with the first
distinction, that Clinton is a creature of the DLC, whereas Obama is
strongly committed to the Howard Dean 50-state strategy.
About two
& a half years after a combination of Hurricane Katrina and
official neglect devastated New Orleans, John
McCain has no idea what to do about the city.
"I really don't
know," he finally said. "That's why I am going ... We
need to go back to have a conversation about what to do: rebuild it,
tear it down, you know, whatever it is."
[emphasis added]
Many questions
as to why the Bush Administration is now, after several months, talking
about the Israeli bombing of a site in Syria. Representative
Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) felt the Intelligence Committee (of
which he is the Senior Republican) was "used" by the White House in
finally making public the "evidence"
that North Korea was assisting Syria in building a nuclear power plant,
just in time to "scuttle the
six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program." Of
course, VP Cheney and former UN representative John
Bolton are absolutely
delighted that the "North Korea 3.0" policy has failed.
Back in February, Seymour Hersh
contributed real
reporting on the story (As opposed to what the rest of the
press corps usually does).
Former
Attorney General John Ashcroft goes absolutely bonkers over
a student who dares, dares, I tell you, to confront the man
with (gasp, shudder) facts and logic! According
to the Fmr Atty Gen, there is a vitally important distinction
between "forcing" water down someone's throat and between "pouring"
water down their throat (while the subject is physically restrained and
their mouth is held open).
Question:
Did the Bush tax cuts of 2001 ever pay for themselves? Did they spark
enough productivity in the economy to stimulate earnings enough so that
the extra tax receipts made up for cutting the tax rate in the first
place? Nope.
The tax cuts cost the government over $1.1 trillion.
Bush aides' argument that the tax cuts aided
the economy is composed of sheer wishful
thinking. Oh hey, didya know that we're not in a recession?
No, y'see, we're in a slowdown.
Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket!
Editor
& Publisher covers
the NY Times story about retired military personnel appearing
on
news shows and giving "objective" and "knowledgable" testimony on the
war that, strangely enough, mirrored Bush Administration propaganda
more or less word for word. The Pentagon’s
military/media cabal placed "at least" nine op-eds in the NY Times and
they served as frequent sources for quotes. The whole operation has
been described as classic "psyops."
The question remains: Is the NY Times doing
penance?
Update: Doesn't seem to
be much interest in the story. Most
media outlets very, very quiet on their role in it.
Distinguished contributor to reporting the tale: Comedy
Central! Amy Goodman's Democracy
Now has also contributed a report.
Gotta say, Hillary
Clinton just keeps digging herself a bigger and bigger hole. Now she's
insulted the members of MoveOn, an organization that
was created to defend her husband back in 1998.
The organization's Action Team member Eli Pariser, claims that MoveOn
did not oppose the invasion of Afghanistan, but Sourcewatch quotes an
online campaign (that collected 30,000 signatures compared to an August
2002
petition against the Iraq War that collected 220,000
signatures)
that sounds an awful lot like opposition.
If not the "best quote ever," well, it's a
pretty strong contender.
Commentary
on the Obama-Clinton
"debate." Absolutely disgraceful exhibition by
ABC. Clinton doesn't come off very well, either. Glenn
Greenwald and Digby explain why
our press is so shallow and frivilous.
Chris Matthews
"gets
tough" with John McCain:
...we've had enough
softball, Senator. It's
time for the show to start here." Matthews continued: "Let me ask
you a tough one here. We've done the Abu Ghraib stuff. We're
getting to the domestic Abu Ghraib here. Is [Sen.] Barack Obama an
elitist?"
Excellent post from Juan
Cole today. Too much to try and summarize.
Pope says Iraq
War is without justification.
It is perhaps
paradoxical that in this grave international crisis the Holy See finds
itself in a diplomatic and political position closer to the
Social-Democratic Germany of Schroeder and the orthodox Russia of Putin
than to the America of George W. Bush. But this is precisely the
situation.
Summary of the left blogospher's reaction to the 16
April debate in Philadelphia: Hated
it!
Firedoglake and Digby get together to
get folks to send still more letters about the top
Bush people all approving of torture.
NY Times Book Review prints a very
disturbing review
that treats al Qaeda in an eerily similar manner to how the Nazis wrote
about the Jews (Acknowledging that, unlike the Jews, al Qaeda is a real
and serious threat).
I agree, whoever won the Clinton-Obama debate, ABC
News most definitely lost it. Talking about 60s radicals who
were active 40 years ago was clearly not worth even two
minutes, let alone the 10 or so they actually spent on them. It took 53
minutes into the debate to actually get into policy!
Yup!
That's the truth. We
love Mary Matalin! That Republican spokesperson is the most
wunnerful spokesperson for the Democrats since JFK! Please
keep her on!
MR. RUSSERT: Is Condi
Rice relevant?
MS. MATALIN: Con--you
know, what people don't know about Dr. Rice is
that she weighed in on every domestic issue before the president when...
Um, that's supposed to help!?!?! To be attached at the
waist with Mr
28% (as of 14Apr) while the economy is tanking? Gotta love it!
ACLU and Crooks & Liars blog combine
to demand an Independent Counsel for Bush's casual admission
that his administration has engaged in torture. Traditional media is still
extremely quiet about this! Yes, the WaPo did
have a story similar to this in January 2005, but it only
named officials as high as former AG Alberto Gonzales, before
he was named as AG. An examination of just
what resulted from torture discussions.
Side note: Alberto Gonzales is having
difficulty finding a job. Let's hear it now:
"Awwwww!"
I
initially included Presdent Bush in among the "principals" who had
approved specific torture techniques, then realized he wasn't
specifically named. Well,
now that's changed and he's admitted to knowing all about it.
Update: Media
reaction the next day was underwhelming. NY Times wasn't
featuring the story by 9:00am, WaPo put it on page A3 and ABC News
placed the story fourth underneath a picture of
cute puppies.
Kewl! Pope Benedict XVI apparently doesn't
want to enjoy a state dinner with an admitted
torturer!
Interesting to hear that the Bush Administration feels
that Jimmy
Carter shouldn't meet with Hamas (The legitimately -elected
leaders of the Palestinian people) because "Hamas is a terrorist
organization."
An analysis of Bush's
April 10th speech on Iraq. The main question was apparently
whether Bush instructed his speechwriters to be "mendacious or merely
shallow."
"Fifteen months ago,"
Bush said today, "extremists were sowing
sectarian violence; today, many mainstream Sunni and Shia are actively
confronting the extremists."
This is all very fine and well, but what exactly do the
very loaded and highly emotional words extremists
and mainstream mean? Remember, both Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's army and the rival Shiite militia of Muqtada
Sadr are given financing by and have good relations with Iran.
So
who's who?
Further
analysis.
Not looking good here. An especially worrisome statement from Bill
Kristol: "I think people are overdoing how much of a lame duck
the
president is." Reminds me uncomfortably of the 1989 "Wimp
factor" that the elder George Bush exorcised by invading
Panama!
Senator James Webb (D-VA) tries to pin down an
Administration spokesperson on
exactly what a "permanent base" is
(As the Bush Administration has pledged not to seek "permanent bases"
in Iraq) and hey, guess what? It's not at all clear what the term means!
Well,
it seems that VP Cheney, [then] NatSec
Advisor Rice,
SecState Powell, SecDef Don Rumsfeld, Atty Gen John Ashcroft and CIA
Dir George Tenet not only approved of torture, they
approved torture techniques in detail. Rice reportedly didn't
care. She told the CIA, after
the Yoo memo was made inoperative "This is your baby. Go do
it."
And it wasn't
just once: "Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly
sought confirmation
from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal. .
. ."
Hey Rapture-seekers, guess what? You're
too late!!! Bwah, ha, ha ....oh, that report was a fake? D'oh!
AP photographer Bilal Hussein has been held
by the US military in Iraq for nearly two years. Pretty much
as soon as Iraq had the right to decide whether or not to keep Hussein
in custody,
an Iraqi judicial committee decided to release him. No word
yet on whether he'll actually be released as the US military still has
physical custody of him. There are 24,000
other Iraqis in custody.
Muqtada al-Sadr calls
off million-man march scheduled for today (Anniversary of the
day Baghdad fell to the Americans).
Examination of John
McCain's "100 year war" comment. Is
it really inaccurate to say that McCain wants 100 years of fighting
and/or occupation in Iraq? 'Cause it sure looks like he does indeed
want that.
Crooks
& Liars has lots of good scenes from the General Petraeus /
Ambassador Crocker report, but it sounds here like Keith Olbermann got
the best summary of it. And why is Joe Lieberman's question
time counted
against the Democrat's time? I mean, considering he's moved
steadily to the Republican view of things, why isn't his time counted
against that side of the aisle?
Will the Mahdi Army (The militia that's under Muqtada
al-Sadr)
be disbanded? Those familiar with the situation say: "Hell
will freeze over first." BTW, there are 28
separate militias
in Iraq.
New National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) presented to
Congress. Democrats
highly suspicious
about why it doesn't say anything about recent disastrous Basra
offensive and why the Bush Administration doesn't appear to be in any
hurry to release a complete unclassified version as opposed to just
quoting the "good news" sections of it.
Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr
calls for million-man
march in Baghdad. To take place on the anniversary of the
fall of
Baghdad to American forces.
Former Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow insists
that
black is white and that up is actually down.
Snow tries to make believe that the recent fighting in Basra, the place
in which Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's troops delivered a butt-whupping to
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's troops, was actually a Maliki victory.
Commentary on all-too-clever
"gaffes" that all-too-conveniently serve the political purposes
of
the speaker. The commentary on Attorney General Michael Mukasey is one
that's especially
worth following
up on.
Thank
you ACLU!!
American citizens can finally view the 2003
John Yoo torture memo. Sure would have been nice to have
viewed them in 2003, when they could have made a real political
difference. Lawyer/blogger
Marty Lederman has a whole series of
observations, the first of which is:
Youngstown Sheet &
Tube Co. v.
Sawyer case, as this
IS a rather important Supreme Court decision concerning
presidential authority.
The memo in PDF format: Part
One, Part
Two It's 81 pages long.
It's
crystal clear that the campaign to clear the Iraqi city of Basra of
"lawless elements" i.e., Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, has
miserably failed. Prime Minister al-Maliki has come out
greatly weakened and al-Sadr plus his Iranian allies have come
out much stronger.
The
US Government
Accountability Office (GAO) has put out a report on contracts with the
Department of Defense. Money spent on those contracts since 2000 has
gone from $790 billion to $1.6 trillion. "but acquisition
outcomes in terms of cost and schedule have not improved."
Please contact
the Foriegn Relations Committee to urge them to have the
recently-relieved-of-duty Admiral Fallon testify on the need
to
avoid war with Iran.
March
We've heard ad
infinitum, ad nauseum,
about how President Bush compares himself to Harry Truman, who left
office as an unpopular President, but later became quite popular. The
Toronto Globe & Mail comes up with a really
devastating reply to that claim.
Well, it's not
quite Lam
Son 719,
the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) invasion of Laos that was
beat back by the North Vietnamese in 1971, but it must have been
humiliating for Bush & Cheney to see their
puppets in Iraq be defeated by Moqtada al-Sadr. Very
interestingly, Sadr directed that his people stop
attacking the HQs of rival political parties. Guess his
forces were doing lots and lots of damage.
Bush gets booed
throwing out the first pitch of the season.
At a campaign
speech, Bill
Clinton said:
And I think it would
be a great
thing if we had an election year where you had two people who love this
country and were
devoted to the interests of the
country, and people could actually ask themselves, who's
right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always
seems to
intrude itself on our politics.
Why, whatever could Bill mean by "all this other stuff"? Well, he was
probably referring to things like:
MSNBC then played a
short excerpt of Clinton's comments, while an on-screen
graphic read: "RACE & THE RACE."
What did Clinton's speech have to do with race? Absolutely
nothing. It was just something MSNBC threw in there. This
is precisely what Clinton meant by "all this other stuff!"
Sadrists open
New fronts throughout Shiite South
Former Governor Don
Siegelman of Alabama, released from prison today on
bond in a bribery case, said he was as convinced as ever that politics
played a leading role in his prosecution.
Siegelman smells
Karl Rove behind his prosecution.
Iran
called on Saturday for an end
to fighting between Iraqi government forces and Shi'ite
Muslim
militants to remove any "pretext" for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq.
Doesn't
look like things are going
too well for the offensive into Basra:
Three days into a
U.S.-backed government offensive, however, the Mahdi
Army retained control of key neighborhoods of the southern port city of
Basra and was able to prevent Iraqi soldiers and police from
penetrating its strongholds.
Also,
Iraq's government has
extended by 10 days a deadline for Shia
militiamen fighting troops in the southern city of Basra to hand over
their weapons.
Erm, since when does one extend an ultimatum?
One gives an ultimatum and then one delivers the "or else!!"
Extending it is an admission of failure.
Update on the Hillary Clinton "I remember landing under
sniper
fire...we ran with our heads down" story: Clinton admits she
"misspoke." Blogger uncovers other
episodes of Clinton "misspeaking." Veterans who have actually been under
sniper fire are very,
very upset at Clinton's fanciful stories:
She has no sense of
what a
statement like that does to soldiers...She
is insulting the command in its entirety...Believe me, heads would have
rolled all over if the military put the then-first lady at unacceptable
risk...
So why did she fib?
As first lady, she
did not attend
National Security Council meetings,
did not receive the presidential daily briefing on terrorism and other
threats and did not have a top level security clearance. Her foreign
trips were glorified goodwill tours, a collection of photo
opportunities and sightseeing trips.
Clinton is trying far
too
hard to make her experience into something it wasn't.
Update: CJR points out that McCain
was treated very differently concerning his Iran/al Qaeda
gaffe.
Clinton's gaffe was treated properly, criticism came from reporters and
it was a matter of easily-checked facts and her claims as to her
qualifications to be President. McCain's criticism was portrayed as a
partisan dispute and reporters never did any fact-checking and made
excuses for him.
"The cease-fire is
over; we have
been told to fight the Americans," said one Mahdi Army militiaman
Well, the
relative peace created by many factors, not just the "Surge,"
was nice while it lasted.
Sure, "Saint"
John
McCain "The Maverick" agrees with both General David Petraeus
and
Osama bin Laden that Iraq is the "central front," but is
he basing that conclusion on real knowledge or on ideology?
Howard Kurtz gives several
reasons as to why McCain is so knowledgable. Just how valid
are
these reasons?
Well, "Teh
Awesome Surge" is
drawing to an entirely predictable close.
Improved security in
Iraq in
recent months has been attributed to a
combination of the surge, the truce observed by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi
army, and the effectiveness and commitment of the [Awakening] councils,
which are
drawn from Sunni Arabs and probably the most significant factor,
according to most analysts.
The Awakening Councils were sustained by payments to individual former
insurgents of $10 a day to not
fight Americans. For some unknown reason, the payments have stopped and
the
former insurgents now feel ripped off. They are going on strike. As
there
are 80,000 of them as compared to 140,000 US soldiers, this is not a
small problem.
This is just too
ridiculous not to comment on. Hillary Clinton is claiming
that she
landed in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996:
I remember landing
under sniper
fire... there was no
greeting ceremony... we ran with our heads down, we basically were told
to run to our cars...
Nuh-uh, no way, ain't gonna happen!! There is
no frikkin' WAY that ANY President is going to send ANY First Lady into
ANY zone where she's going to be exposed to ANY physical danger! This
story is not the SLIGHTEST bit credible!
Lebanon's
Daily Star looks
over the past five years and decides that they're really not
sure
what our president is trying to say.
NY Times
publishes timeline
of Iraq War. The
"ghost of Judy Miller" shows up in a highly slanted,
misleading
entry on Hans Blix and his report to the UN on 27 Jan 03 concerning how
cooperative Saddam Hussein was being with the UN weapons inspectors.
The entry doesn't exactly lie, but it simplifies the incident in such a
way as to favor the Bush Administration's case for war. It makes the
Bush Administration appear positively reasonable when we know full well
they were not.
Summary
of items
and
events
because so much happened yesterday.
From firedoglake:
Darcy
Burner,
Donna Edwards (who both need to be cloned a couple
hundred times) and several other progressive House candidates, along
with some ex-military/DoD honchos, unveil Responsible Plan To
End The War
In Iraq, which also emphasizes ending the war on the
Constitution
and the war on media independence.
Well, it looks as
though the "Bush
Recession" is well and truly started, with Bush sounding an
awful
lot like Herbert Hoover, Bush touting his administration's economic
performance (4.2% job growth for the whole expansion "That is the worst
performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping
track in 1945"), E. J. Dionne Jr. writes about how the
wealthy are lined
up, waiting for the government to bail them out, that very government
they want to "drown
in the bathtub." Bush's words of congratulations to Treasury
Secretary Paulson for "working
over the weekend" stuck many as being another "Brownie,
you're doing a heck of a job!"
Woo-hoo! Constitutionally-correct
FISA amendment passes House by 213-197. The fight is far from over, but
it looks like FISA's an issue that will have to be left to the next
president. Good
observation:
But
this,
in my view, is the real good news because it means that we can
actually, finally, maybe
get a mandate
for the constitution in
this coming election:
House of
Representatives will
enter closed session to discuss FISA bill. House Judicary
Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) is very, very skeptical of the Bush
Administration's case:
The
more my colleagues know, the less they believe this
Administration's rhetoric. ... I believe
the more information Members receive about this Administration's
actions in the area of warrantless surveillance, the more likely they
are to reject the Administration's scare tactics and threats.
After a fruitless
attempt at suppression by the Bush Administration, ABC News
has obtained a copy of the document summary concerning Saddam Hussen's
covert activities in the Middle East. The
PDF is 11 megabytes for a 94-page document.
The head of U.S.
Central Command, Admiral Fallon, distinguished himself by
being opposed to war with Iran. Now
he's resigned.
What America needs,
Fallon says, is a "combination of strength and willingness to engage."
Those are fighting words to your average neocon...
Not that this should
be a surprise
to
anyone, but...
[Saddam
Hussein's]
security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles,
Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
In other words, despite SecDef Rumsfeld's claims of
"bulletproof evidence," a review of some 600,000 captured
Iraqi documents demonstrates no
operational Iraq-al Qaeda link.
NSA spying more
intensive than previously thought.
It
isn't clear how many of the different kinds of data
are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An
intelligence official said the agency's work links to about a dozen
antiterror programs in all.
A
number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that
the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic
surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government
can examine such a large array of information without violating an
individual's reasonable expectation of privacy "has never really been
resolved," said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has
worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.
And Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, had a hilarious
look at the programs in
the agency he runs:
...I don’t know
which program it comes under. I don’t know whether it’s
got a warrant or doesn’t have a warrant. I don’t know whether it’s
collected — I mean, as soon as I can contextually tell where it’s
collected or not collected.
So I don’t know if it’s under this program or that program. None of
that is known to me. All I know is, incorporated in the massive
intelligence we get is all these different streams of intelligence...
Sigh! Just gives ya a nice warm fuzzy feeling of security, don't it?
Bwah-hah-hah!!!
Republican
anti-abortionist steals from anti-abortionist groups. I mean,
hey, what's the more critical priority, protecting life or making a
buck?
Bush states on
his weekly
radio address that:
The bill Congress
sent me would take away one of the most valuable
tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question
key terrorist leaders and operatives.
He then goes on to credit the "CIA program," i.e., torture,
with rescuing Americans from a series of terrible plots. Senators
Feingold (D-WI) Rockefeller (D-WV) and Leahy (D-VT) have all
very clearly stated that
there is no evidence that torture has saved a single life or disrupted
a single plot.
As has been frequently
pointed out, no, the US hasn't been attacked since 9-11. But
no, it wasn't attacked much before then either, when there were no
extensive intel operations, i.e., warrantless wiretapping, "National
Security Letters," and extensive interviews of Arabs going on. These
extensive intel operations have not
resulted in the cracking of any
serious cases.
There was a blast
at a New York City armed forces recruiting station Thursday morning. No
one was hurt as the building was empty, but we at PRAWN strongly
condemn this action and all other actions like it. Violent actions like
this are NOT helpful to cause of peace!
This is pretty
offensive.
I don't know what
[Hillary Clinton] would do as president. But all of my experience
with her when she was first lady is that this is a woman who
would put our nation's interests first and any campaign promises a
distant second. [emphasis added by blog]
So if Clinton promised to get our troops out of Iraq, that would just
a mere "campaign promise" and we know those
silly things aren't taken seriously by
anyone!
I would hope that campaign promises
are made because the candidate is quite serious
about them and has no hesitation or mental
reservations about keeping them.
This seems to
be the time for really bad "attempts" at "satire" and incredibly
lame excuses. First
the WaPo puts
out a piece insulting
to just about every woman over the age of 10 and then wonders
why there are so
few females among their readership. Then Rush Limbaugh
insults Barack Obama by comparing him to Curious George (A
cartoon character who's been around since 1941)
It was not
my intent to bring dishonor and guttural utterances into this campaign.
...
I had never heard of Curious
George.
Err...ri-i-i-i-ght!
Hoo-wee!
I surely would
be
embarassed to be a pro-Bush partisan
right about now! Bush, whose troops have occupied Iraq for nearly five
years now, has to sneak in and out of Iraq like a thief in the night.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes for an official state visit
and stays for two days! The really
harsh part is that Ahmadinejad gets to visit with Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Back in early 2006, Sistani received a letter
from Bush (8th
paragraph) that Sistani couldn't even be bothered to open.
Kind of
amazing how
little the US actually knows about interrogations, how to
conduct them, whether information gained is trustworthy, etc.
Apparently,
telecom companies are
giving more money to Democrats
than to Republicans because Republicans are reliably voting for telecom
immunity anyway. Why bother buying the cow when you can get the milk
for free?
Article that
links to PDF
of Vice-President Dick Cheney document
that was leaked in 1992. Lewis Libby had to do damage control because
document made Cheney look deranged. Document recently released with
numerous passages blacked out. Problem for Cheney: NY Times already
released most of the document in 1992, so NY Times helpfully fills in
blacked-out parts, making one wonder just how enthusiastically our
government over-classifies information that would cause
little or
no damage to national security if released.
February
Serious
dilemna for Barack Obama: First, there's absolutely no question that he
can out-argue John McCain with one hand tied behind his back
(Cole also makes some very sensible observations about "al Qaeda in
Iraq"). That's not a problem at all. The
problem is that the
US has a very decadent, corrupt media
that isn't really concerned with truth or facts or fairness or
objectivity. Greenwald makes the point that black Muslim ministers and
white Christianist ministers are treated very
differently. It will be the job of the left blogosphere or netroots to
inform folks of the true facts of the situation and to keep the
national conversation properly focussed.
Update on
White House email system and hundreds
of thousands of missing emails. What's perhaps the most
startling aspect of the scandal is that:
Under a functioning political system, this would be front-page news as
it's a rather obvious sign of criminal intent.
Update on John
McCain's playing around with the
campaign-finance law that bears his name. And no, there's a major
difference between what McCain is doing and what Howard Dean did four
years ago. Dean didn't materially benefit from public financing before
pulling out, McCain has received the equivalent of several million
dollars in aid.
Detailed look
at Bush Administration justifications for stomping
on the Constitution, i.e., for pushing for telecom immunity
in the new FISA bill. What exactly is the rush in getting
telecoms immunized?
Rolling Stone comments on "The
Myth of the Surge," detailing how that particular strategy is
coming to an end.
FISA
follies: Republicans are trying
to have it both ways. They say that getting a new FISA law is
critical to national security, BUT they refuse to
meet with House Democrats to work out the new law.
The President and
House Republicans simply can’t have it both ways.
They cannot argue simultaneously that the temporary August law was
essential to national security, and then turn around and engineer the
defeat of an extension of it.
John McCain seems
to have materially gained
from having been committed to utilizing public financing for his
campaign as it meant that he received several million dollars worth of
public assistance to help him get on the ballot. Now
McCain wants to drop out because he's already burned through
all of the money that he's allowed to spend until August. What's the
name of this nasty law that's in McCain's way? Why, it's McCain-Feingold!
Yup, McCain helped to write the very law that's now cramping his style!
Michelle
Obama said: “For
the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”
Horrors! Why on Earth would she not be proud? Well gee, maybe because
of things like Operation
Condor, the US involvement in the collaboration
between Peruvian,
Bolivian and Argentine secret police forces to kidnap, torture and
"permanently disappear" South American individuals.
There's
a very real danger that folks consider "Maverick" John McCain to be, at
heart, a liberal. He
isn't.
Do you
think [McCain]'s a conservative?
Absolutely.
Liberals attracted to him would like to believe that he's not, but
that's a mistake, and that's why so many in the national media love
him. But this idea that once he's president he'll become more liberal,
it's wishful thinking. If you look at his record, he's a conservative.
But that gets skewed by this obsession with character. In 2000 we were
assured that Al Gore was the dishonest one, that George Bush might not
be bright, but he's honest. Clearly, Bush has told some pretty heinous
lies. So often the press gets it wrong.
I fact, McCain's not
even very honest. His statement:
I’m the only one the
special interests don’t give any money to.
Actually, McCain has received about $400,000 from
special interests.
As to his judgement and his hanging around with Vicki
Iseman? I hate to paraphrase conservatives from the late 90s, but
it's not the sex,
it's the inability to learn from past mistakes. The blogs don't see
much evidence that McCain actuall slept with Iseman, but McCain very
clearly did many, many favors for lobbyists and that's a problem that
the Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinsky affair didn't have. Their
affair
was just that, a strictly sexual encounter. With McCain and Iseman,
there was lots of lobbying and cash and Senatorial favors for corporate
clients involved.
Howard
Dean's statement is perfect and should be the template for
all Democratic comments on McCain/Iseman.
Gee,
this gives me such
confidence that the upcoming trials of prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay will be fair and impartial:
"At which point,
[Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute,
we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long,
how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals,
we've got to have convictions.'"
One
more legal avenue to disrupting the warrantless wiretapping program is
closed off as Supreme Court refuses to hear the ACLUs suit.
Note that:
1. When the Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal, that
does not mean that they agree with the lower court decision.
It just means they're not ruling on it.
2. Only two judges have ruled on the legality of the NSA
spying on Americans without warrants (All the other decisions have been
concerned over the whether the plaintiffs had "standing")
and both judges have concluded the program was flatly illegal.
The case of the folks who
once did indeed have proof that they were being spied upon is
recalled.
What good did it do the US to put Cuba under an embargo
that lasted 46 years? There
is no apparent evidence that it did the US any good
whatsoever. Castro is leaving office in his own good time and on his
own terms. Cuba had a strong 7% growth rate last year because other
countries are ignoring the embargo.
We've
got an awful lot of fawning media stenographers swooning over
what a "straight
talk" kinda guy John McCain is and how honest
he is and what good judgment
he has. Please, people, this just isn't funny. As dday
from Digby's blog points out:
If John McCain can
keep taking multiple positions on issues, or say one
thing and do another with abandon, and the media will give it a pass,
that's a tremendous detriment for the Democratic nominee.
Oh,
good grief!!! McCain is now claiming that "radical Islamic
extremism" is "the
greatest evil, probably, that this nation has ever faced."
Very interesting news from Iran, precisely
because it doesn't fit into the prevailing "We gotta git 'em
afore they git us" narrative.
Oh , and as to how well Iraq is doing after having
gotten rid of their evil dictator nearly five years ago? Well,
not so hot, actually. Raw sewage is not being treated because
Baghdad's sewage plants are overloaded and breaking down. Gotta love
that smell of liberation!
Good
piece on how the right wing crafts its message. Further
reading on the same subject.
Seems the latest blogstorm
for the right wing is that Code Pink in Berkeley, CA has been granted a
permanent parking spot from which to stage protests against the city's
Marine recruitment center. The National Republican Senatorial
Committee, under the chairmanship of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) has used
the issue to argue for a return to a Republican majority in the
Senate.
A few months
back, I was so distressed with Congress' inability to get anything done
that was against President Bush's wishes, I removed "The Gavel" from my
laptop's internet browser "bookmarks." I reinstated
it upon learning that Republicans
walked out of Congress today, following which Bush scolded
Congress. Speaker Pelosi stood firm and insisted the country will
be safe even if the amendment to FISA expires.
Not only that, they approved
contempt resolutions against Meyers & Bolten!
I guess we can hear now that McCain was
against torture before he was for it? Or will we
continue to hear about what a "maverick" and a "straight talker" he is?
Yeah, yeah, I'll take good news wherever I can get it,
so sue me. "A
lifelong Black progressive [Donna Edwards] and a groveling
tool of corporate power [Al Wynn] face off..." and with 51% reporting,
it's Donna
with a very comfortable margin of 59% to 37%!!
Very
bad weather keeps away all the casual voters, leaving just the really
determined folks, who of course went very heavily for the progressive
candidate.
Kinda
worries me that Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia is responsible for guarding our civil liberties:
Is it
really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the
face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up
Los Angeles is prohibited under the Constitution?
And yes, Scalia is a fan of the TV show "24."
Well, the Senate has
miserably and uttterly failed the people of the United States and the
rule of law by passing a FISA bill that refuses to punish telecom
companies for deliberately and consciously breaking a
clearly-written law passed at the time by a large majority and which
was uncontroversial for more than two decades.
Please
sign the petition to demand that the House not do the same.
How
far has the US fallen from the days when FISA was first
passed?
Senator
Feingold's comments.
Asked what impact that
will have on the case, Hartmann said it will
be up to the military judge to determine what evidence is allowed.
Since when is a trial judge given the authority to
decide that torture is a permissible way to extract information?
Britain, to
its credit, is absolutey opposed to the US proposal.
And I think it's very,
very important that we always assert that our
system of values is different from those who attacked the US and killed
British citizens on September 11, and that's something we'd always want
to stand up for.
Bush made
the swaggering,
"he-man"-type statement "I'm
a spray man myself," to Afghanis in response to questions about how
they should deal with their increasing production of poppies.
Bush and his ambassador to Afghanistan, William "Chemical
Bill"
Wood, are very enthusiastic backers of aerial spraying to reduce the
drug trade. The policy has proven very unsuccessful though
and
has increased the influence of the Taliban.
So, it was soooo
very, very pleasant
to read the words of Ana Pejcinova, an independent consultant and
Macedonian national who used to work for the USAID-funded Alternative
Livelihoods Program in Helmand Province. She
speaks words of
practicality and common sense that are so sorely lacking
in the Bush Administration.
The 911
Commission relied
very heavily on information obtained from the three people
that the Bush Administration has admitted were waterboarded. Critical
question:
AMY GOODMAN: Did
you know that these questions were obtained under duress, under
torture?
PHILIP
ZELIKOW: We did not know that. We could see that
they were extremely reluctant to tell us about the circumstances, and
therefore we could only assume that they felt they had something that
they wished—they didn’t want the Commission to know about.
This is of course, why the videotapes
of the interrogations and internal
documents concerning same were so
crucially important. If the 911 Commission knew that the answers to
their
questions were obtained in between screams and sobs, they would have
realized that a large chunk of their information was garbage.
Intel Chief
cites threat from al Qaeda!!1! Gee, isn't that amazing? He
does so just as the Senate is considering changes to FISA.
Wow! Amazing how that happens!! The head of the CIA, General Hayden,
was asked whether he could make CIA interrogations consistent with
international law and the Army Field Manual. Hayden "bristled" at the
question and rhetorically asked whether CIA haircuts also had to be
consistent with those of the Army.
Small
victories. Joe Lieberman was slated to be a "superdelegate"
for the Connecticut primary. The
DNC stripped him of that status because he endorsed John
McCain, a Republican. Yeah, one wonders how he got a status to be
stripped of in the first place, but hey...
Also, NY Times' editors have
finally taken notice that Maureen Dowd has a real problem
dealing with Barack Obama in a professional manner. Many years too late
for them to finally start exercising editorial discretion, but again, a
positive development.
More on
conservatives trying to hang the "fascist" label on liberals.
Perhaps if conservatives didn't repeat the "Dolchstosslegende"
(Stab in the back legend) with "liberals" playing the part of the
Jewish people, maybe liberals woudn't call them fascists.
Most of the
daily papers ignored Bush's signing statement that said he could
establish
permanent military bases in Iraq if he was in the mood, but
Jon Stewart's Daily Show covered it. After Democrats
denounced the signing statement
...here’s the
question: where are the Republicans? More notably, where are
the Republican presidential candidates, led by a sitting senator?
[McCain,that is]
The state
secrets privilege has
been a very-widely abused privilege from the very case (1953
concerning a 1948 airplane crash) that established the privilege in the
first place. As John
Dean puts it:
...seldom is
nation[al]
security truly at stake when the government claims it
to be. Typically, the invocation of national security borders on being
a hoax.
Propaganda
alert! New
Republican term for 911Truthers: 911 Deniers.
Also, very
interesting evidence on passenger lists
and autopsies.
Round-up of
news, including review of Dave
Neiwert's blog posts covering Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal
Fascism."
January
American public
unimpressed with drop in violence in Iraq. Violence
has gone from "apocalyptic levels" to the merely intolerable (War news
for Jan
31st) and proportion of Americans who think conflict isn't
worth it has gone from 56% to 59%.
Iraqi
government decides without
parliamentary approval, to scrap 13-year-old food rationing
program which has kept many millions of Iraqis from starvation.
Status of
women in Iraq, five
years into the occupation.
The
President attaches
a signing statement to the Defense
Authorization Bill, most notably to section
1222, the provision that forbids money to be spent on new
bases.
Just
amazing to see the extreme
and utter
decadence, frivolity and irrelevance of our press corps.
Apparently, there was a massive voter shift towards Clinton in the 72
hours before the primary vote
...a
massive shift that nobody in the media
detected.
-----------
...all the corporate press does these days is shallow, polling-based
horserace coverage, and now it
can't even get that right. [emphases in
original]
Cartoonist
has a pretty
good take on Bush's Mideast trip. Essentially, it was a
victory lap without a victory.
"Seldom has an
American President's visit
left
the region so
underwhelmed, confirming Bush's huge unpopularity on the
street and his
sagging credibility among Arab leaders he counts as allies.
--------
'It is impossible to feel any excitement about Bush's words, because no
Palestinian, no Arab believes he will, or can, deliver.'
Did
Daily Kos tip the Michigan
primary to Mitt Romney? CNN strongly
doubts that, but there seems
to be some evidence for it.
Evidence
that Bush's
words on democracy are just so much hot air.
According
to the
pollster Rasmussen
(Generally has a pretty good reputation for accuracy) John Edwards is
the strongest Democrat and John McCain is the strongest Republican.
Unfortunately, as exciting as it would be to have either Clinton or
Obama in the running, they both do poorly in the general election
match-ups. Fortunately for Edwards, he grows on people, the
more
they see of him, the more they like him.
About that
long-overdue revision of Paul Bremer's anti-Baathist law? The one that
was going to help reunify Iraq? Seems
it's a lot less than meets the eye.
Shiites like Moqtada al Sadr appear to like it, ex-Baathists hate it.
Tony
Snow tries to claim that
how the
Iraq War was waged was not
all that bad:
Number
one, when it comes to
the war, everybody — it’s great to
be a backseat general, and everybody gets it wrong at the beginning of
a war.
Well, number one, the Iraq War was a war the US launched.
It was launched at a time that the US chose with perhaps the
Congressional mid-term
elections of 2002 being the only time factor that was
determined from outside the Bush Aministration's complete control.
Two, the sacking
of Baghdad was entirely avoidable. Everybody
outside the Bush Administration knew that US troops could easily
have been deployed to protect
historical sites and government offices, but US soldiers sat
around with no orders being given to do so. The film No End in
Sight
made it clear that the US failure to stop the sacking of Baghdad was an
early provocation that helped to spark the insurgency that continues to
the present day, an insurgency so intractable that the US had
to drop 40,000 pounds of bombs on Baghdad's Southern
outskirts nearly five
years
after "Mission
Accomplished."
IVAW
"Yellow Rose of Texas" bus bursts
into flames.
Driver/owner was only occupant at time and safely abandoned
vehicle. Bus had earler encounter with McCain campaign bus.
Congressman
Al
Wynn defends himself:
Their ads claim I
received vacations paid for by lobbyists. The truth
is I was invited by trade associations such as the Railroad Association
and minority business organizations to give keynote speeches and
participate in panels during overnight and two-day business trips.
This is what we call "a distinction without a difference," Wynn had
trips paid for by private organizations. Sure, he may have
done business on those trips, but that doesn't mean he didn't have any
time off to enjoy the sights or the activities. At the absolute
minimum, he's got a lot more explaining to do.
So,
it appears that the
Iranian speedboat "attack" was
just what Iran said it was, a "routine identity
check." Seems the threat voiced during the
non-incident
could have come from many different sources as that radio channel is
open to all sorts of radio broadcasts.
The Iranians
analyzed the Pentagon video released to the US media and
found that the audio track was not synchronized properly with the
video, pointing to serious tinkering.
If this was an attempt at another "Gulf of Tonkin" incident, it lacked
competence.
Amazing quote
from Atrios. Yup, our decayed,
decadent press corps is just
as messed up and cozy with our Republican political elites as
everyone
said they were.
Fred
Hiatt of the WaPo asks the
same question as the counter-protesters did earlier: "Why
do the
Democratic candidates refuse to acknowledge progress in
Iraq?" and the answer is the same: There's just not
much progress
there. The editorial complains that a pull-out would erase "the
progress that has been made," but refuses to recognize that for "the
progress" to last, Iraqis need to make political accomodations with
each other. That was, allegedly, the whole point
of the "Surge" and the editorial admits it hasn't been achieved.
Juan Cole assesses
the one-year anniversary of Bush's announcement and setting
of goals for the "Surge." Funny, it doesn't appear that any
of those goals have been achieved.
Ed Henry of CNN also points out that Bush
has made optimstic
pronouncements on other subjects:
I remember traveling
with the President last summer when he was asked
about a whole other matter, the immigration reform bill back in this
United States and he made a bold declaration then saying "I'll see you
at the signing ceremony."
As you know, that signing ceremony
never happened. So, it's important to remember that sometimes
optimistic talk doesn't turn into reality.
Wow!
Jonah Goldberg speaketh
the truth!
Goldberg: The benefit of Bush’s
compassionate conservatism [in 2000] was that it was majorly a
marketing slogan…
Alex Chadwick: You mean
you’re worried Mike Huckabee might actually mean it?
Goldberg: Yes, that’s what
I’m terrified of.
Pleasant
surprise to see
a right-wing source agree with those on the left about the
failings of the traditional media.
Former Senator
George McGovern composes an excellent
piece about why Bush & Cheney need to be impeached.
In
a news
video, Iraq War supporters are heard chanting "The Surge is
working!" Is
it? Welllll...
...
by most
accounts, levels of political violence are much reduced.
But
the surge has not accomplished the goal that the administration of US
President George W. Bush set when it announced the policy at the
beginning of last year - to buy time for Iraqi politicians to reach
compromises on the country's future that would reconcile its feuding
ethnic and sectarian factions.
Sibel Edmonds (Background)
made many serious charges in a set of closed-door sessions of testimony
to Congress. She
has now decided to reveal
some of that which Congress has inexplicably chosen to keep secret
concerning nuclear proliferation and US complicity and high-level
interference with the investigations of same. She charges that
high-level Israeli, Turkish and Pakistani officials are involved.
Survey
of American terrorist
actions. Funny,
there's not a black or a Muslim among the perpetrators.
Strange how that is.
Congresswoman
Jane Harman
(D-CA)
half-intentionally reveals extremely
serious problems
with Congressional oversight of the CIA
during the time of the Bush Administration. She was informed
of
serious crimes against humanity by the CIA in their interrogations of
the alleged al Qaeda detainee Abu
Zubaydah and protested, weakly and without any follow-up or public
exposure, in a letter that was, without any good reason,
classified until 3 Jan 08. Harman was between a rock and a hard place.
She could not have revealed what she knew without risking her security
clearance, but how was she to conduct effective oversight while being
sworn to silence?
So,
it looks like solid wins
for Barack
Obama
with 37%+, his nearest competitor John Edwards at 29%+ and Hillary
Clinton a very short way behind him, also at 29%+. Bill Richardson is
the only other one who got above 1%. On the Republican side,
it
was Mike Huckabee with 34% and his closest competitor, Mitt Romney
trailing very badly behind him at 25%. Fred Thompson and John McCain
both got 13% and Ron Paul got 10%. Rudy Giuliani may as well
drop
out with only 4%. Analysis: Kos
firedoglake
TPM
Crooks&Liars
So
just how did
Benazir
Bhutto die? Very confusing stories about. Very
suspicious
aspect:
Beyond the
now-infamous decision
not to perform an autopsy, there was
the decision to cordon off the crime scene and wash it down with fire
hoses afterward.
FireDogLake
gives us the sad
news [/snark] that Jonah Goldberg is really,
really upset that no one will take his "Liberal Fascism"
book/theory seriously.
"Jonah hopes
that
...some other
liberal actually reads the book and offers a sustained argument against
it."
The blog Sadly No!
has been running pieces on this astonishingly bad
piece of dreck starting with Simply
Goddamn Embarrassing
on 18 December and continuing with the one (1) positive
review that "Liberal Fascism" has received and a talk show in
which the
hostess declares:
[Jonah]
talks
about how people throw the word fascism around without really
understanding its meaning
Which is amazingly self-descriptive because it's reallly not clear that
either Goldberg or his host understands it either.
