Joe Klein: Romney Campaigning Like a Lightweight

Joe Klein from Time criticizes the campaign that Mitt Romney is currently running, which in his eyes has been long on platitudes and short on substance. With his huge bank account, though, it might just be a winning formula.

Jobs and Gates Together in Tech Love Fest

It would be interesting to find out how these two really feel about each other....

Dutch Pot Shops to Fingerprint Customers

What's next, getting fingerprinted when ordering a mixed drink in a bar? Which is more of a menace to society as a whole, alcohol or marijuana?

British TV Show: Prince Charles Couldn't Marry Camilla Because She Lost Her Virginity at 17

And you thought American TV was salacious!!!

The Ads That Mitt Romney Doesn't Want You to See

The Huffington Post has the television ads that the Kennedy campaign used with devastating effect on Mitt Romney's Senate campaign in 1994.

Lieberman, Dressed in Flak Jacket and Surrounded by Soldiers, Sees "Progress" in Iraq

Not sure if I want to change those vacation plans just yet, though...(story, video)

Iraq An Albatross Around the Necks of Moderate Repbulicans

2006 was bad for moderate Republicans nationwide, especially in the Northeast where they are literally becoming a dying breed. As this New York Times article reports, 2008 could be worse....

Fox News Divides Democrats

The New York Times wrote over the weekend about how the Democratic party is divided as to whether their candidates for president should appear on Fox News sponsored debates or not.

Gingrich Unloads on Bush, Rove

With the leader of their party standing at a 28% approval rating, the vultures have started swirling overhead in earnest, and none more so than ex-speaker and likely 2008 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. In this interview in the New Yorker Newt compares W to Jimmy Carter, and calls Karl Rove 'dumb'.

Huffington: Hillary Trying to Spin Reality Regarding Iraq

Hillary has a big problem with the left wing of her party, meaning those who actually turn out to vote in Democratic primaries. Arianna Huffington crystalizes the reason why in this post, and it has mostly to do with Hillary's shifting and ever changing positions on Iraq--starting with her vote to authorize the war in 2002.

Memorial Day, 2007

Photo

Al Gore on Jon Stewart, Part 2

Al Gore on Jon Stewart, Part 1

Operation Freedom From Iraqis

By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 27 May 2007

When all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America's sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration's reckless bet to "transform" the Middle East. From "Stuff happens!" on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war's dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming "aliens" from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That's a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq's child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation's. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what's happening in the country he gave "God's gift of freedom."

It's easy to see why. To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A "secure" Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq's humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops' coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq's mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it's part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters.

In reality, more than 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who also, in Senator Kennedy's phrase, have "an assassin's bull's-eye on their backs" because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years. How we feel about these Iraqis was made naked by one of the administration's most fervent hawks, the former United Nations ambassador John Bolton, speaking to The Times Magazine this month. He claimed that the Iraqi refugee problem had "absolutely nothing to do" with Saddam's overthrow: "Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don't think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war."

Actually, we haven't fulfilled the obligation of giving them functioning institutions and security. One of the many reasons we didn't was that L. Paul Bremer's provisional authority staffed the Green Zone with unqualified but well-connected Republican hacks who, in some cases, were hired after they expressed their opposition to Roe v. Wade. The administration is nothing if not consistent in its employment practices. The assistant secretary in charge of refugees at the State Department now, Ellen Sauerbrey, is a twice-defeated Republican candidate for governor of Maryland with no experience in humanitarian crises but a hefty résumé in anti-abortion politics. She is to Iraqis seeking rescue what Brownie was to Katrina victims stranded in the Superdome.

Ms. Sauerbrey's official line on Iraqi refugees, delivered to Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" in March, is that most of them "really want to go home." The administration excuse for keeping Iraqis out of America is national security: we have to vet every prospective immigrant for terrorist ties. But many of those with the most urgent cases for resettlement here were vetted already, when the American government and its various Halliburton subsidiaries asked them to risk their lives by hiring them in the first place. For those whose loyalties can no longer be vouched for, there is the contrasting lesson of Vietnam. Julia Taft, the official in charge of refugees in the Ford administration, reminded Mr. Pelley that 131,000 Vietnamese were resettled in America within eight months of the fall of Saigon, despite loud, Dobbs-like opposition at the time. In the past seven months, the total number of Iraqis admitted to America was 69.

The diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began during the Vietnam War, told me that security worries then were addressed by a vetting process carried out in safe, preliminary asylum camps for refugees set up beyond Vietnam's borders in Asia. But as Mr. Holbrooke also points out in the current Foreign Affairs magazine, the real forerunner to American treatment of Iraqi refugees isn't that war in any case, but World War II. That's when an anti-Semitic assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, tirelessly obstructed the visa process to prevent Jews from obtaining sanctuary in America, not even filling the available slots under existing quotas. As many as 75,000 such refugees were turned away before the Germans cut off exit visas to Jews in late 1941, according to Howard Sachar's "History of the Jews in America."

Like the Jews, Iraqis are useful scapegoats. This month Mr. Bremer declared that the real culprits for his disastrous 2003 decision to cleanse Iraq of Baathist officials were unnamed Iraqi politicians who "broadened the decree's impact far beyond our original design." The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is chastising the Iraqis for being unable "to do anything they promised."

The new White House policy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has joked, is "blame and run." It started to take shape just before the midterm elections last fall, when Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memo (propitiously leaked after his defenestration) suggesting that the Iraqis might "have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country." By January, Mr. Bush was saying that "the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude" and wondering aloud "whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq." In February, one of the war's leading neocon cheerleaders among the Beltway punditocracy lowered the boom. "Iraq is their country," Charles Krauthammer wrote. "We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war." Bill O'Reilly and others now echo this cry.

The message is clear enough: These ungrateful losers deserve everything that's coming to them. The Iraqis hear us and are returning the compliment. Whether Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is mocking American demands for timelines and benchmarks, or the Iraqi Parliament is setting its own timeline for American withdrawal even while flaunting its vacation schedule, Iraq's nominal government is saying it's fed up. The American-Iraqi shotgun marriage of convenience, midwifed by disastrous Bush foreign policy, has disintegrated into the marriage from hell.

While the world waits for the White House and Congress to negotiate the separation agreement, the damage to the innocent family members caught in the cross-fire is only getting worse. Despite Mr. Bush's May 10 claim that "the number of sectarian murders has dropped substantially" since the surge began, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the number of such murders is going up. For the Americans, the cost is no less dear. Casualty figures confirm that the past six months have been the deadliest yet for our troops.

While it seems but a dim memory now, once upon a time some Iraqis did greet the Americans as liberators. Today, in fact, it is just such Iraqis - not the local Iraqi insurgents the president conflates with Osama bin Laden's Qaeda in Pakistan - who do want to follow us home. That we are slamming the door in their faces tells you all you need to know about the real morality beneath all the professed good intentions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though the war's godfathers saw themselves as ridding the world of another Hitler, their legacy includes a humanitarian catastrophe that will need its own Raoul Wallenbergs and Oskar Schindlers if lives are to be saved.

Heads in The Sand on Climate Change

The push back by the Bush administration over the German proposal has left many European diplomats furious. “The United States, on this issue, is virtually isolated,” one European diplomat said on condition of anonymity under diplomatic rules, and then added, “with the exception of other big polluters.”

As today's New York Times reports, George W. Bush is leading the American charge against any progress on emissions reductions and global warming progress at the G-8 summit to be held in Germany next week. From Iraq to global warming to diplomacy in general, has the United States ever been more isolated internationally than at this very moment in history?

Harbin China - Siberian Tiger Park

Wildlife park, Chinese style.

McCain Aide Unglued: Obama "Wouldn't Know the Difference Between an RPG and a Bong"

John McCain is certainly back to the straight talk...

An Update on the 2008 Horse Race

This comes courtesy of The Washington Post's political blog The Fix. I disagree with his take on the Republican race thus far: Rudy is the front runner in name only and his candidacy is destined to end up in flames because of the social issues. The race is between McCain and Romney, with McCain being the slight favorite because he's the 'next in line' candidate ala Bob Dole in 1996, and generally speaking Republicans don't eat their own when it comes to presidential candidates.

David Broder on Huckabee and Richardson

David Broder from the Washington Post writes today about how former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on the Republican side and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson on the Democratic side are the two most likely underdog candidates to break into the top tier for their parties' nominations. The only reason these two eminently qualified men are not in the first tier in the first place is a lack of money, which is unfortunate.

Republican Leader John Boehner Cries on House Floor

Bird Shits on Bush During Press Conference

Fitting?

Long Knives Coming out for Edwards

Perhaps nothing can provide more concrete proof that John Edwards is beginning to emerge as a Democratic front runner than the rash of mud being thrown his way, from former Kerry campaign manager and serial campaign loser Bob Shrum (see story here), to Rudy Giuliani, to the right wing Drudge Report and the right wing blogosphere. I've long suspected that the right wing would rather face Hillary in the general election than Edwards due to her polarizing effect on people and lack of moderate, cross over appeal. It's therefore no surprise where the mud is being directed.

Dick Cheney's Lesbian Daughter Gives Birth

This must be uncomfortable for Cheney's base of support, which is made up largely of Bible thumping Conservative Christians. Interestingly, Cheney and Poe live in Virginia, which has a constitutional amendment barring the marriage of same-sex couples and does not allow gay second parent adoptions.

John Edwards: Let's Move Beyond "War on Terror"

"We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes," Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. "By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam."

Edwards is trying to create separation between himself and Hillary on the national security issue. By making this declaration, he moves himself further to the left, and hopefully for his campaign, further away from Bush in the eyes of Democratic primary voters.

Rudy Above The Fray in McCain/Romney Spat

Although leading the national polls, it is likely that Rudy Giuliani will not win the Republican nomination because of his social views on hot-button issues like abortion, gay marriage, and gun control make him out of step with the Republican base. John McCain has rightfully targeted Mitt Romney has his biggest rival for the prize, and the two have been increasingly throwing mud at each other as of late. Rudy's not involved, which speaks volumes about his candidacy.

Al Gore Has Already Won a Popular Vote

Al Gore is almost certainly going to run for president in 2008. Anyone who saw his interview on Larry King last night would come to the same conclusion. Let's just say he didn't exactly offer effusive praise of to any of the Democratic candidates--especially Hillary Clinton. Cenk Uygur on the Huffington Post reminds us that Al Gore has already won a national election in this country, at least the popular vote. And he correctly points out that tons of people who were on the fence in 2000 but wound up voting for Bush are probably itching to 'right the wrong', or make up for that huge mistake by voting for Gore this time around. The guy's run for president twice before (don't forget 1988). I find it unfathomable that he's actually 'not thinking about becoming a candidate', or he 'has no plans to run for president'. He's actually already running the best campaign any of us have ever seen.

U2 @ Cannes 2007

Promoting their movie out this fall U23D

Joe Lieberman, Senate Heavyweight

Last summer when he was being trounced in the polls by Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic primary, few could have predicted the position that Joe Lieberman finds himself in today. As an 'Independent Democrat' in the 1-vote Democratic majority Senate, Lieberman is nearly all powerful: as this Bloomberg article shows, the mere threat of him bolting to the Republican side and therefore shifting the Senate's power gives him unbelievable leverage with his fellow Democrats. It's hard to believe that he was once Al Gore's running mate--the two are about as far apart on the Iraq issue as they could possibly be.

Gore's New Book Reviewed by New York Times

This review is by the Times' best (and most controversial) book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani.

Hillary Trying to Have it Both Ways on Iraq

Team Clinton is busy muddying the waters regarding the shifting sands of Hillary's positions on Iraq, as Arianna Huffington writes. A huge potential pratfall for her campaign is the fact that she voted for the war's authorization back in 2002. That won't sit well with Democratic primary voters, and it takes some chutzpah for her to claim that she's been an advocate for bringing home the troops for 'years'.

Dennis Kucinich's Hot Wife

He may have 0 chance of becoming president, but it's pretty evident that the process of running alone has reaped Dennis Kucinich some nice dividends with regards to his personal life.

Republicans Playing Catch-Up with Internet

The Washington Post reports on the advantage Democrats have built over Republicans with regards to the Internet, both in terms of message control fund raising. This may come as a surprise to many readers, given the apparent online mastery of the Republican party's leader, President Bush.

Rush Limbaugh: Immigration Bill is the "Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act"

The fact that Rush Limbaugh has come out stridently against the new immigration bill means that the right wing of the Republican party, its' 'base', is against it as well. Limbaugh and the base are terrified about the prospect of millions of new Hispanic voters in states like Florida and New Mexico.

Matt Drudge and Flip Flopping in 2008

A link to this article appeared on the Drudge Report today--it's becoming increasingly clear that this hugely popular and influential website has a Romney bias. Romney has flip-flopped so much that he would make a fish out of water on the deck of a ship blush, and Drudge and company are trying to mitigate this fact by pointing out how his competitors, including John McCain, have flip-flopped as well.

Frank Rich: The Reverend Falwell’s Heavenly Timing

Frank Rich, The New York Times, May 20, 2007

Hard as it is to believe now, Jerry Falwell came in second only to Ronald Reagan in a 1983 Good Housekeeping poll anointing “the most admired man in America.” By September 2001, even the Bush administration was looking for a way to ditch the preacher who had joined Pat Robertson on TV to pin the 9/11 attacks on feminists, abortionists, gays and, implicitly, Teletubbies. As David Kuo, a former Bush official for faith-based initiatives, tells the story in his book “Tempting Faith,” the Reverend Falwell was given a ticket to the Washington National Cathedral memorial service that week only on the strict condition that he stay away from reporters and cameras. Mr. Falwell obeyed, though once inside he cracked jokes (“Whoa, does she look frumpy,” he said of Barbara Bush) and chortled nonstop.

This is the great spiritual leader whom John McCain and Mitt Romney raced to praise when he died on Tuesday, just as the G.O.P. presidential contenders were converging for a debate in South Carolina. The McCain camp’s elegiac press release beat out his rival’s by a hair. But everyone including Senator McCain knows he got it right back in 2000, when he labeled Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson “agents of intolerance.” Mr. Falwell was always on the wrong, intolerant side of history. He fought against the civil rights movement and ridiculed Desmond Tutu’s battle against apartheid years before calling AIDS the “wrath of a just God against homosexuals” and, in 1999, fingering the Antichrist as an unidentified contemporary Jew.

Though Mr. Falwell had long been an embarrassment and laughingstock to many, including a new generation of Christian leaders typified by Mr. Kuo, the timing of his death could not have had grander symbolic import. It happened at the precise moment that the Falwell-Robertson brand of religious politics is being given its walking papers by a large chunk of the political party the Christian right once helped to grow. Hours after Mr. Falwell died, Rudy Giuliani, a candidate he explicitly rejected, won the Republican debate by acclamation. When the marginal candidate Ron Paul handed “America’s mayor” an opening to wrap himself grandiloquently in 9/11 once more, not even the most conservative of Deep South audiences could resist cheering him. If Rudy can dress up as Jack Bauer, who cares about his penchant for drag?

The current exemplars of Mr. Falwell’s gay-baiting, anti-Roe style of politics, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, see the writing on the wall. Electability matters more to Republicans these days than Mr. Giuliani’s unambiguous support for abortion rights and gay civil rights (no matter how clumsily he’s tried to fudge it). Last week Mr. Dobson was in full crybaby mode, threatening not to vote if Rudy is on the G.O.P. ticket. Mr. Perkins complained to The Wall Street Journal that the secular side of the Republican Party was serving its religious-right auxiliary with “divorce papers.”

Yes, and it is doing so with an abruptness and rudeness reminiscent of Mr. Giuliani’s public dumping of the second of his three wives, Donna Hanover. This month, even the conservative editorial page of The Journal chastised Republicans of the Perkins-Dobson ilk for being too bellicose about abortion, saying that a focus on the issue “will make the party seem irrelevant” and cost it the White House in 2008. At the start of Tuesday’s debate, the Fox News moderator Brit Hume coldly put Mr. Falwell’s death off limits by announcing that “we will not be seeking any more reaction from the candidates on that matter.” It was a pre-emptive move to shield Fox’s favored party from soiling its image any further by association with the Moral Majority has-been and his strident causes. In the ensuing 90 minutes, the Fox News questioners skipped past the once-burning subject of same-sex marriage as well.

What a difference a midterm election has made. The Karl Rove theory that Republicans cannot survive without pandering to religious-right pooh-bahs is yet another piece of Bush dogma lying in ruins, done in by two synergistic forces. The first is the raw political math. Polls consistently show that most Americans don’t want abortion outlawed, do want legal recognition for gay couples, do want stem-cell research and never want to see government intrude on a Terri Schiavo again. On Election Day 2006, voters in red states defeated both an abortion ban (South Dakota) and, for the first time, a same-sex marriage ban (Arizona).

But equally crucial is how much the “family values” establishment has tarnished itself in the Bush era. Some of that self-destruction followed the time-honored Jimmy Swaggart-Jim Bakker paradigm of hypocrisy: the revelations that Ted Haggard, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, was finding God in the arms of a male prostitute, and that the vice president’s daughter and her partner were violating stated Bush White House doctrine by raising a child with two mommies. But a greater factor in the decline and sullying of the Falwell-flavored religious right is its collusion in the worldly corruption ushered in by this particular presidency and Mr. Rove’s now defunct Republican majority.

The felonious Jack Abramoff scandals have ensnared a remarkably large who’s who of righteous politicos, led by Mr. Robertson’s former consigliere at the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, who was so eager (as he put it in an e-mail) to start “humping in corporate accounts.” Among the preachers who abetted (unwittingly, they all say) the bogus grass-roots “anti-gambling” campaigns staged by Mr. Abramoff to smite rivals of his own Indian casino clients were Mr. Dobson, the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association and the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Tom DeLay, a leader of the Schiavo putsch in Congress, was taken out by his association with Mr. Abramoff, too. Mr. DeLay’s onetime chief of staff, Edwin Buckham (an evangelical minister, yet), pocketed more than $1 million, largely from Abramoff clients, that was funneled through a so-called U.S. Family Network, ostensibly dedicated to promoting “moral fitness.”

The sleazy links between Washington scandal and religious-right hacks didn’t end when Mr. Abramoff went to jail and Mr. DeLay went into oblivion. The first Justice Department official to plead the Fifth in this year’s bottomless United States attorneys scandal — Monica Goodling, a former top Alberto Gonzales aide — is a product of Pat Robertson’s Regent University School of Law, formerly known as CBN University School of Law, after the Christian Broadcasting Network. As The Boston Globe discovered, Regent’s Web site boasts that some 150 of its grads were hired by the Bush administration, and not, it seems, because of merit. In Ms. Goodling’s graduating class, 60 percent failed the bar exam on their first try. U.S. News & World Report ranks the school in the fourth — a k a bottom — tier.

Having been given immunity, Ms. Goodling is scheduled to testify before House inquisitors this week. We know already from The National Journal that she was so moral that she put blue drapes over the exposed breasts in the statuary in the Great Hall of the Justice Department (since removed). The Times found that she had asked civil-service job applicants, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?” Yet her strict morality did not extend to protecting the nonpartisan sanctity of the American legal system. An inexperienced lawyer just past 30, Ms. Goodling exercised her power to vet some 400 Justice Department political appointees by favoring Republican and Rovian loyalty over actual qualifications. Though the Monica at the center of the last presidential scandal did enable a husband’s cheating on his wife, at least she wasn’t tasked with any governmental responsibility more weighty than divvying up pizza.

Mr. Giuliani’s rivals for the Republican nomination just can’t leave behind the received wisdom that you still have to appease the Robertson-Dobson-Perkins axis of piety that produces the likes of a Monica Goodling. They seem oblivious to the new evangelical leaders who care more about serving the ill, the poor and the environment than grandstanding in the fading culture wars. They seem oblivious to the reality that their association with the old religious-right taskmasters diminishes them, however well it may play to some Iowa caucus voters. Mr. Romney, a former social liberal whose wife gave money to Planned Parenthood, is crudely trying to rewrite his record by showering cash on anti-abortion-rights groups; he spoke at Regent U. even as a Pat Robertson Web site mocked his religion, Mormonism, as a cult. Mr. McCain, busily trying to disown past positions unpopular with the declining base, is trapped in a squeeze play of his own making: he’s failing to persuade the hard right that he’s one of them even as he makes Mr. Giuliani look like a straight-talker by comparison.

“America’s mayor” has so much checkered history in his closet — by which I mean Bernard Kerik, among other ticking time bombs, not the gay couple he bunked with before 9/11 — that he is hardly a certain winner of his party’s nomination, let alone the presidency. But whatever his ultimate fate, the enthusiasm and poll numbers Mr. Giuliani arouses among Republicans to date are a death knell for the political orthodoxy of the Rove era. The agents of intolerance are well on their way to being forgotten, even in those cases when they, unlike Jerry Falwell, are not yet gone.

Poodle No More: US Prepares for New British Iraq Policy under Gordon Brown

It's a mystery to millions as to why Tony Blair has been the Bush administration's main cheerleader and enabler regarding Iraq over the past five years. Was it a determination to end the decades long perception at home that Labour is 'soft' on national defense? Was it the oil? No one really knows, and no one in England at least believes what Tony Blair himself has said on the matter: WMD's, terrorism, freedom, etc. He's history, and as this article points out his successor Gordon Brown will probably have a different policy altogether on Iraq, which very well may result in Britain's complete pullout from the war ravaged nation.

Bolton: Let's Bomb Iran

John Bolton, along with disgraced ex World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, were two of the major intellectual forces behind the neo-conservative rationale for invading Iraq. Amazingly, George Bush Jr. thought it would be a good idea to name Bolton as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. We now find this anti-diplomat, frothing at the mouth pit bull telling anyone who will listen that we must bomb Iran. In this maniac's mind that must make perfect sense, what with Iraq going so well and all.

McCain Erupts with F Bombs, Other Vulgarities in Senate

That old McCain demon, his volcanic temper, surfaced again yesterday very close to the Senate floor and it was aimed ironically enough at a fellow conservative Republican Senator, John Cornyn of Texas, as this article reports. McCain, once viewed as the presumptive nominee on the Republican side, finds his struggling campaign on life support today.

Michael Moore's New Movie "Sicko" Released in Cannes

Any Michael Moore release generates controversy, and "Sicko" promises to be no different. Read an interview Moore had with Time Magazine this week here.

Giuliani Pays Wife $10k a Month to Help With Speeches

Since this is Rudy's third marriage, maybe he's found the formula to make this one the charm?? It's difficult to see what particular speech writing skill set an ex pharmaceutical sales lady would bring to the table--but hey, whatever works!

Skeletons in The Closet: What the '08 Candidates Don't Want to be Talking About

As this interesting New York Times article points out, Mitt Romney doesn't want to talk about being from Massachusetts, John McCain doesn't want to be talking about McCain/Feingold, John Edwards wants you to forget about 2004, and Hillary Clinton wants you to forget about her marriage...

James Dobson Unloads on Giuliani

Harry Truman asked, "How can I trust a man if his wife can't?" It is a very good question. --James Dobson, writing about Rudy Giuliani, May 17,2007

Well it's pretty clear from this article that James Dobson won't be voting for Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008. I suspect that a majority of the millions of evangelical Christians who listen to him won't be doing so, either, which adds up to big trouble for Rudy. It also spells trouble for the Republican party in general: it seems like abortion is still the ultimate litmus test. It's also interesting to note that Dobson doesn't like Fred Thompson too much, either. Not moral enough.

Introducing Ron Paul

As it turns out, the guy has some interesting beliefs not only on Iraq and 9/11, but also on blacks and Jews.

Patada subte Times Square

The Last Temptation of Al Gore

Big splash article in this week's Time magazine with glowing quotes of support from Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Is Gore looking to sell books or running for president? My guess, although far from being certain, is the latter.

Zogby Poll: Romney Surges To Lead in Iowa

Although it's still early, with this news it's safe to say that Mitt Romney has the momentum among the Republican field for the nomination--he now leads in both New Hampshire and Iowa. With the Democrats, it's noteworthy that Edwards has hung on to his slight lead in Iowa. Success in Iowa, where he has invested an enormous amount of time and money, is crucial to his overall strategy. If he loses there, like Gephardt in 2004, the wheels could fall off of his campaign pretty quickly.

Fox News' Hannity and Ron Paul Argue After Debate

Ron Paul vs. Giuliani on the Root Causes of Terrorism

In case you didn't catch the Republican debate last night, here's the only thing that you missed: Dare I say that Ron Paul has a point??

Blackberry Stiffs The Rolling Stones

Apparently Research in Motion (RIM) backed out of a licensing deal with the Stones with one of their new phones, and Mick and company aren't too pleased about it.

Democracy in Iraq Apparently Not That Important After All

Arianna Huffington writes in this post on how a majority in the Iraqi Congress recently voted for the United States to announce a firm timetable for the withdrawal of the US military from the country. Bringing 'freedom', 'democracy', and 'sovereignty' to the Iraqi people has been cited by the Bush administration over and over again as the main reason (after WMD's, of course) that we went to war in the first place, so it's more than ironic that Bush, McCain, Cheney, and the rest of the dwindling cast of pro-war cheerleaders now are openly disobeying the will of a majority of this sovereign, free nation.

Wolfowitz: "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

It's hard to believe that the Bush administration is battling to keep Paul Wolfowitz as the head of the World Bank, but as this Guardian article reports, it seems like that's what they might be doing. I guess we shouldn't be shocked at any of the personnel moves this administration decides to make: they are also standing by Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General. Along with Dick Cheney, Wolfowitz is perhaps the most notorious of the 'neocons'--the right wing weirdos most responsible for puppeteering George W. Bush to invade Iraq.

Bloomberg/Hagel 2008?

Time magazine reports on their consciously public dinner together last week in Washington, fueling speculation that these two left wing Republicans might team up to form an Independent run at the White House in 2008. Needless to say it's probably a safe bet to say that Bloomberg picked up the tab. Republicans theoretically have more to lose if Bloomberg does decide to run as an Independent, as the article points out Ross Perot peeled off big chunks of George Bush's Sr.'s support in 1992. Bloomberg, in almost identical fashion to Al Gore, continues to issue lawyerly non-denial denials about his 2008 Presidential intentions.

Update: The Washington Times just published an article on this subject, quoting a Bloomberg confident who claims that Bloomy is prepared to spend an astonishing $1Billion of his personal fortune on a run, which would be more than what the two major party candidates are expected to spend combined!

Is Matt Drudge in The Tank for Mitt Romney?

Believe it or not, there are very few people more powerful in American politics today than Matt Drudge. This Salon.com article indicates that he might be playing favorites among the Republican candidates.

Gingrich Set to Run?

Newt gave an interview with ABC this morning that suggests that he will indeed run for president in 2008. It's a good decision as the weak Republican field is currently devoid of a front runner and in desperate need of some fresh blood. Hillary Clinton is the only other candidate in either party that is remotely as polarizing and divisive a figure as Newt is. That may just be what red meat Republicans are looking for.

Tony Blair's Legacy: Iraq

Arianna Huffington writes that Tony Blair's legacy as Prime Minister of Great Britain for 10-years will be Iraq. It is very surprising to say the least that he was such a war cheerleader, so steadfast in his support of the neo-cons in the Bush administration and their use of fabricated evidence to launch this disastrous war. As Huffington writes, Blair really was the Bush administration's trump card regarding Iraq--the chief salesman who provided crucial 'international' support. That's his legacy, and he'll take it to the grave with him.

Ann Coulter: Al-Qaeda Wants Barack Obama to be President

George Bush - "Internets" Revisited

David Hasselhoff Eats A Burger While Drunk (Full Version)

The Hoff has clearly seen better days...

Dick Cheney, Diplomat

It has come to this in Iraq: Dick Cheney, who would make Attila the Hun look reasonable and even tempered, is in Iraq pushing the 'government' there to get its act together.

Gore Backers Sit on Wallets

The Washington Times has an interesting read on how several fat-walleted past Gore campaign donors have decided to not give to the other candidates in the Democratic field just yet, hoping that Gore finally does decide to toss his hat into the ring. Gore and his advisers continue to use the lawyerly "I have no plans to run" non-denial denial when asked whether he has plans to run. Until he issues a definitive, "I will not run for president in 2008" it's wise for pro-Gore supporters to keep their powder dry. It's still early, right?

Bumbling Bush Winks at Queen

The chances of this being pulled off without W making some sort of a fool of himself were always very slim....

Justice, Alabama Style

In a move right out of "The Scarlett Letter", an Alabama judge ordered two shoplifters to wear "I am a thief" signs outside of a Wal-Mart store where they were busted stealing. See story here.

Fred Thompson Disappoints California Republicans

Robert Novak reports on how the 'would be Reagan' gave a lackluster speech to California Republicans recently. As it stands now, it would appear that the Republicans have very little hope at keeping the White House in 2008.

Is Condi Hiding the Smoking Gun?

By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 06 May 2007

If, as J.F.K. had it, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, the defeat in Iraq is the most pitiful orphan imaginable. Its parents have not only tossed it to the wolves but are also trying to pin its mutant DNA on any patsy they can find.

George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game, which began more than three years ago when his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Tommy Franks told Bob Woodward that Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's intelligence bozo, was the "stupidest guy on the face of the earth" (that's the expurgated version). Last fall, Kenneth Adelman, the neocon cheerleader who foresaw a "cakewalk" in Iraq, told Vanity Fair that Mr. Tenet, General Franks and Paul Bremer were "three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots." Richard Perle chimed in that the "huge mistakes" were "not made by neoconservatives" and instead took a shot at President Bush. Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons' former darling, told Dexter Filkins of The Times "the real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz."

And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.

This would be a Three Stooges routine were there only three stooges. The good news is that Mr. Tenet's book rollout may be the last gasp of this farcical round robin of recrimination. Republicans and Democrats have at last found some common ground by condemning his effort to position himself as the war's innocent scapegoat. Some former C.I.A. colleagues are rougher still. Michael Scheuer, who ran the agency's bin Laden unit, has accused Mr. Tenet of lacking "the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss." Even after Mr. Tenet did leave office, he maintained a Robert McNamara silence until he cashed in.

Satisfying though it is to watch a circular firing squad of the war's enablers, unfinished business awaits. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is not in the past: the war escalates even as all this finger-pointing continues. Very little has changed between the fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" this year and the last. Back then, President Bush cheered an Iraqi "turning point" precipitated by "the emergence of a unity government." Since then, what's emerged is more Iraqi disunity and a major leap in the death toll. That's why Americans voted in November to get out.

The only White House figure to take any responsibility for the fiasco is the former Bush-Cheney pollster Matthew Dowd, who in March expressed remorse for furthering a war he now deems a mistake. For his belated act of conscience, he was promptly patronized as an incipient basket case by an administration flack, who attributed Mr. Dowd's defection to "personal turmoil." If that is what this vicious gang would do to a pollster, imagine what would befall Colin Powell if he spoke out. Nonetheless, Mr. Powell should summon the guts to do so. Until there is accountability for the major architects and perpetrators of the Iraq war, the quagmire will deepen. A tragedy of this scale demands a full accounting, not to mention a catharsis.

That accounting might well begin with Mr. Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice. Of all the top-tier policy players who were beside the president and vice president at the war's creation, she is the highest still in power and still on the taxpayers' payroll. She is also the only one who can still get a free pass from the press. The current groupthink Beltway narrative has it that the secretary of state's recidivist foreign-policy realism and latent shuttle diplomacy have happily banished the Cheney-Rumsfeld cowboy arrogance that rode America into a ditch.

Thus Ms. Rice was dispatched to three Sunday shows last weekend to bat away Mr. Tenet's book before "60 Minutes" broadcast its interview with him that night. But in each appearance her statements raised more questions than they answered. She was persistently at odds with the record, not just the record as spun by Mr. Tenet but also the public record. She must be held to a higher standard - a k a the truth - before she too jumps ship.

It's now been nearly five years since Ms. Rice did her part to sell the Iraq war on a Sept. 8, 2002, Sunday show with her rendition of "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Yet there she was last Sunday on ABC, claiming that she never meant to imply then that Saddam was an imminent threat. "The question of imminence isn't whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow" is how she put it. In other words, she is still covering up the war's origins. On CBS's "Face the Nation," she claimed that intelligence errors before the war were "worldwide" even though the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei publicly stated there was "no evidence" of an Iraqi nuclear program and even though Germany's intelligence service sent strenuous prewar warnings that the C.I.A.'s principal informant on Saddam's supposed biological weapons was a fraud.

Of the Sunday interviewers, it was George Stephanopoulos who went for the jugular by returning to that nonexistent uranium from Africa. He forced Ms. Rice to watch a clip of her appearance on his show in June 2003, when she claimed she did not know of any serious questions about the uranium evidence before the war. Then he came as close as any Sunday host ever has to calling a guest a liar. "But that statement wasn't true," Mr. Stephanopoulos said. Ms. Rice pleaded memory loss, but the facts remain. She received a memo raising serious questions about the uranium in October 2002, three months before the president included the infamous 16 words on the subject in his State of the Union address. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley, received two memos as well as a phone call of warning from Mr. Tenet.

Apologists for Ms. Rice, particularly those in the press who are embarrassed by their own early cheerleading for the war, like to say that this is ancient history, just as they said of the C.I.A. leak case. We're all supposed to move on and just worry about what happens next. Try telling that to families whose children went to Iraq to stop Saddam's nukes. Besides, there's a continuum between past deceptions and present ones, as the secretary of state seamlessly demonstrated last Sunday.

On ABC, she pushed the administration's line portraying Iraq's current violence as a Qaeda plot hatched by the Samarra bombing of February 2006. But that Qaeda isn't the Qaeda of 9/11; it's a largely Iraqi group fighting on one side of a civil war. And by February 2006, sectarian violence had already been gathering steam for 15 months - in part because Ms. Rice and company ignored the genuine imminence of that civil war just as they had ignored the alarms about bin Laden's Qaeda in August 2001.

Ms. Rice's latest canard wasn't an improvisation; it was a scripted set-up for the president's outrageous statement three days later. "The decision we face in Iraq," Mr. Bush said Wednesday, "is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11." Such statements about the present in Iraq are no less deceptive - and no less damaging to our national interest - than the lies about uranium and Qaeda- 9/11 connections told in 2002-3. This country needs facts, not fiction, to make its decisions about the endgame of the war, just as it needed (but didn't get) facts when we went to war in the first place. To settle for less is to make the same tragic error twice.

That Ms. Rice feels scant responsibility for any of this was evident in her repeated assertions on Sunday that all the questions about prewar intelligence had been answered by the Robb-Silberman and Senate committee inquiries, neither of which even addressed how the administration used the intelligence it received. Now she risks being held in contempt of Congress by ducking a subpoena authorized by the House's Oversight Committee, whose chairman, Henry Waxman, has been trying to get direct answers from her about the uranium hoax since 2003.

Ms. Rice is stonewalling his investigation by rambling on about separation of powers and claiming she answered all relevant questions in writing, to Senator Carl Levin, during her confirmation to the cabinet in January 2005. If former or incumbent national security advisers like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski could testify before Congress without defiling the Constitution, so can she. As for her answers to Senator Levin's questions, five of eight were pure Alberto Gonzales: she either didn't recall or didn't know.

No wonder the most galling part of Ms. Rice's Sunday spin was her aside to Wolf Blitzer that she would get around to reflecting on these issues "when I have a chance to write my book." Another book! As long as American troops are dying in Iraq, the secretary of state has an obligation to answer questions about how they got there and why they stay. If accountability is ever to begin, it would be best if those questions are answered not on "60 Minutes" but under oath.

Bush Brushes Up on Manners for Queen's Visit

This could be ugly....

Romney Gains Momentum

We've known for some time that Mitt Romney has some pretty important friends in the Republican party, and we've also recently been made aware of his very strong fund raising prowess. Add last night's very good debate performance to the equation, and you've got Romney suddenly being the Republican candidate getting the buzz. Hmmm. The Republicans get behind a Massachusetts flip-flopper. How ironic!

Bush: "I'm The Commander Guy"

More pearls of wisdom from the leader of the free world.

Ronald Reagan, Where Have You Gone?

The New York Times has a preview of tonight's crowded Republican debate to be held at the Reagan Library in California. The conventional wisdom up until now is that one of the top three 'first tier' candidates, collectively known as "Rudy McRomney" will eventually separate themselves from the pack and win the nomination. All three have struggled, however, and none more so than McCain who reported abysmal first quarter fund raising numbers and has been dogged by several campaign missteps. Ironically given the setting it's another Hollywood actor who won't be present, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, who has been garnering a wealth of attention as of late as he ponders an increasingly likely run. Saddled with a deeply unpopular president leading the party, and with the so-called front runners seemingly going nowhere, the stage may be set for one of the lower tier candidates to steal some of the spotlight tonight. Of those seven, Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee could emerge. A successful governor of a southern state with solid social conservative credentials, he along with the others has found it nearly impossible to gain any attention or funding. The opportunity for the other candidates is is certainly there as this is shaping up to be a historically weak Republican field. Ronald Reagan, where are you now?
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Prince Charles: Global Warming Fight Like WWII

An interesting analogy reported by Breitbart here. Worldwide, the Bush administration is almost completely isolated on the issue of global warming.

Does Hillary Want Gore to Run?

This article from Slate introduces an intriguing, yet far-fetched, theory.

Poll: Obama Ahead of Hillary

It's important to note that this poll was taken before last week's South Carolina primary, and that we are still a full 8 months away from the New Hampshire primary. However it's becoming increasingly clear that Democrats are looking for an alternative to Hillary, and Obama has been the main benefactor of that feeling thus far. I suspect that Al Gore and his political people are very aware of poll results like this one.