South Dakotans - Vote Tomorrow!

The special election is tomorrow. Make sure to drag your friends to the polls.

...Diedrich is lowering expectations -- practically conceding.

Health Insurance

I think Brad DeLong is correct that Kerry's proposal to effectively offload catastrophic health care coverage onto the government is a good one. I'm more skeptical about its workability in practice - the stakeholders with their snouts in the health care trough are rather powerful. I worry frankly that any non-nuclear health care reform (which would likely fail unless the people had taken to the streets or the rest of big bizness had finally gotten smart) will just get loaded up with more and more pork for the lovers of the free market as it sails through congress.

A rather smart person recently clarified the whole health insurance issue to me -- what we call health insurance in this country has little resemblance to actual insurance, and thinking about it as an insurance problem largely muddies the issue. What we have is a health care delivery industry, with little divide between the providers of health care and the providers of health insurance. It's all one tangled mess, and the incentives are completely skewed across the board.

An exception is catastrophic insurance, which could be more like traditional insurance if it were chiseled off. Perhaps if a clean bill could get through congress Kerry's plan is a good first step. Still, I suspect that it'll just provide another way for the health care industry, one way or another, to suck some more taxpayer dollars.

Some sort of single payer system is inevitable in this country. It's just a matter of when, who pays for it, how it's implemented, and how much the current parasites manage to suck from the system until that time (and after).

Ken Mehlman is Gay

Actually, I have no idea if he is, but could this Washington Blade article use any more rather obvious code to let us know that they think this prominent Bush campaign staffer is gay?

But, Mr. Mehlman, gay or straight, is entitled to as much privacy regarding his sex life as the media has determined all fairly prominent public figures are entitled - about zero. Remember the Kerry rumor?

One reporter had a little girl call up, assuming I wouldn’t hang up on a child. They even made her say, “Can I talk to Alex?” And when I said, “Yes, it’s me,” a reporter jumped on the line. CNN’s Zain Verjee wrote beseeching notes, slipping them under the front gate. It was like a horror movie where the zombies are on the other side of the door and then an arm comes through the window. Stuck with Kerry’s denial, each of the American networks had hired a local fixer to approach me for a big sit-down. “Tell me it’s true and we’re on the next plane to Nairobi!” ABC’s Chris Vlasto e-mailed hopefully. Good Morning America, the Today show, CNN, and 60 Minutes all offered me airtime to tell my story. Editors whom I’d been begging for work were now clamoring for my attention.

Alexandra Polier wasn't anything close to a public figure, and based on nothing the media didn't blink about dragging her into the spotlight. While Mick the Hack thinks it would be wrong to print private information such as someone being (his words) "gay, or twisted" that "would cause them to commit suicide," Hack and ilk gleefully chased this non-story down, absolutely unconcerned about its impact on the parties involved.

Rule of Law

Rude Pundit informs us that Bush is almost certainly violating Washington's Firearm Laws.

Our Dear Judy

It's New York Magazine's turn.

Is there a bigger tool than Bill Keller?

Who Woke the Post?

From Hiatt:

Bush could have responded differently. He could have embraced the heroes such as Spec. Joseph Darby, who sounded the alarm; William J. Kimbro, the Navy dog handler who refused to sic his dogs on prisoners; Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who wrote an honest report. He could have apologized to the people of Iraq, appointed an investigator from outside the chain of command, pledged to abide by the Geneva Conventions. Instead, he opted for a Nixonian strategy of damage containment, and a summer of piecemeal disclosure.

Who pays the price for the president's dishonesty? Soldiers such as Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli and his troops, who, as The Post's Scott Wilson reported last week, are out in Baghdad's slums, fighting insurgents one hour and fixing sewers the next. The prison scandal and the administration's failed response haven't doomed those efforts, but they've lengthened the odds. They've given aid and comfort to the enemy.

You Know...

I'd like to think that bundling over $175K might be worth, oh, two tickets to this...

Just sayin'

Lost in Afghanistan

It didn't take a genius to figure out that this administration didn't have any intention of genuinely following through in Afghanistan. I remember the early days of this blog when even suggesting that things weren't going swimmingly there brought howls of anguish from the Righties, who stopped caring as soon as they were given their shiny new toy -- Iraq.

It's sad really. I like, you know, just about everyone else in the country supported the Afghanistan conflict with little reservation at first, though my skepticism grew rather quickly. The truth is, as with Iraq, too much "liberal cover" was given to that war as with the one in Iraq. Toppling women hating theocrats? Sounds good to this liberal! Let's send a dollar to the Iraqi schoolchildren! Hooray!

It wasn't that demolishing the Taliban and going after terrorists there was a bad idea, but because the "rightness" of the mission was so obvious, and anyone who questioned any aspect of it was quickly necklaced, tough questions about just what the hell we were doing there were never asked.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq there were two missions -- remove terrorist threats and rebuild nations too long under the boot of authoritarian regimes. While the "Taliban" are gone in Afghanistan, most of the country is run by warlords (drug lords). And, large numbers of terrorists were allowed to escape at Tora Bora.

In Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, it seemed at least that we'd committed the funds to rebuild the country. Much "liberal cover" was provided from the Friedman wing by people who couldn't believe the Bush administration, which had screwed up everything else so horribly, would screw up their pet project. The terrorist threat was nonexistent, as were the WMDs, so removing an authoritarian regime and replacing it with something better is the only metric by which success can be judged.

When the history of the Bush administration is written, a key theme will be the fact that the "War President" managed to lose two wars. Not the military - they did their jobs. The president.

Stem Cell Madness

Good article by Kinsley.

On the Consequences of Hate

Via Unqualified Offerings we have this letter to the editor written in 2000 in response to the "pro-family" haters.

Letter to the Editor
by Sharon Underwood, Sunday, April 30, 2000
from the Valley News (White River Junction, VT/Hanover, NH)

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda "could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving...to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

Liars

Andrea Mitchell today on Meet the Press:

But I think what's most unhelpful to John Kerry in this regard is Al Gore. The Al Gore speech sets out what is a growing feeling in the Democratic base. We want out. We want quick withdrawal.

There is absolutely nothing in Al Gore's speech which suggests that he's calling for a quick withdrawal. Nothing.

andrea.mitchell@nbc.com

More Crap in the Times

Robert Waldmann discovers some more hooey in its pages.

public@nytimes.com

Illinois

Smart people there:

Still, the poll of 600 likely registered voters, conducted May 21-24, shows Kerry with a commanding 16 percentage-point lead over Bush in a head-to-head November matchup--54 percent to 38 percent. And even if independent Ralph Nader were to qualify for the Illinois ballot, Kerry maintains a 16 percentage-point lead over Bush--53 percent to 37 percent. Nader receives only 4 percent.

The poll showed 52 percent of Illinois voters now say they have an unfavorable opinion of Bush compared with only 37 percent who look upon him favorably. In addition, 55 percent say they disapprove of the way he is handling the presidency.

While Illinois has trended Democratic and Bush lost the state by a dozen percentage points in the 2000 presidential contest, a similar poll taken just five months ago showed 51 percent of Illinois voters held a favorable attitude toward Bush while 40 percent disapproved. Back then, 49 percent of Illinois voters approved of the job Bush was doing as president while 42 percent did not.

Okrent

Digby writes about his Judy column so I don't have to.


...to be fair, Left I does highlight one place where Okrent gets it exactly right.

That automatic editor defense, 'We're not confirming what he says, we're just reporting it,' may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse than no defense. It's a license granted to liars.

The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others.

When an anonymous source with an agenda burns you, then immediately the story should be inverted. It is no longer about whatever the source is feeding you, it is now that the source lied to you. It isn't just about having an obligation to readers, it's recognizing that there is now a real story to tell, such as "Bush Administration Officials Trying to Manipulate Public By Lying to Media."

Until editors and reporters are willing to internalize the basic idea that anonymous sources must be outed when they're caught lying, they should not be used.

Ending Court Ordered Child Support

World O'Crap provides a bit of fun for your Sunday morning.

Cheneyburton

Link:

Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."

Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

But, that Whitewater thing. That was important!

Judy

Rutten rips into the Times over our dear Judy and let's us know that there's some more to come.


I think one thing which needs to be stressed - and it sounds like Michael Massing is about to do it yet again - is that Judy's problem wasn't simply that she cozied up to some liars or was less than dilligent about verifying the BS that was handed to her. She had an explicit agenda and hasn't been very shy about admitting to it.


(link thanks to David E.)

Inverse Judo Flip

Interesting. Kerry just figured out how to package himself to the right of Bush on foreign policy and paint Bush as the namby pamby tree hugging humanitarian do gooder who is going to get us killed pushing this freedom nonsense.

The problem with the Bush Doctrine, you see, is all this emphasis on Democracy promotion instead of saving our own butts.

Nice move. Of course, neither stated position has much to do with reality. The Bush administration isn't serious about promoting democracy and it's hard to imagine a Kerry administration would be less serious. Still, it's an interesting little bit of rhetorical judo. "Promoting Freedom and Democracy" is just the packaging of a foreign policy which is doing anything but, so it'll be sort of amusing to see Kerry strike back at Bush by asking why the hell we're wasting our money and soldiers' lives for those damn furriners.

Those damn Bushies - always concerned with the human rights of others. It's time for a hard headed realist in the White House, someone who puts America First.

Hilarious, really.

Game

I don't endorse everything in this game, but it's certainly, uh, interesting...

FUBAR

Jeebus, this WaPo article makes it clear that no one's in charge. Lovely.

Can't our media comprehend that this stuff matters? This isn't snickering cocktail party chitchat about who is up and who is down. This is an executive branch which is entirely rudderless. There is no leader. Neither Bush nor Rice, whose job it is to get all the ducks in a row, can control their feuding underlings.

Amnesia

A few short days ago the RNC issued this statement:

“Al Gore served as Vice President of this country for eight years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed US citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole.”

“Al Gore’s attacks on the President today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia.

Oops:

Al Qaeda-linked militants on Saturday killed at least 16 people in a string of attacks in the eastern city of Khobar, Saudi security sources said.

They said the dead included at least nine civilians, seven of whom were foreigners and seven members of the Saudi security forces. The sources gave the nationalities of the dead as an American, a Briton, an Egyptian, two Filipinos, an Indian, Pakistani and two Saudi civilians.

I try to be above make cheap political points with this stuff. But, you know what? The accountability administration has been blaming Bill Clinton and Al Gore for everything that's happened under Bush's watch. Some of us said that going to war in Iraq would make us less, not more, safer. Some of us said that going to war would be an excellent recruiting tool for al Qaeda. And, hey, some of us were right.

This is the most incompetent administration in modern history. It isn't even close. And the decisions they've made are causing deaths that would have otherwise not happened.

And, yes, I know the terrorists did this not the Bush administration. Take it up with the RNC.

The Manipulator

A lovely little story from the latest New Yorker.

Dana

I was about to write that it "takes a lot of balls" to have been the Taliban's biggest US supporter and then to go on TV and blame it all on Bill Clinton. But, given that no journalist ever bothers to point it out it really doesn't.

Iraq'd

Spencer Ackerman has the best overview of our new compliant strongman.

Ashcroft Dead Pool

It seems to be an "open secret" that Aschroft's going to go before the election. I have no idea if this is actually true - but, my guess is that it's a pretty decent election season strategy. As deserving of being thrown over as Ashcroft is, he can sort of be the "bad incompetent guy" who wasn't actually central to the Bush War President narrative. Throwing that little soccer ball out for the kool kids to chase will take their attention of all of the other people who should resign

Nattering Nabobs of Nagourney

Swopa documents the obvious -- one of the NYT's main reporters on the Kerry Beat seems to only have "democrats" like Susan Estrich and Mickey "The Hack" Kaus on his rolodex. I'll reproduce a big chunk of his post:

Searching the New York Times website for Nagourney's byline from early 2003 to today produced the following results related to overall Democratic prospects (as opposed to the ins and outs of primary results, individual candidates' pre-primary strategies, etc.):

May 27, 2004
Democrats Wonder if Kerry Should Stay on Careful Path
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

May 2, 2004
KERRY STRUGGLING TO FIND A THEME, DEMOCRATS FEAR
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

April 8, 2004,
Battles in Iraq Bring Problems for Bush And Kerry as Well
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and CARL HULSE

April 1, 2004
Political Memo; Bad Timing as Kerry Slips Out of Picture
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN

March 21, 2004
Political Memo; Some Democrats Say Kerry Must Get Back on the Trail
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and ADAM NAGOURNEY

March 13, 2004
Political Memo; Testing, Testing. Shrewd Politics or Kerry Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome?
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

These were preceded by a brief two-week "honeymoon" as Kerry swept the primaries:

February 9, 2004
Democrats See Unified Party For November
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

January 29, 2004
THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: DEMOCRATS; Party Leaders Express Relief at the Emergence of Kerry
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Before that, though? For the most part, nothing but trouble:

January 9, 2004
THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: IOWA; Tide of Second Thoughts Rises Among Democrats
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and CARL HULSE; Michael McElroy contributed reporting for this article.

January 1, 2004
THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: THE DEMOCRATS; Democrats' Plan for Early Nominee May Be Costly
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

December 29, 2003
THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: POLITICAL MEMO; Stumping Gamely, the Democrats Fight Against Most Voters' Holiday Indifference
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

December 18, 2003
Candidates in Presidential Contest Are Failing to Move Democratic Primary Voters, Poll Shows
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

December 10, 2003
Democrats Wrestle With the Gore Factor
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and EDWARD WYATT

August 31, 2003
THE 2004 CAMPAIGN; Worried Democrats See Daunting '04 Hurdles
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

July 29, 2003
Centrist Democrats Warn Party Not to Present Itself as 'Far Left'
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

July 18, 2003
Political Memo; Tug of Constituencies Strains Democrats
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

July 9, 2003
Campaign Memo; Tricky Question for Democrats: When Is Open Season on One Another?
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

June 15, 2003
A Fund-Raising Sprint by Bush Will Put His Rivals Far Behind
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ADAM NAGOURNEY

May 25, 2003
THE DEMOCRATS ARE RUNNING, BUT WHO'S WATCHING?
By Adam Nagourney

May 17, 2003
Kerry Introduces Health Plan, Pointing Up Divisions Among Democratic Contenders
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

May 4, 2003
Democrats' First Presidential Debate Shows Party Fissures
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

May 4, 2003
Listen Up, Democrats: Why 2004 Isn't 1992
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

April 16, 2003
Looking at Postwar Bush, Glum Democrats Ponder How to Win in 2004
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

March 19, 2003
Divided Democrats Concerned About 2004
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Max Speak

You listen.

Allawi

One of their own:

The choice of Iyad Allawi, closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government.

He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes.

...
Link:

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.

(link thanks to Lisa)

Chalabi Watch

Laura Rozen is your one stop shop. Her latest post, in particular, is quite fascinating. If one can believe her anonymous source, it appears that Chalabi passed information to Iran about our information gathering abilities. He told them how we spy on them. The more interesting question is who told Chalabi?

And, you know what, I just can't figure out anymore if people are joking when they suggest that Ledeen is actually a tool of Iranian intelligence. Oh well, little people like me did try to suggest that putting all these Iran Contra alums back in power might actually not be such a good idea. But, hey, I'm sure there was something more important for the media to focus on that week.

Democratic Gain

Here's an organization which is trying to help out Democrats.


...and 2020 Democrats.

Leading Lights of the Right

Arthur Silber has some choice paraphrases -- I'll excerpt one of the Derb:

And even if this war was not required for our national defense, it has had some wonderful benefits. A military is meant to be used, and soldiers want to fight. They're doing that now, so they're a lot better at killing and blowing things up than they would have been just carrying out those namby-pamby "peace-keeping" missions. One other thing: this war has shown how incredibly stupid it is to have men and women serving in the same unit, especially in combat zones. Pfc. England conclusively demonstrates that.

Abuse and torture? What abuse and torture? Of Arabs? I told you, I don't care about them. If only everyone had my broad, philosophical outlook. Then you wouldn't get bogged down in these ridiculous details.

So, let's see. The war is not being fought for national defense. Derbyshire sure as hell doesn't want it being fought for humanitarian reasons. In fact, he doesn't care about them because, you know, they're Arabs and no one in their right minds should care about "those people."

Nope, the war is a great and wonderful thing because we have a military and they like to kill people. They don't like namby-pamby stuff -- they like to go out and shoot and get their limbs shot off and their eyes and brains blown out. Oh yes, this is what it's all about -- satisfying the bloodlust of cranky old bigots like Derbyshire.

And these people call Al Gore "nuts." They're all fucking insane.

(sorry, paraphrases not quotes. But, click through to the originals and you'll see he's being perfectly fair.)

CNN Repeating Story

You can now send your emails to Eason Jordan at Eason.Jordan@turner.com. He's CNN's chief news executive.

The Next Generation

And, over on his blog Big Media Matt really does get at a serious problem within the Dem establishment.

On the left, the College Democrats are treated like shit, the think tanks do approximately nothing to help their young research assistants move on to bigger things, the junior staffers on the Hill get no support and encouragement to stay involved in politics, and in general no one seems to give a damn whether or not there will be a next generation of professional progressives.

My perception is that there are a lot of people who see the whole situation as a zero sum game -- any job, or salary, or any sort or props which someone else gets is that much less turkee for you. Of course it doesn't have to be this way.

Hack

I guess now that Kaus has completely destroyed his once held (though never deserved) reputation as a serious policy thinker, there's little chance that he'll ever try and regain it. But, one does wonder why a media outlet which presumably doesn't like to be the laughingstock of the known universe continues to publish him.

A Month to "Handover"

Which CNN likes to breathlessly tout as the "End of the Occupation."

For some reason, our press seems to be surprisingly uncurious about a rather simple question.

Handover to whom?

Call CNN

Outrage:

[Kelli] ARENA: Neither John Kerry nor the president has said troops pulled out of Iraq any time soon. But there is some speculation that al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House.

BEN VENZKE, INTELCENTER: Al Qaeda feels that Bush is, even despite casualties, right or wrong for staying there is going to stay much longer than possibly what they might hope a Democratic administration would.

There you go. We're fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and they think John Kerry is a wimp.

Atlanta:
404-827-1500

Washington:
202-898-7900


You can communicate your thoughts to Ms. Arena personally at:
kelli.arena@turner.com

The Final Goth Solution

This is precious.

Move On = Klan

Last night on Fox, Sean Hannity equated speaking to Move On with speaking to the Klan:

HANNITY: Should -- why would Al Gore associate with a group that is that left wing and that radical? What if he spoke before the Klan? Would that -- would we not hold him in judgment for that?

(thanks to sdf)

Rule of Law

Well, if the Attorney General feels no need to obey the law, why should we?

Some allies of the Department of Homeland Security within the Bush administration and members of Congress criticized Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday for issuing terrorist threat warnings at a news conference on Wednesday, contending he failed to coordinate the information with the White House and with Homeland Security, which has the job of releasing threat warnings.

...

Under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and Bush administration rules, only the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can publicly issue threat warnings, and they must be approved in a complex interagency process involving the White House. Administration officials sympathetic to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said he was not informed Ashcroft was going to characterize the threat in that way -- an assertion that Justice officials deny.

Krugman

Good.

Hannitize

Go take the poll.

Boobies!

(thanks to woot)

JK another great success so far! 106 donations totalling $8630.03!

Overall numbers since we began:

Total Donations: 2133
Total Dollars: $178386.89
Average Donation: $83.63

Pardon

Wow, what a shithead Janklow is.

Neocon Judy

Michael Berube reminds us that our dear Judy was also a conduit for tinfoil hat Cuba conspiracy theories.

Let's also not forget her book written with nutcase Laurie Mylroie in a mere 21 days to let us know really quickly why Saddam had, in the space of days, gone from being Our Man in Mesopotamia to The Evil One.

I'm also finding out that she was the go-to gal to drum up support for the idea that Khadaffi was the Evilest One when it was his turn.

Note - there's no contradiction between recognizing there are bad men in the world (Saddam, Khadaffi) that maybe we should do something about and being a bit frustrated about the fact that there are reliable stenographers in the press who are willing to play a part in the Pentagon's PR machine once we decide that one of those bad guys is The Bad Guy of the Week. As Rumsfeld's adventures with Uzbekikitty tell us, not all bad guys are created equal. The ability of the government to easily manipulate useful tools like Miller into putting their PR on the front pages should frighten us all, even if they are truly bad guys.

Success

According to a reader, Purina has stopped running ads on Howie Carr's web page on WRKO after being informed of his op-ed equating gay marriage and prison torture.

Fallujah

The state of things:

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - With U.S. marines gone and central government authority virtually nonexistent, Fallujah resembles an Islamic mini-state - anyone caught selling alcohol is flogged and paraded in the city. Men are encouraged to grow beards and barbers are warned against giving "western" hair cuts.

"After all the blood that was shed, and the lives that were lost, we shall only accept God's law in Fallujah," said cleric Abdul-Qader al-Aloussi, offering a glimpse of what a future Iraq may look like as the U.S.-led occupation draws to a close. "We must capitalize on our victory over the Americans and implement Islamic sharia laws."

The departure of the marines under an agreement that ended the three-week siege last month has enabled hardline Islamic leaders to assert their power in this once-restive city 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.

Some were active in defending the city against the marines and have profited by a perception - both here and elsewhere in Iraq - that the mujahedeen, or Islamic holy warriors, defeated a superpower.

Mistakes Were Made

Eric Boehlert examines the NYT's "mistakes were made" form letter. And, Digby has more.

Shorter Digby: Our press is constantly fed bullshit by Republican sources, and they keep coming back for more seeing it as acceptable practice.

Tim Russert/AP flashback:

In the film we see RNC glee as the Associated Press accepts their oppo research on a Gore misstatement during the first presidential debate. During their months of filming BBC producers also observed producers for NBC's Tim Russert, among others, calling to enquire if the team had any new material. This was apparently normal practice.

"It's an amazing thing," says RNC researcher Griffin in the film, "when you have top-line producers and reporters calling you and saying 'We trust you.... We need your stuff.'"

JK Day Continues

Only 19 donations so far. 15 bucks to save our country. Mars, Bitches!

Quote of the Day

You know what, I was proved fucking right. That's what happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' But I was proved fucking right.

Guess who?

GYWO

Judith Miller edition.

Preview:


...just wanted to remind people that as cynical as David Rees comes across as, he actually bought into the whole "we're going to save Afghanistan" idea and has been trying to help do the work that the Bush administration hasn't. All GYWO book royalties are being donated to these guys, who have to be the coolest guys on the planet.

The Big Dog Speaks

Pre-order now.




It isn't coming out for a month and it's already ranked 8th.

Pollkatz Returns

The great Professor Pollkatz has returned. I'm always fascinated by this graph of his which compares the approval ratings (from Gallup) of presidents from Carter onward.

The striking thing is how the approval ratings of Clinton (The Great Satan) and Reagan (The Most Popular President Ever) track almost precisely except for two differences. Clinton's are abysmal right in the beginning, reflecting some early stumbles and the press's tendency to talk about the "failed Clinton presidency" before it even began. And, then, at the end, when they were both having their respective scandals. Iran-Contra seriously damaged Reagan's popularity, while the press witchhunt of Clinton boosted his.

Happy John Kerry Thursday

Almost forgot. Give some scratch to Big John!

JK Thursday will only last through to the convention. After that he'll be on public financing.

Franken Beats Rusty

Air America on the way to global domination.

But in New York, where Air America still broadcasts over WLIB-1190 AM, the network beat Limbaugh's station, Disney-owned WABC, among both 25-to-54-year-olds and 18-to-34-year-olds during the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. period. In the 25-to-54 demographic, WLIB garnered a 3.4 share to WABC's 3.1; among 18-to-34-year-olds, WLIB won sevenfold with a 2.9 share to WABC's 0.4.

I believe other shows are doing quite well also. I'll be able to tell my grandchildren that I was a guest on the very first day...

(thanks to YYZ)

Take Rusty off AFR

Media Matters has sent a letter to Rumsfeld asking to have Limbaugh removed from Armed Forces Radio. Read the letter. Sign the petition.

TV Ads Worthless

Kos has a post on the declining effectiveness of TV advertising for campaigns. I'm not surprised. Frankly, I don't watch TV ads anymore. I think my brain has finally perfected the art of shutting them out completely.

Advertising on blogs, on the other hand, is an extraordinarily effective way of reaching a targeted audience.

Thursday is New Jobless Day

Congratulations to the 344K new jobless, and to the 3K we neglected to congratulate last week. Lucky duckies every one!

Terra Ists

Writing in the PDN, Will Bunch has some interesting things to say:

Today comes international terror suspect Aafia Siddiqui, a Volvo-driving, MIT-trained neurologist and mother of three, who was reported arrested and then reported not arrested within a matter of hours in April 2003.

Siddiqui, 32, a Pakistani who once lived in Boston, apparently split from her husband, an anesthesiologist, and fled to her native country. Thirteen months ago, NBC News and other news organizations said she'd been arrested there - later confirmed to the Associated Press by two U.S. officials.

That same day, a second AP story said American officials suddenly had "backed off" claims that she was in custody. They claimed new information from the Pakistani government had made her arrest "doubtful."

Yesterday, she was one of seven terror suspects named in a high-profile press conference by Attorney General John Ashcroft. American officials insist that she was named by captured al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and that she shared a post-office box with a terrorism suspect.

Despite the hype, most of the alleged terrorists named yesterday by Ashcroft had been publicly identified long ago. One former national security official in the Bush administration told Reuters news service: "This is more butt-covering than anything else."

If...

Big Fucking Ifs:

"The truth is it wouldn't take much actually to turn this around, not that they necessarily will," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a leading neoconservative think tank. "There are a lot of very positive trends going on in Iraq, and I think if you take care of the security situation and the political trend lines toward real elections, in fact I think Iraq is more than salvageable."

GRRRRROOOOOORE

Good speech. All the hos should watch it. They won't.

Where's Condi?

Rather quiet lately.

Amnesia

Strange press release from the GOP today:

“George Bush has served as President of this country for three years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden attacked the United States killing 3,000 people, and terrorists killed US citizens on several other different occasions including the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, multiple bombings and attacks in Saudi Arabia, a bombing in the Phillipines, and attacks in Yemen, not to mention the almost one thousand American military and civilian personnel killed in what the President has dubbed the 'central front in the war on terror.'"

“Bush's actions demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia.”

Oh, wait, woops -- that isn't what it said. It said this:

“Al Gore served as Vice President of this country for eight years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed US citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole.”

“Al Gore’s attacks on the President today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia.”

Terrorists - Not Just Brown and Swarthy Anymore!

Thanks for letting us know, John:

Our intelligence confirms Al Qaida is seeking recruits who can portray themselves as Europeans. Al Qaida also attracts Muslim extremists among many nationalities and ethnicities, including North Africans and South Asians, as well as recruiting young Muslim converts of any nationality inside target countries.

Herseth in the Lead

Latest poll has Herseth 11 points ahead. The special election is on Tuesday. One would assume the power of incumbency would help her win in November as well. One seat closer to Speaker Pelosi.

President Gore

Wow.

Truth About the Handover

Kos has a bit of a WSJ article which lays out very clearly so even Kyra Phillips should be able to understand just how much power we're going to be giving to the fake yet to be determined Iraqi government on June 30.



None.

Pet Goat

No, really?

At the commission's hearing on aviation safety last May, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, a retired NORAD commander, acknowledged under questioning that the jets could have intercepted Flight 77 if they had been sent sooner.

Felzenberg said the June hearing will focus on tracing the timeline of the FAA's notification, as well as when President Bush delivered the order to NORAD to shoot down any hijacked planes.


In the days after the attacks, officials said NORAD had been notified of the hijacking of an American Airlines jetliner 12 minutes before it slammed into the Pentagon. Vice President Dick Cheney said Bush had authorized the Air Force after the World Trade Center attacks to shoot down any plane that entered and refused to leave Washington area airspace. Cheney left unclear whether Bush's decision came before the Pentagon was hit.

McCarthy's Corpse

Media Matters takes on James Taranto's latest attempt to be cooler than Joe McCarthy.

Truth in Headlines

Oy.

Republican Survivor

This is going to get them in trouble...

Wingnuttery

So, Perle's now being critical. Of what? 1st, the CIA (warning: Moonie Magazine link):

Perle has no doubts that some of the attacks on him are coming directly from members of the CIA, in order to cover their own exposed rears. By attacking Chalabi's intelligence they can distract attention from their own mistakes.

"I believe that much of the CIA operation in Iraq was owned by Saddam Hussein," Perle said. "There were 45 assassination attempts against Saddam -- and he survived them all. How could that be, if he was not manipulating the intelligence?"

The real problem? Not putting Chalabi in charge as soon as possible!

"I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.

With violent resistance to the U.S.-led occupation showing no signs of ending, Perle said the biggest mistake in post-war policy "was the failure to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis more or less immediately.

"We didn't have to find ourselves in the role of occupier. We could have made the transition that is going to be made at the end of June more or less immediately," he told BBC radio, referring to the U.S. and British plan to transfer political authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30.

Hey may have a point - Chalabi probably could have handled the reconstruction budget at least as well as Simone "Frenchy" Ledeen.

And, then we have Hoagland, who is also running with the "you should've put my buddy in charge" line:

The decision to concentrate power in the hands of the Coalition Provisional Authority rather than establish a provisional Iraqi government a year ago has had disastrous results. As Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and others have said, that step "turned an army of liberation into an army of occupation" resented across Iraq. Liberation was successful, and ousting Hussein was a justifiable action. Denying power to Iraqis once he was gone was not. You must face that.

Yes, I know, neither says Chalabi's name, but who else? Who else?

The End of the Occupation

God, I can't believe the press is actually pretending June 30 is meaningful.

Will they ever learn?

My Son Has a Blog

First the missus takes over, and now I discover that my son Max* has a blog as well. He catches this bit of delight from Midge Decter:

We're not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We're there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil."
--Decter on the Warren Olney show, 89.9, Los Angeles, 5/21/04

*joke. Max is not really my son.

Let Them Step Down

Raines left when Jayson Blair put inconsequential bullshit into the paper. The Times now says that the editors were responsible for she-who-they-cannot-name (Judith Fucking Miller) helping to drag this country into war. The blood of thousands of people is on the hands of those editors, by their own admission. They should do the honorable thing.


(let's not forget, of course, that Raines was editor when much of Judy's crap was peddled. But, they say "editors" plural.)

Thanks to Mrs. Atrios

For holding down the fort. Sadly, nothing much got cleaned as I was just hiding in the closet reading Sean Hannity's latest book all day, but, hey...

I'm a Hack

Recently I said that the Mighty Reason Man never updates his blog. I was wrong. He has.

Cuddly Factor?

So I am watching Tweety here -- waiting patiently for Mr. Atrios to get done already --, and the screamer is asking Kerry's Campaign Senior Advisor Tad Devine about Kerry's "cuddly factor". WTF?? Does it really matter if Tweety wants or not to *hug* Kerry?

Polls, Sarin, Speech...

Good Mr. Atrios is busy helping around the house and I am trying to help him for a few hours with his blog. So... I skimmed through news headlines, posts in other blogs and so on, trying to decide on what would make Mr. Atrios laugh when he returns to his blog after a hard day of not-so-much-fun work. I think I will have to settle for this, and leave it to Fat Tim...

More Cleaning

It looks like the U.S. has been cleaning and preparing for summer in the wrong places...

(This is not a coup, but until Mr. Atrios is done with his chores, Mrs. Atrios is in the house!!)

Clean Open Thread

While Mr. Atrios is very fast at the keyboard, it strikes me (Mrs. Atrios) that he is not very fast at Spring cleaning... hmmm...

You can use this thread to do some of your own Spring cleaning.

Open Thread

While Mr. Atrios is doing some way overdue Spring cleaning... (hey, I already did my part! --Mrs. Atrios)

Outsourcing

Max has the latest on Republican fundraising calls being made from India. Look, press corps, just ask the goddamn question:

Have any fundraising calls on behalf of the RNC, either directly or through a firm that they've contracted with, been made from India?

It's rather simple.

Speech

So, I skimmed the transcript. How many versions of "listen to what I say, don't pay attention to what I do" will the 101st Fighting Keyboarders actually swallow? As usual, Andy gives himself some wiggle room, but still.


Weird.

Unitarians - Religion After All

Reversal in Texas.

Jobapalooza

Krugman:

Here's one way to look at it. The job forecast in the 2002 Economic Report of the President assumed that by 2004 the economy would have fully recovered from the 2001 recession. That recovery, according to the official projection, would lead to average payroll employment of 138 million this year — 7 million more than the actual number. So we have a gap of 7 million jobs to make up.

And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last month's rate to reach what his own economists consider full employment.

The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush's supporters have no right to complain about the public's failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of.

Speech Thread

For those with a stronger constitution than mine.

Big John

CBS:

Kerry Bush
Now 49% 41%
4/2004 46% 44%
3/2004 43% 46%

I think that's the first poll showing a statistically significant lead.

More importantly: kicking ass in the Zogby Battleground poll.

Good for the Hoosiers

Ignore the spin on this poll. 50% of Hoosiers support gay marriage or that thing which is just like gay marriage with a different name.

Quote of the Week

Link:

It's extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government," says Hastert spokesman John Feehery, a burden of which Democrats would happily relieve them.

(via Kos)

Hacktackular Howie!

David E. of Fablog responds to Howie's continual assertions that the nasty "liberal media" is being oh so biased by not shitting on the marriages of gay people in Mass. over at Romenesko:

From DAVID EHRENSTEIN: Ron Kampeas asks [below] "Should a wedding be covered like a campaign rally, with every second graf a reminder of 'why this might be wrong.' How do you fact check a wedding?"

Why the same way you'd fact-check any other public event of course. And if we're going to follow Howie Kurtz's strictures the "other side" should always be consulted in these matters. Why are these people whose pictures we see on the "Weddings and Celebrations" page of New York Times not being thoroughly investigated? Why are they getting married? Do they have the right? Are they indeed heterosexual or is it a marriage blanc in the tradition of Cole and Linda Porter? Surely a responsible editor would spare no quarter in assuring the readership that the weddings trumpeted in the Stylke section are the genuine article and not Triumph of the "Will & Grace" alliances. Good journalism demands it.

And Ailes notices Howie just being generally hacktackular.

Hacktackular!

Slyfelinos takes on more right wing nonsense.

Wedding Massacre

As I said previously, I really don't jump on every military operation gone bad. Right or wrong, we're in a war in Iraq and there are people shooting at our soldiers, they're going to respond and sometimes they're going to screw up. Not being on the ground in Iraq, I have little clue about what the precise situation is, what information they have, and what determines the specific operations they take. Whether any particular screwup is of the 'OH MY GOD HOW COULD THOSE IDIOTS HAVE DONE THAT' or of the 'OH MY GOD WHAT A TRAGIC MISTAKE' variety I really don't know. Either way, I don't think our military goes around blowing up wedding parties just for fun.

But, what really pisses me off is when they lie about it even once it's obvious that, well, they're lying. Here's the latest.

And, here are pictures that the Spanish media is showing. Here, and here. You may not want to see them.

(elmundo links thanks to Julius from juliusblog)

Smackdown

If I heard correctly, Al Franken's show is beating Limbaugh's in NYC. 3.4 share.

Perhaps It's Time...

Ah, the libertarians.

Feingold

Say hello to one of my new advertisers, Senator Russ Feingold. Regular readers may remember that I have a tendency to be rather harsh on Feingold at times, mostly having to do with his role in helping to confirm the Worst Attorney General Ever.

My take on Feingold is that he's too often a "bad maverick," when it matters (confirming Ashcroft) and a "good maverick" when it doesn't (lone vote against Patriot Act). But, that's somewhat unfair and largely a result of the fact that 3 years later I haven't been able to get over Ashcroft thing. What is definitely the case is that the Senate would be a much worse place without him.

Your 5 Day Forecast

oy.

Hoeffel Report

So, as I said below I went to a fundraiser for Joe Hoeffel which was attended by Howard Dean. It was held outdoors at a lovely suburban home in Philadelphia's Main Line area. Attendance and money collected, from what I understand, exceeded expectations significantly, which is good news for the Hoeffel campaign.

It was the first time I'd seen Hoeffel speak in person. Now, I've been a supporter of his campaing a) because he's local, b) because he can win, and c) it's really time for Specter to go. But, frankly, I've been of the opinion that with enough money and a well run campaign, a ham sandwich could beat Arlen Specter this year.

I've seen Hoeffel speak on TV a few times, and I have to say that he didn't come across all that well on TV. But, I was glad to see that in person, he's great. Comes across as a real Democrat, knows how to work the crowd, has a little bit of the scrappy Dean attitude, etc... I think we'll find that he'll be quite a formidable candidate as this thing heats up.

This is one we can win.

Defining Deviancy Down

From Tom Tomorrow.

NDN vs. DLC

Kos has an interesting post up on the latest Dem turf wars. I don't know enough about the NDN to have much of an opinion, but I think Kos hits on what's wrong with the DLC -- what started as an organization which was trying to help Democrats create a more business friendly image (for fundraising) and a more centrist agenda (to get the votes of moderates) has just degenerated into the petulant whining of an increasingly irrelevant guy.

Down Down Down

Almost to the 30s...

The war in Iraq continues to tarnish the approval ratings of President Bush. Evaluations of the way Mr. Bush is handling the war in Iraq, how he is handling foreign policy, and how he is handling his job overall are now at their lowest levels ever in his presidency.

Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating has continued to decline. Forty-one percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 52 percent disapprove — the lowest overall job rating of his presidency. Two weeks ago, 44 percent approved. A year ago, two-thirds did.

Sixty-one percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while just 34 percent approve.

As concern about the situation in Iraq grows, 65 percent now say the country is on the wrong track — matching the highest number ever recorded in CBS News Polls, which began asking this question in the mid-1980's. Only 30 percent currently say things in this country are headed in the right direction. One year ago, in April 2003, 56 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction.

The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was back in November 1994. Then, Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades.

Majorities disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling foreign policy and the economy. Terrorism remains the only positive area for the president — a majority of 51 percent approve of the way he is handling the campaign against terrorism. But that number matches his lowest rating ever on terrorism.

.

Lies and the Lying Liars

The Bush blog just lives to post up lies on their blog.
Like candidate, like campaign.

What will we tell the children?

The Governor and Mrs. Atrios

Went to a fundraiser for Joe Hoeffel this evening. Here's a picture of Governor Dean and Mrs. Atrios. Sadly, it appears my thumb accidentally got in the way of the photograph.

The End of Pledge Week

See you suckers! Off to Paris!

(joke)


Serious:
Thanks all! About 1350 of you donated, which is really incredible. I'm bad at writing gushing thank yous, but I'm more than grateful for the support.

Now, back to business. Let's get back to work on the trifecta - President Kerry, Majority Leader Daschle, and Speaker Pelosi.

War is Hell

A delightful essay by Simone Ledeen.

In other news, winter has officially arrived here. The rain has started and all the sand and dust has turned to mud. My pants are perpetually dirty- splattered with mud- and my boots are looking very rough indeed! War is hell.

...

Hillary Clinton is coming here tomorrow. For her sake I hope I don’t see her. I might do something crazy like spit in her direction. Actually, General Tant, right before the President came onto the podium, had a funny line. When Bremer said ‘someone more senior,’ Tant turned to me and commented: ‘If Hillary Clinton shows up I am leaving.’ I heard that tonight in Afghanistan, where she is making a stop, the troops were more interested in the food than her. Go figure.

(thanks to Biblio)

Shifting Links

Reader m writes in to say that the story from Newsday linked below, which was a piece by Knut Royce regarding Chalabi, has been replaced by a more innocuous AP story.

The Royce story still exists at this link, so I'm not sure what the deal is.

Sunday Funnies

Anything amusing on the Sunday talk shows this week? I Tivo most of them, but I can't stand to watch them anymore unless someone brings something fun to my attention.

Missing Pages

McCain was bitching about this various places on Friday but it didn't seem to get much attention. So many anonymous white house officials to interview about how manly president codpiece is. Time finally picks it up:

Another big stack of pages is causing concern over at the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is investigating abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Committee aides discovered belatedly that their copy of the 6,000-page report on prison abuses produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba might not be complete. The copy they got after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7 was a thick document with 106 annexes, and it was quickly arranged into separate binders. Only later did the committee stack up all the pages, compare them with a ream of 6,000 blank pages and decide that at least 2,000 pages were missing. "We'd certainly like to know why they're missing," said Republican Senator John McCain. Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita insisted, "If there is some shortfall in what was provided, it was an oversight." Committee staff members haven't actually counted the pages. Chairman John Warner will investigate this week to see what is missing.

It's not even funny to say anymore, but Jeebus...imagine if Clinton were pulling this shit?

Holy Crap

Iraq is being run by a bunch of fucking Young Republicans. Read the whole thing, but just to give you an idea:

For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.

...more on this basic story here in Slate:

And while the Pentagon's assumptions of an ecstatic, sweets-and-flowers-bearing populace that would welcome the occupiers as liberators may have been understandable in February 2003, Feith continued to let ideology rule his decisions long after the "major combat operations" ended. Last September, Knight Ridder reported that Paul Bremer's request for more than 220 employees for the occupation had yet to be approved. Guess who was to blame? "It is taking forever because Feith only wants true believers to get through the gate," a senior administration official said."

and here:

More such "help" may be on the way in the person of Rich Galen, veteran GOP-spin meister, former spokesman for Vice President Dan Quayle and onetime head of Newt Gingrich's GOPAC. In late October, Galen received the call to serve his country in Iraq as yet another of Bremer's Senior Advisors. His gig? Adding more artillery to the Iraq War spin operation. "My job," Galen told The New York Post before shipping off, "will be to help reporters on the ground find interesting stories that they can use. If there's a civil-affairs unit out of Manhattan that rebuilt a school, it might be of interest to Channel 5 but not to a network."

CPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. "Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats," said one CPA official. "It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk."

"They are all on the campaign trail," said another official. "They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration." "I don't always know if they are Republicans," said yet another senior CPAer. "But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies." They're trying to do the right thing, this official adds, "but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create."

It's also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam's marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: "They don't call it the Republican Palace for nothing."

Bobo

Kinsley slices and dices.

Max Speak

A bunch of idiots should listen.

Immunize

WaPo:

A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case testified that a captain at the Baghdad prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," according to a recording of a military hearing obtained by The Washington Post.

The lawyer said he was told that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, also said a sergeant at the prison was prepared to testify that intelligence officers told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was "the right thing to do."

...

A Defense Department spokesman today referred questions about Sanchez to U.S. military officials in the Middle East, cautioning that statements by defense lawyers or their clients should be treated with "appropriate caution." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, said Sanchez was unavailable for comment last night but would "enjoy the opportunity" to respond later.

At the April hearing, Shuck also said Reese would testify that Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who supervised the military intelligence operation at Abu Ghraib, was "involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure, what the accused was doing," Shuck said in the hearing, which was held at Camp Victory in Baghdad. The Post obtained a transcript of the hearing today.

In the transcript, Shuck said Reese was disturbed by the military intelligence techniques.

"They said that there were some strange (inaudible) by the MI [military intelligence]," Shuck said. "They said, 'What's all this nudity about, this posturing, positioning, withholding food and water? Where's the Geneva Conventions being followed


...

"We intend to seek immunity for a myriad of officers who are unwilling to participate in the search for the truth without protecting themselves," Myers said today.

Too Easy

Today:

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) President Bush suffered cuts and bruises early Saturday afternoon while mountain biking on his ranch. He was on the 16th mile of a 17-mile ride when he fell, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Bush suffered minor abrasions and scratches on his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand, and both knees, Duffy said. The accident occurred while he was riding with members of the Secret Service and his personal physician, Dr. Richard Tubbs.

Thursday:

Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" and assume political power from the U.S.-led coalition, President George W. Bush said Thursday as his administration began to roll out a rough plan for the June 30 transition of authority.

(suggested by numerous people)

Pop Quiz

Who said this, before the Iraq war:

I believe that we can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our principles. Indeed, I believe that our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for.

...here's the full speech and here's how the usual suspects reacted to it at the time (note, Neal Pollack's response was satire, though it was hard to tell...)

Lugar

Lugar just isn't enough. We really need one of the real knuckledraggers to do something like this, not just one of the old guard types. But, I guess it's a start.

In response to September 11, 2001, the United States has created a new Department of Homeland Security, improved airport and seaport security, reconfigured our military weapons and tactics, and scrutinized the efficiency of our intelligence services. All of these steps may help to make us safer. But taking military action against terrorists and their supporters and improving homeland defense are not the same as executing a global strategy designed to overcome terrorism. Military action is necessary to defeat serious and immediate threats to our national security. But the war on terrorism will not be won through attrition - particularly since military action will often breed more terrorists and more resentment of the United States. Nor is the threat or use of military force likely to achieve national realignments that mitigate the extreme danger posed by terrorism in an age when weapons and materials of mass destruction are increasingly available.

Unless the United States commits itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction, we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

The United States, as a nation, simply has not made this commitment. We are worried about terrorism, but the evolution of national security policy has not kept up with the threat. We have relied heavily on military options and unilateral approaches that weakened our alliances. We have engaged in self-flagellation over the September 11 tragedy rather than executing affirmative global strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of terrorism.

He even used that dreaded phrase "root causes" just to explode the brains of the freepi.

Liars

Link:

WASHINGTON, May 22 — Presented last fall with a detailed catalog of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the American military responded on Dec. 24 with a confidential letter asserting that many Iraqi prisoners were not entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Conventions.

The letter, drafted by military lawyers and signed by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, emphasized the "military necessity" of isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their "significant intelligence value," and said that prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.

But the military insisted that there were "clear procedures governing interrogation to ensure approaches do not amount to inhumane treatment."

In recent public statements, Bush administration officials have said that the Geneva Conventions were "fully applicable" in Iraq. That has put American-run prisons in Iraq in a different category from those in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been declared unlawful combatants not eligible for protection. However, the Dec. 24 letter appears to undermine administration assertions of the conventions' broad application in Iraq.

(via Sadly, No!)

Off to War

Here's a link to a Kos Diary entry which links to German TV's coverage of Bush clowning around before announcing we're bombing Iraq.

A little preview of Moore's movie.

(thanks to Yikes in comments)

Moore Wins Palme d'Or

Stupid Frogs.

Run Against Bush

Saw some of these fine patriots running past Starbucks a few minutes ago. Join a group in your area!

Election Year Troubles

Yglesias is right that someone in the GOP, and not one of the usual "mavericks" like McCain, but someone, as he says, "awful" like the Senate's evil little troll Jeff Sessions, is going to have to come right out and say that the Iraq is FUBAR and it's all the Bushies' fault.

Sadly, I just can't see it happening. Over the past 4 years the GOP has transformed itself from the party of "anti-Clinton" to the party of George W. Bush. He has become the personification of the party - it's become rather personality cult-like. Members of Congress are motivated by some combination of a desire to "do good" (as defined by them personally - this could include all kinds of bad stuff) and "get re-elected," with the latter one having a rather heavy weight. If they push Bush over a cliff, he'll bring them all down with him.

If the calendar said 2003 that scenario would be possible. But, I don't see it happening.

So, all they can do is... Clap louder!

Stonewall

It appears that Dear Leader was refusing to answer questions:

The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the independent, bipartisan commission, disclosed the administration’s refusal to answer questions on the sensitive subject during a recent closed-door meeting with a group of Democratic senators, according to several Democratic sources.

...

Democrats suspect President Bush, who met privately with the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, on the morning of Sept. 13, 2001, may have personally authorized the controversial flights, several of which took place when all other U.S. commercial air travel had been halted.

...

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she asked Hamilton and Lehman if they were able to find out who in the administration authorized the Saudi Arabian flights. “Who did this? Why would the Saudis want to get out of the country? They said [those questions have] been part of their inquiry and they haven’t received satisfactory answers yet and they were pushing,” Boxer said.

Another Democrat in the meeting who confirmed Boxer’s account reported that Hamilton said, “We don’t know who authorized it. We’ve asked that question 50 times.”

Boxer said she obtained a commitment from Hamilton that the commission will state in its final report if the White House refused to answer questions about who authorized the Saudi flights after the 2001 attacks.

Republican Bigots

Gotta love'em. Briefing Room gives us an ad transcript from the Republican primary in NC-5.

HOST: This episode of Congressional Jeopardy is paid for by Vernon Robinson for Congress . Today's topic -- homosexual rights! This feminist voted to create special rights for homosexuals and took money from the radical gayPACs.

CONTESTANT 1: [Rings in] Alright, it's a, who is Senator Hillary Clinton?

[BUZZER] HOST: Oh no, I'm sorry. We were looking for Senator Virginia Foxx. Virginia Foxx did that. As a Wake Forest Trustee, this bankrupt businessman let two lesbians get married in broad daylight in the campus church.

CONTESTANT 2: [Rings in] That's Jay Helvey. Who is Jay Helvey?

HOST: You are correct! This other bankrupt businessman brags that he's a tolerant Republican - a code word for gay-friendly. As an Appalachian State Trustee, he let the school sponsor a transvestite drag show.

CONTESTANT 3: [Rings in] Ugh. Who is Ed Broyhill?

HOST: That's right! When the United Way attacked the Boy Scouts for their ban on gay scoutmasters, this courageous conservative successfully defended the Boy Scouts.

CONTESTANT 4: [Rings in] Vernon Robinson. Everybody knows that. Who is City Councilman Vernon Robinson?

[BELL] HOST: Yes, the real conservative! Vernon Robinson: I'm Vernon Robinson and I approved this message because I will fight for our conservative values in Congress just as I have at City Hall.

They Get Letters

To the AJC:

Georgians bear more tax burden

Since Zell Miller recently called John Kerry an ultraliberal from "Taxachusetts," let's compare the tax situations of Massachusetts and Georgia.

According to the Tax Foundation, Georgia's state and local tax burden ranks 18th in the nation; Massachusetts ranks 36th. Strike one to Georgia.

Also, Georgia has a tax code that is so complicated that the state ranks 25th for business friendliness; Massachusetts ranks 12th. Strike two to Georgia.

By Miller's two-strikes-and-you're-out law, Georgia should be warming the bench. However, we'll give it one more at-bat.

For every dollar that Georgia sends to Washington, it gets back $1.01; for every dollar Massachusetts sends, it loses a quarter, which is redistributed to freeloaders such as Georgia.

Strike three, Zell.

JEFF BOATRIGHT, Decatur

Designs on the White House

Don't forget to submit your design!

Question

So, if Chalabi's group really is a front for Iranians why isn't he standing hooded in a dark room with wires hooked up to his genitals instead of, you know, being on every Sunday news show tomorrow?

"I Love to Make a Grown Man Piss Himself."

Jeebus.

Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Twists and Turns

Who knew we attacked one member of the Axis of Evil at the behest of another?

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

The Information Collection Program also "kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing" by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years.

An administration official confirmed that "highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel."

Actually, the truth here is who knows what the hell is going on. Marshall is right that this is more about shifting power in our government than any new information (though, presumably, it's the latter as well).

War Profiteers

True patriots:

Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs.

Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel."

Defense Department records show that Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has been paid $327 million for "theater transportation" of war materiel and supplies for U.S. forces in Iraq and is earmarked to be paid $230 million more. The convoys are a lifeline for U.S. troops in Iraq hauling tires for Humvees, Army boots, filing cabinets, tools, engine parts and even an unmanned Predator reconnaissance plane.

KBR's contract with the Defense Department allows the company to pass on the cost of the transportation and add 1 percent to 3 percent for profit, but neither KBR nor the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., which oversees the contract, was able to provide cost estimates for the empty trucks. Trucking experts estimate that each round trip costs taxpayers thousands of dollars.

Seven of the 12 truckers who talked to Knight Ridder asked that they not be identified by name. Six of the 12 were fired by KBR for allegedly running Iraqi drivers off the road when they attempted to break into the convoy. The drivers disputed that accusation.

In addition to interviewing the drivers, Knight Ridder reviewed KBR records of the empty trips, dozens of photographs of empty flatbeds and a videotape that showed 15 empty trucks in one convoy.

But the Dixie Chicks -- they hate America.

Mars, Bitch!

Okay, here's my final fundraising plea and then I won't mention it again.

So far I've gotten about 1120 donations. That's great! I'm all Sally Field "You like me! You really like me!" But, it's only somewhere between 2-4% of my daily readers (it's impossible to have an accurate measure of that).

If that small percentage was increased by a point or two, it really would make all the difference.

Many are uncomfortable with Paypal -- the credit card link doesn't actually require a paypal account. It's just a secure credit card donation processor like any other.

For those who prefer mail, I'm still working on a solution of some sort.

But, like I said - final plea! I'll leave the annoying links up top until Sunday, at which point they will disappear...

And, besides, the terrorists are winning...

Moonie Friday

John Gorenfeld will be discussing the good Reverend tonight on AAR at about 10pm.

John follows the shenanigans of everyone's favorite billionaire anti-Semitic genocidal cult leader, who just happens to own the nation's premier conservative newspaper, so you don't have to.

When We Were Young

More Chalabi

Go to CBS News and then click on the video of "U.S. 'Friend' In Iraq A Spy?"


...text story.

Senior U.S. officials have told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Chalabi has been passing highly classified U.S. intelligence to Iran. The evidence shows that Chalabi personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, "get Americans killed." The evidence is said to be "rock solid."

On Friday, Stahl reported that senior intelligence officials stress the information Ahmad Chalibi is alleged to have passed on to Iran is of such a seriously sensitive nature, the result of full disclosure could be highly damaging to U.S. security. The information involves secrets that were held by only a handful of very senior U.S. officials, says Stahl.

Meanwhile, Stahl reports that "grave concerns" about the true nature of Chalabi's relationship with Iran started after the U.S. obtained "undeniable intelligence" that Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence, a "nefarious figure from the dark side of the regime - an individual with a direct hand in covert operations directed against the United States."

Chalabi never reported this meeting to his friends and sponsors in the U.S. government, says Stahl.

Survey Results

Thanks to all who responded to the recent survey. The full results from all participating blogs can be found here.

The readers of this site are older than the average blogreader (71% >30 versus 61%) and more likely to be female (24% versus 20.9%) than the typical reader of participating blogs.

Oh, and, not surprisingly, much more likely to be a Democrat.

Right After the Whitewater Corrections...

Stupid NYT:

(May 21, 2004) -- In a front page New York Times article this morning, David E. Sanger quotes a senior U.S. intelligence official's assessment of Ahmad Chalabi's information on weapons of mass destruction, which was distributed so avidly by the Times itself in the run-up to the Iraq war: "useless at best, and misleading at worst."

Yesterday, American and Iraqi forces raided and ransacked the Iraqi National Congress leader's office in Baghdad, completing his fall from grace as what the Times terms a "favorite" of the Bush administration. Today, two front-page articles in the paper, and an editorial titled "Friends Like This," take a harsh view of Chalabi. One would never know that the Times itself once relied on him heavily for its "scoops" on Saddam's WMD stockpiles.

In fact, one must painfully recall the now famous May 1, 2003, e-mail to the paper's Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns from star Times reporter in Iraq, Judith Miller, who wrote: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. ... He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

Oh, how quickly the Times forgets its friends, Chalabi must be thinking today.

Describing Chalabi, Sanger wrote today: "He became a master of the art of the leak, giving new currency to the suspicions about Mr. Hussein's weapons." Leaks? Who was his favored drop? Miller of the Times, although there were many others.

And in today's Times editorial: "Before the war, Ahmad Chalabi told Washington hawks exactly what they wanted to hear about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction ... Much of the information Mr. Chalabi had produced was dead wrong. He was one of the chief cheerleaders for the theory that Iraq had vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction. ... But he can't be made a scapegoat.

"The Bush administration should have known what it was doing when it gave enormous credence to a questionable character whose own self-interest was totally invested in getting the Americans to invade Iraq. ..."

Left unsaid is that the Times should have known better, as well. Yet, incredibly, the paper of record has never run a corrective editor's note to clean up the mess that Miller made for the Times' integrity.

Gerth and Miller must have pictures of the publishers with goats.

Purina and Howie Carr

A few have written in with a response from Purina stating that they aren't a sponsor of Howie Carr and that they don't advertise on his program. They do in fact run an ad on his web page at WRKO, not too far below a picture of a man dressed as a penis. This probably doesn't fit with what they describe as their "family friendly programming guidelines in place that are monitored and enforced. "