OK, John Kerry is an idiot. There's an old joke - what are the three shortest books in the world?
The English book of cooking
The German book of humour
The Irish book of sobriety
I think we can replace German with WASP. Good lord, the man is not funny so he shouldn't even try to tell a joke. He needs to go away and shut up. Hey, John, good job coming out immediately to defend yourself. Might have been a good idea to do the same thing with the Swiftboaters.
The fact that he got so close in 2004 is not because of him but because of the hate of Bush. If we had run "Anyone But Bush" we would have won.
Meanwhile, my pal, John, says that liberals are always right. Once again he is right. Before the 2004 election liberals were talking about the danger in touch screen voting. We were talking about voting irregularities in Ohio. FINALLY, two years later the issue is getting attention.
In South Florida there are problems in Miami and Broward county. Somehow, mysteriously, the reported problems only occur for Democrats. Their votes are coming up for Charlie Crist instead of Jim Davis.
Then the company that manufactures the voting machines used in St. Pete and Tampa is owned by a company from Venezuela. Lovely!
We told you so.
(Full disclosure - I'm Irish)
So, I have decided to take back the term pro-life as a description for everyone who wants this war in Iraq to end. See, we are pro-life because we want our soldiers to live, we are pro-life because we want the Iraqi civilians to live.
All who work against global warming are pro-life, too. We want the planet to sustain life in the future. Kind of kooky and out there but we really think that's important.
Fighting the genocide in Darfur is pro-life. We don't want to see women and children burned out of their homes, their wells poisoned so they can no longer sustain life, the women held in rape camps, the men murdered. We want them to have a life of dignity and the opportunity to live in their homes, not in a refugee camp.
Supporting stem cell research is pro-life. Wouldn't it be nice if your grandmother didn't have to suffer from alzheimers? Or your uncle from diabetes? Pro-life also means a better life. By the way, if you're against stem cell research you need to go all the way and be against invitro fertilization. For years eggs have been thrown out, you should demand the heads of the people who run the IVF clinics for murder.
Helping the poor is pro-life. I know the people who think Reagan is the greatest president EVER might disagree but his administration ruling the ketchup was a vegetable to save money on school lunches is not-pro life. It is hurting the poor. You cannot get an education if you are hungry. Maslov's hierarchy of needs, my friends. Mr. Bush (the current) is also not pro-life when he allowed so many people to perish and starve after Katrina. Granted, he did manage to cut short his vacation for one brain dead woman. To bad the same can't be said for the people who died in the tsunami or Katrina.
For anyone reading this who believes pro-life is only about abortion you have been had. If Mr. Bush were really on your side and believed that abortion is murder he would have demanded a constitutional amendment banning it. He would be fighting every day to stop it. He would attend your rallies instead of phoning it in. And if you believe abortion is murder are you willing to adopt a few black children? I don't see the list of kids in foster care going down so I suppose not. If you're a man and believe that abortion is murder do you wear a condom every time you have sex to prevent an unwanted pregnancy? (That's a question for Rush since it has never been explained why a Christian like himself who is unmarried would need viagra.)
Pro-life means a better life for all.
I am pro-life.
Dying to Save the G.O.P. Congress
By FRANK RICH
IF you happened to be up around dawn on Tuesday, you could witness the death rattle of our adventure in Iraq live on CNN. Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the American commander, were making new promises from the bunker of the Green Zone, inspiring about as much confidence as Jackie Gleason and Art Carney hatching a get-rich-quick scheme to sell a kitchen gadget on "The Honeymooners."
"Success in Iraq is possible and can be achieved on a realistic timetable," said Mr. Khalilzad. Iraq can be "in a very good place in 12 months," said General Casey. Even a child could see how much was wrong with this picture.
If there really is light at the end of the tunnel, why after three and a half years can’t we yet guarantee light in Baghdad? Symbolically enough, television transmission of the Khalilzad-Casey press conference was interrupted by another of the city's daily power failures. If Iraq’s leaders had signed on to the 12-month plan of "benchmarks" the Americans advertised, why were those leaders nowhere in sight? We found out one day later, when the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, mocked the very idea of an America-imposed timetable. "I am positive that this is not the official policy of the American government, but rather a result of the ongoing election campaign," he said, adding dismissively, "And that does not concern us much."
Give the Iraqi leader credit for a Borat-like candor that almost every American in this sorry tale lacks. Of course all the White House's latest jabberwocky about "benchmarks" and "milestones" and "timetables" (never to be confused with those Defeatocrats' "timelines") is nothing more than an election-year P.R. strategy, as is the laughable banishment of "stay the course." There is no new American plan to counter the apocalypse now playing out in Iraq, only new packaging to pacify American voters between now and Nov. 7. And recycled packaging at that: President Bush had last announced that he and Mr. Maliki were developing "benchmarks" to "measure progress" in Iraq back in June.
As Richard Holbrooke, the broker of the Bosnia peace accords, has observed, the only real choice left for the president now is either "escalation or disengagement." But there are no troops, let alone money or national will, for escalation. Disengagement within a year, however, is favored by 54 percent of Americans and, more important, 71 percent of Iraqis. After Election Day, adults in Washington will step in, bow to the obvious and pull the plug. The current administration strategy - praying for a miracle - is not an option. The current panacea favored by anxious Republican Congressional candidates - firing Donald Rumsfeld - is too little, too late.
The adults in charge of disengagement will include the Bush family consigliere, James Baker, whose bipartisan Iraq Study Group will present its findings after the election, and John Warner, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, who has promised a re-evaluation of Iraq policy within roughly the same time frame. Democrats will have a role in direct proportion to the clout they gain in the midterms.
One way or another the various long-shot exit scenarios being debated in the capital will be sorted out: federalism and partition; reaching out somehow for help from Iran and Syria; replacing Mr. Maliki with a Saddam-lite strongman. There will be some kind of timeline, or whatever you want to call it, with enforced benchmarks, or whatever you want to call them, for phased withdrawal. (Read "Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now" by George McGovern and William R. Polk for a particularly persuasive blueprint.) In any event, the timeline will end no later than Inauguration Day 2009.
In keeping with the political cynicism that gave birth to this war and has recklessly prolonged it, the only ones being kept in the dark about this inevitable denouement are our fighting men and women. They remain trapped, dying in accelerating numbers in a civil war that is now killing so many Iraqi civilians that Mr. Maliki this month ordered his health ministry to stop releasing any figures.
Our troops are held hostage by the White House's political imperatives as much as they are by the violence. Desperate to maintain the election-year P.R. ruse that an undefined "victory" is still within reach, Mr. Bush went so far at Wednesday's press conference as to say that “"absolutely, we're winning" in Iraq. He explained his rationale to George Stephanopoulos last weekend, when he asserted that the number of casualties was the enemy's definition of success or failure, not his. "I define success or failure as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves," the president said, and "as to whether the unity government" is making the "difficult decisions necessary to unite the country."
Unfortunately, the war is a calamity by both of those definitions as well. The American command's call for a mere 3,000 more Iraqi troops to help defend Baghdad has gone unanswered. As we've learned from Operation Together Forward, when Iraqis do stand up, violence goes up. And when American and British troops stand down, murderous sectarian militias, some of them allied with that "unity" government, fill the vacuum, taking over entire cities like Amara and Balad in broad daylight. As for those "difficult decisions" Mr. Bush regards as so essential, the Iraqi government's policy is cut and run. Mr. Maliki is not cracking down on rampaging militias but running interference for their kingpin, Moktada al-Sadr. Mr. Maliki treats this radical anti-American Shiite cleric, his political ally, with far more deference than he shows the American president.
The ultimate chutzpah is that Mr. Bush, the man who sold us Saddam's imminent mushroom clouds and "Mission Accomplished," is trivializing the chaos in Iraq as propaganda. The enemy's "sophisticated" strategy, he said in last weekend's radio address, is to distribute "images of violence"” to television networks, Web sites and journalists to "demoralize our country."
This is a morally repugnant argument. The "images of violence" from Iraq are not fake - like, say, the fiction our government manufactured about the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman or the upbeat news stories the Pentagon spends millions of dollars planting in Iraqi newspapers today. These images of violence are real. Americans really are dying at the fastest pace in at least a year, and Iraqis in the greatest numbers to date. To imply that this carnage is magnified by the news media, whether the American press or Al Jazeera, is to belittle the gravity of the escalated bloodshed and to duck accountability for the mismanagement of the war. Mr. Bush's logic is reminiscent of Jeffrey Skilling's obtuse view of his innocence in the Enron scandal, though at least Mr. Skilling has been held accountable for the wreckage of lives on his watch.
It is also wrong to liken what's going on now, as Mr. Bush has, to the Tet offensive. That sloppy Vietnam analogy was first made by Mr. Rumsfeld in June 2004 to try to explain away the explosive rise in the war's violence at that time. It made a little more sense then, since both the administration and the American public were still being startled by the persistence of the Iraq insurgency, much as the Johnson administration and Walter Cronkite were by the Viet Cong's tenacity in 1968. Before Tet, as Stanley Karnow's history, "Vietnam," reminds us, public approval of L.B.J.'s conduct of the war still stood at 40 percent, yet to hit rock bottom.
Where we are in Iraq today is not 1968 but 1971, after the bottom had fallen out, Johnson had abdicated and America had completely turned on Vietnam. At that point, approval of Richard Nixon's handling of the war was at 34 percent, comparable to Mr. Bush's current 30. The percentage of Americans who thought the Vietnam War was "morally wrong" stood at 51, comparable to the 58 percent who now think the Iraq war was a mistake. Many other Vietnam developments in 1971 have their counterparts in 2006: the leaking of classified Pentagon reports revealing inept and duplicitous war policy, White House demonization of the press, the joining of moderate Republican senators with Democrats to press for a specific date for American withdrawal.
That's why it seemed particularly absurd when, in his interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos last weekend, Mr. Bush said that "the fundamental question" Americans must answer is "should we stay?" They've been answering that question loud and clear for more than a year now.
What we should be thinking about instead are our obligations to those who are doing the staying. Kevin Tillman, who served with his brother in Iraq and Afghanistan, observed in an angry online essay this month: "Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a 5-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet."
If we really support the troops, we'll move past Mr. Bush's "fundamental question" to one from 1971 posed by a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran, John Kerry, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
He is not faking his dickyness. And he has an advanced case of asswipery.
On a further note: Dickey Cheney proves yet again that he loathes American values and holds the teachings of Jesus in utter contempt.
And on a further further note Patricia Heaton and her ilk prove again that conservatives do not value human life at all. In fact, they are in so much anal retentive terror of life that they rail against it and do damage to it whenever possible. As usual they set up a straw man.
Being conservative is a mental disorder characterized by denial, self loathing and fear. The harm this mental illness does is clear the more we observe Bush (is he drunk?) Cheney, Limpbaugh, Rummy, Ken Melhman, Foley, Kolbe, Cunningham, Coulter, Drudge, Rove, Heaton, Libby, Gingrich, all gay Republicans, O'Reilly, Ney, Falwell, Pat Robertson...there are so many... who am I leaving out?
The Arithmetic of Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Iraq is a lost cause. It's just a matter of arithmetic: given the violence of the environment, with ethnic groups and rival militias at each other's throats, American forces there are large enough to suffer terrible losses, but far too small to stabilize the country.
We're so undermanned that we're even losing our ability to influence events: earlier this week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki brusquely rejected American efforts to set a timetable for reining in the militias.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a war we haven't yet lost, and it's just possible that a new commitment of forces there might turn things around.
The moral is clear - we need to get out of Iraq, not because we want to cut and run, but because our continuing presence is doing nothing but wasting American lives. And if we do free up our forces (and those of our British allies), we might still be able to save Afghanistan.
The classic analysis of the arithmetic of insurgencies is a 1995 article by James T. Quinlivan, an analyst at the Rand Corporation. "Force Requirements in Stability Operations," published in Parameters, the journal of the U.S. Army War College, looked at the number of troops that peacekeeping forces have historically needed to maintain order and cope with insurgencies. Mr. Quinlivan's comparisons suggested that even small countries might need large occupying forces.
Specifically, in some cases it was possible to stabilize countries with between 4 and 10 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. But examples like the British campaign against communist guerrillas in Malaya and the fight against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland indicated that establishing order and stability in a difficult environment could require about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants.
The implication was clear: "Many countries are simply too big to be plausible candidates for stabilization by external forces," Mr. Quinlivan wrote.
Maybe, just maybe, the invasion and occupation of Iraq could have been managed in such a way that a force the United States was actually capable of sending would have been enough to maintain order and stability. But that didn't happen, and at this point Iraq is a cauldron of violence, far worse than Malaya or Ulster ever was. And that means that stabilizing Iraq would require a force of at least 20 troops per 1,000 Iraqis - that is, 500,000 soldiers and marines.
We don't have that kind of force. The combined strength of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is less than 700,000 - and the combination of America's other commitments plus the need to rotate units home for retraining means that only a fraction of those forces can be deployed for stability operations at any given time. Even maintaining the forces we now have deployed in Iraq, which are less than a third as large as the Quinlivan analysis suggests is necessary, is slowly breaking the Army.
Meanwhile, what about Afghanistan?
Given the way the Bush administration relegated Afghanistan to sideshow status, it comes as something of a shock to realize that Afghanistan has a larger population than Iraq. If Afghanistan were in as bad shape as Iraq, stabilizing it would require at least 600,000 troops - an obvious impossibility.
However, things in Afghanistan aren't yet as far gone as they are in Iraq, and it's possible that a smaller force - one in that range of 4 to 10 per 1,000 that has been sufficient in some cases - might be enough to stabilize the situation. But right now, the forces trying to stabilize Afghanistan are absurdly small: we're trying to provide security to 30 million people with a force of only 32,000 Western troops and 77,000 Afghan national forces.
If we stopped trying to do the impossible in Iraq, both we and the British would be able to put more troops in a place where they might still do some good. But we have to do something soon: the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan says that most of the population will switch its allegiance to a resurgent Taliban unless things get better by this time next year.
It's hard to believe that the world's only superpower is on the verge of losing not just one but two wars. But the arithmetic of stability operations suggests that unless we give up our futile efforts in Iraq, we’re on track to do just that.
1. My dear friend Wendy Werris is having her first reading and signing of her wonderful memoir - An Alphabetical Life at Skylight Books in the Los Feliz area East of Hollywood this Saturday at 5pm. Details here and here.
2. More proof of my thesis that conservatives are the real moral relativists here. Or possibly they have no moral center at all.
 
Here's a little Tuesday dog blog.
This is my boy, Richie, on North Carolina's beautiful Outer Banks. He's German, so he's quite serous about body surfing and organizing my friend's big dogs. He's also going to be 15 in December. You have to admit for a senior citizen he looks great.
The photos were taken by Jean M. Fogle who's works can be seen in Pet Fancy and various dog calendars.
I live in Lakeland, Florida. You know, where Katherine Harris just won the straw poll that you had to pay $25 to vote? Fifteen minutes from where she was born?
Our paper, The Lakeland Ledger, endorsed Bill Nelson for senate.
They said of Nelson:
Fortunately for Floridians, Harris has an opponent who is worthy of being in the Senate. He is incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, a moderate Democrat who has a long record of working tirelessly for his state and nation.
They said of Ms. Harris:
The second-term congresswoman's attempts to appeal to the dominant conservative wing of the party have only served to put her so far out on a limb that only her die-hard supporters are sticking with her. How seriously can mainstream voters take a candidate who denounces the separation of church and state, and suggests that a vote for her opponent is a vote against Christian principles? She has been dogged by reports of corruption investigations and frequent staff turnovers, with former staff members openly opposing her. The net effect is a campaign in constant turmoil.
Living in a purple state it's good that we can keep Senator Nelson. Unfortunately, the DCCC didn't bother to run a candidate against Adam Putnam. There is an independent, Joe Viscusi, who has signs all over my neighborhood. Mr. Putnam is old orange money (like Ms. Harris) and is likely to win but it would be fun to see him go. Or, at least, it would be fun if his power were lessened because he was part of the minority party.
Fifteen more days.
Watching George Will articulate what we, as liberals, should be saying better than any of the Democrats is somewhat frustrating.
He asked, "What is our Mission in Iraq? First it was WMD. There were none so it was to create a beacon of Democracy in the Middle East. That's not going to happen. So, what is our mission?"
He also commented that the President uses strategy and tactical as synonyms. They're not.
Let's hear some Democrats be as clear, please.
Let's dump Pelosi now and say that Jack Murtha will be the Speaker of the House. Pelosi has not earned it. You don't earn it just by being there. You earn it by showing LEADERSHIP. Not only is a good move politically because you take away the Republican talking point about her and most Americans agree with Jack but it is a good move for the troops and for all Americans.
What say you?
Obama Is Not a Miracle Elixir
By FRANK RICH
THE Democrats are so brilliant at yanking defeat from the jaws of victory that it still seems unimaginable that they might win on Nov. 7. But even the most congenital skeptic has to face that possibility now. Things have gotten so bad for the Republicans that were President Bush to unveil Osama bin Laden's corpse in the Rose Garden, some reporter would instantly check to see if his last meal had been on Jack Abramoff's tab.
With an approval rating of 16 percent - 16! - in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Congress has matched the Democrats of 1994 or, for that matter, Michael Jackson during his own version of Foleygate. As for Mr. Bush, he is once more hiding behind children in an elementary school, as he did last week when the monthly death toll for Americans in Iraq approached a nearly two-year high. And where else could he go? Some top Republican Congressional candidates in the red state he was visiting, North Carolina, would not appear with him. When the president did find a grateful campaign mate at his next stop, Pennsylvania, it was the married congressman who paid $5.5 million to settle a lawsuit by a mistress who accused him of throttling her.
Maybe the Democrats can blow 2006 as they did 2004, but not without herculean effort. As George Will memorably wrote, if they can't at least win back the House under these conditions, "they should go into another line of work."
The tough question is not whether the Democrats can win, but what will happen if they do win. The party's message in this campaign has offered no vision beyond bashing Mr. Bush and pledging to revisit the scandals and the disastrous legislation that went down on his watch. Last spring Nancy Pelosi did promote a "New Direction for America" full of golden oldies - raising the minimum wage, enacting lobbying reform, cutting Medicare drug costs, etc. She promised that Democrats would "own August" by staging 250 campaign events to publicize it. But this rollout caused so few ripples that its participants might as well have been in the witness protection program. Meanwhile, it was up to John Murtha, a congressman with no presidential ambitions, to goad his peers to start focusing on a specific Iraq exit strategy.
Enter Barack Obama. To understand the hysteria about a Democratic senator who has not yet served two years and is mainly known for a single speech at the 2004 convention, you have to appreciate just how desperate the Democrats are for a panacea for all their ills. In the many glossy cover articles about Obamamania, the only real suspense is whether a Jack or Bobby Kennedy analogy will be made in the second paragraph or the fifth. Men's Vogue (cover by Annie Leibovitz) went so far as to say that the Illinois senator "alone has the potential to one day be mentioned in the same breath" as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Why not throw in Mark Twain and Sammy Davis Jr.?
This is a lot to put on the shoulders of anyone, even someone as impressive as Mr. Obama. Though he remains a modest and self-effacing guy from all appearances, he is encouraging the speculation about seeking higher office - and not as a coy Colin Powell-style maneuver to sell his new book, "The Audacity of Hope." Mr. Obama hasn't been turning up in Iowa for the corn dogs. He consistently concedes he's entertaining the prospect of a presidential run.
There's no reason to rush that decision now, but it's a no-brainer. Of course he should run, assuming his family is on the same page. He's 45, not 30, and his slender resume in public office (which also includes seven years as a state senator) should be no more of an impediment to him than it was to the White House's current occupant. As his Illinois colleague Dick Durbin told The Chicago Tribune last week, "I said to him, "Do you really think sticking around the Senate for four more years and casting a thousand more votes will make you more qualified for president?' " Instead, such added experience is more likely to transform an unusually eloquent writer, speaker and public servant into another windbag like Joe Biden.
The more important issue is not whether Mr. Obama will seek the presidency, but what kind of candidate he would be. If the Democratic Party is to be more than a throw-out-Bush party, it can't settle for yet again repackaging its well-worn ideas, however worthy, with a new slogan containing the word "New." It needs a major infusion of steadfast leadership. That's the one lesson it should learn from George Bush. Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda - enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging "pre-emptive" war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights - and he didn't fudge it. He didn't care if half the country despised him along the way.
The interminable Iraq fiasco has branded the Democrats as the party of fecklessness. The failure of its leaders to challenge the administration's blatant propaganda to gin up the war is a failure of historic proportions (as it was for much of the press and liberal punditry). When Tom Daschle, then the Senate leader, presided over the rushed passing of the war resolution before the 2002 midterms, he explained that the "bottom line" was for Democrats "to move on"; they couldn't wait to campaign on the economy. The party's subsequent loss of the Senate did not prevent it two years later from nominating a candidate who voted for the war's funding before he voted against it.
What makes the liberal establishment's crush on Mr. Obama disconcerting is that it too often sees him as a love child of a pollster's focus group: a one-man Benetton ad who can be all things to all people. He's black and he's white. He's both of immigrant stock (Kenya) and the American heartland (Kansas, yet). He speaks openly about his faith without disowning evolution. He has both gravitas and unpretentious humor. He was the editor of The Harvard Law Review and also won a Grammy (for the audiobook of his touching memoir, "Dreams From My Father"). He exudes perfection but has owned up to youthful indiscretions with drugs. He is post-boomer and post-civil-rights--movement. He is Bill Clinton without the baggage, a fail-safe 21st-century bridge from "A Place Called Hope" to "The Audacity of Hope."
Mr. Obama has offended no one (a silly tiff with John McCain excepted). Search right-wing blogs and you'll find none of the invective showered on other liberal Democrats in general and black liberal leaders in particular. What little criticism Mr. Obama has received is from those in his own camp who find him cautious to a fault, especially on issues that might cause controversy. The sum of all his terrific parts, this theory goes, may be less than the whole: another Democrat who won't tell you what day it is before calling a consultant, another human weather vane who waits to see which way the wind is blowing before taking a stand.
That has been the Democrats' fatal malady, but it's way too early and there's too little evidence to say Mr. Obama has been infected by it. If he is conciliatory by nature and eager to entertain adversaries' views in good faith, that's not necessarily a fault, particularly in these poisonous times. The question is whether Mr. Obama will stick up for core principles when tested and get others to follow him.
That's why it's important to remember that on one true test for his party, Iraq, he was consistent from the start. On the long trail to a hotly competitive senatorial primary in Illinois, he repeatedly questioned the rationale for the war before it began, finally to protest it at a large rally in Chicago on the eve of the invasion. He judged Saddam to pose no immediate threat to America and argued for containment over a war he would soon label "dumb" and "political-driven." He hasn't changed. In his new book, he gives a specific date (the end of this year) for beginning "a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops" and doesn't seem to care who calls it "cut and run."
Contrast this with Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, who last week said that failed American policy in Iraq should be revisited if there's no improvement in "maybe 60 to 90 days." This might qualify as leadership, even at this late date, if only John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hadn't proposed exactly the same time frame for a re-evaluation of the war almost a week before she did.
The Democrats may well win on Election Day this year. But one of their best hopes for long-term viability in the post-Bush era is that Barack Obama steps up and changes the party before the party of terminal timidity and equivocation changes him.
5 of this morning's "top stories" on CNN.com:
1. Giant, 4-foot catfish stops traffic, drops jaws
2. Indicted Wesley Snipes filming in Namibia
3.Carmen Electra shows troupe how to lap dance
4. Police 'confident' slain neighbor didn't molest tot
5. Priest admits 'just fondling' Foley
Down the page: an ad. for tonight's Larry King live with a pic of Barak Obama and this copy: The Rev. Jesse Jackson. From civil rights and politics to surviving scandal. He talks to Larry and takes your calls.
The reason why many people get their news from THE DAILY SHOW is because, unlike cable "news", THEDAILY SHOW actually has news content.
I was talking to someone the other day who said you have to live in another country to appreciate being American. I lived in Germany for five years and I knew exactly what he meant. I love this country, this big, messy, melting pot of a country.
Mr. Olbermann tonight spoke of the worst of America called Mr. Bush a liar.
If we no longer have the assurance that if we are arrested we will be charged and presumed innocent what have we become?
Please, please, let the Democrats win by a landslide and overturn this horrific law. Or let a court rule it unconstitutional.
Let Jack Murtha be Speaker of the House and let's get our country back.
Why is it such big news when conservatives start saying what liberals were saying all along? James Baker says Iraq is a mess. Really? Welcome aboard, numbnuts. If the media would actually listen to liberals initially we would all be better off. And ten of us would not have been killed today. And there might have been a real debate in this country before Bush started his asinine war. Bush,Cheney, and Rummy are out of touch with reality ON PURPOSE. Some of us this knew this a long time ago.
Also - in a broader sense - why does the GOP exist at all? The GOP is a bad habit its partisans are to lazy to change. The social conservatives are used to get elected - then ignored by the fiscal conservatives. The fiscal conservatives spend like crack addicted gamblers - pitching the budget and sanity overboard.
There is nothing conservative about the GOP at this point. It may be time for a third party on the Right.
This guy, this guy, and this guy have amazingly similar psychological profiles.
Us versus Them defines all issues. Delusions of connection to God (or Gods). Cultish devotion of followers. Denial of reality. Overblown sense of mission. Contempt for established precedent and law.
Nutters.
In today's New York Times there are two stories about campaigning.
One is of Mr. Cheney raising money because the base still loves him and the other one is about Mr. Bush having a group of conservative talk radio personalities into the Oval Office for a meeting.
The meeting, which was not announced on the president's public schedule, was part of an intensive Republican Party campaign to reclaim and re-energize a crucial army of supporters that is not as likely to walk in lockstep with the White House as it has in the past.
Isn't that great. You know, if the man was willing to work a 40 hour week I would allow him the time to campaign after hours. But why should I pay his salary to fire up the conservative base? I would think that between the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the North Koreans going nuclear there would be more important things for Mr. Bush to focus on. Why should I pay to fly Cheney around the country to campaign against my beliefs?
Then you have Tony Snow and the cabinet making the rounds. Who pays for this? Does the Republican Party pick up the tab?
Is the President the leader of the entire country or just the base that still likes him?
It takes a commission created by the GOP congress to come up with the obvious. Ridiculous. The Study Group - (HA!) headed by James Baker will come out with a report that says the Bush/Cheney/Rummy policies in Iraq are not working. Gee. Really? Seems like most of us liberals said that about 3 years ago. The fact that the Bush 2 team is a bunch of belligerent imbeciles would be hilarious if they were not destroying the republic. And - yes - I do think this report is simply cover for the GOP as it runs for the hills on November 8. The GOP will ditch Bush no matter who wins congress. The DEMs can do one thing in the next 2 years if they win - hold Bush to account for his crimes, lies and deceit.
Vote for the "D" no matter what.
One-Letter Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In a recent interview with The Hartford Courant, Senator Joseph Lieberman said something that wasn't credible. When the newspaper asked him whether America would be better off if the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives next month, he replied, "Uh, I haven't thought about that enough to give an answer."
Why wasn't this a credible answer? Because anyone with the slightest interest in American politics - a group that obviously includes Mr. Lieberman - is waiting with bated breath to see how this election goes, and thinking a lot about the implications. If the Democrats gain control of either house, no matter how narrowly, the American political landscape will be transformed. If they fail, no matter how narrowly, it will be seen, correctly, as a great victory for the hard right.
The fact is that this is a one-letter election. D or R, that's all that matters.
It's hard to think of an election in which the personal qualities of the people running in a given district or state have mattered less. Given the stakes, voters who answer "yes" to the question Mr. Lieberman claims not to have thought about should think hard about voting for any Republican, no matter how appealing. Conversely, those who answer "no" should think hard about supporting any Democrat, no matter how much they like him or her.
There are two reasons why party control is everything in this election.
The first, lesser reason is the demonstrated ability of Republican Congressional leaders to keep their members in line, even those members who cultivate a reputation as moderates or mavericks. G.O.P. politicians sometimes make a show of independence, as Senator John McCain did in seeming to stand up to President Bush on torture. But in the end, they always give the White House what it wants: after getting a lot of good press for his principled stand, Mr. McCain signed on to a torture bill that in effect gave Mr. Bush a completely free hand.
And if the Republicans retain control of Congress, even if it's by just one seat in each house, Mr. Bush will retain that free hand. If they lose control of either house, the G.O.P. juggernaut will come to a shuddering halt.
Yet that's the less important reason this election is all about party control. The really important reason may be summed up in two words: subpoena power.
Even if the Democrats take both houses, they won't be able to accomplish much in the way of new legislation. They won't have the votes to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate, let alone to override presidential vetoes.
The only types of legislation the Democrats might be able to push through are overwhelmingly popular measures, such as an increase in the minimum wage, that Republicans don’t want but probably wouldn’t dare oppose in an open vote.
But while the Democrats won't gain the ability to pass laws, if they win they will gain the ability to carry out investigations, and the legal right to compel testimony.
The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
If the Democrats take control, that will change - and voters should think very hard about whether they want that change. Those who think it's a good idea to investigate, say, allegations of cronyism and corruption in Iraq contracting should be aware that any vote cast for a Republican makes Congressional investigations less likely. Those who believe that the administration should be left alone to do its job should be aware that any vote for a Democrat makes investigations more likely.
O.K., what about the Senate race in Connecticut, where Ned Lamont is the Democratic nominee, and Mr. Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary, is running as an independent but promising to caucus with the Democrats if he wins? Is this a case where the man, not the party, is what matters? Only if you believe that Mr. Lieberman's promise not to switch parties is 100 percent credible.
A few months ago we did a little piece on Muhammed Yunis in our Great People series.
It must have helped him with the Nobel Peace Prize which he won yesterday.
Sometimes it's the little things we do that add up to a wonderful life.
Congrats to Mr. Yunis and let him be an inspiration to us all.
So, I get a phone call from my pal, Katy, tonight because she and her husband are watching what we affectionately call the "Snooze" better known as the News Hour. Her husband, who was enjoying a cocktail, wanted her to call me because no less than David Brooks said that the Democrats would take the house with at least 30 new members.
You have to understand that I live in a District where the DCCC didn't bother to run a candidate (not that that has stopped them from sending me emails begging for money) so I perhaps don't feel the winds of change here in Polk County. Could it be true? Could we actually manage to have more than just a one seat majority? Brooks also said he thinks we will take the Senate.
Is it the accumulation of so much bad news that republicans won't be able to sweep it out of the doorway to get to the polls? I guess with Ney pleading guilty today, the new book saying that the Bush administration is using the Christian Right (duh!), Bob Woodward's new book, Mark Foley, the cover up of Mark Foley, at least 46 American soldiers killed in Iraq this month, the Brits "cutting and running", James Baker's report telling Bush to "cut and run" and that's just this month!
Krugman called it the perfect storm in his op-ed this morning. Maybe he's right. I hope so.
Wouldn't it be lovely to have just a smidge of accountability in government? Wouldn't that be a lovely change?
WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.
Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.
More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.
Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.
So, we didn't find any WMD and more people have died since we've invaded than under Saddam and we can't create a democracy.
Wow, are we super-terrif or what?
Oh my - what to say? What to say? When is the "religious" right going to wake the ____ up and realize that the G.O.P. establishment holds them in contempt? They are envelope stuffers for the powerful. It is pathetic. They are pathetic. Childish and pathetic.
Jesus is a liberal. Read the bible...for God's sake.
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