TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES 2

Still no Bloglines access. I hope to be back in operation Monday.
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 11:15 PM

 
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

PBD has been delayed due to travel. Now Bloglines is down. I hope to resume on Sunday the 30th.
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:06 PM

 
OUR FRIENDS

What doesn’t get said

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-072606maliki,0,1103972.story
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki promised Congress today that the war on terrorism would be won, but he ducked the issue that nearly caused some lawmakers to boycott his speech — his previous support for the militant group Hezbollah in its battle with Israel in Lebanon. . . Maliki did not say a word about the two week-old conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. Instead, he stuck with guaranteed applause lines about his determination that American sacrifices in Iraq would not be in vain, and that a democratic regime would replace the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. . . "The fate of our country and yours is tied," the Iraqi leader asserted to a cheering Congress.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004648.html
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Dawa party have deeper ties to the Hezbollah leadership than has surfaced in recent reporting on his visit to the White House . . .

More: http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6669

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/26/clarify_please

http://www.slate.com/id/2146539/fr/rss/
Did the White House write Maliki's speech to Congress?

Mission creep

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/26/BL2006072600903.html
[Dan Froomkin] President Bush and national security adviser Stephen Hadley yesterday for the first time publicly acknowledged the momentous shift in the role for U.S. troops in Iraq, from fighting terrorists to trying to suppress religious violence. . . [I]t's a historic admission: That job one for many American troops in Iraq is no longer fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, or even insurgents. Rather, it is trying to quell an incipient -- if not already raging -- sectarian civil war, with Baghdad as ground zero. . .

As things stand now, an overwhelming majority of the American public no longer supports Bush's handling of the war, which they think was a mistake in the first place. A majority wants American troops to start coming home soon. What unqualified support there is for the war seems to come from people who believe it is central front in the war on terror.

But how will people feel about our troops being sent into the crossfire between rival Muslim sects? That is not the war anyone signed up to fight. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8030.html
[Steve Benen] Remember six weeks ago, when Iraqi and Bush administration officials announced a new plan to bring some stability to Baghdad? It failed. But don't worry; there's a new plan. . . Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security advisor, said the new plan is really just "phase two" of the original plan. The New York Times noted, however, that "there was no Phase II in the previous plan."

"This is more like Plan B," one of Hadley's associated conceded. "Six weeks ago, we were talking about pulling American troops back from the city streets, not putting more of them out there." . . . [read on]

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/26/no_new_thing_under_the_sun
[Matt Yglesias] Bush & Maliki announce new Baghdad security plan. Henley and Crowley note a suspicious similarity to the "new" Baghdad security plan launched five or six weeks ago. That plan, in turn, was seemingly the same as April's "second liberation of Baghdad" and so on and so forth. . .

http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2006/07/qa_at_the_pentagon.html
[Greg Djerejian] Will ink-blotting Baghdad make the difference? I doubt it, frankly. What we see here is a perfect encapsulation of the entire flawed war strategy. Reactive, not proactive, temporarily pulling forces from already volatile regions to ones that have become even more volatile, and therefore failing to conclusively prevail in either--basically too little, too late. Or the Rumsfeld Doctrine, if you will: "just enough troops to lose". . .

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3180

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/retaking-baghdad-part-deux.html

It’s fruitless but it‘s the right thing to do: the Democrats demand that the CIA produce a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. These are the questions the Bush gang doesn’t want to have to answer:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/26/iraq2/index.html

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/07/the_glibness_of.html
[Andrew Sullivan] [Rumsfeld's] detachment from his own responsibility is breathtaking. The glibness with which he describes the mass slaughter of innocents in a country whose security he is responsible for is astonishing. . .

Q: Is the country closer to a civil war?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries, this is really quite different. There is - there is a good deal of violence in Baghdad and two or three other provinces, and yet in 14 other provinces there's very little violence or numbers of incidents. So it's a - it's a highly concentrated thing. It clearly is being stimulated by people who would like to have what could be characterized as a civil war and win it, but I'm not going to be the one to decide if, when or at all.

More: http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2006/07/qa_at_the_pentagon.html

“America is totally alone” (thanks to Laura Rozen for the link)

http://www.slate.com/id/2146602/fr/rss/
[Eric Umansky] As expected, little happened at the yesterday's brief diplomatic confab in Rome, where Secretary of State Rice put the kibosh on the "entreaties of nearly all of her European and Arab counterparts" to push for an immediate ceasefire. The Post notes that U.N. chief Kofi Annan proposed an alternative platform calling for a "pause" in the fighting, but the measure was "blocked by intense U.S. pressure."

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/07/rome_conference.html
[Marc Lynch] I don't know anyone who will be surprised that the Rome conference failed - it seems to have been designed to fail, to give the US the chance to appear to be "doing something" while giving Israel the time it wants to continue its offensive. But this policy is so transparent, such an obvious stalling mechanism, that it is probably making things even worse for the United States and for Israel: when you are faking it, you're supposed to at least try to maintain the pretence so that others can at least pretend to believe you. The call for an immediate ceasefire has become more or less universal now, other than from the United States and Israel: even the pro-American Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, which initially blamed Hezbollah for the crisis, are now loudly demanding an immediate ceasefire.

America is totally alone on this. And more than most Americans might realize, America is being blamed for Israel's actions. The shift in Arab public discourse over the last week has been palpable . . . the main trend has been unmistakable: an increasing focus on the United States as the villain of the piece. (That the Israeli bombing of Beirut stopped just long enough for Condoleezza Rice's photo op certainly didn't help.)

While there's disagreement as to whether Israel acted on behalf of an American project, there is near-consensus about American responsibility for not stopping what al-Jazeera is now calling "the sixth [Arab-Israeli] war". . . .

No. This wasn't inevitable. Real American leadership, such as quickly restraining the Israeli offensive and taking the lead in ceasefire negotiations, could have created a Suez moment and dramatically increased American influence and prestige (especially if the Saudis had delivered Iran in a ceasefire agreement, as I've heard that Saudi officials believed that they could). But by disappearing for the first days of the war and then resurfacing only to provide a megaphone for Israeli arguments and to prevent international efforts at achieving a ceasefire, the Bush administration put America at the center of the storm of blame. I think that the Lebanon war will go down in history as one of the greatest missed opportunities in recent American diplomatic history - not because we failed to go after Iran, or whatever the bobbleheads are ranting about these days, but because we failed to rise to the occasion and exercise real global leadership in the national interest.

One other thing. I've always been an advocate of public diplomacy, but let's be real: no public diplomacy in the world could overcome the fiasco which is America's policy. But even now I think that an actual attempt to explain America's position to the Arab media might have both made some slight difference in shaping Arab arguments and given American officials a stronger sense of how their rhetoric was playing in the Arab world. That feedback might have helped Rice avoid her steady string of disasters in the region, including her expressed surprise at the extent of destruction in Beirut and her spectacularly ill-considered formulation of the violence giving birth to a new Middle East (no single American remark thus far has earned more enraged scorn). But the Bush administration has completely punted on public diplomacy, demonstrating absolute contempt for Arab attitudes - it didn't even send officials on to relatively friendly environments like al-Arabiya - and now it's far too late. "Winning Arab and Muslim hearts and minds" has gone on the trash heap alongside "American promotion of Arab democracy" for the foreseeable future. If the Bush administration has any alternative grand strategy in mind, it's carefully concealing its hand.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115394247123547184
[Digby] I have said it before many times and I'll say it again: the neocons have always been wrong about everything. This is just the latest in a decades long series of delusional miscalculations in which it is fantasized that if only the US would just get tough everything would fall into place. This is the simple essence of everything they believe in. And when they found themselves an empty brand name in a suit named George W. Bush they found the man whose infantile personality and outsized vanity could be manipulated perfectly to advance that belief.

The situation in Lebanon requires American leadership and we have failed miserably to provide it. The various players are engaged in a struggle in which minimizing loss of life and face saving kabuki may be the best we can hope for at any given time. The megalomaniacal belief that if only the Israelis are allowed to "get tough" or the Americans "take it to the Iranians" or whatever other simplistic schoolyard impulses they have been operating under have led us to the point at which the US is taking on the character of a rogue superpower, not a global leader.

I maintain that the players in the mid-east expected the US to exercise its power wisely and the American failure to fulfill its obligation has led to confusion, overreach and miscalculation. This is not surprising. The bumbling, hallucinatory nature of this administration's foreign policy has been manifest for some time now, but it's still hard to wrap your mind around the fact that the most powerful country in the world is being led so incompetently that it simply cannot rise to the occasion when the stakes are so high. I confess that I'm still shocked by that myself, although less so each time we are confronted with a challenge and these neocon magical thinkers automatically default to bellicose trash talk they are unable to back up.

This is a very dangerous moment for the world. The US is showing over and over again that it is immoral and incompetent. That is the kind of thing that leads ambitious, crazy or stupid people to miscalculate and set disastrous events in motion. The neocons have destroyed America's carefully nurtured mystique by seeking to flex its muscles for the sake of flexing them. What a mistake. This country is much, much weaker today because of it and the world is paying the price. At some point I have to imagine that we are going to be paying it too. Big Time.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/thanks-to-republicans-world-hates-us.html
[Reuters] Distaste for America runs so deep that, for example, at the recent World Cup in Germany the American team was the only one asked not to display its national flag on the team bus. In South Korea, traditionally a U.S. ally, two-thirds of people under 30 said in a recent poll that if there were war between North Korea and the United States, they would side with North Korea.

"Anti-Americanism runs deeper and is qualitatively different than in the past, when it was largely attributable to unpopular U.S. policies," Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, says in a new book on the subject, "America Against the World." . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009238.php

And we are nowhere near seeing the end of Bush’s military adventures . . .

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1150
A majority of Americans believe the battles now being fought across the Israel–Lebanon border are the beginnings of a wider conflict – one that could result in a war that spans the globe . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/26/102917/411

http://billmon.org/archives/002578.html

Iran? I think they would have open revolt in the country (and in the military) if they tried – but there’s no doubt that many in the Bush gang want to do it (thanks to Susan Madrak for the link)

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war

The politics of all this: Rovism at its most cynical – the country is mired in terrible and bloody entanglements, with only more of the same ahead, but it's OKAY because the Democrats aren’t likely to make headway against it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601815.html
At home, political strategists said, Bush faces the perception that he is presiding over one brushfire after another, hindered in his efforts to advance a positive agenda at a time when Republican control of Congress appears at risk. . . The escalation of killing in Iraq may have unraveled any chance of major U.S. troop withdrawals before the elections. And the conversation is now dominated by rockets flying in and out of southern Lebanon. . .

The White House sees the risk but is banking, in part, on the Democrats' history of not capitalizing on such moments.

How can a party survive in power after this?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/another-bush-legacy-loss-of-confidence.html
[MSNBC] According to the poll, 65 percent say they feel less confident that life for their children's generation will be better than it was for them. In December 2001, the last time this question was asked, respondents — by a 49-42 percent margin — said they were confident life would be better for their children.

In addition, only 27 percent think the country is headed in the right direction . . And among those who believe that the nation is headed on the wrong track, a whopping 81 percent believe it's part of a longer-term decline and that things won't get better for some time.

The Bush gang’s proposed revisions to their military tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners – stop me if this is a shock to you – changes NOTHING of much substance in what they have been doing all along (they just want Congress to endorse it)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015405.html

Some day they will tabulate all the corruption and insider dealing around Homeland Security, War on Terror, and Iraq war and reconstruction boondoggles, and find it the greatest rip-off of govt funds in history

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601683.html

Destabilizing another part of the world: India to build even more nukes, with US approval

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-plan-will-allow-india-to-build-50.html

More Condi-bashing

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115397807433667672
[Digby] I think Condi Rice is a bad Secretary of State, but not for those reasons. She's a bad Secretary of State because she is loyal to a delusional moron and can't contain the crazies like those who are speaking in that article. If she really is some sort of dovish appeaser, she certainly has been ineffectual. She has been, after all, the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for the last five years of non-stop warfare.

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115398693309202275

Arlen Specter’s bill on presidential signing statements? Actually, it looks pretty good – but fellow Republicans are determined to strangle it in the crib

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8039.html
[Congressional Quarterly] [O]pposition from other Republicans means that Arlen Specter will have a difficult time making legislative headway in his latest move to counter executive powers assumed by the Bush White House.

But conservatives on Specter's own panel quickly lined up behind Bush on the issue. "I don't see what the problem is,'' said John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a member of the panel who also chairs the Republican Study Committee, said signing statements are a valuable tool for the White House to use to clarify legislation. . .

[Steve Benen] If there's any good news here, it's that Republicans might go Specter's bill — as long as Bush is exempted.

[F]ormer Rep. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla. (1977-93), who was a member of the ABA task force, said Republican leaders are unlikely to move Specter's bill unless its effective date is delayed until at least 2009. . . "Otherwise," Edwards said, "people will say this is a way to embarrass the president."

[S.B.] Yes, we'll have to stop this nefarious practice … just as soon as Bush is finished trashing the place.

Full text: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001210.php

John McCain, maverick no more

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001208.php
[Paul Kiel] In response to questions from Congressional Quarterly about whether he would support Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) bill to counter the President's use of "signing statements," McCain said this: “I think the president will enforce the law." . . .

The point of the signing statement, of which Bush has made unprecedented use, is for the President to declare that he will not enforce part or all of a law. . . McCain knows this -- Bush used the gambit to gut the Vietnam War veteran's own torture ban legislation. . .

Lots more: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8040.html

John Bolton’s UN confirmation hearings begin: here’s your background briefing

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001560.php

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601892.html

No surprise here: the GOP Congress is impeding investigation into Duke Cunningham’s network of corruption

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001202.php

Michael Steele, Republican candidate for the Senate in Maryland, gives a brutally honest interview (anonymously) about the difficulties Republican candidates are facing this fall. When his identity gets revealed, what does he say? “Just kidding”

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8041.html

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001212.php
[Paul Kiel] But it gets even better. . . Backpedaling furiously, Steele also said this morning that the interview with Milbank and other reporters was supposed to be off the record. That would mean that Milbank wasn't supposed to quote his remarks, anonymously or otherwise.

But it turns out that's just not true. Steele appears to be lying through his teeth. As Milbank clearly stated in his piece, Steele spoke to reporters "under the condition that he be identified only as a GOP Senate candidate."

This afternoon I contacted Milbank to find out what happened and he confirmed that the meeting, done over lunch, was not off the record. . . .

Maybe “R” is the new Scarlet Letter after all

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/072706/news4.html
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), who is in charge of keeping Congress in GOP hands this fall, surprised the political establishment yesterday by airing an early television advertisement that made no mention of his party affiliation. . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/27/24117/7351

The new subliminal style of political reporting – and how it is profoundly corrupting to a truly independent and critical press

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/mike_allen_dege.html
[Matt Yglesias] [Time’s Mike Allen]... said that news writers are trying to present both sides' points-of-view, hence the 'he said, she said' quality to it, but that they're trying to present these points-of-view in such a way so that a discerning reader can tell who's right based on reading the story. . . [read on]

Theocracy watch: the kindest thing you can say is that this is a shameless, cynical move by CNN to pander to the religious yahoo audience. Anything else you might say goes downhill from there. . .

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607270001

Bonus item: the fundamental dishonesty, and incoherence, of the GOP's “the fetus (or embryo) is a person” discourse

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009241.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:22 AM

 
ON ALL FRONTS

The mess in Iraq

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/iraqis-pm-in-dc-and-this-time-its-not.html
[NYT] The growing differences between Iraqi and American policies reflect an increasing disenchantment with American power among politicians and ordinary Iraqis, according to several politicians, academics and clerics. Sectarian violence has soared despite the presence of the Americans, and recent cases where American troops have been accused of killing civilians or raping Iraqi women have infuriated the public.

Mr. Maliki and other top Shiite leaders also want to maintain strong ties to Iran, whose influence is rising across the Middle East, officials say. . .

The mess in Lebanon

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6655
[Bush] I told him I support a sustainable cease-fire that will bring about an end to violence, and I talked about the importance of strengthening the Lebanese government and supporting the Lebanese people.

[Maliki] I also discussed with the President the issue of Lebanon . . And I also emphasized the importance of immediate cease-fire, and call on the international community to support the Lebanese government and support the Lebanese people to overcome the damage and destruction that happened.

[Bush] . . . we care about the people; we will help to get aid to the people; and that we want a sustainable cease-fire. We don't want something that's short-term in duration.

[Maliki] Here, actually we're talking about the suffering of a people in a country. . . The important thing here is what we are trying to do is to stop the killing and the destruction, and then we leave the room and the way for the international and diplomatic efforts and international organization to play the role to be there.

And finally, a good question. . .

(For President Bush) -- humanitarian aid to Lebanon. Yet there's also reports that your administration are speeding up delivery of laser-guided missiles to Israel and bunker-buster bombs. And do you see this -- if this is true, do you see it as contradictory? On one hand, you allow Israel to kill people, and civilian, in particular, and on the other hand, you're trying to aid the very people that have been suffering and killed as a result?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I don't see a contradiction in us honoring commitments we made prior to Hezbollah attacks into Israeli territory. And I -- like the Prime Minister, I'm concerned about loss of innocent life, and we will do everything we can to help move equipment -- I mean, food and medicines to help the people who have been displaced and the people who suffer.

The mess in Pakistan

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_23_atrios_archive.html#115383153486096578
[Atrios] Like every other sentient being on the planet I'm rather confused by our policies towards Pakistan. We're generally led to believe that Bin Laden is hanging out there along with some of his pals. It's a dictatorship with an unclear line of succession if that dictator ever accidentally gets in the way of an assassin's bullet. They have an active nuclear program. Their top nuclear scientist was handing out nuclear technology like candy on Halloween. The country promptly pardoned him for this and we didn't say a thing. . . And, just for fun, they have a new plutonium plant. And the Bush administration hid this fact from Congress. . .

The mess in Afghanistan

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6663
[Scout Prime] I like to go read the articles at the Department of Defense website where a weird combination of fairy dust, acid and Orwell prevail. This is the opening of an article from yesterday titled "Afghan Security Forces Gaining Capability, Spokesman Says"

While the enemy will continue to resist the will of the government and more violence is expected, the Afghan National Army and National Police are gaining capability by the day, a Combined Forces Command Afghanistan spokesman said today.

Then I also go to Stars and Stripes often because you can learn some very interesting things there. In a July 24th article on the best and worst sides of the Afghan National Army (ANA) there was this....

“The first thing they told us when we got here was to send the ANA troops first, because if we went in front they would probably shoot us in the back,” said one U.S. soldier, who wished to remain anonymous.

The mess in Saudi Arabia (one of our “allies” in the region)

http://billmon.org/archives/002566.html
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah warned on Tuesday of war in the Middle East if Israel continues attacking Lebanon and the Palestinians, in an apparent appeal to key ally the United States to end the fighting. . . [read on!]

More: http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/25/tilting_back

The mess in Turkey (another ally)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009182
[Josh Marshall] Over the last week, Turkey has lost 15 soldiers in cross border attacks from Kurdish separatists operating from inside Iraq. Pressure for retaliation is growing inside Turkey. . .

The media just won’t talk about the elephant in the room: at every turn they seem determined to find glimmers of hope and opportunity in Bush’s patent failures

http://www.prospect.org/horsesmouth/2006/07/post_247.html#004001
[Greg Sargent] It's been kind of interesting to watch the big news orgs struggle and strain to portray President Bush as an active, hands-on participant in resolving the mideast crisis . . .

[CNN] The Middle East crisis is giving President Bush a second chance to be a peacemaker and, however counterintuitive, an unexpected new chance to make headway on his grand goal of leaving the Middle East more democratic than he found it.

[G.S.] That one belongs in the time capsule, doesn't it? Anyone by chance recall Bush's first effort to be a "peacemaker"? Me either. I do, however, vaguely recall him initiating a war of choice on false pretenses that has left over 2,500 Americans dead and many tens of thousands severely wounded. Maybe in the world of CNN war is peace, as the Orwellian phrase has it. It's also worth pointing out that the Bush administration has actually rebuffed calls for the U.S. to push for a cease-fire.

The CNN paragraph links to this article in Time magazine which, while not as favorable as CNN's billing of it, doesn't even mention that the United States is speeding precision bombs to Israel, an act which is kind of at odds with Bush's alleged bid to be a "peacemaker." Meanwhile, the Time article takes readers through the usual things which are supposed to portray an active crisis manager at work, saying that Bush "initiated a series of phone calls from Air Force One and the Oval Office to leaders around the region." Yes, that's right, the President made some calls. And the article concludes on the following note:

[Time] Aides say he is content for now to take steps toward transforming the region in less obvious but, they believe, more fundamental and lasting ways. . .

[G.S.] It's impossible to know what this actually means, or whether any aides actually said this, but accepting it for the moment at face value, it's reassuring to know that Bush is "content" with the impact his administration is having on the Middle East. For a moment there one might have thought things weren't going all that well over in that part of the world. . .

Glimmers of hope and opportunity? I don’t think so. This is today’s must read

http://billmon.org/archives/002575.html
[Billmon] If all this sounds familiar -- the half-baked war plan, the unexpected setbacks, the frantic search for foreign legions, the lack of an exit strategy, the rising tide of blood -- it certainly should. We've already seen this movie, in fact we're still sitting through the last reel. It's a hell of a time to release the sequel. . .

More bad news: http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/israelis-kill-un-peacekeepers-halutz.html

At least one group is cheering on the catastrophes in the Middle East – those who see them as an indicator of the coming Rapture

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607260002

Arlen Specter (R-PA), making threatening noises again – this time about presidential signing statements. Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/25/signingstatements.ap/index.html
A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush's signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.

"We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said on the Senate floor. . .

The American Bar Association shows how it’s done: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115382511469946225
Among those unanimous recommendations, the Task Force voted to:

- oppose, as contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, a President's issuance of signing statements to claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law he has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress;

- urge the President, if he believes that any provision of a bill pending before Congress would be unconstitutional if enacted, to communicate such concerns to Congress prior to passage;

- urge the President to confine any signing statements to his views regarding the meaning, purpose, and significance of bills, and to use his veto power if he believes that all or part of a bill is unconstitutional;

- urge Congress to enact legislation requiring the President promptly to submit to Congress an official copy of all signing statements, and to report to Congress the reasons and legal basis for any instance in which he claims the authority, or states the intention, to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law he has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress, and to make all such submissions be available in a publicly accessible database.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/25/BL2006072500660.html

Bush’s approval numbers drop again – I prefer to view these not as the ups and downs of fickle public opinion, but as temporary blips upward, then reversion back to the realization that he’s been a disastrous leader for this country

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6650
[Holden] Chimpy's job approval rating tumbles to 37%, down from 40% earlier this month, in the latest Gallup poll.

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6657
[Holden] Chimpy's job approval rating fell five points overnight in the latest Rasmussen poll, from 42% yesterday to 37% today. . .

Big win for the bad guys – they find a judge willing to swallow their national security excuse for blocking any investigation into their phone record database

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8J37TP00.htm

The unaddressed problem of personal debt

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115388621610576693

The unaddressed problem of government debt

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/wreckless-tax-cuts-and-wild-spending.html

No surprise that nobody in the WH has had his security clearance pulled over leaking Valerie Plame’s name – but I find the second part of this story more interesting (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2006/07/24/298954-no-security-clearances-revoked-over-plame
No one in the Bush administration has been stripped of security clearances over the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to reporters three years ago. . .

The CIA also revealed it has not yet completed a formal assessment of the damage to national security that may have been caused by Plame's outing in 2003.

The assessment won't be completed until a criminal investigation of the leak has been concluded, Christopher J. Walker, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, said in the July 19 letter to Lautenberg.

[NB: Since the question is one of damage caused by the FACT of Plame’s outing, there is no reason I can see for delaying a report until the criminal investigation is over. What’s clear is that the CIA would HAVE to issue a report protecting one of their own, because the precedent for outing an agent would have to be condemned – and they don’t want to do this while Bush’s team is still in office.]

This is hilarious. Michael Steele, Republican candidate for a Maryland Senate seat, gives an “anonymous” interview with Dana Milbank, complaining that it’s impossible to run as a Republican with Bush and the party making such a hash of things. Did he really think his identity would stay secret, or is he playing some other game? Anyway, he’s anonymous no more

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8028.html
[Steve Benen] You know it's a tough political environment for the GOP when a Republican Senate candidate sits down with reporters and says:

On the Iraq war: "It didn't work. . . . We didn't prepare for the peace."

On the response to Hurricane Katrina: "A monumental failure of government."

On the national mood: "There's a palpable frustration right now in the country."

The same Republican said he "probably" wouldn't want Bush campaigning with him in his home state, said his party has "lost our way," and offered stinging indictments of the White House on the war, immigration, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the Dubai ports deal. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_940.html
[Ezra Klein] I wonder how the rest of the GOP feels about him publicly blasting the party to reporters -- feeding the Bush-is-unpopular and GOP-is-doomed narratives -- while hiding behind assured anonymity. . .

And what’s HIS game? Joe Lieberman (D?-CT) sorta-kinda endorses John McCain for president

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/25/221722/420

And this: taking a page from George Bush’s book, Lieberman’s people block someone from attending a campaign event because “He’s a known protester.” So now we can’t even call Joe a small-d democrat anymore

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/jul/25/campaigning_with_clinton_acting_like_bush

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115385590823037845
[Digby] Man, they really don't get it, do they? . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/25/15422/3764

Theocracy watch: religious organizations are now openly (and illegally) threatening politicians if they accept support from groups who disagree with them

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8027.html

Good advice for the Dems: stop talking ABOUT the message, and get ON message

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/25/11745/9233

E-voting: they just can’t get it right

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072501355.html

Bonus item: The Washington (Moonie) Times takes on Condi

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Condi2.htm
Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda.

The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . “Condi is loyal to the president. She is just incompetent on most foreign policy issues."

The criticism of Miss Rice has been intense and comes from a range of Republican loyalists, including current and former aides in the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. They have warned that Iran has been exploiting Miss Rice's inexperience and incompetence to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. They expect a collapse of her policy over the next few months. . .

[NB: I’ve been waiting for this. Rice was a lousy National Security Adviser, and she lacks the independence and experience to be an effective Sect’y of State. If anything, she is TOO loyal to Bush. But will this criticism break into the open, or stay in fringe publications like Insight?]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:37 AM

 
SEPARATION OF POWERS

The Bush gang (once again) demonstrates its utter contempt for Congress and due consultation. They knew that Pakistan was expanding their nuclear capabilities, but failed to pass that information along to Congress (who only learned about it from third-party sources)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400995.html
The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan's plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor . . . The acknowledgment came as arms-control experts and some in Congress expressed alarm about a possible escalation of South Asia's arms race. Some also sharply criticized the administration for failing to disclose the existence of a facility that could influence an upcoming congressional debate over U.S. nuclear policy toward India and Pakistan. . .

Henry D. Sokolski, the Defense Department's top nonproliferation official during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he was most surprised by the way news of the reactor in Pakistan became known.

"What is baffling is that this information -- which was surely information that our own intelligence agencies had -- was kept from Congress," said Sokolski, now director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. "We lack imagination if we think that this is no big deal."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009229.php
[Kevin Drum] We now have a president whose standard operating procedure is to keep Congress in the dark about anything that might cause him even the mildest inconvenience. Even if it's something that Congress really ought to know about in order to do its job.

But that's the whole point, isn't it? If Congress ever started to do its job, George Bush would be in serious trouble.

http://www.slate.com/id/2146466
[Eric Umansky] As it happens, the Senate is about to consider whether to approve the nuclear deal Bush has inked with India, and Pakistan's plant might just give senators pause.

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115380870925531792

Surprise, surprise. There may be some good security reason why the Bush gang likes to spring these “surprise” visits to hotspots around the world. But it’s also a transparent stunt for news coverage as well

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009223.php

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/surprise-visit-foreign-policy.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072401022.html
[Libby Copeland] It has gotten to the point where it would be a surprise if the Bush administration didn't make a surprise visit every few months. . .

Surprises yet to come http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_916.html
[Matt Yglesias] Say what you want about the Bush administration, but they sure know how to pull off a good media stunt . . Fortunately for Rice, she managed not to be hit by any stray bombs during her trip into town. Compare that to eight-year-old Mahmoud Srour whose family decided to abide by the IDF's orders to vacate the city of Tyre and had their car blown up for their trouble. His mom seems to be more-or-less okay, but his dad and his uncle are dead. Mahmoun's "face was burned beyond recognition" and all three of his siblings are likewise hospitalized and suffering from serious burns. . . In case one is inclined to wonder where the next generation of Hezbollah members and supporters is going to come from, I think you've got your candidate right here. For every dead father, mother, uncle, sister, or whatever, you're leaving behind a lot of angry people. . .

Hey, how’s the visit going, Condi?

http://www.slate.com/id/2146466
[Eric Umansky] The Washington Post leads, oddly, with Secretary of State Rice stopping by Beirut for a hours and "outlining" a plan that didn't amount to much of one: The administration wants a likely NATO-led peacekeeping force (sans U.S. soldiers) and is happy to support a ceasefire…once Hezbollah gives up, returns the kidnapped soldiers and moves back from the border. . .

The administration, of course, still doesn't want a ceasefire. "Any peace is going to have to be based on enduring principles and not on temporary solutions," Rice explained. "We're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing—the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Slate's Fred Kaplan counters that Rice's proclamation was the equivalent of a mayor in the middle of a crime wave announcing that "he's not going to put more police on the streets; he's going to convene a summit to address the wave's root causes."

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004635.html
[Ha’aretz] Nabih Beri, Lebanon's parliament speaker and Hezbollah's de facto negotiator, rejected proposals brought by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday, insisting a cease-fire must preceed any talks about resolving Hezbollah's presence in the south. . . Rice's talks with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora also appeared to have been tense. Siniora told Rice that Israel's bombardment was taking his country "backwards 50 years" and also called for a "swift cease-fire," the prime minister's office said. . .

Hezbollah has a plan – do we?

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/28539.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002562.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009167
[Chris Nelson] The war in Lebanon is already a public relations disaster for Israel, and a very real human disaster, with no end in sight, for thousands of Lebanese. Clearly Israel, under military attack, is not officially concerned with the PR, but you could already see in the very competitive Israeli press, late last week, warnings that the IDF was not being careful, that military plans had already gotten out of hand, and that a diplomatic debacle might be in the making.

Over the weekend, it became clear that Lebanon is also at risk of becoming another serious policy failure for the US. . . [read on]

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001556.php
[Chas Freeman, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and former Asst. Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs] The irony now is that the most likely candidate to back Hezbollah in the long term is no longer Iran but the Arab Shiite tyranny of the majority we have installed in Baghdad. . .

A multinational peacekeeping force? From where?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009226.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-force.html
Support is building quickly for an international military force to be placed in southern Lebanon, but there remains a small problem: where will the troops come from? . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2146466
[Eric Umansky] Nobody seems up to sending troops. "All the politicians are saying, 'Great, great' to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground," said one European official. "Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus."

Some questions about the Middle East Bush will never answer (heck, he’ll never even be asked)

http://www.slate.com/id/2146461/fr/rss/

Ahem

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO035240.htm
[Reuters] Iraq's morgues are overflowing . . .

How many ways can they avoid using the term “civil war”?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3176
MR. SNOW: . . . I think there's an attempt, and it's very alluring to politicians here to try to make the situation sound like civil war everywhere. No, there are parts of Iraq where life is proceeding with a fair degree of normalcy, where people are enjoying greater economic opportunity and they're enjoying the fruits of democracy. You've got a problem in Baghdad, and that is -- it's absolutely critical to address that.

Q: Yes, but it's not the politicians here who are calling it a civil war, it's politicians in Iraq. Iraqi politicians are saying --

MR. SNOW: Well, I'm not going to get into the labeling game. I think the most important -- because I don't know where you go with that, except you get a headline: "Administration says civil war." And it deflects from the real purpose here, which is to figure out how to create civil peace, and that is really the prime objective of everybody in the United State, every American who is working in and on the issue of Iraq. . .

[WP] The leader of Iraq's most powerful political party said Monday that Iraqis should band together and take up arms to protect their homes and neighborhoods against widespread lawlessness. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, whose Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is the leading member of the coalition of Shiite Muslim parties governing Iraq, said the formation of so-called people's committees was one of four essential steps the country must take to curb rampant violence. . . Hakim's contention that neighborhoods should form their own defense committees . . . is shared by many Iraqis who feel they cannot rely on their country's security forces or foreign troops to protect them. Others, however, have expressed fears that the people's committees would amount to nothing more than de facto militias in a country where militia attacks have caused much of the bloodshed. . .

Formation of people's committees should benefit all Iraqis, he said, because they would be created to defend neighborhoods, not beliefs. "In Shiite neighborhoods, they would be protected by young Shiites, because they live there. And the same thing for Sunni neighborhoods: They will be protected by young Sunnis. . .

[NB: So, what does that sound like to you?]

Well: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009169
Salih al-Mutlaq, Iraqi parliamentarian and leading Sunni politician: "Sectarian war has already begun in Iraq. What is happening now is a preparation for a civil war."

William F. Buckley, eminence grise of the conservative movement, lashes out at Bush

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8012.html
[CBS] Buckley finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy.

In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure. "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.

Because wealthy people never cheat on their taxes. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/business/23tax.html
The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8010.html
[Steve Benen] Congress has been debating for months the idea of eliminating, or at least seriously curtailing, the estate tax. So far, fiscal sanity has held its ground and GOP efforts to cut taxes for the hyper-wealthy (again) have failed. . . But the Bush administration, true to form, has come up with a way around this pesky legislative process: it's going to dramatically cut back on enforcing tax law in this area. . .

There are a couple of angles to consider here.

First, it's almost impressive that Bush can, in a practical sense, cut taxes for the rich simply through enforcement mechanisms. The administration has effectively issued a memo to the nation's wealthiest families: don't worry about paying your tax bills; we're no longer worrying about it. . .

Second, as Noam Scheiber noted, this is another helpful reminder about how the Bush administration perceives the policy-making process.

“I guess the argument for ignoring Congress on things like NSA eavesdropping and treatment of detainees is that the president has the authority as commander-in-chief to prosecute the war on terror however he sees fit. Well, what's the argument for ignoring Congress when it comes to tax policy? It's looking more and more like the administration thinks it can do whatever it wants, on whatever issue it wants. Not that this should surprise anyone.”

No, of course not. Debate among lawmakers about a contentious and expensive policy is, as far as the president is concerned, for losers.

Do you trust Arlen Specter to negotiate a “compromise” on domestic spying with the Bush gang? It’s ridiculous, really – these people DON’T BELIEVE IN COMPROMISE. All they care about is finding some cover for doing what they’re going to do anyway

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/specter-instructs-us-to-be-grateful-to.html

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015389.html

What we can do to help block the Specter bill

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/24/104353/467

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/07/24/dialing-for-spinesand-the-constitution/

Looks like Bush treats Josh Bolten (his new Chief of Staff) the same way he treats everyone else

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6641
Via Bob Cesca we learn that Chimpy has "several" profane nicknames for Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. . .

Poor Josh, he’s trying so hard, too

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8009.html
[Steve Benen] If you missed it, be sure to check out White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten's performance on Meet the Press yesterday. Tim Russert must have eaten his Wheaties because when it came to the president's veto on stem-cell research funding, he asked all the right questions. Unfortunately for Bolten, he didn't have the right answers.

Russert, noting Tony Snow's choice of words, asked Bolten, "Does the president believe the use of an embryo for stem cell research is murder?" Bolten wouldn't say directly, but he implicitly agreed, explaining the administration's belief that a "human embryo is a human life that deserves protection."

Russert followed with the logical next step: "If the president believes it is human life, how can he allow private stem cell research to go forward, go forward, if, in fact, that is murder?" Bolten couldn't explain, saying only that it's a "very difficult balance." Russert followed-up again, noting that we're using federal funds for existing embryo lines, which suggests we're funding experimentation on embryos "obtained by homicidal means." Again, Bolten hedged. Russert tried to explain the problem to his guest.

"The logic, Mr. Bolten, as people are listening to this, the president is saying no, we can't use embryos that are going to be discarded by in vitro clinics because, according to a spokesman, that's murder. But we can use embryos that were existing before I became president, that's OK. And if you have a private company and you want to use those embryos, that's OK. Back to the central question: does the president agree with his spokesman, Tony Snow, that the research on the embryo in, in fact, to use that embryo is murder? […]

"Would you then move to close down in vitro clinics — if, in fact, those embryos are being created and used by private companies for research and the president's spokesman says that's murder, and the president said it's a human life, why not then close down the in vitro fertility clinics? Because they're creating embryos that, in the president's view, will be murdered.”

If it was boxing, a referee would have stopped the fight. . . It got particularly interesting when Russert asked Bolten to explain Karl Rove's take on the issue.

Russert: Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, said that adult stem cells show far more promise than embryonic stem cells, and the White House could not identify any scientist who could confirm that. Is—does the president agree with Mr. Rove?

Bolten: I'm, I'm no scientist, not, not quantified to speak on it, but I think the point that Karl was getting at is that there are alternative means to achieve some of the promise of the — of the embryonic stem cells that, that scientists…

Russert: No, he said "far more promise."

Bolten: Well. . . I — like I said I'm not — I'm not a scientist and I don't. . .

Russert: Well, I don't think Karl Rove is, either.

Bolten: Well, he knows a lot of stuff…

Actually, Rove doesn't. His claim was demonstrably false; Bolten just didn't want to say so. . . It was a train wreck.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/24/stemcell/index.html

Hmmm. . . now the WH reverses itself, says using embryos isn’t really “murder” after all. Well, you might think murder isn’t the sort of thing you can just change your mind about – it either is or it isn’t, right?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400990.html
Snow described Bush's position last Tuesday, the day before the veto. "The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research it's inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He's one of them," Snow said from the White House. "The simple answer is he thinks murder's wrong."

The president did not use that term the next day at the veto ceremony, but he did say he objected to the legislation because it "would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others." . . .

At yesterday's briefing, Snow retracted his statement and apologized. "I overstepped my brief there, and so I created a little trouble for Josh Bolten in the interview," Snow said. "And I feel bad about it."

"So the president does not regard this as murder?" a reporter asked.

"He would not use that term," Snow said. . .

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a group that opposes embryonic stem cell research, said he does not see much significance in the White House revision. . .

[NB: OK, now explain to me how “the taking of innocent human life” isn’t murder]

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/snow-waffles-on-stem-cell-murder.html

Bush sends out a fundraising email: “I hope you’re managing your finances better than I’m managing the finances of the country, because the GOP needs some of your money so we can pass more tax cuts. Think of it as an investment!”

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001555.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8017.html
[Steve Benen] But what I found interesting is that Bush's message to rank-and-file Republicans, urging them to contribute financially to the GOP cause, didn't mention the war on terror. . .

Over the course of a 550-word email, the president's message didn't mention the war, 9/11, Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden. The text, which was supposed to help inspire Republicans to open their wallet, didn't even include the words "national security." . .

The conventional wisdom tells us that the GOP will emphasize national security above all else this election season. Indeed, Karl Rove has said as much publicly. But isn't this email a subtle admission that the party can't exactly count on the issue as an automatic winner? That when it comes to making the die-hards proud to be a Republican, they rely on tax cuts, not national security?

Boy, you never have to scratch very deep to find the anti-Semitism beneath the surface of these people

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/religious-right-describes-democratic.html

Theocracy watch

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/23/civil_rights_hiring_shifted_in_bush_era/
[Boston Globe] The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights. . . Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions. . .

At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/24/civilrights/index.html
[Tim Grieve] It's great that the president is acknowledging that "many African-Americans distrust" the Republican Party. It would be even better if he understood why. . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8013.html

Finally, a bit of honest candor from Fox News

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607240014
On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume. . . said: "We've passed" a measure that would eliminate the tax "for nearly everybody” . . .

[“We”?]

Former GOP Ethics committee chair criticizes his party colleagues on their culture of corruption, introduces a no-chance bill to do something about it

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/25/13534/8001

Intriguing: if the Repubs hold the Senate, will John McCain (R-AZ) bring his investigative mojo and love of the limelight to cracking open the Dept of Defense budget?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001193.php

Was Joe Lieberman (D?-CT) looking for a double endorsement for Senate? And then a future campaign as a “national unity” President?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115380445513774458

Katherine Harris (R-FL), Mensa candidate (not!), explains the Middle East

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6638
[Palm Beach Post] Harris, flanked by two large American flags, spoke mostly about immigration, from which she drew parallels to the current fighting between Israeli troops and the Hezbollah militia.

"Israel is fighting a global war, a global enemy, its terrorists, on all of our behalf," Harris said, adding that the United States must take aggressive steps to tighten its own borders to block terrorists. . . "We hear of Middle Easterners — they could be fundamental extremists — taking Hispanic names and coming into our country. We do not know where they are. This is a matter of great national security," she said.

Solid Democratic prospects at the state level: the governors

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/24/134643/929

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/24/124018/017

Bonus item: Oh, they wouldn’t do THIS, would they?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009165
[ABC] You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

WOULD THEY? http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8018.html
[AP] When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration's policies.

Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating "No More War." What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?

Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 2:56 AM

 
OVER THE CLIFF. . .

Sorry, today’s edition is one of the most upsetting I’ve compiled in quite some time. . . but read to the end!

What exactly IS the bold Bush plan for “reshaping” the Middle East? (Aside, that is, from reshaping it into a heap of smoking rubble?)

http://billmon.org/archives/002555.html
[Daily Telegraph] White House aides have said they consider the Lebanon crisis to be a "leadership moment" for Mr Bush and an opportunity to proceed with his post-September 11 plan to reshape the Middle East by building Sunni Arab opposition to Shi’a terrorism. . . [read on]

http://www.ericumansky.com/2006/07/thats_some_plan.html
[NYT] "U.S. Plan Seeks to Wedge Syria From Iran" . . [read on]

WHAT “post-September 11 plan”? I read everything, and this is the first I’ve heard of it. Their make-it-up-as-you-go policymaking has had just the results one would expect. At first, toppling Hussein was supposed to usher in a new era of democracy in the region. When it became clear that by removing that bulwark a wider conflict had been unleashed, they decided that the real enemy was the Shi’as, especially Iran. They seem to think that they can turn Sunni-dominated Syria against Iran, but are endorsing Israeli actions in Lebanon that make it impossible for Syria to cooperate with them – and they are refusing to meet with Syrian representatives anyway. I can’t remotely fathom what their stance toward Syria is – can you?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top11jul23,0,444141.story
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday the United States' poor relationship with Syria is overstated, pointing out that there are existing channels for talking with Syrian leaders about resolving the Mideast crisis when they're ready to talk.

En route to the region, Rice noted that the United States still has a diplomatic mission and State Department officials working in the Syrian capital. That presence, she said, is a "channel for dealing with Syria."

"The problem isn't that people haven't talked to the Syrians. It's that the Syrians haven't acted," she said. "I think this is simply just a kind of false hobby horse that somehow it's because we don't talk to the Syrians.

"It's not as if we don't have diplomatic relations," she said. "We do."

The State Department considers Syria one of the world's state sponsors of terror. In recent weeks, the Bush administration has blamed it, along with Iran, for stoking the recent violence in the Middle East by encouraging the Lebanese Hezbollah militia to attack northern Israel.

The U.S. ambassador to Damascus was recalled last year after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syrian officials have been blamed for the murder, which Damascus denies. . .

[NB: They started off with Al Qaeda as a target, but have let Al Qaeda GROW as a threat while tilting more and more against Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet Israel’s recent actions, tacitly endorsed by the US, have unified Sunni Hamas and Shiite Hezbollah (http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/?p=456). At no point do Bush’s people seem to have grasped the sources of Muslim hatred of the US – most of which they have nourished by their actions over the past five years.]

Condi and the rest have finally abandoned any moral pretense in foreign policy: she says, Oh yes, we want a cease fire, but the conditions aren’t right for one (right for whom?)

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/24/mideast.diplomacy/index.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009147
[Wayne White, Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Middle East and South Asia Analysis until March 2005] I believe [Condi's] activities have been tailored to give the impression of action while not designed to make any real progress toward the urgent ceasefire that should be everyone's highest priority. . .

[N]ot learning from the American experience in Iraq that trying to crush a guerrilla movement with conventional military force involving significant—and in this case, even deliberate—collateral casualties and damage might only generate thousands of other potential fighters bearing various grievances, the IDF could find itself mired in the same sort of seemingly open-ended confrontation. . .

With respect to another extremely serious consequence of not working to bring this carnage to an early end, Lebanon already has absorbed billions of dollars of damage. By the end of the crisis, the cost of rebuilding Lebanon will be incredibly high and the rebuilding effort quite prolonged, leaving most Lebanese, aside perhaps from the hard-core Christian right, considerably more hostile to Israel—and the United States—than ever before. In this respect, I find scenes of devastated Lebanese urban areas not only appalling, but frightening.

[DK] Feeling depressed yet? What if I reminded you that as of last Thursday, we're still 2 1/2 years away from a new Administration?

Those neo-cons: they’re never wrong (never – even when they reverse course and contradict themselves)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/23/8155/57195

Let’s see: Bush’s own intelligence people think it’s a civil war, independent experts call it a civil war, and folks in Iraq call it a civil war. I think it’s time for the press over here to cross that bridge too

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/opinion/23sambanis.html

The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament (not the Prime Minister) calls US occupation “butchery”

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/iraqis-prime-minister-calls-us-troops.html
[John Aravosis] This war is an absolute disaster. . .

“We know there was a corrupt regime in Saddam, but a regime should be removed by surgery, not by butchering. The U.S. occupation is butcher’s work under the slogan of democracy and human rights and justice.”

George Bush has failed. The war in Iraq is over. Bush lost. Prolonging our presence there will only lead to more death, and more hatred, on all sides. Yes, an American withdrawal will be a disaster. But an American commitment to stay in Iraq will also be a disaster.

The patient is terminal. You can either give him massive doses of chemo and radiation that will do nothing to help, and actually will hurt him even more, or you can stop the treatment and call a failure a failure. If you think America is on the right course in Iraq, then please do vote Republican this fall.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/100-killed-in-massive-bombings-in-sadr.html
[LAT] "The enemy is the same," said a statement issued by the Hawza, the network of seminaries in Najaf. "Their aim is to enslave and humiliate us. What's happening today in Lebanon is part of a bigger scheme to crush the blessed [Islamic] nation."

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon had been planned for more than a year

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004623.html

More: http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/war-on-lebanon-planned-for-at-least.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002559.html

It seems apparent that the essence of foreign policy is being able to watch dozens of spinning dishes all at the same time, and not to become obsessed with just one – because even if you manage to control that one, many others go bad while you’re not watching. The Bush gang of True Believers have proven this thesis in spades: while fiddling in the Middle East (and making a complete mess of it), they have taken their eye off North Korea, where they have lost all leverage, Pakistan (which is expanding its nuclear weapons program: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009155) and many other hotspots around the world. The latest narrative of neglect: Africa. And wait til you read why

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/pentagon-says-bush-budget-cuts-and-go.html
[NYT] The Bush administration and Congress have slashed millions of dollars of military aid to African nations in recent years, moves that Pentagon officials and senior military commanders say have undermined American efforts to combat terrorist threats in Africa and to counter expanding Chinese influence there. . . [read on!]

Human Rights Watch: US torture was systematic (even bureaucratized) – and directly approved from above

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009146

Excellent point: why should Arlen Specter, or anyone else in Congress, negotiate a “compromise” bill with Bush over domestic spying – when he’ll just ignore the law when it suits him anyway (as he has FISA and every other applicable law)?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_23_atrios_archive.html#115367419182863390
[Kirt S] “A Process for Prisoners" speculated on how the Bush administration might work with Congress in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Unfortunately, the democratic process envisioned, wherein the executive branch works with the legislative branch to produce mutually agreeable legislation, has been repeatedly undermined through President Bush's use of "signing statements." With these, President Bush signs the law, then demonstrates his contempt for American democracy by asserting that he will not implement the legislation as written, but rather as he sees fit. My speculation is that President Bush will sign a Hamdan-related law giving him huge media coverage and a political victory; then he'll quietly issue a signing statement contradicting the law's intent, and that will receive scant coverage.

With that, he'll demonstrate that his contempt isn't limited to Congress but also includes the Supreme Court (and the media, which will miss the real story).

Bah! Just a bunch of friggin’ lawyers – what do THEY know about the law?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/washington/24prexy.html
American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed. . . In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives.

These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a “line-item veto” and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said. . . The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.” From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president “must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.”. . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300511.html
"We will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked."

Duke Cunningham’s corruption on the House Intelligence committee, not only the Appropriations committee, is coming under scrutiny

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009152
[Examiner] An independent investigation has found that imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took advantage of secrecy and badgered congressional aides to help slip items into classified bills that would benefit him and his associates. . .

And now it looks like even more Cunningham-related indictments are coming. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_23.php#009153
[Fox] Hoekstra said [investigator] Stern, as a final step, wants to interview Cunningham in prison to find out more about how he influenced the system. The Justice Department is resisting because it has other potential prosecutions pending in the case, so Hoekstra is considering subpoenaing the former lawmaker.

[DK] Let's see. Major federal investigation into public corruption. GOP lawmakers and lobbyists top the list of targets. Feds want the Intel Committee to leave one of their important witnesses alone. GOP chairman considers issuing subpoena to the imprisoned Cunningham anyway.

I'm not saying Hoekstra is using his committee to impede a federal investigation, but I'm reminded of the John Poindexter conviction in Iran-Contra, which was thrown out on appeal due to the concurrent congressional investigation.

Glenn Greenwald reviews John Dean’s new book on conservatism’s rampant authoritarianism . . . today’s must-read

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/john-dean-and-authoritarian-cultism_23.html
With 2 1/2 years still left for this administration, the true radicalism of the administration and its followers has becoming unavoidably, depressingly clear, and it is equally clear that this movement has not reached anywhere near the peak of its extremism. Dean's central thesis explains why that is so.

Dean contends, and amply documents, that the "conservative" movement has become, at its core, an authoritarian movement composed of those with a psychological and emotional need to follow a strong authority figure which provides them a sense of moral clarity and a feeling of individual power, the absence of which creates fear and insecurity in the individuals who crave it. By definition, its followers' devotion to authority and the movement's own power is supreme, thereby overriding the consciences of its individual members and removing any intellectual and moral limits on what will be justified in defense of their movement. . .

As Iraq collapses into all-out civil war and new, tragic levels of violence, Bush supporters continue to insist that things are going well there and our invasion was a success. As the Middle East spirals into all-out regional war, Bush supporters insist that this repulsive violence is actually good for the region -- wars are encouraging "birth pangs" on the road to progress, as the Secretary of State put it yesterday -- and they are now actively involving the U.S. in this escalated conflict, even while Iraq rapidly falls apart.

And there is seemingly no limit -- literally -- on the willingness, even eagerness, of Bush supporters to defend and justify even the most morally repugnant abuses -- from constantly expanding spying on American citizens, to a President who claims and aggressively exercises the "right" to break the law, to torturing suspects, imprisoning journalists, and turning the United States into the most feared and hated country on the planet.

And as radical as the administration has become, it is clear that the administration has not even come close to reaching the level of extremism which would be necessary for its supporters to object -- if such a limit exists at all. If anything, on those exceedingly few occasions over six years when his followers have dissented from the President's decisions -- illegal immigration, Harriet Miers, Dubai ports -- it has been not because the administration was too radical, extremist, militaristic and uncompromising -- but insufficiently so.

Bush supporters want more spying, much more aggressive actions against investigative journalists and even domestic political opposition, more death and violence brought to the Middle East, more wars, and still fewer restraints on the President's powers, to the extent there are any real limits left. To them, the Bush administration has not been nearly as extremist and aggressive as it ought to be in dealing with the Enemies. And that is to say nothing of the measures that would be urged, and almost certainly imposed, in the event of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil or in the increasingly likely event that our limited war in Iraq expands into the Epic War of Civilizations which so many of them crave.

Ultimately, as Dean convincingly demonstrates, the characteristic which defines the Bush movement, the glue which binds it together and enables and fuels all of the abuses, is the vicious, limitless methods used to attack and demonize the "Enemy," which encompasses anyone -- foreign or domestic -- threatening to their movement. What defines and motivates this movement are not any political ideas or strategic objectives, but instead, it is the bloodthirsty, ritualistic attacks on the Enemy de jour -- the Terrorist, the Communist, the Illegal Immigrant, the Secularist, and most of all, the "Liberal."

What excites, enlivens, and drives Bush followers is the identification of the Enemy followed by swarming, rabid attacks on it. It is a movement that defines itself not by identifiable ideas but by that which it is not. Its foreign policy objectives are identifiable by one overriding goal -- destroy and kill the Enemy, potential or suspected enemies, and everyone nearby. And it increasingly views its domestic goals through the same lens. It is a movement in a permanent state of war, which views all matters, foreign and domestic, only in terms of this permanent war.

Supreme Court justices who rule against the President on national security matters are tyrants, traitors and pro-terrorist. Journalists who uncover legally dubious government conduct carried out in secret are criminals who should be imprisoned for life or hanged. Virtually every political opponent of the administration's of any significance -- Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons -- is relentlessly branded as a liar, mentally unstable, corrupt, seditious, and sympathetic to the Enemy.

And even those who devoted much of their adult lives to military service to their country (often in ways far more courageous and impressive than most Bush supporters), or even those who have been longtime Republicans and conservatives, have their characters relentlessly smeared and motives and integrity impugned as soon as they criticize the administration in any way that could embarrass the President -- Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, the war critic Generals, Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter, Wesley Clark, John Murtha, John Paul Stevens, and on and on and on.

It is a movement devoted to the destruction of its enemies wherever they might be found. And it finds new ones, in every corner and seemingly on a daily basis, because it must. That is the food which sustains it. . . [read on]

Billmon on Tom Ricks, whose new book, “Fiasco,” sounds like quite an indictment of Bush’s failed war – but it is also an indictment of the credulous war coverage of journalists like Ricks

http://billmon.org/archives/002557.html

More excerpts from “Fiasco”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300495.html

Bonus item: So, what’s the good news? Is there any way that a party can remain in the Congressional majority when it has fostered an unpopular and festering war, buried the federal government under a mountain of debt, endorsed the rampant and illegal power-grabs of an unpopular President, mired itself in multiple corruption scandals – with more to break in coming weeks – and spent months now doing nothing but advancing the legislative agenda of a radical religious minority who do not reflect the values of mainstream America? I know, I know, they very well might. But this is a winnable fight, and if even one branch of Congress switches party control, Bush might be thrown on the defensive for the first time

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300435.html
No modern political party has weathered a midterm election with a president as low in the polls as George W. Bush. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300615.html
Less than four months before the mid-term elections, there is one question that is preoccupying candidates around the country: How big will the Republican losses be in November?

I hope John is right: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/open-thread_24.html
[John Aravosis] I really think Iraq may shock the hell out of everyone come this November, in terms of just how massive an impact it could have on the election. As in, massive Democratic victory in both houses. I could be wrong, but something is brewing with the public, they're finally fed up, and Iraq is going to be a disaster from now until election day. And with Bush and Cheney trying to force Congress to run on Iraq, the daily carnage is going to force Republicans to run from the issue, and run from Bush, which is going to cause even more of a mess.

Again, anything can happen. But I think things are going to get very messy for the GOP in the next 3 months. . .

The Bush gang starts to plan for a possible Democratic takeover of Congress – and they know what that means: investigations, hearings, and subpoenas. (Here’s my prediction: they will stonewall all requests on national security grounds and force the issue into the courts . . . buying time and hoping that a friendly Supreme Court eventually bails them out)

http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,1218016,00.html
As for Bush himself, he is curtailing his traditional August working vacation at the ranch so that he can barnstorm before the midterm elections. Their outlook thus far seems so ominous for the G.O.P. that one presidential adviser wants Bush to beef up his counsel's office for the tangle of investigations that a Democrat-controlled House might pursue. . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/23/235654/654
[Jonathan Singer] With President Bush's approval rating clearly stuck in the gutter and the Democrats maintaining a robust generic congressional ballot lead, it's no wonder that the White House has serious concerns about the potential for the Dems to win back the House or the Senate -- or both. And given the President's consistent use of extrajuridical techniques to achieve his radical agenda -- techniques that even establishment institutions like the American Bar Association are voicing opposition to -- it should come as no surprise that the first reaction of the White House to the possibility that Republicans will lose one or both chambers of Congress is to ramp up their legal defense team.

(The Senate too? Probably not) http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/23/poll_shows_republicans_holding_senate.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/washington/23dole.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:52 AM

 
FIASCO

Mr. Maliki comes to Washington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072200810.html
The last time President Bush met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, White House officials touted a new security plan for Baghdad as one of the centerpieces of Iraq's fledgling national unity government.

Five weeks later, even the White House concedes that the plan has not worked as hoped . . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3169
[NYT] The top American commander for the Middle East said Friday that the escalating sectarian violence in Baghdad had become a greater worry than the insurgency and that plans were being drawn up to move additional forces to the Iraqi capital. . . The shifting of additional forces to the Baghdad area is expected to come at the expense of troop levels in other parts of the country.

[Swopa] In other words, because we have so few combat forces available in Iraq, the only way the U.S. can even try to stem the chaos in Baghdad is to deprive commanders in insurgent-dominated Anbar province even further. . .

[NB: Anyone want to guess what comes next?]

Whatever you do, DON’T call it a “civil war”

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004614.html
[Laura Rozen] Negroponte blocking new CIA NIE on Iraq. "'What do you call the situation in Iraq right now?' asked one person familiar with the situation. 'The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.' Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, 'doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.'”

Whoo, boy: A new book coming out on the Iraq War: “Fiasco” (I can’t wait)

http://www.ericumansky.com/2006/07/look_out.html
[Eric Umansky] Among the revelations cited in a press release for the book:

* U.S. policies and tactics helped create the insurgency.

* Abuse of Iraqi prisoners was far more widespread than just a few "bad apples" at the Abu Ghraib prison, and was, in fact suggested by senior military officers.

* U.S. military leaders failed their troops by sending them to Iraq unprepared for the task at hand.

* One of the most abusive units was the 4th Infantry Division. The general who led this division, Raymond Odierno, is scheduled to become the no. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq later this year.

* The U.S. military was frequently at odds with U.S. civilian officials, resulting in internal friction that undermined the American mission.

* The U.S. military didn't launch a counterinsurgency campaign until August 2004-some 17 months after the fall of Baghdad and a full year after the insurgency began.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072201004.html

Sure Iraq’s a disaster, but at least Bush has defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. . . uh . . . hasn’t he? (thanks to Ahmad for the link)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1826479,00.html
The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption. . . The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of NATO's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people. . .

More: http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=12929819&src=rss/topNews

The latest: the US is working AGAINST an immediate cease fire in Lebanon

http://www.slate.com/id/2146372/fr/rss/
As Rice prepares to travel to Israel today, Haaretz reports that Israeli officials believe they have the U.S. government's support to continue the fight against Hezbollah for at least one more week. The paper says Rice will first meet with Israeli leaders to discuss the crisis and then will return to the region next Sunday to try and work on a cease-fire.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115358676069037412
[Digby] The Bush administration are monsters. That is not hyperbole . . . [read on]

More: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/neoconservatism-and-white-house-still.html

Turkey invokes Israel’s invasion of Lebanon as a precedent for invading Northern Iraq to pre-empt Kurdish separatists. And, in that light, what do we say to them?

http://www.stealthbadger.net/log/index.php/2006/07/21/like-we-didnt-see-this-coming/

Here is what Bush has done: pre 9/11, the US was hated and despised by radical Islamic fundamentalists. Now, because of his enlightened policies, the US is hated and despised by Muslims everywhere

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/22/114558/370

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3168

I think this is a great idea: Bush should continue to listen closely to Dick Cheney and follow his every bit of advice – because no one has done more to destroy the support and credibility of this administration

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/cheney-uses-middle-east-disaster-as.html
[John Aravosis] They ignore the Middle East, war erupts, they do nothing about it, and now Cheney is out there saying that this shows everyone should vote Republican. . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115351334949103287

This – is – INSANE

http://makeashorterlink.com/?X2B22137D
[AP] Undercover government investigators purchased sensitive surplus military equipment such as launcher mounts for shoulder-fired missiles and guided missile radar test sets from a Defense Department contractor.

Much of the equipment could be useful to terrorists . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/22/134357/334
[SusanG] Let me get this straight: We've given up a large part of our fabled "freedoms" (as our president phrases it) - due process, warrants for surveillance, etc. - because of our collective insane fear of being struck by terrorists, right? It's a trade-off most Americans seem eager to make, despite the lack of a coherent explanation about how logging our phone calls to Aunt Mabel in Syracuse makes us safer.

Yet the Bush administration is allowing defense contractors to hold bargain basement sales on sensitive military equipment to any and all comers? . . .

Sure, they should confirm John Bolton as the US representative to the UN – after all, he represents the Bush administration perfectly

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/world/23bolton.html
The Bush administration is not popular at the United Nations, where it is often perceived as disdainful of diplomacy, and its policies as heedless of the effects on others and single-minded in the willful assertion of American interests. By extension, then, many diplomats say they see Mr. Bolton as a stand-in for the arrogance of the administration itself.

But diplomats focus particularly on an area with less evidence of instructions from Washington and more of Mr. Bolton’s personal touch, the mission that he has described as his priority: overhauling the institution’s discredited management. Envoys say he has in fact endangered that effort by alienating traditional allies. They say he combatively asserts American leadership, contests procedures at the mannerly, rules-bound United Nations and then shrugs off the organization when it does not follow his lead.

Six ambassadors separately offered similar accounts of an incident in June that they said captured the situation. All were from nations in Europe, the Pacific and Latin America that consider themselves close allies of the United States, and they asked to speak anonymously in commenting on a fellow envoy.

Mr. Bolton that day burst into a packed committee hall, produced a cordless microphone and began to lecture envoys from developing nations about their weakening of a proposal to tighten management of the United Nations, his chief goal.

Gaveled to silence, he threw up his hands and said, “Well, so much for trying something different.”

Making Bush and the Republicans pay for their short-sighted, hypocritical stem cell policy

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9558558/detail.html

I’m speechless

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-changes-nasa-mission-statement-no.html
[NYT] NASA quietly had its mission statement changed last February by the White House, who deleted the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet.” NASA scientists were surprised to learn of the change. “Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.” . . .

So, so typical: the major US press outlets mainly ignored Bush’s unsolicited, demeaning “back rub” of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But the US press IS very amused by the blogosphere’s reaction to it

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8007.html
An impromptu back rub that President George W. Bush gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel is now massaging millions of funnybones.

A 5-second video and series of photographs recently posted on YouTube.com and various blogs show Bush surprising Merkel at the G-8 Summit by quickly rubbing the back of her neck and shoulders. The chancellor immediately hunches her shoulders, throws her arms up and grimaces. . . The video has been one of the most popular clips on the Web and spawned countless remarks on the particulars of etiquette for world leaders.

Fox News breaks another “exclusive” (because no one else will stoop to their level of absurdity)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607220002
On the July 21 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, during a report on the "scary 'what ifs' " surrounding the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, host John Gibson, along with Fox News' The Big Story Weekend Edition host Julie Banderas, speculated on whether there was any truth to the baseless reports and statements from unidentified "experts" that Saddam Hussein's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was secretly transported to Syria prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and "might have been put in the hands of Hezbollah." Throughout the segment, the onscreen text read: "Are Saddam Hussein's WMDs Now in Hezbollah's Hands?"

During the report, Banderas endeavored to "separate fact from fiction." Not mentioned at any time during the segment was the fact that the Iraq Survey Group's final report, commonly known as the Duelfer report, included no evidence that any secret transfer of weapons from Iraq to Syria had ever taken place.

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072200661.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton; House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.); Plácido Domingo, general director of the Washington National Opera.

THIS WEEK (ABC): Will not air because of British Open golf coverage.

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon; Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha; Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten; Washington Post staff writer Thomas E. Ricks.

LATE EDITION (CNN): Bolton; Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.); Reps. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.); Mohamad Bahaa Chatah, senior adviser to the Lebanese prime minister; Israeli Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog; author Gary Berntsen.

Bonus item: Today’s must read (very clever, very dark)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/22/181659/434
[SusanG] Would you hire a babysitter who hates children. . . Would you hire cops who think laws are stupid and useless and should be abolished?. . . [read on!]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:48 AM

 
THE PEACE PRESIDENT

Little by little, the conventional wisdom is turning: the Iraq war has been a disastrous error, and the rosy-glassed neocons who talked us into it and promised great results can’t be trusted

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/21/1042/62696
[Georgia10] Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, and Rush Limbaugh are among a disturbing number of conservatives who are calling for an all-out world war.

These conservatives have an insatiable appetite for conflict and a maniacal desire to try all 31 flavors war. They want to use events in the Mideast as an excuse to invade any country whose citizens dare to call God "Allah." But their calls for a wider war are not the result of some warped idea that the sound of rockets pounding in neighborhoods will lull the hate to sleep. Nope. They. Just. Want. War.

I offer for your morning enjoyment a serving of pure, unfiltered truth about the neocons who have been calling for a wider war. From Wednesday's Hardball episode, here is Chris Matthews taking them on . . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_913.html
[Paul Krugman] Today we call them neoconservatives, but when the first George Bush was president, those who believed that America could remake the world to its liking with a series of splendid little wars — people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — were known within the administration as “the crazies.” Grown-ups in both parties rejected their vision as a dangerous fantasy....

Would the current crisis on the Israel-Lebanon border have happened even if the Bush administration had actually concentrated on fighting terrorism, rather than using 9/11 as an excuse to pursue the crazies’ agenda? Nobody knows. But it’s clear that the United States would have more options, more ability to influence the situation, if Mr. Bush hadn’t squandered both the nation’s credibility and its military might on his war of choice...

Few if any of the crazies have the moral courage to admit that they were wrong. Vice President Cheney continues to insist that his two most famous pronouncements about Iraq — his declaration before the invasion that we would be “greeted as liberators” and his assertion a year ago that the insurgency was in its “last throes” — were “basically accurate.”

But if the premise of the Bush doctrine was right, why are things going so badly?

The crazies respond by retreating even further into their fantasies of omnipotence. The only problem, they assert, is a lack of will. . . [read on]

Iraq: worse and worse

http://makeashorterlink.com/?K3251227D
[Reuters] Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of "black days" of civil war ahead.

Signalling a dramatic abandonment of the U.S.-backed project for Iraq, there is even talk among them of pre-empting the worst bloodshed by agreeing to an east-west division of Baghdad into Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim zones. . .

"Iraq as a political project is finished," one senior government official said -- anonymously because the coalition under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in public to the U.S.-sponsored constitution that preserves Iraq's unity.

One highly placed source even spoke of busying himself on government projects, despite a sense of their futility, only as a way to fight his growing depression over his nation's future.

"The parties have moved to Plan B," the senior official said, saying Sunni, ethnic Kurdish and majority Shi'ite blocs were looking at ways to divide power and resources. . . "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east and west," he said. "We are extremely worried."

On the eve of the first meeting of a National Reconciliation Commission and before Maliki meets President George W. Bush in Washington next week, other senior politicians also said they were close to giving up on hopes of preserving the 80-year-old, multi-ethnic, religiously mixed state in its present form. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/world/middleeast/22abizaid.html
The top American commander for the Middle East said Friday that the escalating sectarian violence in Baghdad had become a greater worry than the insurgency and that plans were being drawn up to move additional forces to the Iraqi capital. . . “The situation with sectarian violence in Baghdad is very serious,” Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army, the head of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Friday. . .

The politics of it

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/republican-iraq-war-supporter-says-its.html
[WP] The evolving Republican message on the war contrasts with the strong rhetoric used by House and Senate Republicans recently in opposing a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. During a debate last month, Gutknecht intoned, "Members, now is not the time to go wobbly." This week, he conceded "I guess I didn't understand the situation," saying that a partial troop withdrawal now would "send a clear message to the Iraqis that the next step is up to you. . . If we don't take the training wheels off, we will be in the same place in six months that we're in today," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/20/iraq.democrats/index.html
[Harry Reid, D-NV] The Nevada Democrat said he has been "somewhat gingerly approaching this.... No longer. There is a civil war going on in Iraq. In the last two months, more than 6,000 Iraqis have been killed. That's averaging more than 100 a day being killed in Iraq and we need to make sure there is a debate on this."

Republicans questioned why Reid wants to go over old ground . . . "Talk about your bad summer reruns," said Eric Ueland, Chief of Staff to Majority Leader Bill Frist, "if they want to do that we'll go to the mats," he said.

The Bush gang welcomes the crisis in Lebanon, thinks it leverages their “war on terror” rhetoric – and may even help the Bolton nomination (because for these people no catastrophe and suffering are above political exploitation)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_16_atrios_archive.html#115349528829201844
[WP] In the administration's view, the new conflict is not just a crisis to be managed. It is also an opportunity . . . [read on]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009134
[Josh Marshall] It's clear that the Bush administration thinks that the answer to the situation is to let Israel crush Hizbullah, to whatever extent that is possible and then come in with some sort of international settlement once the changed situation on the ground is fait accompli. But I really wonder whether there is any serious grappling in Washington with how many fires are currently burning in the Middle East and how close they all are to bleeding into one another into a truly regional confrontation. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8000.html
[Steve Benen] Dick Cheney politicizing national security — it's so predictable, you could almost set your watch to it.

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday pointed to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as fresh evidence of the ongoing battle against terrorism that underscores the need to keep President Bush's Republican allies in control of Congress.

"This conflict is a long way from over," Cheney said at a fundraising appearance for a GOP congressional candidate. "It's going to be a battle that will last for a very long time. It is absolutely essential that we stay the course."

Truth be told, I'm delighted Cheney put it that way. If someone likes the way things are going in the world, by all means, "stay the course." The more-of-the-same party wants voters to know that if you stick with the GOP, you'll get more of the status quo. As it turns out, I completely agree. Indeed, I want as many voters as possible to hear this exact message.

To borrow a line from Jennifer Crider, Iraq is a mess, Osama bin Laden is still free, the Iranians are going nuclear, and the Middle East is exploding — that's the Republican definition of progress in the region? That's the "course" on which Dick Cheney wants to stay?

Bolton: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001553.php

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-thinks-his-iraq-policy-is-model.html

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3162

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115350399501554500
They are now officially crazy. . .

War crimes

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6627
Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to "kill all military age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press. . . "The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray," Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name.

Condi: no hurry to find a cease fire (and you can see why)

http://makeashorterlink.com/?U2053227D

A trip down memory lane: the “peace president”

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_914.html

The fact is, George Bush wanted to be a war President even before he had a war to fight

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115350624533871208

More evidence that Bush’s inner circle spend most of their time keeping information AWAY from him

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115349963146069731

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7998.html

Here’s what’s important about the Arlen Specter bill on warrantless wiretapping: there’s a race now between the courts, who are about to rule against the Bush gang’s surveillance policies, and the GOP Congress, which wants to moot it all by pre-emptively ruling them legal

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/defeating-specter-bill.html

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/21/115511/234

Bush’s intervention to block DOJ’s investigation into this surveillance policies was “unprecedented”

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001174.php

Hasn’t this been obvious from the very start?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001184.php
As long as Pat Roberts is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, we may never see Phase II of the investigation into the pre-Iraq war intelligence. . .

The agitprop administration

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/jul/21/cheney_seeks_to_hire_taxpaper_funded_press_critic
It appears that Dick Cheney has been looking to hire a taxpayer-funded press critic. Over at The Daily Politics, Ben Smith has obtained a privately-circulated email looking for someone to fill the job of Cheney's press assistant. Here's how part of the email describes the gig:

The Press Assistant is responsible for monitoring media for various national security and domestic issues, informing the Press Secretary and Deputy Press Secretary of issues of note and factual inaccuracies in the media.

Another GOP crook

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009136
Disgraced former MZM executive pleads guilty to making illegal donations to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA). . .

Let’s see, the Democratic establishment’s take on the Connecticut Senate primary in which Joe Lieberman (pro-war Democrat) is falling behind his opponent, Ned Lamont, is that wild-eyed bloggers and extremists have shanghaied the election. Interestingly, that’s Rush Limbaugh’s analysis too. Shouldn’t that make the Lieberman loyalists a bit uneasy?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115354947834833909
[Digby] [A] good part of the Dem establishment is not just rattled but virtually hysterical. . . [read on!]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009214.php
Ezra Klein muses on the increasingly vitriolic backlash from the pro-Joe forces in the Lieberman-Lamont primary. . .

Lieberman’s biggest problem: Lieberman http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/21/liebermans_problem_lieberman

I don’t know why one might think that the Dept of Education would be less prone to intellectual dishonesty – but under this administration they certainly aren’t

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/21/192552/243
[SusanG] Showing up this past Tuesday to pitch a $100 million school voucher program to Congress that would allow students in underachieving public schools to transfer their bodies - and taxpayer-provided $4,000 per pupil - to private schools, [Margaret Spellings, head of the U.S. Department of Education] admitted she hadn't read a report issued by her own department the previous Friday that found little difference between student performance in public versus private schools. . .

[USAT] She also would not comment on the long-awaited public/private study, saying she hadn't read the report in full and only learned of its release by reading about it in newspapers Saturday. The department on Friday morning had sent the results to about 11,000 people who subscribe to an Internet e-mail list. . . . Russ Whitehurst, director of the department's Institute for Education Sciences, which oversees research, said it had been made available to Spellings two weeks earlier, but that he hadn't talked with her about it.

Spelling also refused to comment on whether, under the proposed voucher plan, private schools would be held accountable under the same rigorous testing guidelines that No Child Left Behind policy requires of public schools. It's tempting to suspect she was dodging the question, but given her lamentable lack of familiarity with research for her own department, it's entirely possible that she simply doesn't know.

Bonus item: up is down, black is white

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7997.html
[WP] A little while after Bush acknowledged that "many African Americans distrust my political party," four men in the Massachusetts section rose to demonstrate that distrust by shouting epithets at the president. The ruckus continued until Bond got up and walked behind Bush to make sure the miscreants were removed.

"Don't worry about it," Bush said. "I'm almost finished." He displayed the enthusiasm of a man undergoing an uncomfortable medical procedure. "I know you can handle it," Bond consoled.

An hour later, the White House released a transcript omitting that exchange and describing the disruption as "applause.". . . [read on!]

More Orwellian editing: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7991.html
Over a year ago, in June 2005, the New York Times uncovered the fact that the White House hired Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, to be chief of staff of the president's Council on Environmental Quality. As part of his responsibilities, Cooney re-wrote government reports on global warming, editing out scientific conclusions he didn't like, and substituting the conclusions of scientists with his own politically-motivated opinions.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:18 AM

 
SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS. . .

George sho’ do love them black folk: Bush finally appears at the annual NAACP meeting, after snubbing them for years, and tries to explain why he’s their best friend

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6605

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/washington/21bush.html
In his first speech to the N.A.A.C.P. since taking office in 2001, President Bush acknowledged on Thursday that “many African-Americans distrust my party” . . . “I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historic ties with the African-American community,” said Mr. Bush, whose relations with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have been so strained that, until Thursday, he was the first president since Herbert Hoover to refuse to address the group. “For too long my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party. . . [H]istory has prevented us from working together when we agree on great goals,” Mr. Bush said. . .

[NB: Well history and the fact that race-baiting politics have served the Republicans – including Bush – so well. But hey, let bygones be bygones, right?]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072000794.html
At other times, the audience groaned, such as when Bush said his family is committed to civil rights. People booed sharply when he praised charter schools. Two men were quickly hustled out of the hall by Secret Service agents for heckling Bush about the Iraq war. . .

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6610
[Scout Prime] I watched Bush's speech to the NAACP Convention. What an awful speech. The Gulf between Bush/Republicans and the African American community was evidenced in the content of the speech and also the audience reaction. There was VERY light applause throughout the speech. He received a large applause only twice. That occurred at the end when he said he would sign the reauthorization of the Civil Rights Act and people cheered and applauded when he said....."And I understand that many African Americans distrust my political party."

Watch the reaction to that line in the video below and Bush being heckled which is hard to hear as they turned up his mic to drown it out. . . .

Bush shows how closely he remains in touch with the concerns of African Americans

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y1F46617D

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7989.html
[Steve Benen] After a five-year boycott, the president finally addressed the NAACP today. While Bush emphasized his desire to "change the relationship" between the Republican Party and African Americans, he had to stretch matters a bit to show how his concerns coincide with those of the African-American community.

"You know, one of my friends is Bob Johnson, founder of BET. He's an interesting man. He believes strongly in ownership. He has been a successful owner. He believes strongly, for example, that the death tax will prevent future African American entrepreneurs from being able to pass their assets from one generation to the next. He and I also understand that the investor class shouldn't be just confined to the old definition of the investor class."

Seriously, the estate tax? As Nico noted, literally only 59 African Americans will pay the estate tax this year, which will drop to only 33 people in 2009. . . . And while Bush is trying to sell the NAACP on his concern for "entrepreneurs," nearly one-in-four African Americans live below the poverty line. The president who no longer likes to talk about poverty kept up his streak today, failing to mention it at all.

Poverty? He couldn’t care less http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7983.html

George Bush, socialist

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6606
MR. SNOW: The President's tax cuts, if you take a look at what the President has been doing -- and this has been going on for a while here -- is shifting the tax burden. And, as a matter of fact, if you take a look at it, again, the upper brackets are carrying more of the burden . . . . [read more jaw-dropping lies]

Iraq is killing the GOP

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009115
[Greg Djerejian] "Three years ago, I would have poo-pooed anyone using the word "radicals" to describe the neo-cons. No more. Any group that can so brazenly (and breezily) avoid a real reckoning with the continuing crisis in Iraq--which is descending into civil war as we speak--any movement that has the gall to suggest as some panacea that we mount significant military operations in Iran and Syria and god knows where else (with Israel in Lebanon to boot), well, their credibility is at a very low ebb indeed, and they very much need to be urgently reined in.". . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009113
[WP] "The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war."

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7985.html
[Steve Benen] After years of defending an indefensible policy, and blasting any Democrat who had the audacity to suggest an approach different from the president's, now Republicans are prepared to "shift their message"? . . . For that matter, the "shift" itself isn't necessarily about a change in policy; it's about threading a political needle. They're looking for a third way — not in terms of the future of Iraq, but in terms of how to talk about the future of Iraq. . .

This is beyond self-deception – it’s some kind of psychotic dissociation from the facts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001907.html
In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace

Arlen Specter’s “compromise” bill on domestic spying is in early trouble

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001708.html

An even more heartening development

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/huge-news-judge-refuses-to-dismiss-nsa.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The Bush administration suffered an enormous defeat today, as a federal district court denied its motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T, which alleges that the administration's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program (and AT&T's cooperation with it) is illegal. Most significantly, the district court, which is in the Northern District of California, rejected the administration's claim that allowing the litigation to proceed would jeopardize the disclosure of "state secrets," a doctrine which the administration has repeatedly exploited to prevent judicial review of its conduct. Traditionally, courts almost always defer to the executive's invocation of that claim and accept the President's claim that national security requires dismissal of the case. But this time, the court rejected that claim. . .

Tom DeLay’s PAC fined, shut down

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001179.php

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/21/delays_pac_to_close_shop.html

GOP lies about fundraising totals

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/20/161340/694

This is just flabbergasting

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7982.html
[Steve Benen] As if FEMA hasn't done enough already, the agency now believes it can interfere with hurricane victims living in FEMA trailer parks doing interviews with reporters. If there's a reasonable explanation for this, I can't think of it. . .

Even worse. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2146294/fr/rss/
[Eric Umansky] A piece inside the Post profiles a CIA contractor who was just fired. Her apparent transgression: She wrote a blog post in support of the Geneva Conventions.

The fight for John Bolton's confirmation (after a year as a recess appointment) heats up

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001552.php

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001550.php

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_890.html
[George Voinovich, R-OH, who opposed Bolton the first time around] Ambassador Bolton's appointment expires this fall when the Senate officially recesses. Should the president choose to renominate him, I cannot imagine a worse message to send to the terrorists . . . than to drag out a possible renomination process or even replace the person our president has entrusted to lead our nation at the United Nations at a time when we are working on these historic objectives. . .

Theocracy watch

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7988.html
The House voted to acquire a 29-foot cross in San Diego so that it can remain on public property. . . [read on!]

Bonus item: Who writes the headlines?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001706.html
Lieberman's Challenger Is Playing Catch-Up

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/20/115150/916
Quinnipiac Univ. 7/13-18. Registered Likely voters. MoE 2% (6/8 results)

Lieberman (D) 47 (55)
Lamont (D) 51 (40)

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:21 AM

 
RUDE AWAKENINGS

Fool me once. . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/19/kristol-iran/
[Bill Kristol, July 2006] We have to be ready to use military force against Iran, if it comes to that. . . . This is a very interesting moment in that respect. You know? We are in a way lucky that Iran has revealed its aggression, its recklessness. . .

[T]he Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be – the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power. . .

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5145.htm
[Dick Cheney, March 2003] I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . .

Are the Republicans finally facing reality in Iraq, and distancing themselves from Bush?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/19/iraq2/index.html
[Tim Grieve] A congressman's surprise discovery: Iraq isn't going so well

Just last month, Rep. Gil Gutknecht, a Republican from Minnesota, was admonishing his colleagues to "give victory a chance" in Iraq. "Members," he said, "this is not the time to go wobbly." . .

Gutknecht is just back from a weekend in Baghdad, and he says that conditions there are "worse than I expected." His solution? The same one he opposed so vigorously just a month ago: Start bringing home some troops. . .

Gutknecht learned during his visit to Iraq that Baghdad is a "serious problem" and "worse today than it was three years ago." Another of Gutknecht's breaking-news discoveries: "We learned it's not safe to go anywhere outside of the Green Zone any part of the day."

It shouldn't take a trip to Baghdad to learn these things; anyone reading any reputable newspaper over the past year would have already known everything that Gutknecht just found out. So why didn't he? Gutknecht says he has been at the receiving end of faulty "spin" from the Bush administration, including claims that the violence in Iraq was being caused by just a few hundred insurgents. "All of the information we receive sometimes from the Pentagon and the State Department isn’t always true," he says.

Well, good morning and welcome to the show.

Gutknecht says that if conditions don't improve quickly in Iraq, "Americans are going to start to losing faith in this thing.". . .

"Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!" was funny when Gomer Pyle said it. It's not so amusing when 2,554 U.S. troops have died and 130,000 are still serving in a war that never should have started in the first place.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901787.html
Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution. . .

No, Iraq isn’t going well at all

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15076269.htm
[McClatchy News] Despite the addition of almost 100,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi troops in the past year, American efforts to pacify central Iraq and the capital appear to be failing, challenging a central assumption behind the U.S. strategy in Iraq: that training more Iraqi security forces will allow American troops to start going home. . .

The Bush gang wants to pretend that Iran is behind everything bad in the Middle East – well, it isn’t

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13907826

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/19/13189/4853
[Kos] So we've got Israel attacking Lebanon. Israel attacking Palestine. Hezbollah attacking Israel. Palestinians attacking Israel. Israel threatening to attack Syria and Iran. Iran meddling in Iraq. The US meddling in Iraq. Lots of terrorists and insurgents targeting the US. The US threatening Iran. Sunnis attacking Shiites. Shiites attacking Sunnis. The US and NATO fighting a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Kurds attacking Turks.

And now, as predicted back when this whole mess was brewing, Turkey threatens to invade Iraq. . .

Yes, Turkey!

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/turkey-signals-it-may-invade-iraq.html
[John Aravosis] This is one of the nightmare scenarios that Bush was warned about, and that he ignored, when he decided to trick the American people into supporting the Iraq war.

Turkey invades from the northwest to quell the Kurds, and Turkey just so happens to stay and annex northern Iraq so that Turkey never has to worry about the Kurds declaring an independent homeland. Then just watch what the Shias do in the south, or even possibly the Sunnis in the middle, once they see northern Iraq basically secede. And oh yeah, I can't wait to see what Iran does with regards to southern Iraq and the Shias - will Iran help foment a move for independent there too?

We are now moving beyond civil war, and into total disintegration of the country. And Bush knew all of this was coming - hell, I'd studied this "Iraq disintegrates into 3 states" scenario in grad school twenty years ago, it wasn't a big secret - and Bush simply didn't care. He invaded anyway, he screwed up the entire war, and now we're in danger of splintering the Middle East and getting a key NATO ally into a major war.

And by the way, remember that little tiff Bush had with Turkey leading up to the Iraq war? Bush finally decided we didn't need Turkey's help invading northern Iraq at the time. Well, three years later Turkey may be teaching Bush a much-deserved lesson in what happens when you screw your friends and tell them you don't need them. They screw you back at a time and place of their choosing.

And finally, if Turkey forces us to revise our entire Iraq strategy and redeploy forces to the north to quell whatever Kurdish uprising is taking place, that will de facto hurt whatever efforts we are currently making in the rest of Iraq to quell the situation there. It's not like we have men to spare in the rest of the country. So, we either need EVEN MORE troops in Iraq now, or Bush's screw-up with Turkey is going to put our forces, and security, at risk everywhere else in Iraq.

How many different ways can we pay a price for George Bush's incompetence? And the Republicans want the fall congressional elections to be a referendum on the Iraq war? Make my day.

The Abyss (1)

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/hospitality-or-abyss-patrick-mcgreevy.html

The Abyss (2)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/071706.html

Iraqi’s PM Maliki is coming to the US to address a joint session of Congress. What will he say when he comes here?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3159

Not this, I’m sure: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/19cnd-shiites.html
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq on Wednesday forcefully denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, marking a sharp break with President Bush's position and highlighting the growing power of a Shiite Muslim identity across the Middle East.

The story that hasn’t caught wind yet: how the failure to anticipate and respond to the collapsing situation in the Middle East needs to be laid at the feet of the new Secretary of State

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004592.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001549.php
[Steve Clemons] I've just seen two reports about absolutely looney Bush administration steps in Iraq and Lebanon that have more to do with public relations management than they do, in either case, with "on the ground realities.". . .

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_war_in_iraq_/2006/07/quagmire.php
[Mark Kleiman] As the latest Middle East crisis goes from bad to worse, one thing is now completely obvious: the United States has virtually no leverage. . .

But don’t worry, we have Karen Hughes hard at work in her new post, burnishing the U.S.’s image in the region. How’s it going Karen?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115336469470754582

Is there ANY sense to the rationale for Bush’s stem cell policy? It’s “murder” to destroy embryos, but it’s okay to use already-existing stem cell lines, which resulted from “murder.” It is a “tragedy” to use already-existing embryos for scientific research (which can SAVE LIVES), but not a tragedy to create them in the process of in vitro fertilization, during which many are intentionally destroyed (i.e. “murdered”)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7972.html
[Michael Kinsley] If you believe that embryos a few days after conception have the same human rights as you or me, killing innocent embryos is obviously intolerable. But do opponents of stem cell research really believe that? Stem cell research tests that belief, and sharpens the basic right-to-life question, in a way abortion never has.

Here's why. Stem cells used in medical research generally come from fertility clinics, which produce more embryos than they can use. This isn't an accident — it is essential to their mission of helping people have babies. Often these are "test tube babies": the product of an egg fertilized in the lab and then implanted in a womb to develop until birth. Controversy about test-tube babies has all but disappeared. Vague science-fiction alarms have been crushed by the practical evidence, and potential political backlash, of grateful, happy parents.

In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then — like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately) — they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don't get into Yale, you have the choice of attending a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away — or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy.

And fate isn't much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.

In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps — with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.

Bush’s public statement on the veto, annotated (in the interests of truth) by Steve Benen

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7979.html

Rove’s lies, and the actual science behind the issue

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/15068192.htm

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/19/9257/41450

Vetoed behind closed doors (I want to know, were any right-wing religious leaders present?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/19/153458/043

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-bars-media-from-stem-cell-veto.html

Will there be a voter backlash?

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2C763F6D
[Reuters] Debi Martin is a Christian, a Republican and opposes abortion but she is ready to vote against the party in November if President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans limit stem cell research.

"This is a vote breaker for me," said the Cincinnati mother. "I tell people I'm becoming a Republi-crat at this point -- because there are just things wrong in the Republican Party where people's voices are not being heard anymore." . . .

The “Pledge Protection Act” – another bit of dishonest Republican symbolism

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7978.html
[Steve Benen] Actually, my favorite part of Akin's [Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo] argument is that his bill is necessary because of the "radical Islamists." As Akin sees it, the United States is battling religious fundamentalists who want to merge religion and government. And what better way to demonstrate our differences than to undercut our courts and mandate that a once-secular Pledge has to acknowledge God, whether it's unconstitutional or not?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/gop-springs-into-action-on-yet-another.html
[Chris] Now I know you cynics out there will say this is just political posturing in an election year. . .

More on the GOP voucher proposal. We’ve learned from the NCLB blueprint how these initiatives go – you tie the bill to a big burst of initial funding, as an enticement to get the structure built in, then gradually CUT funding over time so that the program is actually unworkable as originally conceived. Does ANYONE believe that the Republicans are interested in a permanent program to give low-income kids hefty stipends to spend on schools of their choice?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7973.html
[Steve Benen] In reality, this isn't about expanding "opportunities"; this is about a sop to the GOP base, which wants to take steps towards privatizing education and subsidizing private academies.

The plan will give "the children of lower-income families . . . the same opportunities wealthier families have," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

Nonsense. The GOP, which recently rejected a modest increase to the minimum wage, wants children of lower-income families to have "the same opportunities wealthier families have"? I'm delighted to hear that. Maybe we can start with those families that can't afford the same kinds of housing opportunities that wealthier families have. And the same kind of health care. And the same kinds of transportation, nutrition, and political influence.

Also keep in mind, over the last two years, the Bush administration, which never fully funded its own education plan, has proposed cutting federal support for public education. And some of the same congressional Republicans who want private school vouchers because of their heartfelt concern for low-income children also cut funding for housing vouchers for low-income families.

With this in mind, the new school voucher scheme is a transparent charade. The GOP isn't worried about opportunities for low-income kids; they're worried about opportunities to make James Dobson happy.

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is developing the kind of rep that Arlen Specter and John McCain have – seeming to be a plain talking straight shooter who stands up to the Bush gang’s worst excesses (but then always knuckling under when the pressure builds)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115333903538130941

Here’s a test case: Graham (former JAG) has been the strongest Senator in insisting that revised Guantanamo tribunals conform to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which would grant prisoners more rights than they currently have. The Bush gang, predictably, is saying “go stuff it,” insisting that the Congress endorse pretty much what they have been doing all along. What will Graham do now?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901946.html
But Senate Republican aides familiar with the discussion said that the White House position has hardened since a White House meeting earlier this month, when Hadley assured the same senators the White House could accept tribunals based largely on existing military law, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. . . "They prefer starting with the commissions as currently structured, and adding a few changes," said a senior Senate Republican aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no proposal has been formalized. "Clearly, some [senators] believe that we have to take more from the UCMJ than the administration, at this time, wants."

The Bush administration offered starkly mixed signals last week, first releasing a Defense Department memo pledging that detainee treatment would abide by the Geneva Conventions, then sending lawyers from the Justice and Defense departments to testify before the House and Senate that certain parts of the conventions remain problematic and that Congress need only ratify the original commission plan to meet the Supreme Court's requirements for a legislative blessing. . .

Report: more domestic financial surveillance

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/aclu-says-bush-may-be-spying-on-three.html

These folks aren’t ready to let go, and neither am I: Bush intervened to prevent DOJ lawyers from reviewing his illegal warrantless domestic spying (I believe, because he knew they would rule against it). This is a cover-up, plain and simple, engineered out of the Oval Office. Where is the outrage?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/19/BL2006071900935.html
[Dan Froomkin] Amid all the other news yesterday, the attorney general's startling revelation that President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation into the administration's controversial secret domestic spying programs hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7970.html
[Steve Benen] Stepping back, it's worth noting that Bush believes a) he can tap phones without a warrant; b) he doesn't need judicial oversight; c) he doesn't need to notify Congress; and d) he can personally shut down a legal review of the program at the Justice Department. If the cover-up is always worse than the crime, the president's decision to shut down this investigation is at least as big a deal as the warrantless searches themselves.

Indeed, it shifts the political debate in a way that the GOP may find unhelpful. For months, Republicans have seemed to relish this issue — they get to tout their defense of the so-called "terrorist surveillance program," while arguing that Dems care too much about the rule of law. But this revelation is a curveball. It's not about monitoring suspected bad guys; it's about the president interfering with a legal investigation.

Even for Dems who were unnecessarily sheepish about warrantless searches, yesterday's revelation is worth following up on.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/various-items.html
[Glenn Greenwald] As I have noted many times before, the critical point is not merely that the President broke the law, but that he knew he was acting illegally, as evidenced by the White House's repeated and ongoing attempts to block any judicial review of the President's behavior and, now, the President's personal efforts to block even DoJ investigations of the propriety of his conduct. The President not only blatantly breaks the law in eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, but then attempts to block all courts from reviewing the legality of his conduct and block all investigations (by Congress and now even by the executive branch) into what occurred by invoking frivolous and inconsistent claims about national security.

Is there any grounds for reasonable dispute about whether our system of Government was intended to allow the President to violate a Congressional statute in secret and then block all courts from ruling on the legality of his conduct, and block all investigations into what occurred? If those circumstances do not reflect a President who believes he is above the law, what would?

Today’s must-read: John Dean, on the rise of authoritarianism in the conservative movement

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0714-25.htm
Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, ``enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral." And that's not just his view. . . [read on]

Is the corruption issue gaining traction?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901714.html
Republicans worry that more than six candidates for the House and Senate could be hurt by Justice Department investigations, the courts and revelations in the Abramoff affair. Topping the list are Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), both bruised by Abramoff connections and facing tough races.

Anticipating more bad news, House GOP leaders are privately discussing a pre-election plan to compromise with the Senate on legislation clamping down on lobbyists and member perks, according to a GOP source familiar with the effort. . .

Another Abramoff casualty: former GOP golden boy Ralph Reed (R-GA) loses badly in a Georgia primary, and isn’t it great to see him humiliated?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7969.html
[Steve Benen] Ralph Reed, a man who once bragged about leaving his political opponents in "body bags," saw his political career come to a screeching halt last night. In fact, it wasn't even close. . . As for Reed personally, this race was supposed to be the start of a very successful career in elected office. The far-right Washington Times reported last year that Reed planned to win this race in '06, run for governor in 2010, and then run for president after that. Seriously. Yesterday's results will probably put a crimp in those plans.

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015354.html

Reed (ha-ha) blames John McCain: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/19/reed_blames_mccain_for_loss.html

McCain may have his own problems ahead – 40% of Republicans don’t want him

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/19/poll_suggests_trouble_for_mccain_in_2008.html

“I’m melting, I’m melting. . . !”

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6585
[NBC] U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris denied Tuesday that she is a target of a federal probe involving Mitchell Wade, despite reports that authorities questioned a former key political consultants about her dealings with the corrupt defense contractor. . . She has denied knowingly doing anything wrong when she took money from donors who were reimbursed by Wade. . .

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/19/harris_says_shes_not_a_target_of_probe.html
Meanwhile, "a former Harris staff member who asked not to be named said Tuesday he expects to be called for an interview by the Justice Department and knows of one other staffer who also expects to be called.". . .

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001162.php
[Orlando Sentinel] Justice Department officials have requested records from the Senate campaign of U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris as they continue investigating the dealings of a defense contractor involved in a wide-ranging congressional corruption case. . . .

It was not clear if federal prosecutors issued a subpoena or sent a letter to the campaign in search of information, and a Harris spokeswoman would not elaborate. . .

My, my – listen to them squeal

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607190002
[Bill O’Reilly] These are groups designed to assassinate characters, and I'll prove it. Media Matters gets money from these people. ACORN. Emily's List. Center for American Progress. These are assassins. These are character assassins. Come on, Mr. Ritsch. You know what this game is. . . This is the left-wing Mafia. That's what this is. . . [read on, enjoy]

Interesting study on the demographics of bloggers

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/19/165853/873

http://www.slate.com/id/2145896/fr/rss/

Bonus item: German Chancellor endorses Joe Lieberman

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/19/20400/2090

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:18 AM

 
COVER-UPS

It remains a mystery to me what the major press decides is an important story or not. To me this is huge, because it reveals – not only that Bush didn’t trust his own Justice Dept to conduct a legal review of warrantless spying - but that he clearly knew what they were going to tell him, and he didn’t want to hear it

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/washington/19gonzales.html
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that President Bush had personally decided to block the Justice Department ethics unit from examining the role played by government lawyers in approving the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program. . .

“Why wasn’t [the Office of Professional Responsibility] given clearance as so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice were given clearance?” Mr. Specter asked.

Mr. Gonzales replied, “The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access”. . .

Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who had also sought an O.P.R. investigation of the surveillance program, said Tuesday that she was shocked that Mr. Bush had blocked the clearances of lawyers from that office. . . “The president’s latest action shows that he is willing to be personally involved in the cover-up of suspected illegal activity,” Ms. Lofgren said. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071800601.html
Bush's decision represents an unusually direct and unprecedented White House intervention into an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal affairs office at Justice, administration officials and legal experts said. . . . "Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels," the office's chief lawyer, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote in a memorandum released yesterday. "In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-personally-blocked-justice-dept.html
[John Aravosis] This is getting into Nixon territory, having the president of the United States personally obstruct an investigation into his own possible wrongdoing. . . . So at what point does this president's power stop? We now learn, at no point. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7963.html
[Steve Benen] Call me crazy, but isn't it a little odd for the president to personally intervene in blocking a Justice Department investigation? Especially one involving his own legally-dubious, warrantless-search program? When one talks about obstructing justice, isn't this a rather literal example?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009199.php
[Kevin Drum] Bush apparently didn't trust his own Department of Justice to investigate this program. One can only assume that he felt, with good reason, that there was a strong chance they'd conclude it was illegal. . . Or, rather, I suppose it's more accurate to say that David Addington probably felt that way, and that therefore Dick Cheney also felt that way. And that was the end of the story.

Murray Waas, must-read: http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0718nj1.htm
The statement by Gonzales stunned some senior Justice Department officials. . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001158.php

I’ve been asking this for weeks, but at what point does it become obvious to people that Iraq has dissolved into civil war? (Now 100 people dying a day.) What more does it take?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009203.php

Losing faith

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801373.html
"It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend in the administration, on Capitol Hill or any part of the conservative foreign policy establishment who is not beside themselves with fury at the administration."

Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/under-bush-every-week-is-hell-week-for.html

In the UK, another cover-up is underway

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/07/19/07/20/whitewash/
[The Guardian] The public must be prevented from learning the contents of a conversation between Tony Blair and President George Bush about the conduct of the war in Iraq - crucial evidence in a forthcoming official secrets trial - an Old Bailey judge ruled yesterday.

Any discussion of an already partially leaked document - in which Mr Bush purportedly said in April 2004 that he wanted to bomb the Arabic satellite TV station al-Jazeera, and Mr Blair expressed concern about US military tactics in the Iraqi city of Falluja - must be heard behind closed doors, Mr Justice Aikens ruled. He also banned the public and the media from hearing the prosecution’s arguments on the grounds of national security. . .

Congress gets busy on America’s agenda. . . (nice catch, from Atrios)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_16_atrios_archive.html#115331077157222413
[CS Monitor, 1993] 'THERE'S a battle going on for what the Republican Party will be," says former Sen. Warren Rudman (R) of New Hampshire. The fight, he says, is over whether such social issues as abortion and gay rights will form a central part of the Republican message. . .

[NB: Well, I think we know who won THAT fight]

Gay marriage: thumbs down

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/washington/19marriage.html
House Republicans failed Tuesday in an effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, part of a proposed “values agenda” that they hope will rally voters in midterm elections in November. . . The vote was 237 to 187, with one member voting “present,” well short of the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution.

The vote was largely symbolic because the Senate rejected a similar bill in May. But the amendment’s supporters said they were gaining. . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7967.html

School vouchers: thumbs up

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/19/24521/6388

More: http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2006/07/tierney-and-earthquake-under-school.html

Stem cells: thumbs up (but Bush says he’ll veto it)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-18-senate-stem-cells_x.htm

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7968.html
[Steve Benen] "The simple answer is he thinks murder's wrong," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research.". . . [read on]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/18/bush_stem_cells/index.html
[Tim Grieve] But if Bush thinks that destroying embryos amounts to murder, he sure has a funny way of showing it. As Bush knows -- and as Snow pointed out today -- under federal law and in most U.S. states it is perfectly legal to destroy human embryos using private funds. Such destruction isn't rare -- it occurs all the time, and research on stem cells derived from embryonic destruction has led to many breakthroughs in stem cell science. According to Bush, this destruction must be something like mass murder. But Bush does not favor making it illegal to destroy embryos. He only supports preventing federal funds to go to research on cells derived from destroyed embryos.

Isn't this an odd way to respond to murder? If you believed that people were being killed for research, wouldn't you speak out in their favor? Wouldn't you try to go after their killers? Wouldn't you do more -- much more -- than simply blocking the money going to fund the murderers?

Not Bush. Indeed, he has actively resisted outlawing embryo destruction. In 2004, when some conservative Republicans attempted to insert a plank in the Republican platform calling for restrictions on stem cell research, the White House fought them. What's more, Bush supports in-vitro fertilization treatments for infertile couples, a process that necessarily creates and destroys "spare" embryos. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/18/BL2006071800718.html
[Dan Froomkin] A veto would likely intensify the battle over stem cells between the religious right and, well, pretty much everybody else. It would also place Bush squarely on the opposite side of public opinion on the issue. Neither of these would be good news for the White House. . .

The GOP isn’t making any headway on their much-ballyhooed pitch to win over African-American voters. Gee, I wonder why?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7966.html

Well, at least she gets a free house remodeling out of it

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001151.php
It looks like the Justice Department finally may have become as fascinated by Rep. Katherine Harris' (R-FL) deeds as we have been, lo these many months. Justice Department lawyers and FBI agents have recently interviewed Ed Rollins, Harris' former Senate campaign manager, about her dealings with admitted briber Mitchell Wade and his company, MZM, the Orlando Sentinel confirms today.

It has been hard to imagine that the feds weren't interested in Harris, given what was already in the public record about her activities (in no small part thanks to Rollins): how she took thousands of dollars in bundled donations from Wade, ate thousand-dollar meals with the guy, and tried to insert earmarks to benefit his company.

The news of Rollins' tete-a-tete with the feds is the strongest indication to date that Harris is likely facing a very unpleasant federal probe. . .

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6576
[Holden] Why is Katherine Harris yanking money out of her campaign in order to remodel her Washington abode?

Because her train wreck of a Senate campaign is effectively over. . .

Yet another Republican crook. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009098
Rep. Charles Taylor (R-N.C.). . .

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not going to let the e-voting fraud issue go away – and I say, good for him

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/07/17/21/03/hear-that-lonesome-whistle-blow/

Tony Snow calls Helen Thomas a terrorist sympathizer

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6581

More: http://makeashorterlink.com/?B4E535E6D

Bonus item: David Brooks’ Orwellian history lesson

http://billmon.org/archives/002538.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:57 AM

 
THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

CNN (and others) giggle that Bush is caught on tape saying “shit,” and miss what’s really important about his exchange with Blair

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/17/bush.tape/index.html
An open microphone caught President Bush in an unguarded moment Monday as the escalating crisis in the Middle East prompted him to use an expletive in a conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. . . Apparently not expecting an open mic to pick up his remarks, Bush told Blair: "See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

The full transcript: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5188258.stm

What really matters about this conversation

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009080
[From TPM readers] Yes, of course, this little 'shit' reference in and of itself is not really newsworthy. But look at the video--his insouciant air, as he chomps on his butter role, Blair hunched over him--the ignorance (Syria has much less influence over hezbollah than it did a year or two ago)...It all encapsulates a moment, almost a zeitgeist. We've got no effing leadership at the top, and he's fiddling incoherently in the midst of this like a child w/ a tantrum. . .

I'm not sure this is such a minor story. Many people who frequent this and other blogs have internalized the fact that Bush is, at best, less than statesmanlike when not scripted and surrounded by political props. . . People ask why the U.S. is in the midst of this crisis. This recording provides a simplistic but understandable answer. While none of the major media will directly offer this interpretation, I think it's clear that they feel that this brief clip captures a president who does not look emotionally or intellectually capable of leading in this crisis. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7953.html
[Steve Benen] It's hardly the first time, but I think the media is missing the point about today's big political story. Right now, the lead political AP item is, "Bush utters expletive on Hezbollah attacks." The top headline on CNN is, "Open mic catches Bush expletive on Mideast." The Washington Post's story mentions in its second sentence that a live microphone caught Bush "talking in tough, occasionally profane terms." . . . I think the media's preoccupation with Bush's potty mouth is rather silly. . .

Bush's unplugged moment today included some of the most surprisingly newsworthy remarks from the president in a very long time. We got a glimpse into how the British Prime Minister is pressing Bush on the Middle East. We heard a little about how the president would like to see the crisis resolved. We learned that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might be traveling to the region, presumably to apply diplomatic pressure and invest the U.S. in the crisis. And for those interested in Bush's persona, we learned that Bush is perhaps even more unsophisticated and clumsy in private than his fiercest critics had feared.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/bush-lean-on-syria-i-cobbled-bush.html
[Juan Cole] So, the whole blow-up is Syria's fault, for putting Hizbullah up to making mischief. No reference to Israeli actions in Gaza. No reference to, like, the wholesale destruction of Lebanon by the Israeli air force. And no blame for the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora. And Bush thinks that Nasrullah of Hizbullah takes direct orders from Damascus. And he thinks that if Bashar al-Asad orders Hizbullah to stop firing its little katyushas and give back the two Israeli soldiers, everything will suddenly settle down.

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. . . Here, only Hizbullah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7948.html
[Steve Benen] Blair appears anxious to explain the Middle East to Bush, while the president is slouching and talking with his mouth full.

Regardless, I can't help but notice that the president often comes across as an unsophisticated simpleton in public, with embarrassing malapropisms and difficulties in answering unscripted questions, but incidents like this one at the G8 luncheon suggest Bush is even less impressive in private.

Indeed, the transcript of the president's open-mike remarks during a photo-op at the lunch offers a series of insightful exchanges.

* On his public remarks during the lunch: "No, just going to make it up. I'm not going to talk too long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long."

* On sticking to his schedule: "Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. How about you? Where are you going home? This is your neighborhood, doesn't take you long to get home. You eight hours? Me too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country. Takes him eight hours to fly home…. Russia’s big and so is China."

* Upon seeing Tony Blair get out of his chair: "Yo, Blair. What are you doing? Are you leaving?"

"Yo, Blair"? Seriously?

There's a classic Saturday Night Live skit from the 1980s featuring Ronald Reagan as a slow, quiet man in public, masking an adept technocrat with a vast policy expertise and an eye for remarkable detail. The "amiable dunce" facade was just an act.

Similarly, political observers sometimes wonder if Bush is sharper and more adroit than he seems in public. The president manages expectations by appearing to be simple, the theory goes, but behind closed doors, a skillful and adept leader emerges.

Alas, Bush's amiable-dunce act is genuine.

http://billmon.org/archives/002536.html
[Billmon] The completely non-surprising thing about it is how inarticulate and scatter brained both Bush and Blair sound . . . This is fascinating as well as terrifying. It suggests that Bush and his faithful water carrier both really believe their own bullshit -- not just in terms of viewing Hezbollah and Hamas as the mindless tools of Syria and Iran, but also in their rosy-lensed assessments of how things are going in the Middle East these days. . .

Their own wishful thinking about the consequences of their own pathetic follies appears to have left them with some wholly fantastical ideas about what motivates their enemies in the region. Either that, or they've completely bought the sugar coated lies being spoon fed them by their subordinates. My guess is that it's probably a bit of both -- creating a perfect, impenetrable feedback loop of flattery, deception and wish fulfillment. . .

Are we starting to see a bit of a crack in the unified front of Bush and Blair?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/17/america/web.0717bush.php

George Will (let’s give him credit) blasts the silly and simplistic worldview that is driving current administration policy in the Middle East, and trumpeted by its proxies in the Weekly Standard and elsewhere.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001542.php

[NB: I said this yesterday, but it is becoming more and more clear that many people in the Bush administration (and their advisors and cheerleaders on the side) are looking for them to double their very bad bet in Iraq by following it up with an all-out assault on Iran and/or Syria – and some serious conservatives and foreign policy realists are horrified that no lessons seem to have been learned from the Iraq misadventure]

Regional war? http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115317065503106223

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/openly-debating-us-involve_115314968593755505.html

A taste of the complexity of current dynamics in the region, thanks to Matt Yglesias

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_849.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_860.html

And in Iraq. . . .

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/7/17/104124/061
[BooMan] I still believe that we have passed the tipping point and that we cannot reverse the disaster in Iraq. Staying, at this point, will only further bankrupt our country, while involving our troops in more unspeakable situations and behavior that will further erode our moral standing in the world. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/times-of-london-baghdad-is-now-verging.html
[London Times] West Baghdad, an area that is now in meltdown as a bitter civil war rages between Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. It is, quite simply, out of control. . . [T]wo nights on the telephone, listening to my lost and frightened Iraqi staff facing death at any moment, persuaded me that Baghdad is now verging on total collapse. . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115315491616541049

Today’s must-read: what does ANY of this have to do with Al Qaeda (remember them? the only people in the bunch who have actually attacked the U.S.)?

http://billmon.org/archives/002537.html

“Bush’s relativism”

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/07/craig_crawford_indignation_ful.html

The Bush gang is evacuating Americans from Lebanon. . . and charging them for it!

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/freedom-isnt-free.html

What’s been happening to the taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans? Here are a few numbers

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607170004

More on the politics of stem cells: the Republicans are looking for some side-votes to hedge their bets – but they seem certain to send Bush a bill he won’t like, which he has vowed to veto, giving the Democrats a major wedge issue to press in the fall

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/17/122412/664

Let’s hear Republican majority leader John Boehner explain why it’s okay for them to use flag-draped coffins in their political ads, but appallingly exploitative for the Democrats to do it

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/house-gop-majority-leader-says-its.html

Whoa, man. They really will say ANYTHING, won’t they? Here’s Ralph Reed (R – GA), trying to claim that the blame for his corruption should be placed on the Indian tribes he was defrauding

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001147.php

More on the extremism of right-wing blogs – and the authoritarian impulse that drives their support for the current regime

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/extremism-in-right-wing-blogosphere.html

Bob Novak on “Meet the Press” – shameless lies and ducking his own previous statements

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607170006

Bonus item: I was all ready to post, and this came in over the transom. There’s no other word for this than “weird” (though others, like inappropriate, presumptuous, and demeaning also come to mind) – does this man have ANY barriers about dealing with other national leaders as peers?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-gives-female-german-chancellor.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115319395198734221
[Digby] Check out the look on his face. Does he look like he's "just having fun" or does he look like he's putting the uppity bitch in her place?

This woman is the Chancellor of Germany. What do you suppose you need to do to get treated with respect by this asshole?

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:55 AM

 
GROTESQUE

Condi calls any suggestion that Bush’s ill-conceived and mismanaged war in Iraq may be contributing to regional instability “grotesque.” I say, right adjective, wrong referent

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/16/rice-grotesque/

More and more we are hearing the term “World War III” to describe the Bush strategy against terror. Are we witnessing the test-marketing of a slogan that is meant to justify a total, on-all-fronts assault against those selected enemies (labeled “terrorist organizations” or “rogue states”) whom the administration chooses to demonize – while permanently tagging any domestic opposition or questioning as “siding with the enemy”? Are they trying to lock the next administration into a series of ongoing military commitments that, once launched, cannot be terminated easily? How do you end a World War?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009070

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/16/103553/754

The Bush gang now seems to be deciding that Iran is the real enemy in the region

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13881857/site/newsweek
Bush's decision to invade Iraq as part of the "global war on terror" made America a party to the conflicts on the ground as never before. Saddam Hussein's regime, loathsome as it was, provided a strategic balance to the power of a radicalized Iran. Now the invasion has put Washington head-to-head with Tehran. The confrontation is military, economic, political, ideological, direct and indirect, overt and covert—and on several fronts the Iranians appear to have outmaneuvered the administration. . .

More attacks by Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah. More U.S. saber rattling against Iran. Do they really think they can ELIMINATE their enemies?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071500957_pf.html
Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombing in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.

For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat -- or altogether, the sources said. . . For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.

Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants -- with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike. . .

And what does THIS mean?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/world/middleeast/17sunnis.html
As sectarian violence soars, many Sunni Arab political and religious leaders once staunchly opposed to the American presence here are now saying they need American troops to protect them from the rampages of Shiite militias and Shiite-run government forces. . . The Sunni Arab leaders say they have no newfound love for the Americans. Many say they still sympathize with the insurgency and despise the Bush administration

[NB: Many? Which ones? They support the insurgency, which is killing US troops, but want them to stay? What the hell is this story trying to say?]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/16/225225/522
[McJoan] Iraq is in complete chaos and the Bush administration has no plan. And now we've reached the point where the Sunni seek support from the United States against the American trained and installed Shia forces? We are through the looking glass.

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3147

Okay, time to sum up: the dynamics of the Middle East are complex, subtle, often contradictory. There are many sides of each dispute, and the problems don’t break down into good buy/bad guy dichotomies. This doesn’t mean progress isn’t possible – it means that simple-minded analyses lead to bad consequences

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009073
[DK] I guess conservatives have given up on the whole "9/11 changed everything" gambit. At least until it's convenient to bring it back up again. In its place we're getting schooled on what an intractable problem the Middle East is and has been for years, it turns out: too protracted for us to fix, too ancient for us to have exacerbated. In short, nothing has changed. . .

While it is true that you can understand little about the Middle East without understanding its history, conservatives have an obvious motive for wanting to compress the last 20-30 years of events in the Middle East. Linking the brutal events of the recent past with the brutal events of today allows them to skip over the fact that real progress toward peace and stability in the region was made in the 1990s, in part due to U.S. leadership and diplomacy. In doing so, I suppose conservatives hope to obscure what a hash they have made of the Middle East in the last 5 years.

And what do we have. . . ?

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-chait16jul16,1,477463.column
[Jonathan Chait] WAY BACK when he first appeared on the national scene, the rap against George W. Bush was that he might be too dumb to be president. As time passed, questions about Bush's mental capabilities faded away.

After 9/11, his instinctive rather than analytical view of the world seemed to be just what we needed, and Americans of all stripes were desperate to see heroic qualities in him. . .

Oh, sure, a few of us have brought it up from time to time, but we have generally been dismissed out of hand as wacky Bush-haters. . .

Yet it is now increasingly clear that Bush's status as non-rocket scientist is a serious problem. The problem is not his habit — savored by late-night comedians — of stumbling over multisyllabic words. It is his shocking lack of intellectual curiosity.

Ron Suskind's new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," paints a harrowing picture of Bush's intellectual limits. Bush, writes Suskind, "is not much of a reader." He prefers verbal briefings and often makes a horse-sense judgment based on how confident his briefer seems in what he's saying. In August 2001, the CIA was in a panic about an upcoming terrorist attack and drafted a report with the title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." When a CIA staffer summed up the memo's contents in a face-to-face meeting with Bush, the president found the briefer insufficiently confident and dismissed him by saying, "All right, you've covered your ass, now," according to Suskind. That turned out to be a fairly disastrous judgment.

Bush loyalists like to dismiss Suskind's reporting, but it jibes with the picture that has emerged from other sources. L. Paul Bremer III's account of his tenure as head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority depicts Bush as uninterested in the central questions of rebuilding and occupying the country.

Video of a presidential meeting that came to light this year showed Bush being briefed on the incipient Hurricane Katrina. His subordinates come off as deeply concerned about a potential catastrophe, but Bush appears blase, declining to ask a single question. . .

Bush's supporters have insisted for the last six years that liberal derision of the president's intelligence amounts to nothing more than cultural snobbery. We don't like his pickup truck and his accent, the accusation goes, so we hide our blue-state prejudices behind a mask of intellectual condescension.

But the more we learn about how Bush operates, the more we can see we were right from the beginning. It matters that the president values his gut reaction and disdains book learnin'. It's not just a question of cultural style. The president's narrow intellectual horizons have real consequences, sometimes cataclysmic ones.

Shared responsibility

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009072
[DK] Newt Gingrich, on the rebuilding of Iraq:

We need to fundamentally reorganize our nonmilitary bureaucracies to be effective. I mean, part of the reason you don’t have an effective Iraqi bureaucracy is the American inability at the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department to provide any level of systematic competence is, is almost zero.

Did he leave anyone out? Hmmm, let's see . . . oh, yeah. The Pentagon!

It was the Pentagon that elbowed State aside and assumed full responsibility for post-invasion Iraq, despite having failed to undertake the sort of pre-invasion planning necessary to confront the enormous task.

It was the Pentagon that made no plans to rebuild the Iraqi bureaucracy because Rumsfeld thought if you lopped off the head of the regime and replaced it with a pro-Western government, the Iraqi bureacracy would just keep on keeping on.

It was the Pentagon that disbanded the Iraqi Army, one of Iraq's stronger bureaucratic structures, despite the warnings from U.S. commanders on the ground.

And let's not forget that Gingrich was on Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board during the period in question and was one of the leading proponents of the Pentagon's approach.

Going around behind Gingrich to set the record straight could be a full-time job, but this particular blame-shifting canard needs to be confronted and knocked down hard.

The penny drops

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16sun1.html
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch. . . .

The president's constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. The president had no need to go it alone — everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned more efficiently within the rules.

More: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/journalists-its-time-for-some-articles.html
[Glenn Greenwald] John Dean's superb new book, Conservatives Without Conscience. . . analyzes the transformation of American "conservatism" from a political ideology based on the imperatives of limiting government power into a movement predominated by authoritarian impulses and personalities . . .

One caveat: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009069
[NYT] While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism. . .

[DK] Well, actually, quite a number of people question the White House's determination to fight terrorism. An Administration determined to fight terrorism after 9/11 would not have invaded Iraq, would have devoted considerable effort and resources to securing the nation's ports, and would have worked to minimize the effects of a terrorist attack by improving disaster preparedness, which Katrina starkly showed was not done. That's just the short list. . .

What’s conservative about THIS?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009187.php
Richard Epstein explains in the Chicago Tribune why he's disturbed by President Bush's lavish and unorthodox use of presidential signing statements. He thinks it's the first step in a new theory that justifies circumvention of the congressional and judicial checks built into the constitution. . .

What is the “One Percent Doctrine” (which defines Ron Suskind’s terrific book) – and why is it wrong-headed?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115310242509341573

Terrible headline writing

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/us/17medicare.html
Bush Administration Plans Medicare Changes
The Bush administration says it plans sweeping changes in Medicare payments to hospitals that could cut payments by 20 percent to 30 percent . . .

[NB: “Changes,” huh? How about CUTS or MAJOR REDUCTIONS? I suppose it could have been worse – they could have said “Medicare Reforms”]

The politics of stem cell research seem to be all lined up against the Republicans – so why is Bush making an issue of it now?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/washington/16stem.html

Laughable: Novak now claims he misspoke when he said, on TWO different occasions, that the WH leakers gave him Plame’s name

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/novak-this-morning.html

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015332.html

The new GOP trick (for Tom DeLay, and now Jerry Lewis, R-CA) – raise re-election money so you can use it for your legal defense!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_16.php#009071

This is either irresponsibly sloppy or perversely dishonest reporting – okay, which is it?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_16_atrios_archive.html#115306675335323628
[NYT] Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, returning to her red-state ties, chastised Democrats Saturday for taking on issues that arouse conservatives and turn out Republican voters rather than finding consensus on mainstream subjects.

Without mentioning specific subjects like gay marriage, Mrs. Clinton said: “We do things that are controversial. We do things that try to inflame their base.”

“We are wasting time,” the senator told a group of Democratic women here, on part of a two-day swing through a state that could provide an alternate hub to New York if she starts a national political campaign.

[NB: She was talking about the Republican-controlled Senate, not the Democrats!]

[The full original] “But with the Republican majority, that's not their priority. So we do other things, we do things that are controversial, we do things that try to inflame their base so that they can turn people out and vote for their candidates. I think we are wasting time, we are wasting lives, we need to get back to making America work again, in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way."

Which is it? http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009184.php
[Kevin Drum] This is one of the most dishonest pieces of reporting I've seen in a long time. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115307450671389871
[Digby] This is . . . lazy, bass-ackwards journalism. . .

Apparently the reporter, Ann Kornblut, has a history of this sort of thing

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/16/14732/3082

I agree: it’s time to make the rabid viciousness of right-wing blogs and commentators a bigger issue. When progressive blogs call for opposing politicians who supported the Iraq war, or dare to criticize Honest Joe Lieberman, or call for impeaching Bush, this is evidence of their “extremism.” But when right wing sites call for murdering judges and other public officials, for hauling up journalists on charges of treason, or when they make light of torture, this is excused as hyperbole or sardonic humor

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/journalists-its-time-for-some-articles.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The extremism of the right-wing blogosphere is so blatant that it is acknowledged and lamented by some conservative bloggers. Two well-read bloggers who advocated for the invasion of Iraq and who are generally quite conservative in their political views, Andrew Sullivan and Gregory Djerejian, both wrote recently about how this political shift has made much of the right-wing blogosphere unrecognizable to them as anything "conservative." . . .

When it becomes commonplace to hurl accusations of treason against domestic political opponents, or when calls for imprisonment and/or hanging of journalists and political leaders become the daily fare -- all of which is true for the pro-Bush blogosphere -- those are serious developments. And they merit discussion and examination by the media. . .

Oh, by the way, that terrible and treasonous disclosure of the Bush gang’s secret review of financial records? Not only did they expect it to become public – they already had the talking points drafted to spin the disclosure to their benefit

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/16/the_leak_that_wasnt_a_surprise.html
Washington Whispers: "Before you jump in with those heaping scorn on the New York Times for using a leak to reveal the secret Treasury program to search financial transactions for terrorist activities, know this: The Treasury Department expected it to leak. When the program was developed in 2003, a press plan was included. The goal: Get out front with the spin that there are safeguards to prevent snooping on private accounts, that it is legal, and that there are big benefits to it."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:52 AM

 
DEEPLY DISTURBED

You have to wonder what kind of claptrap Bubble Boy’s advisers are feeding him, if he really believes this delusional nonsense. (What must Putin think of him?)

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/15/putin-jab/
BUSH: I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq, where there’s a free press and free religion. And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia will do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy.

PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.

BUSH: Just wait.

[NB: “Just wait.” Apart from its juvenile tone, this is the answer of a man who cannot imagine that he is wrong, a man whose evangelically-fueled sense of certainty is that he must be right even when all the evidence around him indicates otherwise.]

Reactions: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/why_oh_why_are__4.html

Bush needs new eyeglasses, apparently

http://www.janes.com/regional_news/americas/news_briefs/fr010628_04.shtml
[June 2001] "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." These were the words of President George Bush after his recent meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. . .

http://nationalreport.blogspot.com/2006/04/i-looked-into-his-soul.html
After meeting Putin for the first time in June 2001, Bush said he had been able to gain “a sense of his soul” and had found Putin to be “very straightforward and trustworthy.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060715/ap_on_re_eu/bush_putin_3
[July 2006] In a chilly summit prelude, President Bush blocked Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization . . .

Wrong answer, I guess (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://bestofbothworlds.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_bestofbothworlds_archive.html#115297960502728281
[P O’Neill] And, what kind of sales pitch was Putin responding to with this?

PRESIDENT PUTIN: I have already mentioned that we will not participate in any crusades, in any holy alliances.

Hmmm. . . what is the common factor between the state of US foreign policy in the 80s and now?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#009056
[DK] If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep under a cedar tree in Lebanon in 1982 and awoke today, you could hardly blame him for thinking he had snoozed for only a few minutes.

Israel is still in Lebanon. Iran is America's great nemesis. Russia-U.S. relations remain tense. . .

The only things missing are Survivor, Toto, and Air Supply. . .

Just another day in Iraq

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L15618617.htm

The next logical step: Newt Gingrich says that we are already in the midst of World War III, and should act accordingly

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/archives/2006/07/gingrich_says_its_world_war_iii.html
Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the Administration . . . "This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away. . .

Let me ask a serious moral question (not that moral questions have any place in the current discourse): does a party want to gain and maintain power by soliciting support from people like this?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115303771432300231
Jesus' General posted some excerpts from a freeper thread celebrating the deaths of Lebanese children. The posts are as disturbing as you might imagine. . . .

The Washington Post editorial page, unlike its news coverage, seems to realize exactly what’s at stake with the Specter NSA bill

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401578.html
SENATE JUDICIARY Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has cast his agreement with the White House on legislation concerning the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance as a compromise -- one in which President Bush accepts judicial review of the program. It isn't a compromise, except quite dramatically on the senator's part. Mr. Specter's bill began as a flawed but well-intentioned effort to get the program in front of the courts, but it has been turned into a green light for domestic spying. It must not pass. . .

The bill's most dangerous language would effectively repeal FISA's current requirement that all domestic national security surveillance take place under its terms. The "compromise" bill would add to FISA: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to collect intelligence with respect to foreign powers and agents of foreign powers." It would also, in various places, insert Congress's acknowledgment that the president may have inherent constitutional authority to spy on Americans. Any reasonable court looking at this bill would understand it as withdrawing the nearly three-decade-old legal insistence that FISA is the exclusive legitimate means of spying on Americans. It would therefore legitimize whatever it is the NSA is doing -- and a whole lot more.

Allowing the administration to seek authorization from the courts for an "electronic surveillance program" is almost as dangerous. The FISA court today grants warrants for individual surveillance when the government shows evidence of espionage or terrorist ties. Under this bill, the government could get permission for long-term programs involving large numbers of innocent individuals with only a showing that the program is, in general, legal and that it is "reasonably designed" to capture the communications of "a person reasonably believed to have communication with" a foreign power or terrorist group. . .

This bill is not a compromise but a full-fledged capitulation on the part of the legislative branch to executive claims of power. Mr. Specter has not been briefed on the NSA's program. Yet he's proposing revolutionary changes to the very fiber of the law of domestic surveillance -- changes not advocated by key legislators who have detailed knowledge of the program. This week a remarkable congressional debate began on how terrorists should face trial, with Congress finally asserting its role in reining in overbroad assertions of presidential power. What a tragedy it would be if at the same time, it acceded to those powers on the fundamental rights of Americans.

Why the Democrats are losing this fight

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#009059

Irresponsible press coverage

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/nyt-wp-and-time-all-report-specter.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The moderate-to-conservative Editorial Page of The Washington Post today appears to directly criticize the Post's own news article from yesterday, by Charles Babington and Peter Baker, which ludicrously reported that the Specter bill constituted a "concession" and a "clear retreat" by the Bush administration. . .

It wasn't just the Post which fundamentally misled its readers about this bill. So, too, did Eric Lichtblau in his article in The New York Times ("The proposed legislation represents a middle-ground approach among the myriad proposals in Congress for dealing with the wiretapping controversy"). But in the department of factually false stories, both the NYT and the Post were completely outdone by this indescribably ridiculous Time Magazine article (h/t A.L.), which depicts Arlen Specter as a crusading warrior who resolutely refused to back down and who thereby forced the White House to accede to his demands (his "demands" apparently being that the White House allow him to write a law that would render the President's illegal eavesdropping program legal, and which would remove any and all Congressional limitations in the future on the President's power to eavesdrop on Americans -- boy, that Specter drives a hard bargain). . .

I'm not one of those who believe that blogs have replaced or can replace major journalistic outlets for the gathering of news. The vast resources of those organizations are still necessary for news gathering. But when it comes to understanding, analyzing and interpreting political and world events, there is very little competition, in my view, between the blogosphere and traditional media outlets. Most celebrated journalists yesterday were spewing the plainly false view that the Specter bill constituted a capitulation by the White House, while bloggers immediately recognized that the opposite was true. . . That is why, with rare exception, if I read only blogs but no established media outlets for news analysis, I feel I would be missing nothing. But if I read only established media outlets but no blogs, I would feel that I was operating in the dark.

"If You Really Want to Know What's Going on, I Recommend Sticking to the Blogs"

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/if_you_really_w.html

Another case of the press saying, “the story is what WE say it is”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/15/211853/491
[WP] The upcoming midterm election and 2008 presidential race are likely to hinge on protecting the country from terrorists. . .

From the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll:

4. What will be the single most important issue in your vote for Congress this year: (the U.S campaign against terrorism), (the war in Iraq), (the economy), (immigration), (gas prices), (health care) or something else?

6/25/06
Terrorism 8
Iraq 24
Economy 23
Immigration 13
Gas prices 9
Health care 14
Education 1
All of them 1
Other 4
No opinion 2

But certainly this is what the Republicans WANT the election to be about

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/gop-senator-dewine-r-oh-using-images.html
[Columbus Dispatch] Using vivid images of smoke pouring from one of the towers of the World Trade Center, Republican Sen. Mike DeWine unleashed a commercial yesterday that charges Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown with casting votes in Congress that could have weakened America’s response to terrorism. . .

Will GOP corruption be a deciding issue in the fall?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/15/125620/062

More irresponsible news coverage

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607150001
[Greg Sargent] In recent weeks, one member after another of the D.C. media establishment has gone out of his way to depict bloggers as hysterical, angry and destructive. To hear them tell it, bloggers sitting at their computers are akin to squalling brats in high-chairs chucking baby food at their sober, serious elders -- i.e., major figures at the established news organizations. . .

[Jamison Foser] Three of the four examples Sargent cited -- Brady, Klein, and McCurry -- were complaining specifically about liberal bloggers. And that's a reasonable representation of major media reaction to bloggers: Liberal bloggers get dismissed as crazy and angry, often by reporters who don't bother to offer a single example to back up their sneering insults. Klein, for example, derided "all the left-wing screeching" by "frothing bloggers" and dismissed their "vitriol" as "uninformed, malicious and disproportionate." He didn't, however, quote a single screeching or vitriolic blog post. . . . Meanwhile, vitriol, hate, and even threats of physical violence by conservative bloggers draw comparatively little attention. . .

Presidential signing statements, and the alarming trend of the Supreme Court to grant them legitimacy

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009182.php

Bonus item: speaking volumes

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/15/152557/118
[LAT] It seemed like a routine question, one that military leaders involved in prosecuting the war in Iraq must ask themselves with some regularity: Is the U.S. winning?

But for Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff known for his straight-shooting bluntness, it proved a hard one to answer.

During a Capitol Hill briefing for an audience mostly of congressional aides, Schoomaker paused for more than 10 seconds after he was asked the question -- lips pursed and brow furrowed -- before venturing:

"I think I would answer that by telling you I don't think we're losing.". . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:46 AM

 
COMPROMISE, OR SURRENDER?

Compromise, or surrender? Arlen’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad NSA Bill

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/washington/15nsa.html
Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has been critical of the National Security Agency wiretapping program, said in an interview Friday that he saw the White House-Specter proposal as “a further abdication” of the role of Congress in setting rules for federal surveillance and wiretapping. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7929.html
[Steve Benen] What kind of compromise is this?

To summarize, Bush gets caught circumventing the law and conducting searches without warrants or oversight, and thanks to Specter, his punishment is a voluntary secret court review and more presidential power to do what he's been doing for years. . . For that matter, buried in the middle of the WaPo story is a line that explains that Specter "agreed to repeal a section of the original FISA law that made it the exclusive statute governing such intelligence programs." In other words, the part of the law that Bush was breaking is now off the books entirely.

http://www.orinkerr.com/2006/07/14/the-specter-bills-major-shift-in-constitutional-authority-to-conduct-monitoring/
[Orin Kerr] I have read the Specter bill, and am most intrigued by Section 9 of the bill, which is titled “CLARIFICATION OF THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978.” Interestingly, the Section is a “clarification” only if you assume the correctness of the President’s more controversial claims to Article II authority. If you accept the more traditional understanding of the separation-of-powers seen recently in the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in that case, then this “clarification” is actually a major reorientation of the role of Congress in foreign intelligence monitoring away from the 1978 framework of FISA.

More critiques: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/specter-gives-up-game-sham-nsa-bill.html
Specter's proposed legislation, if passed in its present form, would give President Bush everything he wants. And then some. . .

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/specter-monstrosity.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/14/184553/043

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2006/07/the_specter_bil.html

What will the Democrats do?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-will-democrats-do-in-wake-of.html

Time magazine, like most other major news outlets, totally screws up the coverage of this story

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/has-onion-infiltrated-offices-of-time.html

http://www.prospect.org/horsesmouth/2006/07/post_224.html#003208

More: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-will-democrats-do-in-wake-of.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The media's reports on this travesty illustrate, yet again, that the single greatest problem our country faces -- the principal reason the Bush administration has been able to get away with the abuses it has perpetrated -- is because our national media is indescribably lazy, inept, dysfunctional and just plain stupid. . . The reporters who write on these matters literally don't understand the issues they are reporting, even though the issues are not all that complicated. Notwithstanding the fact that this bill expressly removes all limits on the President's eavesdropping powers -- and returns the state of the law regarding presidential eavesdropping to the pre-FISA era, when there were no limits on presidential eavesdropping of any kind -- Charles Babington and Peter Baker told their readers in The Washington Post -- in an article hilariously entitled: "Bush Compromises On Spying Program" -- that "the deal represented a clear retreat by Bush". . .

Good question: why isn’t THIS a bigger story?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/14/BL2006071400814.html
[Dan Froomkin] There are some hugely important aspects of the Bush presidency that remain insufficiently examined, and the most important are about the run-up to war in Iraq.

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe President Bush and his associates intentionally misled the public in making their case for war. It's a terribly serious charge, if true. In fact, it's hard to imagine a more serious charge against a president. . .

Did Bush, Vice President Cheney and others know the intelligence they were citing wasn't reliable? Did they purposefully understate the considerable doubts within the intelligence community? Did they consciously exaggerate the extent of the findings?

And after the war, when critics began to emerge, why were they so obsessed with discrediting anyone who suggested as much, rather than just responding with a factual defense?

With a few partial exceptions , the media has proven itself unable to answer these questions definitively. . .[read on]

“Journalistic courage” – once upon a time this didn’t sound like an oxymoron. Recently, however. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/15/035/31592

Arianna’s scoop

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/powell-on-iraq-couric-on_b_24599.html
I ran into Colin Powell and asked him if we are ever going to get out of Iraq. "We are," he told me, "but we're not going to leave behind anything we like because we are in the middle of a civil war."

Why does the Right see traitors everywhere? Old habits die hard

http://harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html

Grab it while you still can. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/washington/15boehner.html
Representative John A. Boehner won the job of House majority leader amid a post-Abramoff clamor for an overhaul of lobbying and ethics rules. But nearly six months later, the changes are still tied up in Congress. . . And far from trying to put the brakes on lobbyists and the money they channel into Republican coffers, Mr. Boehner, who has portrayed his ties to Washington lobbyists as something to be proud of, has stepped on the gas.

He has been holding fund-raisers at lobbyists’ offices, flying to political events on corporate planes and staying at a golf resort with a business group that has a direct stake in issues before Congress. . .

[NB: If the Democrats don’t put forth an aggressive program of lobbying reform, ending earmarks, etc, as the centerpiece of their effort to retake Congress, they don’t deserve to]

NOW we’re getting somewhere

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401365.html
The House Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed the former law firm of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff for records of any contacts he or members of his lobbying team had with the Bush White House. . .

[NB: Though I’d be happier if they subpoenaed the WH too]

This is gonna be good: Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson declare total war against Cheney, Rove, and Libby – and the discovery phase of testimony could start soon

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400548.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/14/MNGPGJUS7Q1.DTL

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/06/07/ale06089.html

Video: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115291021076676714

Hilarious

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/14/quote/index.html
Karl Rove lawyer Robert Luskin on the lawsuit filed by Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson: "The allegations are without merit. We may comment further when we have an opportunity to review the complaint."

Depositions also coming up in the NH phone jamming case: a few good questions to ask

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7932.html
[Steve Benen] * Why did James Tobin call the White House 12 times on Election Day 2002 while he was criminally interfering with an election?

* Why did the RNC pay Tobin's legal bills?

* Why did the RNC consult with the White House about paying those bills?

* Why does indicted phone-jammer Shaun Hansen believe his company carried out a scheme that had the seal of approval of both the Republican National Committee and the White House?

* And how is it that Jack Abramoff's tribal clients donated the almost-exact amount of the cost of the phone jamming to the New Hampshire GOP, despite the fact that New Hampshire doesn't have any federally recognized Indian tribes or Indian gambling?

In case you need more evidence that NCLB has NOTHING to do with improving public schools, but rather crushing them under unrealistic and unfunded policy mandates, and thereby opening up the market for private and parochial school competitors

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/education/15report.html
The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools . . . The report. . . also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools on eighth-grade math.

The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.

It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of caveats about its limitations and calling such a comparison of public and private schools “of modest utility.”

Its release, on a summer Friday, was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. . .

A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, offered no praise for public schools and said he did not expect the findings to influence policy. . . . “We’re not just for public schools or private schools,’’ he said. “We’re for good schools.”

[NB: I find this last comment especially outrageous. This is the federal government, funded by public money, saying that it feels no PRIMARY responsibility for the development and improvement of the public school system]

Bush’s Big Bounce looks to be pretty short-lived

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_09_atrios_archive.html#115288567405900231
Bush approval at 36 in both AP and Fox polls. . .

“Bush loses core supporters” (humor)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3139

Polls on current House races, and Democratic prospects

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/14/14484/5225

http://miaculpa.blogspot.com/2006/07/happy-ponies.html
[AP] Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule. . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7933.html

They’re sounding desperate

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3142

This shows why we need to worry about the privatization of Internet space

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/14/13750/3457
[Wired] After hearing Sen. Ted Stevens' now infamous description of the internet as a "series of tubes," Andrew Raff sang the senator's words over a folksy ditty and anonymously posted it to MySpace.com, where about 2,500 people listened to the tune, thanks to a link from one of the net's top blogs.

On Tuesday, MySpace canceled the TedStevensFanClub account, telling Raff that the social-networking site, now owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., had received a "credible complaint of your violation of the MySpace Terms of Services.". . .

Art Brodsky, communications director for Public Knowledge, questioned the timing of the takedown, noting that News Corp. has interests in the telecommunications bill put forth by the Senate Commerce Committee that Stevens heads . . .

Katherine Harris’s (R-FL) traveling clown show

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001136.php

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/14/mommie_dearest_for_senate.html
[AP] "Harris is prone to tantrums, wants to be treated like a princess, micromanages, fixates on minutia while ignoring the big picture, and sometimes does exactly the opposite of what advisers tell her with bad results that they have to clean up later, staff members said."

Said former consultant Ed Rollins: "Katherine is probably the worst micromanager I have ever seen, and her instincts are 100 percent wrong."

Bonus item: The perfect metaphor for Bush’s Iraq policy

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3141

[NB: Here, YOU deal with it]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:52 AM

 
TRIALS

Plame and Wilson file civil suit against Cheney, Rove, and Libby (oh, just give me these guys on the stand, under oath -- you know Patrick Fitzgerald will be listening)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7928.html
[Steve Benen] It's hard to overstate how interesting this might be. . . Consider, for a moment, just how interesting discovery in this case is likely to be. . .

“Discovery”? http://www.samefacts.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2006/07/a_presidential_deposition.php
[Mark Kleiman] Rove will be asked whether it's true, as Murray Waas reported, that GWB personally ordered him to reveal classified information in order to discredit Joseph Wilson. And when he says "yes," as he presumably will, plaintiffs will then have a strong basis for deposing Mr. Bush himself. . . [read on]

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/valerie-plame-sues-cheney-rove-and.html

Also cited: ten “John Does” http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001132.php

Who was Novak’s primary source?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-novak13jul13,1,690136.story

Was it Hadley, not Armitage? http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/13/plame/index.html

I wondered this too

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3138
[Swopa] Does this (along with the recent announcements by Karl Rove and Bob Novak) imply that Plamemania special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has given up any intention of prosecuting anyone for the Plame leak itself, and so has told Joe & Valerie to proceed without fear of interfering with any criminal trial? Or (perhaps as implied by the mention of "false or misleading testimony") are the Wilsons just going ahead on their own initiative? (Is there a statute of limitations that they needed to worry about?)

Statute of limitations? http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015312.html

More depositions to come: this little dirty tricks caper in New Hampshire still has the potential to cause a world of hurt to Ken Mehlman and others

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6530

Arlen Specter cuts a “deal” with the WH over court review of their illegal domestic spying program. If Specter’s satisfied, then you know it must be a smoke-and-mirrors deal that concedes all the key issues for the sake of the APPEARANCE of consultation. And sure enough. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/word-about-this-supposed-deal-just.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009171.php
[WP] An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2145771/
[Eric Umansky] The bill says the oversight is actually voluntary, and the proceedings in the FISA national security court will be held in secret, with no outside lawyers, and the ruling itself may be kept mum. Also, the Specter bill actually loosens some of the current restrictions on wiretapping.

One other thing flagged by the WP in the 28th paragraph: "Specter agreed to repeal a section of the original FISA law that made it the exclusive statute governing such intelligence programs." The reason that might have been worth mentioning, oh, say, 27 paragraphs higher: That's the section that makes the current program likely illegal. . .

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/specter-white-house-fisa-agreement.html
[Glenn Greenwald] From my preliminary read, the bill as it exists today would not only legalize warrantless eavesdropping going forward, but would also purport to retroactively legalize the administration's warrantless eavesdropping back through 1978 - meaning that the criminal behavior which the administration has engaged in for the last five years would suddenly and magically become legal. . . If that is the case, enactment of this bill into law would be a travesty of unparalleled proportions

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015308.html
[WP] Specter said the court would make a one-time review of the program rather than performing ongoing oversight of it. . .

[Jeralyn Merritt] A one time review is not oversight. . . [read on]

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_09_atrios_archive.html#115281001849648793
[Atrios] It appears Specter is moving ahead with his bullshit bill to provide amnesty for the executive branch's criminal activities, legalize those criminal activities, and then have the FISA court rule on the much more narrow question of whether warrantless wiretapping violates the 4th amendment.

It occurs to me that we're at a fascinating moment in political history. Just about all the leading lights of the conservatarian movement in this country are on the record as being in support of the executive branch's right to spy on American citizens, tapping their phone calls, without any judicial oversight. So much for freedom and small nonintrusive government and all that crap. . .

But THIS is intriguing

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009042.php
[K-R] By having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court conduct the review instead of a regular federal court, the Bush administration would ensure the secrecy of details of the highly classified program. The administration has argued that making details of the program public would compromise national security.

However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn't have been monitoring. . .

[Josh Marshall] It sounds like Landay's pointing to the possibility that the White House has been using the program to monitor political opponents. (I'm not sure how else to interpret that line.) And you get the sense he's doing more than speculating.

Will the Senate require the Bush gang to bring trials against Gitmo prisoners under the Uniform Code of Military Justice? This looks to be a BIG fight

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/13/congress.guantanamo.ap/index.html

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/13/AR2006071301637.html

Report: Condi Rice tried to lean on Israel, was told to “back off”

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001533.php

How goes the Bush gang/Project for the New American Century plan to remake the Middle East?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/13/AR2006071301666.html

Yesterday we asked, is Bush’s policy toward North Korea a joke or a fraud? Answer: fraud

http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/blog/americaabroad/2006/jul/13/wrong_on_north_korea

Bush’s inner circle: white men, of course

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_823.html

Ann Coulter, killer

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002838825
In her latest syndicated column, Ann Coulter, already the center of controversy for suggesting violent measures to combat certain liberals, defended the recent call by radio talk show host Melanie Morgan that Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, be sent to the "gas chamber" for committing "treason." . . . But in the column, distributed by Universal, she adds her own twist: "I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution” . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:31 AM

 
KEEP DIGGING. . . .

Here’s what’s coming for Iraq: more troops, more money – and you know what? It still won’t make things better

More troops: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html

More money: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/12/110-billion

Bush wants Congress to rubber-stamp whatever the hell they decide will be their policy toward prisoners in Guantanamo – and this time, maybe, just maybe, Congress will say “no”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/washington/13gitmo.html
A day after saying that terror suspects had a right to protections under the Geneva Conventions, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it wanted Congress to pass legislation that would limit the rights granted to detainees. . . The administration has now abandoned its four-year-old claim that members of Al Qaeda are not protected under the Geneva Conventions, acknowledging that a Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago established as a matter of law that they are. Still, administration lawyers urged Congress to pass legislation that would narrowly define the rights granted to detainees. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201777.html
House Republicans signaled a coming clash with the Senate over the future of military tribunals yesterday when Armed Service Committee members indicated they were inclined to give the Bush administration largely what it wants in the conduct of terrorism trials. . .

"This could be easy," said Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.), who proudly announced she has neither a law degree nor a college degree as she denounced the high court's 5 to 3 decision against the tribunals as "incredibly counterintuitive." "We could just ratify what the executive branch and the [Department of Defense] have done and move on."

"That would be a very desirable way to proceed," said Daniel J. Dell'Orto, the Pentagon's principal deputy general counsel.

Contrast that with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who told Dell'Orto and acting Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury the previous day, "I doubt very much that Congress is going to be disposed to leave these issues to the Department of Defense." . . .

Perfectly said

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/12/BL2006071201128.html
[Dan Froomkin] The White House spin yesterday on the reinstatement of Geneva Convention protections for all U.S. detainees -- that it's not a reversal, and won't really change anything -- is another example of the self-contradicting ambiguity that has been a hallmark of this administration's position on torture and inhumane conduct. . . [read on]

Here's a man whose job is safe

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7912.html
As Congress opened hearings yesterday on the treatment of terrorism detainees, the Bush administration's view was neatly summarized by Steven Bradbury, the Justice Department lawyer serving as lead witness. "The president," Bradbury said, "is always right." . . . [read on!]

Bush’s “Strategy for Victory in Iraq”. . . isn’t

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/12/strategy/index.html
In a new report, the Government Accountability Office says the president's national strategy fails to provide "a clear roadmap for achieving victory in Iraq". . .

Bush’s North Korea “policy” . . . isn’t either

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#009024
[Josh Marshall] Is our North Korea policy a fraud? Or a joke? Or is it a fraud and a joke? . . .

It’s a question of priorities, isn’t it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201894.html
One year after the Department of Homeland Security created a high-level post for coordinating U.S. government efforts to deal with attacks on the nation's critical technological infrastructure, the agency still has not identified a candidate for the job.

On July 13, 2005, as frustration with the Bush administration's cybersecurity policy grew on Capitol Hill, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the new assistant-secretary job opening.

Critics say the year-long vacancy is further evidence that the administration is no better prepared for responding to a major cyber-attack than it was for dealing with Hurricane Katrina. . .

They say they’ve been working on Bush’s public speaking skills: you could fool me

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115268147292295900
Q Well, Mr. President, you've known Mr. Prodi for a long time, and you've known Mr. Berlusconi -- you've known both of them. And how would you assess the personal relationship that you had with Mr. Prodi and with Mr. Berlusconi? Is there a difference how comfortable would you feel with one or the other?

THE PRESIDENT: I feel very comfortable with both. The first thing that's important is I feel comfortable with the people of Italy. We've got very close ties.

And let me just take a step back. What's interesting about our country is that we've got -- we've had close ties with a lot of countries. My ranch was settled by Germans.

Q Really?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. There's a huge number of Italian Americans. A lot of Russian Americans. You know, Norm Mineta in my Cabinet is a Japanese American. In other words, so when you talk about relations with an American President, you've got to understand that there's a -- at least I have, I know my predecessors have, connections, close connections with people who have fond -- either fond memories and/or great pride in their motherland.

[Digby] And, by the way, Norm Mineta's resignation was official last week.

They’re gonna need a bigger poster

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3134

Bob Novak’s “tell all” article on Plame doesn’t tell much (and a lot of it isn’t true)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607120006
In his latest column, Bob Novak purported to discuss his role in the federal investigation into the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, but instead of providing the answer to perhaps the most enduring mystery in this case -- the identity of his original source -- he repeated a number of false and contradictory statements regarding the investigation and the manner in which he learned of Plame's identity. . . [read on]

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3132

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015295.html

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/07/12/yawnwheres-the-news-bob/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/11/20732/0020
[Novak, July 11] Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015297.html
[Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce's Newsday article of July 22, 2003] Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Here are some good follow-up questions for Mr. Novak

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607130001

Pat Roberts (R-KS) has been sitting on the report investigating prewar intelligence abuse, literally, for years – and seems quite prepared to sit on it a while longer (I doubt we’ll ever see it from this crowd)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001111.php

This is a fight the Dems can win: filibuster William J. Haynes’ court nomination

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7916.html

Katherine Harris (R-FL) – the worst major campaign I think I have ever seen

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001116.php
Top aides to Rep. Katherine Harris' (R-FL) Senate campaign are heading for the exit, the Hotline On Call reports.

"The departing staff includes Glen Hodas, Harris's campaign manager, her spokesperson, Chris Ingram, and Pat Thomas, her field director. The status of Harris's chief fundraiser, Erin Delullo, is not clear," the blog says.

Harris is trailing her Democratic challenger by 33 points . . .

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/12/harris_campaign_staff_quits_again.html
Harris Campaign Staff Quits (Again)
Said one campaign aide: "She's just very difficult to work with. It's all the same stuff. The more than we put her out there, the more she shot herself in the foot."

"This slate of staff lasted just three and a half months; in April, Harris lost her campaign manager, Jamie Miller, and strategist Ed Rollins. Both have since become outspoken critics of Harris's."

Don't miss it! http://harrisvideo.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

Jean Schmidt (R-OH) is in trouble too: and wouldn’t it be good never to see or hear from this monster again?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/12/in_ohio_poll_shows_schmidt_in_close_race.html

Isn’t this the way it goes: howls of outrage over Ann Coulter’s hateful and venomous commentary, her explicit calls to kill public officials and members of the press, and her unattributed theft of textual material (if not outright plagiarism) aren’t enough to get her shunned – no, what gets her in trouble is when CONSERVATIVES decide she has become an ineffective spokesperson for their views

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002838462

I know it’s a eulogy, but THIS is a little hard to stomach

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/12/news/newsmakers/lay.reut/index.htm
The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared [Ken] Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared. . .

Bonus item: Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) works on his stand-up routine

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/white-house-paying-100000-salary-to.html
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

"I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.'

"They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

"Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:20 AM

 
NOT WHAT THINGS APPEAR TO BE

With great fanfare, the Bush gang agrees to do something they should be ashamed for not doing a long time ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/world/11cnd-detain.html
In Big Shift, U.S. to Follow Geneva Treaty for Detainees
The Bush administration called today for Congress to fix, rather than scrap, the system of military tribunals that was struck down by the Supreme Court last month, while the Pentagon pledged to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Conventions as the court required. . . But a key Republican senator warned that the administration was risking a “long, hot summer’’ if it pushed Congress to retain the tribunal system for the suspects now held at the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, instead of working to adapt traditional military courts to meet the demands of the war on terror. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2145612/
[Eric Umansky] "It doesn't indicate a shift in policy," a Pentagon lawyer told senators. Except it does. President Bush signed an executive order back in 2002 concluding that terror suspects weren't covered by any part of the Genevas. A statement "late yesterday from the White House" clarified: "As a result of the Supreme Court decision, that portion of the order no longer applies."

Moreover, a Pentagon memo on the military's newly recognized obligations suggested that no previous military interrogation policies ran afoul of the Genevas. It'll be an interesting argument if they stick to it: SecDef Rumsfeld had briefly approved keeping a detainee naked, in dark cell, and leading him around by a leash. Is the administration A-OK with those orders?

"The administration has fought tooth and nail for four years to say Common Article 3 does not apply to Al Qaeda," one former Justice Department lawyer told the NYT. "Having lost that fight, I'm afraid they're now saying, 'Never mind, we've been in compliance with Article 3 all along.' "

Word choice

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004532.html
[AP] "U.S. will give Guantanamo detainees Geneva rights."

[NB: The U.S. can’t give these rights or remove them – they can only decide whether to abide by them or to ignore them. It is some progress that after calling them “obsolete” and “quaint” they have agreed to abide by them. However. . . ]

Under closer scrutiny, this shift in policy is less significant than it appears: for one thing, it doesn’t cover prisoners under CIA control (including those in secret torture prisons scattered around the globe)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7903.html
[Steve Benen] White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said it's "not really a reversal of policy," but considering the fact that the administration used to believe it could ignore Geneva protections, and is now prepared to follow them, it certainly sounds like a reversal. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/11/detainees/index.html
[Alberto Gonzales, January 25, 2002] "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. . . In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete [the Geneva Conventions'] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.". . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_791.html
[Matt Yglesias] Today's laugh-or-cry moment: "Unlike four years ago . . . the debate now seems certain to include the views of the military’s most senior uniformed lawyers, whose objections were brushed aside earlier." Asking the military's lawyers about the legality of military policies -- what a crazy idea. I can't believe it only took them four years to come up with it. . .

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=24300
[Spencer Ackerman] The White House is insulting your intelligence if it expects you to believe that its new policy of extending Geneva Conventions protections to all detainees in U.S. military custody is sufficient to redress the proven abuse and illegality of its war on terror. The very obvious loophole is what will happen to detainees outside of U.S. military custody--as in CIA custody, such as the so-called "black sites," where Geneva is a sick joke. Which is a fairly apt description of this new White House attempt at damage control.

More loopholes: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/newsflash-pentagon-agrees-to-abide-by.html

One of the chief architects of this now-discredited policy is up for an appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

http://www.ericumansky.com/2006/07/geneva_genuflec.html

More: http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/07/the_haynes_cont.html

Will Lindsey Graham stand up for principle? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071101026.html
A key Senate Republican clashed yesterday with President Bush's pick for a federal appeals court, taking aim at the nominee's past support for harsh interrogation methods at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At a Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said that Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II had pushed for the tactics over the objections of top uniformed military lawyers who considered the policy process a "sham."

With equal fanfare Bush trumpets that he has brought the federal deficit down to a mere $300 billion. Well, that’s not the whole story, as it turns out

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009010.php
[Josh Marshall] The more you think about it, the more surpassingly amazing it is how big a fool you need to be to fall for the White House's song and dance today about the falling budget deficit.

The budget deficit last year was $318 billion.

In February, the White House 'estimated' (I use quotation marks because this is a standard trick for the Bush White House) the deficit for 2006 would be $423 billion.

Today they released a new estimate that it would be $296 billion.

In other words, between February and July tax cuts reduced the deficit by a whopping $127 billion. . . Would you fall for this?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009154.php
[LAT] This will be the third year in a row that the administration put forth relatively gloomy deficit forecasts early on, only to announce months later that things had turned out better than expected. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/11/121459/372
[Kos] Actually, it would be the fourth largest deficit of all time . . .

A little federal economics primer from Brad DeLong

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/and_we_are_live.html

Bush claimed to want to be the “CEO President.” Well, he was a pretty lousy CEO too – but is a CEO President what people actually want?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7904.html

You have to give Bush credit for a certain kind of consistency: he gives his top-paid advisers a big salary increase, and gives everyone else on his staff . . . .zip

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/11/salaries/index.html

Bush: not conservative enough?!?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7906.html

The politics of Bush’s threatened stem-cell veto: this is going to be interesting

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7899.html

The Manchurian Media: Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) speculates that press leaks embarrassing to the Bush gang might be coming from Al Qaeda or other foreign agents

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009011.php

Laura Rozen nails him: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004537.html

On the streets of Baghdad

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3131
[Reuters] Private Uday Abdullah is one of 50,000 Iraqi troops and police sent on to Baghdad's streets last month to make the city safe -- but he does not see the point. . . "We arrest lots of gunmen and they just walk free the next day. They're always from the Mehdi Army or the Badr Brigade or the Islamic Party. So what's the point of our job?" he said. . . .

Raed Abd al-Hafudh Saleem, a lieutenant in Baghdad's traffic department, is equally bemused and cynical.

From his concrete booth in the middle of a busy intersection in upmarket Mansour, he has a clear view of the many vehicles carrying heavily armed men that speed past every day.

"I don't know who these people are. I can't stop them because they never hesitate to point their guns at me."

“Civil war” http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/low-grade-civil-war.html

“Girl” or “woman”? What do you call a 14-year old rape victim?

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6507
[E&P] Ever since the case of the raping and killing of an Iraqi and the alleged murder of three of her family members by U.S. troops went public, the age of the rape victim had been in dispute, ranging from about 15 to 25. Two days ago, Reuters and others news agencies produced definitive proof that she was 14, based on a passport and identity card. Most news organizations then started calling her a girl -- but some persist in referring to her as a "woman."

A perfect convergence: corrupt MZM (linked to the metastasizing Duke Cunningham scandal) was also part of hyping phony pre-war intelligence

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001103.php

The Republican scandals just keep coming. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/11/12654/8014
[WP] In the past two years, campaign and political action committees controlled by Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) paid ever-larger commissions to his wife's one-person company and spent tens of thousands of dollars on gifts at stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany & Co. and a Ritz-Carlton day spa.

The use of such committees, especially "leadership" PACs, for purposes other than electing politicians to Congress is a common and growing phenomenon, but campaign finance watchdogs say Doolittle has taken it to new heights. . .

Oh, this is rich. In a year when the GOP, with control of Congress and the White House, has accomplished almost NOTHING, they are preparing to face the public in the fall elections. Their new mantra? “Forget the past year -- look what we’ve accomplished since 1994” (during most of which time, as I recall, Bill Clinton was President)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7901.html

We knew it was coming, didn’t we? Prominent right-wing blogger calls for lynching of Supreme Court justices

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/prominent-right-wing-blogger-today.html

This is a fascinating account. The backlash against progressive bloggers with the temerity to work against Joe Lieberman tells a lot about the mainstream party’s anxieties about the growing influence of the netroots

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115258563861309869

Bob Novak comes clean about his Plame sources – well, no, not entirely

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004536.html
In a column to be published on Thursday, Novak said he told Fitzgerald in early 2004 that White House senior adviser Karl Rove and then-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had confirmed for him, at his request, information about CIA operative Valerie Plame. Novak said he also told Fitzgerald about another senior administration official who originally provided him with the information about Plame, and whose identity he says he cannot reveal even now. . . . "I'm still constrained as a reporter," Novak said in an interview. "It was not on the record, and he has never revealed himself as being the source, and until he does I don't feel I should."

June 30, 2005: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/11/novak-explanation/
NOVAK: Well, that’s what I can’t reveal until this case is finished. I hope it is finished soon. And when it does…I will reveal all in a column and on the air. . .

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/novak-rove-and-cia-spokesman-all.html

Murray Waas comments: http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-did-it-take-two-and-one-half-years.html

Good point: now that Novak has confirmed publicly that Rove was one of his sources, isn’t that game-set-and-match for Bush’s promise to fire anyone who leaked Plame’s name?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/gop-columnist-bob-novak-confirms-that.html

Speculation about Rove’s still-unnamed “primary” source

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3132

Ann Coulter “cleared” of plagiarism charges. But look at what she did.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/11/coulter/index.html
[Tim Grieve] Maybe it isn't fair to call what Coulter does "plagiarism" per se. But there are other words that fit pretty well, and they ought to be every bit as troubling to the kind of people who peddle Coulter's moralistic claptrap. We're thinking here of "intellectual dishonesty," "literary theft" and plain old "stealing."

Theocracy watch: I keep waiting for progressive – heck, even apolitical – Christians to start condemning the way in which the Right has spread the notion that Christianity is somehow synonymous with their ideology. Well, maybe it’s finally starting

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7905.html

Bonus item: George Bush, jerk. This is the kind of ordinary human event that, while trivial in and of itself, tells volumes about someone’s maturity and character

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6506

[NB: It’s simple: he’s a bully by nature who can’t pass up an opportunity to belittle others and remind them of who’s Top Dog. His own brother said as much a few days ago]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:28 AM

 
YOU CAN HELP PBD

Hello all,

As many of you know, a couple of times a year I put out a call for new readers.

Many of you have been recommending PBD to others, and I appreciate that very much.

Some of you are new readers, though, and may have other new readers in mind. Or, if you have been regularly forwarding copies to others, now they can easily sign up to receive it directly.

There are three ways new readers can get this digest directly if they want. One is to add themselves as recipients of the daily e-mail version (identical in content but named "Today's News"). They can do this easily at:

http://groups.google.com/group/Todays-News/subscribe

Option two is to read the blog version here at

http://pbd.blogspot.com/

Option three: they can sign up to receive the blog as an RSS feed. There is a link to the right.

I put a lot of work into this project, and I am very flattered that so many people are interested in reading it. As you know, all that drives me is a desire to see this information and commentary – most of which comes from other people – get to a wider audience. It’s a small thing we can do in response to an administration that is relentlessly trying to restrict and distort the information people receive.

Thanks for your help!

Nick
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:54 AM

 
ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW

The Iraqi govt wants the UN to remove the condition exempting US soldiers from prosecution for crimes against Iraqi citizens. Now, what does that tell you?

http://makeashorterlink.com/?V26C1236D

On the horrific rape and murder case, a claim that the capture, torture, and murder of two US soldiers was retribution for a crime that had gone unpunished

http://us.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/10/iraq.main/index.html
"This video is issued and presented as a revenge for our sister who was dishonored by one of the soldiers of the same brigade that these two soldiers belonged to," reads the statement posted along with the video.

Five soldiers and one former soldier from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division have been charged in connection with the deaths in Mahmoudiya of an Iraqi family and the alleged rape of one member of that family, who was also killed.

The two soldiers who were kidnapped and killed in Yusufiya were also members of that regiment. The U.S. military has said there is no evidence linking the two incidents, however. . .

[NB: Uh, what more would constitute “evidence”?]

Meanwhile, back at the White House, comic opera

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/worse_than_the_.html

On every front, the Bush gang’s policies in their “war against terror” are under assault

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071001349.html

And, following the Hamdan decision, they have more trouble to come. Today’s must-read:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/real-dangers-face-bush-officials-post.html

More: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Report_on_Guantanamo_torture_released_by_0710.html
Documents declassified by the Pentagon to a civil liberties organization show that inmates at Guantanamo Bay have been "systematically tortured," RAW STORY has learned.

The Center on Constitutional Rights' 51-page "Report on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba" is drawn from primary accounts given by current detainees and their American attorneys at the Guantánamo Bay prison.

According to the report, several accounts indicate that physical, psychological, sexual and religious abuse is commonplace at the prison. Many incidents catalogued by attorneys would be in violation of the Geneva convention, and as such, also in violation of the Court's ruling. . .

North Korea is a spectacular failure of Bush’s foreign policy. Their explanation. . . (wait for it). . . . “it’s all Bill Clinton’s fault” (Somebody oughtta remind these guys that they’ve been in control of things for more than five years now.)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008988

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009152.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7896.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008987

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008986

Whose failure is it, really? Hmmm. . . as noted here a few days ago, whose name is associated with every major Bush foreign policy screw-up?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001520.php

What is the covert govt program Rep. Peter Hoekstra was complaining about, because the Bush gang was keeping it secret from Congress?

One guess: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009149.php

A better guess: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004526.html

When was the last time we had a “terror alert” announcement?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_776.html#003131

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7895.html

Bush’s first (and only) use of the veto pen will be. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015279.html

Karl Rove speaks out on Plame (yes, really)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/rove-plame-leaker-should-be-fired.html
[Joe] If Rove thinks the person who leaked Plame's name should be fired, it would indicate that the leaker still works at the White House. The only staff person besides Scooter Libby implicated in the leak is Karl Rove. Libby doesn't work there anymore. Can he fire himself?:

[Aspen Times] As for the Plame affair, Rove stumbled and then refused to answer. . .

Isaacson posed the question in the same way [President Bill] Clinton had Friday night. Issacson, parroting Clinton, pointed out that if a member of the Clinton administration had outed a CIA officer, "You'd be sending people to demand impeachment. You'd be playing it better than the Democrats can play it against you."

Rove then said that after a "careful, thoughtful, aggressive investigation," then the person responsible should be fired.

"Have confidence in the process," he said.

But Isaacson continued pressing on the issue asking, "Don't you have some regrets about that? That was [a] regrettable event."

"I'm going to respect the fact that there's an ongoing case," Rove said, again to hissing from the audience.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7893.html
[Steve Benen] Rove's admission that responsible parties should be fired was helpful. Given the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald has already conducted a "careful, thoughtful, aggressive investigation," and we already know Rove played a key role in the leak, we should expect Rove to begin packing his things immediately, right?

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jonathan Kyl (R-AZ), both lawyers, filed knowingly false court briefs in the Hamdan case. That’s grounds for disbarment in most states

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/07/10/a-matter-of-ethics/

More: http://susiemadrak.com/2006/07/09/21/49/the-kabuki-dance/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115255200907567542

The Republican “American Values Agenda.” Let’s be clear what this is: a series of votes on bills have no chance of passing – that even many Republicans are skeptical about – and that do NOTHING to address the issues most Americans say they are worried over. Period.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2BC3236D
[AP] Could a Republican-controlled Congress, pass a bill to protect the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance from court challenges?

No problem, especially if proposed during the patriotic season leading up to the Fourth of July, Republican leaders thought.

No way, it turned out.

The bill, the first item on the GOP's trumpeted election-year "American Values Agenda," could not make it past a House committee.

Even worse for the Republicans was that they could not blame Democrats. One of the GOP's very own, Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, voted no. Seven other Republicans skipped the committee meeting entirely.

So it goes this year for House Republicans, their majority in jeopardy for the first time in more than a decade. Take an unpopular president, factor in deep divisions in the GOP ranks and add to that Democrats determined to regain control. It all means a Congress having trouble doing its most basic job: passing legislation.

Republican leaders tried to shrug off the setbacks.

"We're not having trouble," Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, insists. "This is your typical legislative meat grinder." . . .

Lobbying reform? Dream on: http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2DC5436D

The redacted report from the Army Corps of Engineers on how to avoid another Katrina disaster

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6499
[T]he Bush Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers Monday submitted to Congress an interim protection report that includes no recommendations for specific projects. . . [read on]

Theocracy watch: more on the Alliance Defense Fund

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7890.html

More information on key Senate battleground states

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/10/131451/888

Yes, Rep William Jefferson (D-LA) looks like a crook, and no, the courts didn’t buy his argument that information in his House office was protected from FBI seizure. (Right now, Republicans are burning up the shredders.)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008991

Ann Coulter’s plagiarism charges get dismissed by her publishers (well . . .)

http://us.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/10/coulter.plagerism.ap/index.html

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001100.php

Bonus item: sit down, remove all sharp objects from your vicinity, and read this

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7889.html
[Roll Call] "This is election by litigation. You just wonder why we even have elections at all," said attorney Jim Bopp, who argued the ballot case for the Texas Republican Party. "It's just an effort to steal a seat. [Democrats] don't care about voter choice or democracy, they just care about power." . . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:11 AM

 
WHATEVER IT IS, IT AIN’T WORKING

Iraq, getting worse with each passing day

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/09/iraq.main/index.html
Gunmen roaming a Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday killed at least 42 unarmed Iraqis as soon as they identified them as Sunnis . . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/sunnis-being-idd-and-shot-on-sight.html
[Chris] What happened to those 75,000 troops who were deployed in Baghdad as part of the White House PR campaign? We know that more troops aren't needed because they've told us so. . .

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/at-least-80-dead-in-civil-war.html
[Juan Cole] Sunni Arab guerrillas replied to the checkpoint massacre by detonating a car bomb in front of the Ahl al-Bait Husayniyah (a Shiite center for mourning their martyrs from the House of the Prophet Muhammad) in the al-Kisah district of the Adhamiyah quarter of Baghdad, killing 19 and wounding 35. (Late reports in the Australian press spoke of 25 dead). . . Guerrillas also set off a bomb in al-Baya' district of West Baghdad, killing 5 persons and wounding 3. . .

Given the 30 dead or so in the afternoon bombings, and given that there were assassinations and deaths outside the capital (three in Karbala alone), even if one takes the estimate of 42 dead for the al-Jihad massacre, something like 80 Iraqis were killed on Sunday in sectarian warfare, and it could have been as high as 100. For my money, that's a civil war. . .

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002802023
[E&P] On a day when Iraqis carried out their own massacre in Baghdad, killing at least 50 Sunnis, the U.S. military announced that four more U.S. soldiers have been charged with rape and murder and another with dereliction of duty in the alleged rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman and the killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008976
[LAT] Brutality and corruption are rampant in Iraq's police force, with abuses including the rape of female prisoners, the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes, assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings. . .

More: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.corrupt09jul09,0,5107554.story

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_war_in_iraq_/2006/07/more_bad_news_from_baghdad.php

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3126
[Swopa] I'd like to be able to provide some kind of thoughtful insight here, but sometimes there's not much to say about watching a nation slowly drown in its own blood.

Why it’s OUR fault (today’s must-read)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115246883399141412

Spin THIS

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6488
[Karl Rove] "You know it's not going to be U.S. style. It's not going to be a Midwest small-town atmosphere. It's going to be Iraq with deeply felt sectarian strains with bad guys and people with lots of guns, but it is going to be a functioning society. It already is a distinct improvement on the society that existed."

In Afghanistan, it’s almost as bad (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2261727_1,00.html
AFGHANISTAN was supposed to be the success story. Two months of precision bombing by American B52s — in revenge for the Taliban’s refusal to throw out Al-Qaeda after the terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001 — soon had the Taliban fleeing over the border into Pakistan.

By December 2001 the Taliban had been ousted and a new English-speaking, westernised Afghan was president. The fact that most Afghans outside Kandahar had never heard of Karzai, that he dared not venture outside his palace and even inside had to be protected by US soldiers, and that he had once been chief fundraiser for the Taliban were all conveniently ignored.

By August 2002 Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, was describing events in Afghanistan as “a breathtaking accomplishment”. He pointed to Afghanistan as “a successful model for what could happen to Iraq if individuals were liberated, allowed to vote freely and to work”. . .

An estimated one-third of the male MPs are warlords, gross violators of human rights or drug smugglers; but, as Karzai says, “better to have them inside rather than outside doing damage”.

But while George W Bush and Tony Blair insisted on declaring Afghanistan a success — and a model for the pacification of Iraq — they apparently forgot one crucial lesson that the British had learnt years before. “Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over” were the sage words of Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of North West Frontier Province.

Far from Afghanistan being a model for Iraq, Iraq has become a model for Afghanistan. . .

Time magazine, on Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy”

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/09/coverstory.tm.tm/index.html
Bush came to office pledging to focus on domestic issues and pursue a "humble" foreign policy that would avoid the entanglements of the Bill Clinton years. . . After September 11, however, the Bush team embarked on a different path, outlining a muscular, idealistic, and unilateralist vision of American power and how to use it.

They aimed to lay the foundation for a grand strategy to fight Islamic terrorists and rogue states, by spreading democracy around the world and pre-empting gathering threats before they materialize. And the U.S. wasn't willing to wait for others to help. . . The approach fit with Bush's personal style, his self-professed proclivity to dispense with the nuances of geopolitics and go with his gut. . .

But in the span of four years, the administration has been forced to rethink the doctrine by which it hoped to remake the world. . . . The Bush Doctrine foundered in the principal place the U.S. tried to apply it. Though no one in the White House openly questions Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, some aides now acknowledge that it has come at a steep cost in military resources, public support and credibility abroad. . .

The waiting game

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/world/asia/10prexy.html
[NYT] President Bush has never made apologies for enshrining pre-emption as the defining doctrine of his first term. He has declared many times that in a post-9/11 world, presidents no longer have the luxury of waiting for the slow grinding of diplomatic give-and-take . . . But as he leaves for Europe and Russia this week, where the simultaneous nuclear standoffs in Iran and North Korea will top the agenda, Mr. Bush finds himself struggling to square his muscular declarations with the realpolitik of his second term after the invasion of Iraq. At every turn, and every provocation, he finds himself in an unaccustomed position: urging patience.

"These problems didn't rise overnight, and they don't get solved overnight," he told reporters during an hourlong news conference in Chicago on Friday. At another point, he said: "You know, the problem with diplomacy, it takes a while to get something done. If you're acting alone, you can move quickly." Underscoring the idea again, he said, "It's painful in a way for some to watch because it takes a while to get people on the same page."

The Chicago news conference was notable because it seemed to mark the completion of a rhetorical journey for Mr. Bush. It is a journey that has steadily moved away, in public pronouncements — if not the president's own thinking — from the lines he drew in the 2002 State of the Union address. In that famous "axis of evil" speech, he identified the threats from Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the three most pressing post-9/11 challenges facing the United States.

"We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side," he said in one of the most-quoted passages of what became the signature speech of his administration. "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

Yet to some conservatives who backed Mr. Bush's decision in Iraq, "standing by and waiting" is the essence of Mr. Bush's current strategy. . .

Mature rethinking? Or paralyzed by the no-win consequences of their own hubris?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008981
[DK] Let's nip this whole "Bush is shifting to a more enlightened foreign policy" theme in the bud, shall we?

Time calls it "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy" in this week's cover story. A David Sanger piece in tomorrow's New York Times is headlined, "Bush's Shift: Being Patient With Foes."

The sad truth is that the Administration's foreign policy has run aground on the shoals of its own incompetence. . . . Afghanistan is reverting to the Taliban. Iraq is beyond the point of no return. North Korea is acting with impunity. Iran controls its own destiny.

Worse, for an Administration that has instinctively favored military action over diplomacy, the nation's military resources are depleted, bogged down, and largely unavailable for any further foreign adventures.

Yet we have stories emerging that suggest the current foreign policy dilemma is a deliberate course of action chosen by Bush. Time, in a mishmash of its news and style sections, calls it a "strategic makeover" led by Condi Rice.

The fact is Bush has boxed himself in, frittering away lives and treasure, and leaving himself with few options. He deserves no more credit for a policy shift than the man serving a life sentence who declares that he will henceforth be law-abiding.

Surrounded by madmen

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/09/the_madman_theory_of_world_politics

The new Army Field Manual -- and what it tells you about the kinds of wars this country plans to be fighting in the future

http://www.slate.com/id/2145175/

The implications of the Hamdan decision for Bush’s warrantless spying

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/nsa-scandal-in-post-hamdan-world.html

More: http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2304226D

Rep. Peter Hoekstra’s letter to Bush yesterday hinted at as-yet-undisclosed intelligence activities that haven’t been properly vetted with Congress. Today, it goes beyond a hint. (How long will it be before we learn what they are?)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004522.html
[Hoekstra] “We can’t be briefed on every little thing that they are doing,” Hoekstra said. “But in this case, there was at least one major — what I consider significant activity that we have not been briefed on. I want to set the standard there that it is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing”. . .

[Laura Rozen] But what is the "major" "significant" intelligence activity that Hoekstra says he has learned about from whistleblowers, not from the White House? Under what authority was the head of the House intelligence committee not briefed of a major intelligence activity undertaken by the administration? And where are Hoekstra's Senate intel committee counterparts? Jane Harman? Were they briefed? And why is Hoekstra making sure his concerns are coming to light now in the Post, the NYT and Fox? Is something about to break?

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060709/pl_nm/security_intelligence_dc_2
[Reuters] The Bush administration was running several intelligence programs, including one major activity, that it kept secret from Congress until whistle-blowers told the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, the committee's chairman said on Sunday. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900705.html

Hmmm. . . . why did Hoekstra write the letter now?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008978

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/07/hoekstras_threa.html

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/07/hoekstra_cia_gr.html

Please tell me: where does the love affair with Condi Rice come from?

http://jmhm.livejournal.com/1636171.html
[Sisyphus Shrugged] If you've been here for any amount of time, you'll have noticed that I have very little respect for Dr. Rice. She's been lucratively wrong at every step of her career (her academic career was based on getting the Soviet Union completely bassackward in a way that was popular with alumni), she's spectacularly intellectually dishonest (among other things, she claims that she's a lifelong conservative Republican because Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond and the rest of the dixiecrats wouldn't let her father vote in the fifties - what ever happened to them, anyway?). . . That said, I think it's ludicrous to suggest that she's gotten where she is today by any means other than a rare talent for convincing men who aren't as smart as she is that she respects them for their minds.

More: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/why_oh_why_are_.html
[Brad DeLong] Everyone I've talked to who knows anything says that she was the worst National Security Adviser in history: that she decided early that she was going to make sure the president didn't hear things he didn't want to hear. Her strategy of kick-down-and-kiss-up was not good for the country. Not good at all. . .

As Michael Kinsley famously said, the real scandals in Washington aren’t the illegal ones – it’s what gets done within the rules each and every day

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900387.html

The MK thesis: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/03/10/time/kinsley.html

The demise of reality-based politics

http://billmon.org/archives/002489.html

What a truly independent and aggressive press can do

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004519.html

Won’t it be ironic if Tom DeLay, crafter of Texas redistricting and player of every political angle, ends up COSTING his party an otherwise safe seat because of his machinations?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/9/222810/4432

I’m not a rabid Joe Lieberman hater, like many of my colleagues in the left blogosphere. But this sort of thing really makes me despise him – it’s Republican-style politics at its worst

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/9/182818/6203

Strange politics: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015269.html

Did Orrin Hatch (R-UT) just blow his last chance to get on the Supreme Court?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/gop-senator-orrin-hatch-possible.html

Senate prospects for the Democrats

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006/07/the_friday_senate_line_3.html
[Chris Cillizza] Democrats need six seats to regain the majority and have five possible pickup opportunities -- Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Missouri, Montana and Ohio. They also have three races on the cusp of competitiveness -- Virginia, Tennessee and Arizona.

Republican prospects are actually looking up in both Maryland and Washington State while the open seat in Minnesota is a tough but winnable race. . . [more]

Theocracy watch: the Alliance Defense Fund. I’d never heard of them – sounds like soon we all will

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/07/10/06/06/opposition-research-2/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:25 AM

 
WHO’S THE BOSS?

Look as if there are EVEN MORE covert (and illegal?) surveillance activities the Bush gang is hiding from us. And they’re trying to bully the news media from talking about them

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/washington/09hoekstra.html
In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters. . .

The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress. . . But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed. . .

“Minority Report” has arrived: the era of pre-emptive arrests

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/us/09plot.html

OK, the Hamdan decision was by any standard a massive repudiation of Bush’s policies in Guantanamo – so what comes next? He declares it as a victory, of course

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115237362447361101
[NYT] "It didn't say we couldn't have done — couldn't have made that decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made."

[Digby] I'm the decider, see. They accepted my decision, see.

Whenever he sounds this moronic I'm reminded that it's probably how it was explained to him. That "see" is the tip-off. He can't actually understand the decision and then go out and expect that people won't think he's a complete idiot for saying what he just said. He doesn't get it. Nobody can spin that badly, not even him.

As TBOGG put it, this is Bush's version of: "That chick at the bar? She's totally digging on me." . . .[read on]

One little problem. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015259.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] Nice try, Mr. President, but Guantanamo wasn't the issue in the case -- the use of military tribunals was. . .

The Bush gang sees Guantanamo suicides as a plot against THEM. A neat trick, that

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-administration-says-detainee.html

By the way, for the record, the Guantanamo prisoners are now properly described as “prisoners of war” – not "detainees,” "enemy combatants,” or other euphemisms

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008968

In Iraq. . . .

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/national-unity-government-on-vergeof.html
National Unity Government on Verge of Collapse . . .

One thing the North Korea fiasco has shown us: that the tough-guy, confrontational approach that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton, et al reflexively fall back upon DOESN’T WORK when you don’t have the threat of military action to back it up – and the North Koreans know it

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3124

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7879.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/08/MNG1FJROPG1.DTL
At his news conference, Bush took pains to counter a question based on intelligence information that North Korea has expanded its nuclear weapons capability in recent years. When a reporter cited such reports. Bush declined to dispute the basis of the question, but challenged the reporter: "Can you verify that?"

"We don't know -- maybe you know more than I do -- about increasing the number of nuclear weapons," Bush said.

In a series of congressional hearings last year, top U.S. intelligence officials, including then-CIA Director Porter Goss, testified that North Korea's nuclear capability had increased since 2002, when intelligence assessments estimated it possessed one or two nuclear weapons. Goss in the Feb. 16, 2005, congressional appearance said: "They have a greater capability than that assessment. ... It has increased since then."

Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, asked during a Feb. 28, 2005, hearing about the assessment that North Korea had one or two weapons, cited a "potential there for a number of weapons to be in their possession" and said the government in Pyongyang was "regularly" producing fissile material for weapons. . .

Does the Bush gang even think their nominees NEED Senate confirmation any more?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070601462.html

What do the newly disclosed visits of Jack Abramoff to the White House tell us?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7884.html

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004514.html

Is the Abramoff scandal finally going to loosen Grover Norquist’s stranglehold over Republican policy?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/08/AR2006070800983.html

He doesn’t think so: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/9/2185/11476

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_09.php#008973

Fractures in the Republican party: is the hard right all that’s left?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/8/134449/5110
[McJoan] [W]e have another agenda designed to alienate, anger, and motivate the basest of their base voters. Leaving behind many moderates. . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115238970102835536

A sign of desperation: Republicans are using the terrorist sledgehammer to pound away on the immigration issue

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701247.html

More of this, please

http://makeashorterlink.com/?A1C55316D
[AP] The Republican plan to privatize Social Security could cause huge debt for decades, a Democratic candidate seeking a House seat in Iowa, a state with a high concentration of elderly residents, said Saturday. . .

Tom DeLay runs in the Republican primary, so he can keep raising money he plans to use for his legal defense, NOT his campaign. As soon as he wins the primary, he withdraws from the race and transfers his residency to Virginia, so he can argue that he CAN’T run from TX-22. Now the courts have ruled that he must remain on the ballot – and so he suggests that he will unretire and re-enter the race. (From Virginia?)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001084.php

Follow-up to the Murray Waas story (in the U.K., not any major American outlet)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1813640,00.html
President George Bush directed his vice-president, Dick Cheney, to take personal charge of a campaign to discredit a former ambassador who had accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq . . .

Katherine Harris (R-FL): at this point, all you can do is laugh

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008972
You could devote an entire blog to Katherine Harris (someone already has) so we try to ration the Katherine Harris posts. But each day brings a new Harris temptation and, as much as you try to stay off the sauce, sometimes you fall off the wagon.

The latest installment in the soap opera that is the Harris campaign finds Harris, burned by her connection to defense contractor MZM, trying to shift the focus by claiming that her opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson, accepted illegal campaign contributions several years ago.

The problem is Harris' former campaign manager was named as a co-conspirator in that case. Oops. . .


Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/08/AR2006070800841.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.); Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns; former State Department counselor Wendy R. Sherman; former CIA director R. James Woolsey; and historian Mary Beth Corrigan.

THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and George Allen (R-Va.); James H. Webb Jr., Allen's challenger in the Virginia U.S. Senate race; and NBA veteran Alonzo Mourning.

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Burns; and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Burns ; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D); former assistant secretary of defense Ashton B. Carter; and Robert L. Gallucci, dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

LATE EDITION (CNN): Burns; Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.); Iraqi Ambassador Sameer Shaker Sumaidaie; author Peter Bergen; Fouad Makhzoumi, chairman of the Future Pipe Group; former secretary of state Alexander M. Haig Jr.; and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Bonus item: Make my day

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/08/adam-carolla-hangs-up-on-coulter/
ADAM CAROLLA: Ann Coulter, who was suppose to be on the show about an hour and a half ago, is now on the phone, as well. Ann?

ANN COULTER: Hello.

CAROLLA: Hi Ann. You’re late, babydoll.

COULTER: Uh, somebody gave me the wrong number.

CAROLLA: Mmm… how did you get the right number? Just dialed randomly — eventually got to our show? (Laughter in background)

COULTER: Um, no. My publicist e-mailed it to me, I guess, after checking with you.

CAROLLA: Ahh, I see.

COULTER: But I am really tight on time right now because I already had a —

CAROLLA: Alright, well, get lost.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:40 AM

 
DOUBLETALK

An excellent question

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-are-bush-supporters-celebrating.html
John Amato astutely asks an excellent question: why are all of the Bush supporters celebrating the unauthorized leak to the Daily News of the FBI's arrests of alleged terrorists who were talking in Internet chat rooms about blowing up the Holland Tunnel . . . [read on!]

Another exaggeration to plant fear in the public consciousness?

http://www.slate.com/id/2145356
[Alexander Dryer] In general, the papers seem confused how to play the tunnel bombing story, given that the FBI's breakup of a Miami "terror cell" last month appears to have been over-hyped. The NYT throws the most cold water on the plot's significance, quoting security officials who question whether there was any substance behind internet chat-room bravado. . .

More:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008963

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008966

Following up on the story yesterday, that the US military has started enlisting soldiers with racist, skinhead affiliations – in case this doesn’t already appall you, here’s why it’s such a bad idea

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115229009920629930
[Digby] I'm not sure there's anything more stupid than hiring a bunch of neo-nazi's to occupy a foreign country. But it is par for the course with the Bush administration. . .

I definitely believe that racism lies at the heart of why many people supported a war against a country that had not committed any crime against ours --- and why they don't care if there were any WMD or any other justification. One dead arab's as good as another dead arab. It didn't matter which arab country we invaded as long as we invaded one and fucked some of "those people" up.

But regardless of the strain of racism that already exists in that warzone, putting white supremecists in their midst and allowing them to spew their Nazi propaganda among those frustrated, frightened, bored soldiers is a recipe for disaster. . .

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3122

http://billmon.org/archives/002516.html
[Billmon] These crazed fascists obviously have to be identified and weeded out of the ranks as quickly as possible -- otherwise they might start doing horrible things, such as, oh I don't know, firing tank cannons at journalists, raping and killing 15-year old girls and then burning their bodies, going house to house methodically shooting everyone they find, savaging prisoners with dogs, and forcing fathers to watch the anal rape of their sons. . .

Ron Suskind’s new book, “The One Percent Doctrine” sounds great – here’s the digest version

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/07/the_one_percent_doctrine
[Matt Yglesias] Suskind tells a story in which you have an administration that, at the beginning, simply doesn't know very much about international terrorism and doesn't care to learn much more about it. They think other things are more important, they have a limited amount of time, and so they're focused on that. Then comes 9/11 -- a devastating event. And, of course, at that time nobody knew what else might be coming down the pike. Decisions needed to be made, and quickly, by people who weren't especially well-versed in the situation. . .

Bush on Bin Laden: doubletalk? I think we need a bigger number

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/07/bush/index.html

Bush on North Korea

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/08/MNG1FJROPG1.DTL
[Friday] Bush ducked questions about a possible U.S. military response to North Korea, and he emphasized that he would continue pursuing diplomatic solutions, even if they prove "slow and cumbersome."

But he rejected conducting negotiations one-on-one, insisting that he needed China and other neighbors at the table so that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il did not make the United States appear to be the blockade to an agreement.

"One thing I'm not going to let us do is get caught in the trap of sitting at the table alone with the North Koreans," Bush insisted, rejecting the criticism by Democrats who say such talks would be the only way to break the logjam.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060708/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_missiles
[Saturday] U.S. offers bilateral talks with N. Korea
A U.S. envoy expressed support for China's proposal to hold informal six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear threat and offered to meet bilaterally with North Korea on the sidelines of those discussions. . .

Bush’s good friend in Russia

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/communism-20.html

Bush: thoughtful steward of the environment (don’t miss it)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_769.html

Paul Krugman gets in a well-earned “I told you so”

http://64.226.238.78/PA/pk/pk214.shtml
Over the last few months a series of revelations have confirmed what should have been obvious a long time ago: the Bush administration and the movement it leads have been engaged in an authoritarian project, an effort to remove all the checks and balances that have heretofore constrained the executive branch.

Why don’t you tell us what you REALLY think? (thanks to Susan Madrak for the link)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/07/07/notes070706.DTL&nl=fix
[Mark Morford] I was having cocktails recently with a group of people, among whom were two lifetime Republicans, each in his 60s, corporate businessmen, one admittedly slightly more moderate than the other (to the point where, after once hearing a senator read off a long list of Bush’s hideous environmental atrocities, actually let his conscience lead his choice and ended up voting for Kerry) but nevertheless both devoted members of the party.

Bush came up, as a topic, as a cancer, as a fetid miasma in the air. They were both shaking their heads. They were sighing heavily. They were both, in a word, disgusted. The more staunchly conservative of the two even went so far as to say he was so embarrassed and humiliated by this president, by this administration, so appalled at all the war atrocities and the wiretapping and the misuse of law, the fiscal irresponsibility and the abuse of the lower classes and the outright arrogance, that if the Dems could somehow produce a decent moderate candidate with a brain, he’d have zero problem switching allegiances and voting for him. Or her.

It may not sound like much. It may not seem like a major shift. But it is, in its way, sort of massive. For thoughtful Repubs with a conscience (they actually exist, I have seen them), there is little left to defend. There is little this administration has done among all categories of ostensible GOP values that they can look to with any sort of pride. Medicare? Shrinking the budget? Smaller government? Less intervention in our lives? Reduced spending? Increased respect in the international community? Responsible international citizen? Ha. Name your topic, BushCo has failed. Spectacularly. Intentionally.

Bush’s new (“new”) media strategy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/07/BL2006070700714.html

Huh? http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7879.html

More b.s. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115231152616504243

Bush’s Larry King interview: underneath the fluff and deceit, a few inadvertent revelations . . .

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6476

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7872.html

Drip, drip, drip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701317.html
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff had a half-dozen White House appointments in the early months of the Bush administration . . . In May, the Secret Service released partial data showing two White House visits by Abramoff. In a letter faxed to Judicial Watch yesterday, a Justice Department lawyer said that the Secret Service had recently learned of other visits when it "unexpectedly discovered computer files" containing entry and exit logs on the visits. . .

Abramoff/Mehlman (more)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008960

New Hampshire Republican operative is about to testify that he acted under White House and RNC orders

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/nh-phone-jammer-white-house-made-me-do.html

More: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Man_indicted_in_election_day_phone_0707.html

This could be big: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7878.html

Bill Clinton speaks out on Plame scandal, Karl Rove

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015258.html

Texas: it may not surprise you to know that they AREN’T quite treated like the other 49 states

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008964

More hints that may eventually unravel where those forged Niger uranium documents came from . . .

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004511.html

In a nutshell, here’s why progressives are fed up with Joe Lieberman (D-CT)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115231514155185065

John McCain (R-AZ) has a carefully tended rep as a good guy, a straight shooter, and a basically decent human being – for a politician, that is. Then you hear stories like this. . . .

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2006/07/why_is_chelsea_clinton_so_ugly.php

The self-correcting blogosphere: Kos says the Ann Coulter plagiarism charges are “overblown”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/7/11290/58796

Or not: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008956

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/07/coulter/index.html

Bonus item: Dick Cheney (2000) – you can look it up!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/7/11629/86748
CHENEY: This is a special interest of mine. I would like a chance to elaborate further, if I might. The facts are dramatically different. I'm not attacking the military, Joe. I have enormous regard for the men and women of the U.S. military. I had the privilege of working with them while I was the Secretary of Defense. No one has a higher regard than I do for them. It's irresponsible to suggest we shouldn't have that debate, that we should ignore what is a major, major concern . . .

There is no more important responsibility for a President of the United States than his role as Commander in Chief. When he decides when to send our young men and women to war. When we send them without the right kind of training, when we send them poorly equipped or with equipment that's old and broken down, we put their lives at risk. We will suffer more casualties in the next conflict if we don't look to those basic problems now.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:49 AM

 
WRONG WAY

Bush’s failed, rudderless foreign policy

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-foreign-policy-failures-are.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009134.php
[Kevin Drum] [T]he Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore. They have no serious plan for Iraq, no plan for Iran, no plan for North Korea, no plan for democracy promotion, no plan for anything. . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/06/BL2006070600772.html

World War III?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7868.html

As you know, a common mantra for the Right is that things are better than we’re hearing in Iraq, because the media is overcovering bad news and ignoring all the positive signs. Guess what? It’s actually the opposite

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/06/iraq/index.html
[Tim Grieve] The news out of Iraq today is bad -- a car bomber killed 12 and wounded 41 this morning -- but a Newsweek reporter says the underlying story may be worse. In an interview with Foreign Policy, Rod Nordland, the magazine's chief foreign correspondent and former Baghdad bureau chief, says that conditions in Iraq are "much worse" than they're described in the U.S. press. . . . The reason? The Bush administration does a "great job of managing the news," and the military has begun to crack down on embedded reporters who might otherwise offer a clear assessment of facts on the ground. . .

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/1042
“The military has started censoring many [embedded reporting] arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a story — they use the word slant — what you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they don't like what you have done before, they refuse to take you. There are cases where individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with the work they had done on embed.”

More: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B6860B61-BE4F-43A0-A012-3998AE078966.htm

More evidence of how desperate the military has become to find recruits

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/washington/07recruit.html
A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization. . . . "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad” . . . .

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-administration-turns-blind-eye-to.html

We know where you live. . .

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/thug-and-intimidation-tactics-of-far.html
[Glenn Greenwald] One of the favorite tactics used by [white supremacist] groups is to find the home address and telephone number of the latest enemy and then publish it on the Internet. . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/6/161421/5156

Abramoff/Mehlman

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/06/mehlman/index.html

Tom DeLay can’t get off the ballot in Texas, may have to run a race with no campaign money, no organization, and no chance of winning. Ha!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/6/12718/48744

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7866.html

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001068.php

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6473

The Ann Coulter plagiarism case may be getting serious

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001071.php

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7858.html
[Steve Benen] For her part, Coulter is, as usual, lashing out wildly, but there's one thing missing from her response. . . Careful readers will note that within the venom, a denial is nowhere to be found.

Bonus item: George and Laura on Larry King Live

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-and-laura-on-larry-king.html
[Joe] Laura Bush dismissed polls saying her husband is unpopular...saying that when we travel around the country, it's not what we see. Does she not know that those crowds she sees are hand-picked?

More: http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6474
[Alessandra Stanley] Two kinds of celebrities go on "Larry King Live" on CNN: those with something to sell and those with something to hide. . .

Extra bonus item: next to Terri Schiavo, I think we’ve found the only thing that can make Bush cut short his vacation time

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-to-vacation-less-campaign-more-in.html

Extra, extra bonus item: this is so stupid, I’m speechless

http://www.slate.com/id/2145246
President Bush is on the case: "I think we have a problem on global warming," he boldly told People. "I think there is a debate about whether it's caused by mankind or whether it's caused naturally, but it's a worthy debate. It's a debate, actually, that I'm in the process of solving by advancing new technologies." . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/7/03653/84950

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 9:02 AM

 
WHAT HAS HE DONE?

The mess Bush has made

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/05/AR2006070501634.html
[Richard N. Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations] "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-at-60-building-legacy-of-more.html

[NB: Let’s be clear. The number of international crises cropping up all at once now isn’t just bad luck or historical accident – these are direct results of Bush decisions or inaction]

“What Bush did to Joe Wilson”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/05/what_bush_did/index.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] Isn't it about time Bush stopped pretending ignorance about this story -- and came clean on his own role? Why should that information only be shared with criminal prosecutors? . . . Is it approved White House procedure to distribute misinformation? Is it okay to out a covert CIA operative? If it's not okay was he disappointed in how top deputies like Cheney and Rove -- both still very much at work at the White House -- carried out his orders?

The arrest of two Italian intelligence officials for a kidnapping plot involving Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka: Abu Omar) may eventually catch up the CIA and other US intelligence operations

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/07/post_734.html

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/world/europe/05cnd-italy.html

Could this eventually unravel the forged Niger documents (which also came via Italian intelligence) – the ones that led to the entire Wilson/Plame mess in the first place?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004507.html

http://crookedtimber.org/2006/07/05/the-music-for-mancini/

A House committee subpoenas Donald Rumsfeld in connection with charges of retaliation against an Abu Ghraib whistleblower

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001056.php

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015242.html

http://makeashorterlink.com/?K39325F5D
"If the department won't even return a call, after three months ... we really have no choice but to subpoena the material and compel their attention to our request," added the committee chairman, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who signed the subpoena. . .

Iraq govt formally announces that it will conduct its own investigation into the rape-murder charges against US servicemen (what, they don’t trust us?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/06/world/middleeast/06iraq.html

A “firestorm” http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/malikis-basra-security-initiative.html

The issue of amnesty for guerillas who have killed US troops isn’t over yet, either

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/al-hakim-amnesty-for-guerrillas-who.html

Sick, sick, sick

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115213814574939152
[Paul Craig Roberts] Americans who get their propaganda from Fox "News" or are told what to think by right-wing talk radio hosts are outraged at news reports that U.S. troops planned and carried out the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman. They are not outraged that the troops committed the deed; they are outraged that the media reported it. . .

The Duke Cunningham cast of characters: what a menagerie!

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001054.php

Will John Ashcroft (former Attorney General) get caught up in the Abramoff scandal too?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001052.php
With Ashcroft, as with so many other power players, Abramoff gained access by hiring someone who already had it. It was former Ashcroft aide Kevin Ring, who joined his firm in 2000. Ring had been Ashcroft's counsel when he was a Senator on the Judiciary Committee. . .

Remember the “Gang of 14” that agreed to withhold certain controversial court nominations in order to avoid filibusters that could lead to the so-called “nuclear option”? Two of the controversial cases were Brett Kavanaugh and Terrence Boyle. Well, so much for agreements – Kavanaugh’s already been confirmed, and Boyle’s coming back for review. I think the Democrats have been had (again)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_14

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/07/05/judge_the_horizon/index.html

The right-wing has a planned, long-term (and highly effective) media strategy – and they’re sticking to it

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7857.html
[Steve Benen] As journalists expose more serious wrongdoing — secret prisons, secret wiretaps — the pushback and level of heated rhetoric has become considerably more intense. Instead of just an antagonistic attitude, the Bush gang has come to view news outlets as another rival to crush for political gain. . .

More: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060710ta_talk_remnick
[David Remnick] The Bush Administration knows very well what it is doing and in what climate. The press––particularly the mainstream outlets the White House finds most irritating––is in a collective state of anxious transition, hurt by scandals (Congressman King was quick to mention Jayson Blair, the Times serial fabulist), by the appearance of a blizzard of new technologies and ideologized alternatives like Fox News, and by a general sense of economic, even existential, worry. . . [read on!]

The Democrats don’t

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7855.html

“Unilateral surrender” http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7856.html

The end of the level media playing field

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607050006
Media to GOP: Heads you win, tails you . . . win [read on!]

Sometimes you just have to chuckle: Ann Coulter complains that plagiarism charges against her have been raised by a “tabloid” – hey Ann, no one BUT tabloid readers/viewers take you seriously in the first place

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008939

Nevertheless, the investigation IS serious: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001055.php

No charges for Rush on phony Viagra prescriptions

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060705/ap_on_en_ot/limbaugh_viagra

[NB: Though it IS interesting to learn that he has a psychiatrist]

The ridiculous lie of abstinence-only policies on STD’s

http://www.slate.com/id/2144903/nav/tap1/

Theocracy watch: now THIS is scary – very, very scary

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/5/19462/93626
[Hunter] Bartholomew's Notes on Religion bring us this case of a Jewish family in Delaware that objected to extensive Christian proselytizing by their public school district. As a result, the family was roundly attacked, subjected to threats, and has now been explicitly singled out by an organization called Stop The ACLU. . . who, as the haphazard nature of the posts on their website indicate, are not so much interested in stopping the ACLU as supporting Bushism and advocating against everyone from Hans Blix to liberalism in general. Including, if need be, sixth graders.

In a recent turn of events, Stop the ACLU published the home phone number and home address of the family on their website, highlighting it as the first instance of an ongoing "project" called "Expose the ACLU Plaintiff".

Expose them to what? Why is the publication of this address and this family especially noteworthy? Because the family in question previously had to relocate due to harassment and threats against them -- including oblique threats from members of the very school board in question. . .

Bonus item: Cheers and Jeers explains to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) how the Internet works

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/5/7452/32234
The Internets is a series of gerbils, one gerbil for each "user." When you "send" a "message" (or, in Stevens-speak, "an internet"), the gerbil takes it down shorthand and scurries through a series of tubes to its destination. . .

But, seriously: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060704/wr_nm/google_netneutrality_dc

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:33 AM

 
WORSE THAN NOTHING

Bush betrays Latinos, admits that he doesn’t have enough “political capital” even to resist his own right wing on immigration. Who blinked first?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/washington/05immig.html
Republicans both inside and outside the White House say Mr. Bush, who has long insisted on comprehensive reform, is now open to a so-called enforcement-first approach that would put new border security programs in place before creating a guest worker program or path to citizenship for people living in the United States illegally.

Worse than nothing: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015237.html

Bush to troops: You’re great, you’re winning. . . oh, and by the way, get used to an extended, bloody commitment for a long time

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04cnd-prexy.html

“Destroying Ramadi in order to save it”

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6453

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3113

Hmm. . . . Our good friends in Iraq don’t trust us to bring the rape-murder culprits to justice

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060704/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_060704163945

And now this: was the kidnapping and beheading of three US troops in June a retaliation for the original rape-murder?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015238.html

Ugly Americans

http://billmon.org/archives/002509.html

Double standard? I don’t think that’s a strong enough term for it

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115199391579838317
[Digby] Even the Plame affair, which was also a national security issue, did not engender a wholesale attack on the freedom of the press. The criticism generally was focused on the cozy relationship between extremely powerful government actors and certain reporters. I don't recall any calls to try the Chicago Sun-Times for treason because they allowed Robert Novak to print Valerie Plame's name. . .

It’s gotten insane: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/light-holiday-fare.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_02_atrios_archive.html#115202050405697981

Joe Lieberman: Bush’s favorite “Democrat"

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/4/15047/28441

Joe Lieberman: doesn’t care what Democratic primary voters think

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115199391579838317

Are the Democrats afraid to play hard-ball politics with redistricting?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/04/AR2006070401041.html

Bonus item: how do they get away with it? (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.findingavoice.com/mt/archives/000298.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:26 AM

 
I LOVE AMERICA

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/3/151923/7785

The big news of the day: Murray Waas reports that Bush told Fitzgerald that he gave the order to release classified information to discredit Joe Wilson. Whether he directly ordered outing Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame may be doubtful – but the main significance of the story is that Bush was DIRECTLY and INTMATELY involved with the discussions, and certainly knew the key players on his staff who later did leak her CIA affiliation

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0703nj1.htm

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7841.html

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001045.php

Why are we hearing about this story NOW?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3109

Well, the Iraq rape/murder atrocity is no longer a hypothesis: soldier charged

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_us_investigation

How screwed up are things in Iraq? Zarqawi had several government officials speed dialed on his cell phone

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/03/zarqawi.ap/index.html

Bush quietly and without fanfare shuts down the CIA unit searching for Bin Laden (better to quit than to fail, eh?)

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/CIA_closes_down_unit_that_was_0703.html

A new development in the “New York Times tries to assassinate Rumsfeld and Cheney” story. The photos in the NYT Leisure puff-piece that showed Rummy’s home WERE TAKEN WITH HIS PERMISSION. Does the right wing think he has a death wish? The Secret Service calls the whole matter ridiculous. So now will the wingers withdraw their outrageous accusations?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7831.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/3/164642/3346

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-is-left-of-malkin-hinderaker-and.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/4/0133/07793

Another California Republican, Joe Doolittle, gets caught in the Abramoff net

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001043.php

Well, it’s official: Joe Lieberman (D-CT) places his own self-interest ahead of his party – but then, who’s surprised by that?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/03/AR2006070300544.html
Facing a stronger-than-expected Democratic primary challenge and sagging poll numbers because of his support of the Iraq war, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday he'll collect signatures for an independent campaign if he loses next month's primary. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/3/1316/57667
[Kos] An interesting kind of "Democrat", Lieberman thinks he is. One who doesn't respect the wishes of his state's Democratic voters, one who will split his state's vote on the left and potentially hand the election to a Republican.

And who do you think is going to sign those petitions? Republicans.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_02_atrios_archive.html#115195778578216269
[Atrios] Why do Democrats feel the need to be loyal to a guy who says he isn't loyal to them?

More on “loyalty”: http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6449

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_02_atrios_archive.html#115194961062688264

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/lieberman-abandons-democrats.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_02_atrios_archive.html#115194514487906792
[Atrios] In typical cowardly Lieberman fashion, he's going to continue running in the Democratic primary while simultaneously pulling petitions to get himself on the ballot as an Independent. . . More than that, he's going to claim he's not going to be trying to run as an independent, but instead as something Made Up, a "petitioning Democrat."

Ned Lamont, Lieberman’s primary challenger

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_07_02_atrios_archive.html#115194666007647442
Members of a party abide by primary results. There is no such thing as an "petitioning Democrat." If there was, Joe could accept the Republican endorsement and run as a "Republican Democrat." . . .

Then there are the other Democrats who refuse to accept the decision of their own party’s primary, if it means that their buddy Joe isn’t the people’s choice

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/3/15429/72262

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7842.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115195205978920723
[Digby] So, you see, Lieberman isn't actually leaving the party. He's just decided that he needn't answer to rank and file Democrats who vote in primaries. They do not know what a "real Democrat" is and they cannot be trusted to choose who they wish to represent the Democratic party in the fall election. Therefore, smarter people, like Joe Lieberman and Chuck Schumer, have to step in and tell them what's good for them. Surely, you can understand that. After all, Joe and Chuck have been leading us successfully to victory lo these many years. We should not question their wisdom.

The Bush blip

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-bounce-any-improvement-was-very.html
[CNN] BILL SCHNEIDER: Well, some polls did show them going up a very little bit, in last few weeks, after those events just mentioned, somewhere in the range of 37 to 41 percent. But this is the most recent poll. The only one taken since the Supreme Court's Guantanamo decision, which went against the White House and it shows the president with a low number indeed, 35 percent. So any improvement was very short lived. . .

What a fool. People like this are deciding the fate of the Internet

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7838.html
[Ted Stevens, R-AK] "I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. . . They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes."

Bonus item: Tom Tomorrow, on the bizarre cognitive dissonance of mainstream media types who promote the views of right-wing commentators who call them traitors (or worse), while at the same time lambasting progressive bloggers as truly dangerous “blogofascists”

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2006/07/03/tomo/index1.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:02 AM

 
AH, WHAT WE REALLY MEANT TO SAY WAS. . .

I think this is a huge story: the Bush gang started domestic surveillance BEFORE 9-11. So how do you justify it now, Big Guy?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abIV0cO64zJE&refer=#
The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. . . “The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. “This undermines that assertion.'' . . .

[NB: I think we need a stronger word than “undermines” – how about, “blows their f---ing lies out of the water”]

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/2/143127/9491
[Jonathan Singer] At this stage, it is important to note that there are only allegations that the Bush administration began spying on Americans before 9/11. But should these allegations pan out -- or even if the White House is in some way able to convince the courts to throw out this lawsuit -- it's not clear to me that the President will ever be able to win back the trust and faith of the American people. The recent revelations out of California -- that the state's Office of Homeland Security was spying on political dissenters -- only underscore this. . .

All right. Bring it on! You want to pick a fight with the press, you need to take on people like Dana Priest (don’t miss it – and look at Bill Bennett’s expression!)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004493.html

More tasty counterattacks in the Bush gang’s war against an independent press

Bill Keller: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/2/16340/88062

Bill Safire: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/2/171218/8098

John Harwood: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/2/184759/2180

I’m glad the Bush gang and their right-wing mouthpieces are so worked up about secret government information ending up in the wrong hands. So I’m sure they’re going to make a huge stink about this one too, right?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-abramoff1jul01,1,6127387.story
Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff improperly obtained a top-secret FBI document and tried to use the information to aid his clients in the Pacific Island territories, according to a report released Friday by the Justice Department's inspector general. . .

Guess who are the strongest opponents to Bush’s threats to attack Iran? You guessed it – the people who would actually have to carry it out

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060710fa_fact

Why does ANYONE believe that Iraq as currently constituted can function as a western-style democracy?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060702/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
The largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament announced Sunday it was suspending participation in the legislature until a Sunni female lawmaker was freed by kidnappers who seized her and seven bodyguards in a Shiite part of Baghdad on Saturday. . .

Sauce for the goose. . . .?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/hey-associated-press-did-dick-cheney.html
[John Aravosis] Since the Associated Press was so concerned a month or so ago that Harry Reid was invited to tour a few boxing matches in Nevada, without paying for the privilege, I'm just wondering why AP didn't bother inquiring in today's story whether Dick Cheney paid for his VIP access to the NASCAR race. . . .

Bonus item: Ann Coulter, accused (again) of plagiarism

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/ny-post-accuses-ann-coulter-of.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:28 AM

 
ON THE BRINK

Well, now we are starting to see the consequences of the politics of hate and fear the Republicans have brought upon us in the Atwater/DeLay/Rove era. The use of enemies, real or imagined, to unify and motivate partisan coalitions is hardly new, or limited to only one party. But in the post-9/11 period, there is an underlying viciousness to political discourse that I haven’t seen in my lifetime (I missed the McCarthy era). The fact that someone like Ann Coulter, who has spoken repeatedly and explicitly about murdering public officials, members of the press, and others, still has a public platform shows how atavistic things have become.

The latest product of this new politics is the labeling of the press as treasonous (over publishing government leaks – i.e., classified leaks the government DOESN’T want disclosed, as opposed to the ones they do), and serious discussion on television and elsewhere of executing reporters and editors. It isn’t very surprising that the “wingnuts,” as we call them, call for such things – what has changed is the seepage of these ideas into ostensibly “mainstream” commentary.

Where does this end? I don’t know – but the latest turn in the insane spiral of accusation is that the New York Times is trying to assassinate Cheney and Rumsfeld (no, I am not kidding)

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/conservative-pundits-reveal-murderous.html
[Glenn Greenwald] I learned today from Michelle Malkin, Powerline's John Hinderaker, Red State, and David Horowitz, among others, that The New York Times not only wants to help Al Qaeda launch terrorist attacks on the United States, but that newspaper also want to do everything possible to enable The Terrorists to assassinate Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. . . [read on!]

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating. . .

http://www.thoseshirts.com/rope.html

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/conservative-pundits-reveal-murderous.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The outright derangement generated by this madness has now led one of the imbeciles who likely read Malkin and Powerline's blog to post the home address and telephone number of the Times photographers on his website. . .

Another upstanding, patriotic blogger -- after linking to the blog which posted the address of the Times photographer -- has now posted this:

So, in the school of what's good for the goose is good for the gander, we are providing this link so YOU may help the blogosphere in locating the homes (perhaps with photos?) of the editors and reporters of the New York Times.

Let's start with the following New York Times reporters and editors: Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. , Bill Keller, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen. Do you have an idea where they live?

Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous - grab for the golden ring. . .

I think this great piece by Paul Waldman sums it all up

http://mediamatters.org/items/200607010004
[T]his week the entire conservative movement -- from the White House to Republicans in Congress to Fox News to right-wing talk radio to conservative magazines -- declared war on the very idea of an independent press. . . [read on!]

And this: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002765284
[Frank Rich] No sooner were the flag burners hustled offstage than a new traitor was unveiled for the Fourth: the press. Public enemy No. 1 is The New York Times, which was accused of a 'disgraceful' compromise of national security (by President Bush) and treason (by Representative Peter King of New York and the Coulter amen chorus). . . It was a solid piece of journalism. But if you want to learn the truly dirty secrets of how our government prosecutes this war, the story of how it vilified The Times is more damning than anything in the article that caused the uproar. . .

Worse than Nixon

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/1/113653/7497

The damn media is making us lose the war!

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115177870624808903
A US combat commander suggested the United States could lose the war in Iraq if public support for it at home is sapped by negative media coverage. . .

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060630/pl_afp/usiraqmilitary

Yeah, news media, stop telling us about things like this

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7827.html
[Steve Benen] After the incidents at Haditha, Ishaqi, Hamandiya, and Samarra, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians. That was before this.

[WP] The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that American soldiers raped and killed a woman and killed three of her family members in a town south of Baghdad, then reported the incident as an insurgent attack, a military official said Friday. . . . The alleged crimes occurred in March in the insurgent hotbed of Mahmudiyah. The four soldiers involved, from the 502nd Infantry Regiment, attempted to burn the family's home to the ground and blamed insurgents for the carnage, according to a military official familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was providing details not released publicly.

Remember, by the way, that the news media HAS often withheld stories at the request of the administration – a favor which, of course, the Bush gang would never abuse

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004490.html

I think Billmon is onto something

http://billmon.org/archives/002498.html
[P]erhaps the administration suspects, or at least has reason to worry, that the Times is getting close to an even bigger police state atrocity, and are pulling out the stops to try to intimidate Keller and his minions into laying off the story. . .

Alberto Gonzales had one last chance to show whether he views the role of Attorney General as that of defending the law and Constitution, or of taking the side of defending whatever the hell the Bush gang wants to justify itself doing. Can you guess?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/01/gonzales.gitmo/index.html
The Supreme Court decision that ruled against the Bush administration's plan to try suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay prison has "hampered our ability" to deal with terrorists, the U.S. attorney general said Saturday. . .

[NB: The absurdity of his argument is that the ruling doesn’t PREVENT the Bush gang from doing any of the things they want to do, as long as they can get congressional authorization for doing so. And THAT, of course, is what they do not want to do – and don’t think they have to do]

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/1/175215/4562

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009115.php

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/1/14377/70288
[Neal Katyal] Not a single person was tried in these military commissions even though the administration said four and a half years ago "We don't have the time to legislate. Congress, you take too long to authorize these commissions. We need to do it right away because we need to try these people." They didn't even indict someone for two and a half years under these commissions. And when they did indict someone, they only indicted a total of ten people.

This was not really . . . about trying terrorists. . . It was about service to an agenda, an agenda of Presidential powers in a time of crisis. . . . The administration took the view that not only would it advance these extreme claims of executive power but it would do so in a context in which they said the courts have no business. . . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115177600251221890
[WP] A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. "Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform," this official said.

[Digby] The assumption, again, being that these people are all guilty when everyone knows for a fact that many of them are not. That means that this administration just doesn't give a shit if innocent people are held prisoner forever. I suppose that there are people who think that's just the price that must be paid (by someone else) for our "freedom," but moral people cannot believe this.

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002497.html

Meet David Addington, one of the architects of the Bush gang’s totalitarian legal philosophy

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060703fa_fact1
Colin Powell: “He doesn’t care about the Constitution.”

Then, for comic relief, we have John Yoo: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3104
[NYT] John C. Yoo, a principal architect of the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, sounded perplexed and a little bitter on Thursday afternoon. . . . "What the court is doing is attempting to suppress creative thinking," said Professor Yoo . . .

Yet another example of the Bush gang editing government reports to delete material that is unfavorable to them – this time, not a matter of national security, but their pathetic response to hurricane Katrina

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6442

Yeah, it’s just so damn hard to get a handle on controlling government spending

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html
Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all. . .

The Duke Cunningham case is starting to look like one of those branching family trees

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_06_25.php#008901

More scandal: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/06/30/state/n124216D83.DTL

“Publicly financed bribery”

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2006/07/publicly_financed_bribery.php

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/washington/02earmarks.html

I’m glad John Aravosis reads the right-wing Washington Times (so I don’t have to)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/07/wash-times-blasts-bush-over-sending.html
[Washington Times] The president's order assigning the National Guard to enforce border security, such as it is, has been suspect from the beginning. The order sounded forceful and dramatic, but was received with considerable skepticism because on second thought it sounded as mostly sound and little fury, signifying not very much. The president's heart is with amnesty, by whatever they're calling it at the White House, and sending weary and exhausted National Guardsmen to "assist" the Border Patrol will neither secure the border nor staunch the gusher of desperate illegals, mostly Mexicans, pouring into the country in search of work. Immigration reform is as elusive as ever. Counting on the National Guard to render the politics harmless is merely blowing more smoke.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062901468.html
The Bush administration has been unable to muster even half the 2,500 National Guardsmen it planned to have on the Mexican border by the end of June, officials in the border states said. . .

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_06_25_atrios_archive.html#115168815528572132
* Meet the Press hosts Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The roundtable includes author Bill Bennett, CNBC's John Harwood, Washington Post's Dana Priest, and New York Times' William Safire.

* Face the Nation hosts Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) and New York Times' exec. ed. Bill Keller.

* This Week hosts Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The roundtable includes ex-Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), Cokie Roberts and Time's Joe Klein.

* Fox News Sunday hosts Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jack Reed (D-RI) and NASA Admin. Michael Griffin.

* Late Edition hosts Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Barney Frank (D-MA) and Griffin.

Bonus item: Someone at Time magazine has a wicked sense of humor

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115177020603949357

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:28 AM

 
SHAMELESS

One thing we’ve learned about the Bush/Rove approach to governing: everything – EVERYTHING – needs to be evaluated through the lens of political advantage. So the Supreme Court slaps down the Bush philosophy of unlimited Executive authority during wartime, and the first thing they think of is how to make this the framing issue of the 2006 election

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001737.html
Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism. . .

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's comment Thursday that the court decision "affirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system." That statement, Boehner said, amounted to Pelosi's advocating "special privileges for terrorists."

[NB: There you have it folks, the basic divide between the two parties in this day and age]

http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=5099276&nav=2aKD
[AP] White House counselor Dan Bartlett says the administration's task now is to determine how to design military tribunals that will pass constitutional muster. Bartlett says Bush could portray any lawmaker who objects to legislation as supporting the release of dangerous terrorists.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_06/009108.php

But I don’t think it’s automatic, particularly on the Senate side, that even Republicans will be prepared to give Bush another broadly worded authorization, given (a) his abuse of every degree of freedom they’ve given him before and (b) his patent contempt for their opinions about anything where his authority has been concerned

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] The Republican-controlled Congress, which has remained resolutely blind, deaf and dumb as President Bush took national security matters entirely into his own hands, now has little choice but to rouse itself to some sort of action. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/us/01gitmo.html
A leading Senate Republican said Friday that he was not sure that Congress should pass legislation to create new military tribunals for terror suspects, a stance that raised doubts about prospects for a White House plan to establish an alternative to the commissions struck down this week by the Supreme Court. . .

Until now, the White House and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney had been dead set against working with Congress on issues involving the detainees, against the advice of some Republicans and some administration lawyers. By waiting until the court forced the issue, the White House may have made its task more difficult, leaving Mr. Bush with less support in Congress than he had after the attacks of Sept. 11. . . [read on!]

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/06/will-hamdan-have-any-effect-on-bush.html
[Glenn Greenwald] I think there is a very real question as to whether the Bush administration even considers itself bound by Supreme Court decisions which it perceives to encroach on the constitutional powers of the President. This is an unpleasant question which hasn't been examined, but it may need to be now. After all, the administration's theory is that the Constitution vests unlimited power in the President to make decisions to defend the country, and nobody -- neither Congress nor the courts -- has any power to interfere with those decisions. Those decisions are, as the Yoo Memorandum put it, "for the President alone to make."

Indeed, in several of the President's signing statements, the administration seems to have pointedly emphasized the limitations on the Court's power to interfere with the President's decision-making when it comes to defending the nation. . . [read on!]

Reality check: the fact is, this ruling is a terrible rebuke to Bush, and to the craven and submissive Republican Congress that let him construe their authorization for war as a blank check for unlimited Executive power – and this despite previous Court rulings that explicitly said otherwise

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/cole
[David Cole] In June 2004 the Supreme Court sharply rejected George W. Bush's assertions that he had unchecked unilateral authority to lock up indefinitely any person he declared an "enemy combatant" in the global "war on terrorism." Writing for the Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declared that a "state of war is not a blank check for the President." . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30hamdan.html
The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law.

"The executive is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction," Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the 5-to-3 majority, said at the end of a 73-page opinion that in sober tones shredded each of the administration's arguments, including the assertion that Congress had stripped the court of jurisdiction to decide the case. . .

The decision was such a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration that it left human rights lawyers who have pressed this and other cases on behalf of Guantánamo detainees almost speechless with surprise and delight, using words like "fantastic," "amazing" and "remarkable." . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30gitmo.html
Privately, though, some administration officials involved in detention policy — along with many critics of that policy — were skeptical that Guantánamo could or would go about its business as before. "It appears to be about as broad a holding as you could imagine," said one administration lawyer, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ruling. "It's very broad, it's very significant, and it's a slam." . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062902092.html
Senior administration officials acknowledged that the ruling scuttles their plans to put as many as 80 detainees through administration-created "military commissions" -- with extremely limited rights -- and said it is unclear how they will respond. . .

Retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy who visited Guantanamo Bay last week, said the military commissions were destined to fail. He said the government should have used courts-martial and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which grants defendants more rights.

"We put ourselves in an unnecessary legal mess from the beginning, and now we've gotten ourselves in such a mess legally and politically, there's no easy solution," McCaffrey said yesterday. "The UCMJ is the only way to go forward."

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_06/009106.php

Heroes of military justice

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115169238714246611

More on the wholesale politicization of policy under Bush

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/06/29/BL2006062901115.html
[Dan Froomkin] It's often said that President Bush is better at campaigning than governing. He certainly seems to enjoy it more.

Five years into his presidency, he still speaks with great contempt about "Washington" -- as if he wasn't running the place. . .

Theoretically, Bush could get himself out of this mess by trying to solve some of the problems afflicting his presidency. But campaigning is easier. . . [read on!]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7822.html
[Steve Benen] Bush considers the war just another political tool. It's to be used to win elections, not to spread democracy or "liberate" anyone. . . [read on!]

<