September 2007 Archives

...and Dennis Miller. I kid you not.

Robert Greenwald:

We can imagine how busy Rudy is. Running for president while distorting your record on 9/11, takes a lot of time and energy. So I can't say we were surprised to learn that Rudy (plus Romney, Thompson and McCain) was too busy to attend Thursday night's debate on minority issues hosted by Tavis Smiley...

Turned out [Giuliani was] right here in Southern California accepting an endorsement from widely discredited Pete Wilson, who's known for exploiting racial division for votes, and pushing the horrible proposition 187. Then off to a $2300-a-plate fundraiser at the Biltmore Four Seasons in Santa Barbara with Bo Derek.

It was about 2 am and I was finally going to turn in. I went over to turn out the lamp in the den and here's what I saw. Wish I could sleep that soundly.

P.S. Someone said he looked like Garfield.

Future historians will point to September 26, 2007 as the day the US-Iran war started:

By a vote 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.”

[Full marked-up version of the amendment here.]

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action.”

Batten down the hatches. If Democrats thought they had a clear shot at the White House, they've got another thing coming.

UPDATE: Here's what World War III may look like.

Mark ponders calling the GOP the Republic party:

Maybe if we use the truncation, they'll stop calling it the "Democrat" party.

Maybe, maybe not. But it got me thinking about calling them the Publican Party. It's a term that has been tossed around at dKos for almost a year. But what is a publican?

The term is commonly used in the UK to describe the manager of a public house, i.e., bars and taverns. And in fact, there is already Publican Party in Scotland -- formed to fight the blanket ban on smoking in public.

Nah. Too narrow. Although the connection to cigar chompers like Schwarzenegger and Giuliani is apt.

In ancient Rome, publicans served as tax collectors for the Republic (and later the Empire).

Tax collectors? Nah. Too easy for them to refute.

In the New Testament, Jesus tells The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. In it, a Pharisee, grateful for his own virtue, is judged lower than a tax collector ("publican") who is ashamed of his own sin. The lesson teaches the value of displaying humility by seeking forgiveness for one's sins over displaying pride at one's own self righteousness.

Humility? You're kidding, right?

By the time of the Renaissance, the word "publican" meant a tavernkeeper (see above), and by extension a slang term for a pimp.

Bingo -- perfect.

Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author, has a new book out, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain -- a book that covers two of my favorite topics. More specifically, Sacks (like Yo-Yo Ma) believes that music is the link between memory and emotion. I believe this as well, and I think that if you stop and ponder it, you probably believe it too. After all, there are certain songs that remind you of your senior year in high school, right?

But Sacks goes beyond that and talks about the spiritual aspect of music (something I've written about here). For Sacks, that's saying a lot, given that he doesn't put any stock in religion (organized or not).

Here's an excerpt of an interview that appears at Wired.com:

Wired: You call yourself an old Jewish atheist in your new book. What is it about music that lends itself to being a catalyst of mystical experience even for people who don't believe in God?

Sacks: Music doesn't represent any tangible, earthly reality. It represents things of the heart, feelings which are beyond description, beyond any experience one has had. The non-representational but indescribably vivid emotional quality is such as to make one think of an immaterial or spiritual world. I dislike both of those words, because for me, the so-called immaterial and spiritual is always vested in the fleshly — in "the holy and glorious flesh," as Dante said. [Note: Dante is another one of my favorites.]

So if music is not directly representative of the world around us, then what's inspiring it? One has the feeling of the muse, and the muses are heavenly beings.

[...]

I intensely dislike any reference to supernaturalism, but I think there can be profound mystical feelings which do not have to call on fictitious agencies like angels and demons and deities. The whole natural world is bathed in wonder and beauty and mystery. The feeling of the holy, the sacred, the wonderful, the mystical, can be divorced from anything theological, and is conveyed very powerfully in music.

Buddhists are leading mass protests against Burma's military rulers. It represents Burma's largest demonstrations in nearly 20 years - and the monks are leading the way. Over the weekend, monks led up to 100,000 people through the streets of Rangoon. The demonstrations have been going on for seven days. Buddhist nuns have joined the protests for the first time. (Click image for larger version)

Sen. Clinton made the rounds of all five Sunday talk shows and apparently played the pundits like a fiddle. They said she was tough, strong, serious, smart, disciplined, and so forth. This could be a turning point in the campaign: Hillary has landed.

Todd Beeton:

[T]he progressive movement took one lesson from Gore and Kerry's losses: that to win, Democrats need to forsake the down the middle politics that have led us to losses in the past and instead stand up clearly and strongly for progressive values...[but] Clinton appears to be banking on a slightly different lesson: that in fact running down the middle is a winning strategy as long as you convince people that your positions are sincere and come from a place of strength, not weakness, a feat Clinton appears to be accomplishing, if the reactions to her Sunday talk show appearances are any indication.

It has to be more than that, though. Bush was perceived as being sincere and strong, not weak. So is Giuliani. All things being equal, Clinton has to also convince people that she has the judgment, experience, and stature to step into the job on day one.

by shep

“Our objective is to protect innocent life. And we've got a lot of brave souls in the theater working hard to protect innocent life.” --George Bush, on the recent killing of Iraqis by Blackwater USA guards

"The moral vacuum of Iraq -- where Blackwater USA guards can kill 10 or 20 Iraqis on a whim and never be prosecuted for it -- did not happen by accident. It is yet another example of something the Bush administration could have prevented with the right measures but simply did not bother about as it rushed into invading and occupying another country. . . .” -- Michael Hirsh

The most recent survey of Iraqi deaths as a result of the US invasion and occupation puts the civilian death toll at
1.2 million, with a margin of error of 2.4%. Certainly, all of those deaths were not the direct result of US military action. So, let’s lop off the margin of error, round to the 7th decimal and, to be scrupulously fair, cut the number in half. That’s about 500, 000 innocent, dead Iraqis. Next, let’s compare that to the deaths of American soldiers which stands (until the next Pentagon announcement) at 3,792.

So that’s approximately 130 innocent Iraqis killed for every US soldier. Got that? While “[o]ur objective is to protect innocent life,” as we liberate and teach them western democratic values, our soldiers are killing 130 innocent Iraqis for every soldier killed by any means, including accidents and friendly fire. But let's set that number aside for a minute and see what the Geneva Conventions say about protecting civilians:

Article 51.-Protection of the civilian population 1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations…

2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited…
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) Those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) Those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) Those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:
…(b) An attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”
[Emphasis mine]

There’s more, about protecting civilian infrastructure and “[p]recautions” to be taken: In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.”

So what should the ratio of non-combatant to combatant deaths look like if “constant care” is taken? World War I (even before Geneva) might make a good baseline. We had our machine guns, torpedoes and aerial bombardment, the major modern tools for indiscriminant killing in war (but without all that “precision” targeting capability we’re so smug and self-satisfied about today). It was also before we developed the physical and moral capacity to firebomb and nuke civilian cities and carpet bomb countries.

WWI gave us roughly 8 million civilian deaths by combat forces and 8.3 million combatant deaths; a little better than a one-to-one ratio. Go back a century to the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), when you had to line up your rifle sight on your target or run them through with a sword – non-combatant to combatant ratio one-to-five – and you can see the beginning of modern “progress”.

It always seemed axiomatic to me that in wars waged by "civilized" nations, more soldiers should die than civilians. Even WWII, which killed over 70 million, still had a non-combatant to combatant death ratio of roughly one-to-one, once death by disease and famine is eliminated. And even though the United States dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than were dropped by all of the participants in all of World War Two, the ratio was still (at worst) only 4-to-one.

In Iraq, we’ve “advanced” that ratio to at least 130-to-one (why this isn’t “news” is yet another damning indictment of what American journalism has become). You can say you believe that the US military is taking “constant care…to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects,” but the numbers prove that you are simply deluding yourself. More than any pervious war, by official policy, our forces are using massive firepower, they’re often doing it in a dense urban environment and they aren’t just shooting back at who’s shooting at them. Simply put, providing "general protection" and exercising “constant care” can’t produce a ratio like that; they are the product of purposefully chosen rules of engagement that risk civilian death to protect soldiers – and contractors.

The truth is, in the moral and political calculus among many US politicians and war proponents (and perhaps many non-supporters as well), one American life is simply worth more than 130 innocent Iraqi men, woman and children. Republicans indemnify contractors from prosecution and change the definition of war crimes for a reason. It’s been more than four years and no one can advocate continuing this particular war policy without also accepting the outrageous outcome.

The fact that this is happening with no morally defensible justification for our invasion and occupation of Iraq in the first place, and no likely objective for the current policy that can be offered by war proponents or their supporters, makes it more than betrayal of the public trust or even a simple war crime. It is a betrayal of our humanity and our honor. It is a betrayal of everything that matters: God, country and ourselves.

[Cross-posted at Dispassionate Liberal]

by Mark Adams

There is only a fringe Pro-War Right.

• 70% disapprove of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
• 57% are unhappy with Congress's impotent attempts to change the course in Iraq.
• 53% believe we never should have been there in the first place.
• 72% want us out within two years, with 49% unwilling to wait even a year.
• 68% think we should decrease troop numbers or remove all our troops.
• 50% want troop levels to be less than pre-surge levels by next summer, only 7% think we need more.

The numbers, obviously, are on our side. So why the spinelessness? I heard progressive talker Ed Schultz say that Tom Daschle wouldn't have allowed the democrats to be pushed around like Harry Reid does. I don't buy that for a minute. Reid has been tougher on a lot of things than Daschle ever dreamed.

One of the reasons MoveOn.org was singled out for special tut-tuting by the Senate last week is because they, as well as the rest of the progressive netroots, are perceived as no where near as powerful and influential as the likes of Rush Limbaugh, or even Ann Coulter. MoveOn made a choice to throw poo rather than act like the establishment and try to represent all liberal/democrats. That, after all is your elected representative's job. You can vote your agreement or displeasure with your wallet.

Congressional Democrats may be seen as wimps, and go out of their way to perpetuate this myth. But what does it add to the narrative when the wimps aren't afraid of us online activists? Indeed, they seem more afraid of conservatives accusing them of being beholden or intimidated by us than exposing their cowardice for all to see when intimidated by the right. They don't really care what we think and want us to just shut up, vote for them and send an occasional check. One thing they don't want is our advice.

Simple-minded and stupid sells, at least to those who don't, won't or can't pay attention. Sound-byte politics is all they get, all they can really stomach, and it's all the better when it's funny. Say what you want, but Limbaugh and Coulter are entertainers first. They don't really try to hide their sick ideology, but they do try to make it clever. They go for the cheap laugh and it works. It stays in your head. Comedy endures.

Going for Teh Funny is why Hillary calling Dick Cheney, Darth Vader is more effective a weeks worth of full page ads in the Times. In that spirit, I'd like to see more of this, please:

"You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it more often."
John Edwards on NCLB

Democrats. We're smarter, better looking, and doggone it, people like us. At least they want to.

Masala Sound System featuring Cinq G, performing "Od Tarnobrzegu po Bangaldesz" blew me away. It is something I had never seen or heard of before: Polish "ragga-bhangra" music -- a fusion of funky Indian music performed by Poles -- and if that isn't enough they produced a proper Bollywood-style video to go with it.

This absolutely rocks!

BONUS TRACK:
Chris Nakashima-Brown:

There's also a killer clip of Masala rapping their "Rewolucja w Nas" at Festiwal Gwiazd 2007. This dude can flubber his throat-singing lips like a Brooklyn Tuvan. And if you look closely at the long shot, you can see a rare image of their promoter, Leggy Starlitz, smiling at his latest creation.

(HT to Cory)

Me neither.

Now, former president of Mexico Vicente Fox tells why -- apparently Bush (a "Texan") is afraid of horses. Fox also calls Bush a "windshield cowboy," i.e., he likes to drive and not ride.

For perspective, here are some past presidents that could, at least on occasion, put themselves on a horse.

Shorter version of what happened in the Senate yesterday:

Democrats: I think we need to make some important decisions about our family's future.
Republicans: Don't talk to me.

All the rest is detail.

(HT to George Lakeoff)

by Mark Adams

Speaking of Kathy (Suck it Jesus) Griffin, it looks like she's hooked up with the head of the "B" list of computer gurus, Apple co-founder Stephen Wozniak.

Kathy isn't the only one with a sense of humor. Woz is a legendary prankster, one of the few humans who could go on Stephen Colber's show and "take him down." And she's just flat-out funny. This sounds typical, classic Griffin:

"The thing is he doesn't realize that I am the brains of the operation and he is like some dumb bimbo that I picked up!"

But what you might not know is Woz also founded Dial-A-Joke in San Fransico. Really.

He met his first wife by responding to a Dial-a-Joke call "live", as he often did for fun, saying, "I bet I can hang up faster than you" and then hanging up. She called back, they chatted, and he asked her out.

The guy invented the Apple I, Apple II and game Breakout (as if that weren't awesome enough). He plays guitar, like me, so what's not to love? While I still miss my old Apple ][e,c and GS's, I've learned to adapt to this new-fangled Mac interface. (Yes, I've gone through over a dozen Apple computers over the years, never once considering a Windoze product.) I'd like to get one of those pads of $2.00 notes he gets from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. That's just cool.

Woz, (the Other Steve) was always the "cool one" at Apple IMO. While Steven Jobs and Bill Gates played the marketing game, I always considered Woz and Paul Allen (the Microsquish co-founder, owner of the Seahawks and Trail Blazers who thinks Searching for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence is a worthy cause) the guys who still retained a bit of their soul they wouldn't sell for any price.

They're "B" list Billionaires. At that price there is no "C" or "D" list. The list is short, including Virgin's Richard Branson, always chasing world records and humanitarian causes, and Ted "Captain Courageous" Turner (before Jane Fonda and Time-Warner sucked the life out of him). They're the ones you know would pick up the tab after doing beers (and in Ted's case, it would certainly be a huge tab).

Woz and Kathy are now officially my favorite celebrity couple -- so Suck It, BradJelina.

Fascinating stuff from Sid Blumenthal:

The elder Bush assumed that the Bush family trust and its trustees -- James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Prince Bandar -- would take [Bush 43] and guide him on the path of wisdom. In this conception, the country was not entrusted to the younger Bush's care so much as Bush was entrusted to the care of the trustees. He was the beneficiary of the trust.

But to the surprise of those trustees, he slipped the bonds of the trust and cut off the family trustees. They knew he was ill-prepared and ignorant, but they never expected him to be assertive. They wrongly assumed that Cheney would act for them as a trustee.

Cheney had worked with and for them for decades and seemed to agree with them, if not on every detail then on the more important matter of attitude, particularly the question of who should govern. The elder Bush had helped arrange for Cheney to become the CEO of Halliburton, making him a very rich man at last.

But Bush, Baker, Scowcroft et al. didn't realize that Cheney's apparent concurrence was to advance himself and his views, which were not theirs. When absolute power was conferred on him, the habits of deference lapsed, no longer necessary. ...

Cheney was always more Rumsfeld oriented than Bush oriented. The elder Bush knew that Rumsfeld despised him and that Cheney was close to Rumsfeld, just as he knew his son's grievous limitations. But the obvious didn't occur to him -- that Cheney would seize control of the lax son for his own purposes.

The elder Bush committed a monumental error, empowering a regent to the prince who would betray the father. The myopia of the old WASP aristocracy allowed him to see Cheney as a member of his club. Cheney, for his part, was extremely convincing in playing possum. The elder Bush has many reasons for self-reproach, but perhaps none greater than being outsmarted by a courtier he thought was his trustee.

There's much more and you should really read the whole thing.

Bush's unyielding personality would have been best suited to the endless trench warfare of World War I, as a true compatriot of the disastrous British Gen. Douglas Haig. His mind is geared toward a static battlefield. For low-intensity warfare, such as in Iraq, "an authoritarian cast of mind would be a crippling disability," wrote British expert Norman F. Dixon in his classic work, "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence." "For such 'warfare,' tact, flexibility, imagination and 'open minds,' the very antithesis of authoritarian traits, would seem to be necessary if not sufficient."

Gosh, it's like the Hale-Bopp Comet all over again:

In March 1997, the cult group Heaven's Gate chose the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet as a signal for their mass cult suicide. They claimed they were leaving their earthly bodies to travel to the spaceship following the comet.

Similarly, by blocking a vote on the Webb amendment (which would have guaranteed a 15-month home rotation following a 15 month tour of duty), Senate Republicans committed political suicide, claiming they were supporting the troops.

Pretty fantastic stuff.

Here, in the real world, what was at stake can be best expressed by reading a comment from John Aravosis' blog:

"I remember well when my son in law was in Iraq for 12 long months. My wife did most of the heavy emotional lifting, consoling my daughter when the panic attacks hit. I did less, but I remember it well.

You see -- when a guy dies in Iraq they shut down all communication home until the next of kin can be notified. One unintended consequence of that is spouses know when somebody has died, but they don't know who. It's like that scene in A League of Their Own, except the tension and fear goes on for a day or two and then it happens again a few weeks later.

How many soldiers come back from Iraq to divorce? How many broken families has this war produced?

You don't support the troops if you don't give them adequate time home. You don't support families that way either.

Neocons say, it is a way to force an early withdrawal. I say, Bush should have thought about that when he started this cursed war.

...and Senate Republicans should have thought about it before they blocked a floor vote on the measure.

You know it's gotten weird when Robert Novak, aka the Prince of Darkness, aka the Douchebag for Liberty, tells it the way it is:

The failure of the Petraeus report to significantly alter the political climate on Iraq is bad news for Republicans in the 2008 campaign. The assessment by GOP insiders is that continued casualty lists in the election year will be fatal. President George W. Bush's statement offered little hope for relief.

And he said this before the Republicans "successful" filibuster yesterday.

P.S. By the way, the phrase "success in Iraq" -- now, more than ever --means one, and only one, thing: Bush Holds GOP Support On Iraq

UPDATE: More on Reid's inner circle and how its strategy on Iraq has shifted.

by shep

…or “loyalty to the in-group”. The moral choice of our (or perhaps any) age.

U.S. Marine General Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“One of the mistakes I made in my assumptions going in was that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi army would welcome liberation, that the Iraqi army, given the opportunity, would stand together for the Iraqi people and be available to them to help serve the new nation,” Pace said.

I'll give him credit, though, for admitting his mistake.

by Mark Adams

If you answered that "unabashed Marxist" Hillary Clinton, (go ahead and giggle at that one, I did), you win.

Seriously, Hillary is best know to Wingnuttystan as the failed author of what they like to call "Hillarycare" and I've been waiting since 1994 for it to be implemented. But instead of immediately entering the presidential race by offering a health care plan she has been identified with for a decade and a half, she originally said that she'd like some kind of vague "universal" program to be implemented by the time she leaves office after her second term.

She's upped the timetable to the first term, and echoing John Edwards includes a mandate that requires medical coverage for all (Obama's plan does not) making it truly universal, sets up a competing public system to compete with private insurers like Edwards proposes, removes obstacles to access for pre-existing conditions (Edwards, ditto), and except for the devil-in-the-details tax considerations and the relative burden on small businesses, it does look every bit as "very, very sound" as the one offered by John Edwards.

Rudy Giuliani: booted from the Iraq Study Group after missing meeting after meeting so he could make millions of dollars giving speeches.

Donate a few bucks so MoveOn can put this ad on TV in Iowa.

Seeing that today is Constitution Day, it is noteworthy that retired federal judge Michael Mukasey has been nominated to become the next Attorney General.

Normally, I'd say that anyone endorsed by Bill Kristol (and who serves as an advisor of the Giuliani campaign!) should be worthy of extreme skepticism. But Glenn Greenwald weighs in with some details from Mukasey's back story, specifically his role as the presiding judge in the case of Jose Padilla:

Judge Mukasey repeatedly defied the demands of the Bush administration, ruled against them, excoriated them on multiple occasions for failing to comply with his legally issued orders, and ruled that Padilla was entitled to contest the factual claims of the government and to have access to lawyers. He issued these rulings in 2002 and 2003, when virtually nobody was defying the Bush administration on anything, let alone on assertions of executive power to combat the Terrorists. And he made these rulings in the face of what was became the standard Bush claim that unless there was complete acquiescence to all claimed powers by the President, a Terrorist attack would occur and the blood would be on the hands of those who impeded the President...

Stalwart rule of law defender Bruce Fein, in a December 2002 Op-Ed in The Washington Times, called Mukasey's decision a "narrow, prudent, and impeccable decision" and said it "sets a standard to which the wise and honest jurist should repair."

Judge Mukasey's respect for the Constitution and the rule of law should not be overstated...

Mukasey is very smart and independent, not part of the Bush political circle, and -- at least compared to the array of nightmarish alternatives -- it is hard to see him becoming a subservient tool of the White House...

None of this is to say that Mukasey should be confirmed as Attorney General if, as appears to be the case, he is the nominee. There is a long record of rulings that very well may constitute potent grounds for opposing him. He published a recent Op-Ed in the Wall St. Journal on the question of legal rights for terrorist suspects which was reasonable on some points though ultimately inconclusive on the central questions.

Bush was always going to nominate a conservative Republican. But he could have done a lot worse than Mukasey. I don't know if Democrats deserve any credit for standing firm against guys like Ted Olsen and Michael Chertoff, but if so -- thanks.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

I made this using an online video mashup application at www.dylanmessaging.com/create. Go ahead make your own.

And pass this along to your like-minded friends.

Edwards goes over the heads of the President and the Congress and directly to the American people:

Our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home. But Congress must answer to the American people. Tell Congress you know the truth...No timeline. No funding. No excuses.

Edwards has managed to frame the debate on his own terms.

UPDATE: Don't just sit there -- go on, call your Congressman. What are you waiting for? Tell them "no timeline, no funding, no excuses."

• Contact your Representative
  
• Contact your Senator

by shep

General Petraeus, just like his civilian rulers in the Bush Administration (I'm shocked), continues to tout progress from The Surge:

"The tribes and the sheiks decided to say no more to Al Qaeda. They were tired of the indiscriminate violence, tired of the Taliban-like ideology and the other practices," he said. "They are Sunni Arabs rising up against a largely Sunni Arab Al Qaeda in Iraq."

I'm not sure what our extra 30,000 troops spread across Iraq has to do with that but, meanwhile, there are good reasons why we should keep 130,000 American soldiers, indefinitely, in a hated occupation in Iraq where 70% of the population says that The Surge has made life more violent and dangerous:

"A rapid withdrawal would result in disintegration of the Iraqi security forces, rapid deterioration of local security initiatives. . . . Al Qaeda in Iraq regaining lost ground. . ."

Obviously, no one has any idea what will happen in Iraq, with or without an American troop withdrawal. So why would anyone state as fact that Al Qaeda, who’s “indiscriminate violence” and “Taliban-like ideology and the other practices," has already been rejected and attacked by much more secular Iraqi Sunnis and which didn’t even exist in Iraq until we invaded and occupied the country, will regain lost ground if we were to withdraw occupying troops?

Your answer can be found here:

"The reason to emphasize al-Qaeda, aides said, is simple. 'People know what that means,' said one senior official who spoke about internal strategy on the condition of anonymity. 'The average person doesn't understand why the Sunnis and Shia don't like each other. They don't know where the Kurds live. . . . And al-Qaeda is something they know. They're the enemy of the United States.'"

Just as Bush and Cheney lied when they said that ”there’s no doubt” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, anyone telling the American public that they know what will happen if we begin to withdraw troops from Iraq is lying, plain and simple. To lay claim to knowledge of future events which don’t even make sense relative to your own characterizations of what’s happening at the moment can be taken for what it is: pure agenda-driven propaganda.

It’s a damned shame that Bush and the Republicans have so corrupted the relative non-partisanship and credibility of the US military but not really surprising. They’ve done the same with every single element of the US government from the Supreme Court to the Department of Justice when they thought it served their interests. There isn’t an honest bone among them and “fixing the facts around the policy” is all they know.

I'll make it brief: There are only 16 months before the next president is sworn in. If that president is a Democrat and if we still have 100 thousand (or more) troops in Iraq by then, this new president's term will be crippled by controversy.

Simply put, s/he will be dogged by accusations that s/he lost the war. Republicans (and some Democrats) will use this impossible situation to accuse the Democrats of being everything from cowards and dilettantes to terrorist appeasers and traitors...and worse. They'll use the issue in the mid-terms of 2010 and the election of 2012 and beyond.

That said, Sen. Obama's sense of timing is pretty good:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq, with the pullout being completed by the end of next year.

"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was," Obama said in excerpts of the speech provided to The Associated Press.

"The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now," the Illinois senator says.

I'll be waiting to see what he does next. And that goes for Hillary as well. As for John Edwards, he's out of power and all he can do is talk.

It's Obama who has the stage today.

UPDATED: Well, Sen. Edwards has upped the ante:

Bush is going to talk about his handing off the Iraq war to the next president [Thursday], and John Edwards has bought two minutes of airtime to follow Bush:

Edwards has bought two minutes of air time on MSNBC, scheduled to air after Bush's 15-minute televised speech from the White House at 9 p.m. EDT...

"Unfortunately, the president is pressing on with the only strategy he's ever had -- more time, more troops, and more war," Edwards says in the ad, according to excerpts provided by his campaign.

The ad was taped at Edwards' home in Chapel Hill, N.C., in the style of an Oval Office address, with him sitting at a desk and speaking straight to the camera, with American flag in the background.

..."Tell Congress you know the truth," Edwards says. "They have the power to end this war and you expect them to use it. When the president asks for more money and more time, Congress needs to tell him he only gets one choice -- a firm timeline for withdrawal."

Well played, Senator!

Tonight begins the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

Judaism 101:

Rosh Hashanah occurs on the first and second days of Tishri. In Hebrew, Rosh Hashanah means, literally, "head of the year" or "first of the year." Rosh Hashanah is commonly known as the Jewish New Year. This name is somewhat deceptive, because there is little similarity between Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year, and the American midnight drinking bash and daytime football game.

That's an understatement.

That said, there are similarities. This holiday begins perhaps the most solemn days of the Jewish year. Prior to this, Jews begin a period of self-examination and repentance, a process that culminates in The Ten Days of Repentance, beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with the holiday of Yom Kippur. So, just as many Americans use the New Year as a time to plan a better life, making "resolutions," the Jewish New Year is a time to begin introspection, looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to make in the new year.

If you were putting your life on the line on the field of battle, if your son, father, husband or brother was risking his life for his country, the last thing you want to hear is your commanding general admit that he doesn't know if the mission is worth fighting for.

Watch it:

This is simply devastating and the effect on morale will be excruciating.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

I know we're being urged, today, to remember 9/11, but I think we should learn some lessons from that day and use them to look to the future. That said, I read something today from Colin Powell that is worth contemplating:

"What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves..."

He is, of course, right. In seeking to overthrow the US, Osama bin Laden has no greater ally than George W. Bush who has systematically trashed the foundation of what makes us so special: the US Constitution. It is the US Constitution that restricts the power of our leaders and guarantees the freedom and liberty of the people -- the vital ingredient to our greatness.

So, in Powell's opinion, what is the greatest threat to our nation?

(HT to The Village Voice)

• It's Petraeus Day on Capitol Hill. Can you stand the suspense??

• David Brooks compares OBL to ... lefty bloggers! Of course -- we're all for fundamentalist religion taking over the government.

• Gallup has Hillary with more support than the next two candidates put together. Obama is set to make a major policy speech on Iraq this week. Can these two facts have anything to do with each other?

• A sign that maybe this blogging thing is washed up: Alan Greenspan has a blog.

• Iraqis overwhelmingly say that the surge has made things worse, and they want the US out. Now. The only people left who disagree are the 70% of Republicans who give Bush a positive approval rating.

• When Petraeus is done on Capitol Hill today (giving his non-report that wasn't written by nobody at the White House) he'll take a victory lap participate in an exclusive interview on Fox News.

• Here's how bad it sucks to be Bill Richardson: Unavision would not allow Richardson to speak Spanish during the all-Spanish-broadcast of the recent Democratic debate.
  

In their quest to find missing aviator Steve Fossett, searchers have come across uncharted plane wrecks six times. But none of the wrecks shed light on what may have happened to the multimillionaire.

Hopes that a crashed plane spotted on the side of a hill might be Fossett's were dashed quickly Friday when ground crews learned the plane last was registered more than three decades ago in Oregon.

All due respect, but doesn't this sound like the plot of Back To The Future IV?

From Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films:

"It's just not possible."

That was the sentence we heard over and over from families who had firefighter sons, brothers, husbands and fathers killed on 9/11, from experts on emergency response, and from investigative journalists. It was just not possible that Rudy could so distort what happened on 9/11 and his role on that terrible day.

These experts, these grieving and furious family members, were united only by the fact that this story had to be told. Republicans, Independents, and Democrats could agree on just one thing: the cold hard facts about Rudy's terrible handling of 9/11 and the aftermath.

We need your help. We don't have ad budgets, so like all our videos, we are counting on you to spread these to your email list, to your local paper, to blogs, to websites. We are fortunate that today we have the new technology and ability to reach millions, but it only happens when you send the video with notes to as many people as possible.

Tim Grieve:

The job numbers for August were released this morning, and they show that the economy actually lost 4,000 jobs last month.

It's the first time in four years that the economy has actually lost jobs in a month, and that wasn't the only bad news. The 92,000 jobs the economy supposedly gained in July? The Labor Department has just revised that number down to 68,000. And the 126,000 jobs the economy was thought to have added in June? Now the Labor Department says the real number was just 69,000.

The biggest losers: August saw the loss of 46,000 manufacturing jobs and 22,000 construction jobs.

Look! Over there -- Osama! 9/11!

The White House said that any new video message from bin Laden would only underscore the threat the United States and other nations face from extremists.

Yawn.

I'm sorry... were you talking to me?

Bin Laden's beard appears to have been dyed, a popular practice among Arab leaders, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors terror messages.

Oh, crap! Why didn't you say so in the first place? Now you've got my attention!

"I think it works for their (al-Qaida's) benefit that he looks young, he looks healthy," Katz said.

Those crafty bastards!

In other news, Paul McCartney was spotted canoodling with Elle McPherson.

Geekesque calls on Sen. Obama to take the lead role in ending the occupation of Iraq:

There was a time for Congress to be the steering wheel of our Iraq policy. Now, someone needs to slam on the brakes.

That person should, by all rights, be you. You alone of any major candidate running in either party had the prescience and honesty to oppose invading Iraq. You understood the disaster that would unfold. This gives you credibility--as well as intellectual and moral authority-- that no one else on the national stage possesses.
[...]
Senator, you're either moving forward or you're moving backwards. Relative to other candidates, you're moving backwards on Iraq. How on earth is it even remotely possible that Hillary Clinton, a clinical study in opportunism when it comes to Iraq, is perceived amongst primary voters as essentially indistinguishable from you?

Do the right thing and the smart thing. For your nation, your party, and yourself. Step forward, demand the damn ball, and be prepared to accept the consequences one way or another. The voters will not punish you for speaking out against a tragical farce like our so-called Iraq debate.

Playing it safe will result in Bush winning and Hillary getting the nomination. Playing it safe is the ultimate form of living dangerously.

Sometimes you just have to step out of line.

by Mark Adams

September 6, 2007 - Clinton Opens Lead Over Giuliani As Dems Surge In Ohio, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Little Unity Among Republicans

That's their headline, but look underneath the hood and Edwards shines. He enjoys the highest favorability ratings 54%, and is within a tick of Obama for low negatives, 26%/25%.

Strange results analyzed below the fold...
X-Posted at KOS

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

General Petraeus is going to give his September report next week. And/But whether or not you believe that the violence is down in Iraq (it's not), whether or not you can even tell me how many benchmarks there are, let alone name a single benchmark or quote the ones that have (or have not) been missed, the single most important fact about the Iraq occupation is not in dispute:

Political reconciliation is nil. Iraq has no functional government -- not even a bad one. It doesn't exist. It has no ability to govern or ensure the safety and security of the Iraqi people. And nothing we do will change that.

We're just marking time, counting down the days until this president (who will not take marching order from al Qaeda) leaves office. Then we'll tote up with the final number of American and Iraqi war deaths so we can plug it into the history books.

And if this is true (and it most surely is), have the lives of our fighting men and women been wasted?

Last spring, Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain both said yes, but quickly revised their comments when faced with an uproar of agonized denial. But there's a difference between honoring our fighting men and women and recognizing that they died in vain.

"Vain" is the root word of "vanity" and dying in vain means you died because of vanity -- the vanity of men like President Bush and General Petraeus. We can, we must, honor the dead while utterly rejecting the vanity for which they died.

President Lincoln, a real wartime president, knew the difference and his words give meaning to us even today -- if we'll listen:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Our continued presence in Iraq will not produce such a government; it will be for the Iraqi people to do that. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

But it's still not too late, after the occupation ends and our troops come home, for the people of the United States of America experience a new birth of freedom. And if that happens (and I hope to God it does) then "these dead will not have died in vain."

Here are the ten posts that were most frequently read by visitors in August, 2007:

1. Holy Crap! Have You Seen Kucinich's Wife?!
   
2. Here's the upside to having a CAT scan on your birthday
   
3. Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts
   
4. What does leadership mean?
   
5. Marbury vs. Madison
   
6. Is POTUS hiding a serious heart condition from the public?
   
7. Why Democrats Should Have Voted Against FISA Bill
   
8. Paranoia Strikes Deep (Mark Adams)
   
9. Bush-Cheney Escape War Crimes Prosecution
   
10. Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back Into The Water...

As I've mentioned before, I've been using Google Reader to keep up with the blogs I read. They have a neat feature called "Trends" that tracks my reading habits. Accordingly, here are the blogs from whom I read the greatest number of posts (during August, 2007):

1. The Huffington Post
   
2. Crooks and Liars
   
3. Think Progress
   
4. Boing Boing
   
5. Daily Kos
   
6. Techmeme
   
7. The Blog
   
8. Dependable Renegade
   
9. Firedoglake
   
10. AMERICAblog

Now, some blogs do not post anywhere near the volume that these blogs do. Accordingly, the following blogs are ranked by the percentage of their new posts that I've read:

1. Dispassionate Liberal
   
2. Dependable Renegade
   
3. James Wolcott
   
4. -THE CUNNING REALIST-
   
5. The Queen of All Evil
   
6. TPM Election Central
   
7. Pollster
   
8. Likelihood of Success
   
9. TIME: Swampland
   
10. Digital Inspiration

Anyway, there you are: a different kind of blogroll -- one that actually presents some meaningful information...about me.

At a recent debate in Iowa, Rudy Giuliani was asked, “In 30 seconds, what is a defining mistake of your life and why?” He made a joke about how he couldn’t possibly list all his mistakes in 30 seconds. So these guys gave it a try.

by Mark Adams

The President and his former Iraq Viceroy are at odds about a trifling detail.  Did Paul Bremer have White House approval to include disbanding the entire Iraqi Army as part of his plan for wide-spread de-Baathification -- the one institution that might have been relied upon to provide employment and enforce stability throughout the war-torn country?  This decision is without a doubt one of the most controversial of the entire war, a true turning point..

The NY Times recounts the back and forth between Bremer and Bush, via Rumsfeld, where Bremer drafted a letter on May 20, 2003, sends it on the 22nd and heard back from Bush himself on the 23rd with a "heckuvajob" letter that did not mention the plan.

One get's the impression that the "C" student CEO PrezNitWit really didn't read Bremer's letter, or at least appreciate it's import.  That's more than understandable.  There was a lot on his plate right then, less than three weeks after his infamous "Mission Accomplished" declaration -- he probably believed his own press clippings, that the hard part was over. 

President Photo-Op certainly had another kind of awareness pressing in on him at that time. For instance, we're still going 'round and 'round about the White House's ability to spy on us, so in an Orwellian turn of phrase ...

DARPA's Congressional report announces that the controversial Total Information Awareness program will be known as the Terrorist Information Awareness program from now on, to emphasize that its purpose is to compile data on terrorists, and not to compile dossiers on US citizens. -- May 20, 2003

The very day Bremer gave the order dissolving what had been the world's third largest land army was a uniquely busy day for His PrezNitNess:

Dept SecDef Paul Wolfowitz was getting "grilled" on Capital Hill about the situation in Iraq ...

Wolfowitz tells Congress, “One of the keys to getting Iraq up and running as a country is to restore its primary source of revenue: its oil infrastructure.

That was also same day that the UN officially turned the country over to Bremer's CPA and Bush signs Executive Order No. 13303, granting immunity to oil companies working in Iraq to protect the UN's Iraq Development Fund's ability to pay for all of this so -- you don't have to.

General Tommy Franks evidently thought this whirlwind of a day would be a convenient time to announce his retirement as well.

BUT, what was really on the minds of the media, and public at large the third week of May, 2003?  What do you think the President was doing May 21, 2003, and talking about on the 22nd when all this went down? 

What was really important, taking precedence over supervising the future of the Middle East and the legacy we will be leaving our grandchildren?  Was George Bush burning the midnight oil, preparing for this monumental day in history?

In a very, very close vote, Ruben Studdard beat out Clay Aiken to become the next American Idol.

Probably not. The Bushes are "Idol's First Fans," after all

Gosh, it's only 6:23 am and I already have a quote for the day:

"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. Then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.

UPDATE: Dang, Ramone! It's 8:23 pm and I found a better quote, from Al Gore, no less:

I fear that I’m losing my objectivity where President Bush and Cheney are concerned. Not much surprises me anymore. I have a lot of friends who share the following problem with me: Our sense of outrage is so saturated that when a new outrage occurs, we have to download some existing outrage into an external hard drive in order to make room for a new outrage.

Now that's funny.

(HT to senate2008guru)

Robert Draper's new book about George W. Bush, Dead Certain, is set to be released next week. Draper's family is friendly with the Bushes (his grandfather, Leon Jaworski, was buddies with George H.W. Bush). So I guess you shouldn't expect any surprises. One thing for sure -- the title says it all. Jim Rutenberg of the Post has it:

Mr. Bush said he believed that Mr. Hussein did not take his threats of war seriously, suggesting that the United Nations emboldened him by failing to follow up on an initial resolution demanding that Iraq disarm. He had sought a second measure containing an ultimatum that failure to comply would result in war.

“One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?” Mr. Bush said. “I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.”

That's a bizarre view of what happened. The second resolution failed because the our allies were not convinced that Saddam had WMD; so, in short, Bush's diplomacy failed...to convince our allies to back us. Bush was "dead certain" and could not -- still can't -- understand why they wouldn't.

So, how does Bush feel about, you know, how it all turned out?

“I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that.”

“Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Draper, by way of saying he sought to avoid it. “This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”
[...]
In response to Mr. Draper’s observance that Mr. Bush had nobody’s “shoulder to cry on,” the president said: “Of course I do, I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot.” In what Mr. Draper interpreted as a reference to war casualties, Mr. Bush added, “I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count as president.”

More self-pity.

Mr. Bush conveyed a level of sanguinity with his unpopularity. Mr. Draper recalled that in their last meeting, in May, Mr. Bush pointed outside to his dog, Barney, and said, “That guy who said if you want a friend in Washington get a dog, knew what he was talking about.”

"That guy" was Harry S. Truman. Hey -- I thought Bush was just like him? How come he can't mention his name?

He otherwise addressed his unpopularity as a tactical issue. For instance, in May he said that this fall it would be up to General Petraeus to convince the public that the Iraq strategy is working.

“I’ve been here too long,” Mr. Bush said, according to Mr. Draper. “Every time I start painting a rosy picture, it gets criticized and then it doesn’t make it on the news.”

There he goes again with the self-pity.

But he said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decision to pursue a strategy in which he believed. “I made a decision to lead,” he said, “One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?”

Um, no.

Seriously folks, Bush thinks he's unpopular simply because he "made a decision to lead?" Wow -- no discussion about right and wrong? He lead us all right -- off the cliff.

But he was dead certain the whole way down.