progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital
Coming back on-line today, I was distressed to see that the Democratic Majority is folding quicker than an origami tiger.
Washington Post: “And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom’s Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush’s policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war’s progress. The first installment of Petraeus’s testimony is scheduled to be delivered before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a fact both the administration and congressional Democrats say is simply a scheduling coincidence.”
Josh Marshall: “It’s like a very sad version of a sixty year old falling for that dingbat head fake ten year olds used to play when I was a kid in elementary school in which Kid A says he wants the football, Kid B says, ‘Fine, but if you take the football, you’re gay.’ And then Kid A stalks off hopelessly bamboozled and unable to parry this paralyzing riddle.”
For reasons that are doubtlessly clearer to him than they are to me, Chairman Bunnypants is speechifying that Vietnam taught us that we shouldn’t pull out of Iraq, at least until January 2009. I guess the reason he’s using Vietnam as a basis of comparison is that many of the die-hard right-wing believe that we should have stayed in Vietnam “until the job was done.” What was the job, and what would it look like when it was done? Who knows. It’s the same questions we’re asking about Iraq. If Cheney has his way we’ll be asking the same questions about Iran.
One rhetorical difference between Vietnam and Iraq is the notion of un-dead Islamo-fascist guerilla warriors traveling to the US and drown us in our swimming pools (or some other primal fear that Gerson copped from Nightmare on Elm Street).
As the Left Coaster asks: “As for Vietnam, if your claim is that they will follow us home if we leave Iraq too early, and are equating that to Vietnam, when exactly did the Viet Cong land in San Francisco?”
Woof, woof! What’s that sound you hear? Why it’s a Bush Dog Democrat playing fetch with his Republican overlord. Open Left has the details.
Speaking of Open Left, co-founder Chris Bowers is going to be at the Dupont Circle Libation Society (also known as the DC chapter of Drinking Liberally) tomorrow night. Maybe he can explain why the worst president evah, always gets his Dem.
[powered by WordPress.]
hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.
95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
We're asking you to put some of the money you plan to give Obama "in escrow" until he demonstrates progressive leadership on the issues we care about, like warrantless wiretapping. [Link]
The report notes that the administration has gone to “unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost” of the wars. [Link]
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen said during his appearance at the National Press Club. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." [Link]
It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration. [Link]
"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be ans [Link]
It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. [Link]
BOULTON: There are those who would say look, lets take Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition and all those things and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom. BUSH: Of course, if you want to slander America. [Link]
In a subsequent e-mail to the employee, Cargol described himself as “a rub-your-belly, grab-your-balls, give-you-a-hug, slap-your-back, pull-your-dick, squeeze-your-hand, cheek-your-face, and pat-your-thigh kind of guy.” [Link]
Democracy Now! Radio and TV News [Link]
Let's take a look at how the Los Angeles Times covered the new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the claims made as part of selling the Iraq war, and compare it to how the editorial page of the Washington Post, by which I mean Fred Hiatt, sees the e [Link]
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" an [Link]
Hertzberg's analysis is noteworthy because he appears to be able to allow several ideas to coexist in his head simultaneously, which quite an achievement these days. [Link]
That night, George Stephanopoulos, who was then a top aide to Mr. Clinton, declared that it was “mathematically impossible for Brown to get the nomination” — the start of a campaign to declare Mr. Clinton the presumed nominee, even as several other [Link]
If Obama is the nominee, Tonay said, McCain will be just fine with her. "In the end, I won't vote for Obama because I don't know who he is, and I don't trust him," she said. [Link]
Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd,&q~ adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. [Link]
Some speculate the Senator Clinton would want the spirit-killing Vice Presidency because she would be willing to wait for two terms so as to be the likely nominee in 2012. I believe that she could well contemplate this scenario. [Link]
A subsequent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that gas prices fell by 3 percent, meaning that only three fifths of the savings from reduced taxes was passed on to consumers. [Link]
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is filing a complaint with the IRS today challenging the conservative group Freedom's Watch status as a non-profit. [Link]
For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth. [Link]
So what's changed? I asked Reich. "I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. [Link]
27 queries. 0.442 seconds