Al Gore on global warming and the Live Earth concerts

In Sunday's NYT. Read More......

Open thread

Life goes on. Read More......

Glasgow police press conf

Two men, from the vehicle, were arrested at the scene. One is in critical condition. The police believe that the incident at Glasgow is linked to the incidents in London, and it is being treated as a terrorist attack. Read More......

Why is Tony Snow encouraging attacks on small airports in the US?

Considering the attack on a smaller airport today in Glasgow, I am a loss to understand why Tony Snow would make such a careless statement in response to the situation.

President Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, said some airports in the United States would tighten security in response to the events in Britain but the terror alert status would not change.

"The most you're going to see right now is some inconvenience — some increased inconvenience of airline passengers, more likely at large airports than small," Snow said.

Didn't some of the 9/11 attackers start their day at a small airport in Maine? There was no reason to provide such information in response to Glasgow and I believe Snow has created a very dangerous situation for Americans with his poorly worded response today. Even his dismissive "increased inconvenience" remark shows just how the White House lacks seriousness about fighting terror and protecting Americans. Read More......

Lateset on the Glasgow explosion

Anyone hearing anything of interest? Any Brits out there receiving any interesting local news on this? More from AP.

CNN says authorities reportedly are calling this a terrorist incident. Read More......

Possible terrorist attack at Glasgow, Scotland airport

From AP. It could be a coincidence, i.e., just an accident, but it's pretty odd timing. Read More......

So, who bought an iPhone?

Come on, fess up. Read More......

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The editorial cartoonists had a field day with Dick Cheney this week. They capture brilliantly many of the evil, nefarious activities of the creepy Veep. Bob Geiger has the compilation.

This week's poem is "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning. It's quite a poem.

Okay. It's Saturday. I'm off for a run -- although my running partner is late as usual. Read More......

China still trying to figure out international PR

China has done an amazing job of selling to the world though their efforts at managing public relations when dealing with a crisis have been lacking, still stuck in the old communist days of the past when you didn't need to justify anything to anyone. Let's just say "I know it's laced with banned chemicals but business is business" might not be a winning strategy with the rest of the world. Consumers elsewhere do have a voice that is eventually heard.

The FDA and US import regulators might be coming around with their own previously pathetic strategy of being a punching bag and accepting any old box of rubbish. When importing billions of dollars worth of goods, this does provide leverage with demanding quality so maybe, just maybe, they are starting to understand that point. Now if we can see progress from import companies and bottom line focused big business start to care about quality, we'll be rolling. Read More......

Saturday morning in Paris, Patrick Blanc

A few weeks ago I posted some old adverts from a Metro station that is in the process of being renovated, giving a glimpse into what was happening in 1959. Fast-forwarding to 2007, I absolutely love the Vertical Gardens by Patrick Blanc, a modern French artist who has pioneered living walls. As a garden junky who appreciates green in the city, I'm even more impressed. If anyone is heading over this way you can see the BHV Homme site just behind the main store, a block behind rue de Rivoli on the edge of the Marais. Blanc also is responsible for the eye pleasing outside of Quai Branly, the indigenous art museum in the 7th. Read More......

It's Friday. That means another top official at the Justice Department quit

Rachel Brand is the seventh top official to resign from the Bush administration's scandal-ridden Department of Justice. Unfortunately, none of those resignations have been Alberto Gonzales. Yet. Read More......

Open thread

The art of the open thread is under appreciated. Read More......

Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 6/29/07

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

So Ann Coulter and her Adam's Apple were let off their leash this past week and snarled and whined much like a canine forced to go on vactation with Mitt Romney.

Showing up in a hand-me-down cocktail dress that is sold with a free pregnancy test, the mustachioed minx arrived on Hardball to bring her special brand of death-threat humor to a tv near you (where was Rupert M. with the first invite? Is Fox starting to snooze when it comes to booking their base?).

Now I know it was as much fun for all of us as it was for you, but just remember Ann, if we had the universal healthcare you deride you would likely get some of the help you so desperately need. We can also help you get legal advice when liberals act so "mean to you" and, you know, respond to your hatred. Sadly, however, medical science cannot yet provide a conscience or the ability to convince a man to stay with you past sunrise. Good luck on that stuff, though.

Here are some of the other fun nuggets I learned this week:

1) Rudy Giuliani understood the terrorist threat when Bill Clinton didn't after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That is why he never mentioned terrorism. Didn't know who Osama bin Laden was. And Put the counterrorism center in the only place that had actually been attacked: The freakin WORLD TRADE CENTER.

Rudy do you really want to run on this? You're to counterterrorism what Lindsay Lohan is to driving or Dick Cheney is to eating vegetables. There is a reason the firemen hate you, you jackass. Let me put this in a way a blunt man like you can understand. Your negligence in not replacing faulty radios GOT THEM KILLED. You get that, America's "cousin-kissing, serial-marrying, Bernie-Kerik-promoting, Oxycontin-pushing" Mayor?

2) New England Republicans just suck something awful. Hey Sunununununu, you can jam every phone in the Northern Hemisphere this time and you're still going to get your ass handed to you. 29% support in the polls? 1% of Democrats voting for you (although, in fairness, with the margin of error, it could be like -3%).

And Susan Collins, how does it feel to have Joe Lieberman raise money for you--when he's not watching protesters almost die in his office--and have progressive groups outraise you to give to a real leader in Rep. Tom Allen? It's going to be really, really lonely--like Bill O'Reilly when the corner falafel stand is closed lonely--for the New England Republican caucus soon (Olympia and Judd, table for two!).

2) My God, did Norm Coleman smoke an unbelievable amount of pot in college. I think Jeff Spicoli was based on him. Now, of course he is very anti-drug. Even though he put so much THC in his system that he was a walking hemp farm at one point. You want pictures? You've got it.

Well that's it for our fun trip through GOP dementia this week. Tune in next week, when Senators Jim DeMint and David Vitter will have probably erected a wall on the Senate floor to separate themselves from Senators Salazar and Martinez. Read More......

Confirmed: Coulter is a leader of the conservative movement in America

Greg Sargent points us to confirmation from right wing big shot Brent Bozell that, in fact, Ann Coulter really is one of the leaders of their movement. On behalf of right wing nuts everywhere, Bozell literally called Coulter one of "our leaders."

Yes, Coulter is a leader of the conservative movement in America. A poster child, so to speak. We're just surprised they admit it. Coulter, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Tom DeLay, Rush -- that's some crowd of leaders you got there, right wing. Read More......

Froomkin: Bush and his crowd makes a lot of boastful predictions, but "their confidence is meaningless" and they're wrong

Froomkin has a typically astute column today titled, Put A Fork in Him. The "him" in question is, of course, George W. Bush. There is one particularly salient section about the Bush team's swagger and confidence -- and how that is usually off-base and just plain wrong. In fact, when team Bush does make a prediction, they're almost always puffery backed up by nothing real. Yet, time after time, the punditry has fallen for it.

Froomkin makes it real by tying Bush's patterns for inaccurate predictions to his spin on Iraq. If George Bush is wrong about everything, why should we believe anything he says will happen in the disastrous war he started? We shouldn't:

Bush and Vice President Cheney's optimistic predictions about the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular have proved to be almost completely and consistently wrong for years now. ("Last throes," anyone?)

Before the 2006 election, White House political guru Karl Rove was supremely self-assured in his public predictions of Republican victory.

White House spokesman Tony Snow recently assured the press corps that Bush had enough votes in the Senate on the immigration bill. "I'll see you at the bill signing," Bush himself told a skeptical journalist on June 11.

Bush and his staff's credibility regarding statements of "fact" is a frequent subject of debate. But their track record on predictions is something else entirely. The evidence is pretty overwhelming that those predictions are unreliable.

I mention this because Bush's core argument against a troop drawdown in Iraq -- something supported by a large majority of Americans -- is basically a prediction. As he put it again yesterday: "If we withdraw before the Iraqi government can defend itself, we would yield the future of Iraq to terrorists like al Qaeda -- and we would give a green light to extremists all throughout a troubled region. The consequences for America and the Middle East would be disastrous."

The consequences for America and the Middle East have already been disastrous because Bush was wrong. Based on Bush's track record, these latest predictions on Iraq aren't going to be accurate either. Read More......

Mitt Romney is sadistic

In response to the Boston Globe article about Romney strapping his pet dog's crate to the roof of his car during a twelve hour drive, his comments were quite revealing. Are all of those plastic smiles hiding something much more sadistic and twisted?

But on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania Thursday, Romney defended his chosen mode of transportation for the family dog.

“He scrambled up there every time we went on trips, got in all by himself and enjoyed it,” Romney said of the Irish Setter.

Romney then goes on to make the story about PETA and it's not. This is about a very strange person who struggles with human emotions. Is the ick-factor ever supposed to go away with this guy, because he's creepy? Read More......

McClatchy dissects the failed Bush presidency

Atrios said we should bookmark the new McClatchy webpage and I did as instructed. Good thing. There's a scathing - and accurate -- article about the failed Bush presidency. It keeps getting worse for him -- and, unfortunately, for the country he leads:

The Senate's rejection Thursday of President Bush's immigration plan was the latest in a series of embarrassments that have exposed Bush's political weakness and shaken his hold on power.

The president slipped out of town for a long weekend in Maine before the Senate delivered the final blow to his immigration bill, but it wasn't the only setback that might put a damper on his seaside getaway with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the space of a single short week, Bush was hit with more Republican defections on Iraq, more bad news from the battlefield, more subpoenas from a hostile Congress, a new assault on his signature education plan and embarrassing disclosures about his vice president.

He also found himself in a fight over executive privilege that begs comparisons to Richard Nixon's legal battles during the Watergate scandal.

"It's the incredible shrinking presidency. He's lost battles in the courts. He's lost battles in Iraq. He's lost battles on Capitol Hill," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

Read More......

Car bomb in London: thus far, more questions than answers

The discovery of a car bomb in London is awful. What can one say? The fact that the U.S. has avoided another domestic attack since 2001, especially considering our misguided homeland security and foreign policy efforts since then, borders on the miraculous.

Sometimes these things are foiled by good police work, sometimes by informants, and sometimes, as appears the case here, by dumb luck and/or the incompetence of the enemy. The car, laden with gasoline, nails, and gas canisters, was found in the West End, an entertainment district of central London, at 2 a.m. According to the police statement, they were "called to reports of a suspicious vehicle." They disarmed ("made safe") the device, cordoned off the area, and began an investigation.

Information is still coming in, of course, but the most interesting element of the story is this: "Sky News quoted an eyewitness as saying the car had been driven erratically before it collided with garbage bins and the driver ran off." If true, this could mean one of several things. It could simply be a grossly unprofessional operation, in which the driver attracted attention (driving erratically), risked accidental detonation (by crashing into the garbage), and then abandoned the operation by running away. So perhaps a botched effort at a traditional car bombing, thankfully ruined by an idiotic perpetrator.

Or, another possibility: this sounds a lot like the behavior sometimes seen in the pre-detonation driving of suicide car attacks (often referred to as SVBIED, for Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device). Perhaps that was the plan, with the driver changing his mind at the last minute. Or it could be something else entirely. The eyewitness report is unconfirmed, and trying to extrapolate from there is absolutely speculative, so I'm very curious to see the results of the investigation.

England has a massive domestic video surveillance system, and the CCTV footage should shed some light on the details. Despite how the Bush administration has perverted and politicized efforts against terrorism, it obviously remains a threat -- certainly even more so because of the continuing debacle in Iraq. Hopefully more answers are forthcoming.

UPDATE: John emails me to note that CNN now reports police went to the club when an ambulance crew, there for an (apparently unrelated) injury, "noticed a smoke-filled car" and alerted authorities. If true, that could indicate an attempt to create a larger crowd for an attack . . . or just dumb luck that somebody saw the car before it detonated. Obviously conflicting reports indicate different possibilities . . . developing, as they say. Read More......

Bush seeks to delay decisions on Iraq. Five more soldiers killed

The reality:

Insurgents launched a deadly coordinated attack on an American combat patrol, detonating a roadside bomb, then firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades at the soldiers, the U.S. military said Friday. Five troops were killed.

As the death toll continues to grow, George Bush went to the Naval College yesterday seeking a friendly audience to spin his view of progress in Iraq. In fact, Bush is desperate to keep Republicans, who have enabled the Iraq disaster, on his side. Also, in typical fashion, the Bush administration is pushing back its own September deadline for progress:

White House officials had been hoping that they could hold together their party coalition on the war through that debate. The increasing concern from Republicans has caused them new anxiety.

Mr. Warner said that July 15, when a Congressionally mandated, preliminary report on the progress in Iraq is due, would be pivotal. The White House has been hoping for far more time, even backing away from its earlier statements that September would be a fair deadline to start judging the results of the new war plan.

The fair deadline for judging Bush's war is long past. Congress is going to have to act because Bush is never going to relent or accept his failure. Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

Yep, the weekend is almost here. For the most part, Congress has left town for the Fourth of July recess. Although Think Progress reports we'll hear about plans to end the Iraq war from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi later today. That could make July very interesting on Capitol Hill.

Stay tuned and start threading. Read More......

Explosive device found in central London

Despite police-state programs launched by Blair that are destroying the future of democracy in the UK, this still happened. No news yet about who might be responsible for this sickening attempt to kill or maim. Read More......

Gordon Brown moves out of Blair shadow

After ten years of spin and triangulation, the Gordon Brown era is starting off on a much different note. Though he is still holding firm on Iraq, for now, he is shaking things up with a new team who are less likely to be lapdogs for Bush and the neocons including one new minister who has previously sparred with former US ambassador John Bolton as well as the Poodle. Overall, a lot of new faces without the stench of Blair and his failures in foreign policy and submission to the Bush agenda. Read More......

Administration dishes out another bloated no-bid contract

I know the GOP likes to think of themselves as fiscal conservatives but with every opportunity to actually connect actions to words since 2000, they've failed miserably and have proven themselves to be frauds. Management of just about every significant project (Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, DHS) has been chaotic with predictable and poor results. Considering the lack of success in the business world that Bush had, this comes as no surprise.

Besides the infamous no-bid contracts for Halliburton that have been shown to be lucrative to the company while less so for US taxpayers who have been overcharged, DHS has also joined in the act. Mission-creep has ballooned a project with Booz Allen, the pricey consulting organization, from $2m up to a shocking $124m in just a few short years. The obvious lack of management skills or financial restraint strikes again. Read More......

Hillary spokesman: "We do expect Senator Obama to significantly outraise us this quarter."

The Obama fundraising juggernaut continues. Read More......

The GOP Senate Obstructionists

Republican Senators have been on a filibuster frenzy this year. This video captures them in action:
Read More......

Democratic Presidential Forum Open Thread

Tonight's "All American Presidential Forum" is being televised on PBS and webcast here. It's taking place at Howard University here in DC. Tonight's debate is inspired by The Covenant with Black America.

In addition, Pam Spaulding is live blogging from the event. She's got a post up about the preliminary events.

Great line from Richardson "Sometimes when I talk about education and this is the first time we have talked about it in any debate, the first thing you hear is 'how are you going to pay for it?' Nobody asks how we're going to pay for the war."

It's harder to blog the Democratic debates. By and large, I agree with all of them. They're talking about solving real problems. And, this debate is about substance. A discussion about education -- imagine that.

Gravel is being Gravel, of course.

Pam Spaulding is doing a great job of providing snapshots of the answers. I keep checking her post because she's on the scene in real time -- and I'm behind. Also, can't wait to see how the Republicans will answer the AIDS questions since they are the party of no condoms and abstinence only. Read More......

Meet 40 Democratic gay-bashers

The gay-bashers won the vote on the Goode amendment by only 6 votes (find entire vote count here). There is no way the Democrats couldn't have picked up some of these votes, had they wanted to. Russ Carnahan voted with the gay-bashers? And Obey and Spratt? Those two are in leadership. Several new members who were helped by the progressive blogs also voted to gay-bash: Boyda; Space; Carney; Ellsworth; and Donnelly.

Here's the entire list of Democratic gay-bashers. Feel free to write and call their offices and let them have it (find their contact info here). This is not why we voted for a Democratic congress.

Barrow
Berry
Bordallo
Boren
Boucher
Boyda (KS)
Carnahan
Carney
Costello
Cramer
Cuellar
Davis (AL)
Davis, Lincoln
Donnelly
Ellsworth
Etheridge
Faleomavaega
Gordon
Herseth Sandlin
Lampson
Lipinski
Mahoney (FL)
Marshall
Matheson
McIntyre
Melancon
Norton
Obey
Peterson (MN)
Rahall
Ross
Ruppersberger
Salazar
Scott (GA)
Shuler
Skelton
Space
Spratt
Tanner
Taylor Read More......

US House passes gay bashing amendment

By a vote of 224 - 200, the U.S. House just adopted the Samuel David Cheney gay-bashing amendment today. The Bush/Cheney administration announced that it would veto the DC appropriations bill if it did not include an amendment banning the use of federal funds for D.C.'s partner registry law (something that has never happened anyway). Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA, where else?), who is famous for challenging newly-elected Muslim-American Rep. Keith Ellison's use of the Koran at his swearing in, took up the cause for Bush and the rightwingers. 40 Democrats voted with the gay-bashing GOP majority. 12 Republicans voted the right way. So while a number of Democrats helped the gay-bashers, it was still the Republicans who promoted this hate and who got it passed. The GOP tried to make this a debate about gay marriage, which it wasn't. It was about more mundane and human things like letting partners make hospital visits when one is having a baby, as the vice president's lesbian daughter Mary Cheney recently did. Then again, if we follow the GOP logic, that this was a vote on gay marriage, then the pro-marriage-equality forces got 200 votes today, including a number of Republicans. And that's more than any federal gay-marriage vote to date.

We look forward to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid killing this amendment in conference. Read More......

Justice Breyer dissects Roberts and Alito

Read More......

Maine GOP Senator Susan Collins says Iraq isn't her top concern

Yeah, she has so many other things to worry about, like not getting re-elected next year because she's so conservative, such a Bush apologist, and so out of touch. Read More......

Bush tells Iraqis to act more like Israel

So our secret plan for democratizing Arab countries is to remake them in the image of their mortal enemy, Israel? That's gonna go over well. Read More......

House to vote on Samuel David Cheney gay-bashing amendment today

Republican Congressman Virgil Goode is going to be offering an amendment in the US House today bashing Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary Cheney, her lesbian partner, Heather Poe, their newborn child, Samuel David Cheney, and all gay families who visit the District of Columbia (Mary and Heather had their baby in a DC hospital a few weeks ago). You see, the Republicans don't think Samuel David should be allowed to have Mary and Heather both visit him if he ever ends up in the hospital. George Bush, who in 2004 had no problem with Samuel David's parents having the right to see him in the hospital, now thinks that it's such an egregious crime, he's going to veto any DC Appropriations bill that doesn't take a swipe at Samuel David and his two mommies.

Will Dick Cheney and Lynne Cheney speak up and defend their flesh and blood, or will they leave their own grandchild behind?

Read More......

Watch Ann Coulter lose it

Click To Play

"I've never seen people avoid ideas as much in such an obvious way," says the woman who wears the same slinky black dress to every interview and every speech, presumably to show off her legs and her cleavage (though it's possible she's simply doing an extended walk of shame from a decade-long one-night stand), and who every interview makes some outrageous comment, like wishing that John Edwards were assassinated or mocking the death of his teenage son in a car crash, in order to get attention. Yes, Ann Coulter never tries to avoid ideas.

She is a walking caricature of herself. But what's most telling is how thin-skinned she is (which is a lesson that everyone should take to heart - responding to Coulter doesn't help her cause, it drives her crazy AND she is a walking embarrassment to the GOP and the conservative cause). Listen to the tape. She's on the verge of losing it, even though she's hardly being challenged at all. She walks around calling people "fags," mocking their dead children, wishing that they were murdered, then when people respond by saying "uh, you're kind of mean," Ann flips out over the level of venom that's directed against her.

The lady is a tramp.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent notes that the article that Ann cites as "one of the greatest columns ever written" is the one in which she mocks the death of John Edwards' son. Real class act. Read More......

Bush immigration bill dies in Senate

Oh well, the Republicans couldn't muster enough votes for George Bush's bill. Now they know how it feels when the GOP filibusters everything - they even filibuster themselves. Read More......

Bush-appointed judge who authored Starr Report accused of lying to Congress

You may recall Brett Kavanaugh. As an aide to Ken Starr, he was the principal author of the Starr report, which led the GOP Congress to impeach President Clinton for allegedly lying about sex in a civil deposition in a lawsuit that was dismissed for lack of merit. Kavanaugh went on to serve as a lawyer for Bush in the White House. Bush nominated him for a lifetime appointment to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit - the most important and influential court in America after the US Supreme Court - and the Senate confirmed him. In the confirmation hearing, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked Kavanaugh if he'd played any role in the legal analysis and debate over enemy combatants. Kavanaugh categorically denied it. Now there are reports that Kavanaugh played a key role. Durbin is writing him to ask him to clear it up.

"By testifying under oath that you were not involved in this issue, it appears that you misled me, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the nation," Durbin wrote Kavanaugh, who was confirmed by the Senate last year on a vote of 57-36 for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

But Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) ought to initiate impeachment. Steven Griles was sentenced to 10 months in prison yesterday for lying to Congress - it's a crime. Brett Kavanaugh should be his cellmate, not a judge on the 2nd most powerful court in America. Read More......

NBC's David Gregory thinks we just need to "strip away" Ann Coulter's inflammatory rhetoric to listen to her points

Not kidding. According to NBC's David Gregory we're all missing the very important points that Ann Coulter makes because we get caught up in her hate speech. He just said to Elizabeth Edwards "if you strip away some of the inflammatory rhetoric against your husband and other Democrats, the point she's trying to make about your husband, Senator Edwards, running for the White House is in effect that he's disingenuous..."

Okay, so much wrong with the way Gregory defends Coulter. Her hateful, inflammatory rhetoric can't be stripped away -- and let's be honest, that's why NBC and ABC put her on their t.v. shows. In typical fashion, he also tries to paint everyone with the same kind of hate speech. So, instead of putting Coulter on, NBC now has one of their top reporters defending her approach. Because, you know, if you strip away the fact that Coulter advocated the assassination of a leading presidential candidate, and mocked his dead son, there's really such an important message buried inside.

Huh? Says so much.

Elizabeth Edwards handled it well, pretty much laughing at him -- and made the key point -- this is not about stripping away hateful rhetoric. The hate speech is the issue:

Click To Play

The traditional media has created Ann Coulter. They feed the beast. They enable her and her hate speech. And, we're just all really stupid because we think the hate rhetoric matters. Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Late start...Lots going on. What do we need to know? Read More......

House Democrats moving on improving gas mileage

Whether the GOP, Cheney, Bush, Inhofe or John Dingell like it or not, this is going to happen. Americans are more interested in what's in the best interest of the country and the future of our world and not just what Detroit and Big Oil wants. Read More......

US global image continues to stay low

Maybe if Bush speaks sloooooowwwweeeeerrrr and loooouuuuddddeeeerrrr, they might understand, no? Don't be surprised if that's what the right actually thinks about their message. No surprises here.

The US comes in for sharp criticism. "Global distrust of American leadership is reflected in increasing disapproval of the cornerstones of US foreign policy," the survey says. "Not only is there worldwide support for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq but there is also considerable opposition to US and Nato operations in Afghanistan ... The US image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia and continues to decline among the publics of America's oldest allies."

Nine per cent of Turks, 13% of Palestinians and 15% of Pakistanis take a favourable view of the US. In Germany, the figure is 30%, in France 39% and in Britain 51% - all down on previous surveys. Only in Israel, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya do majorities believe US forces should stay in Iraq.

The good news in this otherwise predictable but still sad study is that there is a world leader who even even less trusted, so at least Bush has that going for him. Break out the Champagne, errr, the non-alcoholic beer, Putin is worse!

Rising powers such as China and Russia get mixed reviews. Russia's Vladimir Putin scores worse than George Bush in terms of confidence that he will "do the right thing" in world affairs - 30% believe he will, against 45% for Mr Bush.

Read More......

Brazil puts science ahead of religion

While Congress shies away from a battle with Bush to provide $1 billion for religious theory to fight AIDS, Brazil builds a pharmaceutical factory in one of the harder hit countries of Africa so they can provide the necessary medicine locally. While the GOP continues their efforts to restrict choice in America, Brazil announces a plan to provide morning after pills for the poor, in addition to the existing program to distribute condoms for almost nothing.

It's an interesting sign of the times to see a developing nation be so much more progressive than the so-called world superpower. In no way am I knocking Brazil which is a great country with so many qualities, but in another time it would have been the US would have been out in front with combating serious issues like this. Our leaders kowtow to the religious right, fearing their wrath and leaders in Brazil decide to be leaders themselves, as it should be in a modern democracy. Read More......

Coulter's hate has been a financial windfall for John Edwards

The woman should be in prison. Has the Secret Service investigated Coulter yet for wishing John Edwards assassinated? Oh that's right, George Bush's Secret Service only investigates liberals, while conservative man-whores are given free rein of the White House without even getting the basic background checks required of other frequent White House visitors. Why should we expect the Secret Service to investigate death threats against a Democratic presidential candidate? That would require them to do their job in an impartial manner. Just like they didn't care when Pat Robertson suggested that terrorists nuke the State Department. It's not their job to care, it's their job to protect Republicans. More from AP. Read More......

White House trying to quell outright revolt by GOP in House and Senate over Iraq

From AP:

President Bush is sending his top aide on national security affairs to Capitol Hill on Thursday to confront what has become a tough crowd on the Iraq war.

A majority of senators believe troops should start coming home within the next few months. A new House investigation concluded this week that the Iraqis have little control over an ailing security force. And House Republicans are calling to revive the independent Iraq Study Group to give the nation options.

Read More......

Open thread

Well, I've just learned that you can type at pretty much 100% capacity without using your left thumb. Joe and I just spent the afternoon at the emergency room. I had a little mishap with the new Cuisinart, a wad of whole wheat dough, and my left thumb (apparently, the blades are quite sharp - who knew?). It was one of those moments where you freeze in time for like a quarter of a second and think "I did not just do that." 3 hours later, 2 of which Joe was sitting alone in the waiting room, my thumb is all wrapped up in a nice bandage going down to my wrist (I'll spare you the gory details, as Joe might pass out). Fortunately all is now well, my thumb remains in one piece. And in an odd way, I've continued the family tradition of really klutzy emergency room visits, starting when I was a young kid and thought I could balance on top of a basketball (I couldn't), continuing with my brother who was running around in his superman outfit and tried to fly through the basement screen door (it was locked and he flew through the glass), or the time one of my siblings got hit in the head with a baseball bat (and actually, I think all 3 of those occurred within the same 2 week period, which made the hospital grill my mom quite intensely about just what she was doing to her kids). My friend Ari and I are heading out for some dive Italian food to make the hurt go away.

Of course, the larger question is whether I can now write off my doctor's bill since I'm using the emergency room visit as blog content? Hmm....

PS Joe made me swear I'd note that HIS visit to the emergency room two weeks ago was much more dramatic and traumatic than mine. And actually it was. But I'll let Joe share his own adventures in insurance-land with you in another post. Read More......

PBS hires GOP consultant to give "non-partisan" feedback on Dem presidential debate (and then they don't tell anyone he's a Republican)

Ah that liberal media. Read More......

Religious right leader Bob Jones III on being Mormon

A Larry King transcript from March 3, 2000 has Bob Jones III talking about Mormons:

JONES: Mormonism is pantheistic -- it is a religion of -- well, it doesn't teach the same thing about Jesus Christ that we teach. Mormonism teaches that Jesus Christ...

KING: Came back,

JONES: ... were brothers, that they were spirit children that God and his wife fathered in heaven, and that when there's a Mormon marriage in the temple and so forth and so on, that that couple when they die go to a planet and people it with spirit children, just like God and his wife people heaven, and that Jesus and Lucifer were brothers, and that Lucifer rebelled, and Jesus sided with the father. Therefore, he had -- the Bible teaches very clearly that Jesus Christ is God. He is not a created being, he is God. He is in essence -- he is very God of very God.

I bring this up because anyone who thinks the religious right is going to vote for a Mormon is deluding themselves. These people think Catholics are the anti-Christ. You think they're going to embrace Mormons? Read More......

Senate subpoenas Cheney's office, forcing him to claim executive privelege

But of course, Cheney just said he and his office are not part of the executive branch. But he'll have to change his tune immediately in order to squash the subpoena by claiming executive privelege. And that is why the subpoena was issued right now, to force Cheney to recant his recent claim that he's a new and independent 4th branch of government. Two points for the Dems. Read More......

Where is Susan Collins?

Dick Lugar is speaking up about the Iraq debacle. But where are the supposed "moderate" Republicans? You know them, the folks who got elected in moderate, reasonable parts of the country, like Maine, by pretending to not be the neanderthals that most of the Republican party leadership is nowadays.

And the prime neanderthal-denialist is Maine GOP Senator, Susan Colllins. Collins loves to be second. If there's a trail to blaze, Collins will sit back quietly, quaking in her boots, until other more courageous, "real" moderates like Olympia Snowe stick their necks out first. So now that Lugar has stuck his neck out, where are the other GOP Senators, like Collins, who claim to be concerned about the war? Where is Olympia? Where is John Warner? Where are Sununu and Smith?

I was a Republican, a long time ago. And the "moderates" haven't changed a bit in their temperament since that time. They claim to represent the middle, but all they represent is themselves - that is, when they're not busy hiding. Read More......

Do you love the kid or not?

It's time for Dick and Lynne to prove whether they love their new grandson or not.

Bush is now threatening to veto the DC Appropriations bill because it no longer includes gay-bashing language that the GOP has put in there for years. The language banned the DC government from using federal funds to in any way support domestic partner benefits, civil unions and the like (not that the DC government was using federal funds, but it was a nice chance for the GOP to gay bash anyway). Now that the Democrats have dropped the GOP gay-bashing language from the bill, George Bush is threatening a veto.

First off, has Bush learned nothing from the fact that his vice president has a daughter, Mary Cheney, who is a lesbian, and who just had a child - in DC - with her lesbian partner, Heather Poe? What Bush is saying is that should Heather end up in a hospital in DC, dying, Mary won't be allowed to see her because she's not "family." What Bush is saying is that if Mary and Heather's baby, Samuel David Cheney, ends up in a DC hospital with a serious illness (and forget him if he ends up in Virginia) only one parent (we're not sure which) will be allowed to visit because both clearly aren't the biological parent of their baby. (And it's interesting that Mary and Heather, who live in Virginia, chose to come to DC to have their baby - a city in which they have far more rights as a lesbian couple than they have in Virginia. Yet now those rights are in danger of being taken away by the man Mary helped get elected. Way to go, mom.)

Second, Bush supports civil unions for gay couples. He said so on ABC right before the 2004 elections. From the NYT:

In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of "Good Morning America" on ABC, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so."

So, why is he now going to veto legislation that supports his own policies? Answer: because Bush has nothing left to stand for. As he sinks lower in the polls he can only define himself by saying "no," and by falling back on tried and true Republican cliches: lowering taxes; scaring the public; and bashing gays (and their babies). And if Bush has to say no to Samuel David Cheney, Mary and Heather's baby, in order to appease the bigots at the Family Research Council, then the baby is toast. Hell, the baby is the easiest target (reminds me of an old ad from the Children's Defense Fund (at left)).

George Bush is willing to veto Mary Cheney's baby. And not a word from Dick Cheney or Lynne Cheney about the legislative child abuse Bush is about to inflict on their grandson. It's bad enough Dick and Lynne Cheney sat by for so many years as the GOP (and Dick's own boss) bashed their daughter, but you'd think that the Cheneys would finally come to the defense of their own innocent grandson, Samuel David. The Cheneys have a simple choice. They can side with their own flesh and blood, or they can side with the people who bashed Mary and Heather and their newborn child.

So the question remains, Dick and Lynne, do you love the kid or not?



UPDATE: Pam has more. Read More......

Status quo in Anbar is not "victory"

Rob Farley, who does great work on foreign policy and security issues at both Tapped and LGM, has an excellent analysis of the current situation in Anbar. The idea that some tribes in Anbar are sick of al Qaeda is hardly shocking, and while it's nice that they're not cooperating with foreign fighters, working with Sunni tribes on military operations is hardly an unmitigated win for the U.S. *or* Iraq itself. These are, after all, the same groups that we were fighting before we decided to join up with them. As Rob explains,

The US is currently enrolling in Iraqi police and military units tribesmen who were, ten months ago, part of the insurgency. The loyalty of such individuals can hardly be taken for granted; the tribal elite may decide, six months from now, that they are no longer pleased with the US and shift against us. Even if the tribal elites remain loyal, the alliance poses a larger problem for basic US war aims. The alliance with these tribes serves, necessarily, to strengthen them as political units . . . invariably weaken[ing] the central government. As the tribes are also among the least progressive and least interested in democracy of any Iraqi political constituencies, strengthening them also helps undercut efforts towards democratization.

I would even take it a step further: in addition to the potential for tribal leaders to take the money and run, it's not just that the tribes are illiberal, but there is a very real possibility that they could turn against the Iraqi government. Training and arming the disparate groups against each other in a burgeoning civil war is not a good strategy. NOT a good strategy. Read More......

Lugar's Iraq speech making waves on Capitol Hill and beyond

Senator Dick Lugar's speech on Monday night is making waves. This morning, the Senator appeared on the Today Show (where he had to defend himself against a quote from the brilliant war strategist/FOX News pundit, Fred Barnes).

For the past few months, there has been an expectation that some Republican senator would finally stand up to Bush on his failed Iraq policy. Bush has been leading the GOPers off a political cliff with his failed strategy -- so something had to give. "Everyone" seemed to think it would be John Warner from Virginia. Instead, it was Lugar. And, the ramifications are just beginning.

Lugar's speech finally made the front pages today of the Washington Post and the New York Times. Both articles highlighted the major split between the stalwart, steady reliable Republican from Indiana and George Bush.

The Washington Post

The harsh judgment from one of the Senate's most respected foreign-policy voices was a blow to White House efforts to boost flagging support for its war policy, and opened the door to defections by other Republicans who have supported the administration despite increasing private doubts.

The New York Times:

Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and a steadfast supporter of the president, has conspicuously broken ranks with him on the Iraq war, warning that the United States’ standing in the world could be irreparably eroded if the White House does not change strategy soon.

The questions is whether harsh judgments and conspicuously breaking ranks will have any impact on George Bush. Nothing else has had an impact. Read More......