Open thread

AMERICAblog reader Alex noticed that apparently we made the Today Show yesterday during a segment about the surge and how Democrats are saying it's already failed. To quote the Today Show, we're "powerful liberal bloggers." Well, Joe has been working out a lot. That was sweet of them to notice. Read More......

Honoring our troops

Treating our troops as expendable political props, because you're too afraid to admit you made a huge mistake, doesn't honor them - it gets them killed. Read More......

Jerry Falwell's son says America is a Christian nation

From Jonathan Falwell's latest email missive entitled "Recalling America’s Christian Foundation":

It is obvious that there are those who want to ignore, or rewrite, our nation’s Christian heritage.

Oy, who would that be? Read More......

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Limbaugh)

I never thought I'd have to be calling out Barack Obama for race-baiting, but here we are. And he's not race-baiting whites, or Asians, or even Latinos. No, the African-American Senator from Illinois is race-baiting dark-skinned people. (A bit like me race-baiting Mediterraneans.)

I'd heard about this this morning - a memo that the Obama people were shopping around to the press - but didn't get the full story, or the full flavor of the story, until just a few minutes ago. I thought Obama was simply going after Hillary for supporting outsourcing of jobs, or for Hillary being supported by people who are in favor of outsourcing. And sure enough, the Obama memo talks a good deal about outsourcing, though in ways that do seem to skirt the line of racism or at least xenophobia (calling her "HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)") and noting that "Hillary Clinton Accepted Almost $60,000 In Contributions From Employees Of Cisco Systems, Which Laid Off American Workers to Hire Indian 'Techies.'" (I was a bit uncomfortable with the use of the word "Indian" over and over and over again in the memo.) But I still wasn't sure that we had moved from outsourcing to racism until we hit the paragraph about all the money and support that Hillary has received from "Indian-Americans." Sure, the rest of the memo deals with how one of Hillary's top Indian-American supporters is allegedly a bit shady, and that's fair game, but the memo is about more than that. The memo is clearly trying to make the point that Hillary gets lots and lots of support from Indian-Americans, and apparently there's some kind of problem with that. I guess because their kin back home are stealing all of our good white jobs. (No word on whether they're sleeping with our women too.)

The Indian-American community isn't very thrilled about the memo (see this too), nor should they be.

I'd have asked the Obama campaign for comment on this story, but since they never bother to communicate with us, ever, I really wouldn't know who to call. Read More......

The disaster in Gaza

Despite my frustration with seeing oppressed people fighting each other, rather than uniting (nonviolently, one would hope) against that oppression, it is absolutely true that the deteriorating situation in Gaza is in no small part due to mismanagement by the U.S. and Israel.

After proclaiming the benefit of elections everywhere, the Bush administration was faced with the realities of popular governance: Sometimes people don't vote the way we'd like them to. Hamas won the elections in the Palestinian territories, a victory that Secretary Rice claimed was entirely unpredicted by the U.S., and subsequent poor strategies and tactics led to a cascade of disaster resulting in a de facto Palestinian civil war.

Following the elections, the U.S. and Israel made every attempt to undermine Hamas, prevent a unity government from forming, cut off international funding, etc. Despite desperate attempts to prop up Fatah with funding and arms, Hamas has exposed Fatah as both politically and militarily inferior. Now, instead of dealing with a unity government, the U.S. and Israel are faced with a dominant Hamas, one which has consolidated political and military power even in the face of blundering efforts to blunt its influence.

As Tony Karon writes, in response to Tony Snow's disgraceful comments on the situation,

Everyone following the conflict in Gaza knows full well that the reason for the violence is not that Palestinians have not "sorted out their politics" -- they've made their political preferences abundantly clear in democratic elections, and later in a power-sharing agreement brokered by the Saudis. The problem is that the U.S. and the corrupt and self-serving warlords of Fatah did not accept either the election result or the unity government, and have conspired actively ever since to reverse both by all available means, including starving the Palestinian economy of funds, refusing to hand over power over the Palestinian Authority to the elected government, and arming and training Fatah loyalists to militarily restore their party's power. Unfortunately, after three days of some of the most savage fighting ever seen in Gaza, that strategy now lies in tatters. Fatah is, quite simply, no longer a credible fighting force in Gaza, where it has long been in decline as a credible political force.

This situation, like others in the Middle East, reinforces the point about justifiability versus wisdom. I suppose it's "justifiable" to refuse to interact with Hamas, based on its terrorist actions and support for eradicating Israel. But taking such a "justifiable" position leads to a terrible result. Read More......

Pace: Bush fired me

Oh my.

In his first public comments on the Bush administration's surprise decision to replace him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace disclosed that he had turned down an offer to voluntarily retire rather than be forced out.

To quit in wartime, he said, would be letting down the troops....

Pace said, he assured [Defense Secretary] Gates that he was willing to go through even a contentious confirmation process.

So is Pace saying that Bush let down the troops by firing him? And it seems that Bush is only willing to fight for something when it's other people who are doing the fighting, and suffering the consequences. He never was one for supporting the troops outside of political rallies. Read More......

Drudge spreads false smear about Bill Clinton

Yes, I'm sure that headline surprises you. Drudge has been helping spread an anti-Clinton smear about Bill honoring September 11 by making $100,000 (the rumor reportedly got started by the Obama people). In fact, Clinton spent September 11 at a memorial honoring the 9/11 victims. Which begs the question, what was Matt Drudge doing, and with whom was he doing it, this past September 11? Was he honoring the dead? Read More......

Rudy Giuliani and his amazingly good record on banning guns

I was at the Inaugural Maria Leavey Breakfast meeting yesterday with several other progressive writers and blog-types (Maria was a good friend to many in the blogosphere, she passed away suddenly several months away). The speaker was Grover Norquist, who runs Americans for Tax Reform and hosts "the" weekly Wednesday meeting of the conservative brain trust. Norquist is also on the Board of the National Rifle Association so I asked him how Rudy Giuliani's gun record would play with the hard-core, pro-gun GOP base. His response: "Rudy's biggest problem is guns."

I worked in gun control during the 90s. Rudy was one of our champions. He lobbied for passage of the federal assault weapons ban in 1994. He used to say that if the rest of the country needed very strict gun laws like NYC, we'd all be safer.

So, I did some quick research to recount Rudy comments during the 90s. I knew them because back then, I did a lot of radio shows. I used to love invoking the tough, crime-fighting Republican Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giulani. He had better quotes about guns than almost any other elected official, Democrat or Republican. So, it's going to be fun watching Rudy warm up to the NRA a la Romney -- and watch the NRA warm up to Rudy. I pulled together a sampling of some of Rudy's best quotes. If he gets the GOP nomination, this kind of language is going to cause a lot of problems for the folks at the NRA. A lot of problems.

This was from a radio address Mayor Giuliani gave on March 2, 1997 after a shooting at the Empire State Building:

To purchase a gun in the State of New York you have to give your full name, your date of birth, your residence, your occupation. You have to prove that you're a United States citizen, you have to show you are of good character, competency and integrity. And you have to demonstrate a real need for the weapon.

And thanks in part to our stricter gun control laws, crime is down dramatically in New York City. Shootings are down over 50 percent. Murder is down over 50 percent. But the fact is that 90 percent of the guns we take out of the hands of criminals in New York City come from out of the State of New York.

We need a federal law that bans all assault weapons, and if in fact you do need a handgun you should be subjected to at least the same restrictions -- and really stronger ones -- that exist for driving an automobile.

The United States Congress needs to pass uniform licensing for everyone carrying a gun. Congress must do more to prevent a tragedy like the one that happened at the Empire State Building from ever happening again.

Giuliani repeated that theme a couple days later at a meeting of the City Crime Commission, which was covered in the March 7, 1997 edition of the New York Times (that's an archived article):

The city's crime reductions cannot continue much further, he said, especially if guns continue to flow freely into New York from elsewhere in the country, where gun laws are more lax. The five southern states that account for 60 percent of the guns in the city are Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina, he said, and if Congress would only impose handgun licensing on those states and the rest of the country, New York's crime rate would plummet even further....

For months, the Mayor has tried to prepare the electorate for the possibility that the city's dramatic reductions in crime will at some point level off. Though there are some initial signs that this year's crime rate could fall below last year's low, it obviously cannot continue to fall forever, a looming reality that has revitalized the Mayor's campaign against out-of-town guns.

The strategy, which he does not hesitate to disseminate in speeches and national television interviews, operates on two levels: By reviving his 1994 proposal to license guns, he trumps his more liberal Democratic opponents on an issue popular in New York City, especially among the nonwhite voters he is trying to court, an important effort for a former prosecutor whose best-known achievements are in the area of law enforcement. And he now has an entire region of the country to blame when a high-profile shooting blemishes his crime statistics, as the Empire State Building incident did last month. The gunman, who shot eight people, killing two -- including himself -- bought his gun in Florida.

''I really do think there comes a point at which you cannot reduce crime much more when you are being really overwhelmed by the rest of the United States,'' the Mayor said. ''Ninety percent of the guns we've been able to trace come from outside the city. That tremendous problem is being created for us by the rest of the country.''

That strategy of imposing stricter gun laws on southern states should go over well. Unlike his 2008 campaign for President, in 2000, during his aborted race for Senate, Giuliani touted his pro-gun control record:

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Mrs. Clinton's likely Republican opponent in the Senate race, shares many of her views on gun control.

For example, Giuliani's campaign staff specified that he also supports handgun licensing and a national registry of handguns. As mayor, Giuliani signed legislation requiring trigger locks whenever guns are sold in the city and outlawing the sale of toy guns that resemble real guns.

Giuliani also supported the federal assault weapons ban signed by President Clinton and supports Clinton's proposal for background checks at gun shows.

And, in a move that should forever endear Giuliani to the gun lobby, in June 2000, Rudy filed a lawsuit against the gun industry:

Over the past six years, New York City has reduced crime and murder more than any City in the nation. Our success has been built, in large part, on the tireless efforts of the Police Department to remove guns from our streets. But 95% of the guns that our police seize come from outside the City of New York. Their job of keeping New York safe is made considerably more difficult because of less restrictive guns laws in other parts of the nation and because of the illegal and immoral practices of the gun industry. This lawsuit is an aggressive step towards restoring accountability to an industry that profits from the suffering of others.

There's only so far Rudy can backslide from these comments. He said it better than anyone. So, if Rudy can overcome his pro-gun control past to win over the NRA, he truly is a master politician, and the NRA truly is just a pawn of the GOP. Read More......

Bush fundraising ability plummets

AP:

President Bush says polls don't matter to him, but his slumping popularity appears to be influencing fellow Republicans in a way that hurts — money. Bush's yearly fundraising dinner for Republican congressional candidates on Wednesday generated $15.4 million — no small amount, but almost half as much as the $27 million the event brought in last year. Bush raised $23 million at the same dinners in 2005 and 2004.

The take at this year's annual gala benefiting the national Republican Party also took in much less than usual.

Bush helped raise $10.5 million at the event last month, compared with $17 million last year, $15 million the year before and a record $38.5 million in 2004, when he was running for re-election.

Read More......

Continuing the GOP Senate strategy of obstruction, Republicans filibuster energy reform

Republican Senators have been in a filibuster frenzy. Last week they filibustered the immigration bill. Earlier this week, they filibustered the no confidence vote on Gonzales. Then yesterday, the GOP Senators filibustered energy reform in order to protect the power companies:

Senate Democrats, facing their first significant battle over a wide-ranging bill intended to reduce oil consumption, found themselves blocked by Republicans on Thursday and postponed all significant votes until next week.

Republicans vowed to filibuster over a Democratic proposal that would force electric utility companies to generate a big share of their power from renewable fuels, and Democrats failed to muster the 60 votes needed to close off debate.

Hey, it's not like we need to do something about energy. The GOPers would rather play politics then work on an issue of national importance. The GOP energy strategy is "hey, we can always go to war for oil." And, don't forget, the Republicans have never put the national good ahead of the profits of their benefactors. Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

Almost the weekend. Stir it up, please. Read More......

Abbas declares state of emergency, dissolves government

This is bad news for everyone, especially the Palestinian people who are in for more misery. In the coming weeks I suspect we will hear quite a lot of discussions about not only the failures of Abbas but also the failures of the US, EU and Israel in working together. Putting Abbas in impossible situations, doomed to fail, has only provided benefit to the extremist Hamas. We do not need posturing, we need a pragmatic plan but such ideas never seem to fit with this administration.

As if the situation in the region was not bad enough with Iraq, we are facing a civil war among the Palestinians and a very dangerous and violent situation in Lebanon. Our policies towards the Middle East have never looked as bad as they do today and it is hard to imagine this administration having any ability to turn things around or even slow the tide. Read More......