I'm back in DC

Sigh.

I've updated the photo montage I post earlier this morning - it had a few glitches, like cutting off the first photo, which was my favorite. Anyway, I wanted to post the update in any case as I wasn't sure if folks would have missed it this morning, it did get posted a wee early.

Anyway, I'm back. And feeling terribly not good about it.



Quelqu'un M'a Dit Carla Bruni lyrics
Artist: Carla Bruni
Album: Quelqu'un M'a Dit
Year: 2002
Title: Quelqu'un M'a Dit

On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose,
Elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses.
On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud que de nos chagrins il s'en fait des manteaux pourtant quelqu'un m'a dit...

Refrain
Que tu m'aimais encore,
C'est quelqu'un qui m'a dit que tu m'aimais encore.
Serais ce possible alors ?

On me dit que le destin se moque bien de nous
Qu'il ne nous donne rien et qu'il nous promet tout
Parais qu'le bonheur est à portée de main,
Alors on tend la main et on se retrouve fou
Pourtant quelqu'un m'a dit ...

Refrain

Mais qui est ce qui m'a dit que toujours tu m'aimais?
Je ne me souviens plus c'était tard dans la nuit,
J'entend encore la voix, mais je ne vois plus les traits
"Il vous aime, c'est secret, lui dites pas que j'vous l'ai dit"
Tu vois quelqu'un m'a dit...

Que tu m'aimais encore, me l'a t'on vraiment dit...
Que tu m'aimais encore, serais ce possible alors ?

On me dit que nos vies ne valent pas grand chose,
Elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses
On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud
Que de nos tristesses il s'en fait des manteaux,
Pourtant quelqu'un m'a dit que...

Refrain

------

The English version of Carla Bruni's song "Quelqu'un M'a Dit":

Someone said to me by Carla Bruni

Someone said to me that our lives are pretty worthless
They pass in an instant just like roses wilt
Someone said to me that time that slips away is a bastard
Who takes our sorrows to make overcoats for himself
And yet someone said to me…

That you still loved me
Someone said to me that you still loved me
Could it be true ?

Someone said to me that fate makes fun of us
That it gives us nothing and promises us everything
It seems like happiness is within our grasp
So we reach out to grab it and find that we’ve gone mad
And yet someone said to me…

That you still loved me
Someone said to me that you still loved me
Could it be true ?

But who was it who said to me that you still loved me ?
I don’t remember any more
It was late at night
I can still hear the voice, but I can’t make out his face
“He loves you, it’s a secret, don’t tell him that I told you so”
You see, someone said to me…

That you still loved me
Someone really said it to me
That you still loved me
Could it be true ?

Someone said to me that our lives are pretty worthless
They pass in an instant just like roses wilt
Someone said to me that time that slips away is a bastard
Who takes our sorrows to make overcoats for himself
And yet someone said to me…

That you still loved me
Someone said to me that you still loved me
Could it be true? Read More......

Why does Schering-Plough hate America?

Promoting their drugs for unapproved uses and overcharging Medicare (i.e. American taxpayers). In addition to slapping a $435m fine, how about knocking them off the approved vendor list for the US government and when they are the only option, selling their products to the government at cost. It's just too easy to criticize corruption overseas while overlooking daily corporate scandals at home. I guess as long as the campaign contributions continue, change will never occur. Read More......

Murtha has been right all along

John Murtha has a history lesson for Bush over at Huffington Post. The former Marine been right about Iraq all along. He's been viciously attacked and maligned by the right wingers and the media, but his words and predictions have been on target.

Since Murtha began speaking out last November, he has consistently shown a great understanding of the situation in Iraq. In addition, when Murtha speaks, he usually offers two pearls of wisdom that are simple statements, but true. First, Murtha has always maintained that the public was no longer on board with the Bush strategy:

The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.

Murtha has questioned the truth of the rhetoric coming from the Bush administration and he challenged the media to understand that:

Just because the president, just because the White House says there's going to be more terrorism if we withdraw doesn't make it so. He said there's going to be weapons of mass destruction. He said oil was going to pay for it. They said there was an al Qaeda connection. That's not necessarily true.

AJ deconstructs Bush's latest spin-a-thon in the post below. He's trying to fool the American people, but they seem to get it this time. A key finding in the latest AP/Ipsos poll confirms both of Murtha's points:

Not everyone agrees the war in Iraq is central to the war on terror, as the Bush administration maintains. Six in 10 polled think there will be more terrorism in this country because the U.S. went to war in Iraq. Some feel strongly that the two wars are separate.

"They've been successful in the war on terrorism as long as you distinguish between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism," said Eva Washington, a semiretired nurse from Washington, D.C. "We allowed Iraq to become a home to terrorists by going over there."

Eva Washington gets it. The American people get it. They're ahead of the Bush, Congress and the media -- and they know that just because Bush says something, doesn't make it true. Read More......

ABC to air anti-Clinton/pro-Bush "docudrama" about 9/11

Think Progress has the scoop...including background on the show's right wing writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh:

The problem isn’t that Nowrasteh is conservative. The problem is that Nowrasteh and ABC are representing “The Path to 9/11? as an unbiased historical drama. Promos for the movie say it is “based on the 9/11 Commission Report.” Nowrasteh claims he “wanted to match the just-the-facts tone of the report,” and describes the project as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”

Here’s some of the objectivity you can expect: Nowrasteh says the film shows how Clinton had “frequent opportunities…in the 90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks — but lacked the will to do so.” He has referenced Clinton’s “lack of response” to Al Qaeda “and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests.” A review today in Salon.com says the film paints Clinton “as a buffoon more interested in blow jobs than terrorists.”

I can't imagine Clinton would have stayed on vacation if he was handed a Presidential Daily Briefing that warned "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." Clinton knew the Bin Laden threat was real -- Bush blew it off.

There's also an enlightening passage on pages 1 and 2 of Ron Susskind's "The One Percent Doctrine" describing how CIA analysts went to Crawford in August of 2001 to give Bush "face-to-face alerts" about growing terror threats. After Bush got a briefing from a "panicked CIA briefer," his response:

"All right," [Bush] said. "You've covered your ass, now."

Does any sane person think that would have been Clinton's response?

Bush was warned repeatedly in August of 2001 that trouble was brewing. He stayed on vacation. No wonder the President was no where to be found on September 11th. Bush has been covering his ass for September 11th for five years now. Looks like ABC and their parent company, Disney, are going to do that job for him now, too. Read More......

Why does the Pentagon hate America?

A new Pentagon report on Iraq, labelled "grim" by the New York Times and "notably gloomy" by the Associated Press undermines the current Bush p.r. campaign and all of his upbeat messaging on Iraq:

The report comes amid a new effort by President Bush and his administration to shore up sagging public support for the Iraq war in advance of the fall elections, but may do little to help the president's case. Administration officials have tried to portray Iraq as the front line in the war on terrorism and have described the effort as part of a larger struggle against Islamic extremists. However, by putting hard numbers to the perception that Iraq is increasingly chaotic, the new Pentagon report stands to further undermine support for the administration's strategy in Iraq.

The violence in Iraq, according to the report, cannot be attributed to a unified or organized insurgency. Instead, violence is the result of a complex interplay between international terrorists, local insurgents, sectarian death squads, organized militias and criminal groups. The armed militias and other sectarian groups are contesting integrated neighborhoods in a bid to expand their area of influence, the report says.

"This is a pretty sober report," said Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of Defense for international security. "The last quarter has been rough. The level of violence is up. And the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing."

Of course, they issue this report on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend. Because the report is so at odds with Bush's speechifying it is generating a lot of attention anyway. Harry Reid already weighed in on this new document:

The Pentagon’s new report today indicates that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld’s speeches are increasingly disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq. Even the Pentagon acknowledges Iraq is tipping into civil war. Failed Republican policies have left America bogged down in Iraq, with our military stretched thin and less able to fight and win the war on terror.

And Rahm Emanuel had the perfect response which I heard on CNN:

Can someone at the Pentagon please make sure that Secretary Rumsfeld has this for his weekend reading? Instead of continuing his political barnstorm across the country, he should get to work at the Pentagon devising a real strategy for success in Iraq.

Read More......

GOP Congressman the latest to join the anti-Rummy/anti-Iraq crowd

What's taken him so long? Is this guy getting desperate to hold onto his job or what? So tell me again who is wrong about the war? Why does Bush/Rummy/Cheney keep attacking the position of the strong majority of Americans, not to mention members of their own party such as party loyalists such as Tiberi and Shays? I'm smellin' chaos and confused messages for the GOP heading into the campaign season. Pity 'bout that.

Tiberi, of Genoa Township, said yesterday that he does not support Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and thinks new leadership is needed at the Pentagon. He also fired some shots at Bush.

"I can't defend how the president laid out the need for (going to war in Iraq). I don't support Rumsfeld," Tiberi said.

The comments from the three-term congressman came during a meeting before the Dispatch editorial board with challenger Bob Shamansky, whose spokesman revealed that the Bexley Democrat has committed more than $1 million of his own money to the race.

Asked whether Bush has operated above the law regarding government surveillance, Tiberi responded: "He might have."

I guess Congressman Shays of CT, another about face Republican, will have more and more friends as the election heats up. Read More......

Open Thread

Ernesto is paying a visit to DC this afternoon...rainy and windy. What's going on in the real world? Read More......

More Americans with doubts about so-called war on terror

This is what happens when you lie about reasons for invading a country, screw it up even more because you didn't plan and then smear critics. Time to make some changes, folks or else it's more of the same.

Doubts about the war on terrorism are growing. Most people worry that the cost in blood and money may be too high, and they don't think al-Qaida kingpin Osama bin Laden will ever be caught, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

Five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, fully one-third of Americans think the terrorists may be winning, the poll suggests. Worries fed by the war in Iraq have spilled over into the broader campaign against terrorists who directly target the U.S.

Half in the poll question whether the costs of the anti-terror campaign are too great, and even more admit that thought has crossed their mind.

And more bad news for the administration and the GOP:

The AP-Ipsos telephone polling of about 1,000 people found:

• Less than half, 46 percent, are confident that bin Laden will ever be caught down from 67 percent in December 2003.
• More than four in 10, 43 percent, say they're embarrassed by the U.S. image overseas.

Read More......

President Bush Iraq speeches version 3.0

It's almost amusing watching the President contort himself trying to make terrorism into the new Communism. It would be hilarious, except for the fact that he probably believes it . . . and happens to be the leader of the free world. There are a million reasons why this whole line of reasoning is ridiculous, but a major one is that we never really "defeated" communism or fascism, we defeated (some of) the countries that used them as political systems. Communism and fascism largely defeated themselves because they proved themselves to be inferior forms of government, with democracy as the better option. We fight countries (and people) who want to harm us, not who have different political systems, except when those systems are so eggregiously harmful to their people that it compels a response (e.g. Kosovo or, many would argue, Darfur).

Aside from the general political philosophy, though, I think it's pretty entertaining to hear President Bush that we must fight Islamic extremism so we can establish democracy . . . which then votes for Islamic extremism! (See: Hezbollah, Lebanon; Hamas, Palestinian territories; United Iraqi Alliance, Iraq.) I guess somebody forgot to tell them that when we say "democracy" we really mean "liberalism."

Still, the best part of the speech was this:

At the same time, he placed various factions of terrorists Sunnis who swear allegiance to Al Qaeda, Shiite radicals who join groups like Hezbollah and so-called homegrown terrorists under one umbrella.

Experts said that might be overstating the facts.

Well thanks, New York Times, for that piece of understatement. For next time, let me suggest, "Everyone who knows anything about the region, its people, its politics, and its religions knows that is a blatant lie." While there is certainly tactical cooperation between a variety of disparate groups at the ground level, all those groups are working towards very different ends, and most of them hate each other. Which is, come to think of it, probably why they're blowing each other up. Read More......

Chertoff wants more personal data, but can we trust him?

I can understand the benefits of collecting passenger data and see where he's going but the problem I have with this is that this is the guy who over-hyped the 10 August arrests in an attempt to start the election season. Homeland Security has become a campaign tool for scaring the hell out of Americans with any terror related information that might fit into the GOP election theme of being afraid. Because of general incompetence and a passion for playing the terror card, I am against providing Chertoff with anything more. When Chertoff and the Bush administration abuse their power over and over, I see no reason why they should receive an open opportunity to abuse it even more. Sorry, but the trust is long gone. Read More......

More Macaca Fallout

Macaca won't go away for George Felix Allen. He lost a leadership award, which has revived a discussion about his ugly slur last month:

A senator who had singled out an Indian man at a campaign event and referred to him as "Macaca" declined a leadership award from a minority scholarship fund Thursday after donors protested his selection.

Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund donors had threatened to withhold contributions if Sen. George Allen, a Republican seeking re-election this fall, received the fund's Community Leadership Award.

A confederate flag devotee who uses racial slurs probably wasn't the best choice for a leadership award from an organization named for Thurgood Marshall. Read More......

The California fight against global warming and the GOP fear of new business

The Republicans in the California state house are all stuck in the dark ages, afraid of change and unwilling to accept that there is an environmental problem. To the GOP, change is always awful and regardless of the merit of the argument unless we're talking about invading a foreign country and having no idea what to do afterwards, then it makes perfect sense. What has puzzled me for a long time on the issue of alternative energies and global warming is that yes, this does mean change, but doesn't that also mean new business opportunities?

How blind does one have to be to not get that point. New opportunities means the chance to be at the cutting edge of a market that will be taking off. Becoming an early market leader means jobs, it means money it means tax dollars. Hello? What's the problem here? Are the anti-change people afraid of change because it's change? Are they afraid of change because they are already beholden to special interest groups who pay them handsomely and fund their political campaigns? Are they just so lacking in creativity that they miss the point that being a market leader will translate into new opportunities? Sheesh. How narrow minded, but tell me something new. Read More......

Open thread

Having a last meal with Chris, then heading to the airport to go back to DC. Sigh. Read More......

Goodbye Paris

I'm flying out this afternoon. I've put together a collection of my favorite photos taken this trip, along with some beautiful music by Carla Bruni. It's about 6 megs, so probably only for those with decent Internet connections. Enjoy. See you tonight around 8pm DC time. I'll have to post the photo then of Sushi sleeping in my open suitcase as I'm packing this morning. Seems someone doesn't want me to go.

Read More......

Blair just won't go away

It's impossible to deny the reality that Blair revived a political party that was stuck in shadow government mode (sort of like the Democrats in recent years, maybe even worse) but enough is enough. He's so in love with his own power and he's probably not keen to step aside because that will no doubt open up a stream of stories that he would rather not hear about (think more on Iraq) but if Blair cared at all about the Labour Party, he would move on now before he takes the entire party down even more. The Conservatives are looking stronger by the day and with the Iraq disaster being owned by Blair, things will not get any better. Time to get on with your book deals and tours of America who will be swayed and impressed by your posh accent at corporate pep rallies and GOP campaign events. Read More......

Bush Macht Frei

Is this guy friends with George Allen?

An Italian politician has used the "work makes you free" slogan that topped the gates at Auschwitz in a brochure to promote local job centres, saying he could not remember the source but was impressed by the quote.

Read More......