McCain defends Obama over Blago nonsense

If this John McCain, the old John McCain, the real John McCain, had made his appearance a year earlier, he might have won.

John McCain, reminding GOP partisans why they always hated him, downplays the Blago story and takes a passing shot at the RNC on "This Week":

"I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody -- right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don't know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama's campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me."

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At some point, we were all that shoe

Not to belittle the danger posed to our democracy by airborne knock-off Italian footwear, it's difficult to watch this video on YouTube and not empathize with the Iraqi journalist who threw not one, but two shoes at Bush today during a press conference. Video is below, and below it are the screen captures, blow by blow, as it were. And by the way, throwing shoes is something you do at a dog in mediterranean cultures, at least where my people are from. And as calling someone a dog is probably one of the nastiest things you can do in the Middle East, Im wondering if that's part of what's underlying the shoe attack.










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Human rights activists go missing in Zimbabwe

At this point, nothing is a surprise in Zimbabwe. What is it going to take for the African Union and neighboring countries to quit supporting Mugabe?

A prominent Zimbabwean human rights activist abducted 12 days ago was working on case files to be used as possible prosecution evidence against members of President Robert Mugabe's regime, The Observer has learnt.

Jestina Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), is the most prominent among 20 political and civil society activists who have disappeared in the past six weeks.

According to fellow campaigners, Mukoko had established a network of hundreds of monitors - mostly church people, teachers and ordinary township dwellers - who had provided handwritten testimonies of the campaigns of brutality carried out by Mugabe's government. The testimony could have been used in any future investigation of human rights abuses by the Mugabe regime. 'She had catalogued thousands of incidents of murder, assault, torture, arson, and who the perpetrators are. The work was so meticulous it could stand up in any court,' said one associate.

A human rights lawyer revealed that just before Mukoko's abduction the ZPP had shifted from cataloguing violence in townships to the organised abuse of food aid, where people were forced to support Mugabe in return for maize deliveries. 'That upcoming report was going to be extremely embarrassing for the ruling party,' said the lawyer.

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Rove takes the lead on strategy for GOP Senators

Sure doesn't sound like the Republican Senators are going to go along with the new era of bipartisanship. Last week, we learned that GOP Senators are setting up a first fight with the Obama administration over the Eric Holder nomination. Now, we find out, via Think Progress, that the Republican Senators have Karl Rove leading their strategy:

The Republicans want to fight inane political battles, not solve the nation's huge problems. The sooner Obama figures that out the better. And, the sooner the Democrats in the Senate just roll the GOP, the better, too. Read the rest of this post...

Lindsey Graham tries again to ruin unit morale and cohesion in Aghanistan

I worked on the gays in the military issue back in 1993. I was helping a good friend in Senator Kennedy's office prepare for the horrible hearings that Sam Nunn held to "prove" how dangerous even the whiff of gays would be in the US military. The main argument from the anti-gay forces, in a nutshell, is that if other guys in the military know you're gay, then they may not like you, want to work with you, will worry that they may need to keep their eye on you (or off you) while in the shower, will worry that you'll try to cop a feel while they're sleeping in the close together bunks in submarines, etc. Seriously, those were the arguments.

And the same arguments apply to someone you may not "know" is gay, but someone you strongly suspect of being gay. I.e., if you're a homophobe, worrying about gay guys copping a feel in the shower, you're going to be just as worried about the guy who doesn't tell you he's gay, but about whom your gaydar goes off the scale.

That brings us to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who likes to go over to the Middle East and play soldier. Now, I don't know if the unmarried Senator Graham is straight or gay. I do know that, as a gay man myself, Lindsey Graham makes me look straight. If someone put a gun to my head and made me guess whether Graham was straight or gay, I wouldn't hesitate to venture that he's a flaming homosexual because he looks and sounds like a flaming homosexual. And I've rarely met a straight man who flames, and then turns out to be actually straight.

But putting aside whether Graham is truly straight or gay, the problem is that he comes across as gay. A lot of my gay friends and colleagues think he looks and talks over-the-top gay. And I find it hard to believe that members of the US military, who have turned being manly-men into an art, don't have the same suspicions about this unmarried man's sexual orientation. That, we were told by Senator Nunn, by Senator McCain (Graham's mentor), destroys unit morale and cohesion. So why isn't it a problem when Lindsey Graham is involved? Or is it okay to ruin the lives and careers of regular soldiers in the military, but hands-off when the sexual orientation in question is a sitting Republican Senator? Read the rest of this post...

One more "secret" visit by Bush to the country he destroyed over lies

Still wasn't greeted as a liberator. Still the biggest mistake of his presidency:

President Bush flew to Iraq on Sunday, a final trip to highlight the recently completed security agreement between Iraq and the United States.

Air Force One arrived in Baghdad at 4 p.m. after a 10-and-a-half-hour overnight flight from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. It was his fourth visit to Iraq, a country that occupied the bulk of his presidency and will to a large extent define his legacy.

On arriving, he met the two senior American officials, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. Ray Odierno on the tarmac. He is expected to meet with Iraqi leaders and American troops.

As with previous visits — in November 2003, June 2006 and September 2007 — preparations for the visit were cloaked in secrecy and carried out with ruse. The White House schedule for Sunday had Mr. Bush attending the “Christmas in Washington” performance at the National Building Museum in downtown Washington.

The Bush team always loved the drama of pulling off these "surprise" visits to Iraq. The traditional media always fell for it, too. Just like they all fell for the lies that got us into this war in the first place. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Rod Blagojevich probably always thought that one day he would be the topic for discussion on the Sunday talk shows. Today, he is.

The auto industry bailout is the other main subject. Republican Senators should have to explain their strategy to destroy the auto industry in order to score what they saw as a political victory over working men and women. (The memo outlining that strategy was leaked.) The Obama team should read that memo and watch Ensign and Corker today. Those two, along with David Vitter, are the new GOP brain trust in the Senate. And, they have no interest in working together for the betterment of this country. None.

Here's the lineup:

ABC's "This Week" — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

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CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Bob Corker, R-Tenn, and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown University.

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NBC's "Meet the Press" — Madigan; Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn; Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich.; former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.; former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina; Wal-Mart President & CEO Lee Scott; Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

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CNN's "Late Edition" — Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Gene Sperling, former Clinton economic adviser; Ron Gettelfinger, president of United Auto Workers.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Corker.

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Something upbeat to go with the morning coffee

Late night for us and I need just a little more to get moving. The market on Daguerre awaits but we're both stuck in neutral. This helps get things moving just a bit. Read the rest of this post...

British pound drops below euro on the street

Ruh roh. This is not going to go over well in ol Blighty but for Europeans, they will now be able to visit the UK without being clobbered with a criminally expensive bill.

The government is facing a growing backlash over its rescue package for the economy after the pound slumped to below parity with the euro on British high streets and at airports for the first time since the single European currency was launched a decade ago.

Sterling's decline to a value of less than a euro, after commission charges, is seen by economists and opposition politicians as a pivotal 'psychological moment' - and evidence of declining faith in the British economy on global currency markets.

Last night, as skiing operators and other holiday companies across the UK reported customers shunning expensive trips in favour of cut-price deals, Currency Exchange on London's Oxford Street was selling euros for as little as €1.0532 to the pound. After commission and a handling fee, however, €18 cost The Observer £19.61, an exchange rate of €0.918 to the pound.

Tourists at Birmingham, Liverpool and Luton airports were also getting less than €1 to the pound after sterling tumbled in value every day last week.

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Finally, months in the waiting, an open thread

Well, finally went to a Christmas party tonight. Usually have three this evening - for some reason, the same three friends always have parties tonight. So, my friend Matt and I bop from one to the other to the other. All great, and equally fascinating and different. Unfortunately parties two and three got canceled for various reasons, and Joe is home sick tonight, so Matt and I went to the one party in the hood, and it was nice. Lots of olds friends, and some potentially crazy new ones too. One of the neat things about living in DC (and trust me, I rarely find anything neat about living in DC), is that the people you know, your friends, and your friends' friends, are the people who make Washington what it is. At the party tonight, I saw a number of friends who work on the Hill, for big newspapers, for non-profits, friends in gay politics, and more. At one point, I joked to a friend that the guy in corner looked like a younger Bill Burton (one of Obama's top spokesmen during the campaign - you remember him, the guy who was always on FOX, beating the crap out of them). In fact, it was Bill Burton. (Who oddly does look like a younger version of himself, if that makes any sense.) I know for some people, going to parties and mingling with "name" politicos is tantamount to getting too cozy with "the enemy." But I don't see it that way. It makes Washington, DC human for me (and that's a rarity). It makes politics human. This is a town of real people. And I think sometimes we all forget that. Read the rest of this post...