Open thread

Do liberals really want to win? Discuss amongst yourselves. Read the rest of this post...

Susan Collins marks anniversary of her Iraq war vote by attacking anti-war activists

Five years ago today, Senator Susan Collins voted to go to war against Iraq. In her floor speech, Collins invoked every bit of Bush-produced propaganda -- biological, chemical, even nuclear weapons -- to justify that vote. Reading what Susan Collins said is a stark reminder of the war-mongering that had taken over back in 2002. Of course, this was shortly before the '02 elections so Collins was giving a campaign speech:

While the evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of biological and chemical weapons is overwhelming, it is more difficult to determine the state of Iraq’s development of nuclear weapons. Numerous reports suggest, however, a renewed determination by Saddam to obtain materials for a nuclear bomb. A September report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) paints a chilling picture of Saddam’s quest for nuclear weapons. Had the Gulf War not intervened, Iraq “could have accumulated a nuclear stockpile of a dozen or so weapons by the end of the decade,” according to the report. It concludes that the scientific and technical expertise of Iraq’s nuclear program remains intact. And the British government has revealed that Iraqi nuclear personnel were ordered to resume work on nuclear projects in 1998.

According to British intelligence, Iraq also has attempted to obtain uranium from Africa. Since Iraq has no active civil nuclear power program or nuclear power plants, it has no peaceful reason to procure uranium. In addition, the CIA has reported that Iraq has attempted to procure “tens of thousands” of high-strength aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges designed to enrich uranium to provide the fissile material for a nuclear bomb.

How soon could Iraq acquire nuclear weapons? While the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that Iraq is “probably years away from producing nuclear weapons from indigenously produced material,” it points out that, if Iraq were to acquire nuclear material from a foreign source, the time frame could be reduced to perhaps a matter of months. This is a scenario that the Institute calls the “nuclear wildcard.”

Susan has continued her support of Bush's failed war strategy. Ironically, today, Collins launched another misguided attack on the people who want to end the war she helped start.

Meanwhile, Tom Allen is marking the anniversary of his vote against the Iraq war by holding an online peace vigil. Shows the difference once again between the two campaigns. Tom is looking for solutions to the war that Bush and Collins won't end. Susan is launching negative political attacks. Read the rest of this post...

Barney explains why losing a vote on a trans-inclusive ENDA would be disastrous

Openly-gay Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) spoke last night on the House floor about ENDA. Among other things, Barney explained why trying and failing is often worse than not trying at all:

I am convinced that the votes are there to pass a bill that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment. I am also convinced that if we were to put up a bill that included people of transgender, that part would be stricken on a vote, and, unfortunately, a fairly heavy vote. Because what happens is when a tough issue, and the transgender issue is a tough political issue now, and if I have fought with colleagues, it is for not being honest enough with people. And people who would mislead you, I would say, Mr. Speaker, to those who come before us as advocates, people who would mislead you and let you think your task is easier are not your friends. They are undercutting your ability. Underestimating your enemy is the surest way, not only to lose, but to lose so bad it is hard to come back.

I had hoped that we would have a vote upon a transgender-inclusive bill and win. Getting a large vote in this body to say no to transgender inclusion will make it harder in the future to change that situation, partly because my junior Senator, as the Presidential candidate, was unfairly pilloried. His remark was caricatured about his vote on Iraq. He quite sensibly voted for one version of funding for Iraq and then voted against another. He phrased it inartfully. What he did was correct.

But because of that, the fear that Members of this body have and of the other body of voting one way and then later changing has been magnified. People now pay an unduly high price if they change their mind. So if you go ahead and get a negative vote on the transgender issue today, that will make it harder for us at some point, and I hope that point comes within the next few

years, to change things after we have done more education.

If we simply put the bill forward, and these become parliamentary intricacies, but they are irrelevant, if we simply put the bill forward and there was no amendment in the committee and it came to the floor of the House and it included the transgender inclusion, then you would see a series of very clever moves from the Republican side, motions to recommit, that could lead to the indefinite postponement in a repeated set of votes that would keep us from passing this bill.

Barney also explained why 98% of a loaf is better than none:

Now, the notion that you do not pass an antidiscrimination bill protecting large numbers of people until you can protect everybody, in my judgment, is flawed, morally and politically. It is flawed morally because I am here to help people in need. That's why I serve in this job.

If we can get a sexual orientation ban enacted, we will be protecting millions of people in this country who live in States where there is no such law. There are laws in some States and not others. The States that have the laws are probably the place where prejudice is most active.

I do not accept the argument that I am somehow morally lacking if I say, you know what, I would like to protect everybody, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, I am only at this point able to get a vote passed that protects the millions of people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual; but I will withhold from them that protection until I do anything. Because any time you insist on doing everything all at once, you will do nothing.

Barney then lays into all the naysayers who are more than a bit late to the ball:

I will say this as an aside, I will get to this later, that one of the things that does bother me, to be honest, is that people who are now demanding that we kill a bill to protect people against sexual orientation and discrimination because we haven't done enough to protect people of transgender were silent on the issue awhile ago.

When I testified on September 5, I wasn't the head of some large movement. I was speaking out personally. I had been begging people for months. We knew this was coming up. It has been published since earlier this year that we would be voting on this bill now.

People are now having Web sites; people are bursting forward. Where were they when we needed them? I will talk about why we did not see them then and we see them now.

I helped Cheryl Summerville, the lesbian fired from Cracker Barrel for being gay, draft her testimony for Senator Kennedy's Labor Committee hearing on ENDA in 1994. I can't count too many of my critics who have been working on ENDA since the early 1990s. Read the rest of this post...

Bullshit

Bush is now demanding that Congress give retroactive immunity to telecom companies who helped Bush illegally spy on American citizens, and if they don't, he's going to veto the domestic spying bill.

AP:

President Bush said Wednesday that he will not sign a new eavesdropping bill if it does not grant retroactive immunity to U.S. telecommunications companies that helped conduct electronic surveillance without court orders.

Good. Let him. He's going to veto legislation he claims the nation desperately needs? Let. Him.

Bush has been telling us for years that all the domestic spying he was doing was legal. AT&T; told us that the spying was legal. Then why do they need immunity now if everything they were doing was legal?

This is absolutely outrageous. The Democrats had better not give this to Bush. He's at 28% in the polls, folks. Stop acting like he's in charge. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator Larry Craig's "Wide Stance" is a hit!

AP does a follow-up story on how the phrase "wide stance" has apparently entered the lexicon in a big way. How much more of this can the GOP take?

Among the most famous excuses ever given for questionable behavior, ''I have a wide stance'' must fall somewhere between the schoolchild's favorite ''the dog ate my homework'' and President Clinton's ''I didn't inhale.''

But Sen. Larry Craig's contention -- made just after his arrest in a restroom sex sting -- has permeated the public consciousness, showing up as more than just the punch line to late-night talk show jokes.

The online Urban Dictionary defines ''wide stance'' as a euphemism for a closeted homosexual. David Kurtz of the blog ''Talking Points Memo'' called Craig's wide stance claim ''The Best Legal Defense of 2007.'' And Beau Jarvis, who writes about wine, travel and food on the blog ''Basic Juice,'' notes that the phrase has become less than innocent and proposes ''cleansing'' it by using it to describe a well-balanced wine.

Read the rest of this post...

Barney is hopping mad

Here's Barney's latest press release:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) will hold a press conference.... The subject will be the obligation of the Democratic Party to govern responsibly when confronted by a demand to react emotionally by a deeply committed, single-issue faction insisting on putting ideological purity over achievable advancement of our values.

The specific example discussed will be the current demand that the Democratic leadership kill the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which has been the prime legislative goal for gay and lesbian people for over 30 years, because we do not have the votes to include people who are transgender.

Read the rest of this post...

Obama reworking answer on remaining in Iraq through 2013

From NBC/MSNBC:

Barack Obama’s statement that he wouldn’t have all troops out of Iraq by the end of his first term is still haunting the senator on the campaign stump. At an event here this morning, a voter held up a sign with the numbers “2013” written on it to get Obama to take a question from him at the town hall.

Obama re-addressed the question he was first asked at the Democratic Debate at Dartmouth two weeks ago, when he, along with the other major Democratic candidates, said they wouldn’t have all troops out of Iraq by the end of their first terms.

At that debate Obama said that he could not guarantee that all troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his first term. Obama qualified that answer today, as he has in previous town halls in New Hampshire and Iowa, by saying that he would keep troops in Iraq for diplomatic, humanitarian and counterterrorism purposes.

A voter called out to Obama that his answer needed to be simpler, to which he responded, “The notion that I have to be as simplistic as the Republicans are, I don’t agree. I have to be honest and realistic.”

He added, “It can’t be done to bring troops out in three to six months.”

Well, as the guy in audience said, needs to be simpler. I still don't understand why Obama and Edwards didn't just say "yes, at the end of my first term major combat operations truly will be over in Iraq." They could go on to qualify that we'll still need troops to protect the embassy, etc. - people understand that. But the "we can't remove them in three to six months" line was kind of irrelevant - we're not talking three to six months, we're talking 5 years. And throwing in that line about keeping troops there to fight terrorism? Isn't that Bush's (phony) reason for having 170,000 troops there right now? And the 170,000 we have there already clearly haven't taken care of the small number of terrorists who truly are there, so might we need even more troops to take care of "counterrorism"? Again, it's just a bad answer. Read the rest of this post...

Saudi Arabia to "temporarily" release 55 Gitmo "terrorists" and give them $2600 each

Either these guys are terrorists or they're not. But for the Bush administration to claim that they're terrorists, then for the Saudi government to give them a Willy Horton holiday, and thousands of dollars to boot, is beyond sickening. It never ceases to amaze me that with all the talk of the "all-powerful" Jewish lobby, no one has been able to ever take down Saudi Arabia. These kind of stories should mark the end of any special relationship between Saudi Arabia and America, but they never are because no one with any money and power and influence ever takes full advantage of them.

And another thing. What does Bush plan on doing about this? 55 "terrorists" are about to be let go. Men so dangerous that they had to be kept in the super-double-secret prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These aren't just regular terrorists, Bush keeps telling us, these are the worst of the worst. These are men who want to, plan to, kill Americans in the thousands and the tens of thousands. So, if that's true, there's no way these guys are voluntarily coming back to prison (where they could get their hands, or heads cut off) after their little Spring Break in Daytona. So what is Bush planning on doing about the fact that he released 55 super-terrorists who plan to kill American citizens in the thousands?

From AP:

The Saudi Arabian government will temporarily release 55 prisoners recently transferred from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and will give each of them about $2,600 to celebrate the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Who do I have to mass murder to get $2,600? Read the rest of this post...

U.S.-Led Iraq Coalition Withering Fast

From AP

Britain's decision to bring half of its 5,000 soldiers home from Iraq by spring is the latest blow to the U.S.-led coalition. The alliance is crumbling, and fast: excluding Americans, the multinational force was once 50,000 strong — by mid-2008, it will be down to 7,000.

This would be an interesting point for the Dem candidates to start hitting on. We were once, vaguely, an international coalition if the multinational force was really 50,000 strong (I'd like to know how many of them were combat forces), but if we're down from 50,000 to 7,000 (and remember, the Icelander was a press guy), then what was once a vaguely putatively international force, a maybe international coalition, is no more. It's now us. Going it alone. And I don't think the American people will react well to us going it alone, again, still. We were sold this war, partly, based on the "fact" that there was a "coalition of the willing" behind us. Now there isn't. Read the rest of this post...

Bush's ally Dan Bartlett flip-flops after trashing GOP Presidential candidates

Yesterday, the Washington Post first reported that former Bush aide-de-camp/spinmeister Dan Bartlett trashed the GOP presidential candidates. It was the first time we've seen anything resembling clarity from a Bush staffer. And, Bartlett was always one of the worst of the Bush team's liars:

One of President Bush's closest advisers has a brutally candid analysis of the Republican nomination battle: Fred Thompson is the campaign's "biggest dud," Mitt Romney has "a real problem in the South" because people will not vote for a Mormon, Mike Huckabee's last name is too hick and John McCain could end up repeating 2000 by winning New Hampshire but losing the nomination.

Dan Bartlett, who stepped down as White House counselor in July after working nearly his entire adult life for Bush, gave those frank assessments of the Republican presidential candidates during a recent appearance before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that went unnoticed outside the room. Never before has Bartlett opened up in a public setting with such an unvarnished analysis of the race. And while he no longer formally speaks for the president, Bartlett spent 14 years channeling Bush and remains virtually his alter ego, so his views could be seen as a revealing look into the thinking within the president's inner circle.

That didn't last long. This morning, Bartlett was on the Today Show flip-flopping -- and singing the praises of those same candidates he was trashing earlier this week. Now he says "we've got a strong, deep field." Bartlett had the audacity to deny he was "back-pedaling." Bartlett learned well from George Bush that he can just say anything. So which Dan Bartlett do we believe? Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

The GOP debate yesterday proved one thing: Thompson is a dud. If he was going to be the savior of the Republican party, the Republican party won't be saved.

Start threading the news. Read the rest of this post...

More reports of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe

So this is the leadership that the European Union so desperately wants to invite for a summit? Pathetic.

Zimbabwean security forces routinely torture and sexually abuse women opposed to President Robert Mugabe's government, a human rights group said on Wednesday.

"The women endured various forms of torture, including beatings with a variety of instruments ... baton sticks, booted feet, wooden planks, being slapped, and falanga (beatings on the bottom of the feet," Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) said in a report.

"Some violations occurred in the street during arrest, whilst others took place in police vehicles and/or in police custody."

Why is Gordon Brown the only European leader who is taking a stand against this? Read the rest of this post...

More interest rate cuts?

Besides showing a lack of faith in the economy, the Fed hints at another cut should be setting off alarms about the risk inflation. Wall Street may be celebrating with this news but it doesn't sound so great for the bulk of Americans. Despite some of the glowing reports about the jobs report for September, the numbers reported were still soft and barely over 100,000 though that seems to be a reflection of just how low the bar has been set during this administration. If you can't even keep up with the average incoming each month - and this has rarely happened in recent years - then it strikes me as laughable that some are celebrating but celebrating failure is what the GOP is all about. Read the rest of this post...

Suu Kyi rejects junta preconditions

Why even bother at this point if there is a checklist of conditions? Talk or don't talk so why lower yourself since the junta in Myanmar is never serious anyway. The world is still waiting for some pressure by India or China but that's about as likely to happen as the junta unconditionally freeing Suu Kyi from house arrest.

In a statement issued by her party, the National League for Democracy, she rejected the deal, saying: "The success of a dialogue is based on sincerity and the spirit of give and take. The will for achieving success is also crucial and there should not be any pre-condition."

The junta has said it is willing to meet the 62-year-old but only if she first renounces her calls for international sanctions. Yesterday, it appointed the deputy labour minister, Aung Kyi, as "manager for relations" with opposition leaders, apparently at the behest of the UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who visited Burma 10 days ago and met senior General Than Shwe.

Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Insomniac (and international) edition.

I really need to start sleeping better.

However, thankfully I can be of some utility: the last thread was getting pretty full, so here's a clean slate. Read the rest of this post...