Susan Collins' $100,000 blogger

If I were that blogger, I'd get my salary in one lump sum up front. It's not real clear how long Susan is going to last in the Senate. Read the rest of this post...

Gonzales lied AGAIN to Congress

No one could have predicted that a man who repeatedly lies to Congress, with impunity, would lie to Congress again (or, more accurately, again and again and again and again and again and again (give or take a few)). Honestly, I hope he keeps lying to them and getting away with it until the Democrats grow some backbone. He's making fools of them, he's breaking the law, and they're letting him. And they wonder why their approval rating stinks. Read the rest of this post...

Froomkin: Could al-Qaeda possibly have found a better publicist than President Bush?

It's a rhetorical question. Of course, the answer is no. In the column today, Froomkin outdoes himself -- and that's a pretty high standard:

Like any terrorist organization, al-Qaeda wants attention. It wants to be perceived as powerful. And it particularly wants Americans to live in fear.

Could al-Qaeda possibly have found a better publicist than President Bush?

At a South Carolina Air Force base yesterday, Bush mentioned al-Qaeda and bin Laden 118 times in 29 minutes, arguing that the violence unleashed by the U.S. invasion in Iraq would somehow come to America's shores if U.S. troops were to withdraw.

But the majority of that violence in Iraq is caused either by Iraqis murdering each other for religious reasons or by Iraqis trying to throw off the American occupation. The group that calls itself al-Qaeda in Iraq is only one of a multitude of factions creating chaos in that country, and the long-term goals of its Iraqi members are almost certainly not in line with those of al-Qaeda HQ (which is safely ensconced in Pakistan).

Furthermore, the administration's own intelligence community has concluded that the war in Iraq has helped rather than hurt al-Qaeda.

What effect would a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq really have on al-Qaeda? Is it true that "surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaida would be a disaster for our country," as Bush admonished yesterday?

Bush's predictions about the region have been uniformly abysmal, so the opposite may be at least as likely. And in that scenario, a U.S. troop withdrawal would rob al-Qaeda of its greatest recruiting tool. It would also free American and Iraqi fighters to hunt down bin Laden and his fellow vermin wherever they are and give them what they deserve -- which is not publicity, but ignominy and extinction.

Read the rest of this post...

Animal lovers unite

BoycottNikeNow.com

From our good friends, and wonderful advocates for all that is good, Melanie Sloan and Naomi Seligman. Melanie and Naomi, you may recall, are the powerhouses behind CREW. This is a project they're doing on their own time, unrelated to CREW. Please do check it out. Read the rest of this post...

Establishment versus regular thinking, version 52,304

This spat between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over comments in the debate strikes me as a little silly. Here's a transcript of the relevant exchange (edited slightly for length):

QUESTION: [W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous.

[Reagan, Cold War, etc. ...]

And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We've been talking about Iraq -- one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they're going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses.

They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.

COOPER: Senator Clinton?

CLINTON: Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are.

I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don't want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration. And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy.

And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

This brief skirmish has continued, with the Clinton campaign using surrogates (most notably former Secretary of State Albright) to paint Obama as naive, and Obama smacking back with charges of hypocrisy, as Clinton has repeatedly assailed the Bush administration for refusing direct talks with a variety of nations.

Fundamentally, this is an example of establishment thinking versus normal thinking. Establishment thinking says, you don't meet with or talk to Crazy Bad Guys like Castro/Kim Jong Il/Chavez without doing tons of prep work, making sure it's on a track, there are specific goals and benchmarks met, etc. etc. Which is actually essentially true. But in answering the question "would you negotiate with these guys" the normal thinking goes, not negotiating with them is idiotic, so of course I would!

I don't think Obama was saying, "I'll sit down with Castro on day three of my presidency," I think he was saying that negotiations with bad leaders are *theoretically possible* in an Obama administration, whereas they're not even a consideration for the current one. Clinton, in a pretty savvy move, intentionally misinterpreted (I'm guessing) his answer to take a jab and imply inexperience and naivete. Which has worked to some extent, at least among the political insider class and the press. And she thought fast enough to specifically disdain Castro and Chavez, which probably helps her in Florida.

In the end, I don't think voters really care, and his answer probably helps in the primary whereas hers may benefit her in the general. His sentiment is absolutely right, but he can't afford to be careless; Clinton is too good to pass up an opening like that. Despite the generally congenial tone the Democratic debates have taken thus far, they are, after all, debates, not joint press conferences.

Still, on actual substance, it's not anything worth criticizing Obama for, and it's pretty disingenuous to hammer him on it. Read the rest of this post...

BillOreilly.com: "I am keeping my guns loaded if she [Hillary] is elected"

This is the person who posted before on O'Reilly's site and said that he was loading his weapons if Hillary becomes president. For that reason, we can reasonably infer that the "no way" at the beginning of his post does not mean that he is NOT loading his guns, but rather that he IS loading his guns and he simply forgot some punctuation, which is typical of right-wingers. Their English is usually pretty poor.

And note that this person has written 1,062 posts on O'Reilly's site, meaning he's a regular and not some recent liberal plant. Read the rest of this post...

House committee issues contempt citations against Bush officials

AP

The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.

The 22-17 party-line vote — which would sanction the pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors — advanced the citation to the full House.

A senior Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the House itself likely would take up the citations after Congress' August recess. The official declined to speak on the record because no date had been set for the House vote.

Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: Secret Service looking into anti-Hillary threats on Bill O'Reilly's Web site

The Secret Service, already protecting Senator Clinton, has reportedly taken an interest in the threats against the Senator posted on Bill O'Reilly's Web site. Of even greater concern, O'Reilly claims that his Web site is not an open forum, meaning that no one can just walk in and post hate on his Web site. Does this mean that Bill O'Reilly or his proxies approved of the threats against Hillary? Read the rest of this post...

BillOReilly.com: "If [Hillary] wins... my guns are loaded"

Note that the person has written over 1,000 posts on O'Reilly's Web site. That means he or she isn't new, he or she isn't someone who just came over from DailyKos in order to impersonate a BillOReilly.com member (as O'Reilly ridiculously claimed last night). It's a BillOReilly.com regular, and Bill clearly has had no issues with this person posting on his site in exchange for cold hard cash.n But what I want to know is why jetBlue promotes this hateful man on their airlines? Does jetBlue agree that we need to load our guns if Hillary becomes president?

Read the rest of this post...

Bill O'Reilly's Web site threatens Hillary's life

FOX News' Bill O'Reilly has been attacking the liberal blog Daily Kos, and liberal blogs in general, over some extreme comments left by some of our visitors. It's interesting therefore that O'Reilly's own Web site contains some of the most hideous hate you've ever seen. Over the next few hours, we'll be documenting some of that hate. And you'll be interested to know that while O'Reilly holds others responsible for the words strangers leave on their Web sites, on O'Reilly's Web site, he's not responsible at all for the hate and threats his readers leave behind. And I quote O'Reilly's own Web site:

"BillOReilly.com will not be held liable for any user activity on the message boards. We do not actively monitor user-submitted content."

You see, it's okay when he does it.

And with no further ado, examples of BillOReilly.com's threats against Hillary.

Posted By: Wildabeast (4638 posts) - 24 July 2007 8:15am PT

Reply: RE: If Hillary WIns, WIll You Be Respectful of Her?

If Hillary wins, I will be respectful of our leader. If you could read my thoughts, I would be on the SS [Secret Service] watch list.

The only thought that would put you on a Secret Service watch list vis-a-vis the president is a possible threat to their life.

And this:

Posted By: Norman Zaney (12227 posts) 24 July 2007 - 5:43am PT

Reply: RE: If Hillary WIns, WIll You Be Respectful of Her?

As a woman, i would open the door for her.....now, if there was nothing on the other side but empty space and a 50 foot drop into a moat filled leeches and (gulp) rats...well, I can't be held responsible.

O'Reilly claimed on TV last night that the hate on his Web site isn't real, it's the work of liberals trying to sabotage him. Funny, then, that he was all too willing to accept the hate on liberal Web sites as being real enough to report it, on the air, as real. How do we know that it too isn't the work of hateful conservatives? And more importantly, why do companies like jetBlue associate themselves with people who make threats against Hillary's life?

Hillary is under Secret Service protection. Members of BillOReilly.com have made what can reasonably be considered to be threats against Hillary's life. Unlike DailyKos or AMERICAblog, or any other liberal blog, in order to post on BillOReilly.com, you need to give them your credit card info. O'Reilly knows exactly who these people are who are making the threats. Has he done his moral and legal and patriotic duty and reported the names and addresses of these people (which he has because he has their credit cards) to the Secret Service for investigation?

More to come. Much more to come. Read the rest of this post...

Bush is mentoring Iraqi's Prime Minister on leadership

One of the favorite talking points about the failed Iraq policy coming from the Bush administration is to blame the Iraqi leaders. That's an effort to shift the burden from Bush to Al-Maliki. It's wrong on some many fronts. After all, Bush did create the situation that has led to the chaos in the country.

But, now we know that Bush is actually trying to mentor the Iraqi prime minister. Yes, think about that. As if it's not bad enough for Al-Maliki, he has to get regular coaching sessions from the worst President ever. That's what we learned in today's NY Times:

Once every two weeks, sometimes more often, President Bush gathers with the vice president and the national security adviser in the newly refurbished White House Situation Room and peers, electronically, into the eyes of the man to whom his legacy is so inextricably linked: Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq.

In sessions usually lasting more than an hour, Mr. Bush, a committed Christian of Texas by way of privileged schooling in New England, and Mr. Maliki, an Iraqi Shiite by way of political exile in Iran and Syria, talk about leadership and democracy, troop deployments and their own domestic challenges.

We don't need to know much more than that really. The Iraqi Prime Minister is getting leadership training from our failed leader. Yet, the Bush administration wants to blame the Iraqis for poor leadership.

This quote from Bush is classic and sums up the whole problem:

Mr. Bush has said that he has seen signs of improvement. Describing his regular contact with Mr. Maliki , Mr. Bush said in April, “I’ve watched a man begun to grow in office,” adding, “I look to see whether or not he has courage to make the difficult decisions necessary to achieve peace. I’m looking to see whether or not he has got the capacity to reach out and help unify this country.”

Let's apply George Bush test for Al-Maliki to George Bush:

Has Bush "begun to grow in office"? Not at all. He's actually regressed.

Have we seen "whether or not he has courage to make the difficult decisions necessary to achieve peace?" Not even close on that one.

And, we've all been "looking to see whether or not he has got the capacity to reach out and help unify this country." Ha, that's a joke.

Bush fails his own leadership test. Iraq's prime minister doesn't stand a chance with Bush as his teacher. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Let's just get cranking. Seems like there's a lot going on. Read the rest of this post...

US economic problems a "dangerous cocktail"

Turning a blind eye to traditional common sense oversight is coming back to haunt the US economy. Republicans provided half-baked theory and lots of hype for years about how the market could manage itself and somehow, as if a magic wand was waved in the air, it would all work out. So besides facing a new food health crisis almost every week thanks to similar "let the market decide" theory, the US economy is sitting on soft ground thanks to bogus GOP programs that stripped away oversight and threw big money around without consideration for the ability to pay back the loans.

Looking at the "dangerous cocktail" of misguided economic policy, the GOP has strapped the American middle class taxpayers with funding a costly war, not to mention the cost of the propping up the sub-prime lending fiasco that will no doubt find its way to the taxpayers and away from those on Wall Street that had to have it. Just wait until the bill arrives for correcting the food safety programs that were left to wither by the GOP Congress. The next time the GOP starts talking about cutting costs like this, think about how much more it will cost everyone in the future after their cost cutting fails. The GOP and their corporate friends all profit but the public always gets stuck with the bill and it's not pretty. Read the rest of this post...

AIDS must be combated with science, not theory

American professor Robert Bailey spoke at a WHO conference on AIDS about battling the AIDS epidemic with funding for circumcisions which are known to reduce the risk of transmission of the disease by roughly 60%. Instead of spending millions of dollars, a billion in the new Bush plan for Africa, money should be spent on known solutions such as medicine, condoms, doctors, nurses, science and real sex education instead of theory of abstinence which is costly and unproven. We have brilliant scientists and medical doctors around the world so use them instead of Southern Baptist religious leaders to address this problem. Read the rest of this post...