Open thread

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Was the Colorado shooter a failed "ex-gay"?

Joe.My.God has rather interesting take on this. Read the rest of this post...

Clinton adviser out after Obama comment

Two points to Hillary for handling this right. From AP:

A top campaign adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton resigned Thursday, a day after suggesting Democrats should be wary of nominating Barack Obama because his teenage drug use could make it hard for him to win the presidency.

Clinton herself apologized to Obama as they waited to fly to Iowa for a debate.

Obama's campaign sent out a fundraising letter contending that "this kind of attack is becoming a pattern as Clinton's support declines."

Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman for Clinton and a prominent New Hampshire political figure, had raised the issue of Obama's youthful drug use during a Wednesday interview, published on washingtonpost.com.

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Ignoring radical Islam (wait, what??)

Jason Elam, Denver Broncos kicker, has penned (or at least stamped his name on) a new book, cleverly titled "Monday Night Jihad". Because it's about football and scary terrorists! It's not really worth anybody's time to put too much thought into what appears to be a jingoistic screed, but I just wanted to relay this priceless quote:

"I knew there'd be some people who'd have issues with the terrorism element, which we cover through the context of football. But you know what? Radical Islam is here to stay. Since 9/11, it's almost something we don't want to think about."

Riiiiiiight, we *stopped* thinking about radical Islam after 9/11. Totally. Read the rest of this post...

Questions the media should be asking the GOP presidential candidates

Froomkin has made a list, checked it twice.

As it happens, there is one way to get the candidates to address the Bush legacy in their debates or elsewhere. And that’s to ask them. Here are some possible questions:

Q. Do you approve of disapprove of the job President Bush is doing?

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Bush as president?

Q. What would you consider some of Bush’s greatest successes?

Q. What would you consider some of Bush’s greatest failures?

Q. Had you been president, would you have invaded Iraq?

Q. If you had to give President Bush a grade for how he managed the war in Iraq, would it be an A, B, C, D or F?

Q. What decisions if any would you have made differently if you had been in charge these past seven years?

Q. How would you assess President Bush’s credibility? High? Low?

Q. Do you approve of the job Vice President Cheney is doing?

Q. Historically, the vice president has been in a more subordinate role. Do you think Bush was overly influenced by his vice president? Would you expect your vice president to serve a similar function?

Q. Historically, a main job of national security adviser has been to serve as an honest broker between other parties, to make sure the president was making decisions based on accurate information, and to present the president with alternative options and dissenting views. By most accounts, Condoleezza Rice was not that sort of national security adviser. Do you think Condoleezza Rice did a good job as national security adviser? Would you expect your national security adviser to operate differently?

Q. Do you feel President Bush has been operating in too much of a bubble?

Q. President Bush rarely ventures out in public, and almost always talks to invitation-only audiences. Historically, presidents have appeared at events that were open to the public, at least in part to make it clear that they had been chosen to represent the whole country, not just those who voted for them. Would you return to this tradition?

Q. Would you continue President Bush’s practice of using signing statements to quietly assert his right to ignore legislation passed by Congress?

Q. President Bush’s lawyers have asserted that there are few Constitutional checks on a wartime president. Do you agree? And would you consider yourself a wartime president?

Q. Do you think President Bush is within his rights to assert executive privilege to block the testimony of White House aides in the investigation of the politically-motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys? Would you do likewise in similar circumstances?

Q. Some critics have accused the Bush White House of being dominated by politics, at the expense of policy. Do you think Bush got the balance between campaigning and governing about right?

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Trancredo blasts anti-Romney/anti-Mormon push-poll, then republishes the entire thing on his campaign Web site

GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo is very very upset that someone in Iowa is trying to use Mitt Romney's Mormonism, and its controversial teachings, against Romney. Tancredo is so upset at a "questionnaire" that's circulating in the state, saying all sorts of wild things about Romney's Mormonism, that Tancredo felt it important to republish the entire questionnaire on his campaign Web site three days ago, to ensure, uh, that the slurs spread no further. LOL. Here's a sample:

What really is the problem with Governor Romney's Mormonism?

At the core of Mormonism is the belief that Jesus and Satan used to be human blood brothers in a distant planet - Jesus behaved well according to Mormonism and became a deity in our planet system, while Satan behaved badly and became the devil. Moreover, Mormonism teaches that good conduct as Mormons in this life will enable Mormons to become God in a different planet system someday, just like Jesus a generation ago.

A religion which teaches that Jesus - our perfectly pure and holy God and Lord - is the blood brother of Satan - the perfectly evil and sinful creature - is an abomination, and the idea that a creature can become the Creator is precisely what turned Lucifer, the angel of light, into Satan, and is therefore Satanic by nature.

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Huckabee: "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

I hear Huckabee also revealed that Mormons glow in the dark. More from AP:

Republican Mitt Romney retorted to questions about his faith by surging rival Mike Huckabee on Wednesday, declaring that "attacking someone's religion is really going too far."

In an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

The article goes on to quote Mormon doctrine and officials saying that this isn't true. Or, actually, implying that it isn't true, but not outright saying that it isn't true.

The authoritative Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, does not refer to Jesus and Satan as brothers. It speaks of Jesus as the son of God and of Satan as a fallen angel, which is a Biblical account.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee's question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.

"We believe, as other Christians believe and as Paul wrote, that God is the father of all," said the spokeswoman, Kim Farah. "That means that all beings were created by God and are his spirit children. Christ, on the other hand, was the only begotten in the flesh and we worship him as the son of God and the savior of mankind. Satan is the exact opposite of who Christ is and what he stands for."

Not exactly a denial, per se. Read the rest of this post...

SKoreans clone cats that glow in the dark

Okay, I'm now officially a bit creeped out. Though wouldn't it be cool to glow? (And actually, the news here is that the glowing cats were cloned, not that they were made to glow - that's old news, though still creepy, or cool, I'm so confused.)

More from AFP:

South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday.

In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.

A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.

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Democratic Debate Open Thread

2:05pm Would you make it a priority to balance the budget? Obama simply didn't answer the question. Here's a thought - just say YES. Then you can the details. But my God, these roundabout political answers. Ugh. Richardson: Yes. Biden: Again, that "yes" word seems to be missing. Dodd: Again, can't say yes. Edwards: Hasn't said yes yet. What is it with these guys? Hillary: Even she's hedging a bit.

The last Democratic debate of the year. Finally.

It's live on CNN and FOX. MSNBC is delaying coverage for an hour because of some baseball thing with George Mitchell (the venerated George Mitchell, former Senator from Maine).

John and I are both watching. We won't do the blow-by-blow, but when anything interesting pops up, we'll post. It's harder to liveblog the Democrat debates because, for the most part, we agree with these candidates -- and need one of them to be our next President. Read the rest of this post...

A record number of soldiers — 109 — have killed themselves this year

Wars of convenience come at a price. From USA Today:

The Army updated those statistics Wednesday, confirming 85 suicides, including 27 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan.

The highest number of Army suicides recorded since 1990 was 102 in 1992 — a period when the service was 20% larger than today.

A total of 109 suicides this year would equal a rate of 18.4 per 100,000, the highest since the Army started counting in 1980. The civilian suicide rate was 11 per 100,000 in 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....

Since Sept. 11, 2001, records show that 128 soldiers have killed themselves while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

One was Spc. Travis Virgadamo, 19, of Las Vegas. His family said he was on suicide watch but was eventually taken off, and his gun was returned. "That night he killed himself," says his grandmother, Kate O'Brien, of Pahrump, Nev.

O'Brien says her grandson desperately wanted to come home.

"He would say, 'Grandma, pray for me.' " she says. "What good is somebody (to the war effort) that is under such stress?"

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Reuters botches Huckabee rape story

It's not just a small error on the part of Reuters. It's a classic case of how corrupted our media has become.

In this case, Reuters attempts to cover the story of how Huckabee helped a convicted rapist get paroled, and then the rapist went on to rape and murder two more women. In an effort to provide "balance," Reuters presents Huckabee's side of the story (I didn't help free the rapist) and the other side of the story (yes he did). Who does Reuters quote as the other side of the story? None other than a Democratic politician, labeled as such in the story. Why is that a problem? Because they had a former top aide to Huckabee, Olan W. "Butch" Reeves, a Republican who has donated to his presidential campaign, who was at the meeting and confirms that Huckabee tried to influence the board.

Here's what Reeves had to say:

[A]ccording to Reeves, Huckabee actually told the parole board members that the prison sentence meted out to Dumond for his rape conviction was "outlandish" and "way out of bounds for his crime." Huckabee believed there "was something nefarious" about the how the state's criminal justice system had treated Dumond, Reeves said.

Instead of using the source who isn't biased and confirms Huckabee's involvement in the parole release, Reuters chooses the source whose credibility is in doubt. Did Reuters do this in an attempt to kill the story? No. They did it because they're trying so hard to be "fair" that they've lost any concept of the truth. In Reuters' mind - in the mainstream media's mind - the way to be "fair" with a story is to present "both sides." That means a Republican and a Democrat. (The mainstream media loves presenting all sides of a story, even when a story only has one side, but that's a discussion for another day.)

In this case, it was obvious to Reuters that the best way to be fair is to present what a Republican has to say and then what a Democrat has to counter. The only problem is that the Democrat's word is suspect because he's a Democrat attacking a Republican. Reuters had a better source to quote, a Republican who witnessed the event first-hand and who is a trusted ally of Huckabee. So why not use him instead, and avoid the "oh this is just a Democratic smear" implication? Again, I don't think Reuters wanted to water down the story. I think Reuters didn't care if they watered down the story, or worse, didn't even realize they were watering it down. In the ever-shrinking mind's eye of the mainstream media, he-said-she-said is the gold standard of fairness and accuracy, regardless of whether in practice all truth is lost.

But hey, at least the story LOOKS fair. And isn't that what really matters? Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post profile does McCain no favors

I didn't even get to the substance of the Washington Post's profile of John McCain when I saw the photo of McCain they're using. Good God. He looks like his face is falling off. I don't mean this to be catty, but rather to acknowledge that we live in a country where looks matter, especially for our presidential candidates. McCain is looking terrible, and terribly unhealthy. I can't imagine that at some point this isn't going to catch up with him. Read the rest of this post...

Get some great holiday gifts at the AMERICAblog shop

I've added two new calendars for 2008 - one is "Paris by Day" and the other is "Paris by Night." Both contain my photos of Paris, most of which (if not all) were taken over the past year. They're $19.99 each.

And we also have our ever-popular Treason's Greetings cards in Christmas red and Hannukah blue. And our popular Draft the Bush Twins collection:



And the war:



There's much more than that. You can check out the home page of the shop here, and have a ball. Of course, a portion of the proceeds goes to AMERICAblog. Read the rest of this post...

Controversial Mark Penn becoming controversy within Clinton campaign

Via Political Wire, found this Newsday piece on Hillary Clinton's guru, Mark Penn. The article is titled "Clinton insiders question top aide's approach." This isn't a negative attack from another campaign. Seems the union-busting CEO of Burson-Marsteller (profiled by Ari Berman in The Nation last May) is coming under fire from within the Hillary campaign. Okay, this is not the kind of press the Clinton team wants to be getting three weeks before the first caucus. These Clinton in-fighting articles have been popping up with more frequency. Ken Bazinet and Thomas DeFrank had one in the NY Daily News yesterday.

It really sounds like some of Clinton's team are running their own negative campaign against Penn. It also sounds like he deserves the criticism. He's taken Hillary from the inevitable nominee to a candidate facing serious obstacles to that nomination:

On the eve of the final Iowa debate before the Jan. 3 caucuses, Clinton campaign insiders are increasingly questioning the cautious, poll-driven approach taken by Mark Penn, Hillary Rodham Clinton's top political aide, sources familiar with the situation say.

With Clinton barely holding her own against Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa, dissatisfaction is growing with Penn, who some say has mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent.

"There are two people who have come up with this strategy -- one Hillary Clinton and one Mark Penn," said a top Clinton ally, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Mark wanted to run her, basically, for re-election, and we are seeing what happened."

Said another Clinton camper: "The heat's on Mark. ... He's got a lot of enemies."

Penn didn't respond to requests for comment. Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson downplayed the dissent.

Clinton's aides insist that no shake-up is imminent and that Penn still has her ear. But they concede Bill Clinton has taken a more active behind-the-scenes role as her campaign flags.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

That GOP debate yesterday was both boring and a mess. Alan Keyes ruled.

The Democrats debate today in Iowa. Things are really heating up...really, really heating up. It's pathetic the fear so many Democrats have about what Republicans will do to our nominee. As we saw in 2004, the GOPers don't even need facts, they'll lie. Expect that. The key is to be preemptive, fight back hard and really play to win. So, yes, our nominee will be attacked. But, Democrats have to stop acting so afraid of that prospect. It will happen -- and this time, unlike Kerry's campaign, our nominee better deal with and punch back harder.

Okay, with that, what's new? Read the rest of this post...

"It's the economy, stupid" Take II

Bad news from the GOP who created our current round of economic problems.

Higher prices for gasoline and home heating oil, stock market volatility and rising mortgage foreclosures all account for some of the pessimism, in the view of political pollsters.

Significantly, they also cite the recent drop in real estate prices as a major worry for millions who have long viewed their homes as a source of retirement income.

“People feel less secure these days,” and their concerns turn to issues such as education, health care and retirement security as well as the economy, said Sara Taylor, a former White House political director not aligned with any of the Republican presidential hopefuls.

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EU threatens to boycott Bush summit on global warming

Since when has Bush ever really reached out to others who do not share his Stone Age views? He hardly has a track record of compromise so ignoring this summit is not such a bad idea. It would be nice to have countries discussing global warming, but unfortunately Bush never wants to take action that might hurt his special interest supporters. Global warming programs are a dead issue with the US until the next government comes to town. Read the rest of this post...