Video snippets from the Lamont v. Lieberman debate tonight

Politics TV has the debate broken down into bite-size videos based on the particular issues. Read the rest of this post...

The Bush foreign policy failures are multiplying

Uh-oh. Nicholas Burns, the rather smug Under Secretary of State for Political Affair just said on CNN that the Bush team, "can walk and chew gum at the same time." If you have to say that, it's probably not true.

And, as evidence, Bush, the great statesman, can't get China and Russia on board with his strategy for North Korea:

President Bush pressed the leaders of China and Russia yesterday to join the United States in sending a tough message to North Korea for this week's missile launches and said the world needs to speak with "one voice" to force the communist nation to adhere to international rules.

But a U.S. drive for tough sanctions against North Korea encountered immediate obstacles. In his first comments about the controversy, Russian president Vladimir Putin said concern about the missile tests should not trigger an emotional response that would "drown out common sense."

Bush's pal, Putin, doesn't want to speak with his voice. The dire foreign policy situation was actually summed up by a major conservative player in this morning's Washington Post:

"North Korea is firing missiles. Iran is going nuclear. Somalia is controlled by radical Islamists. Iraq isn't getting better, and Afghanistan is getting worse," said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a leading conservative commentator. "I give the president a lot of credit for hanging tough on Iraq. But I am worried that it has made them too passive in confronting the other threats."

Actually, Mr. Kristol, because the President invaded Iraq, he has to be passive confronting the other threats.

What a mess. Read the rest of this post...

Bush and Laura on Larry King

Anyone watching? Because this thing is PAINFUL.

It is frightening that this man is our President. But don't be mean, it's his birthday.

Laura Bush dismissed polls saying her husband is unpopular...saying that when we travel around the country, it's not what we see. Does she not know that those crowds she sees are hand-picked?

I don't think Larry's going to ask any of the questions we submitted and suggested.

UPDATE: I can't believe I watched that whole frickin interview. Ugh. He's an idiot...but he's going to git Bin Laden. And he gets a CIA briefing every day -- except Sunday, (because terrorists don't work on Sundays?) He's optimistic that all problems will be solved -- which is interesting, cause no one else is. Seriously, what an idiot.

Talking Points Memo has the transcript of the question about Bush's BFF, Joe Lieberman.

Judd at Think Progress dissects Larry's praise for Bush taking the lead on issues -- and that on Iraq, Bush led, and "the U.N. went along." Didn't quite happen that way, Larry. Read the rest of this post...

Bush to vacation less, campaign more in 06

Of course, with Bush, vacationing "less" is a relative term. Either way, vacationing or campaigning, he's not governing:

With Republicans nervous about keeping control of Congress and worries about the future of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, White House officials have decided too much is at stake this year for Bush to spend so much time on vacation. He'll spend some time at the ranch, but it will be less than previous summers and interrupted by more time on the road.

Since he's been president, Bush has spent the better part of every August largely out of sight on his ranch. It hurt him most last summer, when anti-war activists camped outside his property and drew attention to the mounting deaths in Iraq. Then Hurricane Katrina hit, forcing him to end his vacation several days early.

It might have "hurt" Bush in the polls, but the people in the Gulf Coast suffered a lot more last year after Katrina -- and still are because of his incompetence.

Let's not forget he was on vacation in August 2001 when the CIA presented him with a daily briefing headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S." -- and he did NOTHING. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread: How's the Lamont vs. Lieberman debate going?

It's live on MSNBC right now. Your thoughts?

Lamont online debate headquarters. Read the rest of this post...

Troops in Ramadi discover effective new strategy: courtesy

The fact that it's news when U.S. troops decide it's important to "replac[e] confrontation with courtesy in hopes of winning public trust and undercutting support for the militants" is more evidence that Defense Department leadership is grossly deficient.

Ramadi, a Sunni-dominated city in Iraq's western Anbar Province, is probably the most dangerous place in the country save Baghdad, and there is constant conflict, both between the Coalition and Iraqis and between Iraqis themselves. The best counterinsurgency tactic in that kind of environment is to undercut the local support for the fighters and create conditions in which people would rather help a benificent Coalition presence than join the insurgency. That very basic fact has apparently escaped DoD leadership, leading to revelations like this occurring in the third year of war:

Marines based in western Ramadi now regularly knock on people's front doors instead of storming through. Instead of roaming the streets in armored Humvees, Marines took a census of the area - sitting down and listening to people's concerns and complaints.

"You'd be surprised at how many people in Ramadi are shocked when we knock and ask to come in. And in Arab culture, it makes all the difference," said 2nd Lt. Ryan Hub of Sumter, S.C., who as a teenager lived in Kuwait for two years while his Air Force officer father was stationed there.

It's not the units' job to determine how to best fight the war, those decisions come from above. I don't blame the boots on the ground for not figuring it out earlier, I blame leadership for not telling them how to do it right. This kind of counterinsurgency move takes discipline, and it's certainly not easy, but it's the right way to go. The fact that it's a newsworthy anomaly is outrageous. Read the rest of this post...

Lamont debates Lieberman tonight at 7pm est

Big night in Connecticut. Lamont's website has set up a one-stop "Debate Headquarters." The debate will be televised live on C-SPAN and MSNBC. Read the rest of this post...

OPEN THREAD: First person space shuttle blogging

AMERICAblog reader Indigo sent us the following shot of the shuttle launch Tuesday from their backyard in Florida. Cool. Read the rest of this post...

Conservative claiming victory in Mexico

AP says his lead is "insurmountable":

Ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon built an insurmountable lead in Mexico's presidential vote count Thursday, but his leftist rival vowed to challenge the results in court.

With 99.92 percent of the vote counted, Felipe Calderon would win even if all the remaining votes went to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party. He had 35.87 percent of the vote, compared with 35.32 percent for Lopez Obrador. Roughly 220,000 votes separated them.

Read the rest of this post...

Why would anyone consent to this photo?

Home page of the Washington Post's Web site. Read the rest of this post...

DeLay to remain on Texas ballot

That's the latest court ruling for now, but the GOP will surely keep trying to get his name removed for the election. Read the rest of this post...

Army charges officer who refuses to go to Iraq

Ballsy. Read the rest of this post...

Kidnappers of Sunni lawmaker demand withdrawal timeline, prisoner release

A group claiming to hold Sunni Iraqi parliamentarian Tayseer al-Mashhadani has issued demands (and a deadline to fulfill them) to the office of Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi. The group told authorities that they would kill her if the following requirements were not met within three days: timetable for withdrawing coalition troops; release of all detainees [unclear if this includes Sunnis]; and a halt to attacks on Shiite mosques.

Those demands appear to confirm initial suspicions that Tayseer was abducted by a Shia group, and the aims closely mirror the main priorities of nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Militia. The Mahdi Militia is a ragtag, relatively decentralized force, but it has a large number of well-armed members and is a formidable force in many urban areas, especially Baghdad. It is one of the two largest Shia militias in the country (the other being the SCIRI party's Badr Corps).

Almost exactly a month ago, I mentioned the dangers of Shia groups becoming impatient with the pace of their consolidation of power (especially to the extent they see the U.S. as holding them back). This is another significant and dangerous step down that road. Read the rest of this post...

Coulter: "textbook plagiarism"

TPM Muckraker has been tracking this story and it's getting really good.

Today's update confirms that the plagiarism expert, John Barrie, who exposed Coulter's plagiarism for the New York Post, has been in contact with her distributor:

It didn't take long to find evidence of plagiarism, Barrie said. "After we found three in the book, we called it quits. I think we found four of her syndicated columns that had problems." But the task proved draining, he said -- on himself, not his technology. "After combing through Ann Coulter for a while, it doesn't take long before you want to call it quits. I want to prove the technology, but I don't want to make my eyes bleed."

Barrie confirmed that Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Coulter's columns to over 100 newspapers around the country, called him twice yesterday. UPS' Kathie Kerr had told me yesterday that they want to review a copy of Barries "report" before making a comment.

YouTube has the full interview with John Barrie on last night's Olbermann show. It's good. She's bad. Read the rest of this post...

NY Court rejects same-sex marriage (Georgia Court does, too)

According to CNN, the NY Court of Appeals ruled against same-sex marriage. The decision was just issued so more details to follow.

UPDATE from NY Times:

New York's highest court ruled today that gay marriage is not allowed under state law.

The Court of Appeals in a 4-2 decision rejected arguments from gay and lesbian plaintiffs throughout the state that their inability to get marriage licences in New York violated their constitutional rights.

Judge Robert Smith said New York's marriage law clearly limits marriage to between a man and a woman and any change in the law should come from the state Legislature.

ANOTHER UPDATE from another state court -- Georgia's Supreme Court upheld their same-sex marriage ban today:

The Georgia Supreme Court, reversing a lower court judge's ruling, decided unanimously that the ban did not violate the state's single-subject rule for ballot measures. Superior Court Judge Constance Russell of Fulton County had ruled that it did.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush at 60, building a legacy of a more dangerous world

Happy Birthday, Mr. President. And, thanks for making the world a much more dangerous place. Your incompetence, lies and ineptitude have created a frightening legacy.

Both of the major national papers today analyzed the fact that Bush is likely to leave the world a far more dangerous place than when he took office in 2001. Bush already told us that the Iraq debacle will be left for the next President to solve, but that's just one crisis.

The Washington Post looks at the panoply of foreign policy disasters that have festered during Bush's tenure:

From deteriorating security in Afghanistan and Somalia to mayhem in the Middle East, confrontation with Iran and eroding relations with Russia, the White House suddenly sees crisis in every direction.

North Korea's long-range missile test Tuesday, although unsuccessful, was another reminder of the bleak foreign policy landscape that faces President Bush even outside of Iraq. Few foreign policy experts foresee the reclusive Stalinist state giving up the nuclear weapons it appears to have acquired, making it another in a long list of world problems that threaten to cloud the closing years of the Bush administration, according to foreign policy experts in both parties.

"I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard N. Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

The New York Times focuses primarily on the North Korean crisis:

The Bush administration has tried to ignore North Korea, then, reluctantly, to engage it, and then to squeeze its bankers in a manner intended to make the country's leader, Kim

Yet none of these steps in the past six years has worked. So now, after a barrage of missile launchings by North Korea, President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of "familiar bad choices."

The choices have less to do with North Korea's newest missile — which, as Mr. Bush pointed out on Wednesday, "didn't stay up very long and tumbled into the sea" — than with the bigger question of whether the president is prepared to leave office in 2009 without constraining an unpredictable dictator who boasts about having a nuclear arsenal.

"We're at the moment when the president has to decide whether he wants an unconstrained, nuclear North Korea to be part of his legacy," said Jonathan D. Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the United States Naval War College who has spent much of his career studying North Korea and its improbable strategies for survival.

So while Bush continues to obsess about turning 60 (documented in a piece on the Today Show and given front page coverage in the Times ), the world continues to become more dangerous by the day. Nice work. Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Tonight, Larry King is interviewing Bush and Laura. CNN has been promoting it non-stop.

We all know that Larry will only throw softballs at them.

But, what questions should be asked? Dan Froomkin had several yesterday. Because of the administration's obsession with all things sex, be interesting to know the Bush family policy on abstinence and birth control -- and what they really think about gay people.

So pretend Larry King is a real reporter -- what else should he ask?

UPDATE: Larry King says he wants your questions for George and Laura. Send him your questions here. Read the rest of this post...

UK terror attack documents found in roadside ditch

And here I thought that it was only democracy that was being thrown into a ditch. Full details here.

The 46-page Ministry of Defence file was discovered in a gym bag and handed to The Sun newspaper by a member of the public.

The bag - also containing an MoD security pass - had apparently been stolen from a Major's car while he was shopping at a Sainsbury's store in the Home Counties. He is not thought to be facing any disciplinary charges.

Read the rest of this post...

Zizou does it again

France to the World Cup final against a fantastic Italian team who are playing great football right now. What another incredible night for Zidane and France goes wild once again. In a country that leans towards despair, Les Bleus are bringing smiles to the nation and have everyone cheering. Read the rest of this post...