July 2006 Archives

Only in Bush World is this not alarming news. From ThinkProgress:

In an interview today with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, President Bush declared, “We have a very strong military and we can deal with any threat to the homeland there is and will if we have to.”

In reality, “the Army is showing the wear and tear of constant battle after nearly five years of war.” Rep. Ike Skelton, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, recently reported:

"Army readiness is in crisis. The administration has brought us here because of a lack of planning and a lack of funding. Today two-thirds of the brigade combat teams in our operating force are unready.Today two-thirds of the brigade combat teams in our operating force are unready."

My wife's blog was featured today at ClubMom.com -- along with the kids.

Congratulations, Kari, on one year in the blogosphere!

Now if we can only get your laptop to work...

I hope you have/had a great day!

While Democrats put together election platforms that focus on domestic issues, they should also take Fareed Zakaria's advice:

[If I were running against conservatives,] I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences, because the man is looking — I mean, it’s not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged. If you listen to what he said last week about Iraq, he’s living in a different world, not a different country. (emphasis from Think Progress' transcript)

Atrios is right: this would explain a lot. Alas, I do not think we can let ourselves off the hook for our current government's failures.

(If you don't get the reference, click here.)

This could be a very cool development. Too bad our nation is so myopic that we aren't taking the lead on developing it:

The Tesla company’s new all-electric car can go 250 miles off a 3.5-hour charge and hit speeds of 130 mph. And although at $100,000 apiece, they’re not ready for the masses, the Teslas represent a huge leap over GM’s 1996 all-electric model, and offer a glimpse of things to come.

Why does the Bush Administration hate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights so much? Over at the DailyKos, BruinKid quotes from an AP story about the new terrorism bill:

WASHINGTON - U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

A 32-page draft measure is intended to authorize the Pentagon's tribunal system, established shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks to detain and prosecute detainees captured in the war on terror. The tribunal system was thrown out last month by the Supreme Court.

Our system of government is not designed to be dependent on the executive branch showing good judgement. There are supposed to be checks and balances. Separated powers.

U.S. citizens can be detained indefinitely and barred from the civilian courts based on very broad and vague guidelines.

Hello, Congress? It's time to defend the Constitution. Actually, it's well past time.

Some numbers that don't end in 0 or 5 have symbolic significance. Here's one:

It has been 1,776 days since President George W. Bush promised to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."

Nice work, Mr. President.

Sigh. So much for the best plans.

My wife is attending the BlogHer conference in San Jose this weekend. I thought it would be cool for her to have a laptop. Not just for the conference, but for the work she does in the web world. She could use the mobility.

So, I found a laptop. Purchased it. Loaded the programs on it. Kari's used it a few times around the house.

She gets to the hotel for BlogHer...and it dies. Won't boot. Odd error message. Save mode, regular mode, no booting is possible.

Needless to say, I was not happy. Since she needed more business cards (excellent networking, honey), and the kids were wondering what mommy was doing, I decided to drive the 80 minutes to San Jose with the laptop recovery disks, newly printed business cards, some essential programs, the kids, and their swimsuits. The plan was for mom and kids to swim in the hotel pool while I tried the laptop recovery.

Oh well.

The laptop was not fixable. The recovery disks did not recover. The kids apparently put on a bit of a show in the pool.

My oldest son, who is allergic to artificial colors and flavors, exhibited a real hyper reaction -- probably connected to the red dye he has been consuming in his tylenol with codiene since having his tonsils and adnoids removed a week ago. (Why in the hell isn't there a liquid pain medicine for children that does not include artificial colors or flavors? Can someone explain this to me?)

So, the visit was short. The kids had some fun. Kari, I think, got a reminder about why she was going to enjoy a BlogHer weekend sans the children. :)

We drove home. Initially, I couldn't find the freeway onramp from the hotel, even though it is about 25 yards from the driveway. (sigh) Kids ate dinner in the van while watching Shrek. They didn't fall asleep until we got home about 10:30.

The new laptop didn't work. I love it when a plan fails to come together.

Update: Oldest son asked to go back to the hotel where mommy was so they could go swimming again. I ordered pizza instead. Kids approved of that alternative plan. But they want mommy home tomorrow.

The fact that our so-called liberal media continues to let the Bush Administration get away with this drives me crazy. From Paul Krugman's column today:

Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn’t let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that that’s not at all what happened, I’ve missed them.

It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?

(Hat tip: Atrios)

For months now, Americablog's John in DC has been screaming at Democratic Party leaders to take up the privacy issue and champion it. It's another one of those "right thing to do, great politics" ideas.

So far, you can hear the crickets in the background.

Will Democrats realize how important this issue is now that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has become an identity theft victim? Will they now see how important it is? How voters care about it?

One of my favorite television writers, J. Michael Straczynski (jms), recently sold a script to Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment. In this post, jms describes how this has elevated him overnight in the film world and the new opportunities one sale has provided to him.

See, there's a real class structure to this industry. A list directors only buy scripts from A list writers. That's kind of the rule, with very few exceptions. I've been working in the TV business for over twenty years, but in features I'm kind of an unknown equation. Always have been, mainly because I really haven't sought it out much; I figure films are like going to Vegas, you can invest years in one shot at the dice. So I stick to TV. I thus have not been in that class of A list writer. Nowhere near.

When Imagine and Ron Howard bought that script, the effect was electric. Suddenly everybody in town wanted to know who the hell was this guy they'd never heard of who just sold a script to Howard and, in essence, jumped the line from "who?" to A-list without much in-between. Twenty years in TV, now suddenly an overnight success.

Within hours of the announcement, every studio in town was calling my agent to get a copy of the script. As it got read, they started calling to set up meetings. Not us calling them. Them calling us.

And then the offers started.

Since the beginning of Babylon 5's preproduction, jms has posted to the newsgroup to offer his insights into the television business. He's taken far more than his fair share of message flames, but stuck at it. It's been a treasure.

If you have an interest in how the television and movie business works from the writer's standpoint, you would find jms' posts extremely informative.

And if you haven't seen Babylon 5, please do yourself the favor of renting, borrowing, or buying some DVDs or Season 1 on iTunes. The show is moving, literate, and thought-provoking. Looking back (especially at the plot involving Earth's government), I find more than one disturbing signal about the world in which we live today.

Via Media Matters, here's the latest Bill O'Reilly attack on factual information.

On the July 25 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly falsely claimed that the Red Cross "historically ... adopted" its emblem "because of the Christian philosophy of giving alms and giving assistance to people in need." In fact, according to the American Red Cross website, it was "[i]n honor of the Swiss ... [that] the symbol of a red cross on a white background (the reverse of the Swiss flag) was identified as a protective emblem in conflict areas." While the cross on the Swiss flag originated in the 1200s from "a symbol of the Christian faith," according to the Swiss Embassy in the United States, the Red Cross makes no mention of Christianity as a reason for adopting the symbol.

Okay, Democratic Party leaders: the GOP is opening mocking you.

Alas, with cause. Atrios quotes from the Washington Post:

The White House sees the risk but is banking, in part, on the Democrats' history of not capitalizing on such moments.

Yes, I'm tilting at a windmill here. But my hypocrisy meter is on overload after reading that PBS KIDS Sprout has fired Good Night Show host Melanie Martinez because she appeared in satirical videos as "The Technical Virgin" seven years ago.

It's bad enough that they fired her over something that happened years ago. (One wonders if any network executives have any skeletons they are hiding?) Worse, they came up with an extraordinarily pathetic explanation for the decision. So I wrote the following e-mail, which I am sure will be ignored.

To Whom It May Concern:

As the father of two children (ages five and two) who watch PBS KIDS Sprout, I wanted to inform you of my strongest possible disapproval of the decision to fire Melanie Martinez because of a satirical video she made seven years ago.

Worse, I find the statement attributed to network president Sandy Wax, that the videos "may undermine her character's credibility with our audience," to be among the most ridiculous sentences I have ever read. Your network should be ashamed to insult the intelligence of your viewers and their parents in this way.

Of course, as my children are five and two, they have no idea about Martinez's previous work. There is absolutely no way for her previous videos to impact my children's perception of her character's credibility. Really, is this the best statement your network's public relations team could develop?

Now that you have established such a reprehensible guideline, I look forward to learning the results of background checks I would assume PBS KIDS Sprout has initiated on all of its executives to ensure that none of them did anything that would be similarly embarrassing seven or more years ago.

After all, setting rules and then applying them consistently is so important for children. You might even say that failing to follow such a guideline in this case would have a negative impact your network's credibility.

I can assure you that your lack of loyalty and good sense in this case undermines your credibility with me. The ridiculous statement attributed to your network's president announcing Martinez's firing also makes me question your network's candor and truthfulness.

Loyalty. Good sense. Candor. Truthfulness.

These are also important values for our children. I must say that I am appalled to see your network reject them.

Sincerely,

Craig Cheslog

One other question: Does PBS KIDS Sprout really think that I should not show my kids the George Carlin-era "Thomas the Tank Engine" or that I need to reach for the remote any time Dr. Ruth appears on "Between the Lions" (to take two examples off the top of my head)?

Hello, Democratic Party leaders? The household debt problem is a huge issue. And I am as confused as Digby is about why the Democrats are refusing to address it.

As he so often does, LTC Bob Bateman authored an outstanding post on Eric Alterman's blog yesterday. He writes about the our nation's ignorance of war, and the impact that has.

We have a problem in the United States. Well, we have a lot of problems of course, but one in particular I can help alleviate. We have a problem of knowledge. More specifically, we have a problem with a lack of knowledge about one particular topic: War.

Two of the stories to which Eric linked yesterday dealt with military affairs, and they were written by a friend of mine. Tom Ricks, a reporter for the Washington Post, has just written a devastating book entitled Fiasco. The Post is highlighting it on the front page, printing extracts as news. It fairly well indicts my profession on a number of counts of hubris, stupidity, and a whole host of other faults. Although Ricks himself never uses those words, the evidence speaks for itself, and Ricks has been covering the military for more than a decade, so he knows whereof he speaks. This is a salient point.

The third story Eric linked was a book review by Andrew Bacevich, a soldier-turned-academic who, when he wore a uniform, had a career-path very similar to my own. It is a review of the book Cobra II, which is about the highest-level planning and discussions about the beginning of the war in Iraq, and his point, well, the title says it all, “Why read Clausewitz when Shock and Awe can make a clean sweep of things?” That speaks volumes. Or does it? I realized that it means a lot to me, but does the title of the review really mean something to you, the majority of you, who read Altercation?

And this was my realization, brought on by my presence here in Newport, where nearly side-by-side sit two communities which are almost completely alien, one to the other. There is the Newport Naval Base, with the Naval War College sitting grandly on the water, and just a few miles away, downtown Newport, home of mega-yachts, “Millionaires Row,” and every accoutrement to personal wealth you might imagine, and it occurred to me that neither know much about the other, but that this toleration of ignorance might not be something we Americans can afford anymore. If, as they say, “War is too important to be left to the Generals,” well then, that presupposes that somebody else knows about war. It is an idea which I endorse.

LTC Bateman links to some reading lists. I'm going to try to add some of these books to my upcoming reading list.

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) seems to have forgotten that truth telling is an important part of being a straight talker. McCain, however, has fallen off the express again. Think Progress has the details:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has repeatedly refused to condemn Hezbollah for its role in initiating the Lebanon-Israel conflict. Yesterday, in a press conference with President Bush, he “criticized the ‘damage and destruction’ caused by Israeli attacks but said nothing on Hezbollah’s role.” Other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, have condemned Hezbollah for its role in initiating the conflict.

Sen. John McCain appeared on Fox this morning and falsely claimed that Maliki has “condemned Hezbollah.” McCain said that, as a result, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and others who have criticized Malaki for his position on Hezbollah are “not qualified to lead.”

At least McCain's many friends in the media are unlikely to call him on his latest lie. A lying McCain, after all, doesn't fit within the narrative.

Hello, Congress? As a theoretically co-equal branch of our federal government, the fact that the Bush Administration did not tell you about Pakistan's plans to build a plutonium reactor should make you very angry. As the Washington Post's Joby Warrick reports:

Henry D. Sokolski, the Defense Department's top nonproliferation official during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he was most surprised by the way news of the reactor in Pakistan became known.

"What is baffling is that this information -- which was surely information that our own intelligence agencies had -- was kept from Congress," said Sokolski, now director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. "We lack imagination if we think that this is no big deal."

Well, lacking imagination is something this Administration has often admitted. "No one could have imagined..." has become quite a mantra to explain away terrible events.

Dear Republican Leaders of Congress: there are these things called oversight hearings where you can hold the executive branch to account for its actions. Yes, I know that may sound weird. Anyway, check with some older colleagues or staff to learn about them. Get a few videos from the C-SPAN library.

Then call one. It's your Constitutional duty.

My apologizes for being away. As a few of you have wondered, I have been busy with my son's surgery and recovery. Things went well and he's recovering nicely -- especially when he takes his medicine. Sometimes that takes more of a negotiation than it should, but the pain usually helps convince him. :)

My wife has written several posts about the surgery and recovery at her blog. Feel free to check it out!

Just 10 days ago, I commended conservative writer Ben Stein on his excellent New York Times column about the state of our nation's economy and future. A column where Stein asks:

Is this America, where far too many of the rich endlessly loot their stockholders and kick the employees in the teeth, the America that our soldiers in Ramadi and Kirkuk and Anbar Province and Afghanistan are fighting for? Is this America, where we will end up so far behind the financial eight ball we won't be able to see because of mismanagement by both parties, the America that our men and women are losing limbs for, coming home in boxes for?

These were great words. But, Stein does not seem to be following them up with actions.

Tonight, Stein is being featured at a fundraiser for Tom McClintock, a very conservative California State Senator who is running for Lt. Governor against California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. The California Progress Report's Frank Russo asks an important question today: Does Ben Stein know the real Tom McClintock?

Tom McClintock is considered an extreme ideologue whose 'agenda consists of privatizing everything from prisons to street-lighting and a voucher system for education." (California Journal, 10-1-91). Even former Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, has referred to McClintock to as an "ideologue, obstructionist, and even caveman," after then Assemblyman McClintock claimed that "Governor Wilson and his supporters have declared war on the taxpayers of California." (LA Times, 6/19/91). Little guys usually come last with McClintock who wouldn't protect consumers against credit card interest rates (LA Times, 10-13-86) and who opposed mandatory product labeling of cancer causing chemicals (Prop 65, LA Times, 10-13- 86).

McClintock’s amazing record continues to this day. He received a zero percent (0%) rating on the California Environmental Score Card of the California League of Conservation Voters. I don’t know about Ben, but I don't want this man on the California Coastal Commission or the State Lands Commission that the Lieutenant Governor sits on. The last day the legislature was in session before their recess, he was speaking on the Senate floor against solar energy. He opposed the intrastructure bonds supported by his “running mate,” Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has even spoken in favor of increased offshore oil drilling and wants to ban carpool lanes.

He is opposed to any increase in the California minimum wage which hasn’t been increased in 5 years (even without indexing). Based on recent statements he’s made, I am not at all sure he even supports the concept of the minimum wage. I’ll have to research to see if he ever has voted for a minimum wage bill in his years in the legislature. He’s never voted for a state budget! The last time he ran for statewide office, he chose as his deputy campaign manager someone who had a theocratic agenda for the state of California. The list goes on and on.

This is a big deal. I am thankful for Stein's words in the New York Times. But I would love Stein to be asked how he can square his support for McClintock with the last two columns he's written.

Russo is correct: there is a lot at stake in this election. That's why I'll be supporting John Garamendi for Lt. Governor. Unlike McClintock, Garamendi understands the issues about which Stein wrote so passionately 10 days ago.

Funny, I was just having this conversation with my friend MS. He insisted that I was opposing Sen. Joe Lieberman (?-Conn.) just because of the war.

I explained that it was far more than that one issue. MS disagreed. It was quite a phone call.

One that didn't change the fact that the opposition to Lieberman is about more than the Iraq War. You can click here for more on the subject.

I'd really like to know why our media elite think that the president swearing is more important than the major policy implications of the rest of the open mike conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Talk about missing the lede.

Ezra Klein explains:

That's a big deal: Bush believes it within the Syrian government's power to calm the conflict. Theoretically, that should have major implications for American diplomacy and, possibly, policy. So what's CNN's headline? "Open mic catches Bush expletive on Mideast"! The story is not that his substantive views on the issue have been uncovered, but that the president curses. Indeed, the article even speculates on how such a stunner slipped out, arguing that "the escalating crisis in the Middle East prompted him to use an expletive in a conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair."

This is your press corps. The President has a potty mouth is a more pressing story than the President believe sufficient pressure on the sovereign nation of Syria could be the key to ending an intensely volatile war in the Middle East. What a proud day for my profession.

I wonder how many times Democrats have to lose an election before they realize that national security needs to be a major part of the platform. It makes no sense to be afraid of it. Democrats have good policies -- certainly better ones than the Bush Administration has offered since September 11, 2001.

Concerned people should heed Eric Alterman's warning:

Robert Wright may be right in this mega-big think piece on foreign policy and the Democrats.  The problem with it however is that he glides over its salability.  It’s not so hard to come up a sensible-sounding foreign policy that makes sense on an op-ed page or in a Council on Foreign Relations presentation—or even one that will make Joe Klein stand up and scream, “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party hates America.”  But it’s damn hard to come up with one about which Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and ultimately, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews will not whine that it's wimpy and does not allow for enough chest-beating and innocent-people-killing.  Wright may be right, which would be great; but if he’s serious, he’s going to have to spend a lot more time figuring out how to sell it.  (And right now, liberals/progressives/Democrats have no bigger problem.)

Paul Krugman today urges us all to remember:

Since those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it — and since the cast of characters making pronouncements on the crisis in the Middle East is very much the same as it was three or four years ago — it seems like a good idea to travel down memory lane. Here’s what they said and when they said it:

“The greatest thing to come out of [invading Iraq] for the world economy … would be $20 a barrel for oil.” Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), February 2003

“Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There’s been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia.” Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and now president of the World Bank, Feb. 27, 2003

“Earlier this week, I traveled to Baghdad to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq.” President Bush, June 17, 2006

“People are doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse. … These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.” Ayad Allawi, Mr. Bush’s choice as Iraq’s first post-Saddam prime minister, November 2005

“My fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.” President Bush, Dec. 18, 2005

(Hat tip: Crooks and Liars)

Oh, yeah. The American voter is always impressed with how quickly Democratic candidates and campaign officials fold when facing criticism. As First Draft's Athenae rightly argues:

Wow. There's no better way to show your strength on national security than by crying like little girls the minute your opponents take a swing at you. There's really no better way to demonstrate to a country conditioned over the past six years to want to vote for the biggest alpha male that you are, in fact, that alpha male, than by turning right around and agreeing with the bully that yes, your mother is a 50 cent whore and if they just wait for a moment you will fetch the change they asked for.

Just as Nancy's best response would have been a hearty, "Oh, screw you, you lying cheating, war-crimes-committing, torture-approving, terrorist-amnesty-granting chipmunk. Why don't you go find those weapons of mass destruction if you're so concerned about our troops, and take C-Plus Augustus with you. We've got work to do," the gentle congressmen referenced above would be best off learning that if stay quiet, they'll still hit you.

Republicans are going to attack. Are Democrats going to stand up for themselves, or fold? Are Democrats going to continue to let campaigning in this country be a one-way fight -- and then wonder on election day how we snatched yet another defeat from the jaws of victory?

As Atrios notes, reporter Anne E. Kornblut completely misleads New York Times readers today.

Kornblut tries to report on a speech by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Instead of noting that Clinton was criticizing Republicans for tying up the Senate with legislation to appease the hard-right GOP base, the reporter makes it appear that Clinton was attacking her fellow Democrats.

Your so-called liberal media, hard at work.

In what alternate reality is President George W. Bush living that he thought he could get away with this statement during a joint news conference today with Russian President Vladimir Putin?

BUSH: I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq, where there’s a free press and free religion. And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia will do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy.

PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.

BUSH: Just wait.

Wait for what, Mr. President? That free press and free religion to just sprout spontaneously from the chaos in Iraq today? A chaos where reporters are killed and people are dying based on their religious preferences?

Wishing does not make something true, Mr. President. Your advisors should serve their nation, perhaps remember that they took an oath to defend the Constitution and not George W. Bush, and engage you in a trip to reality.

And so it begins. Republicans seem to believe that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are a partisan campaign prop. Americablog's John quotes from a Columbus Dispatch story:

Using vivid images of smoke pouring from one of the towers of the World Trade Center, Republican Sen. Mike DeWine unleashed a commercial yesterday that charges Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown with casting votes in Congress that could have weakened America’s response to terrorism.

The new TV commercial, which also flashed images of the 19 hijackers who took part in the Sept. 11 attack, is an apparent effort by the DeWine campaign to jar Ohio voters into remembering the terrorist attack in New York and suburban Washington and to convince them that the senator will support tougher anti-terrorism measures than Brown, a congressman from Avon.

Okay, Senator DeWine. Here's my question, going beyond the reprehensible nature of using these images for partisan gain:

President George W. Bush promised the American people 1,762 days ago that he would get Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, "dead or alive."

Where is he?

Wesley Clark slaps down Sen. Joe Lieberman (?-Conn), and provides the latest example of the Senator's hypocrisy. Kos quotes from Clark's Daily Kos chat:

I am a proud member of the Democratic Party, and I believe it is our party's responsibility to support the will of the Democratic primary voters in Connecticut. I personally look forward to supporting the candidate CT voters elect as the Democratic nominee. Though, as an aside, I must say I find it ironic that Senator Lieberman is now planning a potential run as an independent after he continually questioned my loyalty to the Democratic Party during the 2004 presidential primary.

Check out the comments to see some of Lieberman's greatest hits from the 2004 presidential campaign.

With our Iraqi invasion not leading to greater peace in the Middle East, Gary Hart wonders why we are not hearing from the neoconservatives who led us into this mistaken war of choice. He writes:

Wouldn't you think this would be exactly the time when the nation's wisemen, those neoconservative idealists who saw the great American empire imposing democracy on the Middle East at the point of a bayonet, who secretely envisioned Iraq as our military base in the region, to be heard from? Of course, I mean Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Steven Cambone, and so many triumphalist others so present on the talk shows in early 2003. Haven't seen much of them recently.

Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are left to manage the disaster. You don't hear either one of them linking their arrogant decisions four years ago to the disaster unfolding in the Middle East.

We have some lessons in democracy to be learned here at home. Democracy does not work without accountability. Today there is no accountability in American democracy.

Josh Marshall points out an extremely troubing paragraph in Jonathan S. Landay's story about the White House agreeing to allow review of its domestic wiretap program:

By having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court conduct the review instead of a regular federal court, the Bush administration would ensure the secrecy of details of the highly classified program. The administration has argued that making details of the program public would compromise national security.

However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn't have been monitoring. (Emphasis Marshall's.)

Could is an interesting word. Especially in a news story. As Marshall wonders:

It sounds like Landay's pointing to the possibility that the White House has been using the program to monitor political opponents. (I'm not sure how else to interpret that line.) And you get the sense he's doing more than speculating.

That charge is certainly worth continued investigation.

Some of Senator Joe Lieberman's supporters are getting desperate and making wild and detestible accusations. As Brad DeLong headlines, it is just Another Reason Joe Lieberman Should Not Stay a Senator.

Gift cards are great business: for the company selling them. Daniel Gross examines Williams-Sonoma's latest SEC Filing and concludes:

Translation: $12 million spent on Williams-Sonoma gift cards and gift certificates was utterly wasted because the recipients lost them or decided not to use them. What a great business!

Free money for the corporations! What a country.

Hey, the deficit will only be about $300 billion this year! Woo-hoo! Via ThinkProgress, we see President George W. Bush take credit for this. He says it is a good day for the taxpayers.

Really, must he be this clueless?

President George W. Bush inherited large surpluses. He has subsequently run the four largest single-year deficits in United States history:

1. 2004 (George W. Bush) $413 billion
2. 2003 (George W. Bush) $378 billion
3. 2005 (George W. Bush) $318 billion
4. 2006 (George W. Bush) $296 billion (projected)
5. 1992 (George H. W. Bush) $290 billion

Mr. President, a $300 billion deficit provides no news about which we should cheer. It is a disgrace. Running up our national debt is nothing to celebrate.

Your addition to the birth tax, the debt our children and grandchildren will have to finance, merits taxpayer condemnation. Your fiscal irresponsibility is historic. And tragic.

I'll tell you what I'll celebrate: the end of this irresponsible person's term in office.

Let's see. The Taliban is resurgent. Osama bin Laden has not been captured despite it now being 1,758 days since President George W. Bush promised to get him "dead or alive."

But I guess we are supposed to believe that Afghanistan is under control because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has made a surprise visit there?

I think not. The Bush Administration really has no respect for the people of this great nation.

(Hat tip: Americablog.)

So asks the conservative Ben Stein about the United States of America in today's New York Times.

This is an excellent column. (Actually, it's his second excellent column in the past two weeks, the last one he made the case for raising taxes to keep our economy from becoming a banana republic's.)

The only bad thing about it is that it took a conservative like Ben Stein to write it. Hello, Democrats? Read this and start making the case, dammit.

Life in America in 2006 for an upper middle-class person like me — who, although overweight, still has decent health — is just paradise. There is no place like this place, a shining city on a hill, a gift from God every moment of every day.

But still, with all of that, something is seriously wrong. I could put it into statistics, and in a small way, I will, but I'll mostly put it in layman's terms.

When I was a lad, the chief executive of a major public company was paid about 30 or 40 times what a line worker was paid. Now the multiple is about 180. What did they do in the executive suite to become so great? Upon what meat do they feed? Why, as we are being killed by foreign competition, do we need to pay our executives so much?

We have investigators looking into whether some corporations paid their executives with stock options whose strike price was retroactively determined to be the lowest price of the quarter, so that the options were "in the money" from Day One. After opening investigations into the remarkable timing of some of their own option grants, several companies restated their financial reports, which makes it straight-up fraud in my book. Not one person has been charged with any crime, while young black men and women who sell a tiny amount of drugs on a street corner do hard time. How can this be right?

We have immense corporations that cry the blues all day long about how their pension costs are ruining them and how they have to freeze pensions or lay off workers or end pensions altogether (can you say "Friendly Skies?") and turn over the pension liabilities to the taxpayers. And the same corporations set aside many millions for the superpensions of the top executives.

Even at my own beloved General Motors, whose Cadillacs I love so much — precisely because I think of them being made by the sons and grandsons of men who fought in Vietnam and at Peleliu and other bloody World War II battlefields — there is severe action to have workers quit and to lower their pensions.

At the same time, however, spectacularly large executive pensions, coming straight out of profits, keep G.M.'s retired top dogs happily playing golf at the Vintage, while the men who actually made the cars are saying: "Welcome to Wal-Mart. How can I help you?"

As I endlessly point out, taxes for the rich are lower than they have ever been in my lifetime. (To be fair, taxes for the nonrich taxes are very low as well.) And this is occurring as we accumulate government liabilities that will kill us in the long run. (And cutting spending will not work. Most federal and state spending is for items that are untouchable, like Medicare, education, the military — and, most cruelly of all, interest on the national debt. Every president promises to cut spending and not one of them does it unless a war comes to an end.)

We are mortgaging ourselves to foreigners on a scale that would make George Washington cry. Every day — every single day — we borrow a billion dollars from foreigners to buy petroleum from abroad, often from countries that hate us. We are the beggars of the world, financing our lavish lifestyle by selling our family heirlooms and by enslaving our progeny with the need to service the debt.

I don't see this — except for the taxes — as a Republican thing or a Democratic thing. It's just the way we live today. Drunken sailors from the Capitol to the freeways. Heirs living on their inheritance and spending it fast. The titans of corporate America getting as much as they can get away with and hiring lawyers and public-relations people if there is a problem. It is later than anyone dares to think.

Is this America, where far too many of the rich endlessly loot their stockholders and kick the employees in the teeth, the America that our soldiers in Ramadi and Kirkuk and Anbar Province and Afghanistan are fighting for? Is this America, where we will end up so far behind the financial eight ball we won't be able to see because of mismanagement by both parties, the America that our men and women are losing limbs for, coming home in boxes for?

This is a series of excellent observations and necessary questions. Stein is doing America a service by making these points and asking these questions.

The American Dream requires that we are a community, looking out not just for our individual success but for the common good of our nation.

Will the Democrats rise to the level of this task? Or remain hidden, seemingly afraid of these economic issues?

Think Progress documents how noted climatologist Rush Limbaugh is just making up his arguments against global warming.

For Democrats looking for a way to talk about Iraq, Digby points to how Virginia Democratic Senatorial Candidate (and former Reagan Administration Secretary of the Navy) Jim Webb is handling the situation.

GS: Senator Allen seemed to say that you were part of the 'I told you so' caucus on Iraq.

JW: Well, I think there are a lot of people who don't want to be reminded that they were warned. I think it's relevant, when you talk about how you build national strategy, and how you use the military -- to talk about how these decisions should be made. There should be some sort of accountability.

Digby reminds us what Webb has said about this war.

Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.

There is no historical precedent for taking such action when our country was not being directly threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment that he deserves.

The only way to hold people accountable is to raise the issue. Democrats should be embracing this debate, not continuing to hope they can ignore it for another election cycle.

Sigh.

Over the past several years, the Bush Administration has played the budget deficit game to great success.

You see, the White House will put out a huge deficit projection as the budget process begins. One that is obviously based on dubious assumptions designed to make the deficit look really big.

Then, when the economy acts the way real people expect, the budget deficit comes in smaller than the initial Bush Administration projections. Spinners and the media then give Bush credit for an improving deficit picture -- one only possible because of the bad initial projections. People overlook the problem that the budget deficit remains unsustainably large.

Since the Bush Administration has played this game for several years, you might think our major media outlets would be on to it.

Alas, as Brad DeLong explains, our so-called liberal media still laps up the Bush Administration's spin.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow may want to get an updated briefing -- or just start telling the truth.

On July 5, Snow told the press:

Q One other quick question. What has been the President's reaction to the death of Ken Lay?

MR. SNOW: I really haven't talked to him about it. I'll give you my own personal reaction, which is when somebody dies you leave behind those who grieve and I think they deserve our compassion. But I don't know, what do you think would be the appropriate thing to say?

Q I don't know. I don't know him. The President was his friend, not me.

MR. SNOW: No, the President has described Ken Lay as an acquaintance, and many of the President's acquaintances have passed on during his time in office. Again, I think -- it's sort of an interesting question, but not answerable by me.

On Larry King Live, however, President George W. Bush told a different story.

KING: Because, I mean, you knew him pretty well from Texas, right?

G. BUSH: Pretty well, pretty well. I knew him. I got to know him. This — people don’t believe this, but he actually supported Ann Richards in the ‘94 campaign.

KING: She told me that.

G. BUSH: She did?

KING: She liked him a lot.

G. BUSH: Yes, he’s a good guy. And so what I did — then did was we had a business council, and I kept him on as the chairman of the business council. And, you know, got to know him and got to see him in action.

One of the things I respected him for was he was such a contributor to Houston’s civil society. He was a generous person. I’m disappointed that there was this — he betrayed the trust of shareholders, but…

While I disagree with former President Bill Clinton's criticism of the netroots for supporting Ned Lamont over Senator Joe Lieberman (?-Conn.), I do hope Democratic leaders all over the country will take note of other suggestions about the upcoming midterm elections campaign that Clinton made at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The Atlantic's Ross Douthat summarizes Clinton's ideas:

He thinks his party should attack the GOP for not being serious about homeland security, for passing tax cuts while failing to fund port security, and so on. (You can just imagine how he'd fillet the Republicans on that issue if he were in the race.) And he talked a lot - and this surprised me, actually - about Valerie Plame, and seemed to suggest that this was a place where the Dems should be making more hay than they are. When asked what he would ask Karl Rove, who's speaking here tomorrow, Clinton said that he'd ask him what he would do if the parties' positions were reversed, the Dems held the White House, a Democratic Karl Rove - Rahm Emanuel, say - were implicated in the outing of a CIA agent, and a Democratic President refused to fire him. Wouldn't Rove tell every Republican in the Senate to stand up and make speeches calling the President a traitor for allowing this betrayal of national security to go unpunished?

Then Clinton grinned his puckish grin and said, "And you know, knowing old Karl Rove, he might say: 'That's exactly what I'd do, and I don't know why the Democrats haven't done it.'"

I know I don't understand the failure to make this an issue. Perhaps Democrats like losing elections?

Rather than running away from national security issues (as we've seen with documents that fail to mention Iraq or the war against terrorists), Democrats need to embrace this debate and make it a priority.

Democrats have tried focusing only on domestic issues the past few campaign cycles. That strategy has not worked. As Einstein once reportedly said, a definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.

It is rarely good when the campaign consultant becomes the story.

Is winning the election or leading the field in snarky comments in a insider newsletter the goal here? Misplaced priorities, after all, lead to losses.

The Houston Chronicle's Richard Justice meets with Astros Manager Phil Garner in preparation of ripping the skipper for not naming his stud pitcher, Roy Oswalt, to the National League All-Star team.

Justice blogs about the interview, letting his readers in on an inside conversation about a decision that ended up having far more shades of grey than Justice assumed.

If you like baseball, I think you will find Justice's post a very intriguing read.

Ross Douthat makes an important observation about the state of our economy on The Atlantic @ Aspen's blog. He writes:

One of the more interesting events here yesterday was a presentation by the Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen, in which he presented new polling data that identify (or purport to identify) "What the American People Really Want" going into the 2006 elections. Schoen's sharpest insight, I thought, was his identification of a whole nest of issues - the rising cost of real estate, gas, college, etc., and the insecurity Americans feel about their health care and pensions - as an "affordability crisis." Even Americans who have steady jobs, decent paychecks, and so on, feel increasingly insecure about their future, and about the attainability of the American Dream. The most interesting number he pulled up: a quarter-century ago, ninety percent of Americans thought that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could achieve a succesful middle-class life; today, only fifty percent feel that way.

This is a problem -- and one our political leaders should be seeking to address.

The invaluable resource, The Oil Drum, will go over 2 million unique visitors on Thursday. Congratulations! Check it out if you haven't already.

Opposition to Senator Joe Lieberman is not just about his position on the Iraq War. As Atrios writes:

It's about him "compromising" Democratic principles when he didn't have to, it's about selling out women, it's about thinking "bipartisanship" involves selling our your party so that Tim Russert will pat you on the head for your bravery, it's about dishonesty on things like the Bankruptcy Bill, and now it's about his contempt for the Democratic voters in his own state. And, yes, it's about the fact that the senator has indeed "lost the plot" on the Iraq war.

When many bloggers are calling him, with cause, Rape Gurney Joe, one should know there is much -- much! -- more going on here.

Glenn Greenwald does the heavy work of sifting through the radical-right blogs, and finds out the facts really do not matter to them:

So they accused the NYT of deliberately endangering the security of Rumsfeld and Cheney by printing that travel article. If you wanted to debunk that accusation and had the power to have the best possible evidence magically materialize, you would wish for it turn out that the photographs were taken with the permission of Rumsfeld himself, that right-wing media outlets previously published the same information, and that the Secret Service would make clear how ludicrous the accusations are. And, lo and behold, that's exactly what materialized here. And yet the accusers, even in the face of that dream evidence, still insist that they were right all along and that this Travel article is highly suspicious.

There are no facts which matter. Literally, virtually every political controversy we have is generated by this fact-impervious mindset, this refusal to accept that what one wishes is true is not, in fact, true.

Alas, I doubt any of this will stop the so-called liberal media from putting these creatures on the air.

It has been 1,750 days since President George W. Bush promised he would get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."

Reading Americablog, I just learned that the CIA shut down its Osama-tracking unit last year.

I guess we now know how unserious the Bush Administration is about getting the person behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For our current leadership, 9/11 appears to be just a phrase they can use to scare the faithful and "justify" any action they decide to take.

I think we can all drop the pretense that Sen. Joe Lieberman (?-Conn.) is a Democrat. He announced today that he will start collecting signatures to run as an independent should he lose the upcoming Democratic Primary to Ned Lamont.

Kos gets it right:

So the question becomes even more salient -- who will support the Democratic nominee, and who won't? Schumer will keep getting this question until he answers it. Now, Lieberman, who thinks he is overflowing with integrity, promised Reid and Schumer that he'd stay a Democrat in exchange for letters of support. To get around that pesky little promise (who thought people would hold him to them?), Lieberman says he'd run not as an independent, but as a "petitioning Democrat".

An interesting kind of "Democrat", Lieberman thinks he is. One who doesn't respect the wishes of his state's Democratic voters, one who will split his state's vote on the left and potentially hand the election to a Republican.

We shouldn't be surprised. After all, the holier-than-thou Lieberman ran for Vice President and Senate at the same time in 2000. If Gore-Lieberman had won, Lieberman would have been replaced by a Republican in the Senate.

Lieberman does not care for anyone other than himself. He has shown that he has no respect for the Democratic Party.

It would be nice of the Democratic Party's leadership would make note of this and react. I won't hold my breath.

Update: Atrios has a question for Senator Schumer.

You remember that travel feature in yesterday's New York Times? The one that had the radical right blogosphere in full outrage mode?

It turns out that the New York Times had Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld's permission to run the photo of his house. You see, Glenn Greenwald had the gall to follow up and actually ask the photographer.

Wow. How quaint. As Greenwald writes:

The reprehensible lynch mob hysterics - Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Red State, David Horowitz - spent the weekend screaming that the Times was guilty of gross recklessness and/or a deliberate intent to have Rumsfeld killed, by virtue of publication of this article. That bloodthirsty frenzy caused other bloggers to publish the home address and telephone number of Spillers and urged that other NYT editors and reporters be "hunted down." Other followers of Malkin and Hinderaker suggested to their readers that this was yet more evidence of the unpatriotic recklessness of the NYT.

All along, Don Rumsfeld gave his express permission to the NYT for these photographs to be taken. How can anything other than complete scorn be heaped on Malkin, Hinderaker, Horowitz, Red State, and all of the uber-patriotic copycat accusers who spent the weekend spewing the most dangerous accusations possible based on completely false premises? Who would think that any of them have a shred of credibility after seeing how irresponsible and impervious to facts they are -- even when knowingly catalyzing lynch mobs against people?

You'd think there would be scorn. You'd think Howie Kurtz and other supposedly respectable media outlets would stop putting these type of people on the air. If only out of self-defense.

My guess is that our so-called liberal media are going to just forget about this horrible things this group wrote over the weekend.

That is really all you need to know about the state of media in this dangerous era.

Shaula Evans at the Blogging of the President presents a (mostly) fool-proof way to spot a Canadian in any crowd anywhere in the world.

As someone who has lived his whole life in the United States (but until he was in his 20s very close to the Canadian border), I'd prove an exception that proves the rule.

Especially since the song in question is my cell phone ring tone.

The right-wing blogosphere is in full meltdown today over a New York Times travel story featuring the eastern Maryland town in which the Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld have vacation homes.

Glenn Greenwald has looked at all of their articles, and sums up what the radical rightists are claiming:

So, to recap - America is currently at war and its enemies are domestic liberals and The New York Times. This war was started by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter when they opposed the invasion of Iraq. The New York Times is allied with Al Qaeda and their latest plot against America is to provide their terrorist friends with a roadmap to the vacation homes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld so that they can be assassinated. That is what is being reported today by three of the largest "conservative" blogs on the Internet, along with Horowitz, the leader of the conservative effort to wipe out anti-conservative bias on college campuses.

I know that seems hard to believe. But Greenwald goes through the trouble of linking to all of the blogs that come together to tell bizarre story.

They believe it. And now their followers on the right are printing the home addresses of photographers and reporters on their blogs -- and given the context, it is hard to imagine it was not done in the hopes that someone would retaliate.

Hello, media types. The radical right is at war against you. Some people seem to be taking it a bit more literally than others. But given all of the contempt (or worse) these people have for the media, I do not understand why you go out of your way to give the radical rightists credibility and airtime.

Where is your survival instinct? And hopefully I'm just being rhetorical.

Charles Pierce wonders why the media continues to allow senior administration officials to give anonymous quotes for transparently false reasons. In the end, Pierce gives the media a warning they would be wise to heed:

Here's a hint, guys and gals. They hate you. They will always hate you. They will hate you if you help them transmit their slanders and they will hate you if you don't. Look at the last week if you don't believe that. Judy Miller's newspaper haled before the public bar for treason. You owe them nothing. You owe the country more courage than this.

Washington Week in Review moderator Gwen Ifill smeared Senator John Edwards during this weekend's edition of the program. Atrios has the details about Ifill's revisionist history of the 2004 Vice Presidential debate which she moderated:

Sagal: That was kind of contentious of course, that's where the subject of Mary Cheney came up which she's been talking about

Ifill: And ya know the funny thing? I didn't even ask about Mary Cheney they obviously the candidate, the Democratic Candidate, Senator Edwards, just felt the need to bring it up apropos of nothing and then claim later that he was just trying to express his sympathy and solidarity with the vice president's daughter.

Except, of course, that this is not what happened. You can check for yourself by reading the transcript of the 2004 Vice Presidential debate kept on the Commission on Presidential Debates web site.

IFILL: The next question goes to you, Mr. Vice President.

I want to read something you said four years ago at this very setting: "Freedom means freedom for everybody." You said it again recently when you were asked about legalizing same-sex unions. And you used your family's experience as a context for your remarks.

Can you describe then your administration's support for a constitutional ban on same-sex unions?

Can someone explain how Ifill raising the issue of Cheney's family can possibly be Edwards' fault? Or how Edwards responding to Ifill's question can be considered, as Ifill put it, "bring[ing] it up apropos of nothing"?

A correction is required. This is a simple issue of credibility.

We'll see how much Ifill and PBS have.

An Eschaton commenter catches someone at Time having fun with their supposedly "liberal" columnist with this graphic.

Don't worry. Joe Klein isn't going to let any reality get in the way of his opinions.

Atrios, meanwhile, has decided to start making note of predictions that we have "six more months" to turn things around in Iraq. Atrios calls a six month period a "Friedman" in honor of New York Times' columnist Tom Friedman, who quite frequently writes that we have "six more months" to turn things around in Iraq.

It's also, of course, a nice way of postponing an accountability moment.

A shout out to my wife, Kari, who is now blogging at ClubMom. She started blogging seriously after last year's BlogHer conference, and I'm really happy that she has this opportunity.

Congratulations!