November 2007 Archives

I share Greg Sargent's enthusiasm in seeing a main stream media outlet finally fact check Rudy Guiliani:

Which gives us an opportunity to pose this question yet again: When is Rudy's chronic mendacity going to become part of the pundit narrative of Campaign 2008? When is this constant dissembling going to be discussed by political commentators as indicative of large flaws in Rudy's character, just as pundits are so quick to do about Dem candidates on the strength of far less than this?

The evidence is now right there on the front page of The Times for all to see -- and as an added bonus, Rudy's own backers are confirming that they don't see a problem with his chronic fibbing. So there's simply no longer any excuse for commentators to ignore this.

I am very cyncial about the Bush Administration's motives for the war on terror and homeland security. Even given that cynicism, I find this Associated Press story shocking:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration intends to slash counterterrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments across the country by more than half next year, according to budget documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Homeland Security Department has given $23 billion to states and local communities to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, but one document says the administration is not convinced that the money has been well spent and thinks the nation's highest-risk cities have largely satisfied their security needs.

The department wanted to provide $3.2 billion to help states and cities protect against terrorist attacks in 2009, but the White House said it would ask Congress for less than half—$1.4 billion, according to a Nov. 26 document. The plan calls outright elimination of programs for port security, transit security, and local emergency management operations in the next budget year. This is President Bush's last budget, and the new administration would have to live with the funding decisions between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30, 2009.

I think one of my United States Senators, Barbara Boxer, reacted perfectly to this shameful budget:

"This budget proposal is dead on arrival," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D- Calif. "This administration runs around the country scaring people and then when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, they say 'sorry, the bank is closed.'"

Scaring the American people is a political strategy. But protecting us? No, tax cuts for the rich are apparently a higher budget priority.

Wow...this one makes my head hurt. Atrios posts:

Jim Cramer is interviewing Rudy. I don't have the sound on, but the captions are funny. First one.

Giuliani: The US Should Increase Its Coal Supply Through Government Subsidies

About 4 minutes later:

Giuliani: Business And Government Are Separate - And That's Non-Negotiable

Yep. That makes perfect sense, Rudy.

Crooks and Liars has several examples showing further evidence that the use of the taser is getting really out of hand.

Despite what people may believe, the taser is a potentially lethal weapon. It should not be used as a first resort to force compliance against people who are not dangerous.

I'd really like Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub to justify this slur against the Democratic candidates:

Of course, the Democrats are not much better. They deny that the Islamists are a threat but see even bigger monsters in the economic closet and are even more eager than the Republicans to protect us from competition and change.

Just what the hell is he talking about? Which candidates exactly are against dealing with the people who actually attacked us on September 11, 2001? Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with that attack.

Digby catches our so-called liberal media hard at work. To sum up:

No, those aren't the opening paragraphs of a Townhall hit piece. That's the Washington Post recycling anonymous wingnut email trash and calling it "rumors." I guess we should be grateful that the paper allowed Obama to "dispute" and "deny" the "charge" but considering that he isn't a Muslim, it might have been a teensy bit more responsible if they'd simply written that it's a lie and let it go at that. Instead, it blandly suggests this will hurt him more than the Romney since the polls show that even more people won't vote for a Muslim than a Mormon --- failing to note that while Romney is actually a Mormon and thus could be expected to suffer from these prejudices more than someone who isn't actually a Muslim!

According to the Washington Post "Republicans say Barack Obama is a Muslim and Obama says he isn't" is a legitimate story. Modern campaign journalism in all it glory.

Atrios long ago noticed that our so-called liberal media has a long history of framing any story, event, or scandal as good for Republicans.

Paul Krugman adds a corollary to this media meme: that any economic situation or event makes the case for more tax cuts:

Beyond the point that everything that happens is good news for Republicans, however, notice that everything that happens is good for tax cuts.

If the economy is growing, and tax receipts are rising, then it shows that past tax cuts achieved wonders, plus the Laffer curve is right — so let’s cut taxes some more!

If the economy is shrinking, well, it needs a boost — and what better boost than another round of tax cuts!

See, cutting taxes is always good. It makes you wonder why we ever had taxes in the first place.

Well, this really sums up our situation quite well, alas. Via the IFTF's Future Now blog, author William Gibson answers questions in Rolling Stone:

You made your name as a science-fiction writer, but in your last two novels you've moved squarely into the present. Have you lost interest in the future?

It has to do with the nature of the present. If one had gone to talk to a publisher in 1977 with a scenario for a science-fiction novel that was in effect the scenario for the year 2007, nobody would buy anything like it. It's too complex, with too many huge sci-fi tropes: global warming; the lethal, sexually transmitted immune-system disease; the United States, attacked by crazy terrorists, invading the wrong country. Any one of these would have been more than adequate for a science-fiction novel. But if you suggested doing them all and presenting that as an imaginary future, they'd not only show you the door, they'd probably call security.

With today's worse-than-stupid "correction" to Joe Klein's mistake-filled column on the FISA bill debate, Time magazine's editors are either engaging the world in a symposium on horrible journalism practices -- or are just plan clueless. (I'm going with the latter.)

Glenn Greenwald continues his outstanding analysis of this important issue, one that really exposes so much about what is wrong about our media today.

Leave aside the false description of what Klein wrote. He didn't say "that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets." He said that their bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." But the Editor's false characterization of Klein's original lie about the House FISA bill is the least of the issues here.

All Time can say about this matter is that Republicans say one thing and Democrats claim another. Who is right? Is one side lying? What does the bill actually say, in reality?

That's not for Time to say. After all, they're journalists, not partisans. So they just write down what each side says. It's not for them to say what is true, even if one side is lying.

Yes, it is harder to get at the truth. To read, to research, to come to a conclusion. But, today's reporters think it is okay to be stenographers (and all too often, a stenographer for only one side of the argument).

Well, it is not working. It may be hard work, but calling a lie a lie is not biased -- it is the minimum that should be required for such an important job. As Greenwald writes:

Atrios satirizies Time's journalistic methods here. But as is true for Colbert's satire, it is really more of a literal description of how Time conducts itself than it is anything else.

It is worth underscoring that this entire episode began when Klein told Time's 4 million readers -- and Time actually claims an average issue audience of more than 20 million people -- that House Democrats were seeking to protect foreign Terrorists to the same extent as American citizens (and were therefore "well beyond stupid"). When it was demonstrated that Klein's statements were outright false, he said that a source told him this and "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right." Time's Editors now think that no correction to this false smear is needed beyond: "Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't." Read Atrios' post with that conduct in mind.

You might think that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney might be more tolerant of other religions than other candidates...but you would be wrong. Matthew Yglesias comments on Romney's statement that he would not consider a Muslim for a cabinet position:

So because there are relatively few Muslims in the United States, Romney wouldn't consider a Muslim cabinet official? Meanwhile, before Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State, she was UN Ambassador. Her successor at the UN was Bill Richardson who went on to become Secretary of Energy. His successor was Richard Holbrooke who was widely viewed as a likely Secretary of State in a John Kerry administration and, again, is a very likely candidate for that job in a Hillary Clinton administration. John Negroponte had the job before becoming Director of National Intelligence. George HW Bush had the job before becoming CIA Director. But Romney's telling us that current UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is too Muslim to be so much as considered for a cabinet post? Really? How repugnant.

And unconstitutional. Why do the Republicans (and the big-time pundits) keep refusing to recognize this clear Constitutional prohibition from Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (emphasis added)

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Himself-Conn.) went on FOX News Channel today and lied about the Democratic position on Iraq.

Alas, I wish I were surprised. Greg Sargent has the details here.

Wow...that was a stinky crew Keith Olbermann had to highlight tonight. Crooks and Liars has the video.

And, wow, the New York Post really is pathetic.

I could not agree more with what Digby, and her anonymous political memo writer, argue:

George Bush should be tied so tightly around the Republican candidates' necks they can hardly breathe. Every quote of support, every vote, every word of worship should be thrown in their faces and there is a ton of it. He is the most unpopular president, for the longest sustained time, of any president in history. He is the modern Herbert Hoover, a man whose name should become an epithet.

And it isn't just the presidential campaigns. The congress, obviously, is missing its moment to solidify this president and the drones who enthusiastically supported every single thing he did for six long years as losers in the eyes of the public. I know that liberals don't like to be nasty to anyone but each other, but this is just crazy. As Deep Insight says:

Congressional Democrats, however, sometimes act as if it is still 2002 when they were still in the minority. The big bad Republicans will distract the country and beat them into submission. Bush has a 25% approval rating. There is absolutely no political price in opposing the initiatives of the GOP. On national security issues, the Democrats need to take the “kick me” sign off their backs. Bush has weakened our national security with this reckless war in Iraq. Bombing Iran will only add to the terrorist threat. This has to be clearly stated.

I want to join TeddySanFran at Firedoglake in thanking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for standing up for Article I of the Constitution and not allowing President George W. Bush to put radical conservatives into office via recess appointments.

More like this, please.

Was this what President George W. Bush saw when he looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin's heart? CNN reports:

On Saturday, Russian authorities arrested Kasparov, one of President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics, and sentenced him to five days in prison after he helped lead a protest.

Kasparov was charged with organizing an unsanctioned procession of at least 1,500 people against Putin, chanting anti-government slogans and resisting arrest, court documents said. His assistant said he was beaten during the demonstration.

Time columnist Joe Klein really should admit that he made a huge mistake when he claimed in his recent column that the FISA bill passed by the House Democrats last week "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans."

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald demonstrates, Klein's wishy-washy mea culpa from last night hardly does him any credit. In fact, it highlights the entire problem with Klein and his fellow pundits: rather than doing the hard work of their own original research, they listen to (Republican) political operatives and staffers and then reprint the spin they have been given.

Klein got caught on this one, and even admits to the practice, as Greenwald explains:

Nobody who can read basic English can fail to understand what this says. As clearly as it can, the bill says that no warrant is required for communications involving non-U.S. persons outside of the U.S. In fact, individual warrants are not even required when a foreign target communicates with someone inside the U.S.; only general approval by the FISA court of the procedures used to eavesdrop is required (see Sec. 105). Thus, Klein's statements about the bill were indisputably, unquestionably false, and all one had to do is read the painfully clear language of the bill to know that.

But Klein, of course, never bothered to read the bill and still hasn't (even though he is published by Time to "report on" and opine about this bill). Instead, even now, he says that he has spoken with both Republicans and Democrats, and while Democrats insist that what he wrote was false, "the Republican Committee staff disagrees and says [his] reporting is correct."

In other words, Klein's GOP source(s) blatantly lied to him about what the bill does and doesn't do in order to manipulate him into uncritically feeding Time's readers the Rush Limbaugh Line -- namely, that Democrats are giving equal rights to Terrorists and preventing the Leader from eavesdropping on foreign Terrorists. And Klein dutifully wrote down what he was told in Time without bothering to find out if it was true and without ever bothering to talk to any of the bill's Democratic proponents. And no Time Editor knew enough or cared enough to bother correcting any of it. And thus, the unfortunate 4 million Americans who read and trust Time now think that the Democrats' FISA bill does the exact opposite of what it actually does.

That is the real story here. That's how our political system works. Scheming GOP operatives feed whispered lies to their favorite, most gullible, most slothful and/or dishonest Beltway journalists. Gleeful and grateful that they have been chosen for this dirty task, these journalists then scamper and write down what they were told and think that, by doing so, they are engaged in what they call "original reporting" -- which means uncritically passing on what they're told by government sources. As a result, they continue to obfuscate every key political issue and mislead Americans by doing the opposite of what journalists are supposed to do.

Oh, Klein is Time's "liberal." Thank you, so-called liberal media.

It is absolutely shameful for the Commission on Presidential Debates to decide to bypass New Orleans -- and to use such a lame excuse to justify such a poor decision. This New Orleans Times-Picayune editorial describes the city's justified outrage:

How naive of New Orleanians to think that a sense of justice and site logistics -- not politics -- would determine the locations for next year's presidential debates.

What else but politics explains the indefensible decision by the Commission on Presidential Debates to leave New Orleans out?

The commission's official line is that the city, recovering from Hurricane Katrina, is not ready to host such an important event. That's what commission Co-chair Paul Kirk told Anne Milling, founder of Women of the Storm, which together with four local universities sponsored New Orleans' proposal.

''Politics trumped the moral decision,'' an incensed Ms. Milling said Monday.

The commission's explanation is a slap in our face. It also contradicts the reality on the ground.

As the editorial points out, New Orleans is getting ready to host the NBA All-Star Game and the BCS College Football National Championship Game. It has hosted major conventions during its recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

But it cannot handle a presidential debate?

That just does not make sense. I can understand that our national failure to help New Orleans recover would make our politicians feel a bit awkward, but that is precisely why New Orleans was the perfect place to have a conversation about domestic issues.

The people who made this decision should feel shame -- first for their conclusion to exclude New Orleans, and second for their obvious lies to "justify" their mistake.

(Hat tip: Crooks and Liars)

Radical right-wingers, though, will probably see these reports as progress:

• U.S. Notes Limited Progress in Afghan War (Washington Post)

• U.S. Scales Back Political Goals in Iraq (New York Times)
  

And, those political goals in Iraq, of course, were the whole point behind the surge. The surge was supposed to give the Iraqi politicians space to reach agreements and show progress. We are not supposed to be alarmed that so little progress has been made while our troops are literally on the firing line?

So, Afghanistan is not going well and Iraq appears to be a situation where no exit is possible. I do not see how this can be anything but depressing news.

Larry Johnson looks at more reports this week that debunk the claim that Al Qaeda is a major presence in Iraq.

The foreign fighter and Iranian myths blew up in the Bush Administration’s face in a big way this week. Despite repeated declarations over the last year that the violence racking Iraq is the result of Al Qaeda operations and influence and Iranian meddling, the facts on the ground do not support these claims. The U.S. Army confirmed this week that the foreign fighters constitute a small fraction of the insurgent activity and that most of insurgent activity is the handiwork of Iraqi Sunnis.

Those darn facts. Always getting in the way.

Speaking of Al Qaeda, President Bush, it has now been 2,259 days since you promised to get Osama bin Laden "Dead Or Alive." How's that going?

Even for Wal*Mart, this is a new low. Stephanie Mencimer writes at the Mother Jones blog:

ust when you think that Wal-Mart had already exhausted every last possible strategy for screwing over its employees, here comes this story in the Wall Street Journal. Deborah Shank, a Wal-Mart employee gets into an accident with a semi and ends up permanently brain-damaged a few years back. Her Wal-Mart health insurance paid her medical bills, but she also sued the trucking company for damages. She wins $700,000, which after legal fees and expenses, nets her about $400,000, which was put in a trust to pay the nursing home she now lives in.

But Wal-Mart gets wind of the settlement and turns around and sues Shank for $470,000, the money its insurance company paid for her care from the accident. Now, the woman is reliant on Medicaid and Social Security and Wal-Mart apparently got a much needed windfall.

And Wal*Mart wonders why people like me hate the company so much.

USA Today's Gregg Zoroya reports:

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.

The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.

Oh, I guess I am supposed to believe that there is no official Bush Administration policy behind this lie.

(Hat tip: Informed Comment)

This is a few days old, but I only heard it while listening to a couple-day-old Rachel Maddow Show while driving to Stockton so the family could watch the Stockton Thunder play ice hockey last night. The Los Angeles Times' Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports:

When Rudolph W. Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the spring of 2000, one thing he did not have to worry about was a lack of medical insurance.

Today, the former New York mayor joins two other cancer survivors in seeking the Republican presidential nomination: Arizona Sen. John McCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy, and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson had lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.

All three have offered proposals with the stated aim of helping the 47 million people in the U.S. who have no health insurance, including those with preexisting medical conditions.

But under the plans all three have put forward, cancer survivors such as themselves could not be sure of getting coverage -- especially if they were not already covered by a government or job-related plan and had to seek insurance as individuals.

"Unless it's in a state that has very strong consumer protections, they would likely be denied coverage," said economist Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, who has reviewed the candidates' proposals. "People with preexisting conditions would not be able to get coverage or would not be able to afford it."

The campaigns offered statements about how they were debating to fill this gap. Shouldn't this really be basic stuff? Making sure the candidate is covered by the program being offered?

Personally, I am just so surprised -- shocked, really -- that the magic of the free market system is failing to fix this problem on its own.

Another of President George W. Bush's good friends suffers a huge electoral defeat at the polls, as Australian Prime Minister John Howard not only loses this parliamentary majority, he appears also to have lost his seat in parliament.

What was behind the loss? Local issues, certainly, but also a rejection of key points of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, as the BBC News reports:

Mr Howard had found himself on the wrong side of public opinion on the Kyoto protocol and the war in Iraq, our correspondent said. Many people also seemed to be simply tired of Mr Howard after 11 years of his rule.

Update: Glenn Greenwald adds more on why we really should be happy to see John Howard go and a useful reminder that we shouldn't chalk up every foreign election on a "love or hate" Bush scoreboard.

In the December 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton, writes about the generation-long consequences of the Bush Administration's budget and economic policies.

This article not only looks at the costs of the Iraq War, but also the Bush Administration's tax policies, budget policies (remember the surplus?), the bankruptcy boom, and how its contempt for the world can come back to hurt our nation. As Stiglitz writes:

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Really, I hope history gives him an appropriate place near the bottom of the political circles of hell. Now Rove is trying to sell the idea that the Bush Administration was opposed to the timing of the votes on the Iraq Authorization of Use of Force resolutions passed by Congress in October 2002.

As ThinkProgress explains, Rove is such a liar that he does not seem to care that we know things like this:

Rove’s claim is utterly dishonest and flat-out false. In Sept. 2002, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) asked President Bush to delay the vote on the Iraq war:

“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’”

Of course that timing had nothing to do with the mid-term elections that November. No, nothing at all.

I hope our main-stream media outlets get over their crush on Karl Rove's brain long enough to keep the new Newsweek contributor from spreading such falsehoods on their airwaves and pages.

Alas, I won't be holding my breath.

One wonders why the supposedly democracy and freedom loving people in the Bush Administration do not understand that new technologies do not negate Constitutional protections. The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima reports:

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied. (emphasis added)

Of course it is. There's no need for the American people to know what their government is doing, or why it is not abiding by its own internal guidelines.

Harper's Scott Norton writes:

When the Founding Fathers looked for a model that reflected the abuses they objected to—in short what they intended to forbid by their new Constitution and Bill of Rights—they turned to an English institution, the Court of Star Chamber. It was a state security court with ancient roots which flourished under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. The Star Chamber court operated in secrecy, was not bothered by the picky evidentiary rules that emerged in other courts, and did not believe that those appearing before it on state security charges had many rights—certainly not the right to counsel, nor even the right to conduct a defense. It relied very heavily on torture to extract the evidence it sought to convict, usually a confession—though rarely, of course, a confession with any validity, since the application of the rack would quickly get the subject to say whatever was desired, truthful or not.

Although scholars have been complimentary of the Star Chamber for its work on commercial matters, when politics was at issue, we see that it acted with little independence from the monarch. It was a tool for lashing the political opposition. And freethinkers were its particular victims. The mistreatment dealt to religious dissenters in particular, men like “Freeborn” John Lilburne and John Pym, caused the public to turn strongly against the Star Chamber and to demand its abolition. In the end, the Court of Star Chamber stood as an image for the tyrannical excesses of King Charles. And the American colonists, being overwhelmingly Roundheads, were among the loudest voices raised in opposition.

The Bush Administration is slowly introducing the Court of Star Chamber to the process of American justice. We see its elements everywhere. In the farcical Combat Status Review Tribunals created in Guantánamo, row repeatedly denounced even by judges serving on them as a travesty. In the Military Commissions, crafted in conscious avoidance of the standards both of American military and civilian justice. And in the steady press to lower the standards of our federal courts to introduce practices that continually tip the scales of justice in favor of prosecutors. Reports have begun to circulate that the Administration has put together a group of scholars headed by an right-wing activist judge to craft legislation to introduce a new court of Star Chamber, perhaps to be floated in the coming year. As we see in the public pronouncements of the Bush Administration, accusations leveled at detainees in the war on terror are leveled for political effect, and often to parallel partisan political campaigns. If those accusations are rejected by a court, it therefore undermines confidence in the Administration and the Party. Which is why, in the Bush view of justice, a failure to convict is unacceptable. And which is why the Bush view of justice is no justice at all.

Why are we so accepting of the Bush-Cheney regime's assault on the Constitution? As noted in a previous post today, will we accept anything if it is wrapped in a "war on terror" package?

Scarecrow at Firedoglake wonders:

whether Mr. Bush has a line that can be crossed as long as the executive claims its actions are in furtherance of fighting "terrorism."

The answer, sadly for our Republic, appears to be "no."

Let's see how long it takes for Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to backtrack from this statement, via Crooks and Liars:

I was in the White House a number of times to talk about the issue, and I may rankle some in the room saying this, but I was very underwhelmed with what discussions took place at the White House,” Corker said.

A few minutes later during a question and answer session a man in the audience asked him to clarify his statement.

“I was concerned about your statement that you were underwhelmed with what was going on in the White House. Did you mean with him or with his staff?”

In response, Corker said, “Let me say this. George Bush is a very compassionate person. He’s a very good person. And a lot of people don’t see that in him, and there’s many people in this room who might disagree with that…. I just felt a little bit underwhelmed by our discussions, the complexity of them, the depth of them.”

Join the club, Senator. Join the club.

Americablog's Chris in Paris links to a story in the Guardian with the above headline. Richard Norton-Taylor reports on news of which every American should take note:

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.

Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".

It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.

The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when ... and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out."

So, 2,258 days after President George W. Bush promised to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", bin Laden's former hosts are reportedly retaking large swaths of Afghanistan and are closing in Kabul.

I know today is Black Friday, and many people are out there checking items off their holiday shopping lists. But news like this is important. It needs to be discussed.

Those who have used the fear of terrorism to govern us for the past six years while producing such failed results must be held accountable.

Former CIA agent (and Valerie Plame Wilson classmate) Larry Johnson is rightly very angry about the revelations in former presidential press secretary Scott McClellan's new book:

We knew about Rove and Libby. But now we can add the names of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Andy Card to the list of people who helped create the lie, i.e., that no one at the White House was involved in leaking the name of Valerie. We no longer have to wonder if any damage was done. We have the revelations in Valerie’s book, Fair Game, describing in detail her job as the operations chief for the Iraq Task Force and her mission of tracking down and eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

If outing a CIA intelligence officer collecting intelligence on our enemy during a time of war is not treason, then what is? George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby to help buy his silence. Why? McClellan’s revelation blows the cover on that sham. Bush was involved. Of course we will now witness the spectacle of Republicans, who delighted in castigating Bill Clinton for his confusion about the meaning of sex, themselves doing verbal gymnastics as they search for the true meaning of “involved”. Horseshit! This is an impeachable offense. George Bush not only helped obstruct justice, but continues to obstruct justice. The President is no longer an idle bystander. He is a participant in a cover up. He knew that Rove, Libby, Card, and Cheney were involved in leaking Valerie’s name. Yet the coward, the man who failed to complete his Reserve duty, went AWOL on his staff. He sent Scott McClellan out to lie to the press.

Thanks to reader BZ for passing this one along.

Can someone please explain to me why Congress will not now launch immediate and top-priority investigations into this matter? Here's an excerpt from Scott McClellan's new book that should make everyone take notice.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself.

According to the former presidential press secretary, the President of the United States was involved with this cover-up, one only involving the exposure of a covert CIA operative.

Heck, as ThinkProgress notes, even a Republican presidential contender is taking this seriously. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told Chris Matthews that:

MATTHEWS: Scott was told to do something, Scooter did it. I mean, it’s fairly parallel here.

HUCKABEE: Well, they’re serious allegations, but we don’t know yet whether they’re true. Scott’s not saying this under oath. It’s not being denied under oath. And I have a feeling that before it’s all finished through the wash, that’s what’s going to happen.

But these are serious allegations. They deserve to be thoroughly examined, investigated, and the truth brought to the American people.

MATTHEWS: Do you think the American people deserve a statement from the president in this regard, personally?

HUCKABEE: Oh, I think he will have to respond to it, because the closeness and the fact that Scott McClellan was one of his most trusted aides and in the position of press secretary. (emphasis added)

This is a serious matter. Did the president know about the plans to expose a covert CIA operative for political reasons? Did he approve of the cover-up afterwards? Did he knowingly send out his press secretary to mislead the American people about the matter?

We deserve to know. It is time for one of those accountability moments about which President George W. Bush used to speak so fondly.

The Bonddad Blog looks at the charts, and rumors that the Persian Gulf states are reconsidering their decision to peg their currency to the dollar, and is very concerned about the possible outcome of one of those oil states removing the link.

I think we should all be worried about it.

What Kos said:

I don't know how many times I've written this, and maybe I'm just wasting my time, but rather than talk about leadership, Obama and Clinton could actually show us what that leadership looks like by fighting to prevent the Senate from capitulating on Iraq.

What? Actually use their positions as United States Senators to advance their cause? Whoa. What a concept.

Digby recounts an important episode from campaigns past: when the press corps, in effect, decided to destroy the campaign of Sen. Ed Muskie in 1972 -- with the unspoken help of the Nixon team, who much preferred to run against Sen. George McGovern.

After years of this sort of politics, from Atwater to Rove, from Willie Horton to Swift Boats, it would be nice to think the mainstream media have learned from the past and will ensure that things like this are adequately examined within the context of history and not just the heat of the moment. But that's clearly too much to hope for.

OPEC is discussing no longer using the dollar to price oil because it has fallen so much in relation to other currencies.

As the headline on the Bonddad Blog puts it:

If This Happens, We're Hosed."

From the "exporting Democracy to the world" file, the Associated Press reports (via Editor & Publisher):

The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.

An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months.

The case of Bilal Hussein should trouble everyone who believes in freedom of the press and due process. The AP has investigated the charges and found nothing to substantiate them. Hussein's defense has not been allowed to prepare properly.

This is not a way to win hearts and minds of people around the world.

Federal budget analyst Stan Collender has found one group of people who will benefit from the federal budget mismanagement of the past six years: bond traders. After all, there's going to be a glut of federal debt to trade for the foreseeable future.

In the midst of making this point, Collender also notes yet another instance of the Bush Administration making decisions that may look nice in the short term, but will have expensive long-term consequences:

Fourth, because so much of the close to $3 trillion that will be borrowed during the Bush administration has been short-term debt, the amount that will have to be refinanced each year will be substantially greater than has typically been the case in the past. Even though it was in a position to lock in relatively low rates for years, the White House chose to ride the yield curve with shorter-term debt that cost less while George W. Bush was in office. As a result, the next president and Congress will suffer; the bond market will benefit.

Way to go, Mr. President.

Like so many other initiatives announced by President George W. Bush, his plan to speed up air travel over the Thanksgiving holiday period does not have much substance behind it. The Atlantic's James Fallows explains how the press reaction (especially the rapturous coverage on Fox News Channel) is much ado over very little.

Keith Olbermann has some thoughts about what really supporting our troops means (hint: sending them to Iraq over and over again is not part of the definition).

I found the video quite emotional -- seeing a homecoming for two young boys with their father, home from Iraq.

Unfortunately, home for just a two-week leave.

Via Truthdig, a story about how the Indian government has decided not to accept dollars at many tourist sites because our currency is in a free fall.

I suspect, alas, that this is the type of news we will read with greater frequency in the coming months and years.

One of the reasons I support the Writers Guild of America: they should get compensated for their talent. As this video by the Colbert Report writers explains. You can learn more about the writers' strike on the United Hollywood blog.

Less than one week after stating that he planned to leave the Guiliani and Clinton marriages alone, Washington Post columnist David Broder put the Clinton marriage under the microscope in his latest column.

The Horses Mouth's Greg Sargent has the details here.

Harper's Scott Norton writes:

Of all the Bush Administration’s many perversions of the justice system, there is something particularly distressing about the case of Maher Arar. A Canadian software engineer, he was changing planes in JFK on his way home to Canada after a Mediterranean vacation when American law enforcement snatched him up. Arar had been fingered as a terrorism suspect by Canadian authorities. Within a brief period of time, he was interrogated, locked-up and then bundled off to Jordan with directions for transshipment to Syria, a nation known to use torture. Indeed, it was plain from the outset that he was shipped to Syria for purposes of being tortured, with a list of questions to be put to him passed along. Never mind that Syria is constantly reviled as a brutal dictatorship by some Bush Administration figures who openly dream of bombing or invading it… the Syrians, it seems, have a redeeming feature—their willingness to torture the occasional Canadian engineer as a gesture of friendship to the Americans.

In time, the Canadians launched a comprehensive inquiry into the matter, concluded that they were mistaken about Arar. He was cleared, the findings of the commission of inquiry were published, and Arar was given a roughly $10 million award in compensation for the role Canada played in his mistreatment.

Canada, in sum, behaved the way a democratic state is supposed to behave.

But what about the United States?

As you can probably guess, the Bush Administration is once again not really all that interested in the democratic process.

If our Republic is to regain its stature on the world stage, one of the necessary steps will be to get to the bottom of what really happened to Maher Arar, who ordered it, and why.

Crooks and Liars' Steve Benen writes about a good decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: instead of recessing the Senate, the chamber will hold nonvoting pro forma sessions next week so President Bush will not be able to make any recess appointments.

It's a small step. Hopefully we'll see the Democratic majority use more of the parliamentary tools at its disposal.

Federal budget expert Stan Collender is not impressed by the Secretary of Defense's latest scare tactics:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday became the latest member of the Bush cabinet to say something that can easily be proven wrong to support the White House.

As reported in the Washington Post, Gates said that a delay in getting the funds requested by the president for Iraq and Afghanistan would soon force him to start laying off employees and ceasing operations at bases.

Gates should know better, and should know that someone would quickly call him out on this.

A memo to Chris Matthews: it is stuff like this that leads people to agree with radio host Stephanie Miller that you can be, as they say, "a right wing tool."

These new Center for American Progress television ads are a good start. It is about time that progressives -- and liberals -- start retaking the political language after decades of letting radical conservatives define the debate.

Chris Mooney explains why this Category 4 cyclone, currently headed for India and Bangladesh, is really dangerous. As he writes:

But let's face it: Irrespective of the particular meteorological details, we've got a powerful storm that is definitely going to hit somewhere where there could be very severe damage and/or loss of life. The big picture is this: Sidr is bad, bad news.

I doubt Tim Russert will apologize, but it is now clear that Russert was wrong during the recent Democratic debate when he accused Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton of blocking the release of documents from the National Archives.

I am stunned by this news: Newsweek's Mark Hosenball reports that former President Bill Clinton recently had lunch with radical conservative funder Richard Mellon Scaife.

(Hat tip: Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones Blog)

Wow...even for the Media Research Center, this is incredibly lame.

What is it with quote cropping this week? Do people really think we cannot find the full quotes out there on the internets?

Via TalkLeft, here is another example of what happens when we do not provide the necessary programs for our returning veterans: in this case, he gets addicted to painkillers, robs a pharmacy to try to feed his addiction, and then face California's mandatory minimum sentences.

Make no mistake, this is our national failure to support our Veterans that led to this situation.

Our goal should be for no Veteran to face such choices. Perhaps that is impossible to reach, but after all we ask of our men and women in uniform, no other goal is worthy or acceptable.

Reading this Los Angeles Times story about what has happened to the famous "Marlboro Marine" highlights the fact that we need to provide more and better services for our returning veterans.

Oh, and that war is serious business and we should not send our young men and women to fight a war based on lies and misguided ideology.

The Washington Post's David Broder has apparently decided that he is not interested in writing about Rudy Giuliani's multiple marriages despite focusing numerous columns (including one as recent as September 6, 2007) on the Bill Clinton-Hillary Clinton marriage.

There is nothing like some hypocrisy to get the dean of D.C. pundits going in the morning.

The Bush Administration's lax policies and privatization mission led to Iraqi insurgents getting weapons that were supposed to go to the Iraqi security services. TPM Muckraker's Spencer Ackerman offers his must read for the day:

Welcome to the operation to get guns to the Iraqi security services, circa 2004-2005. According to Government Accountability Office investigations -- and at least one criminal investigation -- over 190,000 weapons sent to Iraq for the Iraqi security forces disappeared almost as soon as they got off the C-17s. General Petraeus, who was in charge of the effort at the time, commented recently that he thought expeditious delivery of weapons was more important than proper bookkeeping. The New York Times details that his men truly internalized that message -- even to the point of opting not to notice when Iraqi warehousers would turn contractor-run armories into a private, for-profit arms dealership.

While you may not be able to reach the obvious conclusion that waterboarding is torture, perhaps you could take a few steps to show that the Michael Mukasey Justice Department is not going to continue being a political attachment to the president.

As Harper's Scott Horton explains, one easy step Mukasey could take is to fire Department of Justice press spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

Here’s some cogent advice for Michael Mukasey. If he wants to demonstrate that he’s determined to do something to rebuild the reputation of the Department of Justice, he should start by issuing walking papers to some of the people who have done the most to destroy the Department’s reputation. And DOJ press spokesman Brian Roehrkasse must stand pretty much near the top of that list. Last week I had a discussion with some network media colleagues who are working on a story I have been covering heavily. At one point they relayed a series of statements from a DOJ spokesman. It must have been Brian Roehrkasse, I offered, because virtually every statement made was either a rank falsehood or a conscious distortion. And indeed, it was.

Roehrkasse has a well formed reputation with the media, namely, as a political hack and shameless dissembler.

In a service to everyone who thinks leaking a covert CIA agent's identity is not an act of patriotism, Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith and commenters note that Richard Armitage's admission about his culpability in leaking Valerie Plame Wilson's identity is not very complete and is at best misleading.

Make no mistake, it will be extraordinarily difficult to defeat Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a primary (and she will not face the voters again until 2012 anyway).

All I know is that I am going to be very reluctant to vote for her again after her actions of the past couple months. Glenn Greenwald recounts Feinstein's troubling record:

Two months ago, Dianne Feinstein used her position on the Senate Intelligence Committee to enable passage of Bush's FISA amendments, granting the President vast new warrantless surveillance powers.

Last month, Feinstein used her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to ensure confirmation of Bush's highly controversial judicial nominee Leslie Southwick, by being the only Committee Democrat to vote for the nomination (The Politico: "Sen. Dianne Feinstein had emerged as a linchpin in the controversial nomination").

This week, Feinstein used her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to enable confirmation of Bush's Attorney General nominee by ensuring that the frightened Chuck Schumer didn't have to stand alone (Fox News: "Schumer's and Feinstein's support for Mukasey virtually guarantees that a majority of the committee will recommend his confirmation").

And now, Feinstein is using her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee -- simultaneously -- to single-handedly ensure fulfillment of Bush's telecom amnesty demands, as her hometown newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, reports...

The New York Times' Matthew Wald reports on one way to make so-called alternative energies more competitive: by forcing companies to pay for the carbon emissions created by burning fossil fuels.

Rather, the change would come from Washington, if Congress does what it has talked about and puts a price tag on greenhouse-gas emissions. Suddenly the carbon content of fuel, or how much carbon dioxide is produced per unit of energy, would be as important as what the fuel costs. In fact, it might largely define what the fuel costs.

That could shake up the economics of energy, handicapping some fuels and favoring others. Those that produce hefty emissions, like coal and oil, would likely look much worse. And some — sunlight, wind, uranium, even corn stalks and trash as well as natural gas — would probably look much better. “Carbon-negative” fuels that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they are made, might even become feasible.

Carbon dioxide is what economists call an “externality,” something that imposes a cost on somebody other than the manufacturer. At some point, the thinking goes, Congress will force industries to pay those costs, either with a tax or a cap-and-trade system in which allowances will cost money. The consensus in the energy business is that lawmakers will come up with a charge that could start at $10 per metric ton or more.

Here's CNN, a member of our so-called liberal media, editing Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make her appear to say something completely different from what she actually said.

Matthew Yglesias provides a preview of Fred Kaplan's new book Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, and reminds us that the Bush Administration is not only incompetent, it is also brought us horrible ideas. As an example, Yglesias quotes Kaplan:

For several months afterward, as the insurgency morphed into sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, President Bush invoked the elections to dispute that anything of the sort was happening. "I hear a lot about 'civil war,'" he said at one press conference. "The Iraqis want a unified country. . . . Twelve million Iraqis votes. . . . It's an indication about the desire for people to live in a free society."

But it indicated no such thing. Had Bush looked at his own country's history, he would have seen that the election sporting the highest turnout ever, with 83 percent of the eligible population voting, was the election of 1860 -- the election right before the American Civil War.

Frank Rich writes yet another important column today:

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights. The front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, boasts a proven record in extralegal executive power grabs, Musharraf-style: After 9/11 he tried to mount a coup, floating the idea that he stay on as mayor in defiance of New York’s term-limits law.

What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.

In a Times OpEd article justifying his reluctant vote to confirm a man Dick Cheney promised would make “an outstanding attorney general,” Mr. Schumer observed that waterboarding is already “illegal under current laws and conventions.” But then he vowed to support a new bill “explicitly” making waterboarding illegal because Mr. Mukasey pledged to enforce it. Whatever. Even if Congress were to pass such legislation, Mr. Bush would veto it, and even if the veto were by some miracle overturned, Mr. Bush would void the law with a “signing statement.” That’s what he effectively did in 2005 when he signed a bill that its authors thought outlawed the torture of detainees.

That Mr. Schumer is willing to employ blatant Catch-22 illogic to pretend that Mr. Mukasey’s pledge on waterboarding has any force shows what pathetic crumbs the Democrats will settle for after all these years of being beaten down. The judges and lawyers challenging General Musharraf have more fight left in them than this.

The fact that this is true is simply pathetic.

Earlier in his article, Rich also points out that it took only 53 "aye" votes to confirm Mukasey. Yet, we are also told to give the Democrats a break because the Republicans are holding up our agenda with a series of filibusters -- requiring 60 votes to break. In fact, a favorite phrase right now is that it takes 60 votes to do any business in the Senate.

Except, apparently, when the radical right wants to make the nation's top law enforcer a man who is not sure waterboarding is torture. Then only 53 votes are apparently required.

This is yet another example of our Senate leadership failing all of us. Why do they fail to fight against the radical right's discredited and deeply unpopular agenda?

Update: I encourage you to read this Glenn Greenwald post that goes into even more detail about all of the policies that have been stopped by Republican filibuster threats while Democrats allow with a less-than-filibuster-proof vote the confirmation of an Attorney General who could not admit that obvious torture practices are illegal.

Paul Krugman does a nice job here of fighting back against the new attempt to erase from our collective memory Ronald Reagan's use of Nixon's racially toxic southern strategy.

Matthew Yglesias rightly points out that the only way to move the foreign policy debate away from fear mongering and unilateralism is for liberals to start, um, advocating liberal ideas.

Ultimately, the most helpful think would be for a progressive president to successfully implement progressive ideas under circumstances (unlike those of the Clinton administration) when the public is paying attention. That means dropping the assumption that liberal ideas won't fly politically and need to be kept hidden under layers of macho posturing and, instead, actually try to build progressive messaging around progressive ideas.

It's remarkable the extent to which you almost never see leading Democrats articulate commonplace notions like "starting a war with Iran would be a strategic disaster for the United States," "expending finite resources investigating people who there's no probable cause to suspect is probably a waste of time," "we should focus on fighting al-Qaeda rather than other Muslims who haven't attacked us," "invading Iraq was a huge mistake," "Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt founded the UN because a strong UN is good for America," "getting other countries to follow non-proliferation agreements is going to require us to follow them too," or "reviving the Israeli-Arab peace process would make ti easier for us to find Muslim allies." Now I'm not going to promise anyone that those exact phrases are ones it would be smart to use. But the ideas are important ones, and the real political professionals need to think about finding the best ways to express them.

These are important ideas. They need to be shared with the public.

Meanwhile, a commenter on Yglesias' post makes an additional important point:

If and when the Republican nominee starts up with "we're tougher on National Security" bulljive, I just hope the Dem nominee has the ovaries to respond with some variant of, "I'd be a lot more confident in Republicans on National Security if 9-11 hadn't happened on their watch. With plenty of advanced warning. There, I said it."

And more people need to do so.

It also now has been 2,240 days since President George W. Bush promised to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Why isn't this a bigger issue? Where are the speeches making this obvious point?

It is time for Democratic politicians to fight back. Do not accept the fear mongering without comment or by implicitly agreeing with it. Go back after them.

George W. Bush has a record. It is not a good one. It is time to use it.