The Stubborn Sodomite

As if the G.O.P. wasn't in enough trouble already (from ABC News):

Despite reports today quoting anonymous 'GOP sources" that embattled Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho., will resign Friday, his aide says the Senator will return to Washington, D.C. next week to continue his work as best he can, Craig's Idaho press secretary tells ABC News.

Although I'm certain that Craig will resign very soon, I would just love it if he dug in and refused to leave the Senate. Mitch McConnell's head would probably explode if that happened.

And speaking of stubborn, this is pretty pathetic:

Yesterday, a plane carrying three U.S. senators and a member of the House was forced to take evasive maneuvers to avoid rocket-propelled grenades as they took off from Baghdad. “It was a scary moment,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL). “There were a few minutes there where I wondered: ‘Have we been hit? Are we OK?’” added Rep. Bud Cramer (D-AL).

Despite the close call, the lawmakers continued to insist that progress was being made in Iraq. * * *

How screwed up is that? You travel all the way to Iraq so you could come home and spread more G.O.P. bullshit about how great things are going over there, and then something like this happens to totally undercut you. Stuff like this seems to be happening a lot lately.

Rep. Brian Baird Really Stepped In It (With Update)

Democratic Congressman Brian Baird took a pounding the other night at a town hall meeting in Vancouver, Washington. Baird recently flip flopped on the Iraq War -- he was against the war and now he is apparently for it -- and a lot of his constituents aren't real happy about it. You can watch some video highlights of the town meeting here.

I think Baird saw this as a chance for him to get some national exposure, but his plan backfired because he clearly misunderestimated the backlash he would receive here in the Pacific Northwest on this issue. And since all politics is local, he may have just pissed off enough people to make a 2008 reelection bid a lot more difficult than it would have been otherwise.

For God's Sake, even Oregon GOP Senator Gordon Smith realized long ago -- well, eight months or so ago -- that he had no chance for reelection in 2008 unless he flip-flopped with regard to the Iraq Debacle (which he did do). Smith had enough sense to recognize that a "stay the course" position would be politically impossible for him to maintain during the run-up to next year's election.

Baird, however, clearly lost touch with how people feel locally about the U.S. Catastrophe in Iraq, which is pretty funny because it would have been so easy for him to say nothing, given that most people in this country now favor a withdrawal from Iraq.

UPDATE: My new favorite phrase: Green Zone Fog.

I like This

From TPM Election Central:

John Edwards announced yesterday that as president he would have a policy dubbed "Brownie's Law," named in "honor" of former FEMA head Michael Brown. "Edwards will enact a new requirement — 'Brownie's Law' — ensuring that senior political appointees actually are qualified to perform the job to which they are appointed," according to a campaign fact sheet. "Brownie's Law will require that heads of executive agencies and other senior officials have demonstrated qualifications in the field related to their job." It sure says something about the current state of governmental affairs that such a pronouncement could be considered newsworthy.

And here is an interesting idea with regard to the timing of the whole Bedtime for Gonzo story:

So, was Gonzales’ resignation yesterday specifically timed to happen just as the Daily Show started a two week hiatus? Inquiring (and very disappointed) minds would like to know. Not even to mention the revelations about Larry Craig’s bathroom misdemeanours. It’s very suspicious that the court judgment should have been handed down on August 8 – but that Roll Call should only have published the details yesterday. I seem to recall that the last time the Daily Show went on holiday, there was a similar outbreak of political scandals (the Libby case judgement etc). As they say, developing …

Gonzo Is Gone

BushCo's greatest gift to Democrats has resigned:

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under fire from congressional Democrats and even some Republicans, announced Monday that he has resigned from his post.

“It has been one of my greatest privileges to lead the Department of Justice,” Gonzales said at a news conference, announcing his resignation effective Sept. 17.

Although the Bush Regime has tried to make it sound like a last-minute thing that just developed over the weekend, it appears to me that this has been in the works for some time, with the plan being to have him step down in late August while everyone is vacationing and thus paying little attention to the news.

The most interesting part of all this will, of course, be the confirmation hearings for whomever Bush picks to replace Gonzales.

Bush Compares The Iraq Debacle To The Vietnam Debacle

George Bush suggested the other day that we could have won the Vietnam War had we only kept our forces in the field longer. I found Bush's argument to be hysterically funny given (1) Bush actually deserted his post during the Vietnam War, and (2) we are now trading partners with Vietnam, so that particular war isn't exactly a good example for Bush to use, since he is also claiming that an unmitigated catastrophe would result if we withdrew from Iraq.

As Kevin Drum notes, the idiots on the Extreme Right are really starting to run with this "We Could Have Won In Vietnam" idea:

On the right: the Weekly Standard has posted not one, not two, but three separate pieces — two by idiot savant David Gelernter — that have been hauled up from the archives. Verdict: you bet your ass we could have won in Vietnam.

National Review also has three pieces on the same theme, and Peter Rodman's pretty clearly wins the Wingnut History award for the day. He's not content merely to suggest that the United States could have won in Vietnam — a trope that's common enough on the right — but claims that this is practically a "consensus" among military historians. That's chutzpah! Move along boys, nothing left to argue about here.

It sounds to me like there has been a bit of coordination amongst the extremists on this issue. Drum argues that the Democrats have been too slow to respond to Bush's Vietnam statement, but I'm thinking that this might just be one of those times when no response would be best.

I think most Americans have pretty much made up their minds about Vietnam. Sure, 30% of the country would probably respond to such a bullshit argument, but only because that is probably the percentage of people who already believe that we could have won in Vietnam had we stayed the course there.

I just don't think a bunch of right-wing wackos are going to be able to change very many minds on that particular issue. After all, these are the same idiots who said -- and continue to say -- that the invasion of Iraq was a great idea.

There Was Great Stuff In The New York Times Yesterday

I found this op-ed to be particularly good. It was written by several U.S. soldiers currently serving in Iraq and is a must-read.

The soldiers' piece in The Times should remind Democrats that the U.S. is not "at war" in Iraq. The "war," at least as far as the U.S. is concerned, ended over four years ago. What we are doing over there now is simply occupying the country. In fact, the Democrats should always refer to the situation over there as either "the Iraq Debacle" or "the Iraq Occupation," and should never call it the Iraq "War," unless they are referring specifically to the Iraqi civil war.

Frank Rich's "He Got Out While the Getting Was Good" is also worth a look (thanks for the link, Slic[k]). Rich's piece reminded me how fortuitous Kerry's loss in 2004 turned out to be. Had Kerry won, the Extreme Right would not be as demoralized as it is now. Iraq would have quickly turned into Kerry's problem (after all -- he did vote to authorize Bush's invasion), and the recession we are about to experience would have happened on Kerry's watch instead of on Bush's. The Democrats can still blow it pretty easily -- and it wouldn't surprise me if they did -- but things are really looking up for them right now.

And who do the Democrats have to thank for all of this? Well, Karl Rove of course (with a little help from Dick Cheney).

One of these days, most Americans will realize that radical right-wing extremists -- while possessing great skill at stealing elections, smearing people, and generally being Christo-fascist assholes -- really have no talent for governing.

What Bob Schieffer Said

Last month, Bob Schieffer at CBS News said that the Iraqi parliament's plan to go on vacation in August was pretty much the last straw for him (his exact words: "For me, this does it.")

Here is what Schieffer said this morning:

Sixteen years on Face The Nation has taught me one thing: When I ask a question and guests start laying out conditions such as "first let me tell you," or "the real questions is," or "it is important to put that in context," I know we're headed down the old rabbit trail that will take us anywhere but to a straight answer.

When people want to answer, they do so quickly, directly and clearly. When they don't we get all those conditions and lectures about the importance of context.

So excuse me for getting a little suspicious after hearing the White House is proposing some new conditions on the delivery of General Petraeus' long-awaited report on progress in Iraq – conditions such as the White House wanting the general to deliver the report to Congress behind closed doors while cabinet officers do the talking in public.

And, suddenly we're told the general won't actually write the report but that his thoughts will be incorporated in a summary prepared by the White House. Mind you, this is the report the president has said over and over that he will use to decide where we go from here in Iraq.

Over and over, we've been told not to rush to judgment until we hear from the general. Now we're hearing all these new conditions. Maybe it's because I've been dragged down the old rabbit trail too many times by too many people with something to hide, but this doesn't sound like we're headed to a straight answer.

No, this sounds like anything but. And that is a real shame.

I hear you, Bob. When I first read that The White House was going to write Petraeus' report, I pretty much figured that the Corporate Media would "neglect" to mention this very important fact and simply go along with the fiction that Petraeus himself actually wrote it. So I was very happy to hear Schieffer report on this.

Look, most Americans know that things are going very badly in Iraq. But when the White House (1) has to write General Petraeus' report, and (2) wanted Petraeus to talk to Congress behind closed doors, then the situation in Iraq must actually be a lot worse than we think.

I Like This

Fred Barnes recently wrote that Karl Rove has a "great political mind." Hunter over at Kos offers this response:

Here's the thing. Someday, Karl Rove will die. When that day comes, we will all have to pretend he was something other than a piss-headed man hated by everyone but those he found useful, and as matter of convention we will have to treat him with momentary respect. So let's write his epitaph now, while being as mean to him is still perfectly allowable and much more sporting.

Karl Rove was not a "great political mind". His sole contribution to the nation was getting the worst president in history elected on a campaign of unabashed bullcrap, then proceeding to help guide that president into foreign and domestic policy failures at every opportunity. If that's what passes for Republican brilliance, then it explains... well, pretty much everything, actually.

O'Hanlon's Classic Non-Denial Denial

OK, this is starting to get a little ridiculous (from Think Progress):

On NPR’s On Point today, a caller asked Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon to respond to Glenn Greenwald’s recent article which revealed O’Hanlon’s trip to Iraq had been choreographed by the Defense Department. “Well, I don’t have high regard for the kind of journalism that Mr. Greenwald has carried out here,” O’Hanlon said. “I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time rebutting Mr. Greenwald because he’s had frankly more time and more readership than he deserves.”

Well, ain't that just like a Bush apologist. I guess he's just used to the kind of journalism we'd been routinely getting for the last six years, namely, the kind where the journalist isn't interested in the truth but is only interested in making the Bush Regime look good --

-- you know, kind of like that O'Hanlon and Pollack op-ed piece in the New York Times a couple weeks ago.

Jon Stewart Calls The Extreme Right On Its O'Hanlon/Pollack Bullshittery

OK, I've beaten this horse to death, but the GOP still appears to have no problem touting those O'Hanlon and Pollack characters as former Jane Fonda-ish anti-war wannabees who have finally seen the light with regard to our incredible success over there in Iraq.

Bill Kristol, the neocon who has been wrong on Iraq from Day One (and long before that, but who's counting), was on The Daily Show last night, and he responded this way when Jon Stewart asked him who we can trust these days with regard to Iraq:

KRISTOL: Trust skeptics of the war like Mike O'Hanlon and Kevin Pollack, who went over . . . and have seen it in real time . . .

Well, Stewart would have none of that. His response:

STEWART: They weren't skeptics. . . . Kevin Pollack would like us to invade Iran, for God's Sake. Those are two very hawkish guys.

Thank God for Jon Stewart. Now I don't watch the cable news stations around the clock, but that was only the second reference I've seen on television (Countdown being the first) to the fact that O'Hanlon and Pollack lied to this country when they attempted to sell themselves as "war critics." Once again, we have to go to The Daily Show to get the truth.

Oh, and by the way, 175 people were bombed to death in Iraq today, and nine U.S. soldiers have died over there in the last two days.

Glenn Greenwald Interviews Fake War Critic Michael O'Hanlon

A couple of weeks ago, Michael O'Hanlon and Kevin Pollack of the Brookings Institute published an opinion piece in the New York Times which claimed that the United States is "finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms."

Of course, right-wing extremists have been claiming this kind of nonsense for a long time -- who could ever forget Dick Cheney's "the insurgency is in its final throes" remark from 2005 -- but several members of the Radical Right (including Cheney) treated O'Hanlon and Pollack's op-ed piece as gospel because these two men claimed to be "war critics." Well, it turns out (surprise!) that they're not war critics after all. In fact, they are actually Bill Kristol-type war cheerleaders.

Glenn Greenwald has taken the lead in exposing these fakes to the world, and his recent interview of O'Hanlon is nothing short of spectacular. You can read the whole interview here; or, if you don't have that much time, you can read Greenwald's article regarding this interview here.

Of course, Greenwald covers much ground with regard to O'Hanlon's supposed status as a "war critic," and actually got O'Hanlon to make this admission:

As you rightly reported -- I was not a critic of this war. In the final analysis, I was a supporter.

Well, it sure would have been nice if O'Hanlon had admitted that from the start or at least mentioned it in one of the interviews he gave to the Corporate Media after the piece was published. That little detail must have slipped his mind.

But Greenwald's interview is most interesting when he asks O'Hanlon about the trip to Iraq which provided the basis for the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed piece. Here are some excerpts from Greenwald's article:

But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented -- both by Pollack/O'Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military -- a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them. * * *

I have nothing against O'Hanlon personally; he was perfectly cordial and professional in my dealings with him and I think he deserves credit for agreeing to be interviewed in light of what I had written about his Op-Ed. But it is very difficult to credit him and Pollack with good faith, as though they are guilty of nothing more than sloppy "scholarship."

A failure to disclose obviously critical facts that bear on the credibility of their "findings" and a willingness to ground their conclusions in patently one-sided and highly controlled data are far more serious sins than mere sloppiness. It is difficult to avoid reaching any conclusion other than that they willfully served as propaganda tools in order to bolster the perception of success for a war and a "Surge" strategy which they prominently supported and on which their professional reputations rest.

Read the whole article. It's worth it.

Obama Gets Attacked For Speaking The Truth

Everyone who has talked politics with me over the last couple of weeks knows how pissed off I've been over the fact that Hillary, Dodd, Biden, Romney, and others have been attacking Obama for saying this:

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

Obama's statement made a lot of sense to me, particularly given that BushCo has, over the last several years, attempted to minimize Pakistan's involvement in 9/11 while at the same time falsely claiming that Saddam was somehow involved in those attacks. But Obama was instantly attacked by Hillary and others as "naive" for saying those things about Pakistan. Mitt Romney even compared Obama to "Dr. Strangelove."

So let me see if I got this straight: Someone finally attempts to introduce some common sense into America's counter-terrorism policy, and he gets attacked for it by both Democrats and Republicans. Why?

Well, Josh Marshall figured it out:

All Obama said was that if we have actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan won't act, we will act.

Clearly, no Republican can quibble with this. They're on the record for invading countries because they might become dangers to us at some point in the future. They're hardly in a position to disagree with Obama if he says we'll hunt down people who committed mass casualty terror attacks within our borders. And I'm not sure Democrats are in much of a position to do so either.

The unspoken truth here, I suspect, is that Obama has struck on the central folly of our post-9/11 counter-terrorism defense policy -- strike hard where they aren't and go easy where they are. I think everyone can see this. But Obama got there first. So they need to attack him for saying it.

I am certainly glad to see that Obama isn't backing down from his statements. I liked what he said at the debate the other night about how Hillary and some of the other candidates who are attacking him on this had actually voted to give Bush the authority to launch "the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation."

That was a good start, but he needs to stay on the offensive on this. Hillary's vote to authorize the Iraq War was, in my opinion, one of the greatest acts of political cowardice in recent memory, and voters need to be constantly reminded of this.

Message From Corporate Amerika: We'll Support Bush No Matter How Low His Numbers Go

Doesn't AT&T know that Bush is the most unpopular president in a generation? This is from the LA Times:

In a prominent nod to one of the festival's lead sponsors, the logo for this year's Lollapalooza concerts in Chicago includes the tag line, "delivered by AT&T." But Sunday's headliner Pearl Jam complained that AT&T delivered less than the band's full performance during its Lollapalooza webcast. The powerhouse telco turned off the audio during the song "Daughter" while singer Eddie Vedder was railing against President George Bush. That bit of censorship -- which AT&T says was a mistake -- gave a bit of fuel to the forces arguing for "Net neutrality" regulations.

The missing lines -- "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home" -- are benign compared to some of Vedder's more pointed critiques of Bush and the Iraq war. This isn't exactly "I'm ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas" territory. So you have to wonder what the person who pulled the plug on Vedder was thinking -- or not thinking, as the case may be.

AT&T spokeswoman Tiffany Nels said the company goofed. Its Blue Room website is open to Internet users of all ages, so it tries to block "excessive profanity" from the broadcasts. It hires contractors to monitor the performances, and the broadcasts are delayed slightly to enable monitors to bleep off-color material. But those monitors aren't supposed to edit songs, just the stage patter between them, Nels said. "It's not our policy" to censor performances, Nels said, "and we regret the error." She added, "There was no profanity. It was a mistake." * * *

Yeah, right.

Look, it would still be wrong, but I could almost understand if AT&T did this, say, when Bush's approval rating was soaring into the low-to-mid forty percentile. But Bush's presidency is a complete failure. I thought that everybody knew this.

Bike Fishing

Phil and I hit the lower Deschutes last Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning for some steelhead fishing. Although it is still a bit early in the season, there were fish available and we did tangle with a few of them.

I thought it was only a two-hour drive from Bend to the mouth of the Deschutes, but thanks to some road construction it was closer to three hours. When I arrived at about 5 pm on Tuesday, Phil had already scored one of the last campsites available at Heritage Landing Campground, so we immediately proceeded up the river on bicycles to see if we could catch a steelhead or two before it got dark. Unfortunately, I had just gotten rid of my mountain bike a couple months earlier, so I had to borrow one of Phil's.

Anyway, we rode up an old railroad grade for a few miles -- there is no motor vehicle access on this part of the river -- then cut down to some nice holding water below a set of rapids. Phil caught a steelhead the week before at this particular spot, and he graciously gave me first shot at it and then walked to a hole about a quarter mile down river.

I brought along both a fly rod and a spinning rod, but it was way too windy to fly cast, so I broke out the spinning rod and tied on a silver-bladed spinner with a green body. I proceeded to wade out into the river so I could get into position to fish a deep slot just in front of a small set of rapids. I then casted my spinner into the aforementioned rapids and let it drift into the deeper water just downstream. The spinner was only in the water for five seconds or so before a steelhead pounded it.

The fish immediately took to the air for a couple jumps and headed upstream for a little ways. I was in shock for the opening moments of the battle, given that I had never hooked a salmon or a steelhead on the very first cast of a trip before. But I eventually grabbed hold a bit and got the fish closer to shore and into shallower water, which caused it to make a long run back toward the middle of the river.

After about a five-minute fight, I brought the fish close enough in to see that it was a hatchery steelhead -- and therefore a keeper -- so I got the fish as close to shore as I could then tossed it up onto the bank. A few minutes later, Phil walked back from downstream and snapped the photo on the left.

We rode back down to camp just before dark, then got up at about 4:30 the next morning and began biking back up the river while it was still dark out. We stopped at the same area we fished the previous evening; and in no time at all, Phil hooked a steelhead on a spinner. It was another hatchery fish that was about the same size as the one I caught the day before.

A few minutes after landing that fish, Phil hooked a much larger steelhead -- probably in the 14-pound class -- which immediately took him quite a ways downriver before breaking off. The fish was probably one of those Idaho-bound steelhead that stopped off in the Deschutes for a bit to enjoy the cooler water and to steal Phil's spinner. We fished for a few more hours before heading home.

Anyway, it was a great trip and I look forward to the next one.

Deja Vu: The Vast Right Wing "After-Echo"

As I was trying to wake up this morning, Central Oregon's local radio station was broadcasting right-wing extremist Paul Harvey's latest "news segment." Harvey had this to say:

Some of the president's critics are conceding that the [Iraq] War is going better, reflecting changes in attitude on the ground. * * * An opinion piece in the New York Times today says: "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms," and it was written by two Bush critics from the Brookings Institute -- Michael O'Hanlon and Kevin Pollack.

Now, I knew that O'Hanlon and Pollack had an op/ed piece published a week and a half ago in the New York Times about how great things were in Iraq, but according to Paul Harvey, there was one in this morning's Times as well.

Harvey was wrong, of course -- there is no new piece in the New York Times by these so-called "Bush critics." This is just recycled news that the Extreme Right is re-hashing in order to make it look like there continues to be changes of heart with some war critics.

And by the way, calling O'Hanlon and Pollack "war critics" would be akin to calling John McCain a "war critic." Sure, these guys have been critical of how BushCo has handled the Iraq War, but even staunch war enthusiasts like John McCain and Joe Lieberman have done that.

The truth is that O'Hanlon and Pollack have long been war cheerleaders, both with regard to the invasion itself and The Surge. In fact, the Internets have been buzzing for the last week-and-a-half about how these characters really are not war critics; but in case you missed all that, you can read about it here and here. Glenn Greenwald's excellent expose of these faux war critics can be found here.

But the Corporate Media have done little if anything to get out the truth on O'Hanlon and Pollack's actual status as war supporters, and that means that Bush apologists like Paul Harvey can keep recycling O'Hanlon and Pollack's bullshit and make it sound like something brand new and completely legit.

Is this a great country or what?

The Best-Armed Insurgency . . . Ever

Put this one in the "just when you think it can't get any worse" category:

The US government cannot account for 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to an investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office.

According to the July 31 report, the military "cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces."

The weapons disappeared from records between June 2004 and September 2005, as the military struggled to rebuild the disbanded Iraqi forces from scratch amid mounting attacks from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. * * *

Instead of spending all that money arming "the enemy," we could have spent it on improving America's infrastructure.

Oh well. But it does once again bring up the question of whether it is possible to commit treason through gross negligence.

When Flip-Floppers Attack

I loved this line from Mitt Romney -- he said it during yesterday's GOP debate after Sam Brownback brought up the fact that Romney was once pro-choice but is now anti-abortion:

"I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they've been pro-life longer than I have."

Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, Mitt, because I'm pretty sure your flip-flopping on abortion will come up again and again during this campaign.