His language may be strong, and his analysis somewhat oversimplistic, but if you can see past it, I think he’s drawn a pretty good bead on the right wingers. Reflecting on Durbin’s non-apology for pointing out torture, TBogg writes: Every time the chickenhawks endorse torture they make it more dangerous for American service people. Do they care? Not really. They … Read More
What Time Is It?
Bush is plummeting in the polls, republicans and public support are turning against Bush on social security, the War in Iraq, and John Bolton, and everybody’s talking about the hyped-up and “fixed” pre-war intelligence. You know what that means, right? Yup, it’s time for Bush to energize his base by going after the gays. Nothing like playing upon middle America’s … Read More
At Long Last, I Introduce . . .
. . . the religious left. The success of the Religious Right in appropriating the language of Christianity has led many people to become generally wary of religion in the public sphere and of Christianity in particular. The Religious Right has used the language of Christianity to promote an extreme and divisive political agenda that has helped polarize our nation. … Read More
Rush on Durbin
Now actually being compelled to confront what Durbin actually said on the Senate floor, the wingnuts are starting the meme that the FBI memo that Durbin read from . . . is . . . wait for it . . . fabricated. That’s right. Durbin simply made it up, according to the desparate wingers. From the June 17 broadcast of … Read More
Operation Yellow Elephant
The objective of OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT is to recruit College Republicans and Young Republicans to serve as infantry. They demanded this war and now viciously support it. It’s only right that they also experience it. So far, it isn’t going too well. Recently, as reported here, Operation Yellow Elephant tried to get a recruitment ad into the program of the … Read More
What The Durbin Kerfuffle Reveals About The Right Wing
Yglesius said it for me: A little while ago Dick Durbin noted on the Senate floor that torturing prisoners was the sort of thing Nazis or Communists would do, and that the United States, trying to be one of the world’s good guys, should hold itself to a higher standard of conduct. The right-wing noise machine, deploying some now familiar … Read More
Unintentionally Ironic Funny Quote of the Day
Rice, in Egypt, said that the U.S. is no longer willing to tolerate repressive regimes to bolster regional stability. She flew next to Saudi Arabia. — from today’s WSJ, as reported here.
Egregious Is As Egregious Does
"I thought Durbin was totally out of line. I watched some of his comments on the floor of the United States Senate. For him to make those comparisons was one of the more egregious things I’d ever heard uttered on the floor of the United States Senate." — Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with radio host Steve Gill. … Read More
AssHat Gets Stymied – Declares Victory
John, from Powerline, takes a stand: I called Senator Dick Durbin’s office this morning at (202) 224-2152 and, after being on hold for a while, laid out the reasons why I think Durbin should resign from the Senate. “Hi. This is John Hindrocket from Powerline, the Blog of the Century. You may remember me as the guy who calls Jimmy … Read More
Floodgate Still Open
A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq’s weapons programme were “totally implausible”. He tells the Guardian: “I’d read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there’s no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues … Read More
White House and White Outs
Think Progress has a nice link-o-riffic list of the many many instances in which the Bush White House has altered or buried expert analysis when the facts didn’t jibe with the adminsitration’s policies. The full text is below. Read it, and ask yourself, are we to believe the fixing of facts around policy didn’t happen with respect to Iraq? Cattle … Read More
LGF’s Premature Ejaculation
The Little Green Footballs post: Is British reporter Michael Smith, who broke the Downing Street memo story (after re-typing and destroying the originals), the same Michael Smith who was hired by Mary Mapes as a CBS assistant producer in the Rathergate scandal? You can almost hear the ohpleaseGodletitbetrueohohohohpleasebetrue-ohpleaseimgonnacumiswearimgonnacumohpleaseletitbetrue breathlessness behind their words. Sadly, the answer is no. Not surprising speculation … Read More
More On Cheney’s Lies
As everyone knows, Cheney recently said in CNN that the insurgency was in its “last throes”. Here’s what General William Webster, the U.S. commander for Baghdad, said the other day: "Certainly saying anything about ‘breaking the back’ or ‘about to reach the end of the line’ or those kinds of things do not apply to the insurgency at this point." … Read More
What Hagel Said
"Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse.” “The White House is completely disconnected from reality” “It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we’re losing in Iraq” “More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned" – Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
The US Wanted Democracy In Iraq? Um . . . Not So Much
One of the Downing Street Memos, informally called the Options Paper (PDF format) is interesting in that it discusses two apparently equally acceptable post-Iraq outcomes: The US administration has lost faith in containment and is now considering regime change. The end states could either be a Sunni strongman or a representative government. The paper goes on to list the plusses … Read More