Not according to my definition. Nor does the Booman Tribune see it.
If you caught the intellectual lightweight, Michael O’Hanlon, on CNN this morning you would have been treated to a masterful display of toadying and sucking up that puts the “sick” in sycophant. O’Hanlon continues to insist that his DOD arranged and controlled trip this summer to limited areas of Iraq proved beyond doubt that the surge is working and we are progressing in Iraq. Of course his confident claims are not attended by any benchmarks or empirical evidence. So as a public service we will take a look at the [...]
UPDATE: Another look at the numbers –
Tags: Michael O’Hanlon, CNN, Iraq Progress Report
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I’m still looking for the raw numbers, but Olbermann announced something quite impressive during last night’s "Countdown" – the show was, according to Keith, Number 1 in the 25-54 demo Thursday night, beating Bill O’Reilly for the first time. He also mentioned "Countdown" was the highest rated of all the cable news programs Thursday night. What happened? I’m suggesting a combination of things – he got a lot of new exposure with the Sunday night show just before football on NBC. Sure, critics will argue that he came in fourth place with something like 4 million viewers. But, that’s WAY more viewers than anybody gets on the cable nets. So, the exposure certainly didn’t hurt. O’Reilly is on vacation this week, so that likely contributed to lower viewership for his program, although I doubt that many loyal Fox News viewers just marched over to MSNBC for a week. Not likely at all. We’ll have to see if the trend holds next week. But, for right now, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a HUGE victory for Olbermann and MSNBC.
UPDATE: Here are the numbers. Keith was correct. It’s a WIN.
The Scoreboard: Thursday, August 30
Tags: Olbermann, Countdown, MSNBC
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And, amazingly, it’s not blazing hot this Saturday morning! Just in time for college football, we’re getting a break in the heatwave. I’m thrilled! Looks like a good day for the Farmers’ Market and some football-watching. One quick reminder, while Blogger does always put the newest post on the top, during my regular posting, I try to "trick" the system and upload my daily collection of posts in reverse order. That way, the "introductory" post of the day is near the top. Just a reminder to keep scrolling down for more fresh material, You’ll know when you run into the previous day’s stuff.
For today, one that caught my eye over coffee today…
New Iraqi civilian death toll statistics contradict the Bush administration’s claims that the escalation is working. From the LA Times: Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday. In July, [...]
Tags: Iraq War, Civilian Deaths
Categories: Uncategorized
Not according to my definition. Nor does the Booman Tribune see it.
If you caught the intellectual lightweight, Michael O’Hanlon, on CNN this morning you would have been treated to a masterful display of toadying and sucking up that puts the “sick” in sycophant. O’Hanlon continues to insist that his DOD arranged and controlled trip this summer to limited areas of Iraq proved beyond doubt that the surge is working and we are progressing in Iraq. Of course his confident claims are not attended by any benchmarks or empirical evidence. So as a public service we will take a look at the [...]
UPDATE: Another look at the numbers –
Tags: Michael O’Hanlon, CNN, Iraq Progress Report
Categories: Uncategorized
I’m still looking for the raw numbers, but Olbermann announced something quite impressive during last night’s "Countdown" – the show was, according to Keith, Number 1 in the 25-54 demo Thursday night, beating Bill O’Reilly for the first time. He also mentioned "Countdown" was the highest rated of all the cable news programs Thursday night. What happened? I’m suggesting a combination of things – he got a lot of new exposure with the Sunday night show just before football on NBC. Sure, critics will argue that he came in fourth place with something like 4 million viewers. But, that’s WAY more viewers than anybody gets on the cable nets. So, the exposure certainly didn’t hurt. O’Reilly is on vacation this week, so that likely contributed to lower viewership for his program, although I doubt that many loyal Fox News viewers just marched over to MSNBC for a week. Not likely at all. We’ll have to see if the trend holds next week. But, for right now, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a HUGE victory for Olbermann and MSNBC.
UPDATE: Here are the numbers. Keith was correct. It’s a WIN.
The Scoreboard: Thursday, August 30
Tags: Olbermann, Countdown, MSNBC
Categories: Uncategorized
And, amazingly, it’s not blazing hot this Saturday morning! Just in time for college football, we’re getting a break in the heatwave. I’m thrilled! Looks like a good day for the Farmers’ Market and some football-watching. One quick reminder, while Blogger does always put the newest post on the top, during my regular posting, I try to "trick" the system and upload my daily collection of posts in reverse order. That way, the "introductory" post of the day is near the top. Just a reminder to keep scrolling down for more fresh material, You’ll know when you run into the previous day’s stuff.
For today, one that caught my eye over coffee today…
New Iraqi civilian death toll statistics contradict the Bush administration’s claims that the escalation is working. From the LA Times: Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday. In July, [...]
Tags: Iraq War, Civilian Deaths
Categories: Uncategorized
Don’t look for an abundance of posts for a few days. We’re dogsitting for our son and his wife this weekend. That means a house full of pups and, most likely, not a lot of free time to plow through bloglines. By the way, bloglines has a pretty nifty new beta you can play with at beta.bloglines.com. I’m bouncing back and forth between it and the old version. The major issue I have with the new ajax version is a small technical thing – when I copy and paste a headline from bloglines into Qumana, the headline font supersizes. So, I either have to manually change that or stick with the old version of bloglines. If I solve one thing this weekend, that’s my target.
To start things off this Friday evening (which, by the way, is just a tad bit cooler around here than has been the norm for the past several weeks. This is a good thing.) I’m cherry-picking a couple of posts from the venerable AMERICAblog. I really respect and admire the folks who thoughtfully post on issues over there. It’s a great one to add to your bloglines and stay updated. And, I sense that what would have been considered a radical leftist position have become much more mainstream in the past couple of years…
CNN’s host Glenn Beck says New Orleans should not be rebuilt
Okay, Jonathan Kaplan and CNN, make up your mind about New Orleans [...]
As expected, Petraeus sees progress — just like Bush
No need to wait for the official report. Nope. Petraeus already has his talking points down: "The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has thrown al Qaeda off balance and led to a reduction in [...]
P.S. – At the request of a couple of regular readers, I’ve change the number of posts on the first page, so it should load faster. However, that means you’ll usually need to click the "older posts" link at the bottom of the page to get to more of the current posts. Don’t be afraid to do that! I’m putting ten posts on the first page now, instead of three days worth of posts. And there are frequently more than ten posts on any given day…thus, you’ll need to click the "more posts" link. Let me know if it’s too much of a hassle. Oh, yeah. As long as we’re chatting, don’t forget the "comments"…feel free to use ‘em.
Tags: AMERICAblog, New Orleans, Katrina, Glenn Beck, Patraeus
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Bookmark the following post and check back occasionally over the weekend. If you’re from the left, the original post will aggravate the heck out of you and leave you shaking your head. But, don’t give up. Plow through the comments to get a good feel of where both the left and right stand on the war. It’s quite amazing. Try to figure out how both sides can feel so strongly about their positions. Bookmark it because the comments will continue to grow all weekend long.
The Dratted War Just Isn’t Going According to Plan!
Democrat plan, that is. Remember back in January where the President was supposedly on the political ropes and would shortly be forced to begin withdrawing from Iraq? "Lame Duck" didn’t even begin to describe President Bush as that time -…Democrat plan, that is. Remember back in January where the President was supposedly on the political ropes and would shortly be forced to begin withdrawing from Iraq? "Lame Duck" didn’t even begin to describe President Bush as that time – [...]
Tags: Iraq War
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Sure, it’s going much, much, better over in Iraq. Everywhere you turn there are signs of progress, right? Sorry, but I’m just not seeing it.
‘We should start over’
The National Intelligence Estimate said Iraq is a bloody mess unlikely to improve anytime soon. The Government Accountability Office says Iraq is not making any political or military progress. And an independent examination of the Iraqi police shows a force that is so far gone, it might need to be scrapped altogether. An independent commission established by [...]
And, from Juan Cole, what may be one of the most important and concise posts of the evening..
Arguments over Night of the Living Dead in Iraq
…I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting in a supposedly safe all-Shiite area. The government has all but collapsed, with even the formerly cooperative sections of the Sunni Arab political class withdrawing [...]
Tags: National Intelligence Estimate, Government Accountability Office, Iraqi Police
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It’s not simply the loss of life. That’s bad enough. The information below is enough to gag any reasonable person..
Red Blood, Black Rock
Imagine you are in charge of safety for those laboring in America’s mines. Now imagine you don’t really care whether one, ten, or a hundred of these men and women die. All you care about is saving money for the corporations which are your real master. Once you have that mindset down, you’re almost ready for a spot with the Bush administration. You just have to take one more step. You have to be willing to take the broken bodies of those who have died through your own negligence and hold them up as reasons to reward those who collaborated in their deaths. That’s exactly what [...]
Tags: Mining, Coal Mining, Stream Buffer Zone Rule
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Finally, from Florida comes a Congressman with guts…
Now, More Than Ever…
Rep. Kendrick Meek on accountability and Iraq… Rep. Meek is asking for some help in making certain that your elected representatives know how you feel about Iraq. It’s time to stand up and say “enough.” “The American people are asking for our troops to come home. I think that should be the goal of the Congress – [...]
Tags: Kendrick Meek, Iraq Spending, Iraq War
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I know the list is already long; the list of problematic situations in Iraq. But, there’s yet another issue to add…cholera.
The occupation that just keeps on giving (2).
Cholera is on the rise in northern Iraq as sanitation and medical systems break down from the stresses of coping with thousands of internal refugees. So far, 5000 people have been afflicted with the disease. ""The disease is spreading very fast," Dr Juan Abdallah, a senior official in Kurdistan’s health ministry, told a UN agency. "It is the first outbreak of its kind here in [...]
Now, just watch – somebody is going to take that last phrase and say, "See, the war’s been underway for a long time and this is the FIRST outbreak, so that’s really a pretty good record". Or something equally silly. Oh, by the way, here’s another "issue":
U.S. Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq
An American-owned company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to U.S. officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts [...].
Tags: Iraq, Cholera
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I wish I had the time (and talent) to pull together posts like the following. It’s based on a newspaper column, embellished with salient thoughts from the post’s author. It wraps up so many good points in a single post that I can’t help but be impressed. I believe you will be, too. via Mahablog..
The Road to Serfdom
Today’s Paul Krugman column is a must read. Shorter version: We are all New Orleans now. Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement [...]
Tags: New Orleans, Katrina, Paul Krugman, Middle Class
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That’s the simple way of saying it. Read the following excellent post by Glenn Greenwald and remember, it’s talking about how widespread such spying was long ago. Long before the current administration opened the floodgates of warrantless wiretapping, etc…
Warrantless surveillance and the new Coretta Scott King disclosures
…There is a long and recent record demonstrating that surveillance powers, when exercised against Americans without oversight, will be abused. And that record just got longer and more disturbing, thanks to a superb investigative report from a local television news station in Houston, which obtained the previously secret FBI surveillance file on Coretta Scott King. Here is what happens when we allow our political leaders to [...]
Tags: Warrentless Wiretap, Coretta Scott King, Domestic Spying
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Give me a break! One incredulous report after another. It’s become almost routine. Almost the norm. Then, you stumble across one that makes you take a deep breath and sigh…
Petraeus Proving To Be A Political Hack
I have been extremely careful in not labelling General David Petraeus as essentially becoming a political hack for the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy. I have argued that he will deliver a soldier’s report, one intent on shoring up support for a mission he believes in and feels he can accomplish. I have always argued he can not be, by definition, an honest evaluator of his own strategy and performance. That just seems common sense to me. But it is becoming increasingly clear, for even someone like me that really does not want to believe it, that General Petraeus and his operation have chosen to become political hacks doing [...]
UPDATE: AMERICAblog has more:
Spinning members of Congress in Baghdad: Lobster tortellini, cheat sheets and children’s cartoons
The Bush administration has been in full campaign mode over the Iraq war since it started. They’ve put enormous time and resources into messaging the war, not so much into a strategy to extricate the U.S. from the quagmire. Over the past week, there have been several article demonstrating the public relations push the Bush team made with members of Congress visiting Iraq this [...]
From the other side: Troops to "Surrender Democrats": Up Yours
The Washington Post headline caught the self-pity of a couple of antiwar congressmen: "Lawmakers Describe ‘Being Slimed in the Green Zone’ " — If they were "slimed," it was with their own words. As these congressmen visited Iraq […]
There was this one, little, incident that couldn’t quite be managed by PR..
Iraq: Close Call for Congressional Delegation
A close call in Iraq leaves me wondering ‘what if?’. What if this attack had succeeded? Congressional sources confirmed late Thursday that a military transport plane carrying three Republican senators and a Democratic representative was attacked by either missiles or rocket-propelled grenades after taking off from the Baghdad airport. Sens. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and Rep. Robert E. “Bud” Cramer, D-Ala., were uninjured after their C-130 transport plane took evasive measures and dispatched flares to avoid the incoming fire. Shelby recounted the incident [...]
Tags: Patraeus, Green Zone, Moran, Tauscher
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Always keep in mind that the money has to come from somewhere. It doesn’t just magically appear, no matter how fast Washington wants to spend it.
It’s not $50 billion. It’s $200 billion.
George W. Bush is not asking for $50 billion in additional appropriations for Iraq. He’s upping his already pending ask for $147 billion by $50 billion more. Four years and already nearly a half trillion (with a "t") dollars in, the president now seeks an additional $200 billion? And we’re thinking of giving it to him? Seventy-plus percent of America wants us out. Less than a quarter of Americans support the president in anything he does. Democrats hold the majority in both houses of Congress. And this president is asking for [...]
Tags: Iraq War, War Funding
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Isn’t this the kind of thing that Republicans typically accuse Democrats of doing?
Today’s Housing Bubble Post – Bailout With Taxpayer Dollars
Have you been responsibly managing your debt? Have you been sacrificing so you don’t get in over your head? Saving instead of borrowing? Accepting lower returns on your money rather than getting greedy and taking on high risk for higher yields? Sucker. Bush announced "home loan relief" today. What does this mean? In short, a huge taxpayer transfer to the rich. Partly by moving [...]
Steve Soto writes that, yes, it is a Democratic-style idea, but he likes it –
For Once, Doing The Right Thing
Sure, he’s stealing Democratic proposals and packaging them as an administration initiative, but I applaud Bush for getting involved in the mortage meltdown and putting forward an agenda to help homeowners keep their homes. When you are president, you have the luxury of [...]
Tags: Mortgage Bailout, Housing Bubble
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