It’s Thursday. We’re in the home stretch. Woke up this morning to Tim Russert talking about last night’s Democratic Debate. We spent the evening immersed in the entertainment side of the new television season, and didn’t watch the debate. I know, that’s not very "political" of me, but there IS more to life than politics and blogging! Russert and the "Morning Joe" crew were pretty hard on the Dems for their answers to a question about how fast they would get our troops out of Iraq. The "Big 3" wiggled in their answers, pretty much saying they really didn’t know how quickly that could happen and it was possible our troops would be there until 2013! The answers may be honest, but they are not going to sit well with voters who elected Democrats to Congress on an "end the war" campaign issue. Some further analysis here.
Posts may be light this evening, but we’ll kick things off with our "buddies" at Blackwater.
Blackwater: Using the Iraqis for target practice
This is what happens when you privatize the military by outsourcing its functions to unaccountable private corporations: "The American security contractor Blackwater USA has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms providing similar services to the State Department, according to Bush administration officials and industry officials. Blackwater is now the focus of [...]
Tags: Blackwater
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You’d think Kerry was running for President, the things he’s saying…
If there’s anybody left who doubts that “compassionate conservatism” is an Orwellian smokescreen for the same old Republican policies, listen to this: After promising he’d work on “expanding health care for children,” the President has now unilaterally declared war on a successful, wildly popular program that gives health care to millions of low-income kids. Democrats see a [...]
Tags: John Kerry, SCHIP
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It’s really disheartening. The U.S. Army. It’s broken. That’s not me talking; it’s the Army boss…
It’s remarkable what gets lost some days amid the mounting detritus of the Bush Administration. Yesterday the new Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey, the former top commander in Iraq, went before Congress and essentially declared the Army to [...]
Tags: U.S. Army, George Casey
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Getting health care WILL be a challenge for many families with children, unless we get some kind of resolution to the SCHIP standoff in Washington. This, my friends, is a problem.
Bush Declares War on Bipartisan Bill to Provide Health Insurance to Children
John Kerry says all there is to say and then some, about Bush’s plan to veto the SCHIP bill… "Four days from now, a wildly successful effort to provide healthcare to 6 million low-income children will disappear. This summer, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to expand the State [...]
Tags: SCHIP
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We mentioned it yesterday. But, it’s getting more attention today. Juan Cole takes a detailed look..
Transcript Reveals Impeachable Offenses by Bush Re: Iraq War
El Pais published a transcript (reprinted at this link) of the conversation between George W. Bush, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, and Condoleeza Rice held at Crawford before the Iraq War. Bush is typically bullheaded, impatient, conspiratorial, bullying, arrogant, ill-informed and way over-optimistic. The transcript shows the true colors of the man– a sort of thuggish, ignorant Mafia don– who destroyed the United States and destroyed Iraq. At one point Aznar prophetically says, "The thing that worries me is your optimism." The transcript, it seems to me, provides [...]
Tags: El Pais, Transcript, Iraq, Jose Maria Aznar
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Now, it’s Waxman’s turn to report. And, what a report it is -
Right on the heels of a Brookings Institution report detailing the problems private military companies create for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released a study [...]
But. Wait. There’s more. via TPMmuckraker –
Also in Waxman’s report on the 2004 lynching of Blackwater contractors in Fallujah is an expletive-laden internal assessment of the quality of the company’s Baghdad shop at the time. "One Blackwater [...]
Tags: Blackwater, Waxman
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I’m still thinking there’s a bit of a ratings ploy involved here, but the debate over Bill O’Reilly’s comment about eating at Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem isn’t going away. Olbermann kept the flames roaring last night…
CLIPS: Wash. Post’s Robinson on O’Reilly: "[I]t was, at best, a casually racist remark"
During the September 26 edition of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, discussing Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s controversial September 19 remarks about his visit to Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said of O’Reilly’s comment: "[I]t was, at best, a casually racist remark." Robinson also said: "[W]hat really ticks me off is that when you say that, when you point that out, you know, immediately you get charged by O’Reilly and cohorts with, you know, you’re the thought police, you’re the thought Gestapo, you’re the word Nazis, you’re interfering with free speech, and somehow cutting off an honest debate about race. Well, tell me what in the year 2007 is [...]
And, this morning, Joe Scarborough kept the chatter going on "Morning Joe" -
Scarborough Slaps Sharpton For Not Going After ‘Moron’ O’Reilly
This could be a first: Al Sharpton criticized for being insufficiently inflammatory; faulted for not shooting from the hip. At the opening of today’s "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough panned the Rev’s "O’Reilly Factor" performance last evening, in which the normally obstreperous one was relatively subdued on the subject of his host’s comments on Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem. Later, Scarborough escalated his criticism, [...]
Newspapers are all over it, too -
O’Reilly at Sylvia’s: O’Reilly and Sanches comment…
The Washington Post’s Paul Fahritalks with both Bill O’Reilly and CNN’s Rick Sanchez… O’Reilly was still simmering last night. “They’re making it something that it isn’t,” he said in an interview by phone from New York. “Anyone who listens to the tape [of the radio show] and is fair-minded will tell you this was an intelligent [...]
O’Reilly at Sylvia’s: More write-ups…
Variety’s Michael Learmonth writes about the story… Cut, parsed, and repurposed, and according to O’Reilly, taken out of context, the comments have been red meat for liberal groups as well as for O’Reilly’s 8pm rivals, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and CNN substitute host Rick Sanchez. Both have spent two nights keeping the controversy alive. Williams, who was present [...]
Tags: O’Reilly, Olbermann, Robinson, Sylvia’s Restaurant
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You can see it. The anger among Democrats. It came front and center in the past 24 hours.
The Democratic Party has betrayed us
Mere words cannot convey the depth of my disgust with our current political class in DC. As Cernig, has already pointed out, the Dems failed us and betrayed us so completely this week that we can longer trust them to restore our government to its proper functioning as our Founders intended it. For over 200 years we’ve survived many corrupt and power mad administrations but never have they been not only left so unchallenged, but actively enabled by the legislative branch of government as they have been for the last seven years. There is only one conclusion that can be reached. The Democrats [...]
Tags: Congress, Democrats
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Politics=Money. Lots of it. More than ever before.
Fundraising
Bloomberg reports that Hillary Clinton may be about to "blunt one of rival Barack Obama’s few advantages" in the presidential race: "As the campaigns press donors with predictions that their candidate is losing the fund-raising race, both Clinton and Obama are [...]
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Campaign Fundraising
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This doesn’t seem at all right to me. After all the rucus over the practice of "caging" during the U.S. Attorneys being fired, we’re going to officially make it legal? Apparently so, in at least a couple of states. If this is a good thing, please explain how.
New Law May Hurt Democrats in Ohio, Florida
"Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes for President Bush’s two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede voting by Democratic-leaning minorities in 2008," McClatchy reports. The new Ohio law aimed at reducing voter fraud allows for "caging" — "used in the past to target [...]
Tags: Caging
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My feelings, exactly.
I’m not in a place to judge the veracity of Dan Rather’s reporting on Bush’s National Guard service, but as usual, Sidney Blumenthal has done an extraordinary job sequencing the bits and pieces of the Rather CBS story and suggests that Rather’s $70 million lawsuit against CBS will animate some much needed truth-telling about Bush’s slippery story on military service. Blumenthal writes: "If the court accepts [Rather's] suit, however, launching the adjudication of legal issues such as breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference with contract, it will set in motion an [...]
Tags: Dan Rather, Bush’s National Guard service
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First, O’Reilly. Now, Limbaugh. Oh, man. This post is from an Iraq War veteran.
Sorry to once again "preach to the choir." But just moments ago it was brought to my attention that conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh once again issued an unforgivable insult to those who disagree with his neoconservative philosophy of blind loyalty to George W. Bush’s needless war in Iraq. Limbaugh boldly stated that any troops who call for a withdrawal of troops in Iraq are "phony soldiers." Not that long ago he made a similar comment about [...]
Tags: Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Phony Soldiers
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What’s up with the Democratic leadership in Congress? Have they forgotten their campaign promises? Apparently, they think they’re living up to them! At least Nancy Pelosi does.
Pelosi: Still Sending the Wrong Message
Nancy Pelosi is schizophrenic. That’s not a psychiatric diagnosis, but it does seem a reasonable assumption to make considering what she told Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday. To cut to the quick here’s what she said to Blitzer that I find suggests evidence of a massive dissociative mental disorder and a deranged personality: "Nine months after taking control of the House, Nancy Pelosi is taking credit for "changing the debate" on the war while in Iraq there are 30,000 more troops than on the day the San Francisco Democrat first [...]
Tags: Congress, Nancy Pelosi, Wolf Blitzer, Iraq War
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But, it’s not going to be an easy sell from here on out…
Breaking: Senate passes hate crimes bill.
Moments ago, the Senate voted to expand the hate crimes law to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, or disability of the victims. The vote retained the 60 votes necessary to prevent a filibuster, and it will pass as an attachment to the defense authorization bill. Opponents of the measure immediately predicted it “ultimately would [...]
Tags: Hate Crimes, Defense Authorization Bill
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You just had to expect this would happen. The amazing thing is that our tax dollars are paying the salaries, whether it’s through the U.S. military or private contractors. Maybe the military should just ante up and pay comparable salaries.
Gates: Military Contractors Luring Away Many Troops
During a time of significant military overstretch, private security companies hired by the Defense Department have been actively recruiting U.S. troops. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate [...]
Tags: Blackwater, Private Contractors, Robert Gates
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Missed him again.
Letting Bin Laden Escape Once Again
According to NBC News last night, the Bush Administration just bungled another chance to get Osama Bin Laden and/or Ayman al Zawahiri last month. And why did the local military commanders miss a chance to get one or both of the top leaders of Al Qaeda? Because the necessary [...]
Tags: Bin Laden, al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda
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