“Absolutely Absurd”

Key words from a key player. Directed at the White House and President Bush.

White House knew of NIE’s judgments for months.

Harper’s Scott Horton interviewed an intelligence community official who casts doubt on the White House’s claim that they only recent learned of the NIE’s judgments: But one highly reliable intelligence community source I consulted immediately after Hadley spoke answered my question this way: “This is absolutely absurd. The NIE has been in substantially the form in [...]

Speaking of absurd..

Right Claims Iran NIE a CIA Plot Against Bush

Another bang-your-head-against-the-keyboard moment.   Neocon Grandfather Emeritus Norman Podhoretz–now serving as FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR (oh, help us all) to Rudy Giuliani–has decided that the NIE report is a deliberate attempt by the CIA to subvert the Bush Doctrine. Un-fricking-believable.  How ’bout this, Norm?  YOU’RE WRONG.  You’ve always been wrong and you will continue to always be wrong.  [...]

Liar, Liar!!

Some high-level fingerpointing going on in Washington this week.  Interestingly enough, it’s a couple of GOP lawmakers who are pointing fingers at the Bush Administration!

Republicans Call Bush’s Bluff On War Funding Threats

Two Republican lawmakers are calling the Bush administration’s bluff in the battle over Iraq war funding.  President Bush and other top administration officials have threatened to furlough 200,000 Pentagon employees if Democrats do not bend to Bush’s demands on Iraq war funding.  But in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Virginia Republicans Tom Davis and Frank Wolf say the administration’s threat is baseless, because [...]

Your Religion vs My Religion

It’s the hot topic up in Iowa this week. Huckabee, to his credit, is trying to stay out of the melee…

Huckabee Won’t Go There on Mormonism

Mike Huckabee is keeping mum on what he thinks about Mormonism, the faith his chief opponent in Iowa, Mitt Romney, is a member of, according to a report now [...]

Does Huckabee respect Santeria and Scientology too?

Huckabee says he respects “anybody who practices his faith,” when asked if he agreed with many evangelical Christians that Mormonism is a cult. So I wonder if he feels the same respect for Scientologists and for Santeria practitioners? See, Huckabee, just like Romney, is trying to have it both ways. Both want to get elected as [...]

As long as we’re looking at Mr. Huckabee, take a glance at the number CBS  News did on him today, via AMERICAblog..

How Huckabee’s Clinton-hatred led him to help parole a convicted rapist who then molested and murdered another woman

I’d heard about this story, but never fully understood it until reading this CBS News piece out today. It’s horrendous. Huckabee basically helped secure the guy’s release because the convict had raped a distant relative of Bill Clinton - and being a distant relative of Bill Clinton, the right-wing attack machine said the woman who was raped wasn’t credible (even though the guy was convicted), and they demanded that [...]

ABC News, not to be outdone, goes with this…

Mom: ‘Carol Sue Would Be Alive Today’ If Not for Huckabee

A Missouri mother says she will do “whatever it takes” to stop former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from becoming president, because he freed the man who went on to rape and murder her daughter, Carol Sue Shields (pictured). “I can’t imagine anybody wanting somebody like that [...]

As Low As You Can Go…

It’s Bill-O!

Bill O’Reilly Owes Helen Thomas an Apology

Monday night on his show, Billo called White House correspondent Helen Thomas a “pinhead” for saying something she didn’t… This was a complete fabrication, aided in no small part by White House spokesperson Dana Perino’s twisting of Helen’s words at the podium. Notice how O’Reilly purposefully began his clip [...]

Choice Quote

There are, as always, several choice quotes from today’s Presidential News Conference. Tops in the “gasp” category must be this one…

Bush On Saudi Rape Case: I ‘Don’t Remember’ If I Brought It Up With King Abdullah

This morning, CNN’s Ed Henry pointedly asked President Bush why he hasn’t used his “influence” to “do something” about the 12-year old Saudi woman who was the victim of a brutal gang rape and later sentenced to 200 lashes. The Saudi court blamed her for being an “adulteress who invited the attack.” Bush refused to [...]

Every Once In A While

You find a blogger over on the Right who makes some real sense.  Powerline has a post up tonight that makes some solid points about Iran, Nukes and the NIE.

World doesn’t end, Bush suffers blow

…The real problem for the administration and the nation is that one can have little confidence in the accuracy of the NIE’s current assessments. Our intelligence community appears to have been wrong in its key assessments of Iraq’s WMD capability and intentions during the run-up period to both Gulf Wars. And, if the intelligence community [...]

White House Oooops

This is getting ridiculous.  Absolutely ridiculous.

CREW: Bush Administration Lost More Than 10 Million Emails

On Target

Jack Cafferty does it again.  Absolutely nails a great topic.

Cafferty: If Iraq Is So Corrupt, Why Does U.S. Still Drop Billions Into It?

Monday on The Situation Room, Jack Cafferty reads to a new report that shows that out of 185 nations, Iraq is the third most corrupt country in the world, which begs the question — why are we still pumping billions of dollars into its failed and corrupt [...]

Iran NIE

The President had already scheduled a news conference for today, or I’m betting he wouldn’t have picked today to talk with reporters.  Not one day after the Iran NIE was finally released.

Did Gates Force Bush to Release a Humiliating NIE?

Despite the best efforts of the Administration and their now demoralized neocon supporters to put a positive spin on the new NIE to an incredulous media at the President’s morning presser, the most plausible explanation for the NIE’s complete reversal of intelligence findings from the 2005 NIE is that enough adults in the Pentagon finally told the Bush/Cheney regime to knock off the war talk on Iran. But how did they force the [...]

And, from over on the Right, we find this assessment…

The NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Program

Norman Podhoretz takes note of some questions about it: …I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air [...]

Back on the Left, the media takes in on the chin…

Mainstream media gives Bush a pass on Iran lie, they’re all one big happy club

It was all one big happy boys’ and girls’ club today, when the mainstream media got its chance to question President Bush about the recent bombshell that when Bush warned about Iran’s nuclear program leading to “World War III” he already knew that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program 4 years ago. Bush then upped the ante by lying to the media again during his press conference this morning. In response to one question Bush said [...]

Polls, Polls, Everywhere

We’ve got ‘em for you.  Lined up and ready to go..

New Poll: Giuliani, Hucakbee Tied

National Poll Finds Clinton Sinking, Huckabee Surging

“If The Caucus Were Held Tonight…”

One Month Out from Iowa Caucus, Clinton Leads in Pew Polling

The Mike Huckabee Phenomenon

Heavy Reading

This one will take awhile for you to digest.  However, it darn interesting, even if you only skim it.

Today’s Must Read

Score another one for Wikileaks. This morning — thanks to a source known only as “Peryton” — the open-source website for whistleblower documents published the 2004 manual for U.S. military detention operations at Guantanamo Bay. You can read it, with commentary, here. Last month, Wikileaks published the 2003 edition of the manual. Among other controversial provisions, the manual instructed officials to hide certain detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross, a practice that [...]

Not So Fast

Presidential praise turned upside down.  The issue, as we dive into Tuesday evening, is stem cell research.

Prominent Stem Cell Researcher Praised By Bush Rips White House’s Stem Cell Policies

Last month, University of Wisconsin professor James Thomson — the first scientist to successfully isolate embryonic stem cells — and his colleagues published a paper in Science Magazine stating that human skin cells could be “reprogrammed” into embryonic stem cells. President Bush has refused to directly fund embryonic stem cell research, twice vetoing such legislation. [...]

Another Poll

This kind of supports the idea that polls are not an accurate predictor of outcomes. HUGE difference between this one and most of the others.

Iowa State Univ. Poll: Clinton Leads

Here is news of a poll that not only shows Hillary Clinton leading, but Obama behind Edwards, thus “disproving” my theory that Edwards is done: [...]

As I said…

Beware of Iowa Polls

Walter Shapiro, who has covered eight presidential campaigns, warns against reading to much into the latest polls coming out of Iowa.  “There is no such thing as a reliable poll a month before the Iowa caucuses, because no one — from top campaign insiders to the lowliest reporters — has any idea who will participate. Everyone has [...]