COKIE, THE PERFECT VILLAGER

Cokie Roberts tries to defend the war whores by making the false claim that most Americans agree with McWAR on Iraq. Crooks & Liars has the video and partial transcript and Glenn dismantles Cokie's argument. Here's something I also found interesting:

VANDEN HEUVEL: But what is winning? This war is unwinnable. There are no military solutions. And Cokie, Americans are already behind this, 2/3 of Americans believe this war was a mistake to fight. And when Dick Cheney said to ABC’s Martha Raddatz last week, “I don’t care what Americans think.” …

ROBERTS: That’s not exactly what he said. He said “So.”

VANDEN HEUVEL: …The contempt, the disdain for Americans and for what this war has done to the military, to our economy, and to our future as a nation. If you care about responsible…

Cokie is literally correct about what Cheney said but she's trying to play down the contempt Cheney has for the American people.

THIS IS FUNNY...

Well, it's only funny under the assumption that McWAR won't be our next President. Crooks & Liars has TWO recent instances of McWAR giving a cheerleader speech on the Iraq Fiasco only to have the broadcast interrupted by reports of fighting.

The first one was on 3/26/08, the second was on 4/7/08.

SHORTER MONA CHAREN: VOTE FOR ISRAEL

Back on 9/10/2004, Mona Charen wrote a column that encouraged Jews to vote GOP and ended with her strongest argument:

Finally, Israel has had no better friend in the White House than George W. Bush. It would be a well-deserved expression of appreciation if Jewish votes provided the margin of victory for this best of all friends to Israel.

MCWAR & THE CASUAL VOTER

John Dean wrote about how sad it was that so many voters were so ill-informed and how that plays into the hands of the GOP's Noise Machine. In particular, this will help McWAR because the MSM has favored him for years. Jonathan Martin of Politico notes that the casual voter:

The more casual the voter, the more likely he or she is to like McCain. Why? Because, as my source puts more colorfully, the information flow they have is largely confined to Vietnam vet, POW, straight talker and maybe maverick.
[snip]
It goes without saying that this dynamic only bodes well for a general election dominated by casual voters.

This problem is compounded by the fact that the Dems are still wrapped up trying to decide between Hillary and Obama, as Digby notes, and haven't gotten around to turning their attention to McWAR.

THE NEO-CONS LOVE THE IRAQ WAR SO MUCH...

that they have set up a non-profit to convince us how great it is, The Insititute for the Study of War. Headed by Kimberly Kagan, it attempts to protray Iraq in the most positive way. Despite the fact that Maliki lost the confrontation with Al-Sadr and the Iraqi military has been revealed as a paper tiger, these idiots still insist otherwise:

As the dust settles Basra, the outcome of the offensive and the state of the enemy remain unclear. At the same time, the clashes that erupted in Baghdad and elsewhere across southern Iraq in response to the Basra offensive are quite revealing. Indeed, recent events in Baghdad, the Five Cities area, and Dhi Qar province are important to grasp not only because they explain the nature of the enemy system in southern Iraq but also because they demonstrate the capacity of the Iraqi Security Forces.

GREENSPAN: "IT WASN'T ME"

The responses Alan Greenspan got from his previous op-ed in the Financial Times about the credit crunch led him to defend himself in this new piece. He apparently feels that criticisms of him are in fact criticisms of the free market itself:

I do have an ideology. So does each member of the forum. I trust our views are subject to the same standards of evidence that apply to all rational discourse. My view of how the efficiency of global capitalism has evolved over the decades as new evidence has appeared contradicts some earlier judgments and confirms others. I have been surprised by the fierceness of investors in retrenching from risk since August. My view of the range of dispersion of outcomes has been shaken but not my judgment that free competitive markets are the unrivalled way to organise economies. We have tried regulation ranging from heavy to central planning. None meaningfully worked. Do we wish to retest the evidence?

REMEMBER HOW BAGHDAD WAS SOOO PEACEFUL THX TO TEH SURGE?

Well, that statement is "no longer operative."


Hundreds flee fighting in Baghdad as showdown looms between government and Shiite militia
By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Hundreds of people fled fighting in Baghdad's Shiite militia stronghold Monday as U.S. and Iraqi forces increased pressure on anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who faces an ultimatum to either disband his Mahdi Army or give up politics.

Gunbattles raged around the sprawling Sadr City district that serves as the Baghdad nerve center of the Mahdi militia, which has been under siege since last week by about 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Gunfire and explosions could be heard before dawn in Baghdad, apparently coming from the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City. A low-flying jet could also be heard circling the center of the capital several hours before sunrise.

Police said at least 14 civilians were killed in clashes Monday in the Baghdad area, nine of them in Sadr City. Frightened families poured out of Sadr City -- some carrying their belongings in sacks or piled in pushcarts.

HANNITY STILL AT IT

Sean is still hammering away at the William Ayers-Barack Obama link and tries to make it seem that Obama is as radical now as Ayers was 38 years ago.

FATS IS "STUCK ON STUPID"

I got this from edthecynic on AOL.

RUSH: ...Now, the question is: is CO2 even a pollutant? Is it an air pollutant? Because if it is, then all the water vapor on this planet is a pollutant. The vast majority of CO2 that's in the atmosphere comes from water vapor....

Source (requires paid subscription)

MORE DYSFUNCTIONAL GOVERNING

Douglas Feith tells 60 Minutes that the decision to formally disband the Iraqi Army was another case of the Bush regime ignoring the normal national security decision process:

"No, no. What I'm saying is the process by which this decision was made was not a great process," Feith concludes.

THESE PEOPLE ARE UNFIT TO RULE

Douglas Feith was interviewed on CBS' 60 Minutes and provided two remarkable statements. Here's the first one:

Feith responds, "It is true that there was a serious error that the CIA made in saying that we would find WMD stockpiles. And it was a terrible mistake for the administration to have made those stockpiles in any way a part of the case for war. I don't think we needed to."

"Wasn't that the whole lynchpin for the war?" asks Kroft. “I don’t believe so,” the former Defense Department official answers.

We KNOW that Feith is wrong here, as even Pres. Bush has admitted that WMD were the main reason for war.

Worse than this, Feith shows absolutely no regrets:

Kroft asks a final question, “Knowing what you know now, do you still think this was the right thing to do?”

"I think the president made the right decision given what he knew. And given what we all knew," says Feith. "And to tell you the truth, even given what we've learned since."

Just like Rove, Feith can't come to terms with the results of his actions.

5 KEY POINTS ABOUT IRAQ THAT EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW

From Tom Dispatch:

1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse
2. The Bush administration has no learning curve
3. The "success" of the surge was always an expensive illusion for which payment will someday come due
4. A second hidden surge, not likely to be discussed in the hearings this week, is now under way. U.S. air reinforcements, sent into Iraq over the last year, are increasingly being brought to bear. (see here)
5. A reasonably undertaken but speedy total withdrawal from Iraq is the only way out of this morass

Guess who doesn't get any of this?

McCain Insists Iraq Buildup Is Working
By LIBBY QUAID – 1 hour ago

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Republican John McCain insists last year's U.S. troop buildup in Iraq brought a glimmer of "something approaching normal" there, despite a recent outbreak of heavy fighting and an American death toll that has surpassed 4,000.

"We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success," McCain said in a speech prepared for delivery Monday.

McCAIN HAS BEEN WRONG ON IRAQ FOR A LONG TIME

Frank Rich of the NYT points out that McCain is no better than the deluded neo-cons when it comes to Iraq and lets us know that he's been deluded for over a decade:

Or as he was in the 1990s, when he championed extravagant State Department funding for the war instigator Ahmad Chalabi, who’d already been branded untrustworthy by the C.I.A. (The relationship between Mr. Chalabi and the former lobbyist Charles Black, now a chief McCain campaign strategist, is explored in a new book, “The Man Who Pushed America to War,” by Aram Roston.)

I'M HAVING THE DUBIOUS PLEASURE OF LISTENING TO PAUL WEYRICH

Tonight I decided to dip into wingnut radio world and rediscovered this old standby that I had forgotten about: RIGHTTALK.

YUP, NO PROGRESS IN IRAQ

No matter what the wingnuts say, we simply cannot afford to stay in this quagmire.

Report: US No Closer to Iraq Goals
By BRADLEY BROOKS – 13 hours ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The United States is no closer to achieving its goals in Iraq than it was a year ago but a quick military withdrawal could lead to massive chaos and even genocide, according to a report released Sunday by a U.S. think tank.

The U.S. Institute of Peace report was written by experts who advised the Iraq Study Group, a panel mandated by Congress to offer recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq in 2006.

"The U.S. is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago," it concluded. "Lasting political development could take five to 10 years of full, unconditional U.S. commitment to Iraq."

THE REAL BORDER PROBLEM

No, it's not illegal immigrants bringing nasty diseases into the country and it sure isn't the folks who are looking for work. Oddly, the biggest threat seems to be a gang from El Salvador.

The Most Dangerous Gang in America
The United States has long been home to violent gangs, from the Mafia to the Bloods and Crips. But recently, US authorities have warned of the dangers of a transnational, ultra-violent gang with its origins in Central America, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

The gang started life as a few Salvadoran youths on the streets of Los Angeles.

Now, as it sweeps up through Central America and across more than 40 American states, the FBI says it is dealing with an unprecedented threat to national security and has gone to El Salvador to deal with the gang, dubbed 'The Most Dangerous Gang in America'.

LISTEN HERE

BETRAEUS BS FROM THE PAST

(h/t Bloomberg)

At the National Press Club on 9/12/07, Gen. Betraeus said that the Shiite internecine conflict in the South was no big deal:

QUESTION: As you know, General, the security situation in Basra in the south has become quite complicated with a violent power struggle going on between two Shiite factions and the British in the process of drawing back.
Can you foresee a situation where American troops may have to be committed to that area? And if so, if that were to come to pass, would that affect your ability to carry out the kinds of U.S. drawdowns that you laid out in your congressional testimony?

PETRAEUS: I don't envision that.
I could envision, perhaps, some small special forces participation along with the Iraqi special operations forces, which we have actually built up down there recently. And they've operated in and out of there at various times all along, together with British special forces, as well.
There clearly is a competition ongoing in Basra between the Fidhila Party, the Supreme Council and the Sadr parties and militia.
But interestingly, there is an accommodation down there right now that is the kind of Iraqi solution to problems in the south that, you know, is mildly heartening, I guess is the way to put it.

At a meeting of the Senate FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE on 9/11/07, Betraeus had this to say:

GEN. PETRAEUS: Basra province, very, very important to Iraq, of course; the ports, the oil, and all the rest of that all flow through there. The British did a good hand-off to a force that was trained and equipped and certified to hand off the palace. They had earlier handed off the logistical base and other bases, consolidating at the airport. They have a number of important tasks there. In fact, I will go home, or -- yeah, it is home now, Iraq -- I'll go back to Iraq through London and talk to them, with the Ministry of Defense and the prime minister, to discuss the tasks and make sure we have a common sight picture on that.

Beyond that, Prime Minister Maliki put a pretty strong -- a very strong four-star general down there as the Basra operations command commander several months ago. That has already had a salutary effect.

There's no question but that there is a competition down there between the Fadhila Party, the Supreme Council, the Badr Corps, and certainly Sadr's party and militia. Interestingly, there have been deals there recently, and the violence level has just flat plummeted. It's included some release of some Jaish al-Mahdi figures -- again accommodations between all of them.

Again, for the Shi'a south, that's probably okay. These are Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems. The problem is that that does not necessarily transfer to a province that has mixed ethnosectarian identities such as Diyala, Baghdad or some of the others.

From the Senate ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 9/11/07:

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, it's largely because that's a Shi'a area, and there has not been the kind of sectarian violence. There's just basically one sect. There is a pocket of Sunnis down there, but there has been general coexistence down there, by and large.

So you literally just don't have the same -- that particular challenge in Basra or in the other southern provinces. There is intra-Shi'a fighting that goes on, but that is something that, in general, the Iraqis have shown an ability to resolve in a way that they have not been able to deal with the very heightened sectarian violence in particular that took off into mixed areas in the wake of --

From JOINT HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEES, 9/10/70:

GEN. PETRAEUS:Well, as I mentioned, there's a very substantial number of Iraqi battalions, especially Iraqi army battalions, that are very much in the fight. ... Indeed, in many cases, regardless of what their operational readiness assessment may be, there may be no coalition assistance whatsoever in some of the southern provinces that have moved to provincial Iraqi control, for example.

YUP, THE WAR DRUM FOR IRAN IS BEING BEATEN AGAIN

Huge Ego Hewitt claims that:

In 2008 everyone should know that Khomeini's successors will present the greatest challenges to America over the next four years.

To which I say, COOL!, because Iran is really no threat to us. HEH linked to a London Times article and I've noted before that the LT seems to be another outlet for the neo-cons.

TIME MAGAZINE VERDICT ON TEH SURGE

Looking for the New Baghdad
By BOBBY GHOSH / BAGHDAD
Thursday, Apr. 03, 2008

As I leave Baghdad, I reflect that for all the success of the surge, it has not exorcized Iraq's sectarian demons. Behind the painted walls, the murderous rage I saw in 2006 and '07 continues to fester. The Mahdi Army may have ceased fire, and Sunni insurgents may pose as friends of America, but both are just waiting. Unless Americans have a major change of heart about maintaining a substantial and aggressive military presence in Iraq, all the gains of the past year will amount to nothing.

DON'T THINK THE GOP IS CORRUPT???

Well, take a look at this list. (h/t bluegal at Crooks & Liars)

RADIO TIDBITS

I'm listening to the Janet Parshall show and her guest is claiming that Terri Schiavo was lively and conscious! (You can find excerpts from the autopsy here) It may not be live but Parshall did say that Terri died 3 years ago (March 31, 2005), so it must be recent.

Last week I came across an AOL poster who stated that Randi Rhodes was on air when she made those harsh remarks about Clinton and Ferraro. I wondered where this misconception came from and while listening to a repeat of Lars Larson's radio show, I found out it was probably the usual culprit: a right-wing radio gasbag. Larson also claimed that Randi was on the air and faced a massive FCC fine.

GOP: RECESSIONS R US

John Lott (in comments below) claims that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)revised the start date of the 2001 recession back to the year 2000, thus he claims the recession started under Clinton. He referred to a WaPo article, I referred to the NBER's website.
Here are the post-war dates of the beginning of recessions:

November 1948(IV) - Truman
July 1953(II) - Eisenhower
August 1957(III) - Eisenhower
April 1960(II) - Esienhower
December 1969(IV) - Nixon
November 1973(IV) - Nixon
January 1980(I) - Carter
July 1981(III) - Reagan
July 1990(III) - G.H.W. Bush
March 2001(I) - Fredo

Assuming that we are in recession right now, there would be a total of 11 post-war recessions.

NINE of them began when a Republican was President!

ANOTHER WINGNUT MYTH GOES "POOF!"

I first heard of this nonsense from Ronald Reagan:

A National Holiday for King
Monday, Oct. 31, 1983 By GEORGE J. CHURCH
TIME Magazine

But Reagan, asked at his news conference if he agreed that King had Communist sympathies, replied with inexcusable flippancy (and mathematical inaccuracy):

"We'll know in about 35 years, won't we?"

I just came across a wingnut poster on AOL who made the unsubstantiated claim that King was a Marxist. Fortunately, we now have access to the FBI files:

FBI tracked King's every move
updated 10:52 a.m. EDT, Fri April 4, 2008
By Jen Christensen
CNN
Hoping to prove the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was under the influence of Communists, the FBI kept the civil rights leader under constant surveillance.

The agency's hidden tape recorders turned up almost nothing about communism.

While King did have associates who had been members of the Communist Party, by all accounts they severed those ties when they started working in the civil rights movement. What's more, the FBI bugs never picked up evidence that King himself was a Communist, or was interested in toeing the party line.

UH OH, TIME FOR A DIVERSION

Teh Surge is now demonstably a failure, e.g. -

3 US Troops Killed, 31 Wounded in Iraq
By KIM GAMEL – 3 hours ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — Suspected Shiite militants lobbed rockets and mortar shells into the U.S.-protected Green Zone and a military base elsewhere in Baghdad on Sunday, killing three American troops and wounding 31, officials said.

A military official said two U.S. troops died and 17 were wounded in the attack on the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters in central Baghdad.

Another American service member was killed and 14 were wounded in the attack on a base in the southeastern Baghdad area of Rustamiyah, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

So what are the war whores going to do? Bang the drum for an attack on Iran!
First, war whore Kimberly Kagan has an op-ed piece in the WSJ that makes the case this way:

Above all, the U.S. must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq. Iranian agents and military forces are actively attacking U.S. forces and the government of Iraq. Every rocket that lands in the Green Zone should remind us that Iran's aims are evidently not benign – they are at best destabilizing and at worst hegemonic. The U.S. must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq, and protect Iraq from the direct military intervention of Iran. Failure to do so will invite Iranian domination of an Arab state that now seeks to be our ally.

Second, Petraeus may also suggest this, according to the Daily Telegraph:

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:53am BST 05/04/2008

British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.

"Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq," a British official said. "Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can't fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves," he said.

BERLIN VS. HAYEK & VON MISES

I've read much of what Isaiah Berlin has written but I don't think I ever came across his thoughts of two of the greatest Free Market Fairy apologists of the 20th Century: F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. I just came across this letter¹ Berlin wrote to Elisabeth Morrow on April 4, 1945:

I am still reading the awful Dr Hayek. He is in New York now, I gather, and causing a certain feeling of jealousy in the breast of his old Viennese mentor, Dr von Mises, who is just as much of a dodo, if not more so, and used to be the principal influence behind the more reactionary writings of Mr Henry Haslett in the editorial columns of the New York Times. Dr von Hayek is now competing for Mr Haslett's soul with Dr von Mises: and a great jealousy has sprung up between the two.

I wouldn't consider either dodos but I think that's how Oxford Dons refer to people they think are deeply misguided. Berlin also included a mention of both men in one of his official dispatches² to the Foreign Office from the British Embassy in DC:

In the meanwhile, the Reader's Digest, which in effect is the voice of Big Business, has printed a digest of Professor Hayek's notorious work, The Road to Serfdom (any number of off-prints of this at reduced prices would be supplied by the Book of the Month Club to purchasers). Wall Street looks on Hayek as the richest goldmine yet discovered and are peddling his views everywhere. The Scripps-Howard papers have syndicated a digest of this digest, and the imminent arrival of the Professor himself is eagerly anticipated by the anti-Bretton Woods party, who expect him to act as the heavy artillery with formidable academic ammunition, a commodity at present insufficiently supplied by the somewhat thin writings of their university allies, faced as these are by the almost complete consensus of all the reputable economists in the country. Professor Hayek should not be surprised if he is invited to address the Daughters of the American Revoution to provide them with the latest weapons against such sinister social incendiaries as Lord Keynes and the British Treasury.

¹Letters, 1928-1946 / Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy, pp. 540-41.
²Washington despatches, 1941-1945 : weekly political reports from the British embassy / edited by H. G. Nicholas, pp. 534-35

McWAR: OUT OF IT THEN, OUT OF IT NOW

McWAR makes a couple of amazing admissions about Martin Luther King. The first one comes from John Amato on why McWar voted against the MLK national holiday:

“I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a very large African American population and it had not been in issue. It just simply had not been.”

Jake Tapper adds this:

I didn't know Dr. King. I was a member of the military. Obviously I admire him as all Americans do.

I don't think McWar means that he didn't vote for the holiday because he didn't personally know King. I think McCain was just outside the mainstream back then, just as he is today.

HISTORIANS STILL DON'T THINK MUCH OF FREDO

(h/t Steve Benen at Crooks & Liars)

4 years ago, Robert S. McElvaine conducted an informal poll of historians about how they would rate Fredo's presidency and then 19% thought it was a success and 81% thought it was a failure. This year, the opinions are even more lopsided:

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

GOLD-PLATED DEFENSE SYSTEMS

Despite the increase in the poverty rate, the GOP has no problem wasting 10s of billions on defense systems that won't help us one bit in the WOT. I wonder how many wingnuts will complain about this wasteful government spending?

GAO Blasts Weapons Budget
Cost Overruns Hit $295 Billion
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2008; Page A01

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago.

The GAO's Sullivan said the reasons for the cost overruns and delays are threefold: There are too many programs chasing too few dollars; technologies are often not mature enough to go into production; and it takes too long to design, develop and produce a system.

Defense Department officials have tried to improve the procurement process, the GAO said, by doing more planning and review in the early stages of a contract. But "these significant policy changes have not yet translated into best practices on individual programs," Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the GAO, wrote in the report.

"Flagship acquisitions, as well as many other top priorities in each of the services, continue to cost significantly more, take longer to produce, and deliver less than was promised," Dodaro said. "This is likely to continue until the overall environment for weapon system acquisitions changes."

THE "HE'S NOT REGULAR FOLK" GOP MEME

Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg trots out the "Dems aren't regular people" meme to criticize Obama. As The Daily Howler documented, this was also done to Al Gore and to a lesser extent, John Kerry. To make this even seem to work, she mischaracterizes Obama's opinion of Wright and then falsely claims that Obama didn't foresee the possibilty of negative reactions by "regular folks" to some of Wright's comments.

To make this even sillier, she criticizes Obama for being such a lousy bowler that he failed to prove that he is "one of the people."

UPDATE: Bill Katovsky at HuffPo does the same as Carlson.

GLENN VS. MUKASEY'S DOJ

Glenn Greenwald got a reply form DOJ about AG Mukasey's claim that legal restrictions on tapping prevented us from stopping 9-11. As usual, Glenn knifes through the lies and misleading truths to get to the heart of the matter (pics of docs on Glenn's post) :

(3) There is only one reference in the Joint Inquiry report (.pdf) that has any remote similarity to what Mukasey described (p. 36), but that was a call that originated in the U.S., not in an "Afghan safe house":

Critically, the Report emphasized that FISA provided all of the authority needed to have intercepted that communication, to learn of its domestic origins and to disseminate it to the FBI and other domestic intelligence agencies. To the extent the NSA failed to do so, this had nothing to do with FISA or any other legal restraints or civil liberties, but rather, with poor intelligence practices:The pre-9/11 failures, as the Joint Inquiry itself concluded, were failures resulting from how the NSA used its legal authorities, not from insufficient legal authorities or excessive legal restraints.

SOMETIMES, IT'S SO EASY IT'S SCARY

By "it" I mean finding wingnut propaganda. On Memeo, the excerpt from Larry Kudlow's piece on The Corner was:

Recessions are part of capitalism. They happen every so often. We've had two in the last 25 years.

We'll have 3 now and ALL of them came under GOP presidents. Coincidence? Probably not. If we go back 27 years, we get 4 recessions, all under GOP presidents.

TIN EARS, TINY HEARTS, HUGE EGOS

GOP congressman don't seem to care much about other people. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., tried to downplay the 9-11 attacks (from the AP):

During a joint hearing on Tuesday by two House Judiciary subcommittees considering legislation to extend benefits, Issa described the Sept. 11 attacks as "a fire that had no dirty bomb in it" and added: "It had no chemical munitions in it. It simply was an aircraft, residue of two aircraft and residue of the material used to build this building."

(h/t Atrios) Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) showed some GOP love for the troops last Saturday (from ThinkProgress):

(UPDATE: McHenry was talking about a security contractor, not a soldier. However, even HOT AIR realizes that doesn't get him off the hook.)

We spent the night in the Green Zone, in the poolhouse of one of Saddam’s palaces. A little weird, I got to be honest with you. But I felt safe. And so in the morning, I got up early — not that I make this a great habit — but I went to the gym because I just couldn’t sleep and everything else. Well, sure enough, the guard wouldn’t let me in. Said I didn’t have the correct credentials.

It’s 5:00 in the morning. I haven’t had sleep. I was not very happy with this two-bit security guard.

This reminds me of the arrogance of disgraced GOP Congressman Tom Delay:

Recently, as The Washington Post reported, DeLay and cronies lighted up cigars at Ruth's Chris Steak House in D.C., which is in a building owned by the Smithsonian and falls under a federal smoking ban.

A manager politely cited government policy and asked DeLay to snuff out his stogie.

"I AM the federal government," DeLay bellowed at him, and then stormed out.

MORE EVIDENCE OF CLASS WARFARE

Behind on the payments for your yacht? Not to worry, a bankruptcy can lower the payments. Behind on your home? Not so much....

Behind the Senate deal on housing relief
The $15 billion compromise bill includes tax breaks for builders and buyers.
By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 4, 2008 edition

Consumer groups, unions, and civil rights groups cried foul as details of the bipartisan deal surfaced Wednesday night. Critics charge that the subprime mortgage industry marketed many of its loans to African-Americans and Latinos, including those with solid credit ratings. Under current law, bankruptcy judges can restructure loans for a yacht or vacation home, but can't touch primary residences.

THE AZ FUNDIES LOSE AGAIN

There was an effort in the legislature to put a gay marriage ban on the ballot in November BUT IT FAILED thanx to Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix. You may recall that a similar measure was on the ballot before and LOST!

Bid for ban of AZ gay marriages is derailed
Fall referendum off the table; Bee to kill Senate measure
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Tucson, Arizona Published: 04.04.2008

PHOENIX — State lawmakers' efforts to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage before voters appears all but dead.

The House gave preliminary approval Thursday by a 28-27 vote to put the question on the November ballot. But that OK came only after Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, lined up enough votes to tack on a provision to grant certain rights to unmarried couples living together, whether gay or straight.

That move effectively tied the two issues together as a single ballot question, meaning voters who want to make same-sex weddings unconstitutional would be voting for some constitutional rights for gay couples. A spokesman for House Speaker Jim Weiers, sponsor of HCR 2065, said that is unacceptable and that the Phoenix Republican will now kill his proposal.

ANOTHER McWAR FLIP-FLOP

Steve Benen at Crooks & Liars finds that McWar has flopped around the issue of keeping troops in Iraq, kind of like how we still have troops in Korea. On 11/27/2007, McWar told Charlie Rose that Korea was an inappropriate model for Iraq and later flipped back. Benen puts it best:

So, for those keeping score at home, McCain 1) endorsed a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 2) denounced a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 3) re-embraced his first point; and 4) blasted those who agreed with his second point as being incompetent.

We simply can't trust McWAR with our national security.

SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE U.S.

Our image across the world has improved a bit, according to the latest survey from PIPA:

While views of US influence in the world are still predominantly negative, they have improved in 11 of the 23 countries the BBC polled a year ago, while worsening in just three countries.

The average percentage saying that the US is having a positive influence has increased from 31 per cent a year ago to 35 per cent today while the view that it is having a negative influence has declined from 52 per cent to 47 per cent.

Looking just at the countries that have been polled in each of the last four years, positive views of the US eroded from 2005 (38% on average), to 2006 (32%), and to 2007 (28%); recovering for the first time this year to 32 per cent.

MORE ON FREDO'S GLORIOUS WOT

It seems that the rot is spreading all over the world.

IEDs go beyond Iraq, Afghanistan
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Makeshift bomb attacks by insurgents — common in Iraq and Afghanistan — are on the rise in other countries, prompting concerns by military experts that the tactic is becoming the weapon of choice by terror groups worldwide.

There are 200 to 300 improvised explosive attacks each month outside Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the British Triton Report. Triton is part of the consulting firm HMS Ltd., which provides counter-IED training for the U.S. government and other governments and businesses. The IED threat outside Iraq and Afghanistan increased steadily in 2006 and 2007 and is on a pace to exceed those numbers in 2008, said Irene Smith, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO).

ATRIOS DID A POST ON THIS A WHILE AGO

and now Bloomberg catches up. We have a new class of squatters in America.

Lenders Buried By Foreclosures Let Late Borrowers Stay in Homes
By Bob Ivry
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Banks are so overwhelmed by the U.S. housing crisis they've started to look the other way when homeowners stop paying their mortgages.

The number of borrowers at least 90 days late on their home loans rose to 3.6 percent at the end of December, the highest in at least five years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. That figure, for the first time, is almost double the 2 percent who have been foreclosed on.

Lenders who allow owners to stay in their homes are distorting the record foreclosure rate and delaying the worst of the housing decline, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, a unit of New York-based Moody's Corp. These borrowers will eventually push the number of delinquencies even higher and send more homes onto an already glutted market.

``We don't have a sense of the magnitude of what's really going on because the whole process is being delayed,'' Zandi said in an interview. ``Looking at the data, we see the problems, but they are probably measurably greater than we think.''

MALIKI IS A PAPER TIGER

There's no doubt about it, our man in Baghdad is a farce.

Iraqi PM Freezes Raids Targeting Militia
1 hour ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militiamen.

The announcement comes one day after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr hinted at retaliation if the arrests of his followers did not stop.

MORE SIGNS OF A RECESSION

Not only did jobless claims surge, the number of people who are looking for full-time employment but can only find part-time has increased by over 20% from a year ago.

McCAIN HAS A HISTORY...

of saying he doesn't know much about economics.

ON DEADLINE: McCain Snared in Bush Trap
By WALTER MEARS AP Special Correspondent
AP Special Correspondent

Nor will they let McCain forget that he once said he knows a lot less about economics than about military and foreign issues, and still needs to be educated. That was in a Wall Street Journal interview published Nov. 25, 2005. Then, on Dec. 18, 2007, he was quoted as saying the issue of economics is not one he understood as well as he should, although he did know the basics of it.

McWAR's effort to wiggle out of this only leads him to support voodoo economics:

"I'm very well versed in economics," he said. "I was there at the Reagan revolution."

Would someone tell McWAR that Reagan's economic policies were failures?

ODDS AND ENDS

Here are a few interesting links to sites I don't often visit.

PERRspectives has a good post about how McWAR has flip-flopped about his religious preference.

FAIR provides more examples of Bob Grant's hate speech.

Physics News gives a summary of the debunking of another wingnut climate myth - the effect of cosmic rays on temperature.

Steve Clemons lets us know when can be on a conference call with George Soros.

Swopa at NeedleNose finds an eye-rolling quote from an MSMite, Jack Tapper: "...many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we're confident is the right one."

Athenae at First Draft dives into FreeperWorld for our edification & amusement.

PROGRESS, WAPO-STYLE

NYT:

Estimates by Iraqi military officials of the number of officers who refused to fight during the Basra operation varied from several dozen to more than 100. But three officials said that among those who had been relieved of duty for refusing to fight were Col. Rahim Jabbar and Lt. Col. Shakir Khalaf, the commander and deputy commander of an entire brigade affiliated with the Interior Ministry.

... a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed.

CNN INTERNATIONAL:

A senior Iraqi official said that more than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers deserted in Basra and other hot spots during the fighting. There were others who simply took off their uniforms and joined the Shiite militias the army was battling, the official said.

A closely held U.S. military intelligence analysis of the fighting showed that Iraqi security forces controlled less than a quarter of the city, according to U.S. officials in the United States and Iraq. They said Basra's police units were deeply infiltrated by members of al-Sadr's Mehdi Army.

BIG FUSS ABOUT RANDI

There is glee in Wingnut World because Randi Rhodes was suspended from Air America for calling Clinton and Ferraro "fucking whores." This was in a night club setting but she was there as a representative of Air America, so I think management does have a point. Video clip here.

YUP, IT'S A NEO-CON PAPER

As Chris Matthews once said, the WaPo is a neo-con, not a liberal paper. Today's editorial about Maliki & Basra is a disgraceful portrait of neo-con propaganda. Here's the concluding sentence:

But the fact that an Iraqi government commonly described as impotent and inert now is willing and able to fight Shiite militias is a step in the right direction.

It's not "willing and able" - the militias are not only better-armed, they have much higher morale than the government's soldiers.

WAY TO GO, GOP!

I don't think many people will be looking to Grandpa McWAR for change.

81 percent of Americans think country on "wrong track"
Thu Apr 3, 2008 10:10pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four out of five Americans believe things are "on the wrong track" in the United States, the gloomiest outlook in about 20 years, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Thursday.

The poll found that 81 percent of respondents felt "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track." That was up from 69 percent last year and 35 percent in early 2003.

Only 4 percent of survey respondents said the country was better off than it was five years ago, while 78 percent said it was worse, the newspaper said.

The Times said Americans were more unhappy with the country's direction than at any time since the survey started in the early 1990s.

IRAN, AL-QAEDA & HOLY JOE

Noah Shachtman at Danger Room brings to our attention the long-standing antagonism between Iran and Al-Qaeda, something wingnut war whores like Joe Lieberman never tell us.

First, Zawahiri states that Al-Qaeda will fight Iran if it becomes dominant in the region:

I can only say that major changes will occur in the region, and the situation will be in the interest of the Mujahideen if the war saps both of them. If, however, one of them emerges victorious, its influence will intensify and fierce battles will begin between it and the Mujahideen

Second, Zawahiri remembers that Iran helped us overthrow the Taliban & Al-Qaeda:

In a videotape released in December, he said that "Iran has stabbed the Muslim Ummah [nation] in the back" during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

I SEND THE AG A LETTER

Dear Sir(s),

Recently AG Mukasey mentioned that we had knowledge
of a phone call from an Al Qaeda safe house to the U.S.
before 9-11. He implied that if we had been able to tap
this call, we would've been able to prevent the terror
attacks on 9-11.

Would you please tell me HOW we knew there was such
a call and why we didn't get a tap?

Thank you,

You can too: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Others have had the same idea (h/t Atrios):

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Subcommittee Chairmen Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Robert “Bobby” C. Scott (D-VA) sent a letter to United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey demanding answers about a recent public statement claiming there was a pre-9/11 call from a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan that was apparently not intercepted by federal authorities.

UPDATE: Other reactions here.

UM, WE KNEW ABOUT A CALL???

danger durden at DKOs has a diary that expands on Mukasey's comment that we knew there was a call from an Afhghanistan Al-Qaeda safehouse to America before 9-11. This wasn't mentioned in the 9-11 Commmision's Report and indicates another case of criminal bungling on the part of the criminal Bush regime.


Mukasey backs Bush efforts on wiretapping
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2008

Attorney General Michael Mukasey defended the Bush administration's wiretapping program Thursday to a San Francisco audience and suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to monitor an overseas phone call to the United States.

Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he said, "we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went. You've got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that."

THE PRIME MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE HATCHERY

Yes, I'm talking about the Harvard Business School. It turns out that about 2 out of 3 of their graduates shouldn't.

Skilling, Gerstner, O'Neal, Peek Complete Puzzle of Harvard MBA
By Brian Kladko
April 3 (Bloomberg) --

Harvard Business School's two-year program instills confidence ``to go out and aim high and to think you can work on the world's stage,'' said Scott Snook, an associate professor at the school. Yet, not all students mature psychologically while at Harvard, he said.

Snook studied 50 students from before they enrolled until they graduated in 2006. Using psychological tests and interviews, he found that one-third were still, in respects, stuck in adolescence, and had trouble empathizing.

Snook found another third inclined to define right or wrong in terms of what everybody else is doing. That might explain why even well-educated executives have fallen prey to the subprime- mortgage debacle, he said. Snook said the study will be published this year.

``They can't really step back and take a critical view,'' he said. ``They're totally defined by others and by the outcomes of what they're doing.''

GERSON IS A LIAR (AND A WAPO COLUMNIST)

Michael Gerson used to be a speech writer for Pres. Fredo and now is a columnist for the Washington Post. I was amazed at the number of LIES in his recent outburst, "Obama's Abortion Extremism."

In the 1st paragraph, he repeats a hallowed wingnut lie about Casey and Clinton:

Robert P. Casey Sr., the senator's father, was banned from speaking to the Democratic convention for the heresy of being pro-life.

Casey wasn't invited to speak primarily because he didn't support the ticket!

A few paragraphs later, Gerson lies about American's attitudes about abortion:

Few Americans oppose abortion under every circumstance, but a majority oppose most of the abortions that actually take place -- generally supporting the procedure only in the case of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.

The majority of Americans want abortion legal in all cases (21%) or most cases (36%). SOURCE: ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Jan. 9-12, 2008. N=1,130 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

McWAR SUCK UP TO RAYGUN

In this audio clip from ThinkProgress, McCain repeats the wingnut myth about Reagan:

"won the Cold War without firing a shot"

WOW! LIEBERMAN IS OUT OF IT

I read this at FireDogLake and I couldn't believe the transcript, so I watched the video clip and I was still amazed. Holy Joe thinks there's something called "Al Qaeda in Iran" that is a threat to take over Iraq. Can someone please tell him it's time to retire?

Here's the transcript from Lexis-Nexis¹:

KELLY: So, OK, it goes on and on. What about Obama's refined position that McCain supports a 100 troop presence in Iraq is inaccurate?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I think that -let me say generally that Sen. Obama doesn't come to this debate with a lot of credibility. Basically on the question of Iraq, John McCain has had the guts to stand out on his own arguing for what he thought was right. And it turned out that he was right about the surge working to improve conditions in Iraq.

If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized.

On the specific question of the 100 years, I think that's an unfortunate example of the way Sen. Obama has used it, of playing political gotcha with a national security question.

If you look what Sen. McCain said in that exchange at the town hall meeting - I believe it was in New Hampshire - he wasn't talking about a long war. He would like to see our troops, as many of them as possible, come home as soon as possible from Iraq. But the fact is, we're going to need, as we have after every conflict we have been in, World War II, Korea, et cetera. We're going to want to leave troops there to secure the peace that our soldiers have won.

It's clear that that's what he meant. Anybody who says that John McCain
is for a 100-year war in Iraq is either not informed or is intentionally trying to mislead the public. And I think Sen. McCain appropriately responded to that today.

¹Fox News Network

April 1, 2008 Tuesday
SHOW: THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON 5:00 PM EST
America's Election Headquarters for April 1, 2008
BYLINE: Bill Hemmer, Megyn Kelly, Brit Hume, Douglas Kennedy
GUESTS: Chris Kofinis, Michael Reagan, Scott Rasmussen, Mark Halperin, Bill Adair, Kirsten Powers, Ed Rollins, Tammy Bruce, Bill Press, Joe Lieberman
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 7888 words

MULLAH DOBSON READY FOR THE PASTURE

First, Dobson says he can't support McCain and won't vote at all, then he says he will vote and now he says McCain is hurting the GOP.

Could somone tell him to stifle?

ANOTHER PERSON WITH A MORAL ARGUMENT

I noted below that one caller to Mark Levin's show objected to torture for the simple reason that "we're better than that." Today, I find that someone else shared that view. In Philippe Sands "The Green Light," she reports this part of an interview with Douglas Feith:

Feith described how, as he and Myers spoke with Rumsfeld, he jumped protectively in front of the general. He reprised his “little speech” for me. “There is no country in the world that has a larger interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions as law than the United States,” he told Rumsfeld, according to his own account, “and there is no institution in the U.S. government that has a stronger interest than the Pentagon.” So Geneva had to be followed? “Obeying the Geneva Conventions is not optional,” Feith replied. “The Geneva Convention is a treaty in force. It is as much part of the supreme law of the United States as a statute.” Myers jumped in. “I agree completely with what Doug said and furthermore it is our military culture. It’s not even a matter of whether it is reciprocated—it’s a matter of who we are.”

Myers was at the time the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

THE 4TH AMENDMENT DOESN'T APPLY EITHER

In fact, in BushWorld there are basically no limits on Presidential power as long as he claims he is acting in his role as Commander-in-Chief. I didn't notice this when I read the Yoo torture memo but the AP picked up on it.

Memo Linked to Warrantless Surveillance
By PAMELA HESS and LARA JAKES JORDAN – 35 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001.

The 37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP.

JOE KLEIN: ON THE WAY TO RECOVERY?

(Via Atrios)

Joe Klein of TIME writes a great piece on the ignorance of war whores like Fred Kagan,

"Too Many Kagans, Too Little Knowledge"

Highlight:

7. On the day that John Yoo's remarkable torture memo is released, this foolishness is a reminder that none of these people--none of the vicious, mendacious, naive, simplistic, unapologetic, neo-colonialist ideologues who promulgated this disaster--should have even the vaguest claim on the time or tolerance of fair-minded people. Fred Kagan's certainty is an obscenity, his claim to expertise a farce.

hagee vs. WRIGHT

McCain deliberately sought the endorsement of a religious extremist yet Obama's pastor gets much more attention in the wingnut media. Today I heard Sean Hannity and Fats Limbaugh both continuing their attacks on Obama because of Wright yet we see nothing comparable in the MSM about McWar and Hagee. Perhaps this AP story will help redress the imbalance.

Jewish Leader Calls Hagee 'Extremist'
4 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism said Wednesday that synagogues in the movement shouldn't work with the Rev. John Hagee, a Christian Zionist, calling him an "extremist" on Israeli policy who disparages other faiths.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said Hagee and his group, Christians United For Israel, reject any Israeli land concessions to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

Yoffie also condemned Hagee's views on Roman Catholicism and Islam. The San Antonio pastor has suggested that Catholic anti-Semitism shaped Adolf Hitler, among other comments.

"On Israeli-Palestinian politics, John Hagee and the CUFI are extremists," Yoffie said, in a speech to Reform rabbis meeting in Cincinnati. "In expressing contempt for other religions and rejecting territorial compromise under any and all circumstances, their views run against the American grain."

The Union for Reform Judaism represents more than 900 North American synagogues

DYSFUNCTIONAL AND IMMORAL

The Yoo torture memo has generated a lot of commentary and Marty Lederman brings up a point that is a hallmark of the criminal Bush regime: It ignores standard vetting policies to get the decisions it (e.g. Cheney ) wants. Others have noticed this same pattern when it comes to either economic or national security issues.

WHY THE MSM DOESN'T LIKE WONKS

First, something from Glenn Greenwald:

The central paradox of our political life is that the right-wing faction that continues to dominate our political institutions and win elections embraces fringe beliefs which have little popular support. That's why their overarching objective is to remove substantive considerations from our political debates -- the more consequential the issue, the less establishment media attention it receives, the less real public debate there is over it. Instead, our elections are determined by the barren, petty personality-based distractions and mindless chatter that define the lowly Drudgian Freak Show, where our political life now almost exclusively resides.

I'd like to add that the right-wing also wants to avoid real discussions because their candidates are so ill-informed. Here's just one example from US News & World Report:

"If this comes down to some policy wonk debate between McCain and Hillary or Obama, well, we're not going to win that one," is how a John McCain political adviser, in a recent chat with me, assessed the Republican presidential candidate.

YES. THE GOP DOES ENGAGE IN CLASS WARFARE

(h/t Kevin Drum)



We know that the stock market has done better under Democratic presidents since WW II and know we know that the "little people" do better also. From Dani Rodrik's blog:

It comes from Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels' new book, soon to be released. What it shows is the difference that the President's party affiliation makes to the distribution of income during the four years of the president's term. (The distributional outcomes are shown with one year's lag.) When a Republican president is in power, people at the top of the income distribution experience much larger real income gains than those at the bottom--a difference of 1.5 percent per year going from the bottom to the top quintile in the income distribution. The situation is reversed when a Democrat is in power: those who benefit the most are the lower income groups. If you are in the bottom quintile, the difference between having a Democratic or a Republican president in office is an income gain (or loss) of more than 2 percent per year!

HANNITY IS WORSE THAN I THOUGHT

Over 20 years ago, I recall listening to a bit of Bob Grant's radio show and I was amazed at how much hatred he spewed. I haven't thought much about him until I came across this BuzzFlash interview with Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal claims that Hannity was a big fan of Bob Grant:

Hannity also credited Bob Grant as his mentor. Hannity says in his book, Let Freedom Ring, "I'd grown up listening to Bob Grant, one of the most entertaining hosts I'd ever heard."

I got Hannity's book and found these comments about Grant:

Sure, there were a scattering of great stations and great personalities out there - among them people like Barry Farber and Bob Grant in New York, whom I listened to avidly. (p. 259)

I'd grown up listening to Bob Grant, Barry Gray, John Gambling, and Barry Farber. (p. 264)

On the same visit I also met Bob Grant, the King of Afternoon Drive in New York and one of the great pioneers of talk radio in America. Bob was a hard-hitting interviewer with in-your-face opinions, and one of the most entertaining hosts I'd ever heard. (p. 266)

So, Blumenthal was essentially correct although his quote combines 2 sentences from Hannity's book. You can find out more about Grant here and here's a snippet:

Grant's firing from WABC ten years ago stemmed from intemperate comments he made about the late Secretary of Commerce and former Democratic Party Chair Ron Brown. The latter was in a plane crash on a trip to Bosnia. When reports surfaced their might be survivors Grant commented to the effect he hoped Ron Brown was not among them.

THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD

It's now out in the open: The Fed is buying the bits of the Big ShitPile that Bear Stearns accumulated at face value and the Treasury told the Fed that it would make good any losses. I understand the need for this move but let's all hope we get a more regulated financial system.

VIETNAM STILL LIVES IN THE DEEP, DARK HEARTS OF WINGNUT WAR WHORES

Some of the Vietnam vets I've met go on about that glorious war and claim they never lost a battle, that the war was lost on the home front. I can give them McNamara's opinion but I usually get this sort of reply:

Mnelms5324 on AOL:

(1) Robert S.McNamara the Secretary of Defense, but in reality his life was with antiwar protester and most everything anti-military.

(2) We won every battle on the battlefield.. but ones like the Coward McNamara and the protesters lost the war for us.
So McNamara opinion is about like yours and every other antiwar and antiMilitary nut out there, not worth a damn...

(3) McNamara was a Coward in every meaning of the word, his opinions was formed by the antiwar protesters and long hair hippys.
McNamara had long friend relationships with many antiwar protesters and supported their every move.

THE USUAL AFTERMATH: ANGER

Maliki's botched attack on the Mehdi Army has only made the Sadrists stronger, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Anger follows the fight with Sadr's militia
Residents of Sadr City, Moqtada al-Sadr's Baghdad stronghold, said they felt 'caught in the middle' of the battle between Sadr's Mahdi Army and US and Iraqi forces.
By Sam Dagher Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 1, 2008 edition

The fighting has also firmly wedged the US in an intra-Shiite struggle that has been bubbling for some time and will probably only intensify. The battle has also spawned more popular anger and frustration, especially in places like eastern Baghdad, toward both US forces and Mr. Maliki's government, which already had been teetering on the verge of collapse.

This popular anger is like an adrenaline rush for the Sadrist movement, which, in contrast to other Shiite parties, particularly the one led by rival Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, is seen as being on the side of the young, poor, and downtrodden.

"We voted for a government to help us, not to do this to us," says an angry woman, who gave her name as Umm Jasem. She sold fresh eggs at the market. Her stall was reduced to a heap of charred metal. "Enough! Tell America enough."

THE HOUSE DEMS: VIRTUE REWARDED

They stood up to Bush and Jay Rockefeller and refused to give the telcoms retroactive blanket immunity. Now, the Bush regime has decided that all the fear BS won't work and it will have to compromise. According to a couple of sources, one reason the House Dems have held their ground is that they think DNI McConnell is just another Bush ideologue and can't be trusted.

MALIKI NIL SADR 1

So much for Teh Surge. It's starting to look like we'll never get out of Iraq.

Paltry results of Iraqi offensive silence U.S. withdrawal talk
By Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008

"There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up" on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon.

In the larger sense, "this is a reminder that nothing has changed," said a senior State Department official, who also wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

GOOD NEWS!!!

Fafblog is back!

"DOESN'T APPLY"

We now have the infamous torture memo by John Yoo. Here is part one and part two. This has generated some discussion and here I give my opinion.
In Prof. Yoo's judgment, the President's war powers allow him to ignore the 5th Amendment:

First, the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause does not apply to the President's conduct of a war.

The memo justifies this in part by citing Lincoln's Attorney General, James Speed. The memo does refer to this section of Ex Parte Milligan (1866):

"The constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with its shield of protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of men that any of its great provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of Government."

But disingenously claims that it does not apply to the current argument:

¹¹Our analysis here should not be confused with a theory that the Constitution somehow does not "apply" during wartime: The Supreme Court squarely rejected such a proposition long ago in Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 119-20 (1866), and at least that part of the Milligan decision is still good law. See, e.g., Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164-65 (1963); United States v. L. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U.S. 81, 88 (1921) ("[T]he mere existence of a state of war could not suspend or change the operation upon the power of Congress of the guaranties and limitations of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments ...."). Instead, we conclude that the restrictions outlined in the Fifth Amendment simply do not address actions the Executive takes in conducting a military campaign against the Nation's enemies.

The general Alice in Wonderland logic is this: Because we are at war, the U.S. laws about war are not applicable:

The assault, maiming; interstate stalking, and torture statutes discussed below are generally applicable criminal prohibitions, applying on their faces to ''whoever'' engages in the conduct they proscribe. 18 U.S.C. § 113; id. § 114; id. § 2261A; id. § 2340A. Each of the canons outlined above counsels against the application of these statutes to the conduct of the military during war. As we explained above, the application of these statutes to the President's conduct of the war would potentially infringe upon his power as Commander in Chief. Furthennore, the conduct at issue here--interrogations-is a core element of the military's ability to prosecute a war. As a general matter, we do not construe generally applicable criminal statutes to reach the conduct of the military during a war. Moreover, the application of these statutes to the conduct of the military during war would touch upon a prerogative of the sovereign, namely its discretion regarding the treatment of unlawful belligerents.¹⁶

Note that in 2340A, the law applies to ANY American:

(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

You may recall that Jose Padilla's lengthy isolation led to a disintegration of his (here & here) personality, something that is expressly prohibited by definition in 2340:

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

DOES McCAIN KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IRAQ?

(Via Atrios)

It's hard to tell, especially because he contradicts himself. Will the MSM start reporting this? Hard to tell.

IT'S PRETTY SERIOUS

Somebody tell Sean Hannity!

Banks Face Biggest Crisis in 30 Years, Report Says (Update2)
By Edward Evans
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Credit market turmoil poses the most severe crisis for banks in 30 years, surpassing Black Monday in 1987, the Asia currency crisis and the burst of the dot-com bubble, Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman said in a joint report.

Revenue from investment banking may drop 20 percent in 2008 before a further $75 billion in markdowns, analysts led by Huw van Steenis said in a note to clients today. Six quarters of earnings will have been erased by writedowns and falling revenue by this month, rivaling the collapse of the junk bond market at the end of the 1980s that put Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. out of business, the report said.

``The industry is facing the most severe investment banking crisis in 30 years,'' the analysts wrote in the report. ``Global securities markets are in the midst of profound cyclical and structural change.''

FREDO TAKES RESPONSIBILTY

(h/t CelticPatriots3 on AOL)

PRES. BUSH: As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq (12/14/2005)

MAYBERRY MACHIAVELLI SCUMBAGS

The criminal Bush regime has no shame whatsoever. Via Blue Girl at Proctoring Congress I found this report about the show trials due this Fall:

Navy Lawyer: Gitmo trials pegged to political campaign
Posted on Fri, Mar. 28, 2008
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
Miami Herald

The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.

The brief filed Thursday by Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer directly challenged the integrity of President Bush's war court.

Notably, it describes a Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign.

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying.

FREDO & FOODSTAMPS

According to the NYT, there will be an increase in the number of foodstamp recipients to 28 million in the next fiscal year. Let's look how well Fredo has done for the poorest among us. The left axis is the number of recipients in 1000s. Data source here.

WHAT THE DOCTORS THINK ABOUT HEALTHCARE

Someone please tell Sean Hannity!

US doctors support universal health care - survey
Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:00pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) - More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.

Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The 2002 survey found that 49 percent of physicians supported national health insurance and 40 percent opposed it.

The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan.

ANOTHER WRITE-DOWN & PLEA FOR CASH

UPDATE: More of the same - Deutsche Bank Faces Writedowns Of About $3.95 Billion

UBS takes another hit from the credit crunch and writes down an additional $19 billion. The good news is that another executive will resign.

UBS Says Ospel Resigns After $19 Billion Writedowns (Update2)
By Elena Logutenkova

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- UBS AG, struggling to stem damage from the U.S. subprime meltdown, reported a second straight quarterly loss after an additional $19 billion of writedowns and said Chairman Marcel Ospel will step down.

The bank will seek 15 billion francs ($15.1 billion) in a rights offer to replenish capital, after already raising 13 billion francs from investors in Singapore and the Middle East. The writedowns will lead to a first-quarter loss of 12 billion francs and further job reductions, Zurich-based UBS said today.

Ospel, who led the creation of UBS in a merger a decade ago, will be succeeded by general counsel Peter Kurer. The Swiss bank joins Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. in turning to investors for a second time to increase capital after writedowns and losses on subprime-infected assets cost the world's biggest financial institutions more than $208 billion.

Losses already cost the jobs of former CEO Peter Wuffli, finance chief Clive Standish and investment banking head Huw Jenkins.

New York-based Citigroup and Merrill said in January they will receive $14.5 billion and $6.6 billion from investors respectively, after getting $7.5 billion and $5.6 billion cash infusions in November and December.

MORE McWAR-STYLE "SUCCEEDING"

Iraqi casualties at highest level since mid-2007
Tue Apr 1, 2008 2:31am EDT

BAGHDAD, April 1 (Reuters) - Violent civilian deaths in Iraq climbed to their highest level since mid-2007, Iraqi government figures showed on Tuesday, due to a spike in violence between Iraq security forces and Mehdi Army militia fighters.

A total of 923 civilians died violently in March, up 31 percent from February and the deadliest month since August 2007, according to figures released by Iraq's interior, defence and health ministries.

JOHN LOTT == LIAR

On the FAUX News site, wingnut John Lott has a preposterous column entitled "The 'Recession' Is a Media Myth," and its chock full of LIES and misleading truths. Here's just one:

"...during the last year of the Clinton administration when we were in a recession."