Oy. It was discouraging to read “The Lies Peddled On Sunday Shows And How Democrats & Liberals Play Into Them” at Pre$$titutes, via the Daou Report:
Chuck Schumer on Meet The Press: “Bush, say whatever you want about him, does not back away from a fight.” Thanks Chuck, keep inflating your own opponent.
Howard Dean, bless his heart, appeared on This Week and continued to fumble and stumble on the Iraq question, playing into the narrative that Democrats are incoherent on Iraq. Can’t he just flat out say it was illegal and immoral and the sooner we end this catastrophic misadventure the better? Why legitimize the so-called “political process,” a process by which Iran is gradually tightening its grip on Iraq? Dean rambled on about how our position should be contingent on the success (or lack thereof) of the Iraqi electoral process. Isn’t that Bush’s line?
My favorite line from today’s Meet the Press: “The politics of the war were taken more seriously by this administration than the war itself.” (George Packer) … OPEN THREAD:
Say whatever you want about George Bush, he is definitely part lower primate.- Sen. BooMan- (PA)
omg. I misread what you wrote as “lower part primate.”
Now I have to wipe coffee off the computer screen.
I misread what you wrote as “lower part primate.”
So did I…
:<)
Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be laying the groundwork for indictments this week over the outing of a covert CIA operative, including possible charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers involved in case said on Sunday.
Top administration officials are expected to learn from Fitzgerald as early as Monday whether they will face charges as the prosecutor winds up his nearly two-year investigation, the lawyers said.
When is the latest we could know. Friday?
I think so, unless he asks for a GJ extension.
a couple accounts are saying Tuesday…. and I’d guess the leaks will begin tomorrow if that’s true.
This will be a wild week.
I guess it will be either Monday late afternoon, or Tuesday. The GJ will probably vote on the indictments tomorrow morning. I expect they will vote yes on every count they have the opportunity to vote on. This GJ has been exposed to toxic brew of corruption, and they won’t be in any mood for leniency.
oh Booman, I sure hope you are right on that
I saw Biden on Chris Mathews last week and get the same sinking feeling. Come on at least start demanding some freaking answers on a timeline or something. Demand justice and demand the idiots that got us into this come up with a reasonable way out. Not an open ended fucking bloodletting. We need some leadership here.
Here’s Frank Rich’s column, “Karl and Scooter’s Excellent Adventure” from today’s NYT, courtesy of Truthout.
As for the Dems’ lame performances, they are still afraid of the wingnut smear machine, and *they need $$$$ support from corporate America to finance their own ambition. So, they won’t oppose the war on the merits; they’ll only oppose it in the context of opposing Bush regime incompetence, but of course this is not really opposing the war at all.
If they’d just take some time to figure out what the hell they actually believe in, the “message” would take care of itself.
These pathetic and self-absorbed Dem hacks believe in themselves and they believe that the idea that the GOP will self-destruct and the Dems will “win by default” is an excellent strategy, and one that doesn’t require them to take a principled position on anything, leaving them each free to pander to whichever demographic they need to for votes in their own campaigns.
Certainly these Dems are not worse than the extremist wingnut Repubs destroying our democracy, but it’s not clear they’re better enough than those rabid Repubs to make any substantive differece for the better.
so true! Amen!!
has so spoken, so shall it be. Now I’m about to get Clintony, not Hillary Clintony though……the other one. As dispicable as it is, those who are about to be arrested are beginning a feel sorry for us campaign that is going to reach out and touch someone. Sure the looney tunes will talk about how fucking crazy we are, but we are just going to keep getting arrested and many of us will cry real tears because we have really been fucked on Iraq and fucked over so badly by this administration it is just about unspeakable how bad the damage is. As we gain momentum though and the tears continue to fall in Iraq and out of Iraq the Democrats will come and save us and not have to draw the line in the sand that will make failures in Iraq “THEIR FAULT” America is still the land of the great blamers. I really don’t fucking care any more who blames me for what the fuck ever, I don’t care if I become the one they save to save their asses…….I just need the fucking insanity to stop and it will stop when they ride in on their white horses and save us. It’s all so P.C. and lovin the people and savin the down trodden only Jesus could do it better. So let’s just fucking get on with it!
Frankly, Susan, I am very depressed today after listening to the talking heads.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever step up to the plate and hit a homerun for us?
When will they ever say” I was lied to just like you were”?
When will they ever know the difference between right and wrong?
When will they ever begin to open their eyes to the “WE THE PEOPLE” out here?
When will they ever know that we are very displeased with all of them that can not and will not understand the land of which they serve?
Oh hell, I could go on and on, but it seems fruitless to even think of let alone talk about.
I am seriously wondering about the investigation process with all the bru ha ha it has produced. We deserve answers and many yesterdays would have been ok with me. Instead, we will have to wait till the power hands change…and still nothing changes..I am so depressed today…:o(
The cloud that hangs over all of us with this administration, congress and supreme court, is just like the big bad cloud that hangs over my area of the country today..and it is a cold, dark, and threatening cloud. When I need medicare, it won’t be there for me just like my social security. When I need everything in my 401K it will not be ther for me. So you see, anything else I have forgotten in this dismal speach, is likewise I will not be expecting when I need it….what do you think?
Then when we total up all the dead and wounded with this nonsensealbe war, we will cry our hearts out to continue it like today and the day before and the year before that. See where I am coming from? Will this ever stop…I thought we learned from many years ago bout things like this…but it seems, history does repeat itself…I am just plain outright depressed today. Well, maybe it is mad I am…I am both I suppose. All I knowit is not a healthy feeling I have today.
Anybody catch Dick Durbin blowing wages and national security on Lou Dobbs this week? Americans want both, this administration has delivered neither, and yet, we can’t even distinguish ourselves from that record?
DURBIN: This immigration system is not working. It has failed. But we’ve also got to acknowledge the fact that we have some 10 million Americans who are now undocumented and a part of our economy in the United States. We have people who are a major part of the economy in the city of Chicago.
DOBBS: When you say a major part — excuse me, Senator. But you know, I’ve heard this line of reasoning from too many people, suggesting they’re a major part of the economy.
What they are is a way in which employers manage to pay less than fair wages so that they have labor, rather than paying prevailing wages to U.S. citizens. You know, this nonsense that illegal aliens do work that Americans won’t do — that is utter nonsense.
DURBIN: Well, I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you.
DOBBS: Americans will do work at the wages that are being offered.
DURBIN: I have to disagree with you. There is exploitation. There is no doubt about the exploitation. I’m not sitting here trying to defend it any way.
But I will just tell you, point blank, go to a major city in America — certainly a major city in my state — and ask restaurant owners and hotel owners how their businesses would fare without undocumented workers, and you’ll see the harsh reality.
These men and women are doing things in jobs every single day. They’re an important part of the economy. And if you had your wish and they all left tomorrow, it would have a dramatic negative impact.
We’ve got have a system. We’ve got have a system that enforces our laws, but creates a means by which people can earn their way to legal residency if they work hard and pay taxes, they’re good citizens, and basically follow the rules.
The politics of the war were taken more seriously by this administration than the war itself.
Well, of course. There is, among certain factions both left and right, the conviction that America is some sort of unstoppable military juggernaut. The roots of this lie in the world wars, both the first war, where our mere presence rather than our battlefield prowess tipped the scales in a war of attrition, and the second war, where we hastened what was essentially an inevitable Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Mind you, this isn’t to say that American military might in WW2 wasn’t considerable, or that our achievements, especially against Imperial Japan, weren’t awe-inspiring, but our victories in that epochal war were based as much on the contributions of our allies and woeful strategic blunders by our enemies as on our own strength. There was, in other words, a large element of luck in the Allied victory in WW2, and if any of a large number of things had turned out differently — say, if Hitler had heeded Admiral Canaris’ recommendation to start the war two years later when Germany would have had the naval resources to defeat Britain — we might be saluting a Nazi flag now.
In the time since, we have fought four major wars: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I, and Iraq II. Korea ended in stalemate. We were unequivocally defeated in Vietnam. We won Iraq I, and we are beyond any hope of victory in Iraq II. We are not an unstoppable juggernaut.
And, more importantly, in any military engagement that isn’t completely trivial, victory is never assured, and some objectives simply can’t be achieved with armed force, no matter how much of it you have.
The Kool-Aid that we have collectively been drinking for most of the last sixty years is this bullshit “most powerful nation in the world” nonsense. That’s like being the biggest guy in the bar. It doesn’t mean that the next biggest guy can’t kick your ass, or that the smallest, wimpiest guy at the end of the bar won’t slip you a knife while you’re ordering your next drink.
The leaders who start wars — and who never, ever fight in the wars they start — like us to drink that Kool-Aid. They always tell us that victory will be certain and swift. The plain truth, however, is that victory is rarely swift and it is never certain. Never.
The hawkish factions of both left and right — and here I refer to the honest, decent members of those factions — would do themselves and the rest of us a great favor if, when contemplating starting a war, they were to remind themselves that we can lose. And contrary to the bullshit nonsense about Vietnam being the only war we’ve lost, we have actually lost several wars both big and small (1812, Korea, Vietnam-Cambodia, Somalia, Iraq II) and suffered pyrrhic victories in others (the Philippines, our own civil war, Iraq I).
You don’t have to have a pacifist bone in your body to reserve war as the very last resort. All you have to do is recognize that war is, by its very nature, an exercise in chaos and chance, and that history is replete with examples of great empires being brought low by the fatal combination of hubris and small but determined enemies.
CommentBits has BitTorrents of the Colbert Report here.