I think, maybe ...

Gen. Petraeus' idea of "enormous" is different than mine. Cdr. Huber:

As the Senate sent legislation to the White House that calls for troop withdrawal timelines, General David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that the war will require "an enormous commitment" by the United States.

...

To me, 3500(?) American lives, countless Iraqi lives, and half a trillion bucks is pretty enormous, especially with the results we've seen. With those resources, I could make everybody in Africa 'middle-class', I could insure every American's health, and I could probably come up with an alternative to petroleum products. What could you do?

Coachella

For rock fans: Everything you need to follow along with this weekend's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

"Artificial Deadlines" Rejected By The Artificial President

Don Davis:

He won't endorse "artificial deadlines" to pull-out from an artificial country, terrorized by artificial Iraqi police and army, run by an artificial government, in a war sold by artificial intelligence, and started by an artificially elected U.S. oresident.

Hey, George, tell it to the troops coming home to be fitted for artificial limbs.

Talk about your "art-of-official" Bushshit!

Rest assured, Georgie m'boy, there's nothing artificial about all the death and destruction you've wrought, either abroad or here at home.

Kucinich Big Winner - There's no Debate

The Satirical Political Report

"Between my young hot wife, and that old hot-head Gravel, I'm suddenly starting to look pretty good to Middle America."

He always looked good to Middle Earth, but I'm not sure Hobbits vote...I don't blame him fer that shit-eatin' grin, neither!

Really, the only reason I posted this is so I could pass on some wisdom imparted to me by a wizened old motorcycle mechanic I knew in my youth:

"Here's the deal on tall girls - toes ta toes, yer nose is in it. Nose ta nose, yer toes is in it."

The whiny fall guy

MoDo on 'Slam-Dunk' Tenet:

The president and vice president wanted Slam-Dunk to help them dramatize the phony case. Everyone had to pitch in! That Saturday session in December 2002 in the Oval Office was "essentially a marketing meeting," Slam-Dunk writes, just for "sharpening the arguments."

Hey, I feel better.

Can't a guy be a lickspittle without being an ideologue?

Looks like he can be a traitor as well.

Related:

Waxman invites Tenet to testify

"Invites". Heh.

You can keep up with Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform here.

So tell me ...

Is there a Republican who isn't a hypocrite or a crook?

I'm surprised ...

She stayed so long. River of Baghdad Burning is leaving for safer locales. Glen says goodbye:

Since I chanced upon her years ago, I have worried when River didn't post in a while. Her last was back in February. During the silences, I knew it could be a simple matter that, with a few hours of electricity per day, she and her family may have more immediate uses for it than to power her computer. Or it could be worse. Much worse. Anyone, other than The Big Shopper McCain and his ilk, knows what much worse can be.

...

Whore now and save!

The next chapter of my novel The Fourth Estate is up at The Practical Press.

And don't forget, you can vote in The Practical Press Awards of 2006 for your favorite short story, poem, novel, audio book, or songs until Monday. Not only will you find my work, but that of our friends Mustang Bobby, Old White Lady, Shakes, and many others.

Relationships

Deja vu:

...

America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq.... America's generals did not provide Congress and the public with an accurate assessment of the conflict in Iraq....

After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

...

All over again:

...

Which brings me to this: We veterans didn't lose the war. The protestors didn't lose the war. Even Hanoi Jane, (though I detest her to this day), didn't lose the war. The lying fucking government of Lyndon Johnson, Robert MacNamara and his uniformed henchman, General Westmoreland lost the war. They lost it by lying to get us in...by lying to send more troops...and by lying about "body counts".

...

Throughout my teenage years, I heard every politican say "we will never make the mistakes of Vietnam again." Lyin' bastids ...

The Wørd on Global Warming

A tip o' the Brain to Grist.

America Since 1980: A Right Turn Leading to a Dead End

AlterNet

The piece begins with:

U.S. politics took a sharp turn to the right in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as president.

And goes downhill from there, much like the U.S., to end with:

This is a bad situation for a bully to be in. After a quarter century of not caring about the concerns of other countries, the United States is facing a situation where other countries may not care much about our plight. We may soon wish that we had spent more effort building up meaningful international institutions when we had the opportunity.

If Repuglicant policy is allowed to run its course and make a few people unconscionably wealthy, and everybody else beggin' poor, and no one else in the world gives a shit, in fact takes pleasure at our discomfort, I have no doubt people will wonder WTF happened and how can they treat us that way? The answer is plain for all to see.

The Best and the Brightest

On Wednesday I posted about David Halberstam.

Please go see what a pro has to say about him in Newsweek.

As it was in the beginning, so it was down the decades: Halberstam, who died on Monday in a car crash in northern California at age 73, was always present at the creation, reporting, watching, thinking, and writing about the unfolding drama of what Henry Luce called the American Century. The Harvard graduate who went from Cambridge to Mississippi to cover the great domestic story of the time became one of the earliest and most important journalists to chronicle the great foreign story of the age: Vietnam, where, in the pages of The New York Times, Halberstam insisted on reporting what he saw happening, not what the government said was happening. The difference was essential, even epochal, and Halberstam achieved something few journalists ever do. He changed history, for he helped change how America saw not only the war in Vietnam but the ways of Washington. It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that Halberstam's reporting, and his epic book, The Best and the Brightest, were crucial elements in Americans' growing, and justified, distrust of their government.

His was a hope born of experience. Back in the 50s, Halberstam had begun watching America, painfully but surely, cast off the burdens of segregation. Since then, from the American South to Southeast Asia, he bore witness to the conviction that for all our sins and shortcomings, we would, painfully but surely, move toward Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mountaintop. It is a mark of Halberstam's greatness that his work has long helped us see how we might get there, and always will.

The mountaintop is still a long way off, but we continue to climb. We must.

Even yet still more Moyers...

So sue me. I like the guy.

Truthout

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers begins his new weekly series, "Bill Moyers Journal," with an interview with Jon Stewart, anchor of the award-winning The Daily Show for eight years, about why so many get their news and analysis from his fake news show. Also on the program: Josh Marshall, blogger and publisher of the influential talkingpointsmemo.com, gives his perspective on the role of politics in the recent firings of federal prosecutors; and Carlo Bonini, Italy's foremost investigative reporter.

You can see a preview and check air times or anything you need to at the link.

Dem 'Debate': Ho-Hum

I had that thing on while I did other things. Nothing Earth-shattering happened, although Joe Biden got off a good one: when asked if he thought he could convince Americans that his renowned verbosity would not get in his way as president, he gave a one-word answer - "Yes" - and then just stood there. Great comedic timing. Laughter ensued. It was probably the high spot of the event.

I couldn't even tell you without looking it up how many candidates were there. Seven? Eight? I never heard of that Gravel guy before, and I missed Al Sharpton not being there. I'm glad they let everybody participate, but that will probably change.

Nobody waffle-stomped any of their appendages or shot any toes off. It was about what I expected, a preliminary job interview with everybody on their best behavior. Boring.

I think the main purpose of the whole deal, indeed of this whole looong election season, was to comply with the TV Pundit Full-Employment Act.

Done got us another one, Cleetus!

Mr. Shakes got his green card!

... He’s "tootally gooing to becoome a citizen in time to voote in 2008!" ...

Go wish them well.

Shit, I'm late for work ...

Reminder

On Monday, voting will close for The Practical Press Awards 2006. While I'm up for an award, I direct you there to experience the wealth of good work done by the nominees in every category, from short story writers to poets, novelists to audio collections, songwriters too. While you're there, give a thank you to Kenneth Quinnell who runs the page (and does all the work and research to put on the award show). He's rounded up some excellent talent, quite a few who you'll recognize from the 'comments' section here. I'm honored to be in such good company. Best of luck to all the nominees.

Class Act

That would be Steve Soto. You don't see a right wing blogger, nor many 'legitimate' news sources, point out their own mistakes. As I said when I took umbrage with a post of his (a rarity, I assure you) a while back (as did a lot of other commenters) I love Soto and this is one of the reasons why.

Update: I feel obligated to point out that I was wrong. Some commenters have correctly said that many of you knew the surge was a lie and doomed to fail from the outset. I on the other hand (for once) wanted to give the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt based on what I originally saw from Robert Gates. Even though I qualified my support for the surge, I was wrong and many of you were correct from the start.

...

As Steve writes today:

...

The original sales job done by this administration for the surge back in January is now inoperative. We were told by the administration that we would be surging while the Iraqis would be undertaking political reconciliation and achieving benchmarks during the remainder of 2007. According to today's Post, it isn't happening. Additional proof came from Petraeus himself this morning when he said things are more complex than imagined and our situation will get worse before it gets better. That’s if it gets better. Yet Joe Lieberman says today that we need to stay and fight Al Qaeda in the middle of a sectarian war, requiring our soldiers to fight everyone at the same time even without any political reconciliation.

...

So now we've wasted more lives for the political machinations of the Bush administration. Personally, I'm tired of this "let's try this and see if it works" approach to this war. Nobody knows what the fuck to do, from Bush, to his Defense Secretary, to morons like Lieberman, to the "generals on the ground", so they're pulling plans out of their ass. The 'surge' was a failure (I don't want to hear we only have 60% of the 'surge troops' on the ground. After 3 months, if all the elements aren't in place yet, it ain't a surge) and all we have to show for it is a couple hundred new, flag-draped coffins arriving in the dead of night.

As my esteemed colleague JerseyGuy reminds us regularly, it is time to impeach these people. Get them out of office and then put them in jail.

Makes ya think ...

About who is gonna be running the show in 50 years?

Click to embiggen

Cartogram from an excellent site I found a while back called Strange Maps.

Who gives a fuck ...

They're only brown people.

'Kremlin Justice'

The Carpetbagger Report on Rove's violations of the Hatch Act:

Rove & Co. never explicitly instructed federal employees to take specific actions on behalf of GOP candidates, because that would obviously violate the Hatch Act. Instead, they'd just lead the horse to water, and tell the horse how incredibly important it was for him to drink. If the horse suddenly started drinking the water, that certainly wasn't Rove’s fault.

The administration maintains that the previously undisclosed meetings were appropriate. Those discussing the briefings on the record yesterday uniformly described them as merely "informational briefings about the political landscape."

What a coincidence. All of these employees were using the exact same phrase ... almost as if they'd been instructed on exactly what to say when asked about the administration's illegal political operation.

As Paul Kiel explained, "The entire scheme has been laid out before us. The question now is whether Karl Rove will get away with it."

Rove thinks he's got enough power that his shit don't stink. I want to see his face get rubbed in it.