“America has three-quarters of a billion dollars to spend on the embassy in Baghdad, but our troops have to live like this.”
[...] But there is little doubt the Democratic nominee will have to defeat both McCain and the media in the fall.
We’re playing against a stacked deck in November. You haven’t seen nothing yet.
Fun new game! Which TV news "military expert" is really a whore for the Bush administration? (Hint: all of them)
Did it work? Were you duped?
Were you calmly and methodically and rather nefariously led to believe that maybe, just maybe, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the rest, right along with tales of soldier suicides and torture and staggering civilian body counts and the utterly disastrous Bush military policy weren't really all that bad after all?
Wrong. Oh, how horribly wrong.
So I ask again, did it work? Was America duped? Well, yes and no. There's little doubt that this insidious, sustained PR attack — and make no mistake, it was/is an attack on the American people; such calculated "psychological operations" aimed at U.S. citizens are actually very illegal, though it's enormously difficult to prove so in court — swayed millions of Americans, gave fuel to the preemptive attack argument, inflamed (and still inflames) the warmongering right, scammed the media, fanned the pro-war fires for years before the public recoil finally kicked in.
But oh, kick in it did. This is the fascinating thing. Even all those high-ranking military experts lying like well-decorated dogs in one of the most impressive, appalling PR campaigns in American history could not keep Bush from collapsing, could not prevent Americans from learning the real facts of the failed war and toxic presidency — eventually.
And maybe this is a good thing. Because now, given the scope of the Bush administration's lies — the true scale of which we may never fully know — the recoil is even more forceful than it ever might've been, the anti-neocon, anti-Bush revolt is potent and heartening and enormously helpful to the Democratic cause, perhaps far more than if Bush and his cronies had told the truth in the first place.
Then again, if they had been the slightest bit honest, if Bush had even a hint of integrity, we'd never have launched this staggeringly botched, futile war in the first place, and maybe we wouldn't be where we are now, with the American experiment under Bush far less of an experiment and far more of a cyanide tablet.
...
The week started with a front-page story about his legendary temper, with new stories revealed therein. Then McCain embarked on a "Forgotten Places" tour this week, traveling across the country to places that "conservatives don't normally appear." And now, we know why. In Alabama, he attracted a largely white crowd in the landmark of the civil rights movement, Selma, and praised a ferry that was constructed due to an earmark, after condemning the practice. He then departed for Youngstown, Ohio, where he offered a stirring defense of free trade at a plant which closed earlier in the decade. When asked about the "cheap dumping of foreign goods" on US shores, McCain replied "I can't turn that around," which ought to be comforting to unemployed steelworkers.
...
...
So don’t talk to me about the left. There is no left. It was killed when the labor unions bought into the war machine and became fat and complacent. It died when working people indulged racism and hatred and voted for smooth-talking liars who turned around and screwed them for everything they had. It was murdered when so-called liberals sent thousands of kids down the pipeline to Vietnam. Now we just sit and wait for scraps, hoping that some candidate will bring us “change.” But I don’t believe in left and right any more. I believe that there are greedy corporate pigs who own the country and are running the government. And then there are the rest of us, mostly trying to just get by.
...
Smoking weed can improve your performance in all sorts of activities -- from playing reggae music to watching Battlestar Galactica to writing blog posts.
If you're an already ill-trained, semi-motivated soldier in the Afghan Army, however, spliffs are a particularly poor way to prepare for battle, as this little clip illustrates...
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.
He believes electing Democrats will hurt America's security and economy and appeared to call on his listeners to make sure that doesn't happen.
"We do, hopefully, the right thing for the sake of this country. We're the only one in charge of our affairs. We don't farm out our defense if we elect Democrats ... and riots in Denver, at the Democratic Convention will see to it we don't elect Democrats. And that's the best damn thing that can happen to this country, as far as I can think," Limbaugh said.
Limbaugh's comments prompted Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to say: "Anyone who would call for riots in an American city has clearly lost their bearings."
10. Fewer embarrassing gaffes, more humiliating blunders
0. Replace "Hail To The Chief" with Black Sabbath's "Iron Man"
8. Send FEMA to rebuild Knicks
7. Change name to Barack W. Obusha
6. Show America you're not some stiff workaholic by blowing off work sometimes
5. Jump Snake River in rocket powered "Sky-Cycle"
4. Become trapped in an elevator until January 20, 2009
3. Less of this (VT: Bush dancing in New Orleans)
2. Ask father for tips on how he achieved his 31% approval rating
1. Hide Cheney's medication
A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.
It's not much but it's something. Georgetown University has decided not to renew Doug Feith's contract.
Word from campus is that both students and faculty had pretty much had it with the arch war criminal walking around campus although I also heard that he is such a goofy, pathetic guy that some students felt sorry for him. One told me, "he's like the nerdiest loser I ever saw. He cannot have done the things he's accused of. He's too obtuse."
I told her to read Arendt's "The Banality of Evil."
In any case, the Jesuits have done themselves proud by, at long last, giving Feith his walking papers. I wonder where we'll turn up next. In a McCain administration or in the dock at the Hague?
Iraq war architect blames Powell for Iraq
The man who led the office that supplied the Bush Administration with "raw intelligence" on Iraq now says everyone else is to blame but himself.
Remarked Milbank wryly, "It must have been very difficult being Doug Feith: correct all the time, and surrounded by idiots."
The Issue
ISPs have been restricting the free flow of P2P Internet traffic through their networks for years. In some cases, ISPs have pushed past the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Their tactics now involve forging "hang-up" messages between computers communicating through their networks. Here at Vuze, where P2P technology is the foundation of our business, we decided to take a stand. We decided that enough is enough.
Sure, We'll Get Over It When Conservatives "get over" Roe v. Wade
...
Yes. Even I hadn't actually thought of it in quite that way. This guy is old, he's rich, he's famous, he's had cancer and he's not particularly popular in his own party. His signature issue of Campaign Finance Reform was achieved (and he used it for toilet paper when it got in the way of his relentless quest for the presidency.) It's not like there was some grassroots groundswell that drafted him. Indeed, last summer he was pretty much out and he just ground it out until he got the nomination.
...
The nomination of Gen. David Petraeus to be the new head of the Central Command not only ensures that he will be available to defend the George W. Bush administration's policies toward Iran and Iraq at least through the end of Bush's term and possibly even beyond.
It also gives Vice President Dick Cheney greater freedom of action to exploit the option of an air attack against Iran during the administration's final months.
But Petraeus had already effectively taken over many of the powers of the CENTCOM commander last year.
As the top commander in Iraq, Petraeus was in theory beneath Fallon in the chain of command. But in reality Petraeus ignored Fallon's views and took orders directly from the White House. Petraeus was in effect playing the role of CENTCOM commander in regard to the twin issues of Iraq and Iran.
It had become increasingly evident to Fallon that he was not really running things at CENTCOM, according to the source. Fallon's frustration about Petraeus' de facto power over Middle East policy was the main reason he was ready to step down.
Fallon's resignation announcement on Mar. 11 was followed less than a week later by a 10-day Cheney trip to the Middle East in which the vice president talked explicitly about the military option against Iran during visits to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That suggested that Cheney felt freer to wield the military threat to Iran with Fallon neutralised.
Today in Youngstown, a city hit hard by unfair trade agreements, economic downturns, and the mortgage crisis, John McCain actually compared his campaign's early money struggles due to wasteful and extravagant spending to the economic challenges facing residents of Youngstown.
"John McCain is truly the Paris Hilton of politics," said Doug Kelly, Executive Director of the Ohio Democratic Party. "The husband of a beer heiress has displaced the daughter of a hotel magnate as the new grand champion of simultaneously ignoring and insulting working people."