Where to start?

The words are in my head, but they don’t seem to want to come out my fingertips to the keyboard. I carry on conversations with nobody during my hour-long commute to and from work each day. I think, I need to write about that, and then I get home and peruse the blogs instead, or read Becoming Vegetarian, or play with the dogs.

There’s a big part of me that’s mighty discouraged and yet I take solace that there are people like Glenn Greenwald and his readers. I take solace in the fact that I have friends who are as horrified and disgusted as I am. 

I’ve taken to listening to “progressive” talk radio again just to see if there is some sort of awareness out there of the cliff that we are heading for and I hear rumblings. But for the most part it’s just a rehash of how awful the Republicans are,  Sarah Palin!!, Glenn Beck!!  and very little examining of themselves or their supposed leaders. Yeah, Republicans suck. Got it. Now, what are you going to do about it? Dave Marsh, whose show airs on Sundays, and listened to by me for the first time last Sunday, gets it. It isn’t about what THEY are doing, its about what WE are doing.

It’s funny, in a sad sort of way. There are some who were virulently opposed to Hillary Clinton who are now upset that Obama is not the liberal avenging angel they thought he’d be, but nearly to a man (and nearly all the show hosts are men – way to go progressive radio) they just can’t seem to admit their mistake. A couple of them step off the reservation every once in a while, and I even once heard Cenk Uygur admit that, knowing what he knows now, he would have voted for Hillary. Why? Because, he realizes, she wouldn’t have let the Republicans roll her. Nuh-duh dude.

Some of them are actually catching on that things are progressing exactly as Obama has intended. Perhaps the Alan Simpson episode has finally made it plain.  

Shirley Sherrod was fired when a snippet of a speech she gave on class warfare was taken out of context by a right wing rat-fucker. Alan Simpson, on the other hand, full bore antagonist of the every American worker and every Social Security recipient, and not taken out of context,  remains, with the full support of Barack Obama, as the co-chair of Obama’s Deficit Catfood Commission which is working in secret (so much for transparency) and has Social Security in its sights. Social Security, which has not added One Thin Dime to the deficit.

 There’s a class war alright. It’s just not the one the the Tea Partiers think is happening. (There isn’t enough time this morning for me to comment on the goings on on the other side,  but don’t worry, I’ll get there too).

In other news . . .

Tonight President Obama is going to give his version of “Mission Accomplished” speech. Oh yay. What was the mission again? Joe Biden was in Iraq for the “turnover” ceremony.  Maliki claims Iraq is now capable of handling all threats on their own. Except when they can’t I suppose.

“Iraq today is sovereign and independent,” Mr Maliki told Iraqis in a televised address.

“Our security forces will take the lead in ensuring security and safeguarding the country and removing all threats that the country has to weather, internally or externally.”

[...]

Around 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq and will focus on supporting Iraqi forces. They will not participate in combat missions without a request from the Iraqi authorities, or if they are acting in self-defence.

The new Iraqi air force is still in its infancy, our correspondent adds.

Air cover for Iraqi ground operations is provided almost exclusively by US planes and helicopters, he says.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan …

Afghanistan bomb attacks kill twenty-one US soldiers in 48 hours

Deaths have risen consistently each year since 2001. Afghan police and civilians have suffered far higher casualties.

The coalition blames the rise in troop deaths partly on the influx of reinforcements, which is allowing commanders to target previously untouched insurgent safe havens where rebels are mounting stiff resistance.

Gen David Petraeus, senior US and Nato commander in the country, warned last week fighting would “get harder before it gets easier”.

 Sigh.

I’m off to work. Catch you all later.

RIP: Robert Byrd

CNN:

While he set two endurance records in Congress, he was only proud of one in the end. The other was for his 1964 filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, when he spoke for 14 hours and 13 minutes in an effort to derail the law.

He opposed civil rights when he first ran for office, a stance he came to regret later in life. He blamed “that Southern atmosphere in which I grew up, with all of its prejudices and its feelings,” for his opposition to equal rights, which included joining the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s.

He called the move “the greatest mistake of my life,” an “albatross” that would always shadow his career.

“It’s a lesson to the young people of today, that once a major mistake has been made in one’s life,” he said, “it will always be there, and it will be in my obituary.”

I will remember him for this:

Holy War for Oil

Rummy played GW like a violin. (PZ Myers)

President George W. Bush was a god-fearing child given control of our military apparatus…or perhaps he was a child manipulated by a military that found religion a convenient hook. Frank Rich describes the internal propaganda used during the war. What I find shocking is that Bush received regular intelligence briefings with covers that invoked a combination of G.I. Joe war imagery and militaristic bible verses.

 

Same song, different verse…

The latest smash and grab from the Bush administration:

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury’s massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country’s largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

“It’s a mess,” said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department’s inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. “I don’t think anyone understands right now how we’re going to do proper oversight of this thing.”

Sound familiar? It should.

Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

“Severe inefficiencies and poor management” by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used,” the report said.

“The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that [Development Fund for Iraq] funds were used in a transparent manner,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., director of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Not to mention this:

A House committee report on Tuesday questioned whether some of the billions of dollars in cash shipped to Iraq after the American invasion — mostly in huge, shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills — might have ended up with the insurgent groups now battling American troops.

The report was released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing when Democrats sharply questioned the former American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, about lax management of the nearly $12 billion in cash shipped to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004.

Iraq was just a warm up.

I don’t get it

Colin Powell, the consummate “team player” (see here for a startling history up to 1995, and here), the man formerly reviled by the Left (here, here) for knowingly lying to the U.N. about Iraq’s weapon capabilities (here, here and here), the man who vouches for Ted Stevens “sterling” character, is now the darling of the progressives because he has had a “come to Jesus” moment and endorsed Barack Obama.

Joe Cannon snarks:

Lefties — who not long ago pilloried anyone who voted for the authorization of military force — are orgasmic over Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama. After all, the war was hardly Powell’s fault. It was Hillary’s.

(As I’ve said before: You can’t accuse progs of lacking standards. Double standards.)

David Sirota trys to have it both ways.

Just a little note on Colin Powell, who many believe will appear on Meet the Press to endorse Barack Obama this weekend. If this happens, the elite media will be ablaze with stories talking about how awesome and Serious and Respected Colin Powell is. While this propaganda will be good in its short-term benefit to Obama*, [BlueLyon note: Some more of that "end justifies the means" logic all too prevalent in the Obama fan club]  it will be horrific in the long-term sense of our country’s ability to recognize its worst decisions and move forward from them.

Let’s just remember: Colin Powell is one of the major reasons we went to war in Iraq. In his 2003 United Nations speech, he perpetrated one of the biggest frauds in the history of international diplomacy – a deliberate and calculated fraud that, in terms of its blood-and-guts ramifications, dwarfs major scandals like Watergate. Sure, there were certainly other Bush officials who helped get us into war. But to deny that Colin Powell was a major factor in sending us into a war based on lies is to quite literally deny that the sky is blue.

The idea that being endorsed by someone like that is a good thing – well, that logic may fly in the television studios of New York and D.C., but it shouldn’t fly anywhere else. A person whose most important legacy is destroying America’s international credibility shouldn’t be seen as a Serious or Respectable person, nor an asset to any campaign, no matter how many apologists – liberal or conservative – claim that “behind the scenes” Powell was really a good guy. He wasn’t a good guy – he was one of the handful of people who knowingly lied us into a war. That the elite media imparts even an ounce of credibility to this dishonest yes-man is not a commentary on Powell’s alleged positive attributes. It is a reflection of the elite media’s deep disdain for the facts and truth it purports to respect.

Ya know? I didn’t like the cult of Bush, and I don’t like the cult of Obama either. It’s frightening, no matter what “side” is doing it.

In plain sight…

Digby

So, it’s not really a capitulation. It’s a strategy.

ghost2 muses at Alegre’s Corner on the FISA capitulation and suggests that it happened with Obama’s full support and direction.

This is not only Pelosi’s position, but also Obama’s position.

You are naive if you think the compromise happened without the knowledge of Obama, and he is issuing a statement after the fact. That cannot be.

An expolosive, controversial issue like this could hamper the nominee. Why would Pelosi bring it up now?

Note carefully. It’s the quiet time. Reporters mad at Hillary Clinton for prolonging the primary have just now gotten their vacations. It’s summer, just before 4th of July. What better time to throw Campaign Finance, FISA under the bus?

Superdelegates LOVE the money networks Obama has and are drooling at the prospect of that money. He is even careful and not issuing fundraising emails for anyone, b/c that means some cherished donors will also end up on somebody else’s big email list. That’s his ace, and he is not letting go of it.

Remember, the first thing that came for Obama was MONEY. You’d think that network of bundlers, lobbyists, and corporate bosses with connections didn’t expect anything in return?

Obama will throw a lot of people under the bus, but he is too smart of a politician to throw his money backers there. That won’t happen.

FISA and immunity were the first thing delivered by Obama. You, Glenn and everyone else can ignore that at your peril.

Even Hunter (Why do we care about FISA?), over at DailyKos says:

Because of all the issues we’ve faced, in the last few years, this one was an absolute no-brainer, the one thing that the Democrats, no matter how stunningly incompetent, humiliatingly ineffective or bafflingly capitulating they may be, could manage to win simply by sitting on their damn hands. But no; it took serious work to lose on this one. Serious, burning-the-midnight-oil work to manage to quite so cravenly negate their own oversight duties.

Hunter assumes that the Dems wanted to “win” this (that is, come down on the side of the Constitution). It’s obvious they do not.

In other news…

Turkana points out to us what else our Democratic Congress gave Bush: Funding for the war, no strings attached, through July 2009.

While you were distracted by the Democrats’ capitulation to Bush on domestic spying and telecom immunity, you probably didn’t even notice that they were also busy capitulating to him on the war.

Oh, and Cheney? He’s off the hook too.

What can we say about a leader who can’t stand up to the most unpopular president ever? No strings attached. In exchange for a few small bills that the Democrats could have hammered Bush for not supporting. If they weren’t political imbeciles. But now the war is funded through July 2009. The biggest blank check ever. Because Nancy Pelosi took the war off Congress’s plate. You have to love that metaphor. Because it calls to mind Pelosi’s previously having taken impeachment off the table. Which set the table for this, as reported by The Hill:

Vice President Dick Cheney has won his battle to withhold records from the public despite efforts by Congress and other critics who say they should be open to scrutiny.

The Democrats are conceding defeat. The party’s top investigator in the House of Representatives acknowledges that there is nothing more he can do to force the vice president’s hand.

“He has managed to stonewall everyone,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.”

Waxman said that despite Cheney’s turning this administration into “one of the most secretive in history,” there’s not much he or anyone else can do because the administration has only a few more months left in office.

Sure. And Waxman’s one of the good guys. But there’s nothing more he can do. Against perhaps the only government official in this country who is even more unpopular than Bush. Because once impeachment was off the table, it was clear that Bush and Cheney could do whatever they wanted. There are no consequences. So, they thumb their noses and laugh. They are above the law. And Congressional Democrats agree. But don’t worry about it. Just another day in Washington.

9/11 widow has a question for Barack

Here.

Now forgive me, but I do not recall the help (or the voice) of any Barack Obama from Illinois. Indeed, I cannot recall hearing or feeling the impact of any one speech from the Illinois Senator. Did he attend the rally on the mall in Washington? The marches and protests in NYC? Did he conduct national press interviews? Did he write any editorials? Organize any protest rallies? Mobilize the people? Did he write any petitions? If he did, I never saw any of them.

Yet according to Barack Obama, because he spoke out in 2002 against the war in Iraq, he is better qualified to be president.

And if there is one thing I know for sure right now, I do not feel like reaching across the aisle and finding compromise with Republicans particularly on any of the following issues: Roe v. Wade; torture; FISA surveillance and illegal wiretapping; unfounded wars with Iran, Syria, or any place else; stem cell research; the erosion of our constitution; alternative energy and global warming; and/or healthcare reforms.

And according to Barack Obama, since Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the president to go to war in Iraq, she is unfit to be President.

As Democrats we need to remember exactly who took us to war in Iraq. We need to remind ourselves exactly who is to blame for the huge price tag our soldiers and their families have paid. We need to never forget that it was George Bush who created this debacle. Costing us billions in dollars and worldwide respect.

Maybe that’s what bothers me most about Barack Obama. He keeps talking about working with the Republicans. Reaching across the aisle. Compromise. Well, I’ve been to Washington. I have fought battles in Washington — most of them against the Republicans — to get 9/11 legislation passed into meaningful law.

 

Five Years

Sign on to the plan:

Attend a vigil. (MoveOn and I don’t see eye to eye these days, but this is bigger than our dispute. I’ll be on the corner tonight.)

Not that George Bush is listening.

In other news

Out There

• Ted Haggard cries poor mouth.
• Even the Pentagon can’t agree on what to do with Mess-O-Potamia
• Jim Gibbons is already thinking about retirement. Would that he would have done so in 2006.
• The DNC Rules and Bylaws committee meets today to discuss sanctions for Florida. I hope they stand firm. More here.

On the Home Front

• That Silver Springs dental clinic that looked so promising may not happen.
• Lyon County hires a Michigan city manager for the county manager position. Good luck, fella.
• Ironing Board Transit Brigade steaming up support for new community transportation system. Desperately needed.

You have GOT to be kidding me

The Pentagon Sends Messengers of Apocalypse to Convert Soldiers in Iraq

“We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region,” OSU declares on its website about its planned trip to Iraq. “We’ll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq.”

[...]

But behind OSU’s anodyne promises of wholesome fun for military families, the organization promotes an apocalyptic brand of evangelical Christianity to active duty US soldiers serving in Muslim-dominated regions of the Middle East. Displayed prominently on the “What We Believe” section of OSU’s website is a passage from the Book of Revelations (Revelation 19:20; 20:10-15) that has become the bedrock of the Christian right’s End Times theology: “The devil and his angels, the beast and the false prophet, and whosoever is not found written in the Book of Life, shall be consigned to everlasting punishment in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

With the endorsement of the Defense Department, OSU is mailing “Freedom Packages” to soldiers serving in Iraq. These are not your grandfather’s care packages, however. Besides pairs of white socks and boxes of baby wipes (included at the apparent suggestion of Iran-Contra felon Oliver North, according to OSU) OSU’s care packages contain the controversial Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game. The game is inspired by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ bestselling pulp fiction series about a blood-soaked Battle of Armageddon pitting born-again Christians against anybody who does not adhere to their particular theology. In LaHaye’s and Jenkins’ books, the non-believers are ultimately condemned to “everlasting punishment” while the evangelicals are “raptured” up to heaven.

(links within the article)