Echoes of the Nixon era

Arlen Specter's FISA bill would put President Bush above the rule of law, just as an earlier president would've wanted.

By Glenn Greenwald

Jul. 31, 2006 | With one piece of legislation, Sen. Arlen Specter seeks to expand the Bush administration's radical theory of executive power beyond the wildest dreams of Dick Cheney or even John Yoo. Just when it looked as though some semblance of checks and balances was being restored, Specter -- the Pennsylvania Republican who masqueraded for months as a tenacious opponent of the White House -- offers a bill that would strike an immeasurable blow for the Bush vision of an imperial presidency.

* * *

In reality, Specter does not want to amend the mandates of FISA so much as abolish them. His bill makes it optional, rather than mandatory, for the president to subject himself to judicial oversight when eavesdropping on Americans, in effect returning the nation to the pre-FISA era. Essentially, the president would be allowed to eavesdrop at will, precisely the situation that led to the surveillance abuses of the Nixon White House and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

The whole obscene story is here....

Let's try and stop this.

Have I said I don't think electoral politics offers a solution for all the damage Our Leaders have done?

Two depressing to even quote so here's the link.

Q: Mr. President, both of you, I'd like to ask you about the big picture that you're discussing.

Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel.

Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they're sharply critical of Israel.

And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.

So what has happened to America's clout in this region that you've committed yourself to transform?

Bush: David, it's an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let's hope everything is calm - kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

And so we have, we've taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

And make no mistake: They're still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for.

In the long term, to defeat this ideology - and they're bound by an ideology - you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

And, look, I fully understand some people don't believe it's possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible.

And I believe it will happen.

And so what you're seeing is, you know, a clash of governing styles.

For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.

And so they respond. They've always been violent.

You know, I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden, Hezbollah's become violent because we're promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas?

One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles.

And so what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked and that brings hope.

And one of the challenges, of course, is to convince people that Muslims would like to be free, you know, that there's other people other than people in Britain and America that would like to be free in the world.

There's this kind of almost – you know, kind of a weird kind of elitism that says well maybe - maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn't be free; maybe it's best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies.

And our foreign policy rejects that concept. We don't accept it. And so we're working.

(Link.)

Chapter 97,824.

Our Leader dispenses his wisdom and understanding of an important foreign policy issue.

Gotta increase the minimum wage. Have something to give to the voters besides two more years in the Iraq quagmire.

A minimum wage increase.

Including in the bill estate tax repeal.

How stupid do they think we are (rhetorical). But why should they worry? You don't see this being covered with any significance or focus in the corrupt Big Media.

We've got here:

Man charged after videotaping police

And here.

Cell Phone Picture Called Obstruction Of Justice

Man Arrested For Shooting Photo Of Police Activity

As they say, even paranoids have enemies.

As we move towards an undemocratic Christian theocracy here, the democratic secular tolerance for non-Christians ebbs away. Like here. And here. Fanning the flames of war in the Middle East isn't enough (can't wait for Armageddon when we have the power to bring it on).

And of course no one should expect anything like tolerance from a Christo-fascist second-rate actor/crappy director -- so when caught driving drunk (oops! allegedly drunk), blame the Jews. Of course.

UPDATE: Gibson blames it on being a life-long alcoholic. An obvious effort to seek Christian forgiveness. It was booze making him say things he didn't actually believe. Me, I beg to differ: the booze only enabled him to say what was always there, the beliefs he was taught.

Off the Times:

Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast

Must belabor the obvious: Has this administration not done enough harm yet, particularly in the Middle East? Is the world not a more dangerous place thanks to our leaders? (Last is a rhetorical question but the answer is yes, undoubtedly, irrefutably yes.)

Actually, thought they're all supposed to singles looking for axxxion. Anyway, a great rack on an enabler of the destruction of America still adds up to something ugly in my book....

Nothing too new, just nicely put. Krugman busts out of the TimeSelect barrier:

Amid everything else that’s going wrong in the world, here’s one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.

At one level, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don’t like have been established, whether it’s the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.

But it’s dismaying to realize that the machine remains so effective.

Here’s how the process works.

First, if the facts fail to support the administration position on an issue — stem cells, global warming, tax cuts, income inequality, Iraq — officials refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Sometimes the officials simply lie. “The tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive and reduced income inequality,” Edward Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, declared a couple of months ago. More often, however, they bob and weave.

Consider, for example, Condoleezza Rice’s response a few months ago, when pressed to explain why the administration always links the Iraq war to 9/11. She admitted that Saddam, “as far as we know, did not order Sept. 11, may not have even known of Sept. 11.” (Notice how her statement, while literally true, nonetheless seems to imply both that it’s still possible that Saddam ordered 9/11, and that he probably did know about it.) “But,” she went on, “that’s a very narrow definition of what caused Sept. 11.”

Meanwhile, apparatchiks in the media spread disinformation. It’s hard to imagine what the world looks like to the large number of Americans who get their news by watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh, but I get a pretty good sense from my mailbag.

Many of my correspondents are living in a world in which the economy is better than it ever was under Bill Clinton, newly released documents show that Saddam really was in cahoots with Osama, and the discovery of some decayed 1980’s-vintage chemical munitions vindicates everything the administration said about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. (Hyping of the munitions find may partly explain why public belief that Saddam had W.M.D. has made a comeback.)

Some of my correspondents have even picked up on claims, mostly disseminated on right-wing blogs, that the Bush administration actually did a heck of a job after Katrina.

And what about the perceptions of those who get their news from sources that aren’t de facto branches of the Republican National Committee?

The climate of media intimidation that prevailed for several years after 9/11, which made news organizations very cautious about reporting facts that put the administration in a bad light, has abated. But it’s not entirely gone. Just a few months ago major news organizations were under fierce attack from the right over their supposed failure to report the “good news” from Iraq — and my sense is that this attack did lead to a temporary softening of news coverage, until the extent of the carnage became undeniable. And the conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, under which lies and truth get equal billing, continue to work in the administration’s favor.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn’t let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that that’s not at all what happened, I’ve missed them.

It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?

Just a quicky: I am so sick of how the majority of Amuricans disagree with our leaders, on moral stuff in this case.

Really, let them get off hir asses and vote the c*cks^ckers out or let them shut up. Voting is the very least they can do, not whining like little tit babies....

Here. Now! Just do it.

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month

The whole beautiful story is here.

We have succeeded in Iraq, mission is indeed accomplished, and the fruits of our victory are spreading:

Shiite militias are sending men to Lebanon.

Obviously to support democracy and peace in that country.

Bravo, our beloved leaders!!

Did you know that our leaders are perverting the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. It is now set up and operating to weaken civil rights. All you need to know is here.

Of course Israel's response is disproportonate.

But with that as a given, next question has to be -- not What is proportionate? -- but What has to be done to stop the threat and initial source? Particularly when the problem is created in part by an electorate who put terrorists in power?

Here's some photos from one side.

Haven't bitched about the scum that fuels the GOP counter-revolution against America in, like, days.

So here's a golden oldie, as it were.

Absolute scum.

Crap on enough of the Muslim nations and they'll become our democracy-loving allies. Look at our long history of success in Lebanon since the Reagan years and our successes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq and the success of democracy in empowering, legitimizing and effectively legalizing terroristas and terrorism in Lebanon and Palestine.

Our leaders are keeping up the good work.

Once again, Josh nails it.

All I'd add it that our absolute ineptitude in starting fires unnecessarily then refusing to very much constructive is summed up Our Leader's idiotic remark about someone other than our leaders getting Syria to get Hezbollah to stop the shit is awfully emblemic of all that is wrong about our approach to the Middle East. (Aside: Love how our temperorary, deranged neutrality still allows us to rush weapons to Israel. See this and this.)

The immaturity of making a mess one refuses to clean up makes one think that maybe W is a decider after all. Could the entire administration be as %$#&ed as he??

Unlike other blogs, including those with readers, this isn't Lieberman bashing just for the sake of bashing.

Rather, it's a reminder that part of the problem here is that really is no meaningful opposition to our America-hating administration and its supporters.

After all, Dems like Lieberman and the whole DLC have failed to come forward and explain exactly why they're not Republicans. What does Lieberman believe in that prevents him from joining the GOP?

At least someone else thinks the compromise between Spector and W on the illegal, unconstitutional wiretapping isn't a compromise but, well, a simple capitulation.

Read it here....

This will be required Sunday reading for all of them....

Oppressive, repressive, and doesn't share its nukes. And willing to work for us really, really cheap.

One can hope....

From the War Room (or did I just say that?):

When George W. Bush acknowledged in his NAACP speech Thursday that "many African-Americans distrust my political party," several men in the audience took to their feet and shouted epithets. As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports, NAACP chairman Julian Bond approached the podium to help the president; Bush said, "Don't worry about it, I'm almost finished"; and Bond said, "I know you can handle it."

On the White House Web site, the incident is described this way. "AUDIENCE: Yes! (Applause)."

And an honest report and analysis is here.

From the War Room:

The Bush administration has long insisted that news stories about violence in Iraq obscure the progress that is being made on the political front.

Perhaps it's time to put that story to rest.

In an extraordinarily gloomy report from Baghdad, Reuters correspondent Mariam Karouny says that Iraqi leaders have "all but given up on holding the country together." Among the ideas now on the table: Divide Baghdad into two zones, one for Shiites and one for Sunnis, in the hopes of stopping the bloodshed between the two.

The harsh words from one unnamed government official: "Iraq as a political project is finished."

This is good; I never knew Our Leaders ever saw Iraq as a "political project." Well, I mean other than a political issue for domestic use in rallying their supporters (as opposed to a political project in Iraq).

And our leaders are fully aware of what's going down in Iraq because they have improved the intel after the intel debacle that resulted in the present debacle.

Not.

And the WaPo shows it support for our leaders by bringing us the good news from Iraq:

Thursday was one of the quietest days in one of the year's bloodiest weeks, with no single reported attack in Iraq claiming more than 13 lives.

Then from the War Room again:

Top headline at the Washington Post’s Web site: "Bush Sees Mideast Strife as a Step Toward Peace."

I report. You decide. Fair and balanced.

From the Times:

“His approach is to first destroy and then think about what to build,” Mr. Walesa said of the country’s current president, Lech Kaczynski, who served as Mr. Walesa’s national security chief.

Really? Really?? Walesa was really that stupid? I want to think not but then again, stupid as it is, sounds like our leaders' pre-war plan for Iraq: Destroy and after that, whatever....

Our Leader is really, really loved.

50% or more approve of him in three states.

50% or more disapprove of him in 47 states.

Numbers don't lie, at least here.

From smirkingchimp.com, the whole piece:

Mark Crispin Miller: 'How to pre-empt a 'November Surprise''
Date: Thursday, July 20 @ 09:55:08 EDT
Topic: Elections

Mark Crispin Miller

If the GOP should lose the House and/or the Senate on Election Day, they will pick out a handful of the "closest" races--as many as they need to hang on to majority control--and start to scream like hell about ELECTION FRAUD.

That's right: the major perpetrators of such fraud will cast themselves as victims of the very crime that put them where they are, and charge the Democrats with having used the very tactics that the Bush Republicans have now perfected: legal/bureaucratic disenfranchisement, e-voting manipulation, hostile challenges to would-be voters, covert efforts at disinformation, countless ballots thrown away, and so on.

This is what we'll hear non-stop from Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity and Coulter; Hastert, Boehner, Sensenbrenner, Graham and Coburn; even Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove himself.

This, of course, is how the Busheviks routinely operate; and yet I'm basing this prediction not just on their history as war-propagandists, but on the blunt admission of a certain high-placed GOP insider, who recently told Thom Hartmann that this is the party's plan, if they should lose control of either side of Congress. It's very easy to imagine such a plan succeeding, with the party's Mighty Propaganda Wurlitzer ahowl day after day, night after night, with all its stops pulled out; and with the mainstream press too busy being "balanced" to point out the truth (and no doubt piously harrumphing that such dirty deeds have surely been committed "on both sides"); and with the Democrats, as ever, playing feeble defense, fighting back too little and too late when they ought to have been out there slugging all along.

In other words, the Bush Republicans will certainly succeed--unless the Democrats, and others to their left, start working to pre-empt that strategy right now. The only way to foil that plan is to define the conflict truthfully and clearly, and to begin to do it now. However low the Bush regime may sink in the opinion polls, the Democrats, and all the rest of us, are simply cooked, if they do not stand up like vertebrates, and speak as patriots, and tell the nation the unpleasant truth: that these BushRepublicans are where they are today because they have committed vast election fraud, in 2000, and in 2002, and in 2004; and that they lately have committed it again in San Diego, and have more planned in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California and Virginia, and wherever else they have the system rigged, whether at the state or county level. In short, it's time to cut the crap, stop worrying about the epithet "sore losers" (the Republicans would never let that stop them), and trot out all the evidence that the Establishment has thus far largely waved away.

Right now, for example, the Democrats ought to be raising holy hell about the growing evidence of fraud in San Diego. What's more, they have to set the record straight about Christine Gregoire's 2004 election as the governor of Washington. It is now gospel on the right--and very often hinted in the mainstream--that Gregoire robbed Dino Rossi of his rightful victory. The tales to that effect are everywhere, and yet the Democrats have made no effort to correct them. We've heard all about that crucial little bunch of pro-Gregoire votes that appeared as if by magic right at the eleventh hour; but we have heard nothing of the thousands of pro-Rossi votes, in both Snohomish and Yakima Counties, that were concocted through the DRE machines.

The American people ought to hear about those phantom votes. And if, in fact, the Democrats did cut some corners in that race, they ought to say so, and atone for it, so as to drive home the essential point that the Republicans stole many more. The system is indeed corrupt, and both sides have committed fraud--but, since 2000, only one side has repeatedly and vastly disenfranchised the American electorate. While neither party is republican or democratic, there is only one side that cannot succeed without subverting the electoral process. The Democrats (or those of them who actually support American democracy) should say it loud and clear; for even it it means that they too must come clean, it will be better for them in the long run; and in any case a thorough cleansing is exactly what this filthy system needs.

Unless the Democrats speak out right now, the GOP will manage to co-opt the issue of election fraud--by playing, as ever, on the perennial fear of foreign "terrorism." Specifically, the party will augment the sturdy myth of rampant Democratic "voter fraud" by linking it to the resurgent threat of those dark-skinned "illegals" scurrying across our southern border. Sequoia, the smallest of the three top vendors of e-voting machinery, is now owned by a Venezuelan company, and Hugo Chavez's party uses its machines to count the Venezuelan vote. That fact will be used to limn a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy-involving Chavez, Lopez Obrador, John Conyers, Rahm Emanuel, Michael Moore, George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Jesse Jackson, Hillary Clinton and al Qaeda--to trash American democracy and thereby force the Bush Republicans from power.

That paranoid scenario depends, of course, on a complete inversion of the truth: Sequoia's product, just like the machines from Diebold and ES&S, helped the Republicans to score their startling "re-election" victory in 2004. For instance, the party used Sequoia DRE machines to hype the Rossi vote in those two counties in Washington. (The evidence was so compelling that the state will now no longer use Sequoia's wares.) And yet that inconvenient fact can be erased quite easily by the GOP's terrific army of professional liars, who will keep lividly implying that Sequoia was a weapon in the Democratic plot to seize power in Olympia. And that Big Lie also will succeed, unless the Democrats speak out against it now.

From the War Room:

Let's go back to the American Enterprise Institute. Danielle Pletka, AEI's vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, tells the Washington Post that she doesn't know anyone who is "not beside themselves with fury at the administration" just now. The right's complaint? As the Post says, "Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon."

Well, right. And why is that? Why are Iran and North Korea able to do what they want with little fear of serious repercussions? Why might Syria and Iran and Hezbollah think the administration is weak and without options for stopping them? It gets back to the beginning of all of that, the part about those U.S. troops "hunkered down" in Iraq. They're there, of course, because Bush sent them there -- and because people at places like the American Enterprise Institute applauded so enthusiastically when he told them what they'd been telling him: Invade Iraq, and we'll transform the Middle East. Invade Iraq, and we'll make the world a safer place.

Are they chastened by the experience? Wiser for the knowledge that the deaths of 2,544 Americans and more than 50,000 Iraqis have bought? It doesn't look that way. This morning on Fox News, neocon pundit Bill Kristol said that the United States has to be ready to use military force against Iran. "Think what this crisis would be like given what we now know about the Islamic Republic of Iran, its regime, its recklessness, its close, close ties to terrorist groups," Kristol said. "Think what the world would be like with an Iran with nuclear weapons."

It sounded like satire, only Kristol was dead serious -- even as he delivered the greeted-as-liberators punch line: The Iranian people "dislike their regime," he said, and they might just welcome "the right use of targeted military force."

They're so pathetic -- and we moreso for not getting rid of the scum, for not ending the national nightmare of being led by these America-hating traitors....

So hard not to laugh.... From the Journal:

Bush's Risky Mideast Strategy:
Seek Change, Not Quick Peace

Umm, in other words, same old, same old. Seeking change did a very great deal of bring us -- the world -- to where we are now.

Back to this blog' occasional Microsoft bashing:

Just a reminder that bloated Vista is a) still delayed and oops! b) not going to be the, uh, Great Leap Forward claimed. As to the latter, with M$ getting into the anti-spyware/malware/virus buiness, what would expect other than high-maintenance crap. (And the answer of course is a dual-boot Mac, spending as little time in Windows as possible. Look folks; even if we spend too much time at work and God forbid bring it home, we do come home and take care of personal stuff. Think of your computer as the same thing: Windows is work. Why should that be the sole place you do computer stuff, specially when it sucks?)

Can we finally please stop acting as if W is actually leading our nation? He is merely the electoral front and primary salesman for the cabal that is (mis)leading our nation. I mean, there's a big difference. Let's focus on the real leadership, in the shadows....

The Times is back to its old form, back doing its courtier thing, sucking up to Our Leaders by gratiously -- and falsely and incorrectly -- slamming Dems. (They're so slammable you can do a enough bashing and harm by being accurate -- as long as one didn't also practice a double standard where the wingnuts can do no wrong.

(Speaking of which it was terrible not having Busmiller around to cover the S word matter.)

Our Leader, who is only the front man for the true leaders in the shadows, who is far less of a decider than he wants and needs us to believe, whose administration has done its fair share to bring chaos and death to the Middle East by totally dropping the ball on the Israeli-Palestinian mishugas as well as by compelling the spread of democracy and thereby enabling and empowering Islamo-fascist terrorists, who can't do a damn thing as Israel and Lebanon and Gaza burn, shows his true abilities or, rather, his lack of all true leadership abilities other than being a complete and utter lying sack of crap:

President Bush's feelings about the U.N. chief's approach to the
Mideast crisis, punctuated with an expletive, were made public
unintentionally as he shared lunch with G-8 leaders.

That's the Times, the audio is here. (Maybe even uncensored.) (Free sub. required of course.) Links to a video are here so if censored you can at least lip read.

Our Leader has no control over Syria. Fine. Here's a really brief history lesson: We never got anywhere fully ostracising a nation and had our greatest successes opening up to them and being, well, welcoming. Hey, look! there's North Korea! Another foreign policy success for our leaders! (An overview of our success in the Middle East is here.)

Of course, our leaders really want the non-oil producing parts of the Middle East (except Iran, I guess) to burn.

Ahh, here's a transcript from the WaPo:

President Bush was caught on an open microphone talking with other leaders at the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg as they ate lunch before adjourning on Monday. At times the television camera was on Bush, at times it was panning the room. Some of the exchange was hard to hear over the clinking of plates and pouring of drinks. Here's a transcript by The Washington Post:

Someone, probably an aide, asks Bush something, evidently whether he wants prepared closing remarks for the end of the summit:

Bush: No. Just gonna make it up. I'm not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long.

The camera is focused elsewhere and it is not clear whom Bush is talking to, but possibly Chinese President Hu Jintao, a guest at the summit.

Bush : Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home?

Bush : This is your neighborhood. It doesn't take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home?

Reply is inaudible.

Bush : "Eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country."

At this point, the president seems to bring someone else into the conversation.

Bush : It takes him eight hours to fly home.

He turns his attention to a server.

Bush : No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke.

He turns back to whomever he was talking with.

Bush : It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair approaches.

Bush : Blair, what are you doing? You leaving?

Blair : No, no, no, not yet.

Blair, standing over Bush as the president eats, tries to engage on the stalled global trade negotiations.

Blair : On this trade thing . . .

Some of the ensuing conversation is inaudible. Blair evidently wants Bush to make a statement on the talks.

Bush : If you want me to. I just want some movement. Yesterday, I didn't see much movement. The desire's to move.

Blair : No, no there's not. It may be that it's impossible.

Bush : I'll be glad to say it. Who's introducing me?

Blair : Angela. [German Chancellor Angela Merkel ]

Bush : Tell her to call on me. Tell her to put me on the spot.

Bush then changes the subject, presumably to a gift Blair must have given him for his recent 60th birthday.

Bush : Thanks for the sweater. Awfully thoughtful of you. I know you picked it out yourself.

Blair : Oh, absolutely.

Both of them laugh. Then Bush turns serious, asking Blair about comments apparently made about the Middle East crisis by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, another guest at the summit.

Bush : What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically ceasefire and [then] everything else happens. You know what I'm saying?

Blair : Yeah. No, I think -- the thing that's really difficult is we can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed. Now, I know what you guys have talked about but it's the same thing.

The next remarks are i naudible, but the conversation turns to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Blair : . . . see how reliable that is. But you need that done quickly.

Bush : Yeah, she's going. I think Condi's going to go pretty soon.

Blair : Right. Well, that's, that's, that's all that matters. If you -- see, it'll take some time to get out there. But at least it gives people a --

Bush : A process, I agree. I told her your offer too.

It's unclear what offer he means, but apparently Blair offered to make some sort of public statement.

Blair : Well, it's only if it's -- I mean, you know, if she's gotta -- or if she needs the ground prepared, as it were. Obviously, if she goes out, she's got to succeed, as it were, whereas I can just go out and talk.

Bush : See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over.

Blair : Who, Syria?

Bush : Right.

Blair : I think this is all part of the same thing. What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way, he's [inaudible ] . That's what this whole thing's about. It's the same with Iran.

Bush : I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

At this point, Blair notices the microphone and turns it off.

Two sets of lyrics. The song with asinine lyrics and the flacid empty bromides was written by obviously hypocritical US Senator Orrin Hatch. The lyrics for the other was written (presumably) by M. Jagger for a track on the recent Stones album.

Guess which is which. And bonus question: Guess which is in heavy rotation on the iPod.

1.

Heal our land
Please grant us peace today
And strengthen all who lack the faith to call on Thee each day
Heal our land

Please keep us safe and free
Watch over all who understand the need for Liberty
Heal our land
Heal our land

And guide us with thy hand
Keep us ever on the path of Liberty
Heal our land
Heal our land

And help us understand that we must put our trust in Thee
If we would be free
Protect us by the power of thy rod
And keep us as one nation under God
Heal our land
Heal our land

And guide us thy hand
Keep us ever on the path of Liberty
Heal our land
Heal our land

And help us understand
That we must put our trust in Thee
If we would be free

2.

You call yourself a Christian
I think that you're a hypocrite
You say you are a patriot
I think that you're a crock of shit

And listen, I love gasoline
I drink it every day
But it's getting very pricey
And who is going to pay

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con.... Yeah

It's liberty for all
'Cause democracy's our style
Unless you are against us
Then it's prison without trial

But one thing that is certain
Life is good at Haliburton
If you're really so astute
You should invest at Brown & Root.... Yeah

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con
If you turn out right
I'll eat my hat tonight

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah....

It's getting very scary
Yes, I'm frightened out of my wits
There's bombers in my bedroom
Yeah and it's giving me the shits

We must have loads more bases
To protect us from our foes
Who needs these foolish friendships
We're going it alone

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con
Where's the money gone
In the Pentagon

Yeah ha ha ha
Yeah, well, well

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Neo con

'Talking Right,' by Geoffrey Nunberg

They Write the Songs

Review by STANLEY FISH

In some quarters repairing the Democratic Party has taken the place of baseball as the national pastime. All you need to play is, first, an analysis of what the Democrats are doing wrong (which is usually an analysis of what the Republicans are doing right) and, second, a strategy for regaining the political advantage. Most of those who enter this sweepstakes are (relatively) strong on the diagnosis part and woefully weak on the remedy part. Geoffrey Nunberg's "Talking Right" is no exception.

Nunberg's thesis is that if you want to get people to do certain things — vote for your candidates, support your policies — you must first get them "to talk in certain ways." Capture the field of language and the political field will be yours because the words everyone responds to will have the meanings you have conferred on them. Over the past quarter-century, Nunberg says, the Republicans have been so good at this that even those on the left "can't help using language that embodies the worldview of the right." So, for example, if the word "values" turns up in a political conversation, it will be understood without reflection to refer to a specific set of stances — pro-family, pro-American, pro-merit, pro-religion, anti-special-interests, anti-quotas, anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, anti-assisted-suicide.

Of course these are not the only values, and Democrats are free to argue for an alternative set, but if the contest is between those whose values come to mind immediately with the very mention of the word and those whose values have to be explained —"I'm not against traditional marriage, I'm just for anti-discrimination" — the game is over before it begins. "The left has lost the battle for the language itself," Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, declares at the outset. "The challenge facing liberals and Democrats is to recapture that ordinary language." That, he announces, is "what this book is about."

Actually, no. What this book is really about is the rueful admiration Nunberg feels for the ability of the political right to appropriate what he (following Richard Rorty) calls the "final vocabulary" of American politics. A succession of lively chapters explains how the Republicans turned "government into a term of abuse"; torpedoed affirmative action by introducing and promoting reverse discrimination; made "liberal" into a word of accusation; redefined the middle class so it encompassed everyone from the proprietor of a corner grocery to the president of the United States (all standing in alliance against the effete mob of latte-drinking, Volvo-driving Eastern seaboard snobs); invented a cultural divide that masks the economic divide between the haves and have-nots; narrowed Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms into the freedom of corporations to do what they like; drove a wedge between "patriotic" and "liberal," so that one cannot be said to be both; and, in general, "radically reconfigured the political landscape" in ways that even liberals themselves accede to because the right's language is now the default language for everyone.

On the way to proposing a counterstrategy (it never really arrives), Nunberg pauses to engage in a polite disagreement with his fellow linguist George Lakoff, who has provided a rival account of the conservative ascendancy. Lakoff argues that Republicans have articulated — first for themselves and then for others — a conceptual framework that allows them to unite apparently disparate issues in a single coherent worldview. "As Lakoff tells it," Nunberg writes, "the same principles that lead you to favor the flat tax would lead you to oppose abortion and favor abstinence-only programs." But there is a simpler answer to the question of what connections link conservative social and economic views, Nunberg says: "There aren't any." In place of a conceptual unity, there is only a rhetorical unity (Nunberg doesn't use the word, but the entire history of rhetoric from Quintilian to Kenneth Burke stands behind him), a "hodgepodge of conflicting metaphors, symbols and rules of thumb . . . self-interest and moral principles in different proportions," all woven together not in a philosophically consistent framework but in a narrative "that creates an illusion of coherence."

Once again, the Republicans have such a narrative — "declining patriotism and moral standards, the out-of-touch media and the self-righteous liberal elite . . . minorities demanding special privileges . . . disrespect for religious faith, a swollen government" — but "Democrats and liberals have not offered compelling narratives that could compete" with it. Eighty pages later he is still saying the same thing. "The Democrats need a compelling narrative of their own." No doubt, but it is a need this book does not supply. What it does supply is the kind of debating point Nunberg correctly dismisses as ineffective. Democrats, he says, should shore up their position on religion not by arguing for secularism but by explaining that secular values protect freedom of religion by not allowing a particular sect to occupy the entire religious space. That's not a bad argument, and it's a familiar one in judicial debates about the First Amendment's religious clause, but it won't fly in the political arena, if only because, as Nunberg says of a feeble Democratic slogan, "you have to do a little mental stutter step" to understand it.

Nor will you get much political mileage by pointing out, as Nunberg does, that conservative pundits sometimes say journalists are inevitably subjective (when they complain that most mainstream reporters are liberals) while at other times they ridicule postmodernists and left-wing academics who question objectivity and absolute truth. Again, the observation is accurate, but it does no useful polemical work. Instead, it pays still another compliment to the ability of conservatives to play both sides of the discursive street whenever it is to their advantage.

So a book that promises to teach liberals how to defeat the political right ends up being a paean to its resourcefulness. Cheerleading may be the intention, but resignation, bordering on despair, is finally the effect. The message seems to be, these guys are just too good; there must be something we can do. But all Nunberg can think to do is claim for the left an advantage that is irrelevant to his book's project: "Liberals have a linguistic advantage of their own, in the form of truth." That is to say (and he says it), the right's success is built on a structure of "distortions." "We" are truth tellers; "they" are political liars.

This notion is particularly odd given an earlier section of the book in which Nunberg does a nice critical number on what is surely the most overrated essay in the modern canon, George Orwell's turgid, self-righteous and philosophically hopeless "Politics and the English Language." Commenting on Orwell's distinction between words politically inflected and words that plainly name things, Nunberg points out that plain language is as political as any other and will probably be all the more effective because it "seems to correspond to concrete perception." The point, as he has been saying all along, is not to strip all of the political overlay from your language but to make the language that carries your political message the lingua franca of the public sphere.

This is not to disdain the truth; in the final analysis the question of what is true and false is paramount. But Nunberg isn't offering a final analysis here, only a rhetorical and political analysis. His claim that he is allied with the truth against the forces of conservative darkness may be endearing, but it is utterly unhelpful.

From the Times Book Review.

Part of the tragedy of the triumph of the radical Right, the crypto-fascists, is that they are generally wrong about everything past a few very basic points. That's why Iraq has been a screw-up in every way possible for one example.

It's more tragic because the majority of the people really agree with the crypto-fascists. The American-haters running our country have persuaded the people to vote for stuff antithetical to them by the use of words, by selling gold-plated $#!t.

Which is the ultimate lameness and irrelevance of the Dems: They don't know how to speak to the people and they are learning how to do it or the need to do it. No way can they win except in fluke circumstances where the Republicans lose the races for themselves.

Go here and do what you're supposed to do.

That's a joke. His administration was, to the extent it wasn't a lie, a joke.

I despise him too: "Thank God George W. Bush is President!"

What a lying, pandering piece of scum.

So it joys me that a book's coming out soon doing a slice + dice on him.

Here's the full review/preview (and yes, it will be interesting to see how Big Media, particularly the Times, handle it):

Preview of Upcoming Book That Roasts Rudy Giuliani -- Over 9/11

By Kirkus Reviews

Published: July 13, 2006 10:20 AM ET
NEW YORK A long-awaited re-appraisal of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's much-hailed actions surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be published in September to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy. It's called "The Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," written by Wayne Barrett, the longtime Village Voice writer and author of a biography of the former mayor, and Dan Collins, a senior producer for CBSNews.com. The publisher is HarperCollins.

"When he assured New York that things would come out all right, he was blessedly believable." That was on 9/11. Things haven't been as good for Rudy Giuliani since. And this book won't make it any better.

Compared to the bewildered George W. Bush, Giuliani projected confidence, calm and leadership in the terrible hours after the Twin Towers fell. That was all to the good. However, Barrett and Collins assert, Giuliani's subsequent claims that he had expected and had been preparing for a terrorist attack since taking office do not match the facts, which the authors explore in abundant (and just this side of numbing) detail.

Giuliani, for instance, detailed an Office of Emergency Management, but then located its headquarters inside what had long been identified as a prime target—the World Trade Center. It was, the authors write, "the only bunker ever built in the clouds."

The heads of various crisis-management-and-response units were political appointees, most in way above their heads. Giuliani and his subordinates were never able to coordinate communications among various fire, police, dispatch, public-health and other agencies; had they been successful, there's a good chance, the authors maintain, that the civilians who were told to stay in place inside the burning towers would have been evacuated, as the fire chiefs had ordered.

The authors' account verges on indictment when they explore why the firefighters' handy-talkies did not work, a congeries of causes ranging from the technological to the political. Suffice it to say that the Giuliani City Hall seems to have been no stranger to sweetheart deals and patronage, so that the employee in charge of emergency broadband communications had a sister who worked as a lobbyist for the phone provider who just happened to win the lucrative contract. That employee later committed suicide.

Now a millionaire, Giuliani may not have been directly responsible for all those woes, but they happened on his watch. This careful condemnation will raise eyebrows.

Greenwald:

The media's reports on this travesty illustrate, yet again, that the single greatest problem our country faces -- the principal reason the Bush administration has been able to get away with the abuses it has perpetrated -- is because our national media is indescribably lazy, inept, dysfunctional and just plain stupid, for reasons discussed in this comment from Jao and my response.

The reporters who write on these matters literally don't understand the issues they are reporting, even though the issues are not all that complicated. Notwithstanding the fact that this bill expressly removes all limits on the President's eavesdropping powers -- and returns the state of the law regarding presidential eavesdropping to the pre-FISA era, when there were no limits on presidential eavesdropping of any kind -- Charles Babington and Peter Baker told their readers in The Washington Post -- in an article hilariously entitled: "Bush Compromises On Spying Program" -- that "the deal represented a clear retreat by Bush" and that "the accord is a reversal of Bush's position that he would not submit his program to court review."

Anyone with a basic understanding of what FISA was and of the conflicts in play could read the Specter bill and see that the last thing it does is entail "compromises" on the part of the White House. Nobody who knows how to read could read that bill and think that. At this point, I believe they don't even read the bill. It's hard to see how they could read the bill and then write that article. Instead, it seems that they just call their standard sources on each side, go with the White House-Specter assessment that this is some grand "compromise" on the ground that it is a joint view of both warring sides, and then throw in a cursory ACLU quote somewhere at the end just to be able to say that they included some opposing views. But the reporters who are writing about this - and I mean the ones writing in the pages of our country's most important newspapers - don't actually have any idea what they're talking about.

Babington is the same reporter who falsely told his readers on the front page of the Post in March that the Republican "compromise" bill from the Senate Intelligence Committee (offered in lieu of an actual investigation into the NSA program) entailed substantial Congressional oversight of the program, even though a quick reading of the actual bill would have revealed that it entailed no such oversight. Representatives from Sen. DeWine and Snowe's office apparently told him what great oversight their bill provided and so he printed as fact what he was told.

After bloggers pointed out this error, the Post, several days later, was forced to issue a correction (appended to the top of the original article). But the same thing that happened there is happening here - Republican Senators and White House representatives with a vested interest in how the story gets reported characterize the bill in a certain way, and then lazy, uninformed reporters like Babington uncritically regurgitate that version as fact in the newspaper.

As Jao observed in his comment, the damage here is that it becomes conventional wisdom that this bill is now some sort of "compromise" on the part of the White House, such that beltway journalists and other types will simply assume that it's some sort of moderate, middle-of-the-road result which only extremists and obstructionists would oppose. The reality, of course, is the opposite: this bill bolsters the President's theories of unlimited executive power beyond Dick Cheney's wildest dreams. But the media, as is so often the case, fails in its duty to inform Americans as to what the Government is actually doing, which then prevents anything from actually being done about it. For every instance of presidential abuse of power or profound policy failure over the last five years, that dynamic is a major cause.

While an arguement can easiy be made that this administration has committed any number of treasdonous acts, the Big Media aren't just enablers but their enabling of the destroyers and haters of democracy and of this country is treasonous as well.

Except now they learned their lesson; it's going to be done in secret. Like in any other oppressive state. (We're now in a post-freedom pseudo-democracy. Hey; maybe all the bad whether is caused by the founding fathers spinning in their graves!)

Don't believe Social Security phase-out is coming down the pike again next year?

This from a press release just out from from Finance Committee ranking member, Sen. Max Baucus ...

"U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, today blasted the President’s renewal of a plan to privatize Social Security and slash benefits for millions of Americans. The Mid-Session Budget Review released by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) today included a proposal that would spend $721 billion – nearly $10 billion more than originally planned in the President’s original Fiscal Year 2007 budget – to turn Social Security into a system of private accounts with lower guaranteed benefits to Americans. The President’s proposal to privatize Social Security includes significant cuts in guaranteed benefits for the vast majority of Social Security recipients through the indexing of initial benefits to prices, rather than wages.

"This is only one of several behind the scenes initiatives over the last few weeks aimed at laying the groundwork for phasing out Social Security next year. Is Social Security phase-out a good issue for Democrats in the mid-term elections? Yep, absolutely. But the president and his allies on the Hill really are getting ready to do phase out the program next year."

Don't pretend you weren't told in advance.

The press is ignoring it. And a lot of Dems across the country are too.

And as long as they do, candidates around the country can refuse to say where they stand on the issue until after election day. Tom Kean, Jr. in New Jersey is just one example.

But there's actually something you can do. Right now. Find out where the candidates in your state and district stand on the issue. Are they in favor of preserving Social Security or will they vote for phasing it out and replacing it with private accounts? Simple question. And you can get an answer.

-- Josh Marshall

The post with links is here.

But poor Black people moreso:

In advance of its August publication date, GQ has released a big piece on Ralph Reed today, with one gem in particular: a plan hatched by Reed and Jack Abramoff which sounds suspiciously like "mortgaging old black people," as a former Reed associate told the magazine.

In July of 2003, Abramoff and Reed considered launching something called the Black Churches Insurance Program.

We know how this scheme would have gone, because Abramoff pitched something similar to a cash-strapped Texas tribe, the Tigua. Basically, since the tribe couldn't pay Abramoff, he offered to arrange "a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older." When those elders died, the death benefits would have gone to Abramoff through one of his non-profits. The Tigua didn't take Abramoff up on the offer, but it was too good of an idea to let go.

The whole ugly story is here.

These people are sick and should be put down like dogs. Or at least neutralized.

Journalistic courage should include the refusal to publish in a newspaper or carry on a TV or radio news show any statements made by the President or any other government official that are designed solely as a public relations tool, offering no new or valuable information to the public.

No $#!t.

The whole pointing-out-the-obvious piece is here.

In fairness, it's a posting at one of mainstream journalism's most prestigious organization sites, so even if obvious that the piece is posted is not insignificant.

Just in case one thought the right wing only recently discovered the virtues of blatant lying and endless repetition of proven lies:

Wrong!

Look here.

Besides bringing freedom and democracy and thereby enabling terrorists:

July 15, 2006
Some Questions Regarding Israel's Objectives: Is Israel Trying to Curb America's Deal-Making in Middle East?

When I visited Israel in March, one of the more interesting dinner discussions I had was with former Mossad Director Danny Yatom, now a Labor Party member of the Knesset.

As head of the Mossad, Yatom gave orders to have the head of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, assassinated by poison. The effort was botched, and the failed attempt became globally embarrassing news for Yatom and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the fact remains despite this one failed case that Israel has been extremely skillful at knocking off serious enemies in covert, lethal, under the radar screen ways.

Why is Israel pounding most of Lebanon rather than just the South and rather than pinpointing its attack against Hezbollah assets? Why the dramatic bombing of explosive fuel centers? The attacks both in Gaza and in Beirut seem made for Fox News, CNN and the next Schwarzenegger movie.

I think that there is little doubt that a significant part of the explanation can be attributed to the fact that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his more liberal partner in this effort, Amir Peretz -- now Defense Minister -- are not former field command generals and want to demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of Israel's national security -- and that they won't be timid in using Israel's military capabilities.

But that doesn't explain it all. The Israeli response to the Hezbollah incursion is exactly what Hezbollah wanted. Adversaries rarely give each other the behaviors the other actually desires unless there are other objectives involved.

My view is that three broad threats were evolving for Israel from the American side of the equation. One one front, the U.S. will be attempting to settle some kind of new equilibrium in Iraq with fewer U.S. forces and some face-saving partial withdrawal. To accomplish this and maintain any legitimacy in the eyes of important nations in the region -- particularly among close U.S. partners among the Gulf Cooperation Council states -- America "might have" tried to do some things that constituted a broad new bargain with the Arab Middle East. The U.S. had even previously flirted, along with the Brits, in trying to get Syria on a Libya like track and out of the international dog house.

There was also pressure building to push Hamas -- or at least the "governing wing" of it -- towards a posture that would move dramatically closer to a recognition of Israel. Abbas was becoming increasingly entrepreneurial in creating opportunities for the constructive players in Hamas to squirm towards eventual negotiations with Israel that could possibly be packaged in terms of "final status negotiations" on the borders and terms of a new Palestinian state. George W. Bush is the first President to actually call the Palestine territories "Palestine" and may have eventually come around on trying to pump up Abbas's legitimacy as the father of a new and different state. I am doubtful of this scenario -- but some in Israel had serious concerns about this unfolding.

Lastly, despite lots of tit-for-tat tensions and enormous mistrust, Iran and the U.S. were tilting towards a deal to negotiate about Iran's nuclear pretensions and other goals.

Some in Israel viewed all three of these potential policy courses for the U.S. -- a broad deal with the Arab Middle East, a new push on final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and a deal to actually negotiate directly with Iran -- as negative for Israel.

The flamboyant, over the top reactions to attacks on Israel's military check points and the abduction of soldiers -- which I agree Israel must respond to -- seems to be part establishing "bona fides" by Olmert, but far more important, REMOVING from the table important policy options that the U.S. might have pursued.

Israel is constraining American foreign policy in amazing and troubling ways by its actions. And a former senior CIA official and another senior Marine who are well-versed in both Israeli and broad Middle East affairs, agreed that serious strategists in Israel are more concerned about America tilting towards new bargains in the region than they are either about the challenge from Hamas or Hezbollah or showing that Olmert knows how to pull the trigger.

The rest is here.

Don't have the time to redo the links (long boring story having to do with committing to a format).

But if and when I bother to, this is as important a link as any:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/grandolddocket.php

Randy Forsyth, Capitalist Tool (R) (so to speak), at barrons.com:

***
President Bush trumpeted Tuesday that this year's federal budget deficit is projected to total only $296 billion, $127 billion less than the previous forecast from the Office of Management and Budget. Next year's shortfall is estimated to total $339 billion, down from the previous forecast of $354 billion.

David Stockman, the OMB head in the first Reagan Administration, was, in his words, "taken to the woodshed" for forecasting $200 billion deficits "as far as the eye can see." Allowing for inflation over the two decades, $200 billion in red ink then is about the same as $300 billion now. But in it's not just the value of the dollar that's been debased over time; so have our standards.

***
The way to judge a nation's solvency is not to measure the cash inflow and outflow in any one year, as the government does it, but to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens on current and future generations, he writes. Based on that criterion and the work of Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters, the current U.S. fiscal gap is $65.9 trillion! That's trillion with a "t" and Kotlikoff's exclamation point.

To put that in perspective, $65.9 trillion is more than five times gross domestic product and almost twice the size of national wealth.

The rest of the gore is here.

Actually, the situation is even worse than that....

"Israel has a right to defend herself. Every nation must defend...against terrorist attacks and the killing of innocent life."

-- President Bush

-- as quoted in Barron's.

But let's parse this....

In regard to Hamas and the Palestinians: a soldier is kidnapped and justifiable defensive retaliation is killing a number of innocents.

Hezbollah is more complex but even if excessive force is warranted, destroying Beirut is, well, difficult to justify.

But Our Leader does justify it.

Which now exacerbates the situation and even makes a regional problem our problem.

First, it justifies the violence. If Israel's overreaction is justified, then overreaction to Israeli overreaction sureley must be justified as well.

Second, it gives the Muslim and Arabic disaffected more reason to hate the West. Not a good thing.

It also and further justifies Iran's work to generate nuclear arms as well as, to a slightly lesser degree, Pakistani assistance towards that goal.

Our leaders are really, really doing a great job in the Middle East.

Yes, thank God George W. Bush is president. We and the world are far safer with him in charge.

As I was saying:

This dick gets appointed Speaker of the House as a result of scandal. So what does he do, under the vigilant (not) eyes of Big Media and the DC Courtiers?

Why, he ups the ante.

Of course.

And the Times has it, on the front albeit a Saturday.

Now if only Keller realizes that the SWIFT operation was a) no secret and b) initially publicized by proud Republicans....

Two terrific stories, both on the front page, reminiscent of the days of old.

First, contrary to a slightly misleading headline, public schools on average, are doing as well as private schools, actually generally better. So much for private and charter schools. (Also left out of the print version, I believe, is that the actual report is here.)

Second... ah, it's worth a post of its own....

No need for no stinkin' links, it's all over everything, but isn't it great how we are successfully spreading democracy through the Middle East bringing with it peace? Hezbollah empowered in Lebanon, Hamas running the Palestinian entity, Iraq on the slow road to break-up with the Shia state becoming a satellite of peace-loving pro-Western near-nuclear-powered Iran. (And of course, the Likud, the party of former terrorists and their acolytes, have been in near-continuous power in Israel for almost thirty years.)

This is success; the Dems couldn't have done this.

All hail our wonderful leaders!

Sigh.... This is better put that I could do without more time than I have but it lays it all out nice neatly. Amazing how Big Media treated it with a straight face, though. From the War Room:

The White House has apparently reached a deal with Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter over the president's warrantless-spying program. Under the deal, the president will be required to submit the program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for legal review. At least that's how Specter sees it. "If the bill is not changed, the president will submit the Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," the Associated Press quotes Specter as saying. "That is the president's commitment." The White House sees it differently. Again, from the AP: "An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement."

Not that the language matters, of course. Assuming for a moment that the deal actually requires Bush to submit the program to the FISA court -- and assuming that Specter's legislation actually makes it through Congress -- Bush could use one of his signing statements to write the legal review requirement right out of the bill.

But even if Congress does require legal review, and even if Bush doesn't eliminate it with a stroke of his pen, isn't this all a little amazing? The president gets caught running a spying program that violates federal law, about which he was legally required to brief Congress but didn't, and the reaction from the tough-talking Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is a deal that will, as the New York Times explains, reaffirm the president's "constitutional authority" to spy on foreign powers and their agents; give the administration more authority to use "emergency" wiretaps with retroactive court approval as well as other surveillance tools; and deny jurisdiction to anyone but the FISA court to hear challenges to the warrantless wiretap program.

This is what the Times' David Sanger calls a "tactical retreat" for the White House. It sounds more like a gold-plated rubber stamp to us -- accommodation and after-the-fact approval where serious oversight would seem to be required. It's an "interesting bargain," says Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "[The president is] saying, 'If you do every single thing I tell you to do, I'll do what I should have done anyway.'"

Well, not exactly. What the president is actually saying is, "If you do every single thing I tell you to do, I might do what I should have done anyway." We don't know when "checks and balances" became an "option" for the executive branch to consider -- actually, we do -- but it sure is good work if you can get it.

The rest of it here. And an alleged breakdown of how bogus the deal is is here.

The sad, pathetic story starts here and there's more here.

If you still labor under the fantasy that the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal divulged "classified information" that put U.S. lives at risk or hampered our ability to track terrorist financial assets, you are willfully ignorant or have been living in a sensory isolation tank.

The rest of the story, chapter and verse, is here.

Updated: The Republican Congress spilled the beans! For real!! OK, so let's bust Keller, Pinch and everyone at the Times for the SWIFT story after we impeach all the 'publican in Congress -- the real traitors!!

Word. We're helping them find recruits, indoctrinate them and giving them the opportunity to engage in some basic training. The story and documentation are here.

From the HuffPo:

Robert J. Elisberg: '50 easy questions to ask any Republican'
Date: Wednesday, July 12 @ 09:48:31 EDT
Topic: Republicans

Robert J. Elisberg, The Huffington Post

Anyone can ask tough, intricate, confrontational questions. But all that ever does is start an argument, and it gets people nowhere. On the other hand, these are...well, easy. These are friendly questions. These are questions that allow another person to actually explain their thoughts, and explain fully. And to do so in as comfortable, as simple a way as possible.

Without feeling attacked. Without feeling pressure. Without feeling no one cares what they have to say. Friendly. Easy.

Print them out, carry them around in your pocket, and the next time someone begins quoting from a Republican talking points memo, take the list out and ask.

1. What are the Top Seven best things that the Bush Administration has done?

2. Is the Iraq War is going well?

3. After three years thus far, when do you think Iraq might be able to "stand up" so that America can "stand down"?

4. For his part in the event, how would you rate the job the President did protecting New Orleans from devastation?

5. How do you think the rebuilding of New Orleans is going?

6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America's energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?

7. Do you believe in the President's call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?

8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?

9. Why do you think they haven't been able to find anyone who can verify that George Bush ever showed up for National Guard duty in Alabama?

10. Would you want Donald Rumsfeld to plan your daughter's wedding?

11. Are you aware that no government in the history of civilization, other than the Bush Administration, has lowered taxes during a war?

12. Are you married?

13. Do you personally feel threatened by gay marriage?

14. Since getting elected, do you think the President has been more a uniter or a divider?

15. How do you explain the President's approval rating going from a high of 90% to the current mid-30%?

16. Do you like the government collecting personal data on you without a warrant?

17. How much money do you have in your bank account, stocks and investments?

18. What's your partner's favorite sex position?

19. If you have nothing to hide, why aren't you answering?

20. Should we build a wall along the Mexican border?

21. Why isn't anyone building a wall along the Canadian border?

22. Does that terrorist gang arrested in Canada count as a threat?

23. If you shot someone in the face while drinking, how fast would the police show up to arrest you?

24. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, would the guests still be there?

25. Even if no laws are broken, do you think it's okay to reveal the name of a covert agent?

26. During your lifetime, approximately how often have you changed your mind?

27. Why shouldn't people dismiss you as a flip-flopper?

28. Where do you think the Weapons of Mass Destruction might be?

29. Where do you think Osama bin Laden might be?

30. Is it fiscally responsible to cut taxes, increase spending and create a $9 trillion federal debt?

31. Are you glad liberals passed such programs as Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, women's suffrage, federal deposit insurance, unemployment compensation, rural electrification, child labor laws, minimum wages and the 40-hour work week?

32. What are the Top Ten best things that conservatives have given to America?

33. If you were on life support, would you want a doctor you'd never met making a diagnosis about you via remote television?

34. Do you think man-made greenhouse gases have anything at all to do with depleting the ozone layer?

35. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, and guests were still there, how many factions would they now be split into?

36. How good is it that the terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed?

37. Are you aware that in 2002 the Pentagon knew where al-Zarqawi was and presented three separate plans to kill him, but the Administration refused to act each time?

38. Is George W. Bush the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?

39. When he started talking about being a Born Again Christian, would you want to stay or leave?

40. Is Ray Romano the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?

41. Would you want him to be President?

42. Does the Administration have an environmental policy that benefits the environment?

43. Since George Bush campaigned for President strongly against nation building, in what ways are our actions in Iraq not nation building?

44. What's the maximum amount of time you'd want to spend alone with Dick Cheney?

45. After dismissing Saddam Hussein's old Iraqi army, was it a good idea to let them keep their rifles?

46. Would a policy that allows torture be something that makes you proud as an American?

47. Has the Mission been Accomplished?

48. Do you feel comforted that Dick Cheney is a heartbeat away from being President?

49. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding, and guests started fighting and were killed, would you expect to be allowed to view the caskets when they were returned home?

50. How glad do you think George Bush is that he's no longer active in the National Guard?

Maybe I'll send them to my congressperson....

Then again, these guys are, on a certain level, pretty stupid, so maybe we can reduce it two questions:

1. Why are you wrong on everything? Do you hate America that much?

2. Why the constant lying? Are you incapable of ever telling the truth or did your parents just do a really lousy job raising you?

Of course not, but has everything come out that will ever come out?

First, the crypto-official version:

Novak: My role in Plame leak probe
July 12, 2006
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after 2-1/2 years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret.

I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.

For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew -- independent of me -- the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003. A federal investigation was triggered when I reported that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was employed by the CIA and helped initiate his 2002 mission to Niger. That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Some journalists have badgered me to disclose my role in the case, even demanding I reveal my sources -- identified in the column as two senior Bush administration officials and an unspecified CIA source. I have promised to discuss my role in the investigation when permitted by the prosecution, and I do so now.

The news broke Sept. 26, 2003, that the Justice Department was investigating the CIA leak case. I contacted my longtime attorney, Lester Hyman, who brought his partner at Swidler Berlin, James Hamilton, into the case. Hamilton urged me not to comment publicly on the case, and I have followed that advice for the most part.

The FBI soon asked to interview me, prompting my first major decision. My attorneys advised me that I had no certain constitutional basis to refuse cooperation if subpoenaed by a grand jury. To do so would make me subject to imprisonment and inevitably result in court decisions that would diminish press freedom, all at heavy personal legal costs.

Sources signed waivers

I was interrogated at the Swidler Berlin offices on Oct. 7, 2003, by an FBI inspector and two agents. I had not identified my sources to my attorneys, and I told them I would not reveal them to the FBI. I did disclose how Valerie Wilson's role was reported to me, but the FBI did not press me to disclose my sources.

On Dec. 30, 2003, the Justice Department named Fitzgerald as special prosecutor. An appointment was made for Fitzgerald to interview me at Swidler Berlin on Jan. 14, 2004. The problem facing me was that the special prosecutor had obtained signed waivers from every official who might have given me information about Wilson's wife.

That created a dilemma. I did not believe blanket waivers in any way relieved me of my journalistic responsibility to protect a source. Hamilton told me that I was sure to lose a case in the courts at great expense. Nevertheless, I still felt I could not reveal their names.

However, on Jan. 12, two days before my meeting with Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor informed Hamilton that he would be bringing to the Swidler Berlin offices only two waivers. One was by my principal source in the Valerie Wilson column, a source whose name has not yet been revealed. The other was by presidential adviser Karl Rove, whom I interpret as confirming my primary source's information. In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources.

When Fitzgerald arrived, he had a third waiver in hand -- from Bill Harlow, the CIA public information officer who was my CIA source for the column confirming Mrs. Wilson's identity. I answered questions using the names of Rove, Harlow and my primary source.

Testified before grand jury

I had a second session with Fitzgerald at Swidler Berlin on Feb. 5, 2004, after which I was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. I testified there at the U.S. courthouse in Washington on Feb. 25.

In these four appearances with federal authorities, I declined to answer when the questioning touched on matters beyond the CIA leak case. Neither the FBI nor the special prosecutor pressed me.

Primary source not revealed

I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection. I have revealed Harlow's name because he has publicly disclosed his version of our conversation, which also differs from my recollection. My primary source has not come forward to identify himself.

When I testified before the grand jury, I was permitted to read a statement that I had written expressing my discomfort at disclosing confidential conversations with news sources. It should be remembered that the special prosecutor knew their identities and did not learn them from me.

In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.

Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation.

I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in Who's Who in America.

I considered his wife's role in initiating Wilson's mission, later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be a previously undisclosed part of an important news story. I reported it on that basis.

And this spin from Salon's War Room:

Novak: Fitzgerald knew, but I'm still not saying

Within two weeks of beginning his investigation into the CIA leak case, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently knew the identity of the Bush administration official who outed Valerie Plame.

The rest of us? We're still waiting.

In a long-promised "tell all" column that tells substantially less than all, Robert Novak says that Fitzgerald knew the names of the sources for his Plame column before Novak confirmed them for him on Jan. 14, 2004. Two days before their meeting -- and just two weeks after he was named special prosecutor -- Fitzgerald told Novak's lawyer that he'd be bringing two waivers with him. "One was by my principal source in the Valerie Wilson column, a source whose name has not yet been revealed," Novak writes. "The other was by presidential adviser Karl Rove, whom I interpret as confirming my primary source's information. In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources."

So who was the first source? In a column in October 2003, Novak described the source as a "senior administration official" who was "no partisan gunslinger." Novak still won't say who the official was, and he hasn't added much to his previous description. The source is clearly a male -- Novak refers to him in his new column as a "he" -- and Novak tells the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that he's "not a political operative."

Is the source still in legal jeopardy, if he ever was? From Novak's perspective, the answer to that question seems to be no. Novak says that his source has "not come forward to identify himself." We'll take that to mean that the source hasn't come forward in public, not necessarily that the source hasn't testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury. But either way, Novak says he feels free to discuss his role in the case publicly because Fitzgerald has told his lawyers that the investigation "concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded." If Fitzgerald were still thinking about the possibility of charges against Novak's original source, it's probably safe to assume that he wouldn't have delivered such a message to Novak now.

There's at least one more question to answer here: Why has Novak's account of the administration's motivations shifted over the past three years? In July 2003, Novak told Newsday that his sources came to him with Plame's identity. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Now Novak tells Kurtz that he doesn't think leaking Plame's identity was "part of a plan to discredit anybody," and he writes in his column that his still-secret source told him after the fact, through an intermediary, that his disclosure of Plame's identity had been "inadvertent." As for the "they gave me the name" part? Novak has changed his story on that, too. Now he says that the administration officials who told him who Plame was didn't use her name; he got that, he says, from Joseph Wilson's "Who's Who" entry.

-- Tim Grieve

Of course, the whos is far less important than the significance of White House law-breaking and the ffect of a political snit on the intel community (to coin a phrase). And, of course, the irony: the rightist national security administration telling covert agents that their own gummint will be happy to expose and endanger them if political partisan circumstances require i.e politics trump security.

UPDATED: Or maybe not; here's how Novak is still full of crap.

Liars.

I know, I know -- what else is new? Just the scale, of course....

And it's kind of bipartisan, too (fair, balanced...).... Unless for these purposes one was to count Lieberman as a Republican. Look!

Of a lousy, hagiographic record.

A big wet puff piece of crazy man Ricky Santorum, starting off by his desire to be another Alphonse D'Amato and no reference to one distinction of possible significance. The Fonz actually lived in New York, Ricky only owns an empty house in the state. More rightist respect for law: owning an unlived in house is the same as residing.