I know it's de rigeur to laugh at David Broder, but his column yesterday may deserve some attentiion. Obama supporters, I think you're about to be had.
The column which appeared in yesterday's Tallahassee Democrat (those of you who live in a real city may have seen this days ago--apologies if I'm rehashing old news) is titled
Who can save the Democratic Party? I topic which I'm sure gives Dave many sleepless nights; without the DP, who could he concern troll?
The column is a "frank" interview with an unnamed Clinton staffer.
Anybody else see the irony? When I opened up Daily Kos, a few minutes ago, the lead story was that excellent expose by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse on the horrors of mountaintop removal strip mining.
And just above that story was the banner of these wonderful sponsors:
Is it just me or are other Kossacks getting mass emails from Harry Reid asking us to get our knickers in a wad over SCHIP? I just got an email called 13 votes, asking me to click on this link, sign this petition, give, give, GIVE
NYPopulist's attempted debunking of reasons why Gore shouldn't run left out a couple of rather important negatives.
(5) Gore's Nobel won't make much difference to anyone not already convinced that we have a climate problem. As Grist succinctly put it:
There's no reason to think that winning the prize would have any positive effect on Gore's chances if he did run. Does the American public care about the Nobel, a prize awarded by a bunch of ... foreigners? Wouldn't winning a "peace" prize brand Gore as weak on national security? Doesn't it show that he thinks he's better than us? Who would want to get a beer with a Nobel Peace Prize winner? Wait, did he just sigh?
If he entered the race, Gore would run headlong into the same dim-bulb, theatrics-obsessed political press that did him so much harm in the 2000 race.
On day (4, is it?) the media pile-on continues with a screed from the mercifully little known Kathleen Parker (who never met a chestful of medals she didn't just ADORE) archly intimating how ads from MoveOn advances Osama's Agenda. But maybe the pendulum's swinging back, with help from here and here. The Bush aparatchniks initially tried to slime MoveOn by trying to convince everyone that "betrayal" is identical to treason, so if someone betrays, you're saying ipso facto that that someone is a traitor. Now, even the wingjobs (like Parker) don't really say that's what MoveOn is really saying (while doing their best to imply that's exactly what is really being said).
In the Beltway, parsing seems to have become the number one leisure activity.
What do you do when you're a bloodthirsty tyrant, hated by everyone, who has finally been cornered and now faces a public accounting for your many crimes?
This morning on the Diane Rehm show, the discussion was the Foley Flap and how it would affect the Grand Ole Preverts. One o the panelists said that since the Foley scandal broke the number of House races too-close-to-call has gone up dramatically (he had the acutal number which I forget).
One endanged Repub he specifically mentioned was Pombo.
That's the best news I've heard yet in this election cycle.
Pombo's evil deeds as a member of the House leadership are too well-known to re-hash here, but long before he attained his present powers, he has been a Nature-hating pimple on the Body Politic. For too long.
We all agree that the current debate, even without the McCain McCave-in, is a monstrous blight on our national honor, not to speak of image, as a moral people. And many of us have posted diaries fantasizing on bringing the various perpetrators to justice---somehow. However, given the political realities in this country, a realistic prediction would have to be that none of the authors of the present evil will ever suffer even a mild inconvenience.
However, history has a sense of humor when it comes to "inevitable" events, or status quos. Below is a scenario on how the Bush criminals could find themselve s in very hot water. Notes to recent events are interpolated.
Today was an interesting day. It began when I read Alexander Cockburn's smackdown of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. It ended listening to an NPR story about how majorities of Muslims in many countries believe that Arabs and Osama had nothing to do with 9/11. The research was done by the Pew Global Attitudes project. The story quotes rates of 46% (France) and 41%(Pakistan) with majorities of Muslims in Britain, Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia belief that 9/11 was a plot to start a war agains Islam. The highest percentage I heard quoted was 53% for Jordan. NPR evidently intended to show this as a "disturbing trend" in the Muslim world.
But not long ago I also heard a poll that found that 65% of Americans still believe that Saddam was behing 9/11. Moral:
It's still too early to tell how "creditable" the latest "creditable threat" is. I recall the last one, also from England, where there was a flurry of arrests and much fanfare. In the weeks following it turned out that the 'dire threat" was a bunch of losers shooting off their mouths on the Internet.
But however real or surreal Operation Liquid Sky turns out, it couldn't have come at a better time for the schemers in the Bush "Reichshause". Yesterday at this time NPR was revealing a plot whereby we would excuse ourselves from ALL the provisiions of the Geneva Conventions: US soldiers would be immune to all war crimes legalities, and US prisoners would get absolutely no legal protections against war criminal acts.
You can find the story here
At least what there was of it until something more "urgent" came up.
Another US failure we can all cheer is the collapse of the 'Doha Round" of trade talks yesterday. The immediate reason was that the US and the EU didn't want to give up their agricultural subsidies. This is being spun in parts of the MSM as the 'greed of pampered US farmers keeping the Third World in poverty'. There might be a microscopic grain of truth in that, but had the talks been successful the real effect would be to make the entire world safe for ADM and Cargill. A successful agreement would be shoved down everyone's throat, NAFTA style, with the dismal side effects showing up later.
As a veteran of of the 2000 Tallahassee Circus, I had a front-row seat when the Bushie Brownshirts showed up en masse to do their bit for His Fraudulency.
Much as I hate to concede anything to that unsavory mob, they seem to have been prescient on one point: their obnoxious chants and banners about "Sore Loserman" As I watch the Connecticut race unfolding, Lieberman's campaign seems determined to prove that 2000 slogan right.
Lieberman and his staff remind me of "El Loco" in Rocio Duran's novel about a South American dictator to whom nothing mattered but keeping his grasp on the Power of Power.
Ever since the nomination of General Hayden and his world of wholesale spying on us, I've had the strangest feeling I've seen him, or someone very like him before.
One really hilarious excuse from the NkvdSA about sweeping up all our phone call records is the one that it keeps us safe from the terrorists. In fact there's better than even odds that they might be delivering our personal habits directly to terrorst groups, like a Domino's Pizza.
(more below)
And Santorum isn't the only one. If Roe v. Wade is overturned one consequence that is absolutely guaranteed will be that crime levels, which have been in decline since the 1990's, will start going back up. And Santorum and his fellow "right-to-lifers" will be entirely responsible.
As I write this the Egregious Nancy Grace is trotting out her stable of "experts" trying to make wingnut hay out of Jill Carroll. Carroll's stating that she was not grossly mistreated is obvious evidence that she's identifying with her kidnappers, right? And what's with that thing on her head!
It must be pretty tough on the Bush worshippers when their propaganda poster kids keep refusing to stick to their scripts.
