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He doesn't live here anymore

- mark 5-31-2006 10:33 pm [link] [1 comment]

endless love


- bill 5-28-2006 6:19 pm [link] [add a comment]

looks like Sunshine Theatre is expecting some interest in al gores movie. too bad this isnt 2000, although the heathers in the mediacrisy would have mocked the treehugger without mercy. if gore somehow became president, it would be the most impressive second act since richard nixon rebounded from his loss in 1960.

An Inconvenient Truth (PG) 11:00, 11:30, 12:00, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 3:00, 3:30, 4:00, 5:05, 5:35, 6:05, 7:15, 7:45, 8:15, 9:30, 9:50, 10:30, 11:45, 12:05, 12:35


- dave 5-26-2006 11:56 pm [link] [add a comment]

ape man
- steve 5-26-2006 5:06 am [link] [2 comments]

in a nutshell :


The story on the Rove-Novak connection recalls what happened to Rove during Bush I's campaign in 1992. It turns out that Rove was fired from that campaign for leaking information to Novak to undermine another person working on the campaign. It was that one event that has led to the disaster known as W.

When Rove was fired from Bush Sr's campaign, he vowed to show him what a mistake he had made. He would take the president's alcoholic, coke snorting, business failure of a son, and make him president. He would show Poppy that it didn't matter who was the candidate, Rove could get him elected.

So Rove's first step was to get Bush elected governor of Texas. Way behind a popular incumbent in the polls just prior to election day, Bush somehow got elected. Maybe it was creative campaigning, who knows, but Ann Richards was out and the decider was in. End of phase I.

The next step was to create the image of a "compassionate conservative", which, we all know by now, was nothing but a phrase. There has been no compassion in the Bush Administration, and he has even abandoned conservative principles. This false image made Bush appealing to moderates who just wanted tax cuts.

To get Bush elected, Rove had to assemble the most amazing coalition of supporters and keep them happy. He knew his financial base would be the oil industry, so being from Texas that was a natural. Adding Cheney to the team was a stroke of genius.

Rove also needed the support of fundamentalist Christians, so he gave their leadership a starring role in defining social policy. The oil industry didn't care, their main concern was the supply of oil, at high prices. What would be great for the U.S. oil industry would be U.S. military bases surrounding a large oil field, or what Iraq looks like today. The oil industry would support bush if he would find a way to invade Iraq, which was the stated goal of his administration even before he took office.

To get support for invading a country that presented no threat to America, Rove needed political cover, and the neoconservatives provided that. They weren't all religious fanatics, and they weren't all oil whores. Alot of them actually believed invading a country of relgious fanatics, being run by a secular dictator, would actually embrace American democracy. But that didn't matter, the neocons gave the Bush administration the air of respectability, so that people wouldn't think they were just crazy (although that would eventually happen).

So there's the oil industry, the Christian right wing, and the neoconservatives who believe war can overcome religious fanaticism (not including their own fanaticism). There would still be alot of skeptics within the Reublican party. So Rove resorted to that old standby, tax cuts. Even with massive government spending, Republicans could be counted on to ignore their principles in exchange for tax cuts. Works every time.

Throw in manipulation of the news, friendly state republican voting officials, and not only does Rove get the alcoholic, drug addicted, business failure of a son to the White House (he didn't get him elected, but appointed is just as good), but he gets him re-installed for a second term, which is something Bush Sr. couldn't do without Rove on board.

So Rove really showed GHWB. And now we are all paying for his mistake of firing Rove. Thanks alot.
- kgofsb, 05.25.2006

- bill 5-26-2006 2:58 am [link] [add a comment]

The Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust is currently featuring a Stephen Colbert clip on the front page of their website in which Colbert "defends" Tom DeLay. QED. LOL.
- jim 5-25-2006 1:51 am [link] [3 comments]

"Every war becomes a proving ground for new tactics and new technologies. Battleships rose to prominence in World War I; tanks and bombers determined the course of World War II; Vietnam brought air power definitively into the Jet Age. The current conflict is no different. The Pentagon began this war believing its new, networked technologies would help make U.S. ground forces practically unstoppable in Iraq. Slow-moving, unwired armies like Saddam Hussein’s were the kind of foe network-centric warriors were designed to carve up quickly. During the invasion in March 2003, that proved to be largely the case—despite most of the soldiers not being wired up at all. It was enough that their commanders had systems like BFT, which let them march to Baghdad faster than anyone imagined possible, with half the troops it took to fight the Gulf War in 1991. But now, more than three years into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the current state of network-centric warfare reveals that frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear—gear that hasn’t come yet. “There is a connectivity gap,” states a recent Army War College report. “Information is not reaching the lowest levels.”"

- dave 5-21-2006 3:06 am [link] [add a comment]

hayden hearing on wnyc.

likely on cspan as well but The Washington Notes steve clemons is supposed to appear on wnyc.
- dave 5-18-2006 7:27 pm [link] [2 comments]

theres always a defense contract lurking behind any bush foreign policy initiative.

- dave 5-18-2006 7:20 pm [link] [1 comment]

Seems like most people don't trust Wayne Madsen. I don't know enough to judge, but it seems to me like he at least sometimes gets a scoop. Especially on insider DC stuff. Anyway, he says tomorrow is Fitzmas.
- jim 5-18-2006 6:56 pm [link] [3 comments]

I'm not saying I believe (or trust) her, but this is interesting:

...Judy Miller tells Rory O'Connor and William Scott Malone about the story she'll regret for the rest of her life -- the fact that an anonymous White House source told her in July 2001 that an NSA intelligence report predicted a large al Qaeda attack, possibly on the continental United States...
Or maybe she'll just say anything to get back into the spotlight.
- jim 5-18-2006 6:48 pm [link] [3 comments]

Ned Lamont commercials, the first featuring Kos.
- jim 5-18-2006 6:45 pm [link] [add a comment]

Tom "6 months" Friedman. LOL. (Did I get this from one of you? Sorry if it's a dupe.)
- jim 5-17-2006 7:11 pm [link] [7 comments]

Interesting Krugman NYRB reviews of Phillips' and Suskind's books on the Bush family.

- jim 5-17-2006 6:53 pm [link] [add a comment]

Comment of the Day -- on a thread about conservative battle wanking fatigue


Son, we live in a world that has blogs, and those blogs have to be guarded by men with computers. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Waring? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Reynolds and you curse the Keyboarders. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Reynolds’ existence, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that blog. You need me on that blog. We use words like “fisk,” “indeed,” “heh” … We use these words as the backbone to a life spent at home defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the endlessly self-important invective that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a laptop and start to post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

- mark 5-16-2006 6:36 pm [link] [1 comment]

Girl in the Bubble

- mark 5-16-2006 1:08 am [link] [add a comment]

Batiste
, WSJ page A1 (saturday edition)
- mark 5-15-2006 10:57 pm [link] [add a comment]

kos booksigning wednesday on the bowery.

- dave 5-15-2006 5:07 pm [link] [1 comment]

frogmarch time?

- steve 5-13-2006 7:09 am [link] [add a comment]

ponies too cheap to meter

- mark 5-12-2006 6:53 am [link] [add a comment]

"Sadly, No!’s responses to Mark Kleiman’s response to Atrios’ response and Digby’s response to Ana Marie Cox’s response to Stephen Colbert’s routine at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner went way over the line of civility."

- dave 5-10-2006 4:54 pm [link] [add a comment]

sometimes people get exactly what they deserve. right, michael kelly? this is what he had to say about a speech al gore gave in the time leading up to the war in iraq. the speech is excerpt in the link, and was dead on. if you recall, kelly was an eager embed who died in an accident in the desert.

Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts--bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was
contemptible.


- dave 5-10-2006 4:51 pm [link] [add a comment]

the new drum beat from the right is that the left is angry. it started with hil and now everyones getting called on it. its too easy. better angry than mad.

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated. --r.cohen
and so on.
The whole "angry left" myth is a copout, an escape-hatch for those who are confronted by fact and choose to respond by attacking the messenger rather than the message. It's a cowardly tactic that originated on the radical right (see Malkin and the "moonbats"); lately, we have seen its use on the rise in the traditional media. It is, indeed, a pathetic diversionary tactic. Instead of addressing the substance of the critique, those who use the easy-out "angry left" defense avoid addressing the true issue at hand.

- bill 5-10-2006 12:28 pm [link] [add a comment]

I'm sure everyone has seen this, but just for my own memory, here's a transcript of the Hayden interview where he demonstrates his complete misunderstanding of the 4th amendment. But at least he sounds like a smug prick, so he's got that going for him.

This guy is scary.
- jim 5-08-2006 7:03 pm [link] [5 comments]

Porter Goss resigned from the CIA! What are the odds he was at the one of the "hooker parties?" Great news!
- tom moody 5-05-2006 10:56 pm [link] [1 comment]

rope a dopeing rummy

noticed on huffpo but posted here
- bill 5-05-2006 9:00 pm [link] [add a comment]

"We Americans have never outgrown the narcissistic notion that the rest of the world wants (or should want) to emulate us. In Iraq, bringing democracy became the default excuse for our warmongers -- it would be perfectly plausible to call them "crusaders," if Osama bin Laden had not already appropriated the term -- once the Bush lies about Iraq's alleged nuclear, chemical, and biological threats and its support for al Qaeda melted away. Bush and his neocon supporters have prattled on endlessly about how "the world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East," but the reality is much closer to what Noam Chomsky dubbed "deterring democracy" in a notable 1992 book of that name. We have done everything in our power to see that the Iraqis did not get a "free and fair election," one in which the Shia majority could come to power and ally Iraq with Iran. As Noah Feldman, the Coalition Provisional Authority's law advisor, put it in November 2003, "If you move too fast the wrong people could get elected.""

- dave 5-05-2006 7:59 pm [link] [1 comment]

I saw the "Rumsfeld getting some tough questions" story all over the place, but I didn't read the transcript until just now. Worth a look.

Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.

- jim 5-05-2006 7:00 am [link] [5 comments]

Rush was quoting this WSJ op-ed at length this AM ... It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty


- mark 5-03-2006 12:17 am [link] [add a comment]

colbert emcees white house correspondents dinner.

video @ crooks and liars

- dave 4-30-2006 5:06 pm [link] [17 comments]

"Here's a story of importance, via Matthew Yglesias, who doesn't seem to appreciate the gravity of what he's discovered. Francis Fukuyama, the apostate neoconservative, says that in the 1990s, neocons tried to manufacture an enemy, because they felt that the Republican Party "didn't do as well" when there wasn't a ruthless, monolithic pinkomuslimcommienihilist threat to America."

- dave 4-30-2006 4:23 pm [link] [add a comment]






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