Whatever I Want

The Washington Times is reporting that the Bush administration could be considering either splitting Iraq along ethnic lines or, and this is the scary part, allowing a military coup to oust Prime Minister al-Maliki and install a new dictator – most likely Iyad Allawi, former minister of the interim government in Iraq.

It would be very ironic if, after all the “cut and run” accusations by the administration, they decided to use one of these “outs”. Maybe they need the troops for Iran?

One of my favorite websites, Factcheck.org has an analysis of some misleading ads being run by Republicans congressional candidates in several states. These ads are concerning Social Security. The Republicans are accusing the Democrats of wanting to cut Social Security and increase the tax on workers – not true. More people need to know about this website so they can get the facts.

Lest you think they don’t go after the Dems you can look here.

There are a lot of questions — about a lot of things — that President Bush can’t seem to answer.

Excellent question by Bill O’Reilly. Here’s the meat:

O’Reilly: ” But if the public doesn’t know what torture is or is not, as defined by the Bush Administration, how can the public make a decision on whether your policy is right or wrong? ”

Bush: “Well, one thing is that you can rest assured we are not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum, no matter how hard you try, because I don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield.

“But what the American people need to know is we have a program in place that is able to get intelligence from these people and we have used it to stop attacks. The intelligence community believes strongly that the information we got from the detainee questioning program yielded information that made America safer, that we stopped attacks.”

read more

From Digg

I’m back and thought I’d share this guy’s art. I saw this a few months ago and just came across it again recently. He does art on a “dirty” car’s back window. I don’t think the car is legitimately dirty but that doesn’t matter. The stuff he does is really cool.

Will be off for a few days but should return (with a vengence?) Wednesday. I may make a couple of posts if I have time.

You can actually see it… like time-lapse photography of a plant growing. First McCain holds a press conference and says the following:

We had a carrots and no sticks policy that only encouraged bad behavior. When one carrot didn’t work, we offered another. Now we’re facing the consequences of the failed Clinton administration policies.

It seems at that moment McCain was either following the line he assumed the Republicans would follow or Condoleezza Rice was off message because she said the following on The Situation Room when interviewed by Wolfe Blitzer,

BLITZER: But if it could potentially turn things around and end this nuclear North Korea, what’s wrong with a direct dialogue like that?

RICE: Let me just remind you, we tried direct dialogue. The United States tried direct dialogue with the North Koreans in the ’90s, and that resulted in the North Koreans signing onto agreements that they didn’t — then didn’t keep. And the United States didn’t have the force of others like China and South Korea to say to the North Koreans, “That is an agreement that you should have kept.”

BLITZER: So Bill Clinton’s to blame?

RICE: No. I — Wolf, you keep saying that. And I told you that, at the time, it might have made perfectly good sense to try direct talks. But having seen what North Korea did in that context, it’s important not to go back down that road. It’s important to bring the weight of China and South Korea and Japan and Russia to bear on the North Korean…

Later on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes McCain said this,

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: You were quite critical today about the agreed framework from 1994. Tell us why.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, first of all, may I say that I wasn’t doing anything but responding to attacks that were made on the president of the United States, accusing him of being responsible for this international crisis of the utmost seriousness that we’re in now.

Incredibly, as the president is trying to unite the nation and the world to impose sanctions against the rogue state of North Korea, the Democrats and Mrs. Clinton attacked the president of the United States and accused him of being responsible, when the fact is that it is a failure of the Clinton administration policies that I was heavily involved in at the time that have caused us to be in the situation we’re in today.

I find it hard to understand why the president should be attacked at a time when we need to unite the people of this country behind the president, as he goes to the United Nations to seek sanctions on the North Koreans.

What’s really disturbing about his rhetoric here isn’t the fact that he tries to lay the entire North Korea Nukes Crisis at President Clinton’s feet but that he tries to say that because of this crisis everyone needs to fall in line behind President Bush; no questions asked. I think we know where this thought process gets us.

The very next day on NBC’s Today Show a more reserved McCain said,

I think this is the wrong time for us to be engaging in finger pointing when in this crucial time, we need the world and Americans united in going to the United Nations to bring about sanctions against North Korea.

He claimed that his finger pointing was comments were in response to attacks on the President by the Democrats. There was a time when McCain was considered a maverick – a moderate Republican who could be counted on to go his own way on important issues. It looks like the desire for the presidency has Senator McCain toeing the line for the Bush administration hoping for the nomination. My prediction; He won’t get it and then he’ll realize he sold out his principles for nothing.

The Washington Post is reporting that Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert, has “pledged today to fire anyone on his staff who covered up information on former congressman Mark Foley’s improper contacts with teenaged male pages,” of course he said he feels that no one in his office has done anything wrong.

This reminds me of when Bush originally said that anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak would be gone and then, when it started to come to light that Rove and/or Cheney could be implicated, changed his statement to, anyone found to have committed a crime in the leak would be gone. This twisting of the original statement was necessary because he would have been forced to fire both Rove and Cheney by his old standard.

I’m just waiting for Hastert to re-issue his statement with a similar change.

Rep. Ray Lahood was on Face the Nation defending Speaker Hastert. Apparently, in Illinois, defending someone includes listing 3 other scandal-plagued Republicans (emphasis added),

Lahood: Look at, I give Speaker Hastert high marks for strong leadership. He took care of Tom DeLay, his best friend. When Tom was having ethical problems, the speaker went to him and asked him to leave. When he appointed Duke Cunningham to the intelligence committee, he went to Duke and made sure he wasn’t on the intelligence committee after it was disclosed he took 2.3 million dollars. And when Bob Ney was appointed chairman of the House administration committee, he was appointed by Speaker Hastert. Speaker Hastert went to him and told him to step down from that committee after the Abramoff disclosures. Hastert has the ability to take on these big ethical challenges that our party has faced…

These comments actually got a chuckle out of veteran newsman Bob Schieffer. It’s nice to know that Denny has the best in his corner.

Originally from Crooks and Liars.

Rahm Emanuel, the DCCC Chairman, was on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos and gave a very good performance debating RCCC Chairman Thomas Reynolds’ stand-in Rep. Adam Putnam. Crooks and Liars has the video as well as a full transcript (I suggest you watch the video to get the full flavor). Obviously Emanuel was in the catbird seat and Putnam was on the defensive. What I’m happy about is that the Dems finally have a concrete example to go with their message of change and having that example has started to coalesce that message into something a lot more tangible.

A couple of things I found interesting: When asked if he was “aware” of the “overly friendly” messages Emanuel seemed to skirt the issue a bit saying, “Never saw them.” This could be big trouble for the Democrats if they’re splitting hairs (although he did finally say “No” to any awareness). The other thing that I found interesting but not surprising was the way that Putnam went with the Republican campaign tactics of fear and misinformation about what the Democratic bogeymen (and bogeywomen) would do if they take the majority. I would love it if FactCheck.org would take a look at this debate for the voters.

Pat Buchanan seems to think he’s found a “hot button” issue against the Democrats in 2008 – he claims that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi marched in gay pride parades which also had NAMBLA floats in them. NAMBLA is the North American Man-Boy Love Association, a group of men who think it’s perfectly natural for older men to have sex with young boys. Of course most people think of these NAMBLA idiots as a big joke but Buchanan thinks he’s on to something. Media Matters is reporting on appearances by Buchanan on CNN and earlier on Scarborough Country where he makes outrageous, unsubstantiated claims such as,

Now, Ms. Pelosi, it’s my understanding, has marched in gay pride parades in which they’ve had floats of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which wants to eliminate all age of consent laws. And it’s an outrageous group, in my judgment, a criminal group almost in what it recommends. But I’ve not seen the Democrats come down and condemn them, and I believe Senator Clinton has marched in a parade with a similar float.

and on October 5th, trying to get Rep. Pelosi even closer to the group,

Ms. Pelosi has marched in gay pride parades with the North America Man-Boy Love Association, NAMBLA, which — who are pedophiles who are trying to get the laws repealed for sex between men and boys! If she’s been marching with pedophiles, is she credible standing up there saying, “I`m shocked, shocked that some Republican is after 17-year-old pages?”

Boy, it sounds like she’s right up there on the float with a NAMBLA t-shirt on. Of course it’s utter B.S. Buchanan thinks that this is going to be very big in 2008; that they’re going to have to answer for this. I have to say that if they did march in a gay pride parade that allowed NAMBLA to have a float, it seems that the problem is more with the parade promoters than Clinton or Pelosi. Expressing support for the gay community in a large parade that has many different groups is not expressing support for all the groups. I’m not sure but I doubt that Hillary or Nancy would come out in favor of the anal fisting float either (if there was one). Buchanan says that if he marched in a parade with the Klan he’d have to answer for it. Well, damn straight! No parade organizer is going to invite the KKK to march in their parade and if they did you’d have to question what the parade’s theme was.

I don’t mind if the Republicans want to attack the Democrats for their actions (issues would be even better, but who does that anymore??) but let’s stop the baseless accusations with the hope that if you throw enough mud some of it will stick.