He's Learning

Too bad kos didn't post the link to this, but I'm very proud to see that at least one leader on the Democratic side is learning how to fight back. It shows that we have spines, that we actually believe in something enough to stand up for it, and it is good morality, which translates into good politics. Take it away, John!

If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving
in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the
classic G.O.P. playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable
Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to
serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

What he's saying is matter of fact and common sense. Read the entire thing here.

Happy Halloween

Atrios points out the scary obvious:

Bush to his media sycophants:

• My attitude about our – look, I'm into campaigning out there: People want to
  know, can you win? That's what they want to know. I mean, there's – look,
  there's some 25 percent or so that want us to get out, shouldn't have been
  out there in the first place – and that's fine. They're wrong. But you can
  understand why they feel that way. They just don't believe in war, and – at
  any cost. I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you,
  you fight back. And that's what we're doing.

As Greg points out, a strong majority support getting out. But more than that,
we weren't attacked by Iraq.

No wonder they hate us.

This scares me much more than anything will next week.

(hahah, I can't format in Blogger on internet exploder)

Grrr

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Of course, it's probably just politics, considering the race-baiting we've had in TN, but that probably makes it even stupider. Harold Ford:

"I do not support the decision today reached by the New Jersey Supreme Court
regarding gay marriage. I oppose gay marriage, and have voted twice in Congress
to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. This
November there's a referendum on the Tennessee ballot to ban same-sex marriage -
I am voting for it."

I hope Ford will at least try to wrangle out of this by realizing that the NJ Supreme Court legalized equal protection, not marriage. Shameful.

Ford made Kos mad. He doesn't realize that he won't like Kos when he's mad.

Ownership Society

Remember all of Bush's platitudes about an ownership society?

He sure followed through - you've been owned!

Things I Hate

In addition to grapes with seeds in them, and flies (and Susie Derkins), I really hate being taken for a complete and utter idiot. For example:

On CBS this morning, White House Counselor Dan Bartlett claimed that the
administration has “never” had “a stay-the-course strategy.”

One of the many reasons I hate Bush. Think Progress has a few drops from the ocean of evidence against this. I wonder how long it will take the regular talking heads to start spouting this talking point and become deaf, dumb and blind to everything they have said for the past few years.

In case you were wondering, yes, that was a rhetorical question. The answer is immediately.

Mea Culpa

I know I shouldn't do this more than once a day, but...

...what Digby said.

The Grown-Ups in Charge

Don't have a fucking clue.

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is
vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical
intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a
few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s
in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I
don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families
or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly
about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how
Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is
mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to
me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in
Iraq but that whole area.”

Dear god, this is the Republican party that has supported Bush's war in Iraq from ground zero. So, who you gonna vote for?

Holy Joe

er, John. Says Think Progress:

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) explicitly blamed the Clinton administration
for North Korea’s nuclear weapons test on Sunday: “[I]t is a failure of the
Clinton administration policies…that have caused us to be in the situation we’re
in today.”
This morning on NBC, “Straight Talk” McCain had a different tune:
“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.”

It is beyond me why McCain is widely regarded as being a non-partisan saint by the media. I think they are too busy giving him a perpetual hand job because they go for the "tough, man in uniform" kind of guy. The problem, however, is that it is completely misleading, if not straight out false, and McCain is full of shit.

By the way, does anyone else besides me see Lieberman going for a McCain-Lieberman Unity ticket in '08? Of course Joe's the bottom. For more on the similarities between the two, read Stoller at MyDD.

Making the World a Safer Place

One death at a time.

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more
people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would
have died if the invasion had not occurred.

Digby has more.

We are all sinners - I am not using sin in a religious context, but in the context of - god and holy books aside - we have all done wrong in our lives - but some burn brighter than others. It is my hope that we can learn from our mistakes, both individually and as a people, and move forward to prevent these atrocities from happening again.

Bomb Iran

Because unlike North Korea, they don't have nukes.

Yet.

Holy Joe

Lieberman believes the Republican party is the party of righteousness and the Democratic party is the party of sin. How else could he spout this garbage?

I mean that's just absolutely the wrong response, and it shows how politically
sick congress in Washington has become, because everything is seen through the prism of partisanship. I'm not naive, I've been in this business a long time, and I know that we are in an election year but my God! This is a guy who took advantage of a kid, a minor. Kids who came to Washington with a lot dreams about being a page, and maybe being a member of congress one day. This is the classic pattern that for years women have been complaining about, which is that a man in a superior position in their place of employment uses that to...basically for
sexual harassment so the thing was just immoral and outrageous. Obviously Foley
had to go and he did go. Now to make it into a political question is wrong.

For the purpose of this post, let us not dwell his little ode to Clinton during the impeachment. Ned Lamont, on the other hand, believes the following:

“Joe Lieberman just can’t bring himself to hold anyone in Washington
accountable, even when the safety of our children is at stake. If Dennis Hastert
knew that Mark Foley was harassing minors and didn’t do anything about it, he
should resign immediately. Anyone who disagrees is morally tone deaf. The fact
that Joe Lieberman says calling for Hastert’s resignation is too “partisan”
demonstrates that he’s been in Washington so long that he can’t recognize the
difference between what’s right and what’s partisan.

We expect Senator Lieberman to stand by President Bush on the war and other failed policies, but until now we didn’t expect him to protect a public leader who put the safety of our children at risk. Connecticut deserves better than someone who puts a twisted definition of “bipartisanship” ahead of what’s right for this country.
It’s time for a change.”

Exactly. Joe Lieberman is an apostate, and he will be smote down in great anger with a sword of fire on election day. Everyone knows that the first rule of any religion is: we, and only we, are right. Joe needs to pay the price for cavorting and performing obscene acts with Republicans, and worshipping at the Republican god of power as an ends unto itself. Incidentally, I think this is very telling about Joe:

Denny Hastert doesn't come to me for advice but if I were him I would tell them
get somebody who people in both parties respect in there quickly, immediately.

Joe think the path to salvation comes by being respected on both sides of the aisle. Wink, wink, Denny, I'll give you a reacharound in the men's room after this is all over (never mind kicking Clinton when he was down to make himself seem like a greater man). Not only does Joe have no idea how politics works - he has become too dependent on the scraps thrown to him by Republicans because Democrats will not get anywhere near his diseased carcass - but his sense of right and wrong is also completely out of whack. Regardless of what happens next month Lieberman will try to martyr himself, but he will never be anything more than a petty Judas.

Outfoxed

I would like to hear from the right-wing apologist who can chalk this up to an honest mistake.

Nice try, Falafel-lovers, but Foley is a REPUBLICAN. This is a Republican scandal, and only a Republican scandal.

I realize this is preemptive, but if some cutesy, jerkoff "journalist" thinks he can publish an article about how there have been previous homosexual sex scandals between Democratic members of Congress and page boys back in the day - it would not surprise me if they go back over a century to dredge something up - to show "balance" and that "both sides do it," then that journalist needs to be taken out behind the shed. This scandal is only about Republicans. The less important scandal is Foley (R-FL). The more important scandal is how the Republican House leadership covered it up so they could stay in power.

That's your Republican party, folks. Putting themselves before children and the country.

Republicans Want the Terrorists to Win

Republicans are disgusting and should have zero - negative, if possible - credibility with the American people. They have no principles besides obtaining and maintaining power - Foleygate illustrates this very well - and do not care about America.

QALAT, Afghanistan U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the
Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring
the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.
The Tennessee
Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too
numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military
means.
"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,"
Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the
southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be
successful."

Pardon me, but "aiding and abetting the terrorists," anybody? Let me try and sort out Republican foreign policy over the past five years:

1. Invade Afghanistan because the Taliban was allied with Al Qaeda
2. Do not finish the job because and let Osama escape because Saddam Hussein was the biggest threat ever, had WMDs, was allied with Al Qaeda and had to be destroyed, even though we knew none of the above was true
3. Continue to knowingly prosecute a failed war in Iraq for the past three years, while letting Afghanistan slip by the wayside and continuing to let Al Qaeda escape
4. Willingly let the Taliban back into power in Afghanistan because we cannot win, while continuing to make pronouncements about victory being over the horizon in Iraq
5. Call anyone who disagrees anything you do a cowardly terrorist lover or, in not so many words, a Democrat

It should be apparent to anybody that Republicans are both stupid and crazy and no one should believe anything they say. They are running this country into the ground. The above sequence frighteningly demonstrates that nothing they say or do makes any sense, and America will suffer because of them.

The 2006 midterms are coming up in about a month. Make a difference. Raise awareness. Support Democratic candidates. Vote Democratic.

Iraq = Vietnam

I think that in any posts I have made on Iraq and Vietnam, I have always treated the comparison gingerly. There are many pitfalls that one can make in doing so and there is no silver bullet that will pierce through everything and nail the two together. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that a better comparison to our invasion of Iraq is Japan's invasion of China in the Pacific War. Regardless, even though I imagine it had been on the backburner, I had not spent much time considering this angle very much.

So, without further ado, what Digby said.