A Solid Endorsement

I have as many problems with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) as Andrew Sullivan and am not with him on as many issues, but he was right on the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. He's not a liar, he's not a GOP/FOX grifter and he's not an authoritarian. I've said for a long time that he would be the smartest nomination the Republicans could make, a real statement that would crystallize issues.

It's a little scary that Sullivan has written his endorsement so well today, just as he did for Obama four years ago, the first such endorsement I saw and the piece of writing that influenced me to really look at Obama, take him seriously as a candidate. Hopefully, we stay the course for four more years. Obama's the best Republican President since Eisenhower, and I'm hoping since Theodore Roosevelt by the end of his second term.

Here's a few key paragraphs that I agree with:

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry's buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy. This kind of rigidity has its flaws, but, in the context of the Newt Romney blur, it is refreshing. He would never take $1.8 million from Freddie Mac. He would never disown Reagan, as Romney once did. He would never speak of lynching Bernanke, as Perry threatened. When he answers a question, you can see that he is genuinely listening to it and responding - rather than searching, Bachmann-like, for the one-liner to rouse the base. He is, in other words, a decent fellow, and that's an adjective I don't use lightly. We need more decency among Republicans.

And on some core issues, he is right. He is right that spending - especially on entitlements and defense - is way out of control. Unlike his peers, he had the balls to say so when Bush and Cheney were wrecking the country's finances, and rendering us close to helpless when the Great Recession came bearing down. Alas, he lacks the kind of skills at compromise, moderation and restraint that once defined conservatism and now seems entirely reserved for liberals. But who else in this field would? Romney would have to prove his base cred for his entire presidency. Gingrich is a radical utopian and supremely nasty fantasist.

I don't believe Romney or Gingrich would cut entitlements as drastically as Paul. But most important, I don't believe that any of the other candidates, except perhaps Huntsman, would cut the military-industrial complex as deeply as it needs to be cut. What Paul understands - and it's why he has so much young support - is that the world has changed. Seeking global hegemony in a world of growing regional powers among developing nations is a fool's game, destined to provoke as much backlash as lash, and financially disastrous as every failed empire in history has shown.

I'm supremely grateful to Rep. Paul that he's not an Obama-hater. He's a gent, which is more than I can say for every other GOP Presidential candidate, other than Gov. Jon Huntsman (who should keep spending as little as possible in his training run in prep for 2016). Romney is establishment trash, with no vision for running a compelling campaign, let alone a Presidency. And Gingrich is anti-establishment trash, all for him, grifter class. His hypocrisy has more integrity than Romney's. It's like Tony Soprano -- this is what he does.

Obama-Paul. A tighter race than either Willard or Newton?

Warzone Oakland

WTF, Oakland? WTF, Mayor Jean Quan? Last night in Oakland you unleashed the cops on Occupy Oakland and the resultant news is bad news for the powers that be -- as well as for the injured Iraq War vet:

An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.

Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.

Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Jay Finneburgh, a photographer who was covering the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying on the ground.

"This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up," Finneburgh wrote.

Damning video here:

The irony:

"He survived two tours in Iraq," said Adele Carpenter, a friend of Olsen's and a member of the Civilian Soldier Alliance. "This struggle has high stakes, I really respect the fact that Scott was standing up for what he believes in. He's really passionate about social justice causes."

Olsen appears to be the first serious injury nationwide of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to virtually every major American city -- and several smaller ones -- as millions of people continue to express their rage and disappointment with the country's banking, regulatory and health care systems.

Well, Mayor Quan, I guess the movement can give thanks that you've highlighted their cause with your own police overreaction. It worked to help publicize the movement when a cop pepper-sprayed some young women protesting in NYC, so this should do wonders. If Olsen dies, it's like Kent State May 4, 1970 revisited.

Let's see how you handle the return of the protest tonight.

Check, Please

President Barack Hussein Obama keeps another promise and ends the Iraq War for good. Yes, while it does feel a bit like Groundhog's Day (didn't we already announce we were pulling out...although still leaving 50,000 troops) it's still ending Dick Cheney, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld's war, nine years later.

He's actually keeping George Bush's promise but, sure enough, no Republican can let on that he's once again proving to be our most able Commander-in-Chief since George H.W. Bush (regardless of what you think of some of the wars he chose to fight, like Panama). Come to think of it, Bush the Senior left Iraq as well.

I'm sure President McCain would still have us there. For the next nine years.

It's Over

Since America has long ago turned its attention away from our war of aggression against Iraq, which did not attack us on 9/11 no matter the lies of Dick Cheney, George Bush and their cabal, and since the Right will not give Obama credit for any of his great advances and repairs nor will the Left support him in the same organized fashion that Bush enjoyed even at his most damaging, I'm sure that Obama's achievement here will get scant acknowledgment or esteem.

I'm mainly talking to those of you out there who don't want to see the GOP take over the House or Senate and start yet another set of witchhunts, government paralysis, tax protection for the rich and gutting of both financial safeguards and the social safety net. For those of a more Conservative bent, I hope you aren't taking this opportunity to give George Bush some sort of credit for being the genius who trashed a country without provocation, created droves of refugees and sectarian warfare affecting every family in the country, and let the forces of chaos tear up the infrastructure in the days after we took Baghdad. And left Iran without a counterbalance. Dark days they were, indeed.

Yep, the neocons screwed it up. And it seems like only Rachel Maddow remembers:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gobama.

Why We Don't

So here's a good reason to get out of Afghanistan:

The Feb. 12 nighttime raid left three women — two of them pregnant — and a local police chief and prosecutor dead. It was one of the latest examples of Special Operations forces’ killing civilians during raids, deaths that have infuriated Afghan officials and generated support for the Taliban despite efforts by American and NATO commanders to reduce civilian casualties.

The joint American and Afghan assault team shot five Afghans — all family members — from the roofs of buildings in a large residential compound near Gardez, in southeastern Afghanistan, where members of an extended family lived in different homes, survivors said. The Americans did the killing, they said.

At first, the American-led military command in Kabul said that the two men who died were “insurgents” who had “engaged” — in other words, shot at — the forces at the scene. The initial account also said that the troops then stumbled onto the bodies of three women “tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room.

Military officials later suggested that the women — who among them had 16 children — had all been stabbed to death or had died by other means before the raid, implying that their own relatives may have killed them.

But the military later said the men were innocent civilians shot after they went outside, armed, to investigate the presence of the forces conducting the raid. Then on Sunday night they admitted that the women were also killed during the raid.

...

In the interview, Mr. Yarmand said he did not know whether bullets had been dug out of the bodies. He said he would not dispute family members’ claims, but added, “We can not confirm it as we had not been able to autopsy the bodies.”

Here's more:



Select frames here.

Can you say "war crime?"

Credit Where Due

Credit to Meghan McCain (and not for the first time) for calling out her father's 2008 running mate for her lying hypocrisy.

Credit to Republican David Frum for his dissection of that same politicians evil speech to teabaggers.

And credit to the now late Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), former marine, for the stand he took against the Cheney/Bush Iraq War.

War Stories

So the post-Ft. Hood violent backlash against Muslims begins...even when they're not:

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

This on the same day that more Blackwater bad actions were revealed:

WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Cash is king!

And, today, our President delivered a moving eulogy for the victims of the Ft. Hood attack, mentioning each one by name and telling something about their lives.

And "Taps" is the saddest song.

Horror and Halliburton

Hard to take story about a young woman who went to Iraq working for contractors KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, and within four days of arriving was drugged and gang raped by KBR employees. And that's not the worst of it -- when she reported this crime to her superior, she was locked in a shipping container with two armed guards. Only after convincing one of the guards to let her call her father did her rescue get put into motion. It's all here in this harrowing Rachel Maddow segment.

After refusing to take any action against the rapist employees, Halliburton has been working hard to keep this from going to trial, including trying to get a silencing out-of-court arbitration per the employment contract created under then-CEO Dick Cheney. But it's looking that that's not working for them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) got an amendment to a massive defense bill passed in the Senate making it illegal for the U.S. government to do business with contractors who deny victims of assault the right to bring their case to court. Seem like a slamdunk, yet thirty Republican Senators, and only Republicans, voted against it. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) called it a political amendment aimed at punishing a company the Dems didn't like. Nice sentiment for the victims from the supposed law 'n' order crowd, list here:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html

You read that right. McCain (R-AZ) was one of the thirty.

Now there are rumors that powerful senior Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) is looking to strip the amendment from the final bill. There's a denial from his office, but who knows what will happen, with the Pentagon against it.

After all, what matters more, rape or riches?

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/frankens-anti-rape-amendm_n_329896.html

Hurt Me

Director Kathryn Bigelow made a name for herself thirty years ago as a Columbia film student with her thesis, a twenty minute scene of two guys beating each other up in an alley as two Semioticians deconstructed the lure of cinematic violence on the soundtrack. As a friend of mine pointed out, a similar scene of two men pounding on each other is a highlight (and humorous respite) in the middle of her current release, The Hurt Locker, while the deconstruction is now all in the rest of the pictures. Taking place during the most lethal stretch of our Iraq occupation, the film is, one one hand, an essay-like deconstruction of what it takes to be a risk-addicted soldier specifically trained and tasked to disarm IED's, the bombs anti-U.S. Iraqi insurgents use(d) to blow us up. On the other hand the movie is a highly successful entry into what may be my favorite genre, the serious action film actually about something real and significant.

Emphasis now on the action and, from the very first scene, monumental suspense.

I've had my issues with Bigelow's films in the past. Her proto-True Blood indie vampire flick, Near Dark, made her the potential punk crossover director to watch. However her follow up, Blue Steel, was made laborious with it's use of metronomically cut static/graphic shots and a plot that collapsed into numbing cliche by the end. She can be credited with giving us the compulsively watchable Point Break, which also gave us the Keanu Reeves persona that paid off in The Matrix, and while she's filled in with some admirable television directing assignments, her ensuing films seem mainly ill-fated.

Until now.

One hopes that Bigelow is at the start of a streak, because all of her talents and unique style -- often confused with being a "male" style when it's much more clinical, perhaps that of a woman fascinated like an anthropologist with male rituals and camaraderie -- have paid off. The superlatives are easy to come by. This is easily the most entertaining movie made about the Iraq conflict, without sacrificing an ounce of realism, and for me the best American movie I've seen in a theater this year. She's also introduced a new star, lead actor Jeremy Renner, and gotten a career-best performance (thus far) from Anthony Mackie.

What makes The Hurt Locker work starts with the setting, which is essentially a 24-hour livewire situation where literally anyone not in an American army uniform can be a deadly enemy, whether the local merchant or the kid with the soccer ball. The picture is structured as a series of high-suspense set pieces, each one essentially an escalating variation on man vs. bomb (or insurgent). By very nature this is a looping existential situation, where literally one moment to the next can be there you see him, there you don't. The actual story engine is a classic platoon tale, where a hotshot cowboy (Renner) joins Mackie and crew as team leader, a.k.a. the man in the barely protective bomb suit with the fingers free and vulnerable so they can do the detail work on the bombs themselves. And at the center is Renner's character, who is clearly better at war than he is at peace, which may be more dooming to him than any shrapnel.

One of the tricks and grammatical tropes of the movie is how we learn the geography of the bomb experts world, what it means to be 200, 100, 50 meters away. Bigelow does an expert job of keeping the geography straight in each individual set piece, no small feat considering the you-are-there handheld documentary shooting style. Another piece of grammar that grew with the picture is how during the defusion scenes there will be a cut to the point of view behind a high window, indicating that we're likely with someone who has the ability to detonate the bomb, locking the dread factor right in place.

I won't be surprised to see The Hurt Locker deconstructed further by filmmakers in the future who want to figure out how to put together their own action sequences for maximum impact. How did she do that will be the question each time, and one hopes they have a fraction of the serious content that Bigelow reveals. While there is nothing right/left partisan in the picture and no spoken words of political positioning, there are those moments where you just start asking yourself, if this is such a seemingly low value environment in the first place and everyone around seems so damned hostile to us, why the hell did we come here in the first place?

Finally there's the substance of the main character. Screenwriter Mark Boal was an embedded journalist in the Iraq War, which is what gives the characters and situations their foundation in reality. For Boal and Bigelow the courage of these servicemen and the lead in particular is unassailable. One could even interpret the ending of the film as as gung-ho as Top Gun, but which I believe would be missing the obvious point. Yes, these are America's bravest and most willing to sacrifice; however there's something about either what made them want to be there or something about the experience of the war that changes them, something that makes them not 100% whole as a human being. And it's that chasing after a piece that makes an IED defusion specialist.

The most reassuring aspect of the movie is that when the main character settles in we know he's the able rebel, the kind of John Ford character who can break the frontier where others can't, but will never be comfortable as a settler. As enigmatic as his character's inner life might be, we know him from movies of yore, he's in our cinematic DNA. It's to Bigelow and Boal's credit that we learn something new about this character, as grounded by the context of our nation's Iraq experience.

For larger metaphors you can take what you will, but if you're looking for the most gripping action film of the summer, it ain't Transformers 2.

The Dirty, Dirty Truth

It's closer and closer to being revealed, hence the panicky Cheney gambit of playing the memo game, as if some Cheney-ordered memos to post-justify the criminal torture he ordered will grant him exoneration for the emerging story, per Josh Marshall:

At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?

Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.

All the Cheney-Bush gang was concerned with at the time was pushing through the attack on Iraq they had planned before taking office, before 9/11, going all the way back to the father's decision not to press Desert Storm into Baghdad. Imagine Dick Cheney fuming ever since then, a decade of building resentment, his moment having arrived.

From this base sin, if it is proven to be true, all other evil grew including everything covered by Laura Rozen here. It's why they're going after Jane Harman who wanted evidence preserved. It's why they're trying to foist the hot potato on Nancy Pelosi, who never instituted a policy of torture and claims she was lied to by the CIA. It's why Porter Goss, hack GOP Representative turned hack CIA Director, is looking ripe for questioning. And possibly indictment with his co-conspirators, led by Richard Bruce Cheney himself.

And now it's reaching the mainstream media.

Ends vs. Means Test

I'd always said that when we eventually found out the truth about what happened behind the scenes in the Bush/Cheney Administration, it would be worse than whatever we were imagining. And sure enough, it now appears that Vice President Cheney ordered up a torture program for the personal purpose of beating out a link to justify the invasion of Iraq:

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

There's a longstanding myth, bolstered by movie heroes of increasing amorality over the course of the 20th Century, that the only way to really get anything done is to break eggs, break the rules, break arms. Jack Bauer isn't the first or the worst, he's just one in a chain but the one most seems to inform the Bush/Cheney political era. He's the valorization, with the occasional dramatic flaw, of the ends-justify-the-means rationalization which has just enough grains of truth to tempt. After all, is there any of us who has not, at some point, chosen an arguably less ethical means in order to achieve an end. Maybe you needed a more tranquil result, so you held back information. Maybe you needed a little more time to get something done.

Whatever it was, I'm betting it wasn't on the scale of fixing a policy and then torturing individuals to get a pitchline for it.

So the big problem with a Nixon and a Cheney and their close advisers is that because they have chosen to override the moral compass of our nation based on the simple fact of ego, that they somehow know better than the laws man created to protect the republic, like the dictators of ancient yore, means that they cannot be trusted on anything. Because somewhere in their mind on every key issue is that they know best, the closed mind, the ruthless mind, the despot mind, stuck operating within the diametric structure of democracy, but pushing the edges, blurring the edges, crossing over so much they end up living on the other side.

If you can't trust any key players in that Adminstration about torture and the selling of the Iraq War, then how can you trust them about wiretapping? Or whether they abused the Patriot Act? Or their motives for choosing the head of FEMA? Or their haste to roll back taxes on the rich? Or their desire to privatize Social Security? Or why they fired a Federal Prosecutor? Or why they outed an undercover CIA agent?

It's just at 51% right now, but I wonder if the trickle will grow. We had the wool pulled over our eyes by the ultimate Ends/Means crew: Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove.

Will the chorus grow for accountability?

Torturous

Of course it's torture, even Ari Fleischer says so now. He's equivocating that it should never be done but sticking his chin out that it works. It's actually humiliating to watch grown men covering their collective asses in such a grudge-holding, adolescent way. Where do you stand, Ari, outside of the politics of it all?

Which is not to say that the Obama Administration is above using politics to combat politics. Cheney opens his mouth, Obama points to prosecutions up the foodchain, leaving the minions alone. Especially as someone leaks potentially damaging info about Rep. Jane Harman, who's on record with a letter to the then Presidente Bush opposing his use of torture in America's name.

This after destroying memos written by longtime diplomat Philip Zelikow opposing the legal reasoning of White House torture-justifiers Jay S. Beybee and John Yoo.

This after using torture to drum up a false link between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein to justify the lie of their invasion of Iraq. To enable more of their snowballing violence.

Yes, waterboarding is torture, as we've defined it in punishing other countries for war crimes, but Cheney and the rest of his morons didn't even know or care:

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

Let us first note that if this is true, the decision to abandon the Geneva Conventions was based on literally criminal ignorance. Anyone with a degree in history or a Google account could have found out any of these things if they had wanted to. I did, as soon as the cascade of evidence of abuse and torture unleashed by Bush came to light. And let us note secondly that this is not a defense. For Tenet to have proposed a criminal torture technique without inquiring as to its history and past use is a function of criminal incompetence. For that, a man who presided over the worst attack on the homeland in US history and compounded it with destroying the moral standing of the US was awarded a Medal of Freedom.

It's a new world now, thanks to the election of Barack Obama as leader of the generations on down and everyone older who's ready to change business as usual around the world. The accoutrements of Western Civilization have spread everywhere and continue to spur liberal thought, as in more personal freedom and interpersonal understanding. What's left are the reactionaries and jihadists on either side, and I just don't think they can grow in any lasting fashion while the rest of the world increasingly pulls together in greater scale than ever in human history.

Take it from the calmest man on Earth:



I mean, what the hell are we doing having the word waterboarding now used so often everyday speech?

Thank the Bush-Cheney Administration. This time there's no one else for them to blame.

Promises

So the new President isn't doing a ton of backpedaling on campaign promises as might be expected -- he's enacting them via his new Federal budget proposal:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It'll be a battle royale in Congress, with Republicans seeking to make their Party relevant by crying, "No, no no!" just months after the last President left, the one who let them spend us into massive debt. There will be Democrats to battle as well, those trying to carve out more for their own constituents or make political points. But the most striking aspect of this budget is the sheer honesty of Obama reversing the Cheney/Bush policy of baldfaced budget lying, where the costs of their wars were kept off the books -- treasonous.

Speaking of their wars, their pet project, attacking the country that didn't attack us on 9/11, President Obama is about to announce a 19-month plan (3 more than he promised, not too shabby) for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, while leaving in place an advisory force that Democrats are already yelping about. In an odd-bedfellows moment, he's garnering the support of Conservatives like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for this policy choice.

As the saying goes, if he's being attacked by both sides, he must be doing something right.

Oh, that's why.

So as anyone could have predicted, the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist is now a hero across the Middle East:

Newspapers across the Arab world printed front-page photos of Bush ducking the flying shoes, and satellite TV stations repeatedly aired the incident, which was hailed by the president's many critics in the region.

Many are fed up with U.S. policy and still angry over Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam.

As many as 98,000 Iraqi civilians may have been killed since the war began, according to Iraq Body Count, an independent organization that tracks media reports as well as official figures. The war has cost nearly $576 billion so far, according to the National Priorities Project.

Wafa Khayat, 48, a doctor in the West Bank town of Nablus, called the attack "a message to Bush and all the U.S. policy makers that they have to stop killing and humiliating people."

In Jordan, a strong U.S. ally, a 42-year-old businessman, Samer Tabalat, praised al-Zeidi as "the man. ... He did what Arab leaders failed to do."

The web has delivered a load of shoe-throwing parodies as well, my favorite being the last one on this HuffPo page, featuring The Three Stooges.

My guess is that the incident will be repeated here in the U.S., possibly in mass fashion, once/if El Presidente gets in front of another crowd again soon. Maybe it'll spread even further, like the comical Yippie pie-throwing at public figures usually carried out by Aron Kay.

In case anyone has forgotten why El Presidente might deserve the shoe-pie treatment, he's still wrong, even admitting so, and not the least bit sorry about it:

May this be his political epigram and epitaph:

"Yeah, that’s right. So what?"

Taste the leather, baby.

Shoe 'nuff

I think Juan Cole has the most telling comparison:

If you search shoes and Iraq, here is how google shows two BBC stories on December 14, five years apart (they came up together like this at the top of my search):

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraqis celebrate Saddam capture
Dec 14, 2003 ... women ululated and crowds beat pictures of Saddam with shoes. ... where the Saddam statue was toppled at the end of the war, ...
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3317637.stm - 46k

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Shoes thrown at Bush on Iraq trip
Dec 14, 2008 ... President Bush's farewell visit to Iraq is marred by an incident in which two shoes are thrown at him during a news conference.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7782422.stm - 8 hours ago

Yep, El Presidente Bush dodged a shoe aimed at his head by an Iraqi journalist, with the hurling of shoes considered the utmost expression of contempt in that country:



I guess free speech has finally come to Iraq -- the very reason we took down Saddam.

Mission Accomplished!

Last Licks

El Presidente Bush is not quite finished ruining America -- he's making some final, hard-to-revoke moves on the way out the door. Like undermining worker safety -- and more:

Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay needed protections for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.

With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the transition “as smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from trying, in its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.

The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious rules the Bush administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal with issues as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment. One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species.

He's putting his stamp on the further destruction of our planet's ecosystem with some final nails in the "old growth" coffin. And he's got rightwingers like the always wrong William Kristol calling for Bush to pardon all torturers and wiretappers in his administration. From masterminds down to thugs. And give them medals.

Yep, it's important to remember, when we're all feeling better about our government later in the new year, that El Presidente and Grand Vizier Cheney have done very, very bad things without respite, and that their "gifts" will keep on giving, which is to say, hurting. I don't expect they will be the last bad men we see in government, but they surely set a low standard.

In fact, all this torching on the way out reminds me of another bad man who left a wake of disaster when he was forced from a particular position.

Turkey in Belly

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

On a personal level, I'm thankful as always for my family, a feeling deepened this year.

I'm also thankful for my country and the new leader who has emerged since last year at this time and has his family lead by example.

And in an even more macro way, I'm thankful that this process looks like it may actually begin.

Correct Again

It's a Shiite/Kurdish legislative victory that could still run into showstopper problems with the Sunni contingent, but today the cabinet of democratic Iraq set a timetable for the U.S. and whatever coalition forces to leave:

The proposed agreement, which took nearly a year to negotiate with the United States, not only sets a date for American troop withdrawal, but puts new restrictions on American combat operations in Iraq starting Jan. 1 and requires an American military pullback from urban areas by June 30. Those hard dates reflect a significant concession by the departing Bush administration, which had been publicly averse to timetables.

Iraq also obtained a significant degree of jurisdiction in some cases over serious crimes committed by Americans who are off duty and not on bases.

The date they set: by the end of 2011.

Correct again, President-Elect Obama.

Hothead

The Obama campaign is clearly trying out a theme that they can develop next week: McCain is a hothead.

There's evidence of this in his personal dealings, his Senate dealings, and in how he sprung up on the Georgia issue like he already thought he was President (albeit with an advisor being paid that country). There's serious talk of a McCain Presidency being a series of foreign policy crises of his own making thanks to his Cold War-era rhetoric -- "hysteria-based foreign policy."

I think the key for Obama and the Dems is to link McCain's kneejerk neoconservatism to the current Administration, to the ideology that got us all into the Iraq War and radically diminished our prestige and heft in the world in the first place. It truly can be the worst of both worlds -- bad judgment of now standard Republican neoconservatism, heightened by McCain's own disastrous trigger-happy tendencies. Essentially it's turning that media-loved maverick label against him.

And how hard can it be, when McCain endorses a new military draft with one on-the-spot answer in a town hall appearance?

Years

Another blazing success of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove Administration's War on Terra:

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Rejecting a prosecution request for a severe sentence, a panel of military officers sentenced the convicted former driver for Osama bin Laden to five and a half years in prison on Thursday. The sentence means that the first detainee convicted after a war crimes trial here could complete his punishment by the end of this year.

The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, had already said that he planned to give the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, credit for at least the 61 months he has been held since being charged, out of more than six years in all. That would bring Mr. Hamdan to the end of his criminal sentence in five months. After that his fate is unclear, because the Bush administration says that it can hold detainees here until the end of the war on terror.

Nice job, Republicans, of nailing Osama bin Laden's ex-chauffeur. I'm sure those five months will be worth all the money and brainpower spent on the conviction, although as long as Republican is President and can, like a king, keep him imprisoned indefinitely, at least more of the interrogation story won't come out.

Hey, it's not even Friday yet and there's another GOP politician in a disgraceful sexual scandal:

JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.

The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee. The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children -- were romantically involved, the woman said.

A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of "deviate sexual assault." The indictment identifies the victim only by initials. It says that on May 17, Muschany "had deviate sexual intercourse" with the girl, "knowing that he did so without" her consent.

Muschany, 42, was booked into the Cole County Jail today at 2:50 and he was released after posting a $5,000 bond. If convicted, Muschany faces a fine of up to $5,000 and a prison term of up to 7 years.

Only seven? Maybe he can take some of Hamdan's six.

What are the Republicans doing right, besides giving Paris Hilton some awesome new material?

They're doing what Obama said:

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that, two Iraqi officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. U.S. officials, however, insisted no dates had been agreed.

Hey, it's fun to mock, but there's a point to it. While grandpa McCain is putting a softer face on the deadly GOP brand, let's not forget that the same Karl Rove driving his vile and lying character smears of Obama has been driving U.S. policy for almost a decade. Let's not forget that the GOP financial and ideological party apparatus, taken over by Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney et al is essentially corrupt, a criminal enterprise that will take more than this election to wash through the system, if ever. It's the party of blatant hypocrisy, dividing voters with anti-gay rights laws while assaulting young boys or seeking illicit sex in airport bathrooms.

This election is about much, much more than Barack Obama. He's a vessel, sure, he brings youth and intelligence, strategy and tenacity to the Party and hopefully the Republic, and he's the right man at the right time. But this is just as much about clearing the palate, flushing the toilet, lighting sage and Native chants.

They'll try to smear Obama, to bring them down to their level. But that's just not the guy he is.

Just remember who these smearmongers are, Rove to McCain, and how much they've just gone and ruined these last eight years.