Today’s edition of quick hits. * Bill Clinton and Barack Obama spoke on the phone today, reportedly for about 20 minutes, and both issued statements afterwards indicating that it went well. I shudder to think about the extent to which their statements will be parsed and analyzed for evidence of animosity. * I’ll try and […]
In late 2007, Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan, giving the Defense Department’s Special Operations forces greater ease to go into the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the goal of targeted al Qaeda’s top leaders. The plan, codenamed “Operation Cannonball,” sounded very encouraging on paper — it would sidestep turf wars between Washington […]
The McCain campaign wants to manufacture a controversy over Wesley Clark’s comments about McCain’s qualifications. Fine. McCain and his allies want to feign outrage. Fine. They want to spend the day whining about the Obama campaign being insufficiently sycophantic about McCain’s military record. Fine. But did these guys really have to give us Bud Day? […]
I often wonder what it must be like for the president, on a personal level, to know that he’s so deeply, historically unpopular. I know the traditional White House line is that Bush expects to be vindicated by history — we may not like him, but our grandkids will think he’s amazing — but not […]
Following up on an item from this morning, the pushback from news outlets, the McCain campaign, and conservative activists against Wesley Clark has been pretty fierce today. In fact, Clark’s comments have already taken on an entirely different meaning. Here’s how Time characterized the McCain campaign’s efforts this morning: “The presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign launches […]
On Thursday night, the Senate approved the war supplemental, which included the expansion of the GI Bill, sponsored by Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and approved with broad, bipartisan support. This morning, the president signed it into law. For those of you who can’t watch clips online, Bush said, “…I want to […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * In mid-July, Barack Obama will be making an overseas trip to Europe and the Middle East. Though, for security reasons, there’s been no announcement about visiting Iraq, one assumes it will be […]
The widespread confusion about Barack Obama’s religion, background, and patriotism continues to vex me. The WaPo has a front-page item on the subject today that didn’t make me feel any better. The piece focused on a small town in Ohio called Findlay. On his corner of College Street, Jim Peterman stares at the four American […]
Auto-correct can be a very helpful feature of any word-processing program. But when conservatives use it, they run the risk of embarrassing themselves. Some far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press feed, for example, will use auto-correct to change “Democratic Party” to “Democrat Party.” This, of course, is because they have the temperament of […]
It’s been a couple of weeks since a high-profile conservative argued that al Qaeda could take over Iraq, so it was disappointing (though not surprising) to see Joe Lieberman on “Face the Nation” yesterday, rehashing the old GOP talking points. “The surge was implemented by President Bush,” Lieberman said. “It’s now working. Senator Obama unfortunately […]