Tuesday’s Mini-Report

October 16, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Keep an eye on this one: “Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran.”

* Responding to Putin’s comments, Matt Yglesias argues that the developments “deserve to be taken very seriously. Since we’re not contemplating actually conquering Iran and trying to occupy its territory, people need to understand that the post-strike diplomatic environment is going to be much more important to the future of the Iranian nuclear program than is any damage that bombing Iran with our on-the-table options might or might not do. If Russia decides to just send some scientists with schematics and materiel over to Iran and show them how to build a nuclear bomb, then — bam — nuclear bomb.”

* The Maliki government seems a little impatient when it comes to getting Blackwater private security forces out of Iraq. The Prime Minister once again asked the State to “pull Blackwater out of Iraq,” in the wake of a now-complete Iraqi probe of the Nusoor Square shootings in Baghdad on Sept. 16. Adviser Sami al-Askari told CNN the Bush administration wants a delay, but Maliki and most Iraqi officials are “completely satisfied” with the findings of their probe and are “insisting” that Blackwater leave the country.

* Jena Six developments: “For months now, Reed Walters has maintained that an incident in which white students hung nooses on a tree in the schoolyard of Jena high school “did not fit the criteria” of a hate crime, which is why he did not prosecute it as such…. That’s not what the U.S. Attorney who considered the case said today in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on Jena.”

* The House voted today to condemn the Bush administration’s withholding of Iraqi corruption information. The final vote was 395 to 21.

* Sen. Chris Dodd today called on the Senate leadership not to move forward on telecom immunity. Following up on today’s Verizon revelations, Dodd said, “We must be told the full extent of Verizon’s activities and what other private information they have provided to the Bush Administration. More troubling still is that the United States Senate would sanction those telecommunications companies that have violated the law and the privacy of our citizenry, enabling this Administration’s assault on the Constitution.” Good for him.

* It’s hardly a surprise, but it looks like Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey shouldn’t have too much trouble getting confirmed. “I don’t see a bombshell,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said. “Right now from what I have seen, I would expect him to be confirmed.”

* Pat Buchanan thinks Don Imus was a “victim.” He added, “[I]f Don Imus had been black, nothing would have been done to him.” I sometimes wonder if Buchanan realizes he’s a parody of himself.

* A variety of progressive netroots activists targeted five conservative Dems to reverse course and vote to override Bush’s S-CHIP veto. On Friday, Baron Hill (D-Ind.) announced he would join the majority, and yesterday, Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.) did the same. “My objection to the method of funding for this bill and my support of North Carolina’s farmers and the economic well-being of our communities are well-known, but I have always supported the SCHIP program and will do what is necessary to preserve it for the sake of children and families in need,” McIntyre said. Two down, three to go.

* Mitch McConnell is taking local heat for his office’s role in pushing the Frost family smear. Good.

* NYT: “The second-highest-ranking member of the Air Force’s procurement office was found dead Sunday in an apparent suicide, Air Force and police officials said Monday. The civilian official, Charles D. Riechers, 47, came under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee this month after reports that the Air Force had arranged for him to be paid about $13,400 a month by a private contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, while he awaited clearance from the White House for his selection as principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. He was appointed to the job, which does not require Senate confirmation, in January.”

* Bill O’Reilly believes the Abu Ghraib scandal was “blown out of proportion.” He did not appear to be kidding.

* Rick Santorum claimed on Fox News last night that Sen. Hillary Clinton is “not doing any kind of interviews.” Um, Rick? Two weeks ago, she did all five Sunday morning shows on the same day.

* Sam Brownback is going to push for an official government apology for slavery and segregation. “They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe editorial board. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward … is at the end of day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.”

* And finally, I know there were a lot of rumors going around today about Air America’s Randi Rhodes getting attacked, but the talk was bogus. The New York Daily News reported, “Rhodes’ lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she’s not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a ‘hate crime.'”

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Re Dodd: “Good for him” indeed. My impression is that he’s been the strongest and most consistent among the Dem candidates on the issue of undoing Cheneyist-Bushist depredations against the Constitution. I wish the front three were being more unequivocal about undoing the Constitutional rollback and reestablishing the rule of law w/respect to the Executive.

  • Given that a Democrat was President at the time, I’d expect the shrill little man-cub from Foxnoise to say that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was “blown out of proportion….”

  • When will Bush add his soulmate Vlady to the Axis of Evil. Can the Axis only have three members? If so, I bet Bush kicks North Korea to the curb and invites Russia to spend the night.

  • Two weeks ago, she did all five Sunday morning shows on the same day.

    That info obviously didn’t penetrate through to A Sanctum Santorum (where Rick’s head remains firmly lodged, deeply insulated from the real world).

  • Pat Buchanan thinks Don Imus was a “victim.” He added, “[I]f Don Imus had been black, nothing would have been done to him.” I sometimes wonder if Buchanan realizes he’s a parody of himself.

    The whole problem with the thing is, exactly, the racial overtones of it. So, yeah, his being white had to do with it, and should be something that has to do with it. It’s not like people are angry with him just because he called some women ‘hos.’
    He, a white man, called young black women ‘notty-haired hos.’ Wise the fuck up, Pat.

    Responding to Putin’s comments, Matt Yglesias argues that the developments “deserve to be taken very seriously. Since we’re not contemplating actually conquering Iran and trying to occupy its territory,

    I think this is one of the rare occasions where maybe it should be pointed out that Matt Yglesias is a young, callow person. How do we know Putin’s words aren’t bluff and bluster? How does he know among the Boltons of the right-wing foreign policy, no one wants a ‘do-over’ of Iraq, shifting an occupation to Iran to see if we can get it right this time? His theories would be a lot more compelling to me if he would do a little to address these basic hurdles to them. If people are using bluffs against you, you really have to develop strategies to think about and identify whether their words are bluffs, and you have to make attempts to choose whether to treat their statements like bluffs (ignore them) each time your faced with them. Otherwise, you become completely paralyzed in the face of nothing more than bluffs, and that is totally unacceptable. Really capable people become powerless in the face of really dumb people due to nothing more than a cheap trick.

    The House voted today to condemn the Bush administration’s withholding of Iraqi corruption information. The final vote was 395 to 21.

    Yay! /gloat

  • The danger with Putin is that he could always pull a “Nikita”—and just send nuclear-tipped Russian ICBMs to Iran. Crossing the Caspian is so much easier than crossing the Atlantic, and those fidgety little Fidel-haters will need a new nemesis once Dr. Castro gets around to dying.

    Thus, there’s no need to send the know-how on Bomb-making to Tehran.

    Additional concern must be given to this alliance on a second angle, as well. A Tehran/Moscow tandem that becomes openly hostile to Washington in particular, but also to the West in general, is not something that Washington can easily ignore. Not only could inland pipelines be blocked, but the Persian Gulf itself could be effectively closed off If that happens, then what happens to America’s addiction to oil?

    There is no choice in this arena anymore. The United States must undergo an emergency crash program to rid itself of any dependency on petroleum. Stop building bigger cars and start building bigger busses. Stop building high-rise rental condominiums and start building high-speed rail corridors. Start decentralizing the commercial/retail districts so people can walk—and go full-bore on internet-communications technologies so people can do things in real-time from long distances.

    Lose the need for oil—and Putin’s Russia dies on the vine. So does the entire Middle East

  • In other words w/ Imus, there’s a whole history of racial oppression and racism committed by whites against blacks in this country. So any time a white person does something rotten to a black person, it’s kind of natural to say, “Ok, was this totally unfair, and if so, could racism have something to do with that?” unless you already know better about the particular people and situation involved. That is, when a white person hurts a black person, it looks racist and comes with the danger of communicating a racist message unless the incident can be explained in some other way.

    So every time a white person calls a black person a nigger, it’s not as if it’s unfair to get mad at the white person just because we might not think a lot of it if it was black person who said it. The same acts committed by a black person and a white person can have totally different import until we free this country from racism.

  • Sen. Chris Dodd today called on the Senate leadership not to move forward on telecom immunity.

    How in the world does shit like immunity for telecoms that went buns-up kneeling for the asking even get considered? What’s next, a resolution praising them for selling us out?

    Hitler, Tojo, and the old Soviet Union had it all wrong. They should have just hired nineteen hijackers plus one tall Saudi and then let us f*ck ourselves over.

  • I really just don’t think Russia and Iran have a lot of cards to play against us, and I don’t think they can push us into a lot of things unless we play our hands badly. Maybe there are little side-“battles” they can force us to lose by being bold because it wouldn’t be worth it for us to push on those battles, but in a straight-up hot or cold confrontation between us on something that we and either one of them are both completely determined not to lose on, I think they have to lose (so they really have to back down and try to make that work out the best way for them that they can, and beyond that can only bluff and see if it works).

  • Right wing on the march against Hillary eavesdropping allegations

    After spending two minutes vamping on Hillary Clinton in a diatribe that couldn’t have made GOP candidates smile more if they’d written it themselves, Fox News hosts told their viewers that Republicans are planning to dredge up newly noticed scandals from Hillary Clinton’s past to smear the Democratic frontrunner.

    Tuesday’s Fox & Friends discussed an article in The Hill about Republicans’ plans to paint Clinton as a hypocrite in the ongoing congressional debate over how to best legalize President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program because she is alleged to have listened in on secretly taped phone calls.

    And so it begins.

  • If only Don Imus would have been black and the basketball team white…then…Buchanan is mentally challenged isn’t he?

    We need only refer to the rhetoric and thinking of our own WH and their supporters to see the flawed thinking toward attacking Iran. Our smart bombs didn’t kill Sadam or his sons but managed to destroy countless innocent Iraqis. Thousands of innocent Iranians will likely die if we use surgical air strikes on Iran also, we will be creating a whole new flock of “terrorists” or those who hate America by such an event. With this administration whatever can go wrong will by their rush to profiteer of the war that will ensue.
    Never does the WH Cheney bunch mention the likely aftermath of such an attack or how it would affect others involved…they don’t care and have proved to be extremely shortsighted. Putins attitude suggest we are nearly ready to resume the ‘cold war’ if we continue our absurd foreign policies.
    The basic truth is that whatever Bush and Cheney touch becomes worse or corrupt no matter what their claimed intentions. The past 6yrs has been an all round disaster under their leadership and they always claim they ‘will’ be successful if they can just continue their failures.

  • Inquiry Urged on Hunt Oil Contract in Iraq
    Democrats say Bush ties may have led to Iraq oil contract.

    Washington – Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward investigating Hunt Oil’s oil exploration contract in Iraq, saying the company’s ties to President Bush raised questions about whether it had insider information that helped it reach the deal.

    U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, asked Hunt to turn over all Iraq-related communication with the U.S. government by Nov. 2.

    The lawmakers also demanded that Ray Hunt, Hunt Oil’s chief executive, submit copies of information he may have received about Iraq as a member of Mr. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

    A Hunt spokeswoman said the company would cooperate with the request for “certain limited information.”

  • I think I have to strike my last comment. I think I may be over-estimating the amount of leverage we have against Russia and Iran. I think I was just kind of shooting my mouth off, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to give this opinion.

  • I have this sinking feeling that I try to block out, but I can’t: I think it’s quite possible that Chris Dodd is the most qualified, and would make the best president of all the Democratic candidates (there’s not a Republican who’s remotely qualified).

  • Swan said:
    I think I have to strike my last comment.

    Don’t be so hard on yourself. Other than that both Russia and Iran both have oil to sell and their respective armies aren’t completely bogged down in Iraq we have plenty of leverage. America is a powerhouse of latte-making and health insurance. I’m more than certain that we can parlay those two strengths into an offer that neither the Iranians nor the Russians can refuse.

  • Will this:

    Make Osama unpalatable to Democrats?

    Make Cheney unpalatable to fringe loons?

    Lead to dumb ass commercials from the GOP that claim the Republicans elected the first African-American Veep?

    Whatever the outcome (if any) I think we should all pause to give thanks that however obnoxious our relatives may be, Dick “Dick” Cheney isn’t one of them.

  • then — bam — nuclear bomb

    Sorry, Matty, but that’s bullshit. Nuclear weapons take major facilities to produce — the type of large facilities that are quite easy to bomb. Once we’ve begun bombing, what’s to stop us from bombing more? Will Russia provide AF support, too? And why would they want to let themselves be dragged into that? They’re going to violate treaties and UN resolutions over Iran? Do you seriously think Russia wants a nuclear Iran just the other side of Chechnya? Nyet.

    Russia wants oil, an ally against the loony Americans, and they want to keep China from getting same. They don’t want to create another nuclear rival on their border.

  • If only the Klan was full of minorities…
    If only Hitler were a Jew…
    If only Bin Laden was a white Christian…
    If only the army controlling Iraq was comprised of Iraqi’s that all the other Iraqi’s respected…

    It’s amazing how much easier life is, when we get to choose the race of the people involved.

  • Golly….
    Dims to the rescue!
    Riding in from center-right field like Dudley Doright on Faithful Nell!

    Glen Greenwald:

    UPDATE III: I just learned that the FISA bill cooked up by Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s Senate Intelligence Committee does contain full retroactive amnesty for telecoms. Here is a list of all registered Verizon lobbyists, and here is a partial list of some of the lobbying firms working on behalf of AT&T. AT&T was the fifth largest contributor to Rockefeller’s last campaign, followed by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association in Sixth place, Bell South in Ninth Place, and Verizon was in the top 20.

    Side note: I checked Hillary’s pet contributors…
    http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.asp?cid=N00000019
    No Verizon in the top 20.
    Looks like she may make a principled stand on this one.

    Like the name says:

    ROTFLMProgressiveAO

  • I think it’s quite possible that Chris Dodd is the most qualified,

    I think sometimes people who hold themselves out in the best representation aren’t always the best for real. Just like first impressions of your best friends often turn out to belie a lot of great depths to their person that you onhly discover over the course of knowing them a few months, often the people who mess up your life or your business the most badly are some of the ones who gave you the best firt impressions out of everyone you ever met. It’s precisely that great sell, in fact, that makes them so dangerous, because you rely on the sell. Just like fundies should be taking the dedication of their frontrunners to social conservativism with a grain of salt, Chris Dodd is one of several democratic statesmen whose sometimes refreshing-sounding rhetoric I feel should be taken with a grain of salt.

  • I think this quote from the Wapo article needs reiteration:

    Nacchio’s account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

    Less than one month after being elected…
    The Chimp and Cheney show was taking a shotgun to the rule of law.

    Is that a record?
    Note: Guinness Book doesn’t have a government malfeasance category….

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html?hpid=topnews

  • Dennis wrote:

    Don’t be so hard on yourself.

    I think the grain of truth I’ve got to leave in place from my comment is that, despite their blustery rhetoric, both Iran and Russia are really unlikley to do anything that makes it certain they are going to get into a hot conflict with us. Sure, in such a conflict, maybe they could damage our interests, maybe they could cause us casualties, maybe they could cause us to lose equipment and maybe they could cause us embarassment. But in any hot conflict with us, they’re going to wind up the losers because nothing they accomplish in the conflict against us is going to be worth the cost for them. We’re the nation with the MOABs, the cluster bombs, the stealth aircraft, and the ranks of the finest Special Ops people in the world tens of thousands of troops deep. If they anger us, we’ll smash their puny nations face-first into the mud. So taking that kind of bravado from these nations too seriously is selling ourselves short.

  • […] Maliki and most Iraqi officials are “completely satisfied” with the findings of their probe and are “insisting” that Blackwater leave the country.

    Maliki really *is* between the hammer and the anvil on this, isn’t he? If he’s successful in getting Iraq rid of the plague, he just *might* unite Iraq behind him, if only momentarily (just like Iraq’s team’s win in soccer made the whole country forget its divisions for a moment) and preserve his standing *in Iraq*. If it means shafting US in the process, he gets double kudos. But… It’s not going to be popular with the Bush administration; afterall, who is wearing the pants in Iraq; Maliki or Bush?

    * Jena Six developments:

    One of the “developments” has been that quite a few of other people had had nooses hung on their doors, etc, including a prof at Columbia U, since then. So Walters is “all wet” and the House Judiciary Committee is right; it *is* a hate crime and there’s a lot of hate going around. Walters’ passing it off as a “prank” was all that was needed for the scum to feel empowered enough to crawl from under a rock.

    * Pat Buchanan thinks Don Imus was a “victim.”

    Well… If you consider how much revolting crap people like O’Reilly, Limp-dick, Coulter, Malkin and countless other pundicks have gotten away with, both before and since “the Imus storm”… You begin to wonder if Imus’ worst offense might not have been that he spread his shit more evenhandedly, without consideration for *anyone*.

    * Sam Brownback is going to push for an official government apology for slavery and segregation.

    Well *good for him*; I wouldn’t have expected it from a Repub. Such an apology is long overdue, as is a formal apology due to the Native Americans for what had been done to *them*. Accepting culpability and apologising for one’s acts is a sign of maturity, as well as a promise for a better future. And it doesn’t hurt, really, to say “I’m sorry” 🙂 And, such an apology would be much more in the scope of US’ Senate than nattering about what Turkey did in Armenia (or what Japan did in China and Korea); *those* apologies remain in the purview of Turkey and Japan… But cleansing our own wounds, so that hey can begin to heal? I have no derision for such a desire. Even if the move is initiated by a Repub.

    “I think it’s quite possible that Chris Dodd is the most qualified, and would make the best president of all the Democratic candidates” — Hark, @17

    Kucinich would be as good, if not better. Unfortunately, he has even less chance of getting the Dems’ “nod”.

    “Russia wants oil, an ally against the loony Americans, and they want to keep China from getting same. They don’t want to create another nuclear rival on their border.” — Laszlo Panaflex, @22

    It’s good to see that someone else not infected with the “Iran + Russia = nukes falling on DC” paranoia 🙂

    Russia — even in its USSR avatar — and (communist) China had always been at loggerheads, about who’s going to rule Asia (and the rest of the world, Marx willing). Given that Rice is supposed to have been an expert on erst-while USSR, I’m surprised that she seems to be so clueless about that.

    Russia — long before it became the dominant republic of the USSR — had been “making nice” with its Asian/Muslim neighbours, of which it had (and still has) many, due to its sheer size (US doesn’t seem to recognise how lucky it is that it only has two neighbours to keep peace with). But it doesn’t mean that Russia is going to share its nuclear know-how with Iran; Russia has been friends with India, too, for many years, but it took *US* to bolster India’s appetite for nuclear-capability…

    Like Laszlo says: Russia, Iran, and “all them little buggers” are looking for allies, the better to defend themselves against the big, bad, US. If US thinks that Russia would give Iran nukes… Good; maybe it’ll be enough of a deterrent not to nuke Iran (or Russia). But, actually *give nukes to Iran*? Get real…

  • Anyone on Mountain or Pacific time might want to check out PBS Frontline program on Cheney tonight. The program aired here in the east at 10:00 pm and is quite good. Nothing new for regular CB readers, but much of the Bush/Cheney power grab is presented and strung together quite nicely.

    Local times can be found here, as well as the ability to watch online.
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney

  • Sam Brownback is going to push for an official government apology for slavery and segregation. “They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe editorial board. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward … is at the end of day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.”

    Republicans, if they wanted to make a big deal out of this at the expense of Democrats, could easily do so, since the fact is that the President who forced the Federal Government to start promoting the Jim Crow laws of the south was none other than Democratic icon Woodrow Wilson, the most overrated Democrat in history, also known in his day as “a narrow-minded bigot,” which is a more accurate description of the man who lied us into war and screwed up the League of Nations over his racist attitude to the colonial nations who wanted independence, thus setting the stage for most of the violence of the 80 years of the 20th Century that followed.

  • RE: DrBB @ #1

    Re Dodd: “Good for him” indeed. My impression is that he’s been the strongest and most consistent among the Dem candidates on the issue of undoing Cheneyist-Bushist depredations against the Constitution. I wish the front three were being more unequivocal about undoing the Constitutional rollback and reestablishing the rule of law w/respect to the Executive.

    Is that why he voted for the “Patriot” Act twice?

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  • “THE I-MAN RETURNETH!!!!”

    Nothing to cheer about, as a matter of fact, it’s disappointing.

  • Re: Randi Rhodes “incident.” Another example of the lies and deception spread by the left-wing hate machine.

  • Sure, bring Imus back, but put him on satellite where he won’t take up precious free air waves.

    I don’t care whether he’s racist or not.
    He’s BORING!

    As for Brownback’s resolution?

    Lessee…
    Armenian genocide, over 90 years ago.
    Slavery, over 140 years ago…
    Anyone up for condemning the Spanish inquisition?

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