Thursday’s Mini-Report

November 1, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The market is almost back to where it was when Bush took office nearly seven years ago: “The Dow industrials suffered one of its biggest declines of the year Thursday, plummeting more than 360 points after a Citigroup downgrade served as a blunt reminder to Wall Street that the credit market crisis is not over. The Dow Jones industrial average (Charts) finished 362 points, or about 2.6 percent, lower based on early tallies. The broader S&P 500 index (Charts) lost 2.6 percent, while the tech-fueled Nasdaq slipped nearly 2.3 percent.”

* This afternoon, Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy announced their opposition to Michael Mukasey’s AG nomination, while John McCain announced his support. As of now, there are nine “no” votes against Mukasey, 47 “yes” (all Republicans), and 44 undecideds.

* Yesterday, we talked about Washington State Rep. Richard Curtis (R), the latest “not gay” conservative Republican to get caught up in a sordid gay-sex scandal. Today, Curtis resigned from the state legislature. In a written statement, he said, “Events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people. I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused.”

* James Sandler has a fascinating report today on the war against government whistle-blowers: “[A] six-month investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, in collaboration with Salon, has found that federal whistle-blowers almost never receive legal protection after they take action. Instead, they often face agency managers and White House appointees intent upon silencing them rather than addressing the problems they raise. They are left fighting for their jobs in a special administrative court system, little known to the American public, that is mired in bureaucracy and vulnerable to partisan politics. The CIR/Salon investigation reveals that the whistle-blower system — first created by Congress decades ago and proclaimed as a cornerstone of government transparency and accountability — has in reality enabled the punishment of employees who speak out. It has had a chilling effect, dissuading others from coming forward.”

* Juan Cole makes the case: “The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there.”

* The government’s terrorist watch-list started with a couple of dozen names. “By June 2004, that list had swelled to 158,000 names. In May of this year, it clocked in at 755,000. Today, only five months later, it’s at 860,000 and counting, according to the Government Accountability Office.” Wow.

* The military’s recruiting troubles get worse. Much worse: “The Army started off the recruiting year with the lowest number of recruits signed up for Basic Training since the United States military became an all-volunteer force in 1973. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, told Pentagon reporters on Wednesday that the diminished number of delayed enlistment recruits in the pike will make it extremely difficult to reach the goals for 2008.”

* Here’s an extremely good, non-rhetorical question: why would Blackwater guards need silencers? “The fact they appear to have smuggled them into the country doesn’t weigh heavily in favor of an innocent explanation.”

* Here’s another extremely good, non-rhetorical question: “My question for those who support torture because they believe it’s effective is always: should local cops use waterboarding to gather evidence from suspected criminals?”

* Some Republicans are almost desperate to see Michael Bloomberg run for president, in the hopes of splitting the left.

* In the midst of manufacturing depraved and baseless gossip, several right-wing blogs prove that they have no idea what role a “body person” plays in a campaign. (Hint to conservatives: it has nothing to do with sex.)

* A few weeks ago, Trent Wisecup, chief of staff to Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), went berserk yelling at a liberal blogger while on camera. It appears that Wisecup has since decided to take a leave of absence.

* The Republican scam to divide California’s electoral votes is losing popularity quickly. A new poll released yesterday found a majority (53%) oppose the measure, while only 22% support it. Even among California Republicans, the stunt isn’t popular — with opponents outnumbering supporters, 46% to 22%.

* And finally, a quick housekeeping note. I generally don’t talk about The Carpetbagger Report’s traffic, but I wanted to mention that October 2007 was easily the best month in the site’s history. Whether you’ve been reading for four years or four days, I appreciate your support.

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

“The market is almost back to where it was when Bush took office nearly seven years ago”

I always enjoy the fact that CB goes out of his way to point out the bad days in the market, but doesn’t comment when the market rips (like yesterday for instance) or the fact that it has been on a hell of a bull run since its bottomed in 2002.

  • …October 2007 was easily the best month in the site’s history.

    I would attribute it to Ron Paul’s throng of supporters who routinely visit the Carpetbagger Report.

  • Regarding the U.S. Army’s recruiting problems… Supporters of a military draft argue that an all-volunteer army would allow political leaders to get into wars willy-nilly, since most of the public would not be involved and thus not care.

    President Bush’s Iraq adventure seemed to have confimed this… by involving the U.S. in a war for which there was no real security issue, and which appeared to be primarily for political gain.

    However, the current recruiting issue suggests that conducting this kind of war properly and maintaining it for its duration won’t be so easy to do… willy nilly…

  • I wrote my senators that Judge Mukasey probably is a good man and probably does have good credentials. So did my uncle who was a sheriff of a small county in south Georgia in the 1950 and 60s. He unfortunately acted racist even though he personally said he was not. By remaining silent and going along with the status quo, he failed the moral test of his generation. The moral test of ours is our public stance on torture.

    Mukasey must denounce torture. He must denounce waterboarding. He must do this publicly so that the entire world will see that we are returning to the standards of the Geneva convention. What he believes in private is irrelevant.

  • When Bush took over the whitehouse the DJA was at about 11,000 points. Today it is just over ……. wait for it…. drum roll please…….. 11,000 points!!! My what a smashing success! Up is down, black is white, stagnation is good.

  • ***house keeping note*** I am always amazed at how many excellent posts you put out on a daily bases. Each day you pour them out and as soon as I’m done with one you have another to read. Don’t know how you do it but keep doing it. btw…So far there haven’t been many trolls or idiots commenting here and this is something I hope never changes but I get paranoid, especially after reading comments on Think progress or firedog lake just to mention a few. I only tell intelligent, informed people about this site.

    Whistleblowers…you are brave patriotic citizens who will all be punished under this administration until we get democrats in office who have a spine.

    The evil move on bloggers are the only messages Bush has not found a way to control like he has the media. Bush saves his best speeches for the neanderthals who he can depend on to clap at anything that comes out of his mouth. The government wants to operate in secret without being accountable to anyone…the crowd would leap out of their seats with applause since this obviously means more profit for them. It’s for certain there was not one poor person in the crowd. Why didn’t Bush mention the dems in congress should be listening more to Rush Limbaugh and Shawn Hannity like he does.

  • With an army of nearly a million strong, those terrorists have got to be kicking our a$$e$. Any day now.

  • The government’s terrorist watch-list started with a couple of dozen names. By June 2004, that list had swelled to 158,000 names. In May of this year, it clocked in at 755,000. Today, only five months later, it’s at 860,000 and counting…

    Pretty soon it will be faster and easier to list the people who AREN’T on the list.

  • Here’s an extremely good, non-rhetorical question: why would Blackwater guards need silencers? “The fact they appear to have smuggled them into the country doesn’t weigh heavily in favor of an innocent explanation.”

    For the type of jobs you use a silencer for?

  • * A few weeks ago, Trent Wisecup, chief of staff to Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), went berserk yelling at a liberal blogger while on camera. It appears that Wisecup has since decided to take a leave of absence.

    Whoa! Take a Thorazine, you wacko.

  • “Here’s another extremely good, non-rhetorical question: “My question for those who support torture because they believe it’s effective is always: should local cops use waterboarding to gather evidence from suspected criminals?””

    I have never understood our hysterical reaction to terrorism. Ordinary crime is by far a greater threat to all of us than terrorism could ever hope to be. Just Google crime statistics and see for yourselves. And yet we have not given up our rights and liberties to fight crime, and we have bent over backwards to make sure those accused are given their constitutional rights.

    Why is that?

  • Oh, yes, huge gains, just HUGE.
    </sarcasm>

    This is what we call a sideways market. If I wanted to, I could zoom out to a twenty, fifty year, or hundred to show that modest gains in the market don’t actually mean an increasing market. It’s been a good year, sure, but those wobbly gains have been steady and not predictors of value.

    ^-^

  • I’ve given up hope that Bloomberg will run for president. But if he ran, he’d have a great chance to win, and I’d like to think that he’ll hurt Republicans–some of whom presumably still value managerial acumen and good economic instincts over religious, anti-tax or xenophobic fanaticism–as much as Democrats.

    That said, he’s probably to the left of Lady Triangula on any issue you’d care to name.

  • The market is almost back to where it was when Bush took office nearly seven years ago…

    What a bunch of Gloomy Gusses. Before Bushenomics™ we had to be satisfied with just one job. Now, many Americans are happily working at two or more jobs. Not only that, we’ve weaned ourselves from the old economic model of making or growing things that people want to a modern economy of selling each other cafe lattes and sub-prime mortgages so that we can buy the things we want, manufactured in China or grown G*d knows where, at WalMart.

    It’s all good, people, and the glass is half-full.

  • Steve, I assume you picked up a few readers from Steve Gilliard’s old site. I got here from something that was written on it after his death last spring.

  • Washington State Rep. Richard Curtis (R), the latest “not gay” conservative Republican to get caught up in a sordid gay-sex scandal.

    He reminds me of Michael on Arrested Development who was a “never nude.”

    -Homer

  • The government’s terrorist watch-list started with a couple of dozen names. “By June 2004, that list had swelled to 158,000 names. In May of this year, it clocked in at 755,000. Today, only five months later, it’s at 860,000 and counting, according to the Government Accountability Office.”

    Wow, just wow. Almost one in three hundred of us is a suspected terrorist. I’m afraid to leave the house for fear of the Muslim hordes outside my door. It’s a good thing that David Horowitz just had Islamofascism awareness week so that we can spot these would be bomb throwers.

  • Today, only five months later, it’s at 860,000

    The ultimate in bureaucratic ass-covering by the list makers. If we just put every known living person on it, when someone slips through no one can blame us for not having them on the list!

  • For the type of jobs you use a silencer for?

    If they’re doing illicit, assassin stuff, they’re probably going out incognito to do it, obtaining domestic or U.S. military disguises and ditching their Blackwater vehicles somehow.

    Also, I guess it could always be that they didn’t know ahead of time that they were going to be involved in that sort of thing, but just wanted to bring the stuff along in case a very profitable and illegal opportunity presented itself while they were in Iraq, too good to pass up on.

    Also sheds new light on the Nisoor square incident. What if someone told them a job would be to wait until they got to a certain place on the trip, and then shoot on the east/west/whatever side of the convoy? Or shoot when they saw/heard a certain signal? Or saw a specific person? Could also be in cahoots with whoever is in a position to effect which way the Dep. of State is traveling through Baghdad on a given day.

  • [Bush saves his best speeches for the neanderthals] who he can depend on to clap at anything that comes out of his mouth. — bjobotts, @7

    My first reading was: “…who can give him a (dose of) clap by mouth”, and I thought “don’t I wish”.

    It’s been a very long day…

  • dajafi, at #14 – I’m not sure quite where the left has gotten the idea that Clinton is so far to the right. Certainly to listen to my friends on the right, she’s a commie just waiting to socialize everything. But let me move up to here a response I gave JKap below, when he asked whether Democratic voters would like her Senate record, and linked to Project Vote Smart, because I think her record as evaluated by various progressive (and conservative) political advocacy groups tells a very different story than the memes in left blogosphere (and for the record, [a] I consider myself a citizen thereof, and [b] I remain undecided for the Iowa caucuses, leaning mainly Dodd and Clinton but could live with about 5 of ’em, but like many here I am troubled by Kyl-Lieberman which is a big part of why I remain open to others besides HRC).

    14. On November 1st, 2007 at 6:14 pm, Zeitgeist said:
    Ok, JKap, I’ll take you up on this one:

    On November 1st, 2007 at 10:33 am, JKap said:
    …Hillary Clinton backers side with their candidate because they like her.

    Yea? How do they like her Senate voting record?

    Using just the Project Vote Smart site you linked to, I suspect there is a reason most mainstream Dems find HRC quite acceptable, as the polling shows – and it isn’t just name recognition or ignorance. I would expect the average active Democratic voter to have a lot in common with this:

    NARAL 2006 voting score – 100%
    Planned Parenthood 2006 score – 100%
    National Farmers Union 2006 – 83% (Farm Bureau, on the other hand, 29%)
    Humane Society and ASPCA, most recent – both 100%
    National Shareholders Union (Club for Growth types), most recent – 10%
    Bus. & Industrry PAC (same) – most recent 27%
    Americans United for Sep. of Church and State – 2006 – 100%
    ACLU – 83%
    NAACP – 96%
    Human Rights Campaign – 89%
    American Conservative Union – 8%
    Assn of Alcohol & Drug Counselors – 100%
    English First – 0%
    Natl Education Assn – 100%
    Nat’l Parent-Teacher Assn – 93% (most recent)
    American Wind Energy – 100%
    Defenders of Wildlife – 82%
    Childrens Defense Fund – 90% (100% in 2005)
    Council for a Livable World – 75%
    Friends (Quakers) Committee – 92%
    PeacePAC 2005 – 100%
    Public Interest Research Group – 91%
    NRA – F
    Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence – 100%
    American Public Health Assn – 100%
    AFL-CIO – 93%
    Americans for Democratic Action – 95%
    People for the American Way (most recent) – 92%
    Center for Security Policy (Repubs score high) – 32%
    Bread for the World – 100%
    NOW – 96%

    Care to tell me what among those would drive Democratic primary voters away from Clinton in droves? That looks like a damn good – and damned liberal – record to me.

  • The military’s recruiting troubles get worse. Much worse: “The Army started off the recruiting year with the lowest number of recruits signed up for Basic Training since the United States military became an all-volunteer force in 1973. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, told Pentagon reporters on Wednesday that the diminished number of delayed enlistment recruits in the pike will make it extremely difficult to reach the goals for 2008.”

    video

  • Of all the things I heard today, Bush’s comments about Mukasey, waterboarding and Democrats reduced me to yelling at the radio in my car…

    On Mukasey and waterboarding: Mukasey was asked whether waterboarding was torture. That prompted him and all the GOP toadies to respond in the most convoluted way possible, which means that even people who should be able to figure it’s all double-speak will nod along as if it makes sense.

    Mukasey doesn’t have to know what interrogation techniques “we” are using in order to answer the question. He doesn’t have to be “read in” to the program, either. Waterboarding has been deemed to be torture by military experts, and human rights agencies, various conventions, and there is an easily-researched history of what it is, why it is considered torture, etc. And then there is that much more recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan that found that the Geneva Conventions most certainly did apply – even John Freakin’ Negroponte came out and said that the interrogation techniques had to be abandoned because they were illegal. Are we to believe that Michael Mukasey is not familiar with the Hamdan decision? That he hasn’t read it or studied it? Are we to believe that a man who wants to be the Attorney General would not be delving into the minutiae of these cases, the decisions and formed any opinions about them?

    Contrary to Ed Gillespie, who thought it was okay to go on national TV and say that members of the Senate who had been briefed have said it is legal. What? When did that happen? Did they say this in some secret, private room and then get hit with the Mind Eraser, so that they now have no memory of it? Aside from the fact that the only one who says it’s legal is the president, whatever “briefing” was given was probably a variation on “don’t bother asking any questions – we say it’s legal and that’s all you need to know.”

    The frustration of sitting by watching these people try to negotiate the ins and outs of relatively simple concepts as though they were made of melting taffy is making me crazy.

    As for Bush’ comments about Democrats, they were offensive and beneath contempt – but I guess that’s where Bush lives these days. What the Democrats need to do is throw it right back in his face, and say, “It takes an incalculable level of chutzpah for the president to stand before the American people and invoke the name of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader whom the president could not be bothered to pursue and capture, preferring, apparently, to use him as a weapon of fear. After the horror of 9/11, the American people deserved better; instead they got lies and a disastrous war, thousands of loved ones dead and injured, billions and billions spent on contracts handed out to political cronies with no oversight, and now more noises about war and confrontation. Mr. President, a 24% approval rating doesn’t get you on the bully pulpit – it doesn’t even get you on the first step. The 76% who don’t approve of your job performance? They are more than MoveOn and Code Pink, sir. They are moms and dads, lawyers and accountants, farmers and doctors, auto workers and scientists, teachers and students, salesmen and business owners. They are not fooled by careful parsing on torture. They are no longer falling for the message of fear. And neither are we.”

    And then what they should do is vote against Mukasey – let his nomination fail in committee, or fail on the floor of the Senate, with not a single Democratic vote. Then let him recess-appoint someone. Someone no one will mistake for an independent steward of the Constitution, but another in a long line of sycophantic boot-lickers. Let him end the charade.

    Sorry – I got a little carried away, but this just makes me furious.

  • Clinton is to the Right of Democrats, yes.

    But she’s to the Left of Bush. And Bush, sadly enough, seems to the Left of the current crop of candidates.

  • zeitgeist, I appreciate the information. But I would commend to you to this Mark Schmitt article from last year: The End of Checklist Liberalism. Speaking strictly for myself, I couldn’t be less impressed that NARAL and some environmental group give her high marks; ADA, PAW and AFL-CIO carry a little more weight with me, for what that’s worth.

    It’s sort of beside my main point, though. While one could make an argument that for a Senator–voting on mostly issues that she didn’t raise (and acting within a universe limited by what’s available to be voted upon!)–it’s sufficient to “vote the right way,” in the case of a president I want someone I trust to set the agenda and (not to sound like Kucinich) expand the universe of progressive possibility.

    To that end, Sen. Clinton has enabled the warmongers in 2002 and 2007; shown no leadership on economic justice issues; trailed Dodd and others on issues related to checks and balances and restoring Constitutional protections (probably my “single issue”, if anything is); and even hesitated earlier this year on the question of whether homosexuality was a sin. And if you judge her by her associates, the fact that she’s elevated a cretin like Mark Penn to the position of top non-spousal advisor seems pretty revealing to me.

    I just see no leadership there–no courage, and above all little to no more capacity than Bush had, or has, to change people’s minds on issues of policy.

    As I wrote yesterday, I think she’s a perfectly acceptable moderate Republican. Otherwise, while I appreciate and enjoy the discussion and have no plans to drop it, I don’t see much chance that either of us will convince the other of Sen. Clinton’s real merits or lack thereof.

  • Anne,

    I don’t know if Digby accepts guest posters, but I think you’d be a great voice there. Your “comment” is great, and as such deserves to be a post on its on. I bet Mr. Carpetbagger and a bunch of us carpetbagging denizens would be happy to recommend you if that would help.

  • but if bloggers gave up on discussions where they wont change anyone’s mind, the blogs would be pretty slow! 🙂

    the reality is that all of the leading Dems have their Mark Penns, their ultimate insiders, their mercenaries. You think Axelrod is really that much better than Penn? it is also true that none of the “big 3” have really distinguished themselves as bold, progressive leaders in the Senate.

    your critique is valid as to the limitations of the specific interest group ratings, but taken collectively over a broad range of groups, they do give a good general impression of a candidate’s proclivity toward or away from progressiveness (and if you look at the ratings, you actually do see HRC shading her stances as she preps to run – the scores above are actually down from, say, 2004). in some ways this “general sense” misses key information – a single but horrendous vote like Kyl-Lieberman, for example. but it also in some ways tells more: no one knows what the issues of tomorrow will be; there are always new challenges, unexpected twists, and knowing someone’s general tendency gives a better idea of how they will lean on a host of issues over time, including the unpredicted ones.

    i know i wont convince you to support HRC (at least not in the primary; i’m holding out hope to convince you should she be in the general!) but i do think the blogmeme that she is somehow broadly conservative for a Dem is significantly undermined by the info above. as between HRC and other liberals, there surely are reasons to prefer others, or choose one of another. but she ain’t no Republican on those consistent, across the issues ratings.

  • Zeitgeist,

    I pointed to Hillary’s Senate voting record, not her popularity ratings. I’m sure you have a reasonable argument bolstering those ratings, but that just wasn’t my point of the thread that you are referring to. I’m interested in the specifics of Hillary’s Senate record and I think that the specifics should be important to Democratic voters.

    I’m not saying that my way is the best way. I am simply iterating a basic idea that I believe is important in a democracy, a full and unfettered examination of the facts.

    Specifically, the aspects of Ms. Clinton’s Senate record that many progressives would reasonably scrutinize, the fact that she cast two (2) votes in favor of the Patriot Act, AUMF in Iraq, and AUMF in Iran (Kyl-Lieberman), are typically not scrutinized here on the Carpetbagger Report or in the mainstream media.

    So here I am, calling progressives to a higher standard. Dumb idea, I know.

  • Congratulations, Mr. Carpetbagger on the readership numbers for October. Frankly, I think it will shortly be the 2nd largest and then 3rd largets, etc. month. You have an outstanding site and the increase in readership, especially given the low troll factor, will continue to increase, IMHO.

    Kudos to you sir!

  • “The Army started off the recruiting year with the lowest number of recruits signed up for Basic Training since the United States military became an all-volunteer force in 1973. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, told Pentagon reporters on Wednesday that the diminished number of delayed enlistment recruits in the pike will make it extremely difficult to reach the goals for 2008.”
    Great, they’ll start cleaning out the state and federal prisons any day now.

    But not if they’re gay! That would be immoral.

    “Here’s an extremely good, non-rhetorical question: why would Blackwater guards need silencers? ”
    Two words: Death Squads

  • Thanks for your kind words, Edo – for now, as long as no one minds, I’m just happy to be able to have a great place to vent, and a rational group of great commenters to hang out with.

    I think what I so appreciate about Steve’s blog is that it isn’t an echo chamber, people can have rational disagreements and the debate is honest. And the sense of humor and snark is top-notch.

    Congrats to Steve for the great traffic news!

  • Anne, i’ll raise Edo by one – your post shows you more qualified to be on the party’s (or the candidates’) speechwriting team than whoever is presently in those positions!

    JKap – I had a feeling you were going to say that. But I used those ratings as a shorthand for her broader voting record because nearly all of them are, in fact, based directly on voting performance on votes of interest to that group. I understand your point, but I’m not sure that her “voting record” and her group ratings are entirely distinct things.

    And I still can’t believe you didn’t post anything on the MSNBC article. I hope you got a chance to take a look. It was fairly positive for your guy (although it was clear they also wanted to make him sound a little nuts).

  • October 2007 was easily the best month in the site’s history…….

    Fantastic. You’re a one man army Mr. CB. Rarely does one person’s high volume output have such a solid working relationship with really high quality execution. I don’t know how you create it all every day and maintain that level of quality and freshness but you do.
    _______________________________________________________

    From the archive: Posted February 26th, 2003 at 11:46 am

    Carpetbagger can’t help but laugh about the fact that Lawrence Lindsey, the president’s former economic adviser, was hung out to dry by his “friends” in the West Wing for admitting that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. The admission actually played a part in his dismissal.

    The price tag isn’t what’s getting me worked up. Wars cost a great deal, not only the lives they take, but in the financial burdens placed on the countries involved.

    No, the troubling part isn’t the cost of the war, it’s the fact that the administration knew the war was coming, knew roughly what it would cost, and didn’t add a penny in the recently unveiled budget for the war. The budget already forecasts the largest deficit in the history of the country. Now the war will add over $100 billion more to the deficit, plus a new round of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

    Bush is seeking to be the first president in U.S. history to cut taxes and wage a war simultaneously. The fiscal irresponsibility on display is nothing short of breathtaking. Usually, when you fall in a hole, the first rule is “stop digging.” This administration has fallen in a crater of its own making, and it’s looking for a bigger shovel.
    ___________________________________________________________________

    What innocents we were. What a rude awakening these bastards have been. The crater was a pothole looking back. But they wanted a crater and we’ve got a beauty.

    Thanks for shining that light along the way Mr. CB. I hope you’ve got good batteries though because the the light at the end of the tunnel looks like a poor lost firefly casting an illusory light right now.

  • Just in case any readers have mixed feelings about my comment # 20, I’d like to remind you that it’s not necessarily a great thing if we’re assassinating people in Iraq. Also, people killing people they really shouldn’t be might also explain why they’d want to do it through a mercenary (easier to accomplish / cover-up the crime) or why a mercenary has to be involved.

    For example, personnel in the military or in high posts elsewhere may be just as corruptly partisan as personnel we’ve heard of in other parts of the federal government. They may look at a new Iraq and decide they don’t want there to be any liberal influence there, because they want the country to be an experiment or an example of conservative ideas, or they just don’t want liberal ideas to take root anywhere where they can help it. This may sound psycho, but it certainly may be true. So if they hear of a particular person who they think is too liberal, or too idealistic, and it may be a lawyer or whatever, and they worry that somewhere along the line that person may have more influence on the ideas of Iraq than they would like, a really immature ill-adjusted person may just decide to have him/her killed, if they can accomplish it.

    In that case, my writing comment # 20 isn’t drawing light upong anti-terrorism measures that, while they may be questionable, occur in a context where there are no easy answers, decided upon by the people a lot better positioned than us to know what the decision requires; rather, by comment would then just be drawing light on covert political terrorism and victimization that just happens to be accomplished by Americans.

  • zeitgeist, thanks for the list but here’s the deal for me: Hillary voted to hand a loaded gun to a known idiot with the AUMF for Iraq. Her explanation is that, with tens of thousands of troops queued up, she didn’t actually think that he’d go to war. She recently voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment – whose very name should have sent any Democrat screaming into the night – with the full knowledge that this administration has spun prerogatives out of the thinnest air.

    Having a “D” after her name doesn’t make Hillary any more of a Democrat than it made of Zell Miller.

  • I think people’s worries about Hillary’s hawkish tendencies are valid, but, assuming she is the nominee, I suspect that the punishment of withholding one’s vote in the general election is more apt to accrue to us than it is to her. I know without a doubt, without even having to think about it, that a Republican president – a Giuliani, a Romney, a Huckabee – is not only likely to hurtle us headlong into another military debacle, but will do so much damage on the domestic front that we may never, ever recover.

    I know Hillary – or any of the other Democrats – will not be using her office to roll back Roe v. Wade, will not be nominating more Scalias or Robertses or Alitos to the Supreme Court, will not be stocking the agencies and departments of the government with people whose mission is to kill the government, will set the DOJ back on the course and mission it is supposed to have, will not have us all praying to a national God, will advocate for children and the poor, will work her ass off for changes to the health care system, will sign legislation that repeals the MCA and restores the honor and dignity and moral authority that we used to have. And, if we are really, really lucky in November, 2008, we will have a Congress that can make Joe Lieberman sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap, one that can install a Senate Majority Leader and a Speaker of the House who will stop selling out liberal interests, and one that can pull Hillary to the left when she wants to veer to the right.

    There were a lot of members of Congress who voted the wrong way – they made the mistake of “underestimating the words of evil, ambitious men” – and Hillary was one of them; it makes me angry that so many of them were so cowed that they failed to listen to their gut and listen to us.

    But I cannot, in good conscience, watch one of those GOP contenders stand on the steps of the Capitol and take the oath of office in January, 2009 and know that maybe my vote could have prevented that. Just can’t.

  • I hope you’ve got good batteries though because the the light at the end of the tunnel looks

    Yeah, maybe somebody could hook you up with a cabin somewhere for three weeks, or something. They’d be like a regular Molly Pitcher.

  • Anne, with respect, how can you state with such certainty what Hillary Clinton will do, or not do, in order to gain and remain in office? Aside from her hawkish tendencies (No small matter, that), there’s also her coyness in the matter of the release of Presidential documents, and her introduction of a bill in 2005 to outlaw flag burning – said bill being beyond the pale for even Antonin Scalia.

    It is axiomatic in American politics that presidential candidates run toward their base in the primaries and then move oppositely in the general election. If this holds true then the general election version of Hillary will be slightly to the left of George W. Bush and that’s just not good enough for me.

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