Friday’s Mini-Report

November 2, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Say hello to your next Attorney General: “Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California say they will support Michael Mukasey’s nomination to be attorney general. Both are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

* This has the potential to be very interesting: “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and more than a dozen other current and former intelligence officials must testify about their conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists, a federal judge ruled Friday in an espionage case. Lawyers for two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists facing charges have subpoenaed Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and several others to testify at their trial next year. Prosecutors had challenged the subpoenas in federal court…. If they ultimately testify in court, the trial in federal court in suburban Alexandria, Va. could offer a behind-the-scenes look at the way U.S. foreign policy is crafted.”

* In only the fifth veto of his presidency, Bush rejected the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) today, because, he said, it included $9 billion in extra spending for water infrastructure projects. The bill, which funds hurricane protection, flood mitigation, and wetlands restoration is expected to become law anyway, because it enjoys veto-proof support in both chambers.

* Reporters finally started asking Rudy Giuliani about his blatantly dishonest radio ad today. “Even if you want to quibble about the statistics, you find me the person who leaves the United States and goes to England for prostate cancer treatment, and I’d like to meet that person,” he told reporters. Allow me to translate: “As long as I really believe in the broader point I hope to make, it’s acceptable for me to lie about the details.”

* Did the White House think no one would notice? “On ABC World News with Charles Gibson last night, ABC National Security Correspondent Jonathan Karl filed a report about the recent decline in American troop casualties in Iraq. In the report, Karl noted that ‘violence in Iraq is down,’ but added that ‘there has been almost no political progress on the national level.’ … After the report aired, the White House sent the piece out in an official White House publication called ‘White House Iraq Update.’ But, as Karl writes today, the White House edited his report before sending it out, making it look ‘like an unqualified declaration of success in Iraq.'”

* Is Iraq poised to get worse? “The U.S. military official in charge of supporting reconciliation efforts in Iraq says that unless the Shiite-led Iraqi government takes concrete steps to embrace the Sunnis, the new, mostly-Sunni ex-insurgent militias supported by the U.S. could return to insurgency.”

* CBS reveals the man who know as “Curveball.” (thanks to DOK for the tip)

* S-CHIP continues to percolate: “Talks seeking a bipartisan compromise on health insurance for low-income children were cut short on Thursday, and the Senate then swiftly passed a bill to provide coverage for 10 million youngsters, fully expecting President Bush to veto it. The 64-to-30 vote, coming one week after the House approved the same bill, moves the legislation to Mr. Bush’s desk. The bill differs slightly from one vetoed on Oct. 3, but it faces the same fate.” Negotiations between lawmakers continue.

* Fox News banned candidates from using network footage in campaign ads. Mitt Romney’s doing it anyway.

* Whether you like Dennis Kucinich or not, this CBS interview was both awful and unfair.

* Speaking of Kucinich, Jimmy Carter wants no part of the UFO discussion.

* TAP is hosting a fascinating discussion about the modern role of the Air Force.

* Jon Soltz has an idea: moving Condoleezza Rice’s office to Baghdad.

* And finally, Speaker Pelosi had a compelling response to Bush’s speech from yesterday: “He is the President of the United States. What does he have to show for his presidency? He is the President of the United States already talking about his library. What is he going to have in the library? A tax cut for the wealthiest people in the country at the expense of the middle class and a war without end that is a total failure? So he has to talk about something and he stoops to a level, in my view, that is beneath the dignity of the office that he holds and I don’t want to go there with him.”

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

In the open thread spirit, it appears Obama is sharpening his knives a bit and got a serious stab in at Giuliani (with a little twist for Hillary as well). In the event he ends up the nominee, I am always glad to see he can go toe-to-toe with the thugs is necessary; I do think some of the commenters under the story rightly question the politics of both Obama and Giuliani bringing up Hillary.

  • I’ve had enough of Dianne Feinstein to last me for the rest of my life. I won’t vote for her ever again. Fool me once, and all that crap.

  • What the hell is up with Schumer and Feinstein??

    Let’s change the name of their party to the Democaves.

    They cave on everything and it sickens me.

  • We need t shirts: Schumer supports torture; Feinstein supports torture.

    I am ASHAMED of them, of the direction this country persists in following.

  • Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California say the will support Michael Mukasey’s nomination to be attorney general.

    F*CK!!!

    Just when it looked like there was a bit of momentum on this thing…
    I guess it was too much to have hoped the Democrats wouldn’t piss away this opportunity to do the right thing.

  • Schumer and Feinstein—minions of the Bushylvanian Reich. Their transformation the the Dark Side is well underway. They’ll be having their Thanksgiving turkey with Darth Lieberman, that’s for sure….

    And about the Fox/Romney thing—Did Romney sign a waiver allowing Fox to hold possession of Romney’s intellectual property (being his image and his comments)? Also, when something political is broadcast into the public airwaves might be identifiable as “being in the public domain.”

  • “Even if you want to quibble about the statistics, you find me the person who leaves the United States and goes to England for prostate cancer treatment, and I’d like to meet that person,”

    Yeah, well maybe if more people weren’t lying about our health care system to keep it from going to a public system (like Giuliani), then more people would hear about the benefits of specific procedures as they’re performed in other nations, and would go and get a good operation, better than they’re getting here.

  • …you find me the person who leaves the United States and goes to England for prostate cancer treatment, and I’d like to meet that person

    There are plenty of Americans traveling to Mexico for medical and dental work. There are also plenty of Americans traveling to India for heart surgery, knee and back operations. The National Coalition on Health care reports that 500,000 Americans went overseas for procedures last year.

    Many hospitals now outsource X-ray interpretation to India as well.

    So, once again, Giuliani is full of shit. But, then, Repoublicans like it when their President is full of shit.

  • “The bill, which funds hurricane protection, flood mitigation, and wetlands restoration is expected to become law anyway, because it enjoys veto-proof support in both chambers.”

    Ah, but then there’s the trump card, the stealth veto, what we affectionately know as the Bush signing statement.

  • Good points, Swan and Dennis #’s 8 & 9.

    And don’t forget the people who migrate to Canada just to get the damned coverage in the first place.

    But what drives me nuts is what do these swipes at the health care in other countries have to do with COVERING ALL AMERICANS???????????

    We’re talking about the right (and obligation) to obtain health insurance, at standard rates, without exclusions for preexisting conditions, for all Americans. What the hell has that got to do with prostate cancer survival rates in England?????????

  • “After the report aired, the White House sent the piece out in an official White House publication called ‘White House Iraq Update.’ But, as Karl writes today, the White House edited his report before sending it out, making it look ‘like an unqualified declaration of success in Iraq.’”

    Islam-O-Fascism? Are “Islam-O-Fascists” making the Dictator-in-chief act like a fucking Nazi pig?

    Big Fucking Lie.

  • And don’t forget the people who migrate to Canada just to get the damned coverage in the first place.

    And don’t forget the people who migrate to be able to get the medical marijuana– there’s another stupid, pro-suffering policy of our government that does nothing of benefit.

  • F*!@kin’ Feinstein! And we’re stuck with her until she’s 80 years old! If she still runs than I’ll run against her myself. Damn, that woman pisses me off! What would it take to recall her ass? Maybe we’ll get lucky and the FSM will call her home early.

  • Unintentional Humor Department:

    Chris Matthews just stated that “Thompson could pick up all of the marbles if he stays in this thing.”

    Thompson should start by picking up his manifestly lost marbles.

  • I still feel like the Democrats are not together enough on opposing theRepublicans in congress. It’s like communicating via guessing game.

    Doesn’t anybody every talk to people anymore?

  • * And finally, Speaker Pelosi had a compelling response to Bush’s speech from yesterday […]

    Brits have a very nice saying: “fine words butter no parsnips”, which is rather relevant to the things Ms Pelosi *says* vis-a-vis things Ms Pelosi *does* (or doesn’t do, as the case might be. Vide the little matter of impeachments and dining room furniture). I wonder if she went trick-or-treating dressed as Arlen Specter.

    I think, of all my disappointments post ’06 elections, she’s the greatest of them all. Reid is a wimp too, but Reid’s a man, so I never expected as much of him.

  • S-CHIP continues to percolate: “….The bill differs slightly from one vetoed on Oct. 3, but it faces the same fate.”

    Republican legislatoes are basically political zombies, there seems to be absolutely nothing you can give to peel off just a few more from the pack, they always vote in lockstep. And most of the ones who have voted for S-CHIP will probably face primary challenges from the right next year for having the temerity to change their conventional feeding patterns on one measly issue. Braindead freaks, the lot of them.

  • The problem isn’t that we have Senators who are willing to approve a nominee for AG that would turn a blind eye to torture. The problem is that we have Senators who have been willing to endure a criminal President who would appoint one.

    The Congress has had plenty of opportunity to take a stand against the criminal enterprises of the White House, and they have not. Why should Mukasey be forced to acknowledge that what the administration has done is criminal and unconscionable when Congress itself hasn’t?

    Yes, it really sucks to approve a nominee that is so obviously willing to accept the criminality of the administration. This is just one of many logical consequences of all the crap they’ve tolerated thus far. Chickens come home to roost. They put themselves into this situation. If they wanted to get all moral and upstanding, the opportunity for that was long ago. It’s a little late for them to be complaining about just how much dirt and blood El Jefe is spattering on the Constitution, and how dirty it’s starting to get from him trampling it underfoot.

  • …you find me the person who leaves the United States and goes to England for prostate cancer treatment, and I’d like to meet that person.

    Let’s see. I believe that you have to be a citizen to enjoy another country’s healthcare system unless you pay for it. So, what’s the benefit of going across the Atlantic ocean to pay for it? Could he be any stupider? AND, it’s not that easy to just move to Canada and become a citizen to “enjoy” their healthcare. Anyone thinking they can simply go to another country, well, you can’t. America isn’t the only country that restricts immigration and access.

    “fine words butter no parsnips”

    And here we say “All hat and no cattle” which appropriately describes our asshat in chief and all the dems.

    The friggin neo nazi cons have taken over and nary a single person who has the ability to actually do anything is. I call and call and am, as I expect they desire, giving up.

    Face it, we’re fucked. The corporations own everything including us.

    Welcome to slavery new millennium style.

  • I still feel like the Democrats are not together enough on opposing the Republicans in congress. It’s like communicating via guessing game.

    PERSON 1: Is it a giraffe?

    PERSON 2: No…

    PERSON 1: Is it the planet Uranus?

    PERSON 2: No…

    PERSON 1: Is it the second draft of proposed legislation?

    PERSON 2: No…

    PERSON 1: Can you tell me whether I’m getting warmer?

    PERSON 2: No…

  • Schumer and Feinstein facilitate Mukasey’s nomination with their support. Within days, CIA interrogator Max Hurt has a come-to-Jesus experience and divulges to the NYT details of having been ordered by superiors to water board numerous Gitmo detainees. To protect Heir Shrub & Co. from legal jeopardy, AG Mukasey determines the practice is lawful and makes no effort to investigate. Time passes. President Clinton believes Bush and Chaney hold vital hitherto undisclosed secrets regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities based on prior statements by both. In the interest of national security, she orders Blackwater to rendition Bush and Chaney to Fuckistan for lawful interrogation to obtain the particulars. Bush soils his codpiece while mumbling something about torture. Chaney morphs into a toad and croaks.

  • Okay, Bush vetoed a bill because there was money in it for infrastructure? Hmmm…I guess there’s more money for contractors in the clean-up after a disaster, so that’s why he’d prefer not to have the government involved at this stage.

    Giuliani gets huffy with the media because they want to “quibble” over the statistics he used in his ads? I think the media’s more appropriate response to that should have been, “no…we don’t want to quibble over your statistics, we want to know why you lied.” And when he tasked them to find one person who had left the US for England for medical treatment, they should have given him their best puzzled look and said, “Sir, you do realize that an American would have to pay for treatment in a foreign country, right? That it wouldn’t be free?” And then they should have loaded up both barrels and said, “We understand the treatment you received, and which you credit with your recovery, wasn’t developed in this country,” and just waited to see what incredible lie he would manage to tell in response.

    I am officially tried of hearing anything Nancy Pelosi has to say.

    As for Feinstein and Schumer…hard to find the words to adequately describe my revulsion for their positions. Schumer had this to say:

    I would also like to say something about torture, particularly waterboarding. I deeply oppose it. I supported Senator Kennedy’s amendment in 2006 and am a co-sponsor of his bill in this congress. Unfortunately, this nominee, indeed any proposed by President Bush will not agree with this. I am, however, confident that this nominee would enforce a law that bans waterboarding as I hope it will.

    This afternoon, I met with Judge Michael Mukasey one more time. I requested the meeting to address, in person, some of my concerns. The Judge made clear to me that, were Congress to pass a law banning certain interrogation techniques, we would clearly be acting within our constitutional authority. And he flatly told me that the President would have absolutely no legal authority to ignore such a law, not even under some theory of inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution. He also pledged to enforce such a law and repeated his willingness to leave office rather than participate in a violation of law.

    Read that one more time. Schumer is putting his trust in someone upholding laws that haven’t even been passed yet. Judge Mukasey knows what all of us know – that no such laws will ever pass, not with a veto-proof majority – and so Judge Mukasey and George Bush can rest easy knowing that the status quo lives, and once again, Democrats who claim they are on the side of morality and principal have been outflanked, outsmarted and outplayed by people who have none.

    That’s just pitiful.

  • Anne,

    It’s called politics as usual. Schumer is treating torture as if it were a proposal to expand a highway in upstate New York. And as for writing a law to make waterboarding illegal, will that make bamboo under the fingernails illegal? Or electricity to the genitals? Will each type of torture require a bill of its own?

    What is Schumer thinking? Is he really so full of himself? He needs to lose his job and have a time out.

  • So, does anyone have anything material to say about Rep. Pelosi?

    You know, like something material against Sen Feinstein would be, “supporting even considering someone who cannot support our constitutional requirement not to torture.”

    C’mon.

  • Note to Rudy Giuliani: I kind of imagine if that pretty much anyone in this country who found themselves facing death from prostate cancer and unable to afford their own health care here would love to go to England and be covered by universal health care if they could. Only people who can get treated enjoy higher survival rates here! (And even then, not by much.) Shit for brains.

  • Brits have a very nice saying: “fine words butter no parsnips”, which is rather relevant to the things Ms Pelosi *says* vis-a-vis things Ms Pelosi *does*

    Leave it to the British to think up a new way to say something nasty about something somebody else is trying to do / doing.

  • OK here’s my pipe dream. I think we have already banned torture (Geneva Conventions, Military Detainee Act, etc.), if not specifying which methods constitute torture. Mukasy would not opine one way or the other whether waterboarding is illegal torture, although he finds the method reprehensible. If he had opined that it definitely constituted illegal torture, would Bush have pulled his nomination? Because Mukasy as AG, after opining that, would practically be required to prosecute all who participated and authorized the technique, leaving the whole Bush cabal open to war crimes prosecution. Did Schumer, who apparently knows Mukasy well (and whose senior staff member clerked for Mukasy, I think) make a side deal with Mukasy to support the nomination in spite of the vague waterboarding comments, so that once AG they could actually pursue these prosecutions? A girl can dream!.

  • I believe that you have to be a citizen to enjoy another country’s healthcare system unless you pay for it. — J, @22 (and Anne, @26 said something similar)

    Not quite. That’s true only of the US, as far as I know.

    When my husband was on an exchange program in Oxford, our son continued seeing, on a regular basis, an orthodontist. For free, even though each visit here had to be paid for. We got free healthcare in Poland also, even though we were there on a private visit, without any official sponsorship. When I got sick in Holland (before I was married), the doctor — sent by my place of work — came to my dorm to check on me, even though I was working *without a permit* (yon “illegal alien”). Not only did I not pay a penny, but my place of work sent me *compensation*, to Poland, for the sick days lost from work…

    As for JulieAnnie’s argument (nobody from US goes to England for treatment)… As far as I know, nobody from England comes here for treatment, either. Though I did hear that some people — even from US — went to USSR for the laser operations on the eyes, when it was still a new technique. And, of course, scads of Japanese used to come here, for a couple of days, to get their driving licenses; even adding in a plane ticket, it was still worth it, both price-wise and difficulty-level-wise. Much like a Las Vegas divorce 🙂 Eventually, Japan stopped recognizing US licenses, unless someone had spent at least 3 months here, which cut down on the fad but all of my students got theirs, even before they could speak proper English…

  • RE: a liberal republican’s comments @ 31….
    Particularly: A girl can dream!

    We haven’t seen any numbers yet on the number of people the US tortured.
    They may be shockingly high.
    Consider that once you cross the rubicon and start behaving immorally– not only is there no going back– but also: the egregious behavior feeds on itself.
    Sins snowball sufficiently unto the day…
    Evil manifests itself multifariously.

    Suppose further that Bush signed off on the torture.
    That the order to torture percolated down from his imprimatur…

    That means that snaking down from the President there are possibly thousands of Americans guilty of the most heinous sorts of war crimes.

    Feinstein, Schumer, and the Democrats HAVE TO make the crime retroactively legal.
    Else they have to admit out loud to the world that America is basically a nation of torturers lacking all moral suasion.

    It’s Hobson’s choice:

    1) Admit that the President and his lieutenants are reprehensible torturers…
    2) Or praise the Emperor for his beautiful wardrobe.

    We all know which one they are going to choose.
    If only to try to pretend to the home crowd a bit longer that America’s moral standing in the world hasn’t become a sick joke.

    So sorry. No dreaming allowed.
    And no laughing either.
    This joke is simply to sick….

  • For all of my adult life I have believed that people of Jewish heritage, and those close to them, had strong moral values, an acute sense of compassion on which they acted because their religion required them to do so. Centuries of persecution, the holocaust, and mindless discrimination seemed to have bred a culture that didn’t react with malice towards bigotry, and had developed a superior understanding of the ever so flawed human condition.

    Thus I have to wonder what has happened to that culture when I see the likes of Schumer, Lieberman and Feinstein behaving as they do. They are a disgrace to human decency, and their own heritage. I am ashamed to be in the same political party with them. Lieberman technically qualifies as an ‘Independent’. So will I just as soon as I can go to the town clerk’s office and unenroll myself in the so-called Democratic Party.

    This cave-in is really the last straw.

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