Wednesday’s Mini-Report

June 11, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Oh my: “U.S.-led forces killed Pakistani troops in an airstrike along the volatile Afghan border that Pakistan’s army condemned on Wednesday as ‘completely unprovoked and cowardly.’ U.S. officials confirmed that three aircraft launched about a dozen bombs following a clash between Taliban militants and Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces late Tuesday. Pakistan says the strikes killed 11 of its paramilitary troops. The Pakistani army said the coalition airstrike hit a post of the paramilitary Frontier Corps and was a ‘completely unprovoked and cowardly act.'”

* On a related note, ABC News reported that Pakistan is now threatening to end “cooperation” with the U.S. with regards to counter-terrorism.

* The deficit soars: “The U.S. government says a flood of economic stimulus payments pushed the federal budget deficit to an all-time high of $165.9 billion in May. The Treasury Department reported Wednesday that the May deficit was more than double the imbalance in May 2007. That reflects some $48 billion in payments as part of the government’s $168 billion effort to give the economy a jump-start and keep the country from falling into recession.”

* McCain’s “not too important” comments this morning really were a gift to the Democratic Party. A hanging curve, right over the middle of the plate.

* Joe Lieberman thinks the whole controversy is “outrageous.” Whatever.

* Thanks to ridiculous Republican-driven efforts to block Democrats from voting, we can expect plenty of stories like these: “A 97-year-old Arizona woman who has voted in every election since 1933 says she won’t be able to vote in November, due to the state’s stringent voter ID law that requires proof of citizenship for those registering to vote and a photo ID when voting. Shirley Preiss was born in 1910 in Kentucky, before the state issued birth certificates. She has no driver’s license or passport.”

* The impeachment drive is going nowhere fast: “The House voted to refer articles of impeachment against President Bush to the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, though the bill’s sponosor, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), warned that he is not going to let the issue drop.”

* There’s been some complaints about Jason Furman joining the Obama campaign as an economic advisor. Paul Krugman defends the move.

* McCain admits he can’t use a computer. (thanks to R.K. for the tip)

* Does the McCain campaign consider Arizona a swing state this year? It sure looks like it.

* McCain keeps saying that “1.3 million people around the world make a living off eBay.” That’s simply not true, but he says it all the time anyway.

* It doesn’t sound like U.S. News & World Report will be around much longer.

* Have I mentioned lately how unbelievably annoying Senate Republicans are?

* Newsflash: Among DC insiders, most Democrats accept the science on global warming. Most Republicans don’t.

* Bill O’Reilly suggested inner-city kids lack “values systems.” Nothing racist about that. Not at all.

* ProPublica, “the investigative brainchild of former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger, launched its new Web site with a mix of original stories, links to other news outlets, and its new ‘Scandal Watch.'”

* The humiliating saga of Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) keeps managing to get worse.

* And finally, on “The Colbert Report” last night, the show briefly featured a post of mine. Just thought I’d mention it, because, you know, I found it pretty cool.

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

If Obama is so American, why doesn’t he agree with George Bush?

  • TPMM wonders whether Bobby Jindal is an exorcist. I wonder if he becomes VP, will the term “enhanced interrogation” be replaced by “exorcism”.

  • Thanks to ridiculous Republican-driven efforts to block Democrats from voting, we can expect plenty of stories like these: “A 97-year-old Arizona woman who has voted in every election since 1933 says she won’t be able to vote in November, due to the state’s stringent voter ID law that requires proof of citizenship for those registering to vote and a photo ID when voting. Shirley Preiss was born in 1910 in Kentucky, before the state issued birth certificates. She has no driver’s license or passport.”

    Notice that she stopped voting as soon as she started hating America.

  • Sorry, why is Bill O’Reilly’s comment about inner-city kids racist? I did read the article. And it was a generalization – but it wasn’t necessarily racist, it could have been ‘classist’, as he was comparing inner-city kids to an ‘affluent’ high school.

    While I hate O’Reilly as much as the next guy, not every generalization is racist. Coming from BIll, of course, it’s usually belligerent and intentionally offensive, which does make it racist. But can’t we *talk* anymore?

    Also, for the people on these boards who abbreviate Bill O’Reilly as BO, please don’t. That’s also an acronym for Barack Obama, Body Odor, Box Office, and a bunch of other things.

  • “The Colbert Report” last night, the show briefly featured a post of mine. – CB

    Not that it really matters but. . . .

    Interesting that they stripped out the image of the capitol and the swoop under the Blog title section.

    Also interesting that they pull the “Hezbollah’ style fist-jabbing.” quote out of the wrong sentence in the post.

    Anyhow, conrats on being quoted and having your blog displayed on such a popular show!

  • Joe Lieberman thinks the whole controversy is “outrageous.” Whatever.

    You know you’re a Republican when your friend screws up and the mistake itself doesn’t bother you but you’re outraged that people notice and comment.

  • “The impeachment drive is going nowhere fast…Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), warned that he is not going to let the issue drop.”

    Good for Kucinich.

  • Obscure parlimentary tactics are nothing new, but I have to wonder why the Dems can’t head off this nonsense. The rules of the Senate are arcane, to say the least, and are there to protect the minority, but I don’t recall the Dems, when there were in the minority, being able to shut things down this way.

  • You know, the only people I’ve heard of being prevented from voting by these new laws are the elderly. In South Bend some nuns couldn’t vote, now this woman in Senator McCain’s state. She’s probably about his mom’s age too.

    Truly, the GOP is an endless source of irony.

  • Rich (8), the reason you don’t recall Dems shutting down Congress this way is because if they did, it would be all over TV. In fact, it was just about every time they did it. So they chose their battles, mostly on judicial or other controversial appointments. But with a Republican friendly media, the Reps are not so inclined. By the way, they also did it the whole year 2000.

    Franklin (4) I have to disagree with you about the O’Reilly comment. “Inner City” is pretty much a euphemism for ghetto, and in most eastern cities, that means black or occasionally hispanic. It is far more specific than, say, “poor neighborhood” and I doubt O’Reilly’s listeners would have equated Inner City with Appalachian. In fact, I would be really surprised if he would ever suggest that people in WV have no value system.

  • Not sure if this was mentioned yet, CB, but your web-site got screen time on last night’s Colbert Report (watching it now). Grats.

  • From The Hill:

    On a conference call with reporters arranged by the McCain campaign, Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, called the Democratic response to McCain’s remarks “another partisan attempt to distort John McCain’s words.”

    Wow. He’s actually got the McSafe-Haven-For-Traitorous-Dogs campaign people arranging things for him.

    Harry—THROW THIS PIECE OF MINI-ZELL SCUM OUT OF THE CAUCUS. NOW, DAMMIT—NOW!!!

  • * McCain admits he can’t use a computer. — CB

    A truly bi-partisan approach: pox on both your houses. OTOH… I notice that he leaves all the “matters ‘puter” to his wife… Like Steve Benen and Mrs Carpetbagger (sine qua non)?

    * Does the McCain campaign consider Arizona a swing state this year? It sure looks like it. — CB

    If that’s the case, how can he afford to lose even *one* vote, especially that of an elderly woman who might consider him a young, clever whippersnapper (“A 97-year-old Arizona woman who has voted in every election since 1933 says she won’t be able to vote in November […])?

  • Someone has been saying Obama is too black! Someone has been saying Obama is too white!

    Someone has been saying Obama is just right, but we won’t ever let you know who it is.

  • ABC News reported that Pakistan is now threatening to end “cooperation” with the U.S. with regards to counter-terrorism.

    Good thing we spent untold billions of dollars and our good name propping up Pakistan’s tinhorn dictator since he was such a stalwart ally in the war on terror…

    I suspect that the phrase “money well spent” will never be applied to any initiative of the Bush administration.

  • Sweet nod from the Colbert Report. Remember us when you’re famous! 🙂

    And welcome Colbert Nation.

  • Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University and frequent guest on Countdown, had some scathing words last night for the failure of the Democrats to impeach GWB for his many crimes over the last seven years.

    I don’t know why those of us who think Bush should have been impeached are labeled crackpots by pundits, press, media and government. On the other hand, maybe I do. Virtually all were complicit in supporting the invasion of Iraq. How can you demand the indictment and conviction of GWB for a crime that you aided and abetted? I think someday historians will conclude that it’s collective guilt on the part of the vast majority of the American people that let George Bush off the hook for slaughtering 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians for no reason at all. We can’t face the enormity of that savage crime, admit we were stampeded into a lynch mob of the worst sort.

    Kudos to Keith Olbermann for not ridiculing the efforts of Dennis Kucinich.

  • I don’t understand why no one seems to care much about getting impeachment done. Harry Reid said no matter what Bush has done, he thought we should be focused on the election, not impeachment. I wanted to throw up. It’s the Democratic Party’s job to focus on the election, and it’s Congress’ job to check executive power.

  • Why are we so worried about Iranian nukes when the fastest path for fundamentalist Islam to get a nuke is overthrowing Pakistan?

  • Erik, really…those are details! Details, I say!

    You worry about (or don’t worry about) details later. When? LATER!

  • Wasn’t it just a few months ago that McCain was calling Obama “naive” for talking about bombing targets in Pakistan?

    I’m sure we can expect to hear from him any minute now … (crickets)

  • * ProPublica, “the investigative brainchild of former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger, launched its new Web site with a mix of original stories, links to other news outlets, and its new ‘Scandal Watch.’”

    Pretty interesting. It linked to Washington Times, but also to McClatchy. I don’t really trust the WSJ guy though.

    One funny story they linked to was the suit against Microsoft that is in the courts. Back in 2000-2002 MS & Best Buy sold subscriptions to MSN that had an opt-out requirement in a sort of stealthy way. Lots of people got charged for the service their credit cards.

    The funny part is that In about 2000 Microsoft had a deal where you bought a computer and if you signed up for MSN for a year you got a rebate and the computer was basicaly free. And you got the rebate right away. Well on the internet I found out that the word was that the deal was illegal in California and they couldn’t force you to subscribe. So I went out and bought two of them and they ended up being free because I refused to sign up for MSN. Figured that was my only chance of ever getting the best of MS. Now they’re being sued for something similar.

  • Nice! (on the Colbert Report reference.)

    McCain admits he can’t use a computer.

    The Huffingtonpost article asks whether we want a commander-in-chief who can use a computer. Now, if we take that literally, the answer for me is, “Who cares?” There are lots of smart and effective decision makers who don’t or can’t use a computer–at the level of Presidential decision-making, I think what computers can provide is pretty much irrelevant. I’d give a different answer if the question were whether we want a commander-in-chief who is sufficiently incurious not to have learned, over the past 20 years, how to use a gadget that’s almost universal these days. . . We’ve seen what lack of intellectual initiative has brought us during the past eight years. . .

  • Steve, I want to thank you for this nightly “segment”…..I can’t go to bed without it!

    Just sayin…

  • Is it possible for this country to go froma president who calls it “the internets” to a president who hasn’t spent much (any?) time online?

    While it seems like a superficial issue, it isn’t. It does matter because, as mentioned above, it reveals a lack of basic curiosity about something that has completely revolutionized our modern world. For pete’s sake, computers aren’t exactly new anymore. Not mention it doesn’t help fight the idea that he’s old and out of touch.

    Also, as a man who claims to watch MTV’s “The Hills” regularly it seems completely absurd that he’s computer illiterate.

  • It’s not really the computer itself, it’s understanding the revolution that has occurred with the internet. And he can’t really understand it without getting online and exploring and learning and seeing for himself. What a dumbass.

  • What’s important is the casualties in Iraq.

    So stop pretending we have only 4000, douchenozzle.

    cas·u·al·ty /ˈkæʒuəlti/ –noun, plural -ties.
    1. Military.
    a. a member of the armed forces lost to service through death, wounds, sickness, capture, or because his or her whereabouts or condition cannot be determined.
    b. casualties, loss in numerical strength through any cause, as death, wounds, sickness, capture, or desertion.

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