Friday’s Mini-Report

August 17, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* AP: “President Vladimir Putin placed strategic bombers back on long-range patrol for the first time since the Soviet breakup, sending a tough message to the United States on Friday hours after a major Russian military exercise with China. Putin reviewed the first Russian-Chinese joint exercise on Russian soil before announcing that 20 strategic bombers had been sent far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans — showing off Moscow’s muscular new posture and its growing military ties with Beijing.”

* On a related note, Josh Marshall responded to the news from Russia with a terrific post: “[O]ur whole national dialog, hundreds of billions of dollars and a lot more are going to Iraq. And more generally the fantasy 450 year long-war epic battle with the Islamofascists. We’re close to breaking the US Army and Marine Corps with over-extended deployments. And in hotspots around the world, there’s a vacuum, as the world sort of rushes past us. In many ways this is the greatest danger in Iraq, not that our future as a nation is at stake in staying (as the right would have it) or even that it’s necessarily at stake in leaving but that our engagement with the country has fixed us with a dangerous national myopia which is letting many other problems fester unattended for going on a decade.”

* An edge-of-the-seat week on Wall Street ended on a positive note today, after the Fed lowered interest rates cut a key interest rate by a half a percentage point. “The Fed also said in a statement that recent turbulence in financial markets has significantly increased the risk that the economy will worsen. Investors interpreted the two moves, taken together, as a signal that the central bank is prepared to take serious action to try to prevent disruptions that began in the market for mortgages from spreading widely through the economy.” The Dow closed up 233 points.

* On a related note, confused about the current market freakout? Salon’s Andrew Leonard did an excellent job explaining what’s going on and why.

* Yesterday, the Bush gang insisted publicly that they were not pushing for closed-door-only briefings between Gen. Petraeus and members of Congress. By all indications, the administration was lying.

* Next week, The Daily Show will get reports from Baghdad — real ones, not in front of a green screen.

* Donald Rumsfeld wants to write a book. Publishers don’t seem to care.

* Lee County, Florida, doesn’t want Rep. Don Young’s (R-AK) ethically-dubious $10 million earmark.

* Remember Nicole and Jeffery Rank? They were arrested on the 4th of July, 2004, for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts to a public event where the president was speaking. The couple filed a lawsuit with the help of the ACLU, and settled out of court yesterday for $80,000. White House spokesman Blair Jones said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing. No, of course not.

* Fox News got caught this week fiddling with Wikipedia pages, editing content that didn’t fit with the partisan network’s political agenda. Not surprisingly, Fox News then ran a segment last night blasting Wikipedia’s reliability because some people manipulate the online encyclopedia due to “self-serving agendas.” The irony was rich.

* Before the report the White House is writing for Gen. Petraeus is turned over to Congress next month, the public is already skeptical. CNN reports, “A majority of Americans don’t trust the upcoming report by the Army’s top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn’t change their mind, according to a new poll…. 53 percent of people polled said they suspect that the military assessment of the situation will try to make it sound better than it actually is.”

* A South Carolina small supplies shipping company exploited an automated shipping system to charge the Pentagon $1 million to ship two 19-cent washers. The system was designed to make it easier to quickly get supplied to U.S. troops, but Charlene Corley, the owner of C&D Distributors LLC, decided to try to exploit the system. She pleaded guilty yesterday to wire fraud and money laundering.

* If there’s a bigger hack in public life than Sean Hannity, he or she is hiding well.

* Thanks to several alert readers, I now have a clear understanding of the president’s position on brain-eating zombies.

* And finally, John Edwards’ 7-year-old, Jack, asked his dad, “[I]s it fun to be on ‘Hardball’?” Edwards responded, “I think it’s only fun if you’re Chris Matthews.”

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

“By all indications, the administration was lying.”

say it isn’t so!

  • I find Russia’s new provocative stance. Last week, they buzzed Guam in TU-95 long-range bombers concern worthy , and American pilots scrambled up from carriers. (More at the link.) As to those who would dismiss the Russians and the Chinese as “not playing in the same league we do” – I would remind those folks that the KC Royals are in the big leagues, but there are a lot of minor league team that could take them standing up.

  • President Vladimir Putin placed strategic bombers back on long-range patrol for the first time since the Soviet breakup…

    And they said we were crazy to position F-22 Raptors in Alaska! Who’s laughing now??

    Speaking of Alaska, Don Young’s Coconut Road earmark was even more constitutionally dubious than ethically dubious. But we knew that already.

  • It looks more and more like Rove is leaving town just ahead of the sheriff.

    Top Commerce and Treasury Departments officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.

    I’ve got to tell you McClatchy is rapidly becoming my favorite news outfit.

    During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.

    Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House’s political guidance in mind.

    The briefings are part of the legacy of White House political adviser Karl Rove, who announced this week that he’s stepping down at the end of the month to spend more time with his family. Despite Rove’s departure, investigations into the briefings are expected to continue.
    […]

    “It was certainly a concern of mine that the work in the department be separated from campaign activities,” he said. “At the top level there was never a discussion of ‘What can you do to help these guys?'”

    One former political appointee who attended a briefing said for all the hoopla over the briefings, he wasn’t impressed with them at the time.

    “It wasn’t rocket science,” said the appointee, who asked to remain anonymous because he didn’t want to be publicly linked to the controversy. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, no kidding. We know.’

    But John D. “Jerry” Hawke, who served as Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance in the Clinton administration, said the campaign-style briefings for Treasury appointees were unusual.

    “Nothing remotely like that happened,” during the Clinton administration, Hawke said. “I never experienced anything like that. The notion that the White House would be holding meetings with Treasury appointees just didn’t fit.”

  • The couple filed a lawsuit with the help of the ACLU, and settled out of court yesterday for $80,000. –CB

    That’s a lot of anti-Bush T-shirts… 🙂

  • Yet another Friday without any word or pic from Smithers. Sniff! Edgar* and I will just have to drown our sorrows in martinis, I guess. Just kidding … they don’t don’t make cat-martinis. Maybe I can concoct his using tuna juice, hoping of course that it doesn’t lead to a craving for the hard stuff (mouse blood).

    * full name: Edgar Martinez Louise Stephan. All our cats, regardless of gender, have had the middle name Louise – Karen’s sister Chris’ middle name – it just sounds nice.

  • ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    … they don’t don’t make cat-martinis…

    Oh I don’t know.
    This cat looks like it has gone to drink…

    Either that… or its the last cat abandoning the GOP’s sinking stinking boat.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Regarding the two 19 cent washers for a million dollars:

    If you protest the war, wingnuts say you abet the enemy.
    What do they say when you cheat the war effort out of moola?

    Answer: Not a frigging word.

  • Bush thinks history will look at him fondly on the question of “who stood up to terrorism.” Sadly for everyone, history will roundly condemn him as the answer to “who lost the post-Cold War” or “who lost Russia.” Iraq is rapidly becoming he (and complicit Republicans’) great white whale. Unlike the fiction, however, the problem is not just that the Captain is doomed to his own fate, tethered to his obsession — in this case, we are largely tethered to the fate of the unstable captain. Putin has played this addled rube like a Stradavarius.

  • JKap, I really couldn’t tell if the site you link to was for real or a satire. Here is the end paragraph from the article you link to,

    President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

    I looked around the site and found much weirdness. It’s like the John Birch Society for the New Millennium.

  • Once upon a time, there was a chance for the United States and Russia to reach a genuine rapprochement; to trade on the strengths of two great powers, and for each to learn something from the other. Back when there was mutual respect between the two leaders – and there was; I imagine Vladimir Putin though Mr. Bush was a little bit of a dimbulb and not very sophisticated, but I think he saw him as a very strong, uncompromising leader – events appeared to be unfolding such that Russia could join the WTO, would be able to import the latest western technology and would in turn open up her vast treasure house of natural resources. It appeared as if those who had once been ideologically opposed in just about everything were not so very different after all.

    But then, America invaded Iraq, against the advice of the world community, including Russia. The breathtaking stupidity of the Bush administration began more and more frequently to bring Russia into direct opposition with the States. Mr. Putin and some of his ministers began to perceive that the American leader was not only stupider than first impressions had indicated, he was a little bit crazy, too. Putin began to have a harder time quieting the background rumble from the nationalists, who argued that you can never trust the U.S., and negotiation from a position of strength was the only way to deal with them. Everything Bush did began to make them look prescient.

    The final straw came when the Bush government insisted on siting an anti-missile system right on Russia’s doorstep, where the radar would be able to peer deep inside Russia and snoop on all kinds of things regardless of tension or peace. America would never tolerate a reciprocal installation on its borders, but didn’t seem to understand Russia’s protests: on the contrary, the mainstream media said Mr. Putin was “getting shrill” (which seems to have become the journalistic equivalent of the schoolyard taunt, “acting like a baby”).

    Now Russian sentiment is just about as anti-American as it was during the cold war. Vladimir Putin is nowhere near as much of an idiot as Bush, and actually reacts to public opinion in his own country instead of flaunting his ignorance, and ignoring how much people hate him. He is taking a more nationalist, anti-American position by the day, because that’s the way the wind is blowing in Russia. Most leaders whose IQ graphs higher than a barbecue briquette would do the same.

    People say that Bush is stubborn only because they are afraid to say what he really is – a destructive and egotistical child, who likes to break things and recognizes no rules. Because acknowledging what a loose cannon he really is would force people to acknowledge in turn their own culpability in placing him exactly where he could do the most damage, they say he is “stubborn”. You can only turn your face away for so long, America.

    And as for you, Georgie……heck of a job.

  • Thanks, Mark (#14). Your post reminded me of a Star Trek episode (original series) titled “Squire of Gothos” (I think). This is where we meet Tremaine, the off-spring of non-corporeal beings in corporeal form. The petulance and childishness of Bush corresponds remarkably with that character.

  • Putin reviewed the first Russian-Chinese joint exercise on Russian soil before announcing that 20 strategic bombers had been sent far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans — showing off Moscow’s muscular new posture and its growing military ties with Beijing.”

    Whatever. If Russia/China wants to get Shrubworld’s attention, they need to buzz Israel with mean expressions on their faces as they look down. AIPAC will wig out and the Cult of WarLuv will turn it’s Luv-light on the Sino-Soviet menace. The only threats worth taking seriously in Shrubworld are those slights and sidelong suspicious glances directed at Israel. The Shrubwits would chew off their own feet rather than pay attention to any going’s on that don’t fit the paranoid narrative constantly spun out by the Cult of WarLuv members angrily orbiting the AmeriZion axis.

  • * Yesterday, the Bush gang insisted publicly that they were not pushing for closed-door-only briefings between Gen. Petraeus and members of Congress. By all indications, the administration was lying.

    Who cares Steve?

    Gen. Petraeus serves at the pleasure of the president, just like Colin Powell said that he also served at the pleasure of the president, thus never serving the American people since Bush ask Powell to lie – Powell didn’t have problem with lying.

    Bush is playing the VERY same game here with the US public that he did in the UN meeting with Colin Powell, because nobody trusted Bush even back then, so Bush USED Powell, the picture of honesty to go forth and lie to the UN and the US. HOWEVER, Gen. Petraeus didn’t go though a confirmation hearing in congress, thus he will lie if Bush tells him to lie – Gen. Petraeus is a Solider who followers orders so WHY does anyone care if Petraeus meets with Bush behind closed doors or not?

    Petraeus is not, nor never has he been an independent honest assessment, nor is it his job to be independent, honest assessment so why is anyone acting as if his assessment is worth shit? It isn’t.

    We don’t need Gen. Petraeus to tell us what we already know about Iraq – we get that from war correspondence – and those types of journalists are usually very honest when nobody else in the media world is being honest.

    When the Vietnam war was lost – it was not our government that told us that fact. It was Walter Cronkite on the evening news that told us that Vietnam was lost – and NOT one of the government’s generals. my gosh, it doesn’t MATTER what Gen. Petraeus says, what he says will be only what Bush tells him to say.

    Why is it that Bush can say ” we should listen to the generals” when they only follow orders – Bush’s orders.

    It’s quite stupid really.

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