Monday’s Mini-Report

October 8, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Reuters: “Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the ‘war on terror’ is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday. A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a ‘fundamental re-think is required’ if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective. ‘If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut,’ said Paul Rogers, the report’s author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.” (thanks to R.K.)

* Is the division of Jerusalem on the table? “Two senior Israeli politicians, including the prime minister’s closest ally, talked openly Monday about dividing Jerusalem, signaling a possible shift in Israeli opinion about one of the Mideast’s most contentious issues. The dispute over Jerusalem has derailed negotiations in the past, and the latest comments come at a time when Israeli and Palestinian teams are trying to agree on principles guiding future peace talks.”

* I haven’t read the details of Barack Obama’s energy policy, but Brian Beutler has — which is a good thing, because he knows more about the issue than I do anyway. His verdict? “It’s extremely good. Exceptional in some places, slightly nebulous in others, perfectly in line with expectations in yet more, but perfectly in line what we should expect from good public servants at this point, and certainly more than I expected from Obama.”

* A handful of House Dems voted against the S-CHIP bill recently, and their votes will be crucial when trying to override Bush’s veto. Blue America, BlogPac, and several prominent bloggers are targeting five of the Blue Dogs — Jim Marshall (Ga.), Baron Hill (Ind.), Gene Taylor (Miss.), Bob Etheridge (N.C.), and Mike McIntyre (N.C) — with some serious pressure. Needless to say, if you live in one of these districts, I hope you’ll make your voice heard.

* Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.) died yesterday after a two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 57.

* When Hillary Clinton has a confrontation with an unhappy voter, it’s major news. When Rudy Giuliani has a similar confrontation, the media doesn’t care.

* Speaking of Hillary, many conservatives have been apoplectic today in response to news that Sandy Berger is considered an informal “advisor” to Clinton’s presidential campaign. It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds — Berger has no formal role in the campaign whatsoever. John Cole explores the issue.

* Clinton and Edwards include individual mandates in their healthcare plans; Obama doesn’t. Josh Patashnik takes a closer look at the divide.

* I, too, hope Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize this week, in part because so many conservatives would go berserk.

* Want to watch MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough humiliate himself while discussing Iraq policy? Trust me, you do.

* Bjorn Lomberg acknowledges that global warming is real, and concedes that we’re causing it, but argues today that the consequences aren’t that bad. Ezra does a little fact-checking.

* Bill Kristol wants to send U.S. troops into Burma. That’s not surprising, of course, because Bill Kristol wants to send U.S. troops everywhere.

* Paul Krugman explains why Bush is “the very model of a modern movement conservative.” That’s not a compliment.

* Ackerman: “After five days, the AP finally got back its confiscated video of a Wednesday Baghdad bombing. U.S. troops briefly detained the AP cameraman who shot the footage, Ayad M. Abd Ali, for no stated reason.”

* I think the writing on SNL is getting better — this clip, via J.B., about Larry Craig is actually pretty funny.

* Fox News tries to find the good side of global warming — consider how much easier it will be for the oil companies to drill the arctic!

* And finally, Bob Novak, who still isn’t quite over his role in the Plame scandal, has gone after Joe Wilson again, insisting that Wilson did not forcefully object when Novak spoke to him before publishing his now infamous column outing his wife. Today, Wilson told Greg Sargent that Novak isn’t just wrong; he’s also “going straight to Hell.”

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

Well, of course it’s a pity about Jo Ann “Christmas Tree” Davis. Our condolences go out to her family.

But now St. Peter can explain to the woman that the Yule Tree is a pagan symbol and has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

  • “… if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective. ‘If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut…’”

    My point six years ago. Instead, Bush got all puffed up and stupid. He and his minions should be locked up for life.

  • Paul Krugman explains why Bush is “the very model of a modern movement conservative.”

    Excellent article even though it’s long overdue. Bush/Cheney may be the most visible figureheads — and may one day take the fall for the disasters they created — but the entire conservative movement is to blame. Republicans will jump right on the next bus speeding toward the next cliff — read Iran. It’s who they are. Fools.

  • Why would Bush want to actually undercut terrorism? If it wasn’t for his terrorism schtick, he’d have been a lame duck in early 2002. All you have to do is look at his approval numbers shooting up after 9/11 to see how hard he will actually work to prevent another attack.

  • When Hillary Clinton has a confrontation with an unhappy voter, it’s major news. When Rudy Giuliani has a similar confrontation, the media doesn’t care.

    Deft dodging of the issue, CB. Sounds like the “unhappy voter” asked about her “Yea” vote for AUMF in Iran (Kyl-Lieberman). So, instead of answering the question she sidesteps it and calls the guy a “plant.” I guess that he should consider himself lucky that he didn’t get Tased.

    So, I guess any of us who have reservations and doubts about Hillary’s voting record in the Senate are “plants” eh?

  • Deft dodging of the issue, CB.

    WTF?

    Steve didn’t dodge anything. He says clearly that Hillary and Rudee had similar confrontations with voters. He doesn’t defend either candidate. He just points out that the media treated two similar confrontations very differently.

    You have a beef with Hillary, fine, but why tar Steve?

    And Hillary did apologize to the guy.

  • Fox News tries to find the good side of global warming — consider how much easier it will be for the oil companies to drill the arctic!

    Priceless, isn’t it? Absolutely priceless. It’s like criminalizing suicide, and calling for the death penalty for unsuccessful attempts.

    These guys write their own SNL skits.

  • Cheney’s energy policy was kept secret, we couldn’t see the plans, we couldn’t even find out who was present when the energy policy was discussed or confirmed. We do know that the energy policy of the bush administration is driven by the oil corporations who more than likely even wrote the policy. Energy for profit is the driving force behind our present policy with Exxon/Mobile boasting the highest profits in a year than in any other year of their entire existence, and this with an energy crisis being dominant. Just wait until they get control over the last of the drinking water. At least Obama is willing to print out in advance an energy policy for all to see and speculate on and that is a big improvement already.

  • Obama’s energy plan is more of the same lame-ass grab bag of half-measures that all together add up to considerably less than half. All with the pledge to be a leader in addressing climate change by standing tall and looking resolute. Please! Biofuels? Ask the OECD, whose recent report said “Enough, already! Stop this nonsense!” Clean coal? Oh, lots of that in Obama’s plan, but of course that’s pretty nebulous and very expensive. Cap & trade? The old shell game.

    Want to know who’s gonna prove the real dynamo in the energy and environmental arena? Methinks it’s gonna be Kucinich. Wait and see. He’ll make the rest look like they’re standing still.

  • I, too, hope Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize this week, in part because so many conservatives would go berserk.

    I saw an Inconvenient Truth book in a kids’ section of a bookstore today (I guess it was a book-version written for children). I was kind of surprised. The few copies were in a mess of bigger-size science books on a shelf, though, so it would have been better if they had their own display.

  • Re: sarabeth @ #6

    Hell, Rudolf has been confronted (deservingly) by disgruntled 9/11 victims’ family members and you never see that in the Corporate Military Industrial Media. And you certainly don’t see much discussion about Rudolf’s “scoop-and-dump” operation either:

    In conjunction with the cut in fire fighters allowed to search, Giuliani also made a conscious decision to institute a “scoop-and-dump” operation to expedite the clean-up of Ground Zero in lieu of the more time-consuming, but respectful, process of removing debris piece by piece in hope of uncovering more remains.

    Mayor Giuliani’s actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill.

    I don’t have a “beef” with Hillary. I do, however, have serious concerns that mainstream Democratic voters are perhaps not well-enough informed on Hillary’s Senate voting record –with at least a few positions that match our current Acting President’s positions (Patriot Act, AUMF Iraq/n). And here you have CB skipping the subject altogether.

    How does Hillary answer someone with similar concerns as myself? She sets up a strawman. That was ignoble of her and CB’s non-commentary is conspicuous.

    We need leadership to overcome the potentially irreversible damage of the reign of Terror/Team Bush –not someone who will follow in the tyrannical footsteps of the Traitor-In-Chief.

  • “Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the ‘war on terror’ is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements…

    File under No Shit Sherlock. I can make blindingly obvious statements with the best of them. Why can’t I get a job like this?

    Bill Kristol wants to send U.S. troops into Burma.

    I would be inclined to agree. That would be a in line with Shrub’s desire to spread DimocracyNFreedum(TM) all over the place. Unfortunately we have no troops to send and dropping Krissie’s worthless hide on Burma would constitute biological warfare.

  • How long before Reuters and the Oxford folks start finding their names on no-fly lists and terrorist watch records?

  • JKap, I’m with sarabeth. Somehow you seem to think Steve has an obligation to comment on every aspect of everything – at least everything negative about HRC. But Steve’s point – a bit of a theme of today’s posts, really – was how the media does (or fails to do) its job. There is nothing “conspicuous” about his not taking HRC to task for her handling of the question or for her K-L vote itself – no more than any other omission among the hundreds of possible news items each day is “conspicuous.” Indeed, given the point of the bullet — to compare how the media treats similarly situated Dems and Rethugs — it would have been odd had CB gone off on a tangent about the substance of HRC’s position.

    I don’t like her vote on K-L either, but there is nothing nefarious about the fact that Steve doesn’t hit her on it in each post as if her official name were “Hillary (Bad Vote To Bomb Iran) Clinton.”

    As someone who supports the nearly media-invisible Ron Paul, I would think you would certainly be on the same page with complaining about how the media treats candidates in very dissimilar ways without much rhyme or reason.

  • Oh my.
    Iraq wants to send us back to the USA the right-wing’s own private thug brigade:

    http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1008black.html

    I’d like to be the first to go on record:

    We don’t want these Blackwater thugs back!
    Please!
    Let’s not contaminate our homeland any more than it already is with a fresh crop of gun-loving, law-breaking, mentally-ill criminals who seem to have a unique predilection to shooting innocent people in the back.

    Isn’t life already difficult enough?

    I mean come on…
    We’ve spent 450 billion goddamn debt-dollars in Iraq.
    Can’t we at least have the benefit of offing some of our human detritus permanently to Iraq?

    Anybody know if there is online petition I can sign somewhere to keep the Blackwater blackguard in Iraq?

  • So, Robert Novak is both wrong and is going straight to Hell…

    …in other news: Dog Bites Man!

  • Well, at least Hillary didn’t break out into laughter…I guess that way of dodging the question is only for media personnel, and not the voting public. Better to just accuse members of the public of being on someone’s payroll…then you can offer an apology and people will commend you for it, rather than wondering why you didn’t answer the effing question.

  • I’d like to be the first to go on record:

    We don’t want these Blackwater thugs back!
    Please! — ROTFL,@15

    We gotta fight them there, so they don’t follow us here; I agree. But, if you have any practical tips about how to accomplish that, I’d love to hear them.

    JKap,
    Hilary mishandled a query from an unhappy voter and GiuliaAnnie ditto. The first is all over the MSM, the second… not so much. *That* was the point of CB’s posting — the totally different treatment Dems and Repubs get from the MSM.

    CB — at least as far as I can see — tries to give us all a broad picture of what’s happening, without any particular personal “skew”. You, OTOH, seem to be a “one note” (monothematical) cymbal and find it objectionable whenever he doesn’t follow your line precisely, on every point. I suggest you start your own debate website, where you can write, exclusively, about Ron Paul, the WTC conspiracy and the wrong votes the current Dem candidates have cast…

  • It looks like the Dimocrap leadersheep is going to fold on revising the FISA law. Maybe the Republicretins threatened to take their lunch money again. Useless f__king assholes. Will somebody remind our leaderless “Dem” CongrASS why they were elected in ’06. Maybe the impeachments should start with Pitifulosi and Reid. Why do they even require them to take an oath? They certainly don’t uphold it.

  • Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.) died yesterday after a two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 57.

    Another “good Republican” – as in “the only ‘good Republicans’ are pushing up daisies.”

    Good riddance to bad rubbish.

  • Look, the lady’s gone. Didn’t need to die to get out of congress, ya know.

    Funny how the rude posts aren’t ever attached…

  • And Hillary did apologize to the guy. -sarabeth

    I thought she used her apology to dodge the important substance of the question.

    From the New York Post:

    [She] explained that her Iran position was meant to encourage sanctions and diplomacy.

    I honestly don’t see how labeling a foreign army a terrorist organization will do either of those things, and I agree with questioner. She hasn’t learned from her past votes and she’s enabling another war.

    Her initial reaction was also telling about what kind of ‘leader’ she’d be.

    I am not impressed.

    Frankly, I’m glad this is making headlines.

  • I think the difference between Giuliani and Clinton’s respective screwups is that Hillary immediately exercised her vintage right-wing conspiracy paranoia by accusing the man of being a “plant.” Giuliani admittedly lost his temper (though obviously this story has been picked up in many major news sources), but he didn’t go so far as accusing the person of being a “plant.”

    That said, I don’t like either candidate much, but I hate Hillary more.

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