Wednesday’s Mini-Report

October 3, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* I sure am glad Bush came around to accepting Clinton’s policy on North Korea: “North Korea pledged Wednesday to detail its nuclear programs and disable all activities at its main reactor complex by the end of the year, its firmest commitment to disarm after decades seeking to develop the world’s deadliest weapons…. In Washington, President Bush hailed the nuclear deal and said it reflected the ‘common commitment’ of the talks to shut down North Korea’s atomic weapons program.”

* People in Burma are still terrified: “Soldiers announced that they were hunting pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar’s largest city Wednesday and the top U.S. diplomat in the country said military police were pulling people out of their homes during the night. Military vehicles patrolled the streets before dawn with loudspeakers blaring that: ‘We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!'” The acting U.S. ambassador said, “From what we understand, military police … are traveling around the city in the middle of the night, going into homes and picking up people.”

* I’ll have more on this tomorrow, but Chris Cillizza is reporting that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) will announce that he will retire from the Senate in 2008, making the next campaign cycle even more challenging for the Republican Party.

* Some House Dems want to know what role the White House played in the GOP’s illegal phone-jamming scandal. Sounds like a good idea to me.

* NYT: “Signaling an indefinite halt to executions in Texas, the state’s highest criminal appeals court late Tuesday stayed the lethal injection of a 28-year-old Honduran man who was scheduled to be put to death Wednesday. The reprieve by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was granted a week after the United States Supreme Court agreed to consider whether a form of lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment barred under the Eighth Amendment.”

* Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) explains his support for Rush Limbaugh after he smeared U.S. troops: “Frankly, I think there’s a First Amendment issue that goes well beyond Rush Limbaugh, and that’s the right of private citizens to have discourse without the U.S. Congress or members of the Senate leadership denouncing them.” Kingston voted last week to condemn MoveOn.org. (I often wonder if guys like Kingston are trying to appear ridiculous, or if it just comes naturally.)

* This is just madness: “Eduardo Gonzalez, a petty officer second class with the U.S. Navy, is about to be deployed overseas for a third time. Making his deployment even tougher is the fact his wife may not be around when he comes back. His wife faces deportation to Guatemala — her home country that she hasn’t seen since 1989. He also doesn’t know what would happen to his young son, Eduardo Jr., if that happens. “I like being in uniform and serving my country, but if she goes back I’m going to have to give it all up and just get out and take care of my son and get a job,” he said. “Defending the country that’s trying to kick my family out is a thought that always runs through my mind.”

* This warrants some follow-up: “U.S. authorities confiscated an AP Television News videotape that contained scenes of the wounded being evacuated. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl told the AP the government of Iraq had made it illegal to photograph or videotape the aftermath of bombings or other attacks.”

* Strange fires on Capitol Hill: “Four separate, small trashcan fires were reported Wednesday in the Dirksen and Hart Senate office buildings. The first three fires all occurred in women’s restrooms between 9 and 10:45 a.m., while the fourth fire was reported around 2 p.m. Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider described the fires as ‘suspicious.'”

* I find it interesting that Limbaugh’s allies cannot defend him without lying about what he said. If his comments were innocuous, this wouldn’t be necessary.

* A team of FBI agents is headed to Baghdad to oversee a murder investigation involving Blackwater security. While they’re there, the agents will be protected by … Blackwater security.

* Jonah Goldberg doesn’t follow the news very closely.

* New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) is suing the Bush administration over S-CHIP, and explains why in a great HuffPo post. (thanks to Russ for the tip)

* Is it me, or is it ironic that Bush issued a declaration this week in honor of “Child Health Day”?

* And finally, I’m sure this will come as a terrible disappointment to Markos and George Soros, but Bill O’Reilly has identified a new Public Enemy #1: “O’Reilly lashed out at Media Matters for America President and CEO David Brock for what O’Reilly called ‘the vicious far-left assaults on me and Rush Limbaugh over the past few days.’ After calling Brock ‘a hatchet man,’ O’Reilly stated: ‘[A]t this point, this guy has emerged as the biggest villain, in my opinion, in the country. He’ll do anything. He’ll say anything — doesn’t matter if it’s true — for money.'” Congrats, Brock, O’Reilly doesn’t name just anyone the nation’s biggest villain.

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

He’ll do anything. He’ll say anything — doesn’t matter if it’s true — for money

Umm, Bill. Shouldn’t that be “Doesn’t matter if it is false.”? What’s wrong with saying things that are true, Bill? Unless, of course, he’s saying things that are true and they make you and Rush look bad.

  • “Frankly, I think there’s a First Amendment issue that goes well beyond Rush Limbaugh, and that’s the right of private citizens to have discourse without the U.S. Congress or members of the Senate leadership denouncing them.”

    Well, if they vote in favor of commending Rush Limbuagh, then aren’t they tacitly denouncing the troops who speak out against the war, since Limbaugh called them phoney soldiers?

  • It was Clinton’s policy missteps that have led to the nuclear NK we have today.

    People in Burma are terrified; The left is silent.

    Rush Limbaugh smeared U.S. troops? Uh, no he didn’t but somehow this is more important to the left than say, Burma.

    O’Reilly nailed Media Matters. Most of the kool aid free understand that.

  • “It was Clinton’s policy missteps that have led to the nuclear NK we have today.”
    Please explain oh wise guru of foreign policy.

    “O’Reilly nailed Media Matters. Most of the kool aid free understand that.”
    O’Reilly knows all too well as Brock was a hatchet man for the right till he had enough of the homophobia (as he is gay.)

  • *** A team of FBI agents is headed to Baghdad to oversee a murder investigation involving Blackwater security. While they’re there, the agents will be protected by … Blackwater security.***

    Hey—Saddam had his “watchers;” Condi has hers. It’s not as if State wants a professional investigatory unit looking under the lumpy rug, and in those bone-filled closets, y’know. All kinds of nasty things might show up. Graft. Greed. Payola. Assassination. Kidnappings and murders rivaling the days of Chicago’s gangster era. Condi’s secret oil accounts….

    ***…illegal to photograph or videotape the aftermath of bombings or other attacks.***

    Would that be the same “Government of Iraq” that so freely allows al Jazeerah camcorders to record the same aftermath-scenes? Oh—my bad. I’m thinking of the Iraqi Government of Iraq. Bleichwehl must mean the “other” Government of Iraq—currently occupying a residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue….

    ***maxine***

    The left is silent—and the right is—say it with me now, maxine—extinct? The right is spending its every waking moment on—MoveOn? O’Reptile the orally challenged can nail something? When? The man probably can’t even swing a toy hammer, and his octogenarian audience has probably forgotten what a hammer is by now. And “kool aid free”—you’ve been playing with those lead-infested toys from China again—now haven’t you?

  • Ron Paul Raises More Than $5 Million for Q3

    Look at that. Ron Paul’s campaign got spammed with $5M real U.S. dollars.

    I’m sure that it will render yet another collective yawn from the Corporate Military Industrial Media, seeing as how they and their corporate masters favor unending war and American Imperialism.

    The GOP’s dirty little secret is that Ron Paul’s campaign is gaining momentum with 114% growth in fundraising from Q2. Looks like the wheels are coming off the Grand Old imperial war machine.

  • Today’s WaPo had a rather disturbing article titled Pakistan Seen Losing Fight Against Taliban And Al-Qaeda. Seems that the government there is under increasing threat from a resurgent Taliban and an equally resurgent al Qaeda. That Pakistan already has the atomic bomb (“nukular weapon” for the Bushies) and that America has no troops available to prop up its government or at least secure the weapons should the worst happen suggests that the administration’s incompetence could have unanticipated negative consequences.

  • Max: “People in Burma are terrified; The left is silent.”

    Even reading about it on a blog like this still counts as silence, eh?

    O’Reilly and Limbaugh keep getting more ridiculous the more they whine about MediaMatters. The champions of taking things out of context have no grounds for complaining about anyone taking anything out of context.

  • Dennis @ 7, apparently things aren’t going well in Afghanistan either or Karzai wouldn’t be offering the Taliban a place in the government in exchange for a peace deal. And Iran is the big threat in the ME? (My apologies to the grammar police for starting a sentence with “and”.) We ridiculed Tony Blair as Bu$h’s poodle. It is time the US stopped being Israel’s poodle and we got our shit together and addressed the real problem, the Wahabi Saudi supported Taliban. Damn, for a minute I forgot our misleader is the “childrens can learn”, but they can’t have healthcare Presidunce.

  • Irony? Issuing a proclamation for Children’s Health Day on the same day you veto bipartisan legislation to provide health insurance for poor kids is just business as usual for the thugocracy. They have done it over and over again on the environment, education, veterans benefits. You name it. Whatever is coming out of their mouths is a lie. In reality they are doing the opposite.

    Why is there even a scintilla of doubt about this?

  • tko @ 9, the stage was set for this when rather than secure Afghanistan and capture bin Laden, the military was pulled away to George and Dick’s Excellent Iraq Adventure. Further bad news is that Afghanistan is now supplying over 80% of the world’s heroin.

    George W. Bush has set in motion a series of disasters that will plague the world long after his presidency goes into the history books – with an asterisk.

    *Worst President Ever.

  • JKap, methinks you protest too much. I have seen a lot of media coverage for Paul – and that $5 mil does look pretty impressive (unless he wrote a check to himself a la Mittens).

    Iowa – for all of the heat it takes for being small and homogenous – is a perfect opportunity for Paul. No clear, strong frontrunner, two relatively inexpensive media markets where $5 mil goes a long ways, and caucuses, which much more than primaries reward fanatacism of your support not just raw numbers (because only hardcores come out on a cold winter night and stand around in a meeting for a couple of hours).

    He needs to put everything on organizing Iowa (and the organizing part is key) – bus all of the JKaps in the midwest over here every weekend to distribute literature, phone bank, canvass, etc.

  • Open thread item:

    It appears that talk of dividing a state into two (as Washington was talking about when I lived in Seattle, and Florida does now) has moved beyond that point. This may be something to keep an eye on.

    Liberal State Secessionists Meet

    (Chattanooga, Tennessee) In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions – New England and the South – are sitting down to talk.

    Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.

    I don’t think it has much traction yet, but the way things are going in this country I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it gained in popularity.

  • I’m sure CB will talk about it tomorrow, but some late breaking news:

    Teachers Endorse Clinton

    (Washington) The American Federation of Teachers backed Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign Wednesday.

    The 1.4 million-member union said it would immediately begin a program to mobilized voters in support of Clinton across the country. AFT represents school employees including teachers in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and has more than 3,000 local affiliates and 43 state affiliates. It is affiliated international union of the AFL-CIO.

  • Reid and Pelosi need to start hammering Bush on the “reasons” for his S-CHIP veto. If government-run medicine is such a horrible thing, then why do Bush/Cheney et al. use it?

  • Michael W, I’ve come to believe that reorganizing the US might not be the worst idea. It just seems that the place is too big and too complex any more to be managed effectively by one central government. Moreover, both political parties have degenerated to the point that simply being in control of the tremendous amounts of money in the federal budget means far more to them than the well-being of the nation.

    Maybe it’s time to start over.

  • Dennis, I don’t disagree with you, but I don’t entirely agree, either. In almost all political parlance since the founding of our nation, the USA has been called “The Great Experiment”, or some such thing. Part of me thinks that the experiment has failed due to the political and economic divisions running rampant today.

    Part of me thinks it’s a success simply because we have been able to, for the most part, overcome these divisions and maintain a unified nation.

    Maybe I’m too much of an optimist, but I think we can overcome this class/religious/political divide and become even better than we were (before Bu$hco, of course). The Constitution and its Amendments are magnificant pieces of jurisprudence and government, but we must be ever vigilant in maintaining their integrity.

  • ***MAX*** you are full of it…Go troll somewhere else where facts don’t matter. O’Reilley couldn’t nail media matters with an atomic nail gun. Just like the right’s idiots to believe some fantasy in their head as being the ‘truth’ no matter how the facts prove different. The left is far from silent …they just want to end one ridiculous war before jumping into another…but you go ahead and jump in…oh, I forgot, you have to have others fight for you…to make yourself feel big and strong….

    And yeah Rush did smear US troops, just not to their face because he’s a chickenshit with a big mouth…anyone with an open mind could read the real transcript and see not only that he did smear the soldiers but also that he lied about it, tried to change the transcript(it’s recorded you know, in real time, not Rush time). This is how bullshit is spread…it don’t work here because we fact check and recognize inaccurate generalizations. You best go back an have another beer and pretend your fighting off dark skinned men while being hailed as a hero, like Rush does after his 6th oxycotin.

  • I don’t think it has much traction yet, but the way things are going in this country I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it gained in popularity.

    This is wackadoodle.

  • I don’t think it has much traction yet, but the way things are going in this country I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it gained in popularity.

    I mean, it’s not wackadoodle that you say you think it could gain popularity; it’s wackadoodle to secede from the Union.

  • I mean, it’s not wackadoodle that you say you think it could gain popularity; it’s wackadoodle to secede from the Union.

    What’s wackadoodle about being free of the $30,195.31 share of the national debt owed by every man woman and child in the country?

    If nothing else, some strong moves for secession might frighten our entrenched politicians into a semblance of accountability to their constituents.

  • In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions – New England and the South – are sitting down to talk.

    Methinks the sanitariums are a little bit empty.

  • Strange trashcan fires in the Senate office buildings? Probably just Larry Craig’s way of trolling for firemen.

  • Anyone else thinking fires in the women’s bathrooms in Senate office buildings was meant as a distraction to keep snooping cops out of the men’s rooms? Larry Craig and his wide stance and tapping toes is, after all, back in the Senate to stay.

  • Max @ 2

    You a funny funny guy.

    Most of your huffing I understand as right wing knee jerk defense of your friends. It’s all the rage in conservative-land for the past 6 years.

    But BURMA? How the heck do you get the impression the left isn’t unhappy about Burma?
    That’s just weird.

  • “Frankly, I think there’s a First Amendment issue that goes well beyond Rush Limbaugh…”

    How true! Let’s have the Senate pass a resolution which celebrates the rights of our armed forces to express their personal opinion for and against the war they are fighting (or fought) without harassment from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

    Surely everyone would sign that, right?

  • I was just hearing that Jack Kingston of Georgia, says contradictory things. Is this true? Did he really whine about his work schedule while saying ordinary americans don’t work enough? Tell me this guys is not this big a jerk.

  • You’d get a positive vote in California to secede from the Union… Mostly because an appreciable amount of our tax dollar doesn’t come back.

    Of course, California would probably prefer to lose San Diego and Sacramento, but who’s counting?

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