Today’s edition of quick hits.<\/p>\n
* House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today that when Congress returns in September, “there will be a reassessment<\/a>” on how well the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq is working, and whether it’s time to consider “Plan B.” He didn’t say what “Plan B” might include.<\/p>\n * Dick Cheney seemed to be encouraged by what he saw in Iraq today, but let’s not forget what the honesty-challenged VP said after his last trip<\/a> to Baghdad in December 2005: “Well, Iraq’s looking good. It’s hard sometimes, if you look at just the news, to have the good stories burn through. Part of it is that what we’re doing here, obviously, takes time. From our perspective, looking back, as I say, to a year and a half ago, I think it’s remarkable progress. I think we’ve turned the corner, if you will. I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we’ll see that the year ’05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq.”<\/p>\n * I have a new article<\/a> in The American Prospect today. For regular readers, the subject may seem familiar. The headline is “Wish upon a czar.” Take a look. (And while you’re there, notice how cool the newly redesigned Prospect page looks.)<\/p>\n * TP<\/a>: “Yesterday, the National Security Archive (NSA) released a 3 page pre-war Pentagon memo and an accompanying slideshow presentation that revealed the Bush administration’s desire to create a ‘Rapid Reaction Media Team’ (RRMT) to control major Iraqi media while providing an Iraqi ‘face’ for its efforts. Both the memo and the slide presentation were prepared by two Pentagon offices: 1) The Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, which specializes in psychological warfare, and 2) The Office of Special Plans under then undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith.”<\/p>\n * Tom DeLay is apparently annoyed that he’s still facing an FBI investigation. He told reporters<\/a> yesterday: “They’re going after other people and they’re questioning the other people about whether they know anything I may have done. And we’ve given them all the records and that’s the problem they’re having…. [My wife] did her work and she was underpaid for the work she did and they can’t make the case. It’s a Justice Department that is running amok. Fish or cut bait. Do something.” Keep on whining, Tom.<\/p>\n * No one’s buying<\/a> the rhetoric about Iraqis following us home: “Most Americans don’t believe that the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is the key to preventing a full-scale civil war there or protecting the United States from new terrorist attacks, a USA TODAY\/Gallup Poll finds.” * There’s an AP article making the rounds accusing Pelosi of including some kind of corrupt provision in a big water redevelopment bill passed by the House in April. The story is bogus; Greg Sargent debunked it<\/a> with one phone call. (Next question: why couldn’t the AP have made that phone call and skipped the bogus story?)<\/p>\n * CNN’s Lou Dobbs may be wrong about a number of things, but he’s right about church-state separation<\/a>.<\/p>\n * Thomas Friedman devoted his column today to explaining that Hezbollah is bad<\/a>. We, um, knew that, Tom.<\/p>\n * It’s probably an inconvenient reality for the White House, but a majority of Iraqi parliament members have signed a petition calling for a U.S. withdrawal<\/a>. Shouldn’t this be bigger news?<\/p>\n * Number of magnetic “Support Our Troops” ribbons sold by the leading manufacturer in 2004: 4,000,000. Number sold last year<\/a>: 48,000<\/p>\n * With Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in France this week, Bill O’Reilly has decided to lift his entirely meaningless boycott<\/a> of France and all French products. (Yes, apparently, it was still ongoing through last week.) O’Reilly told his minions yesterday, however, that “‘Boycott France’ bumper stickers do remain available on BillOReilly.com for nostalgia purposes, and you never know… we may have to re-impose it.” <\/p>\n * And finally, when I worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, I noticed that my boss, the Rev. Barry Lynn, was always delighted when right-wing critics would criticize him. (Pat Robertson once called Barry “lower than a child molester.”) I never fully understood why he enjoyed<\/i> getting slammed by far-right. And yet, today one of my favorite unhinged right-wing blogs slammed me personally for being a “completely clueless idiot whose ongoing disgust of America is obvious<\/a>.” I have to admit, considering the source, it made my day.<\/p>\n Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s edition of quick hits. * House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today that when Congress returns in September, “there will be a reassessment” on how well the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq is working, and whether it’s time to consider “Plan B.” He didn’t say what “Plan B” might include. * Dick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n* I haven’t had a chance to write as much as I’d like about the federal student loan scandal, but yesterday, the Education Department announced that the chief official responsible for overseeing the loan program is resigning<\/a>. Tim F. had a great post<\/a> on the subject.<\/p>\n