It’s so easy to forget what got us into this in the first place. We get caught up in bitching at one another or even at Republicans, and forget all that we have to take joy in, all that we have to hope for, and all the strength at our disposal. We forget that we have people who say things like this: We believe in a strong and secure America… And we believe we will be stronger by having a moral foreign policy. We need to embrace real political reform — because only real reform will pry government from the … Continue reading ‘We’re going to lift our party up’

From Holden: Blair continues to poodle it up: Tony Blair has rejected a call for an independent inquiry into the civilian death toll in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The call came on Wednesday in an open letter to the premier made available to Reuters and signed by over 40 diplomats, peers, scientists and churchmen. Any totalling of the Iraqi civilian war dead could embarrass Blair ahead of a general election expected next May in a country that mostly opposed the U.S.-led war. [snip] Blair, however, said he saw no need for an inquiry. “Figures from the Iraqi Ministry of … Continue reading We Don’t Do Body Counts, Guvna’

Washintonian magazine dropped Ms. Kelley from its masthead after her book about The Family Bush. Kitty, her hackles up, responded thusly. Meow. I recognize the owner’s influence on his magazine and would understand if you said that you needed to remove me from the masthead in order to preserve your job. In fact, I would applauded your honesty. Instead, you criticized me for the timing of my book. Yet you did not cite one falsehood, one factual error, or one misrepresentation. Rather, you wrapped your criticism around a pious respect “for the office of the President” and for the private … Continue reading Kitty Has Claws

From Holden: Tonight 60 Minutes will highlight the 5,500 soldiers who have deserted since the War on Iraq began. Continue reading “I didn’t want…’Died deluded in Iraq’ over my gravestone.”

From Holden: Tonight 60 Minutes will highlight the 5,500 soldiers who have deserted since the War on Iraq began. Continue reading ”I didn’t want…’Died deluded in Iraq’ over my gravestone.”

From Holden: One on’t cross beams gone owt askew on treddle. Er, I mean morale is in the shitter. In his prepared remarks earlier, Rumsfeld had urged the troops — mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers — to discount critics of the war in Iraq and to help “win the test of wills” with the insurgents. Some of soldiers, however, had criticisms of their own — not of the war itself but of how it is being fought. Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, for example, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee … Continue reading Trouble At The Mill

From Holden: Although I doubt it would bother Chimpy much, Bernie Kerik is not he kind of person you might like to sit next to on a bus. One is left to wonder if he was selected to replace Tom Ridge because of his ability to lie. The autobiography of Bernard B. Kerik, President Bush’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, recounts a difficult time 20 years ago when he was expelled from Saudi Arabia amid a power struggle involving the head of a hospital complex where Kerik helped command a security staff. In the book, Kerik described … Continue reading “Kerik Was a Goon”

From Holden: Although I doubt it would bother Chimpy much, Bernie Kerik is not he kind of person you might like to sit next to on a bus. One is left to wonder if he was selected to replace Tom Ridge because of his ability to lie. The autobiography of Bernard B. Kerik, President Bush’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, recounts a difficult time 20 years ago when he was expelled from Saudi Arabia amid a power struggle involving the head of a hospital complex where Kerik helped command a security staff. In the book, Kerik described … Continue reading ”Kerik Was a Goon”

From Holden: Jeebus. Just like underage women in Rev. Mike Hintz church youth group, it appears that no House rule will remain unviolated during Tom DeLay’s term in office. In violation of House rules, the legal defense fund for the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, accepted donations in 2001 from registered lobbyists, the trustee of the fund said on Monday. The trustee, Brent C. Perry, a lawyer in Houston, said the money had been inadvertently accepted and was returned on Monday. The donations were uncovered by Public Citizen, a watchdog group, and were reported in the … Continue reading DeLay’s Legal Defense Fund Violates House Rules

From Holden: I’m waiting for Britt Hume to tell me this is not a problem because the rate of sexual assault in, say, his family is much higher than in the U.S. Central Command. U.S. service members reported 273 cases of sexual assault in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Bahrain between August 2002 and December 2004. The Miles Foundation reports the victims of assault are predominantly female service members. The alleged assailants are primarily American male active duty military, according to the foundation, a sexual assault victim’s advocacy group. Continue reading Underpaid, Oversexed, and Over There

From Holden: TBogg joins in on the search for My Bush Boom but he is thwarted by ever-increasing lay-offs: US employers announced plans in November to step up job cuts, with the total exceeding 100,000 for the third month in a row, an industry survey showed Employers posted 104,530 cuts in November, up 2.6 percent from the previous month, according to a survey sponsored by international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Government workers were hardest hit, with 21,971 cuts, followed by telecommunications workers, with 21,158 job losses. “Not only are more companies announcing job cuts, there are more jobs … Continue reading TBogg Eye for the Bush Boom Guy

From Holden: Judith Miller and Matt Cooper will be in court today trying to avoid 18 months in the pokey for refusing to testify n the Plame case: New York Times reporter Judith Miller is seeking to avoid imprisonment for refusing to tell U.S. prosecutors the source of a story she never wrote. She is fighting a subpoena from a prosecutor investigating the 2003 disclosure to syndicated columnist Robert Novak that the wife of a Bush administration critic was a CIA undercover agent. In gathering material for the unpublished story, Miller spoke to “one or more” government officials and promised … Continue reading Plame Watch

From Holden: The ACLU has slowly been extracting documentation of the use of torture by U.S. forces in Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq. Their latest batch (see them here) provides proof of a cover-up. The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday new documents show a task force in Iraq tried to silence official criticism of detainee abuse. The ACLU said the special operations task force tried “to silence Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who observed abusive interrogations” in Iraq. The documents also show the Defense Department “adopted questionable interrogation techniques at Guantanamo over FBI objections,” the ACLU said. [snip] The documents, … Continue reading The Torture Cover-Up

From Holden: Little Scottie did not make the trip to California so Hillary Trent Duffy was running the show. And judging by Duffy’s two consecutive non-answers in today’s gaggle it looks like the preznit is worried about a morale problem in the military: Q Trent, is there a morale issue that the President is concerned about in the military? There was, obviously, the lawsuits that were filed yesterday by people who had their deployments extended. Is the President concerned about how military and the military families are viewing their mission, as more demands fall on them? MR. DUFFY: Well, I … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

What in the name of the Little Baby Jesus and pardon the pun, but good God, what on earth is David Brooks talking about?!!!? If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences. So there are significant fertility inequalities across regions. People on the Great Plains and in the Southwest are much more fertile than people in New England or on the Pacific coast. You can see surprising political … Continue reading Some People I think I Know Are Better Than You

From Holden: Atrios was the first to post your preznit’s latest flirtation with military attire. Here’s the full view, looks like they left out the codpiece this time. And here’s a closer look. No caption could capture the stupidity of this latest preznitial look, so how about a brief history of Georgie’s fondness for uniforms. Continue reading Uniformly Stupid

From Holden: Add Vlad to the list of those who don’t believe Iraq can hold elections on January 30. “Honestly speaking, I cannot imagine how it is possible to organize elections under the conditions of occupation by foreign forces,” Putin said in televised comments during a Kremlin meeting with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. UPDATE: Now even Iraqi puppet Interim Prime Minister Allawi is backpedalling faster than Liddy Dole’s proctologist: Belgium’s Le Soir newspaper reported Tuesday that Allawi, who is touring Europe, said: “I think one could envisage elections spread over 15 days, 20 days, with polling on different … Continue reading The Rising Chorus

From Holden: The Navy says that the actions recorded in images depicting apparent abuse of detainees by Navy SEALs were actually all in a days work: Preliminary findings of a military inquiry suggest that some of the recently published photographs of navy special forces capturing detainees in Iraq were taken for legitimate intelligence-gathering purposes and showed commandos using approved procedures, a navy spokesman said Monday. He cited as an example a photo in which a uniformed man is holding the head of a prisoner to pose him for a picture for “identification purposes.” A gun with an attached flashlight is … Continue reading Nothing to See Here, Move Along

Governor of New York, Bitches! A. Continue reading Happy Democrat Photo: Eliot Spitzer Edition

From Holden: It’s the season again, the time of year when no matter where you go – restaurant, shopping mall, drugstore, gas station, massage parlor – you hear those same songs, over and over. But the Bush family has customized the familiar carols to match thier own family history and outlook on life. Join me in collecting these songs of the season that Dear Leader and the rest of the Bushies slur their way through during the entire holiday season. I’ll start you off with a few of Georgie’s favorites, feel free to contribute others in the comments section. War … Continue reading Bush Family Christmas Carols

From Holden: It looks like Goss’s purge of the CIA has not been completed, as the dire warnings of the Baghdad station chief and two CIA officials are reported in the Times: A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials. The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed … Continue reading Paging Porter Goss: Clean-Up on Aisle Five

From Holden: In order to defend Social Security: Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people’s lives better and more secure. And that’s why the right wants to destroy it. Continue reading Krugman Takes a Break from His Break

The political crack den points us toward this, a discussion of the DLC and its ongoing effort to fuck itself in its ass. While Atrios is doing an admirable job of smacking around Will Marshall, Al From and the others on the general theme of “if they’re already trying to kill you, stop painting a target on your forehead,” this passage jumped out at me: What From, Marshall and the other DLC speakers were doing last week was not just ruminating out loud about the need to shy away from certain demonized liberal icons. They were, instead, announcing their willingness … Continue reading Tactics

The town wasn’t small, but it wasn’t big, either, just another post-industrial ghetto rusting gently by the lake. You laughed when they put up condos; sure, the harbor’s pretty, but nobody’s going to live here. You could drive from the neighborhood to the beach in ten minutes. Everybody went to Catholic school, or else you weren’t worth thinking about, was the logic of the day, so it was the same 200 people, birth to death, you shared fingerpaints with the boys you kissed in the backs of their cars at sixteen, or couldn’t kiss them, could never kiss them after you watched them throw up scrambled eggs through their noses in kindergarten.

Continue reading “In America 12/7: What A City Is”

From Holden: Just go read Brad Blog. Continue reading Hack the Vote

From Holden: I’m still at war with AttaturK, and I’m taking another shot. Bar: “The constitution may keep you from being president, but you’re welcome to spend two terms in my Oval Orifice anytime.” Continue reading Duking It Out for Page Hits

From Holden: Many good questions in the gaggle today, particularly on Social Security. You should really go read the transcript. Here’s a taste: Q Is he willing to compromise on the privatization accounts, the idea of his? MR. McCLELLAN: The President believes very strongly that personal savings accounts must be part of the solution. Personal savings accounts will allow younger workers to realize a greater rate of return on their retirement savings, and that’s why he believes so strongly in it. Again, right now, Social Security is headed in a direction that is not sustainable, and the President believes this … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: Russell Mokhiber, journalist: Q Scott, on the Middle East, many evangelical Christians are supporting right-wing Jews in Israel who want to rebuild the temple on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They believe this is a prerequisite for Christ’s return to Earth. They believe when Christ returns to Earth — they call this “the Rapture” — he will take back with Him the true believers, and the rest, the non–believers, Jews and Muslims, will be left behind to face a violent death here on Earth. My question is, as a born-again Christian, does the President support efforts to rebuild a … Continue reading A Gaggle Obsession Extra: Compare and Contrast

From Holden: Atrios and Kevin Drum are going at it with hammer and tongs over the War on Afghanistan. All I can say (besides agreeing with Atrios) is all this cat-bloggingfighting must be boosting their hit counts. Therefore, I hereby declare war on Attaturk! And I’m throwing the first punch. Condi: “I need a mandate for tonight Attaturk, are you still interested?” Continue reading Firing the First Shot

From Holden: Rummy: “Am I overcome with a feeling of deva vu? You bet.</p Continue reading Not Really a Caption Contest