WTF?!

Senate GOPers: It's Al Franken's Fault We're Being Attacked For Votes Against Anti-Rape Amendment. This is just too stupid for words.

Socialists in NASCAR?

Before going to bed I had to post this. Considering the brouhaha over the socialist indoctrination that is supposedly going to take place in America's schools. Here's a public service announcement that makes up part of the package.

The Lion of the Senate is dead

Senator Edward Kennedy, 77, dies. An important death from a political/historical perspective [what happens to Health Care reform now?] however I think I'll be avoiding the news networks for the next couple days.

Finally some push back on this healthcare nonsense

Palin resigns!

Gov. Sarah Palin to resign her office July 26. MSNBC is already asking the obvious question. Is this equivalent to her giving up? What does it say about her "fire" for politics if she can't take the heat from being governor.

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh is a collection of Hersh's columns from the New Yorker. As the subtitle would suggest most of them are on the War on Terror. As well as the scandal around Abu Ghraib. Each column is introduced with updates up to 2004 when the book was published. When these first came out they were earth shattering but now they have seemingly fated into the backround. If you've been following the story over the last several years there isn't much that isn't referenced by everybody else. It's still interesting to be reading the columns that broke the news.

Recommended.

I couldn't agree more

Jeff Stein With an important piece on torture.

State Department stupidity

Button gaffe embarrasses Clinton.

Last full day

Last full day of the Bush presidency. Almost over. Thank goodness!

Let's give him a big round of applause

This is why California is a joke

Fake weddings in a courtroom are acceptable gay marriage not so much.

From the Department of painfully obvious things

US global dominance 'set to wane'

The real America has spoken

I am a student of history. I didn't think I'd see this in my lifetime. There are no words.

This is not from SNL

Sarah Palin on newspapers and magazines.

Oh shiiiiitttttt!

Bailout plan rejected - supporters scramble we are so screwed!

McCain wants to pull plug on campaign

Whining about the media hasn't worked and the VP bounce seems to be over. So what's a candidate to do? Timeout!

Machiavellian and brilliant

Putin Offers to Join Missile Shield Effort. If they let him in which they don't want to do it can't be used against Russia but would support the US claim that it's not against Russia but if they keep him out it is a provocation. Machiavellian and brilliant!

Rudy Giuliani gets hammered

Check out this blast against Rudy Giuliani from Rolling Stone. An exert:

Rudy giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.

WOW.

It's not a surge if you don't leave

Notice how President Bush tonight was actually able to pronounce all the words? supposedly this time is different because cleared areas will not be given back to the insurgents. Now if American forces are required to do this then how exactly are they supposed to leave? After all the Iraqi military hasn't exactly shown to be a terribly useful force as of yet. Accelerated training? Rushing green recruits onto the front line isn't going to help.

There's a rule of thumb that says that you need 10 troops for every insurgent [it may not be a useful metric but it does exist]. So when Bush wants an increase of 21,000 soldiers they can handle 2100 insurgents. Something tells me there's more insurgents then that that aren't being engaged at the moment.

war on terror
bush
iraq
surge

Bush does something right

No that's not a typo. The administration has actually managed to do something right for once. U.S. to Declassify Secrets at Age 25. Sure agencies can still get around released but have to look through the material and not just give a blanket denial.

Has to be some good Vietnam material in there somewhere. Anyone want to go to the National Archives?

government secrecy
open government
bush
archive
declassify