Yes, Bush has has disavowed the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that said that Iran has terminated it’s nuclear weapons program, and that they respond to international pressure.
The ability to accept reality, and then change one’s plans to accomodate it, is what separates the sane from the insane.
The dynamic of the back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is interesting, and I think that Hillary had the better of the exchange, which, according to sources in both campaigns is now officially over.
Obama’s campaign is designed around a goal, to prevent the voting public from thinking of him as an angry black man who cries “wolf” about racism.
As Ezra Klein and John Aravosis have said, this exchange undercuts Obama’s primary message, that he is a new kind of politician who can bring people together, because people are hearing what they see as the same old tired litany (it’s not really tired, because we are a bigoted society) of accusations of racism.
It also gives Charlie Rangel, whose civil rights cred is unassailable, an opportunity to call Obama’s comments stupid.
BTW, if these little digs are causing a hiccup in Obama’s campaign, just wait and see what would happen if he gets the nomination.
Republicans will take those accusations of racism as a badge of honor, and they will, as they have in the past, run a campaign of racist code words.
I fear that Obama would be dead meat in the general.
It appears that the bill is, “ So riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries“.
So my previous report on the issue is wrong, and al-Malaki is acting true to form and doing his level best to ethnically cleanse Iraq’s Sunnis.
It’s a phony success to create a phony victory in a real war.
Yes, he says that he he is open to the possibility of slowing or stopping plans to bring home more U.S. troops from Iraq, which means that he’s not going to bring them home.
He’ll make some announcements, but when the tire hits the road, they won’t be redeployed.
Why, because George W. Bush thinks that all that matters is “victory”, which he defines as staying in Iraq, no matter how many terrorists are created, or how many troops are lost, or how many unstable nations move toward nuclear weapons.
It’s all about him, and he needs to show that he’s “brave and resolute” with other people’s lives and other people’s money.
Rep. Jerry Weller (R-El Guatamala*) has decided not to run for re-election†, and both the Republicans and Democrats are scrambling to try to get the seat.
It’s been Republican for years, but appears increasingly competitive, With the vote being 46%D 43%R, and 11%Green in the last gubernatorial election.
*His wife is the daughter of Efrain Rios Mott, wanted by the ICC for genocide against Mayan Indians in Guatamala.
†He’s financially tied into Mott, and has a history of shady Central American land deals.
Once again, we find a case where all the NRA Republicans think that the 2nd amendment as they define it stops where they live and work. In their brief to SCOTUS, the Justice Deptartment has said that the appellate court ruling was over broad.
It’s because these guys live and work in DC, and they are worried what will happen to them if black people are allowed to carry guns.
Gun control for me, but not for thee, I guess.
Well, knock me over with a sledge hammer, it appears that Attorney General Mukasey is actually doing his job, at least in what has become the minority voting suppression division of the Justice Department under Bush and His Evil Minions™.
I’m pleasantly surprised, though Abu Gonzalez actually made me nostalgic for John Freaking Ashcroft, so it is a low bar.
First, John “Minorities will be Dead Soon” Tanner has resigned as head of the voting rights section, and is moving to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices in December, and last friday, his replacement, Christopher Coates, who was promoted from within the section, demoted Tanner’s former deputy chiefs, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere (who drew a salary while living at her Cape Cod vacation home) and Yvette Rivera (who has been accused of discriminating against blacks on staff).
Of note is that Rivera is being replaced by Tim Mellett, who was one of the professional staff who issued a report, subsequently overruled by the political appointees , that Tom Delay’s Texas redistricting was illegal.
The Iraqi Parliament has finally passed a law allowing for low level Baath party members to return to government jobs.
In a one party state, the bureaucrats will be members of that party, and banning them all from public service was just one of L. Paul Bremer’s many mistakes.
Of course, this should have passed in 2 weeks, but it took about a year and a half.
Joe Conason has a good if to my mind too gentle on what happened with the press in New Hampshire:
The angry Clinton haters in the press corps suffer from the same flat learning curve as Wile E. Coyote. They don’t understand why their Acme arsenal never quite does the job, and instead often leaves them with grimy faces and aching heads.
The problem is that these guys behave as if they are a high school clique, and the journalistic community has very little concern about accuracy.
Kos has a good history of Republican shenanigans in Michigan’s open primary, and suggests that Dems vote for Romney this time around, since the two Dem Choices are Hillary, and no choice.
Under Michigan’s system, you can vote a Republican primary choice for president, and vote Democratic down ticket, where you care about the alternatives on the ballot.
Anne Rice has endorsed Hillary Clinton.
There is a symmetry here between an author who made her name writing of the undead, and the Clinton endorsement that I find….amusing.
So, he’s retiring, with investigations into his ties to Abramoff, Wilkes (Randy “Duke” Cunningham), and his wife getting a cut of campaign contributions.
This guy has serious chops.
Meanwhile, I see that John Kerry is endorsing Obama today. What would be even better would be if Obama could get Kerry, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale to all endorse him at the same time…what a powerful image that would be!
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Interesting analysis from Open Left, Chris Bowers notes that Obama led 38%-39% among those dissatisfied with Bush, but among the 2/3 of the voters angry with Bush, Clinton won 39%-34%.
Obama is in a bind with this. His campaign is deliberately a non-angry one, and he really can’t switch gears, because if he does, he becomes the “angry black man”, and that is not an electable place to be in the USA.
The teenage entrepreneur screwing this up I can understand, but the reporter completely screwed the pooch on this one.
A kid makes jewelry called “change rocks”, and Obama has a concert series called “change rocks”.
The kid has no right to do anything with regard to trademark. Quoting the Wiki, “Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service.”
So if there is no potential consumer confusion, there is no harm, no foul.
Obama can’t sell jewelry, but he could do T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. My guess is that his concern is about his Google ranking, or an attempt at free publicity.
Don’t care, and neither should Obama. Tough luck, kid.
John Kerry has endorsed Barack Obama. I’m not sure how much of this is that he likes Obama, and how much is the feeling that he might have that the Clintonistas submarined him in 2004 to clear the way for Hillary.
TheHill.com – Clinton outraised Obama in the fourth quarter, $24 million to $23.5 million. No breakdown of contributions between primary and general though.
We are starting to see stories about Obama’s ties to Antoin “Tony” Rezko and his house purchase. I don’t see much being there in terms of corruption (stupidity is another matter), but if he gets the nomination, this will be a regular Republican talking point.
Richardson drops out of the race no word yet on who he will endorse, but my guess would be Clinton.
Landrieu’s corruption story seems to have had a bit of wind taken out of its sales. It appears that the earmark in question was because, “Paul Vance, the superintendent of the D.C. public schools, had written Landrieu, then the ranking member on the D.C appropriations subcommittee, and Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH), then the chair, to ask for funds for Voyager.” It’s not the end of the investigation, but it makes it look like any developments are not imminent.
Looks like Unity ’08 will be shut down to make way for a Bloomberg campaign site. Well, f&^% you your honor.
Paul Krugman has an rather interesting insight into the New Hampshire primary results, specifically he gives us this picture of the Intrade price for “Clinton wins the Democratic nomination” bidding:
These investors in this market, you know the one that is supposed to predict the future, got it completely wrong. In fact, as time went on more and more of them got it wring (the bar graphs are at the bottom). Dr. Krugman notes, “There’s no hint that the market saw either Iowa or New Hampshire coming, or knew anything beyond the bloviations of the talking heads.”
That is the little picture, but there is a bigger picture, and that is that markets are not some sort of magically predictive tool. They are simply a sort of group guessing game.
One of the arguments for the increasing use of arbitrage is that by creating derivatives, like futures market, help the economy, because of their ability to predict future market swings.
The answer is that they don’t. What more, as can be seen on an almost weekly basis, these instruments contribute to price swings, and make commodities more active, by adding another layer of profit taking on the way to market, though, to be fair, they employ no-account Harvard MBAs.
There are cases where futures markets are essential. Without the ability to buy rubber for delivery at a later date, for example, bidding on OEM tires for a car manufacturer would be risky and more expensive, but now we have entities like stock futures, which are unnecessary, make the market more volatile, and encourage speculation at the expense of investing.
He’s a real mixed bag. He blew the whistle on some egregious CIA abuses, but he also outed a lot of agents and caused long term damage to the US intelligence apparatus.
Matthew Yglesias makes a very good point, while Americans complain about various minor personal peccadillos of our politicians, “French President Nicholas Sarkozy got divorced early in his term, is dating a supermodel and his son’s writing songs for radical French rappers”.
His thesis is that not only our concerns small minded, but that our politicians have pretty dull lives.
I agree.
The thing that surprises me is that it’s that this is a Maureen Dowd Op/ED, and I’m not referring to her as a miserable excuse of a human being.
When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.
A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?”
Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”
Though let me say, that MoDo does not come across as any great testimony to humanity in this article either.
Atrios calls them, “…all broken. Complete monsters”, and I’m inclined to agree.
I’m beginning to think that we should abolish Journalism schools, and go back to the old way, paperboy to copy boy to cub reporter to reporter, because the products of Journalism schools seemed to have missed “Humanity 101”.
Of course, these days, I’m not sure how you do the “copy boy” bit.