I'm one of those freaks who really enjoys a good snowstorm. Man, I missed it by 24 hours. I also missed that big earthquake in LA, 1993 or 94 or something, only because my friend Michael scratched his eye and we missed our flight to LA - the earthquake was later that night. Having said that, I've been through several tornadoes, again back in Chicago, and you know, it's not that exciting when the civil defense sirens are blaring and you're the one running for your life, or when you're huddling in the basement with a flashlight and a battery-powered radio waiting for the roof to blow off and desperately trying to remember if it's the southwest corner of the basement you want or don't want (remember when they used to tell you to tune the TV to no station, just static, and that the hum would tell you how close the tornado was?). Anyway, tornadoes aren't quite like on the Weather Channel where you get to enjoy it from your jeep, so maybe earthquakes aren't as fun either. Still...
Sometimes I want to think of George Will as being better than the utter liars who control the Republican party. Then I read his columns and realize I'm being far too Christian.
In today's column, Will sticks up for hurt puppy George Bush whose manhood was threatened recently by meeting Senator-elect Jim Webb (D-VA). You'll recall that Bush asked Webb how his son, a US service member in Iraq, was doing, and Webb said he'd like his son home. Bush then got real snippy with Webb and told him, that's what not what I asked you. Webb says he was furious with Bush's retort.
Nice comment to make to a father who, during the Christmas season, says he misses his son. That's not what I asked you. Real classy.
But you won't read about Bush's snippy and calloused remark in George Will's lengthy op ed about the incident in today's Washington Post, an article syndicated around the country. Oh no. Will and his editors somehow conveniently left that little fact out, the most important fact of the entire story, so the story reads as though Bush simply inquired about how Webb's son was doing, and Web got pissed off.
Here's how George Will and his editors portrayed the story:
When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."
Makes Webb sound mighty mean, if you didn't know that Bush just got snippy with him. Now read the original source to find out what really happened:
At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.
Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.
“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.
Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t.
But George Will couldn't defend the honor of our totally emasculated president by telling you all the truth, so he had to do with a lie.
George Will, unfortunately, is no different than any other Republican in Washington. When caught between the truth and a lie, as Mae West once didn't say, but could have, they always choose the lie they haven't tried.
Because at today's press conference in Jordan, following his abbreviated meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Bush made it abundantly clear that he is waving off the rescue attempt by longtime Bush family fixer James A. Baker III. He'd rather stay the course.
News reports this morning indicate that Baker's bipartisan Iraq Study Group will next week officially recommend a gradual pullback of American troops from Iraq.
But in Amman, Bush went out of his way to mock the notion of a "graceful exit" -- and to insist that he's in Iraq for the long haul. "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all," Bush said.
Nothing that Bush has proposed has had any "realism" from the beginning. But, he's not going to change. Hey, it's not his kids over in Iraq. It's just rude people like Jim Webb who have kids fighting in Bush's quagmire.
So, it actually helps TV networks get MORE viewers if their videos are posted on YouTube, but we shouldn't post their videos on YouTube because somehow that harms them (cough, Comedy Central). Okay. And, at the same time, CBS can post their own videos all over YouTube, and they do, but when we post the same videos on YouTube somehow THAT harms CBS. How? Not clear, since CBS is already posting its videos, for free, on YouTube, so it's not like they're worried about their content going on YouTube, and it's not like they're suffering a harm for it being there. So what's the problem again? The networks need to decide if YouTube is a good thing or a bad thing, because in the meantime they're creating a lot of bad blood (Comedy Central).
Those missing 18,000 votes in Florida's 13th Congressional District may result in federal legislation, finally. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has authored a bill mandating paper trails for electronic voting, is taking the lead in the Senate. And, this time, she has the power to make something happen:
Sarasota's voting controversy has given new life to election reform advocates in Congress, prompting the incoming leader of the House to make the issue a top priority for the new year and triggering hearings in the U.S. Senate.
More than being just a battle over who won the 13th Congressional District, officials on Capitol Hill say what happened in Sarasota has wider implications for the nation, giving a more substantive edge to what previously was mostly a theoretical debate over the reliability of touchscreen voting machines.
"What happened in Sarasota really does highlight the issue," said Howard Gantman, communications director for U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, a Democrat from California who is already vowing to hold hearings on the voting issues early in 2007.
The GOP will oppose real election reform. Counting the votes usually works to their disadvantage -- in Florida anyway.
Permit me a brief break from the debacles of the Middle East to highlight an interesting action in support of African development.
In a move that nearly triples the world's richest earned cash prize, Egyptian cell phone entrepeneur Mo Ibrahim (currently based in the UK) will award $5 million to the African leader who leaves power with the best record of democratic governance. The contest will rate governance in 53 African nations each year and will grant winning leaders not only $5 million in cash over ten years, but then also $200,000 per year for life. The prize is aimed at decreasing corruption and autocracy in Africa, and has endorsements from President Clinton and Nelson Mandela, among others.
The idea is that many African leaders cling to power because were they to depart peacefully, they would go from kings to relative paupers:
The award will go to African heads of state who deliver security, health, education and economic development to their constituents. In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper, Mr Ibrahim, 60, said leaders had no life after office. "Suddenly all the mansions, cars, food, wine is withdrawn. Some find it difficult to rent a house in the capital. That incites corruption; it incites people to cling to power. "The prize will offer essentially good people, who may be wavering, the chance to opt for the good life after office," said Mr Ibrahim.
I think this is a great idea. First of all, it incentivizes good behavior, which is generally a good thing. Second, it draws attention to the fact that corruption is the most significant political barrier to African development (the most significant overall, of course, being AIDS), and third, it seems to provide a way to do what it actually sets out to do: The lifetime yearly salary helps prevent leaders from being democratic but then using the prize money to establish autocracy, it creates an unbelievable opportunity for positive press for struggling nations, which could ultimately help with foreign investment and development, and it helps point out that monetary aid has its limits, especially when being filtered through stunningly corrupt governments.
I'm all for sending aid to developing nations. In fact, I'm generally for sending aid to anybody who will use it in a constructive way, or help and/or like the U.S., or any combination thereof. Am I especially happy to essentially use bribery to achieve what should be a basic right and value? No. But much of the aid money to Africa is grossly misused, and nobody is happy having their tax dollars go to the leaders of predatory autocracies, so anything creative, interesting, and potentially beneficial -- especially when it comes out of the pocket of a wealthy individual -- gets my vote of support.
I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, of course, but it seems like the kind of creative initiative that doesn't have much downside and has, as Hubie Brown would say, tremendous upside potential.
The battle continues between the moderates and the extremist wing. This time the extremists are furious over an invitation to Barak Obama to speak at an upcoming event.
Famed pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren on Wednesday defended his invitation to Sen. Barack Obama to speak at his church despite objections from some evangelicals who oppose the Democrat's support for abortion rights.
Obama is one of nearly 60 speakers scheduled to address the second annual Global Summit on AIDS and the Church beginning Thursday at Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.
Sounds reasonable to any reasonable person, but not to the lunatics on the right.
Conservative evangelical Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, e-mailed reporters Tuesday to protest the visit because of Obama's support of abortion rights. "Senator Obama's policies represent the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality, not to mention supreme American values," Schenck wrote.
Saddleback responded with a statement acknowledging "strong opposition" to Obama's participation. The church said participants were invited because of their knowledge of HIV/AIDS and that Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," opposes Obama's position on abortion and other issues.
"Our goal has been to put people together who normally won't even speak to each other," the Saddleback statement said. "We do not expect all participants in the summit discussion to agree with all of our evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of all Ã?— government, business, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and the church."
So, in reading Joe's post below, I'm trying to fully comprehend if the Baker commission is adopting "cut & run" or "Vietnam"? Because it sounds a little of both.
What it sounds like they're saying is the following:
Tell the Iraqis we're pulling out, yes we are, but don't make any real plans to pull out because that would be setting a deadline/timetable, and those are bad things, unless they're good things. The fact that the Iraqis think WE have a deadline, that's good, because it will inspire them to fight harder. (I suppose we're just assuming that the Iraqis are stupid and that they don't read the New York Times and thus they don't know that Bush's threat to withdraw is apparently a feint.) But at the same time, the insurgency won't, somehow (I'm assuming with the help of magic pixie dust) find out that we have set a timetable for withdrawal (or then again, we haven't) and thus insurgents won't just wait for us to cut and run before they fight even harder.
A bit more trouble on the horizon, the plan wants us to kind of, sort of withdraw some of our troops, maybe to big bases in Iraq, or even to move them to surrounding countries. Well, that doesn't sound like bringing our boys home, and let's not forget, this war is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't have, and our military is already overstretched and can't really fight any more wars, so how does this solution solve those problems? It doesn't. It also begs the very large question of, if our troops are withdrawing to finally get them the hell out of Iraq, then why deploy them on the periphery of Iraq, unless you're considering sending them back in, if needed, and if you are, then here we go all over again.
And finally, to the extent Bush does adopt a partial troop withdrawal, where does that leave the remaining tens of thousands of US service members still in Iraq? It leaves them with fewer comrades to support them. So in that sense, this is Vietnam in reverse. Rather than upping our engagement slowly, to death, we're going to withdraw-but-not-withdraw slowly, to death.
All I can say is, this is the Republicans' war and I'll be very interested to watch how out it turns out as the 2008 elections approach.
Via The New York Times, another leak timed for the Bush/al Maliki meeting:
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.
The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.
A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”
So this was a rather huge meeting, a key meeting if not the key meeting, of Bush's trip. And the Iraqi Prime Minister canceled while Bush was already in the air. I guess they don't like Bush in Iraq any more than we like him here.
Get used to seeing the Four Seasons Amman. That's the site of Thursday's breakfast and news conference for President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the U.S. networks are sending their news anchors there, ensuring massive coverage of an event that the White House has said is unlikely to produce any major announcement or development. But the White House, which is eager to show that the President is focused intently on Iraq, is welcoming the coverage.
Bush may be intently focused on Iraq, but his trip became more disastrous by the hour today. That coverage the White House wanted is filled with bad news and talk about the failures of Bush's foreign policy. The entire world got to see that the President of the United States flew half way around the world to get blown off by the Prime Minister of Iraq.
So that's the coverage the White House is getting. Take a look at what the network websites are reporting:
MSNBC headlines: Al-Maliki-Bush meeting postponed for a day: Iraqi officials then cancel three-way meeting with Jordan in surprise move
Prospects for the already-delayed meeting were put into further doubt when al-Maliki canceled a presummit dinner with Bush. But White House Spokesperson Dan Bartlett denied there was a snub, saying it was nothing more then a schedule change.
Even before the meetings began, ABC News had learned the Pentagon was considering essentially writing off Iraq's deadliest province for American forces, pulling U.S. troops out of Anbar, and moving them to fight what may be an even more difficult battle: the fight for Baghdad.
The change of plans appeared to surprise some members of the president's entourage. Boarding the motorcade for the trip to the palace, White House press secretary Tony Snow said there were still discussions about whether a photo op Wednesday night would include al-Maliki.
Probably not the coverage the White House was expecting.
The U.S. government has agreed to pay $2 million to an Oregon lawyer who was wrongfully arrested as a terrorism suspect because of a bungled fingerprint match and has issued an apology for the "suffering" inflicted on the attorney and his family.
It's over, you lost. Iraq is dead. Everyone knows it. You aren't going to put this genie back in the bottle. You lost, you bat-shit crazy far-right pathological lying freaks. The Terri Schiavo days are over. No one likes you any more. But please do stay vocal about your denail over Iraq - we still need to win back the presidency in two years.
