Medal Of Freedom

This waittress deserves a medal of freedom:

In a story on Sen. Hillary Clinton's new Web site dedicated exclusively to issue rebuttals, the NYT mentions that yesterday's "mini-scandal" was whether Clinton had left a tip at a diner in Iowa. The NYT talked to the waitress and she was simply dumbfounded the whole thing had become such a big deal. "You people are really nuts," she said. "There's kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now—there's better things in this world to be thinking about than … who got a tip and who didn't get a tip."

That's a big Amen.

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Going Mainstream

Sure am hearing an awful lot in the mainstream media about that funny economic phenomena, "stagflation". Next they'll be saying that "we never could have anticipated ..... " Other than that little, expensive war going on, huge budget deficits, prolifigate consumer spending and over easy credit of the last ten years, there's really no reason for there to be any problems like stagflation.

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Nearing the End

Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Hoyer, step out of our way.

There is no possibility of the US remaining in the Middle East for a half century. The dollar and US power are already on their last legs, unbeknownst to Democratic leaders Pelosi and Reid who are preparing yet another blank check for Bush's latest request for $200 billion in supplementary war funding.
There isn't any money with which to fund Bush's lost war. It will have to be borrowed from China.

The Romans brought on their own demise, but it took them centuries. Bush has finished America in a mere 7 years.

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Cheap Tent Time

Some time back I speculated whether the religious right leaders would cave-in and support one of the current slate of Republicans, or run a third party candidate. I still believe a third partier will show up. But isn't it interesting how Pat Robertson came out for multiply married abortion loving gay marriage supporting slick Ruddy yesterday saying that "abortion is just another issue". Ole Pat is much more worried about the little brown people attacking his mansion.

Like my wife said, "everytime I hear Pat Robertson speak I feel like I need to go wash".

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Eat Your Kucinich

Eat Your Kucinich. He's Good For You.

Listen to the man and don’t waste his time and trivialize him with questions of little green men. Maybe he’s trying to write checks that he can’t cash. But if you’re going to fall for someone hook, line and sinker, why bother trusting someone who promises to extend the war in Iraq by another year or four, someone who's accepted more money from more people and corporations in the last year than Jerry Lewis in the last 40?

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Blog Discovery

Today's blog discovery: Les Enrages.org. Check 'em out.

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Crackup

I don't have time to comment on it just now, but here's one journalist who has studied the religious right who sees the movement as cracking up.

The big irony is that the "strength" of the religious right was largely a fiction perpetrated by George Bush, Karl Rove and the media.

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Your Media At Work

Have you noticed a distinctly different type of coverage of Congress under the Democrats? If you have not, you should have:

The Republican minority has obstructed as much before one half of this Congress is over with than the Demcoratic minority did the entire previous Congress.

Rovemort's strategy is working. Republicans are blocking the will of the American people. And they're managing to saddle Democrats with the blame. Bob Borosage predicted it exactly. But the mainstream media simply doesn't get it. Jay Leno jokes about the Democratic Congress's four-day work week—but the previous Congress only worked two days a week! NPR quotes retiring Republican Congressman David Hobson: "I don't think they're learning from our mistakes." They're "trying to ram their bills through instead of finding a compromise." But the SCHIP bill, with 18 Republican Senate votes, and the FISA bill, crafted to precisely fix the technical problem the White House complained about, already were compromises. The Republicans blocked them nonetheless. "It would seem to me that reaching out and working together is what the public wants," they quote Hobson. But that's exactly what the Democrats have been doing.

If you're a Democrat, you lose in the media either way.

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Your Government At Work

Via Paul Krugman:

The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

America the courageous, or let's go off the deep end with fear .....

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The Latest On Oil

Anyone notice that gasoline prices are rising again? Or how about the fact they are rising at a time when the don't normally rise? Here's why:

The final factor that may contribute to a larger than anticipated draw is the one that analysts have factored in: Refineries will be coming out of turnarounds. However, utilization rates have been lower than expected, primarily due to low margins. As I have mentioned before, if margins are poor, you aren’t exactly scrambling to process as many barrels as you can. So the utilization patterns of the past couple of years may not be a good guide for this year’s utilization pattern. Utilization should come up, which would lead to downward pressure on inventories, but it's not a sure thing.

Allow me to translate. When oil input prices are through the roof and speculative, oil companies lose money processing their cheap oil inventories into gasoline. So what do you do to keep Congress off your back for gouging consumers with immediate price hikes on their cheap oil inventories? Slow down the refineries to increase prices at the pump. If input oil prices then decline, then their profits can go through the roof (again). If oil prices don't come down, then they can make up the losses by getting more money at the pump due to slower gasoline production. Heads they win, tails they win! Either way, the consumer is screwed.

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Meow

Digby has a great post up about the stupid Washington Village and it's incestuous relationships. Go give it a read. It offers a window into the nonsense that is social Washington and one of the reasons we're so screwed up. Here's a concluding graf:

Capitol Hill hasn't become the laughing stock of the nation because of its partisanship. It's become the laughing stock of the nation because the Republicans have spent the last seven years diagnosing brain injuries from the floor of the senate, molesting high school boys, stealing the country blind and starting wars for no good reason (all of which the Republicans seemed to "get done" very handily.) In the eight years before that they spent the entire time obsessing about phony scandals and semen stains. If we don't laugh we'll never stop crying about what they've done to our country.

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And This Will Only Be The Tip

Your American values, on the march!

In a CIA sub-station close to al Libi's jail cell, the CIA's "debriefers," who had been talking to al Libi for days after his return from Cairo, were typing out a series of operational cables to be sent Feb. 4 and Feb. 5 to the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Va. In the view of some insiders, these cables provide the "smoking gun" on the whole rendition program -- a convincing account of how the rendition program was, they say, illegally sending prisoners into the hands of torturers.

Under torture after his rendition to Egypt, al Libi had provided a confession of how Saddam Hussein had been training al Qaeda in chemical weapons. This evidence was used by Colin Powell at the United Nations a year earlier (February 2003) to justify the war in Iraq. ("I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al Qaeda," Powell said. "Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.")

But now, hearing how the information was obtained, the CIA was soon to retract all this intelligence. A Feb. 5 cable records that al Libi was told by a "foreign government service" (Egypt) that: "the next topic was al-Qa'ida's connections with Iraq...This was a subject about which he said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story."

Al Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then "placed him in a small box approximately 50cm X 50cm [20 inches x 20 inches]." He claimed he was held in the box for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, al Libi claims that he was given a last opportunity to "tell the truth." When al Libi did not satisfy the interrogator, al Libi claimed that "he was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back." Al Libi told CIA debriefers that he then "was punched for 15 minutes." (Sourced to CIA cable, Feb. 5, 2004).

Here was a cable then that informed Washington that one of the key pieces of evidence for the Iraq war -- the al Qaeda/Iraq link -- was not only false but extracted by effectively burying a prisoner alive.

Swell information you got there.

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Earthquake In Kentucky?

I might be tuned out or something, but doesn't this suggest that a Democrat is now the governor of Kentucky?

Kentucky?

Last I looked, Kentucky was a pretty red state wasn't it?

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Fat Cat Oprah

Were you aware that Oprah Winfrey doesn't employee union writers?

While the late-night talk shows -- as well as NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" -- are the first to go into reruns, right behind them will be the daytime talk shows, such as "Ellen," and the soap operas, which will quickly run out of scripts. "The Oprah Winfrey Show" doesn't employ union writers and will continue uninterrupted.

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I Knew He Could Do It

Bush beats Nixon’s disapproval ratings.

Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Bush is doing, and for “the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they ’strongly disapprove’ of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.”

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A Virtual Non Story

I know this will shock you:

Democratic leaders in Congress are quietly preparing to give President Bush essentially everything he wants to keep the Iraq war going for at least another six months without forcing any change in course.

Swept into power on the votes of war-weary Americans last year, Congressional Democrats have so far failed in all their attempts to curtail Bush's war efforts. As they consider the president's latest request for $200 billion in supplementary war funding party leaders have pledged not to hand over another "blank check."

Yawn.

More. Better. Democrats.

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Rubin In Pakistan

Barnett Rubin is an expert on Pakistan and has been there during the recent coup. His blog is worth a read if you want to know what's going on. This post is all about the Pakistani reaction to the U.S. during the Musharraf coup. Excerpt:

The most common feeling toward the U.S. I have encountered is a kind of anger mixed with disappointment. Pakistanis are angry at the U.S. and consider it hypocritical because it has consistently supported dictatorship in Pakistan. Many are also baffled and furious because they see clearly the complicity of part of the Pakistani security forces with the Taliban on both sides of the border and cannot comprehend U.S. continued support for that same military.

Anyone with with half a brain (which would leave out administration officials) can see that we get played like by people like Musharraf all the time (Chalabi anyone?) The rest of the world sees it as well which would explain a very large part of the international anti-Americanism. Extremists play this quite well, using it as a recruiting tool. The world is a far more dangerous place now than when Bush took office. Heckuva job Bushie!

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Quote Of The Day

Juan Cole on Musharraf in Pakistan:

If Bush and Cheney are ever tempted into extreme measures in the United States, Musharraf has provided a template for how it would unfold. Maintain you are moving against terrorists and extremists, but actually move against the rule of law. Rubin has accepted the suggested term of "lawfare" to describe this kind of warfare by executive order.

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The Worst Of Both?

Quote of the Day from Digby:

I'm finding myself more and more obsessed with the Giuliani campaign because it really appears to me that the Republicans may just nominate someone dumber than Bush and crazier than Cheney. And without the morals of either of them. How is that even possible?

I certainly agree with her assessment, but I'm not quite as obsessed with the guy. I think he's an empty suit that will never be elected by Republicans. I think the fix is in for Romney personally.

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YEeeearrrghhhh !

Greenboy:

That hippie guy Dean must have done something right with health care policy when he was governing Vermont - its people are now the healthiest in the U.S.!

Guess which states are on the bottom? "Texas came in 37th place. Mississippi and Louisiana are No. 49 and 50. Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee round out the bottom five." How's that faith-based public health policy working out for y'all?

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