"We didn't get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party."Dick Cheney.
When I posted on retail sales yesterday, I didn't realize that these numbers were the worst since reporting began in 1970. That's quite a feat! And remember, while gasoline consumption has not fallen with rising prices, the rising prices boosted retail sales numbers. So in reality on an apples vs. apples basis, retail sales were actually worse than reported.
The consumer is referred to by some bloggers as "chucky", a reference to the "consumer that never dies". Well this latest reports suggests that, at least for now, the only consumers still twitching out there are the rich ones.
Kevin Drum hits on a point today that I think is central to understanding the damage done to the country by the Bush White House:
One of the great discoveries of the Republican Party over the past decade or two is that an awful lot of the rules we take for granted are, in reality, just traditions. Like redistricting only once a decade, for example, or keeping House votes open for 15 minutes. And what Republicans have found out is that if you have the balls to do it, you can just ignore tradition and no one can stop you. It's that simple.Contempt.
Alberto Gonzales has learned this lesson well. Normally, cabinet officers who have been caught in multiple obvious lies have to either resign or else seriously try to defend themselves. But Gonzales realizes this is just tradition. Unless House Democrats have the votes to impeach him, he doesn't have to do anything. He can just mock them to their face and there's nothing much they can do about it.
In Thursday's testimony, Gonzales made it clear that he just doesn't care what anyone thinks. After all, if Democrats don't like it, what are they going to do? Roll their eyes at him?Exactly. And unless Congress actually puts some teeth behind the current traditions, the Bush administration will simply allow Abu to be the decoy/firewall that protects the real prizes, Rove and Bush. And the precedents will then be available for future leaders .... a new set of traditions.
Somehow, I don't think this will be a headline story tonight. Josh Marshall on the Fort Dix attackers!:
Well, seems they made a jihad training film featuring themselves. But they couldn't figure out how to burn it to a DVD. So they went to a Circuit City and asked the clerk on duty if he could do it for them.These guys turned themselves in! I think Josh is understating it a bit when he says there's a "hint of entrapment".
D'oh!
I guess that means these guys probably needed remedial terrorist training.
There also seems to be more than a hint of entrapment in the role the government informant played in helping arrange the planned attack. Back in November one of the plotters called a Philly police officer and told him that he'd been approached by someone [i.e., the government informant] "who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related."
Yep, another edition.
In this one, Digby does the best write-up of exactly why the beltway pundits have lost touch with any sense of "real" America, instead substituting some 1950's version from teevee. I hope that Broder and Klein, in particular, will read it. Not that it will make a difference.
I saw in the news today that Cheney is out flappin' his gums about Iran. Iran has sort of been out of the news lately, and certainly the predictions (including my own) of an attack on Iran have not materialized. I wonder why?
My first thought is that those predictions were just wrong. What I mean is, that there never was an intent to attack, just sabre rattling. But a part of me thinks that there was indeed a plan to bomb Iran that has been twarted by the 2006 elections, failure in Iraq, and cooler heads. We'll likely never really know.
No matter what the reason, it's a good development for world peace and stability. The problem of nuclear proliferation will continue but hopefully international cooperation can dominate the solving of the problem rather than unilaterial cowboyism.
Scott Ritter takes the glove off.
It’s a shame for these Legionnaires that the Iraqis couldn’t have turned out to be blond, blue-eyed Germans who looked like us, and whose women could be wooed with chocolate and nylon stockings by the noble American liberator and occupier. Or, short of that, passive Japanese, who freely submitted their women to the massage parlors and barracks of their American conquering heroes while their men rebuilt a shattered society. The simplistic approach of many of the American Legion’s most hawkish advocates for the ongoing disaster in Iraq seems to be drawn from a selective memory which seeks to impose a carefully crafted past experience dating back to the last “good war” (i.e., World War II), expunged of all warts and blemishes, onto the current situation in Iraq in a manner which strips away all reality.
source
I know this is going to shock you, but Murray Waas is reporting that the White House has withheld emails that implicate Rove in the Dept. of Justice probe:
The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.Yeah. I know. I'm shocked too.
The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.
Angry Bear makes a very good point in this post. Has anyone really noticed that the attacks in the "safe" American Green Zone seem to escalating? This escalation in attacks seems to be occurring even as we're escalating the military presence around the green zone. Aren't the attacks supposed to decrease with more soldiers on the ground?
Barry Ritholtz on retailers blaming bad weather for crappy sales numbers:
To remind y'all about some past exusage, it was "Too warm in January, too cold in February, too much static cling in March. The fear for May is the emergence of the 17 year Cicada, which will interfere dramatically with ongoing retail promotions. Also of major concern: German U-Boats off of the coast of New Jersey will be interfering with the Memorial Day sales. (We last looked at these less-than-believable excuses in Through The Retail Looking Glass)
I demand that if you are going to bullshit me with absurd and moronic excuses, at least have the god-damned courtesy to make them entertaining.
The media is trumpeting a "change" in Bush's position on Iraq. The reports suggest that the Preznit is now willing to accept a bill with benchmarks.
I don't know. It all has a feeling of genuine administration shift. But we also know Bush well enough (and his addictive tendencies) to know that this could simply be another promise to stop drinking. Put another way, Bush may simply be playing for time, "bargaining" in AA parlance.
If I have to guess, I'd say it a play for time or Bush is hoping that, through negotiations with Republicans, he can sabotage any bill with language or ambiguity that let's him continue on his merry way. Frankly I cannot think of a single occasion where a "hopeful sign" from Bush actually materialized. I believe I'll stay in the "I'm from Missouri crowd" and need to actually see evidence of a real change before accepting the spin. I think Pelosi has it about right:
Pelosi said the president's remarks were meaningless unless he was willing to impose consequences.In the meantime, Republican watch continues. They are clearly feeling the heat. CW is that September is the latest they can still get out from under voting pressure in 2008. I'm not sure I agree with that as the displeasure with Republicans goes quite deep, deeper than just Iraq, although Iraq is the poster issue for that dissatisfaction.
"The president has long said he supports benchmarks. What he fails to accept is accountability for failing to meet those benchmarks," she said.
The stock market isn't having a good day today. But this is following a nearly straight up trajectory. The big news is lousy retail sales. The bears are suggesting that consumers are finally pulling back because of falling wages, the housing bubble pop and rising energy prices. The bulls say retail sales slowed because of lousy weather and it's a one time blip. Of course, we shall see.
I find it interesting that Wal Mart is reporting the worst April ever. I'm sure weather played a part. But to be setting records on bad weather defies logic.
Yeah, Abu Gonzales is appearing before Congress again today. And still lying. Nothing new here. Just more revelations of wrongdoing, politicization and cover-up.
Oh. And in case you weren't aware of it, there have been a few more U.S. attorney's added to the fired-for-political-reasons list.
I. Have. Never. Seen. Colbert. So. Nervous. Something you'd never see conservatives do.
Go watch.
I haven't done one of these in awhile. I read these every day and it's important to remember that these stories are repeated by the thousands, daily, all over Iraq. This is from a blog written by an Iraq employee of McClatchey. The writer is talking about a taxi driver he ran into:
He has three sons… the elder one is Akram and two other kids.
Akram was killed with other civilians in one of the car bombs in Fallujah.
The second son went to his secondary school and never came back.
The third son, he is 16 years old, lost one of his eyes as he was buying something to his family from a mini-market not far away from his house and a passing by military convoy were targeted by a road side bomb and shrapnel injured the kid in the eye.
The real tragedy is the mother… he says she keep thinking when ever the door knocks especially after sunset that her missing son is coming back… she heard from someone that kidnappers usually release the hostages at night. The driver had to inform all his neighbors not to knock the door after sunset, his wife health deteriorate after she run to the main door and she finds out it is not her beloved missing son.
Boy, I sure miss J. Edgar Hoover. When he was in charge he knew how to thoroughly trump up a threat that no one could assail.
Oh, but for the good old days.
Now, whenever there's a "plot" is uncovered (or any revelation by the administration for that matter), you know it's going be a bunch of bullshit. And the Fort Dix arrests this week follow the script.
The NY Times is publishing a story today on the "informer" inside the "terrorists cell". It turns out that the group, certainly guilty of stupidity and perhaps some vague intent to do some harm, was essentially led by the informer from the get:
That moment, recorded on tape and submitted in federal court this week in Camden, N.J., as the authorities charged six Muslim men in the plot, captures something of the complexity of using informers in terror investigations. The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.Now I'm not saying that these bad guys didn't deserve attention, or that they perhaps didn't break a law. But it just goes to show how serious the threat of terrorism really is. These were a bunch of idiots with very vague nefarious plans that were likely to go absolutely no where .... sorta like the guy who was going to take down the bridge with a blow torch. That is go no where until the FBI terrorist expert joined the cell as a plant.
Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.
Apparently there's a story out about how some House Republicans confronted Bush on the war, vowing that support for him can't last much longer.
Yeah right.
I say put up or shut up.
Anyway, this also caught my eye:
During the meeting, one of the lawmakers asked Bush to stop the Iraqi parliament from going on vacation while "our sons and daughters spill their blood," reports the Post. The prospect of the parliament taking a two-month vacation has riled lawmakers in Washington. But, as the LAT reports inside, even when the parliament is in session (meeting three days a week) it frequently has trouble getting started because of such things as electricity shortages and roadblocks that prevent lawmakers from getting there. Although no final decision has been made on the vacation, some Iraqi politicians aren't too happy the United States is trying to dictate their schedules. And even if it's decided that lawmakers shouldn't take a vacation, there's no guarantee they'll listen.The Iraqi parliament usually can't get a quorum even when they're "in session". This certainly isn't a new story.
Here's the latest challenge by the religious right nutbars:
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas schools would be able to offer elective courses on the Bible under legislation tentatively adopted Tuesday in the House.I'm really ambivalent about this. First off and just on principle, religious training has no business in the public schools. On the other hand, I have no problem with religious education in the schools provided that all religions are taught. I don't know it for a fact, but I doubt that this bill is religious education. On to the Supremes if the governor signs it.
The measure, which was approved by a voice vote, was a watered-down version of Republican Rep. Warren Chisum's original proposal. That plan would have required Bible courses to be taught as an elective in all Texas high schools rather than making it optional.
Is it just me, or are the administration personnel starting to look like this? Isn't that Abu Gonzales in the back there?
