Jaw Dropping Editorial

In response to President Bush's proclamation last week that Donald Rumsfeld, The Army Times, The Air Force Times, The Navy Times, and The Marine Corps Times have penned a joint editorial calling for Rumsfeld's ouster. From The Army Times:

Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.

This is a mistake. It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

Upon being informed of the possibly unprecedented editorial, President Bush reportedly "shrugged it off." That's great, I guess listening to troops is now out the window. When you vote in this election on Tuesday, you might want to think about which party will provide oversight for this fiasco in Iraq. The President himself with this reaction has now shown that he isn't interested in any.

The Dispatch Numbers

Looks good.

Good News From The Dispatch Poll

Buried deep in the last Columbus Dispatch poll are some very good numbers for the Democratic party. While many will bask in the banner numbers, which are indeed very good for us, I'd like to focus on one of the cross-tabs that show not just good news for us in this election, but for many to come.

One of the questions asked in the poll is who did you vote for in the last presidential election? About four percent of the respondents replied that they did not vote in the last presidential election and those election always have the largest turnouts.

It is most likely that these voters were not old enough to vote in 2004, or they were just old enough to vote and didn't. These voters are breaking roughly three to one for the Democrats. It is a widely held view that people choose their ideological outlook on politics around the age of twenty. This could signal that there will be a generation of heavily Democratic supporters much like the FDR generation who happen to as Karl Rove says "are dieing off."

Naturally, we will not retain all of these voters for a lifetime, but given the substantial edge we have on them at this point, I think it is a given that we will have a built-in advantage among them for some time to come

Interesting

I wish I could share the President's optimism, but I'm pretty sure more than four republicans will win on Tuesday. I guess it is the cold analytical side of my persona, you know, the whole dealing with reality thing.

The Kangaroo Has Stopped Hopping

Saddam is to get the rope. Why are we still there again?

A Soccer Game Breaks Out At Allen Rally

This is pretty funny. To evade having Senator Allen answer a question, one of his supporters takes a dive like a soccer nancy.

And They Hate To Be Called Nazis

First, the republicans ran race baiting ads in various races around the country, then they realized at this late date in the cycle, they had failed to take a shot at the Jews. Well, fear not readers, this late ad directed against Gary Trauner in Wyoming does just that. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, New Yorker is a dog whistle word for those of the Jewish persuasion which Trauner is.

It's My Incriminating Evidence, And I'm Taking It With Me

This is hilarious. When confronted about wrong doing in his office, republican Tim Murphy does the only responsible thing, he snatches the evidence out of the reporter's hands for safe keeping, and he did it on camera! Murphy then goes on to blame his staff for doing things he clearly ordered them to do.

Intriguing

A couple of nights ago, I stopped in at a semi-popular happy hour location for a few drinks. I started up a conversation with a couple of guys about football and much to my surprise, they were from DC. So I asked them if they were in town to work the election, and they said no. Both were attorney's for the Department of Justice.

I joked with them asking if they were in town for me, they weren't. They did however have some interesting things to say. One of them had worked on the prosecution of Bob Ney. I told them some of the rumors I've heard about Ney over the past ten year and they replied that most of them were believable given their knowledge.

Then one went on to say that Ney also has what they described as "a Mark Foley type problem." Huh? They went on to say Ney was "totally gay", so at this point I'm not sure they were using the phrase "Mark Foley type problem" as a way to indicate that Bob Ney is simply gay, or if he really has a page problem similar to Mark Foley. They left without clarifying.

Even in his days in the Ohio House and Senate, Ney was known as someone who got a little too close to his staff. Is he still doing the same thing today. I realize that Ney is going to prison, and I hate to kick a man when he is down, but he is still a sitting member of Congress as he has refused thus far to resign, and the republican led legislature has refused to throw him out.

Don't worry though, I'm sure the republicans are still doing everything possible to protect the children, or at least they will once the election is over.

Update: Ney just resigned.

Michael Hirsh Gets Shrill

Michael Hirsh gets very shrill with George Bush in his latest Newsweek column (Web Exclusive). From Newsweek:

Was there any more mind-boggling bit of historic bad luck than what happened after Election Day 2000, when those 537 votes in Florida wobbled, then stayed in George W. Bush’s column? Never mind what kind of president Al Gore would have been—he would have been adequate, I suppose, but so would have most Republicans—it is hard now to avoid the conclusion that Bush was precisely the wrong man at the wrong time. Perhaps Bush would have been OK fighting another kind of war, a Jacksonian Battle of New Orleans-type war. But at a moment in history when we faced the most subtle sort of global threat, when we needed not just a willingness to use military force but a leader of real brilliance—someone who would carefully study a little-understood enemy—we got a man who actually took pride in his lack of studiousness. No surprise: Bush never once presided over a grand-strategy session to divine the nature of Al Qaeda, and he ended up lumping Saddam and every Islamist insurgent and terrorist group with Osama bin Laden. He ensured that a tiny fringe group that had been hounded into Afghanistan with no place left to go—one that could have been wiped out had we focused on the task at hand—would spread worldwide and become a generational Islamist threat.

And at a time when we needed a world leader who understood the nuances of burden-sharing in the international system, we got a president who so badly wanted to be a cowboy and not his father (offending even some Texans: "all hat and no cattle" is the term they use down there) that he proudly declared he doesn’t "do nuance." Bush stomped around huffily in his first term, talking loudly and carrying a big stick, in the process all but trashing a half century of carefully nurtured American prestige. No surprise: he alienated a world we desperately needed on our side, thus leaving America alone with all the burden and generations’ worth of bills to pay. Now we face two serious rising threats, North Korea and Iran. And having squandered our attention, resources and prestige on a trumped-up threat, Iraq, we are simply too weak and friendless to confront them as they should be. That’s what I call bad luck.

Unlucky, indeed.

Sidenote: What's with all the big paragraph writers lately?

The Triumphant Failures Of The Bush Administration

In March of this year, under the direction of George Bush, and pushed by Rick Santorum, Peter Hoekstra with the help of the right-wing blogosphere, the DOCEX website went live. DOCEX is where the US put some 50,000 boxes of gathered Iraqi intelligence on the Internet for anyone to see. No passwords were needed, no background checks were required.

The idea is that the right-wing allies would translate the documents and find out where in the hell that sneaky Saddam Hussein had hidden the WMD. It didn't quite work out that way. Today's New York Times reports that there was indeed an old document from before the first Gulf War that would provide valuable information, if you were a rogue nation looking to acquire a nuclear bomb. From the New York Times:

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

[snip]

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

Only a truly moronic group of people would tout putting out this kind of information, in Arabic no less with an Arabic nation currently trying to build such a device, as triumph. The Bush administration is out in full force today, doing just that. You see, this proves that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program and the mushroom cloud was right around the corner. Only it doesn't.

These are old documents and no serious person today believes that Hussein had an active WMD program when we attacked them in 2003. I do find the timing of the release of these documents curious though, perhaps this is the October surprise Karl Rove has been boasting of. I wouldn't put it past them, you know, risking giving Iran the know how to build a nuclear weapon just to win a few more lousy House seats. Given their past, it just isn't too big of a leap of faith.

Hey Don Sherwood, Surprise!!

The surprises are coming fast and furious, aren't they? It has long been rumored that US rep Don Sherwood had choked his mistress and that they settled out of court. Well, it seems the AP has dug up the terms of the agreement, and just in time for election day! From the AP:

A Republican congressman accused of abusing his ex-mistress agreed to pay her about $500,000 in a settlement last year that contained a powerful incentive for her to keep quiet until after Election Day, a person familiar with the terms of the deal told The Associated Press.

What a pompous ass. The only thing he cared about was getting through this election. I guess he figured he is so great that two years from now no one would care about this, if he wins this time, which he will not.

Farewell J

I'd like to take a moment to sent out some well wishes to my friend J who passed this week at the age of 43. In even the worst of times, you were always the best of times. Much misses, sister.

Dead Man Walking

Luckily for the nation, it doesn't look like we're going to have Curt Weldon to kick around much longer. Maybe he can use his newly found free time to go to Iraq and complete that search for weapons of mass destruction he wanted to do.

It has gotten so bad for the Weldon campaign that his latest ads feature people asking voters to give Weldon "the benefit of the doubt." Weldon = Well Done.

Hey Evangelical Christians, Surprise!!!!

Ah yes, nothing better than a prominent Evangelical Christian leader and republican hack getting caught tapping a gay male hooker. From KUSA in Denver:

Mike Jones told 9 Wants to Know Investigative Reporter Paula Woodward he has had a "sexual business" relationship with Pastor Ted Haggard for the past three years.

Haggard is the founder and senior leader of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The church has 14,000 members.

He is also president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization that represents millions of people.

Haggard is married with five children and an outspoken critic of gay marriage.

Hmm, do you suspect as much as I do that this guy got into the God business just for the money, much like Robin Parsley? I have a feeling that these guys are starting to realize that politics is even a dirtier business than conning little old ladies out of their money.

The After Election Talk

If the election on Tuesdays goes the way I think it will go, what you will be hearing from the pundits on election night and for the weeks afterward will be that women widely rejected the republicans in this election and powered the wave election that pushed the Democrats into power.

The overlying theme will be, what does this mean for Hillary, Hillary, Hillary going into the 2008 presidential election and she will crowned the front runner, person to beat, favorite, or whatever.

Next, politicos from both parties will then seek out any and every qualified female candidate they can find to ride this wave into 2008 when the dynamics of that election are likely to be completely different. American politics is so forward thinking.

Hooray For Me

It looks like I'm going to get to attend the next Space Shuttle launch. So cool.

Hey John Sweeney, Surprise!

The Albany Times-Union today printed the police report of a 911 call placed with the police department by Sweeney's wife over a domestic dispute. From the Albany Times-Union:

``Female caller stating her husband is knocking her around the house,'' a dispatcher wrote. ``Then she stated `Here it comes, are you ready?' and disconnected the call. Upon call-back, the husband stated no problem ... asked the wife if she wanted to talk. Wife (caller) then got on the phone and stated that she's fine and that she's drunk. Caller sounded intoxicated. She advised that she was endangered for a moment, but everything is fine.''

As is protocol, the police sent a cruiser out to investigate. State Trooper Scott Grunsel wrote this in his report. From Albany TU:

``Complainant stated that she and husband got into verbal argument that turned a little physical by her being grabbed by the neck and pushed around the house,'' Gunsel wrote in the narrative portion of the blotter entry, according to the document. ``Suspect had scratches on face. Both parties refused medical attention. Complainant removed to friend's house for the evening ... refused any type of prosicution (sic) arrest.''

The Sweeney campaign says the report is "false and concocted." Well, there is one easy way to prove that. Sweeney has the power to compel the State Police to release the actual documents. Surprisingly, his spokeswoman didn't reply to requests from the Times-Union for Sweeney to do so. Guess she doesn't want a beating.

Song For Your Day

The best band on the planet that has yet to release a full length album has released a new UK single. Here is the video for Don't Give Up by The Noisettes. If you want to buy the single, try to get your hands on the UK release which has four songs while the American release apparently only contains two tracks. It comes out Nov 13th.

The Doughy Goons Of George Allen

Goonsmanship ain't what it used to be. In this video some of George Allen's "toughs" tackle blogger Mike Stark. Stark has filed charges.