Busy ....

Sorry for the sparse posting but this has been a busy day....

Did anybody catch the hearings on Walter Reed Army Hospital this morning? I read one thread on the testimony this morning and it was horrid.....

Stock Market is dropping...what's going on? I know a lot of people on fixed incomes or, variable incomes depending on the interest off of their annuities or IRA portfolios.....as usual the White House doesn't want to comment. Just checked...final close down 63.29....not as bad as I thought it was going to be...yesterday was-132 or so....

I'm beginning to think I was right about Ann Coulter's latest bit of lunacy....her popularity and cache' among her right wing friends must have been slipping...and just as a spoiled child will throw a tantrum for more attention, that's exactly what our sweet, little Annie did......and she's rewarded for it with additional appearances on CNN.

Now, for a prediction....within 30 days, Coulter will come out with another sorry excuse for a book....this whole thing has the ring of a pre-planned publicity stunt.....

In the meantime, the jury is driving Judge Walton nuts with questions in the Libby Trial. You can read about it at firedoglake here. And here's a picture of our favorite Federal Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald who has become something of a folk hero to Plameologists.....the distinctions between "Fitz" and the infamous Kenneth Starr are remarkable...there has been virtually no "leaking in this case at all....Fitz has been the model of decorum in this case and I think he's representative of what justice in America should (and could ) be.....

Time to trundle off to my second "set" of meetings for the day...be careful what you ask for in life 'cause you just might get it.....

Somehow I missed the resemblence....

this is ....I don't know what to call it...

Let's lay it out for you here and you can call it what you will....

Adam Nagourney from the New York Times:

The question of whether the remark was offensive enough aside, the Edwards campaign saw an opportunity in the remarks of a woman who is about as popular in liberal Democratic circles as [Sen.] Hillary Rodham Clinton [D-NY] is in Republican circles (not very). Mr. [David] Bonior [Edwards' campaign manager] sent an e-mail to supporters last night urging them to make contributions to the Edwards campaign.

to which Media Matters says:

Hillary Rodham Clinton? What did she do to deserve a comparison to Coulter? Whether or not Coulter is "[un]popular in liberal Democratic circles," the reasons for liberals' denunciations of her could not be more different from the reasons that Republicans might dislike -- and apparently fear -- Clinton. Last we checked, Clinton had not referred to anyone as a "faggot" or advocated the assassination of anyone. Nor has she, to our knowledge, lamented that Timothy McVeigh did not blow up a news organization.

SARCASM ON: "Oh sure, I see it now...they're exactly alike......."SARCASM OFF

Thank You Jesus (General, that is)

On Second edit: OOOPS, MY BAD....that post wasn't written BY the General, it was written by Austin Cline....I think I'll have to pay closer attention to the sig lines next time....

I apologize for ruining your day, General, er....your highness? ...your lordship? ...your grace?

There's a great post up on the dangers of the "Imperial Presidency" on Jesus General... That's his logo at the right....

There's also a good riff on it here.

Just as an aside, I watched Howie Kurtz on CNN's Reliable Sources this morning...caught the segment on the Coulter remarks....the excuse for not universally condemning her? Well, it's because we don't want to give her any more publicity, don't you know....

Hey Howie!

What about your drooling adoration of Michelle Malkin? She's competing head-to-head with Annie in the race for "BEST FEMALE, HOMOPHOBIC, XENOPHOBIC, BILE-FILLED, UNHINGED RANTING PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR!

Cross post

I did a quick post on Ann Coulters outrageous remarks at the Convention of Conservative Voters. You can read the post over here.....

Also, I wonder, did Little Annie go off the deep end because her fame/popularity was slipping?

Was she forced into this outrageous behavior in search of ratings?

Does she think she'll get more TV gigs if she acts more radically?

Stay tune, eh?

Update #1: I found another really good Wisconsin liberal's blog the other day. Check it out here.

Update:#2 Pachacutec over at firedoglake tells us a great joke in "Did you hear the one about..." only it's no joke...Joe Lieberman gave the DEMOCRATIC response to the President's radio address....no kidding...he did.

About that North Korea situation

In case you missed it, the news broke yesterday about the fact that early on in the Bush Administration, they (the Bush foreign policy gang...) decided based on more of their cracker-jack intelligence analysts (meaning Doug Feith and the OSP group in the Pentagon) determined that North Korea was really lying about their nuclear weapons program and so all the deals them made with North Korea were cancelled, talks were cut off and things went down hill from there....North Korea kicked the UN inspectors out started severe sabre rattling and eventually, just last fall, finally tested a crude, nuclear device.

It turns out that the intelligence they based their draconian policy upon, not to mention the famous (infamous? ) "Axis of Evil" speech, was....well...wrong.......

Get that?

The. Intelligence. Was. Wrong.

The New York Times had the whole story here...

According to a senior official,

But now, American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.

So just exactly what does that mean?

Well...this:

“The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea,” Senator Reed said in an interview on Wednesday. “If that was based in part on mixing up North Korea’s ambitions with their accomplishments, it’s important.”

Two administration officials, who declined to be identified, suggested that if the administration harbored the same doubts in 2002 that it harbored now, the negotiating strategy for dealing with North Korea might have been different — and the tit-for-tat actions that led to October’s nuclear test could, conceivably, have been avoided.

So by treating North Korea like a villian and cutting off all relations with them and even refusing to talk to them, we allowed North Korea to go ahead full speed with another version of a nuclear program....

So what difference could it have actually made?

A LOT....here's the "money shot"

The question now is whether we would be in the position of having to get the North Koreans to give up a sizable arsenal if this had been handled differently,” a senior administration official said this week.

Way to go Dubya!

Anybody got a front-end loader?

I'm running out of space to put this white stuff (snow...the atmospheric kind)

To think, we were down to bare ground ONE WEEK AGO TODAY!

Imperial Presidency? Indeed!

Over at Firedoglake, Christie (aka Redhead) has a great tribute to Arthur Schlesinger up on her site. Schlesinger died last night at the age of 89. Wiki has a nice description of his legacy here:

Schlesinger was a prolific contributor to liberal theory and was a passionate and articulate voice for Kennedy-style liberalism. He was admired for his wit, scholarship, and devotion to delineating the history and nature of liberalism. Since 1990 he had been a critic of multiculturalism.

I had actually forgotten Schlesinger's works because he hasn't been in the media eye for years, but Christie reminds us that it was Schlesinger who coined the phrase, Imperial Presidency, and, wrote a comprehensive work on it by the same title.

At Firedoglake, Christie calls upon a piece done by John Dean of Watergate fame on the subject of Imperial Presidency. Dean talks mostly about the manner in which Nixon claimed for the Presidency (actually himself as we now know) extraordinary powers and went so far as to take the government to court in the oddly-named "United States vs United States Court for the Eastern District of Michigan" case.

Dean describes Nixon's basis for expanded powers like this:

"After Nixon pushed the presidential powers even further than past presidents had, both the Congress and Supreme Court acted to curtail his activities. In the name of protecting national security, Nixon wanted to be able to wiretap without the approval of a judge. The authority for this power? Before the Court of Appeals, Nixon relied on a vague "historical power of the sovereign to preserve itself" and "the inherent power of the President to safeguard the security of the nation."

Later, arguing the issue before the Supreme Court, the government got even more vague — just loosely using the national security contention. In the end, the Court — in the ironically named case United States v. United States Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (which became known as the Keith Case) — said no. Joining the opinion were all of Nixon's own appointees — except William Rehnquist, who recused himself…."

If any of this is beginning to sound just a bit familiar to you, it's because Bush has been making this claim for some time now. He is using the "Commander-in-chief" title to claim that he and he alone is responsible for the safety and security of the country, and, therefore, ANYTHING he does is inherently LEGAL. Bush is supported in this contention by a law professor named John Yoo, described in his Newshour interview as:

And John Yoo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, he was a primary architect of the Bush administration's detainee and interrogation policies while working in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Since then, he's written a book on presidential powers in time of war.

I think all of us in the liberal/progressive end of the spectrum thought we had killed this consecpt with the end of Reagan's term of office....but it's back...with a vengence with the Bush Administration.

In my opinion, we need an overwhelming rejection of the principles of the Imperial Presidency so that it can never raise it's ugly head again....and 3000+ Americans won't have to die for Imperial Hubris..