Digby: Getting Rich By Being Wrong

Jebediah Reed has a very entertaining and informative piece in Radar about the elite punditocrisy in which he outlines how wrong they have been --- and how rich they are getting in spite of it. And he also takes the time to examine what has happened to those pundits who were right --- and have been punished for it. It's not pretty.

Democrats Pledge to Extend Minimum Wage

Saturday January 13, 2:47 PM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fending off charges of favoritism, House Democrats say a just-passed minimum wage bill will be changed to cover all U.S. territories — including American Samoa — before it reaches President Bush's desk.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters she has instructed the House Education and Labor Committee to help get the bill changed to "make sure that all of the territories have to comply with the U.S. law on minimum wage."

Daily Kos: Against Torture

by fbb

Fri Jan 12, 2007 at 01:25:28 AM PST

It is widely accepted that "a fate worse than death" exists. Indeed, people suffering from painful terminal illness regularly beg to be "put out of their misery" and commit suicide. Questions of "Did she suffer?" attend normal deaths, and we are comforted to hear that a person died peacefully.

What is this fate worse than death, and why is our government in the business of inflicting it on people?

The Iraq Gamble: At the pundits' table, the losing bet still takes the pot

By Jebediah Reed

A few years ago, David Brooks, New York Times columnist and media pundit extraordinaire, penned a love letter to the idea of meritocracy. It is "a way of life that emphasizes ... perpetual improvement, and permanent exertion," he effused, and is essential to America's dynamism and character. Fellow glorifiers of meritocracy have noted that our society is superior to nepotistic backwaters like Krygystan or France because we assign the most important jobs based on excellence. This makes us less prone to stagnancy or, worse yet, hideous national clusterfucks like fighting unwinnable wars for reasons nobody understands.

Democrats in Senate Fail to Block Bill on Ethics

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: January 12, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — After campaigning for months on a promise to tighten ethics rules, Senate Democratic leaders tried unsuccessfully Thursday to block a measure that would shine a light on the shadowy practice of earmarking federal money for lawmakers’ pet projects.

Last week the House Democrats passed an unexpectedly broad change to their chamber’s rules that would disclose the size, purpose and sponsor of any earmark.

Governors lose in power struggle over National Guard

By Kavan Peterson, Staff Writer

A little-noticed change in federal law packs an important change in who is in charge the next time a state is devastated by a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina.

To the dismay of the nation’s governors, the White House now will be empowered to go over a governor’s head and call up National Guard troops to aid a state in time of natural disasters or other public emergencies. Up to now, governors were the sole commanders in chief of citizen soldiers in local Guard units during emergencies within the state.

Paul Krugman: Golden State Gamble

The New York Times
Friday 12 January 2007

A few days ago Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled an ambitious plan to bring universal health insurance to California. And I'm of two minds about it.

On one side, it's very encouraging to see another Republican governor endorse the principle that all Americans are entitled to essential health care. Not long ago we were wondering whether the Bush administration would succeed in dismantling Social Security. Now we're discussing proposals for universal health care. What a difference two years makes!

And if California - America's biggest state, with a higher-than-average percentage of uninsured residents - can achieve universal coverage, so can the nation as a whole.

Tony Snow Meets Jamil Hussein, Hits Media Coverage of Iraq

When the president's press secretary returns to his roots in talk radio, he speaks more bluntly than he does in the White House briefing room. Yesterday he disappeared AP's disputed source (again) and suggested that he's ready to fight a new "media war" -- or is that a war against the media?

By Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK (January 12, 2007) -- Tony Snow is a smooth operator, no doubt. When Chris Matthews on "Hardball" yesterday called him the best White House press secretary since Eisenhower's guy, James C. Hagerty, he probably meant that he was photogenic, cool under pressure, and spun a good line -- in contrast to his predecessor, Scott McClellan.

But Snow, after all, is a former radio talk show and Fox News host who once freely expressed very conservative positions. He holds back now, except when he is interviewed by friendly radio hosts, so it's always interesting to follow what he says in those settings (the same was true for Donald Rumsfeld).

CIA Leak Probe: Inside The Grand Jury

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 12, 2007

Late in the morning of July 12, 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney stood atop a pier at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia awaiting the commissioning of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, a ship 20 stories high that took eight years to construct. More than 15,000 people stood under clear skies to watch the pomp and ceremony. As she christened the carrier by breaking a bottle of champagne over its bow, Nancy Reagan told the crowd: "I only have one line. Man the ship and bring her alive."

A Washington Post reporter recounted what happened next: "With those time-hallowed words, hundreds of crew members wearing dress whites ran aboard the 20-story Reagan and lined the flight deck while four fighter jets flew overhead and every crane, radar, whistle, and alarm aboard was turned on simultaneously."

Moyers Warns Of Media Consolidation -- Of the Internet -- at Big Conference

Published: January 12, 2007 10:20 PM ET

MEMPHIS Critics of media consolidation by large corporations should also be worried about corporate intentions for the Internet, TV journalist Bill Moyers said Friday at a National Conference for Media Reform.

Moyers, an award-winning PBS producer and commentator, warned conference participants from around the country that corporate America wants to expand its control over the Internet while limiting access by average citizens.

"Big Media is ravenous. It never gets enough," Moyers said.

Legislation introduced in response to U.S. attorney appointments

Friday, Jan 12, 2007

By Aaron Sadler
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Days after the attorney general named a former White House official to serve an interim U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Sen. Mark Pryor added his name Thursday to a bill to restrict the attorney general's appointment power.

Pryor, D-Ark., joined Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in introducing legislation to change a provision of the Patriot Act that allows for indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation.

The senators said the law circumvents the traditional process of Senate consent of executive branch appointments.

Bill Moyers at NCMR 2007 -- PART 1

Bill Moyers Speaking at the National Conference for Media Reform: Part I

Correction: U.S. raided Iran's proto consulate in Iraq, regional war postponed

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein at 2:35 PM on January 12, 2007.

Semantics save the day.

Yesterday, American forces raided what was widely reported to be an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq.

Now the Iraqi foreign minister is helpfully re-describing the facility as an Iraqi-government approved liason office that was in the process of becoming a consulate:

The Iranians were detained Thursday as multinational forces entered the building overnight and confiscated computers and documents, two senior local Kurdish officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Six people suspected of being involved in attacks against Iraqi civilians and military forces were initially detained, the U.S. military said in a statement. One was later released. The statement did not identify the nationalities of the suspects.

Webb does more for troops in one day than Allen did in years

Posted by Bob Geiger on January 12, 2007 at 5:17 PM.

Keeping a promise he made on the campaign trail in 2006, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) did more for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on his first day in the Senate than the man he ousted, George Felix Allen, did in the entire previous Congress.

Going unnoticed in the frenzy of Democrats assuming control of Capitol Hill and George W. Bush seeking to plunge the country deeper into the Iraq quagmire, Webb introduced the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007, legislation that will provide the newest Veterans with educational benefits like those received by men and women who served in the three decades following World War II.

Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees

By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: January 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

Digby: Getting Off

Everybody is wondering just what game Bush is playing. I tend to the "go for it" model, the typical spoiled rich kind, alcoholic style that is born of someone who has never had to deal with the consequences of their actions. I think that Junior sees "history" as having already vindicated him so there is no need for caution, prudence or reason to interfere with anything he emotionally needs to do.

Cheney is trying to secure oil fields and create an imperial America that only superficially answers to the people, whom he disdains. So, for him, everything is going fine. I think they figure that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by going after Iran and while they might get their hair mussed, at the end of the day, the oil fields will be securely under American control.

Digby: I'm The Escalator

Sorry, I kind of dozed off during Junior's speech tonight. He must have popped one of Laura's downers before he went on because I've rarely seen him so somnambulent. It was catching. Or maybe it's just that all that escalatin' is hard work. The president, it appears, is very tie-tie.

Digby: Whispers

Dana Bash really doesn't know what she's talking about. Media Matters caught this one today. I've got another on. I noted the other day that the cable babblers were all whispering that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had gone back on their campaign promises to work five days a week because the John Boehner had asked for the day off to go to the football game and the Dems capitulated.

Digby: Oh Please

President Bush was upset after watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution, comparing it to how he felt after seeing the photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, White House officials said Wednesday.

Yes, he's very sensitive:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.

Digby: Taxpayer Funded Insurgency

I hate to be a killjoy and all, and I'm normally a big fan of foreign aid and helping out the less fortunate around the world, but this additional billion for reconstruction in Iraq just strikes me as the last Republican boondoggle before they retire to count their ill-gotten gains and let the Democrats try to clean up the messes they've created here and around the world (while they scream bloody murder about runaway liberal spending.)

Digby: Extremities

White House officials are keen to portray the new policy as a compromise between two extremes. On one side are the John McCains of the world, demanding big numbers of new troops for extended periods in Iraq. On the other side are the antidependency Democrats, demanding a phased withdrawal, or a timetable for withdrawal, to shock the Iraqis into action. (The White House dismisses the third option of rapid withdrawal as simply a form of defeat.)

Those are two extremes. Except that one of them is favored by a large majority of Americans and the other is favored by three neocons at AEI and Joe Lieberman.

Daily Kos: No Way Forward in Iraq

by Pericles

Wed Jan 10, 2007 at 09:15:55 PM PST

The most important thing about President Bush's speech was that it had to be given at all. Nearly four years after the invasion, we still haven't secured the capital. Worse, we had Baghdad more-or-less secure in 2003-2004, and we lost it. You can't look at a basic fact like that and still believe that we're winning the war.

The pundits want to focus on the word mistake, which Bush used for maybe the first time ever. But here's the context:

Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

In other words, he's responsible the same way that the president of McDonalds is responsible when your fries are cold. Big deal. I continue to hope that someday, maybe when he's 90, Bush really grasps the fact that his bad judgment got good people killed. I don't expect it, but I hope.

Daily Kos: Lieberman refuses to hold Bush accountable for Katrina

by kos

Fri Jan 12, 2007 at 07:51:10 AM PST

See, this is the problem with having a Republican in sheep's clothing heading up committees in our Democratic Congress.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Lieberman’s reversal underscores the new role that he is seeking to play in the Senate as the leading apostle of bipartisanship, especially on national-security issues. On Wednesday night, Bush conspicuously cited Lieberman’s advice as being the inspiration for creating a new “bipartisan working group” on Capitol Hill that he said will “help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.”

Barbara Ehrenreich: Home Depot’s CEO-Size Tip

I’m not upset by the $210 million golden parachute Robert Nardelli just received as a send-off from Home Depot. Not at all. To those critics who see it as one more step in the slide from free-market capitalism to wholesale looting, I say: What do you really know about Nardelli’s circumstances? Maybe he has a dozen high-maintenance ex-trophy wives to support, each with a brood of special-needs offspring. Ever think of what that would cost?

Or he may have a rare disease that can be held at bay only by daily infusions of minced fresh gorilla liver. Just try purchasing a gorilla a day for purposes of personal consumption, or any endangered species for that matter. There are the poachers to pay, the smugglers, the doctors and vets. I’m just saying: Don’t start envisioning offshore bank accounts and 50,000 square foot fourth homes until you know the whole story.

A (Pretty) Short History of Wingnutism

By: Barbara O'Brien on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 2:42 PM - PST

In his WaPo column today, E.J. Dionne quotes one of his readers: “Conservatism, like Christianity, has not failed. Neither has ever been tried, especially by this administration.”

This person may have a point about Christianity, although I think a handful of people have made a sincere effort; Albert Schweitzer comes to mind. But he’s wrong about American-style conservatism. It’s been tried, and it failed.

As Digby wrote recently,

I did not understand the zombie nature of Republicanism and had no way of knowing that unless you drive a metaphorical stake through the heart of GOP crooks and liars, they will be back, refreshed and and ready to screw up the country in almost exactly the same way, within just a few years.

In support of Digby’s statement I present here A (Pretty) Short History of Wingnutism.

From Political Animal: discussion of Chomsky vs. Kristol

...Bill Kristol is about as far to the extreme right as Noam Chomsky is to the extreme left. What's more, they both have about the same affect (sober and clinical), they have clear ideologies that they follow consistently and predictably...

Glenn Greenwald: The Leader is with us

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Boston Herald columnist Jules Crittenden assures us that salvation is imminent, in a post solemnly entitled "On Reflection":

George Bush will address us tonight, and show us the way forward.

We need merely place our Faith in the Strong and Great Leader and everything will be good:

Tonight, our president is expected, once again, to defy the logic of polls and popularity, and dole out the bitter medicine. What must be done. What should have been done a long time ago. I remain confident in our future and the future of Iraq, because for now, we have a president who will do this.

TPM Cafe: Note from Flynt Leverett: Most Important Parts of Bush Speech About Iran -- Not Iraq

By Steve Clemons | bio

I asked former CIA and Bush administration National Security Council senior official Flynt Leverett for a quick summary of his thoughts on President Bush's Address to the Nation.

Here is Flynt Leverett's response:

The most important things that President Bush said last night dealt with Iran, not Iraq:

According to the President, the Iranians are providing "material support” to attacks on U.S. forces. That is a casus belli. It fits in with the administration’s escalating campaign -- encompassing rhetoric and detentions of Iranian officials in Iraq -- to blame Iran for a strategically significant part of the ongoing instability and violence in Iraq.

The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse

By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Thursday 11 January 2007

President Bush may be a headless horseman. But the biggest problem is what he rode in on.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a good name for it 40 years ago: "The madness of militarism."

We can blame Bush all we want - and he does hold the reins right now - but his main enablers these days are the fastidious public servants in Congress. They keep preparing the hay, freshening the water, oiling the saddle, even while criticizing the inappropriately jocular rider. And when the band plays "Hail to the Jockey," most of the grown-up stable boys and girls can't help saluting.

The people who actually live in Iraq have their own opinions, of course. UPI reported at the end of December that a new poll, conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, found that "about 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the US-led invasion than it is today." Meanwhile, according to a CNN poll last month, 11 percent of Americans support sending more US troops to Iraq.

Bush's New Strategy

By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK

Thursday 11 January 2007

So into the graveyard of Iraq, George Bush, commander-in-chief, is to send another 21,000 of his soldiers. The march of folly is to continue ...

There will be timetables, deadlines, benchmarks, goals for both America and its Iraqi satraps. But the war against terror can still be won. We shall prevail. Victory or death. And it shall be death.

President Bush's announcement early this morning tolled every bell. A billion dollars of extra aid for Iraq, a diary of future success as the Shia powers of Iraq - still to be referred to as the "democratically elected government" - march in lockstep with America's best men and women to restore order and strike fear into the hearts of al-Qa'ida. It will take time - oh, yes, it will take years, at least three in the words of Washington's top commander in the field, General Raymond Odierno this week - but the mission will be accomplished.

The U.S.-Iran-Iraq-Israeli-Syrian War

By Robert Parry
January 12, 2007

At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.

Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.”

Russert and NBC anchor Brian Williams depicted this White House emphasis on Iran as the biggest surprise from the briefing as Bush stepped into the meeting to speak passionately about why he is determined to prevail in the Middle East.

“The President’s inference was this: that an entire region would blow up from the inside, the core being Iraq, from the inside out,” Williams said, paraphrasing Bush.

Guantánamo inmates ‘driven insane’

By Guy Dinmore in Washington

Published: January 10 2007 20:00 | Last updated: January 10 2007 20:00

Prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba are being driven insane by a tightening of conditions and the situation of their indefinite detention without trial, according to lawyers and rights activists involved with the US camp.

The lawyers and activists also doubt whether the Bush administration intends to carry out its stated desire to close the facility.

Canned nuclear waste cooks its container

Estimates of radiation damage to materials have been too low.

Philip Ball

Storing high-level nuclear waste without any leakage over thousands of years may be harder than experts have thought, research published in Nature today shows.

Ian Farnan of Cambridge University, UK, and his co-workers have found that the radiation emitted from such waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly than thoughtp.

Pentagon Abandons Active-Duty Time Limit

Friday January 12, 2007 12:16 PM

AP Photo NJRS101

By ROBERT BURNS

AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

The day after President Bush announced his plan for a deeper U.S. military commitment in Iraq, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the change in reserve policy would have been made anyway because active-duty troops already were getting too little time between their combat tours.

Santorum leads ousted Republicans' move back to conservative philanthropy supported think tanks

At ironically named 'Ethics and Public Policy Center' former senator will track 'America's Enemies'

If you thought that his resounding defeat at the polls this past November would send former Senator Rick Santorum scurrying back home to Pennsylvania, think again. Santorum has decided he'll be staying in the nation's capital to head up a new program called "America's Enemies," which will be located at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a Washington-based think tank formerly headed by Neocon hawk Elliott Abrams.

States with higher levels of gun ownership have higher homicide rates

In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm owenrship and state level rates of homicide, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates are higher in states where more households have guns.

Bush on Iraq Surge: A Kissinger Ploy?

Washington Dispatch: Let's assume for a moment the president does have a plan: It might not be what you think.

January 11, 2007

Everyone knew what Bush was going to say before he made his address last night. And the "surge" that Democrats hoped to block had already begun, with advance elements of the 82nd Airborne in Baghdad to arrange for arrivals of 17,500 more troops. "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home," Bush said.

How to Finish off the GOP Machine

By Zachary Roth, Washington Monthly. Posted January 12, 2007.

The Machiavellian case for public financing of elections.

Early this summer, in one of the periodic manifestations of the herd mentality for which this city’s pundit class is known, official Washington decided that corruption didn’t matter. The main piece of evidence for this conclusion was the special election in June to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the California Republican congressman who months earlier had been convicted of bribery. The Democratic candidate had made issues of ethics and influence the focus of her campaign -- and wound up losing to a former GOP lobbyist. "The culture of corruption isn’t selling," declared Slate’s John Dickerson the following day, referring to the Democrats’ label for the Republican scandals of the previous year. Democrats largely accepted the new conventional wisdom, deciding merely to check the box on corruption, rather than making it a focus of their pitch to voters. As the campaign wore on, they invoked the “culture of corruption” less and less frequently. Several Democratic strategists told me before the election that they just didn’t think people cared that much about the issue.

Claiming the Prize: War Escalation Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil

By Chris Floyd, Information Clearing House. Posted January 12, 2007.

The reason that Bush insists that "victory" is close at hand is because Iraqi ministers are likely to approve a new law opening the door to their oil reserves.

I. The Twin Engines of Bush's War

The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not because he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised.

No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and on-line. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

Court unlikely to grant 1st Amendment rights to union political activity

By STEPHEN HENDERSON

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to reject claims that the First Amendment prohibits Washington state from forcing unions to get permission before spending some of the money they collect on political causes.

Most oral arguments at the high court end ambiguously, with the justices leaving small hints about how they'll resolve tricky legal dilemmas.

But once in a while, there are arguments where the only lingering question seems to be who'll write an opinion that reaches an obvious conclusion.

Attytood: "E-Day": It was 40 years ago today

This comes with a huge hat tip to a good Friend of Attytood who was born 40 years ago on this date -- Happy Birthday, dude! -- and as a result is more up to speed on what happened on January 10, 1967, than the rest of us.

The big news story that night? President Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union address.

The topic that dominated all others: Vietnam.

I'm going to guide you to some excerpts of that address -- exactly 40 years ago tonight. See how it compares to some of the excerpts from President Bush's speech that were just released minutes ago:

House debates stem cell research bill

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago

The House kicked off debate on legislation boosting taxpayer-funded research on embryonic stem cells, but ran into a fresh veto threat from President Bush.

Despite bolstering their numbers in November's elections, supporters of the controversial research — which holds promise for medical cures of diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's — acknowledge they lack the two-thirds margin to override another Bush veto.

Dear Mr. President: Send Even MORE Troops (and you go, too!)

Dear Mr. President,

Thanks for your address to the nation. It's good to know you still want to talk to us after how we behaved in November.

Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain't gonna do the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what it was last year. And we were losing the war last year! We've already had over a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another few thousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of mass destruction! Er, I mean... bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice! Um, scratch that. Try this -- BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST! YES!!!

Matt Taibbi: Waiter, There's a Surge in My Soup

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted January 10, 2007.

Bush's announced 'surge' is one of the more outrageous media deceptions in the history of an Iraq war that has been rife with them.

Proponents of escalation cite the example of Tal Afar, a town in northwestern Iraq. U.S. forces there have met some genuine success since September 2005 with the 'clear, build and hold' strategy that Mr. Bush apparently now favors for Baghdad.

But Tal Afar is only about one-thirtieth the size of Baghdad, and it isn't even Arab: its people are mostly members of the Turkmen minority. Trying to replicate that (limited) success in Baghdad is a fool's errand.

In Tal Afar, there was one U.S. soldier for every 40 residents. Using the same ratio in Baghdad would require 150,000 troops, sustained for more than a year. That's impossible. -- Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times

I was in Tal Afar, Iraq's "genuine success" story, over the summer. It was such a success story that the city's neurotic, hand-wringing mayor, Najim Abdullah al-Jubori, actually asked American officials during a meeting I attended if they could tell President Bush to stop calling it a success story. "It just makes the terrorists angry," he said. At the meeting he pointed to a map and indicated the areas where the insurgents held strong positions.

Al Qaeda's Godfather

By Rolf Potts, The Believer. Posted January 11, 2007.

The inspiration behind much of today's violent jihadi culture was a shockingly dopey tourist.

With the global rise of political Islamism, many pundits have recently begun paying closer attention to the writings of Egyptian scholar and Muslim Brotherhood publicist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), whose radical Milestones and thirty-volume In the Shade of the Koran are said to be masterpieces of jihadist thought and persuasion. These writings, which some analysts consider to be an ideological influence on violent Islamist movements such as al-Qaeda, contain an uncompromising anti-Western slant that Qutb supports with observations from his travel experiences in the United States.

Bush's Speech Full of Reality-Based Desperation

By David Corn, TheNation.com. Posted January 11, 2007.

The president acknowledged that Iraq isn't the model of democracy and progress he's spent the past few years claiming it was, but his arrogance is leading his decision to escalate the occupation.

George W. Bush finally has dipped his toe into the reality-based pool.

Standing in the White House library -- because his PR guides wanted him to seem "conservational" -- the president delivered a long-in-the-hyping speech on Iraq on Wednesday night, and he conceded what the American people have already figured out: his war is not faring well. Shortly before the November elections, Bush declared, "we're winning" in Iraq. With public opinion polls showing that close to three-quarters of the nation disapprove of his handling of the war, Bush wanted to demonstrate that he, too, is aware that Iraq is a mess. So he said, "The situation in Iraq is... unacceptable to me. ... Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." But here's the obvious question: given the president's history of false and misleading statements about the war and his record of poor decision-making related to the war, why should anyone accept anything he says or proposes now? He has no credibility -- and far too long of a resume of failure.

Does Media Reform Have a Chance in the Digital Age?

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted January 11, 2007.

On the eve of the Media Reform Conference in Memphis, a new book by Jeffrey Chester documents the corporate media's behind-the-scenes efforts to transform our online media system into a powerful marketing machine. Media reformers and elected officials, please pay attention.

The timing is terrific for the New Press' publication of Jeffrey Chester's new book, Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy.

The book comes out just as a new Democratic majority in Congress is getting seated in Washington after a long absence and a large gaggle of media reformers are headed to Memphis, Tennessee, for a big gathering on January 13th and 14th. Hopefully both the Democrats and the reformers will hear Chester's very loud wake-up call about a rapidly changing digital media system that shreds consumer rights as it " uses the Internet as a personal information collection system."

How to leak a secret and not get caught

Very strange...--Dictynna

LEAKING a sensitive government document can mean risking a jail sentence – but not for much longer if an online service called WikiLeaks goes ahead. WikiLeaks is designed to allow anyone to post documents on the web without fear of being traced.

The creators of the site are thought to include political activists and open-source software engineers, though they are keeping their identities secret. Their goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive documents. That was the fate of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to a 10-year term in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Digby: Steamroller Democracy

I don't now about you, but I'm all on pins and needles waiting for the big speech tonight. The big question will finally be answered: how much is the president going to escalate the war and increase the American occupation?

Think about that. We just had an election that completely repudiated the president's strategy in the Iraq war. Only 12% of the public supports sending in more troops today. The military is not backing this either. Yet what are we watching on television all day? "How many more troops is the president going to send to Iraq?"

Paul Krugman: Quagmire of the Vanities

The New York Times
Monday 08 January 2007

The only real question about the planned "surge" in Iraq - which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation - is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.

Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they're cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be "the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof."

`Data mining' may implicate innocent people in search for terrorists

By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - In his first hearing Wednesday as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont plans to examine federal "data-mining" programs, the computerized hunt for terrorists that can implicate innocent people.

Consider the case of American Airlines pilot Kieran O'Dwyer of Pittsboro, N.C.

O'Dwyer said Tuesday that U.S. Customs agents detained him for 90 minutes in 2003 when he got off an international flight in New York, telling him his name matched one on a government terrorist watch list.

Bush's speech may be the most important of his presidency

By Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush is about to take a gamble that could make or break his presidency and his place in history.

In a speech scheduled for Wednesday night, he'll try to convince a war-weary nation to commit more troops and money to a struggle in Iraq that's already cost more than 3,000 American lives and at least $300 billion.

His nationally televised speech, and the reaction to it, will determine the next step in Iraq, test his relations with the new Democratic-led Congress and set the tone for his final two years in office. Some analysts say it could increase pressure for withdrawal if the solutions Bush offers don't bring quick results.

White House aides acknowledge that the president faces a skeptical audience when he goes before television cameras at 9 p.m..

Dubya's Tower of Babel

With an expected $500 million from a handful of megadonors, George W. Bush's 'truest believers' plan the mother of all presidential libraries and conservative think tanks

After six years of incompetence and cronyism, a failed war against terrorism, the quagmire that is Iraq, wars against science, the environment, corporate regulation and the public's right-to-know, a chummy working relationship with the country's most reactionary conservative evangelical Christians, a politicized faith-based initiative, giveaways to the energy industry, tax relief for the wealthy, a culture of corruption culminating in the forced resignations and imprisonment of some of the administrations key soldiers, and an attack on fundamental democratic rights and values, the Bush Administration is hatching plans to celebrate itself with a $500 million library (the costliest presidential library ever) to be built sometime after the end of Bush's second term.

Senate moving on ethics bill

By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators moved Tuesday to put more muscle into legislation to sanitize their tarnished image with proposals requiring lawmakers to pay charter rates for corporate jet rides and shell out the full cost for Skybox tickets to sporting events.

Members of Congress need to "demonstrate once and for all that we care more about representing the American people than the perks of power," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.

Net Neutrality Bill Returns in Senate

Lawmakers Argue for Continuing Open Internet

By Ira Teinowitz

Published: January 09, 2007

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- The fight over net neutrality rekindled today as the Senate re-introduced legislation that would bar

internet providers from charging content providers extra for using new higher-speed pathways.

Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said their Internet Freedom Preservation Act is vital to retain the internet's function. Discrimination between content providers would "fundamentally change the way the internet has operated and threatens to derail the democratic nature of the Internet," Mr. Dorgan said.

Study gives us a new perspective on the powerful

Walking a mile in another person's shoes may be the best way to understand the emotions, perceptions, and motivations of an individual; however, in a recent study appearing in the December 2006 issue of Psychological Science, it is reported that those in power are often unable to take such a journey.

Digby: Lukewarm Broth

Yesterday I wrote about Applebee's America, Gerald Ford and the beltway's desperate desire to keep the dirty hippies from running amock. The new mantra is that just as we needed to "heal" by forgiving Nixon after he raped the nation, today we must likewise "heal" by forgiving and forgetting the utter hell the Republicans just put this country through for the last twelve years of trumped up scandal, impeachments, stolen elections, bankrupting the treasury, illegal warrs, and constitution shredding. Kumbay-frigging-yah.

Digby: Punchline Drunk

The clearest sign we've seen yet that the wingnuts are really on the run is that they are now pathetically trying to imitate liberal-ish media and they have no earthly idea what they are imitating or what it means:

Great Moments In Fox News Dept. Forget Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World" contest — it's now been completely upstaged by a new Sunday contest on Fox: Sean Hannity's "Enemy of the State" award.

Digby: Moral Hazard

There is an interesting back and forth going on between Jonathan Chait and Peter Wood who has written a book about "The New Anger" which is apparently a manifestation of a leftwing unhinged by Jimi Hendrix.

I wrote about Staney Kurtz's review of Wood's book last week in some detail, tracing the actual genesis of the "New Anger" --- and let's just say that it wasn't the Democrats who invented it. In fact, it was once celebrated on the cover of national magazines as a righteous Republican emotion:

Digby: Four Eggnogs And A Funeral

As regular readers know, I've been pondering this infuriating fixation on bipartisanship and moderation for the last couple of weeks and watching aghast as the press does the wingnuts' bidding, setting up the Dems as failing to fulfill their promise to the American people that they would be moderate and bipartisan if they won the election. This was simply not on the agenda during the election, other than that the House Democrats would restore some sort of fairness to the rules and pass anti-corruption legislation. In fact, the entire election was about the Democrats taking power to provide some needed checks and balance on the Republicans.

Daily Kos: Military Budgeting and Iraq Escalation

by Airpower

Sun Jan 07, 2007 at 08:36:19 PM PST

With potential escalation in Iraq and the desire to see Congress oppose it -- possibly through exercising its power of the purse -- I thought it might be useful to offer a little background on the mechanics of how the Department of Defense gets funded.

First, a word of caution. Military budgeting is a difficult subject to explain because:

• (1) the budgeting "system" has many moving parts,
• (2) it bumps up against other systems (the Joint Strategic Planning System and the Acquisition Process) each of which has more moving parts,
• (3) it is influenced by internal "Pentagon politics" where civilian and military personalities merge and clash, internally and across services, along with conflicting warfighting "theologies"; that is, how the Air Force thinks a war should be fought can be at odds with how the Army believes a war should be fought, and
• (4) it constantly changes.

Daily Kos: Get to know the name "Fred Fielding"

by dday

Mon Jan 08, 2007 at 02:21:03 PM PST

Via The Carpetbagger Report, the President has picked a new White House counsel to replace Harriet Miers (we hardly knew ye). Fred Fielding will be responsible for shielding the President from the avalanche of subpoenaes and legal requests which will come at him from the Democrats in Congress.

Who's Fred Fielding? Oh, nobody. Just the guy who was deupty WH Counsel during Watergate, and chief WH Counsel during Iran-Contra.

Dems Keep First Promise: Anti-Terrorism Bill Passes

by SusanG

Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 05:19:19 PM PST

What the Republican Congress couldn’t accomplish in five years, the Democratic Congress took care of in – yes! – the first 100 hours:

House easily passes anti-terror bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anti-terror legislation sailed through the House on Tuesday, the first in a string of measures designed to fulfill campaign promises made by Democrats last fall.

Patterned on recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, the far-reaching measure includes commitments for inspection of all cargo carried aboard passenger aircraft and on ships bound for the United States.

The vote was a bipartisan 299-128

The holy blitz rolls on

The Christian right is a "deeply anti-democratic movement" that gains force by exploiting Americans' fears, argues Chris Hedges. Salon talks with the former New York Times reporter about his fearless new book, "American Fascists."

By Michelle Goldberg

Jan. 08, 2007 | Longtime war correspondent Chris Hedges, the former New York Times bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans, knows a lot about the savagery that people are capable of, especially when they're besotted with dreams of religious or national redemption. In his acclaimed 2002 book, "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," he wrote: "I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, shot at in the marshes of Southern Iraq, imprisoned in the Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held for a week by Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite rebellion following the Gulf War, strafed by Russian Mig-21s in Bosnia, fired upon by Serb snipers, and shelled for days in Sarajevo with deafening rounds of heavy artillery that threw out thousands of deadly bits of iron fragments." Hedges was part of the New York Times team of reporters that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting about global terrorism.

Katha Pollitt: Happy New Year!

[from the January 22, 2007 issue]

It's only January 2 as I write, and I've already broken my New Year's resolutions. (Exercise! Keep diary! Be better person! [Start column earlier!--Ed.]) You'd think I'd learn--these are the same self-improvement projects I swore fealty to last year, and the year before (and before), with the same results. But enough about me and my slothful ways--how about some resolutions for liberals? For example:

Economics For Contenders

January 08, 2007

Thomas Palley runs the Economics for Democratic and Open Societies Project. He is the author of Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of the American Dream and the Case for Structural Keynesianism. His weekly economic policy blog is at www.thomaspalley.com.

MEMO

TO: Progressive Presidential Candidates:
RE: Framing a Winning Economic Policy
FROM: Thomas I. Palley

The unbalanced U.S. boom that has followed the 2001 recession provides a real window of opportunity for progressive Democrats to reverse the laissez-faire extremism of the last 30 years. This window may open still wider if the economy suffers a recession in the next two years. If progressives are to take full advantage of this opportunity, they will need a new economic policy frame. Here's a suggested road map.

U.N. Ambassador's Oily Past

Phyllis Bennis

January 08, 2007

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her most recent book is Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power .

The transfer of current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad from his job as the Great Wizard of Iraq’s embattled Emerald City in Baghdad’s Green Zone, to the quieter but no less complicated halls of the United Nations, may have several rationales.

GM Introduces Plug-In Electric Car

By Sholnn Freeman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 8, 2007; A07

DETROIT, Jan. 7 -- General Motors Chairman G. Richard Wagoner Jr. on Sunday unveiled an innovative prototype, the Chevrolet Volt -- a plug-in vehicle that derives its power primarily from electricity rather than gasoline -- as the world's automakers take on global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Wagoner's announcement underscores the depth of GM's previous miscalculation on alternative vehicles and the degree to which the U.S. automotive landscape is changing. In 1990, GM introduced the concept of an all-electric car, the EV1. The vehicle made it to U.S. consumers but didn't survive through the decade.

Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: January 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study.

The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available, while rates for people at the very top continued to decline.

NYT Editorial: The Imperial Presidency 2.0

Published: January 7, 2007

Observing President Bush in action lately, we have to wonder if he actually watched the election returns in November, or if he was just rerunning the 2002 vote on his TiVo.

That year, the White House used the fear of terrorism to scare American voters into cementing the Republican domination of Congress. Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney then embarked on an expansion of presidential power chilling both in its sweep and in the damage it did to the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Will Bush Provoke a Constitutional Crisis?

By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, AlterNet. Posted January 7, 2007.

The new Democratic Congress will likely subpoena documents that the White House may refuse to hand over -- if that happens, we may witness a struggle that puts our democratic republic on the brink.

While the November elections provided the Democratic Party a public mandate to end the war in Iraq, President Bush has signaled his intent to utilize his institutional powers as Commander in Chief to maintain and even escalate the U.S. commitment, public or congressional opinion notwithstanding. The Democratic leadership has removed two obvious ways to stop him -- impeachment and a cutoff of war funds -- from the table. Some Democrats have even indicated they will acquiesce in the sending of tens of thousands more troops to Iraq.

For those for in Congress and the public whom acquiescence is not an option, there remains an indirect route to challenging Presidential war-making power and force withdrawal from Iraq. That is to so discredit the Administration in the eyes of the public that neither Republican politicians nor the military, the intelligence agencies, the foreign policy establishment, or the corporate elite will allow it to continue on its catastrophic course. That requires a devastating exposure of the criminality, corruption, stupidity, and false premises of those who are making the decisions.

Frank Rich: The Timely Death of Gerald Ford

The very strange and very long Gerald Ford funeral marathon was about many things, but Gerald Ford wasn’t always paramount among them.

Forty percent of today’s American population was not alive during the Ford presidency. The remaining 60 percent probably spent less time recollecting his unelected 29-month term than they did James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” Despite the lachrymose logorrhea of television anchors and the somber musical fanfares, the country was less likely to be found in deep mourning than in deep football. It’s a safe bet that the Ford funeral attracted far fewer viewers than the most consequential death video of the New Year’s weekend, the lynching of Saddam Hussein. But those two deaths were inextricably related: it was in tandem that they created a funereal mood that left us mourning for our own historical moment more than for Mr. Ford.

Digby: Eason On Down

Many great bloggers have already written definitive posts about the rightosphere's Jamail Hussein witch hunt so I won't go into the particulars. It's an ugly story all around and I'm hoping that it shows, once and for all, the difference between the "angry left" who boisterously criticize the media and the truly pernicious lynch mob mentality of the right. They go for journalistic scalps, and in this case, they may have literally gotten one.

Digby: McCain Watch

Finally, a questioner lays it all on the line: "The war's the big issue," he says, adding, "Some kind of disengagement—it's going to have to happen. It's a big issue for you, for our party, in 24 months. It's not that long a time." McCain replies, "I do believe this issue isn't going to be around in 2008. I think it's going to either tip into civil war … " He breaks off, as if not wanting to rehearse the handful of other unattractive possibilities. "Listen," he says, "I believe in prayer. I pray every night." And that's where he leaves his discussion of the war this morning: at the kneeling rail.

On the way to our next stop, McCain tells me, "It's just so hard for me to contemplate failure that I can't make the next step."

Feds pushing for Internet records

BY JOHN REINAN
McClatchy Newspapers

MINNEAPOLIS — The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.

For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.

U.S. Selecting Hybrid Design for Warheads

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

Published: January 7, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.

The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation’s existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists.

1,000 People Spell Out "Impeach!" in Pelosi's District

CONTACT: Brad Newsham, 415/305-8294, newsham@mac.com

PHOTOS: http://beachimpeach.com/photos.shtml

January 6, 2007 -- Over 1000 people gathered in Nancy Pelosi's district, on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, to spell out the message "IMPEACH!" "America is a great country," said event organizer Brad Newsham, a local cab driver and author. "But President Bush has betrayed our faith. He mislead us into a disastrous war, and is trampling on our Constitution. He has to go. Now. I hope Nancy Pelosi is listening today."

Pelosi hints at resisting Iraq surge

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 1 minute ago

Democrats now running Congress will not give President Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday, suggesting they could deny him the money should he call for additional troops.

Yet Pelosi's second-in-command and a Senate leader on foreign affairs questioned the wisdom and legality of using the power of the purse to thwart the White House as Bush prepared to announce his revised war strategy this week — perhaps on Wednesday.

War games rigged?

General says Millennium Challenge 02 ‘was almost entirely scripted’

By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer

The most elaborate war game the U.S. military has ever held was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing, according to the retired Marine lieutenant general who commanded the game’s Opposing Force.

That general, Paul Van Riper, said he worries the United States will send troops into combat using doctrine and weapons systems based on false conclusions from the recently concluded Millennium Challenge 02. He was so frustrated with the rigged exercise that he said he quit midway through the game.

Digby: Governing By Tantrums

It seems to me that one of the defining characteristics of the Bush administration is a sort of stubborn, spoiled reaction to his critics. I think it comes from two things. First it is a reflection of Bush's personality which, in a position as powerful as the presidency, is bound to color everything.

Digby: Ready For His Close-up

Can I just say that watching Arnold Schwarzenneger on crutches being sworn in to the sound of (badly played) trumpets in a huge auditorium is one of the weirdest damned things I've ever seen? (Jesus --- after he took the oath a choir started singing "Hallelujah!" like the angels are celebrating or something.)

Digby: Firing Wildly

Josh Marshall wonders the same thing I did last week:

And does this perhaps get us toward an answer to our earlier question, Why the Rush? We know that Maliki is highly dependent on al Sadr and the Mahdi Army (the folks the 'surge' is supposed to crush). If it's really true that Saddam was handed over to MA fighters to be executed rather than Interior Ministry officials, was that the rush? Did al Sadr and Co. make Maliki an offer he couldn't refuse? Did they demand that Saddam be turned over to them -- and now -- for execution? Was that why he was pulling so many strings and cutting so many corners?

Digby: Bitterness

The Democrats made them do it:

JUDY WOODRUFF: Congresswoman Northup, you most recently left the Congress. You were there just until, what, a few days ago, literally. Do you see it that way? I mean, as somebody who's served in this modern Congress, if you will, and yet a Congress that was seen as so bitterly divided along partisan lines?

FORMER REP. ANNE NORTHUP (R), Kentucky: It is bitterly divided, but that doesn't mean that there can't be changes. It doesn't mean that people can't work in a more open system and more straightforward system, a system where people can work across the aisle, express their differences and their commonalities, and come to a conclusion.

Digby: Missed Manners

I hate to step on all the good feelings of brotherly and sisterly love we all feel today, but when I hear the new Minority Leader John Boehner call us the "Democrat party" in the same speech in which he is calling for civility, I can't help but wonder whether he knows what that means.

Digby: Why I Am A Liberal And A Progressive And A Democrat

I am a liberal because it is the political philosophy of freedom and equality. And I am a progressive because it is the political path to a better future. And I am a Democrat because it is the political party that believes in freedom, equality and progress.

Digby: Being Literal

MATTHEWS: Why does he still suggest—as our country western music did for all those years—that the people who attacked us on 9/11 -- you know, bin Laden‘s crowd, al Qaeda, which we know exactly who the people were who attacked us, none of them were Iraqi—why the president continue to insists, again in the “Wall Street Journal” today we‘re fighting the same terrorists we fought on 9/11, who killed us on 9/11? Why does he keep doing that?

BLANKLEY: Look, I mean, what he said in the “Wall Street Journal” today, I think the language was careful. He is not saying the same individuals.

Old guard back on Iraq policy

An influential faction of neoconservatives is behind Bush's expected call for more troops.

By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer

January 4, 2007

WASHINGTON — Ever since Iraq began spiraling toward chaos, the war's intellectual architects — the so-called neoconservatives — have found themselves under attack in Washington policy salons and, more important, within the Bush administration.

Eventually, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Defense department's most senior neocon, went to the World Bank. His Pentagon colleague Douglas J. Feith departed for academia. John R. Bolton left the State Department for a stint at the United Nations.

But now, a small but increasingly influential group of neocons are again helping steer Iraq policy. A key part of the new Iraq plan that President Bush is expected to announce next week — a surge in U.S. troops coupled with a more focused counterinsurgency effort — has been one of the chief recommendations of these neocons since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Digby: Campaign Promises

The Wapo, yesterday:

As they prepare to take control of Congress this week and face up to campaign pledges to restore bipartisanship and openness, Democrats are planning to largely sideline Republicans from the first burst of lawmaking.

Digby: Rolling With The McCain Doctrine

How reasonable!

President Bush plans to order extra U.S. troops to Iraq as part of a new push to secure Baghdad, but in smaller numbers than previously reported, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The president, who is completing a lengthy review of Iraq policy, is considering dispatching three to four U.S. combat brigades to Iraq, or no more than 15,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops, the officials said. Bush is expected to announce his decision next week.

Digby: Psikhushka

I have written before about this amazing essay, with which many of you are no doubt familiar. It was written in December 2005, by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who knows a lot about its subject --- torture.

Bukovsky was a very brave dissident and was widely touted as a potential leader of the new democratic Russia. (He declined.) He is a fierce critic of Putin today. But he first gained international attention in 1971 for smuggling proof of certain totalitarian practices:

Paper: 'Blood and oil; How the West the will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches'

01/07/2007 @ 3:38 am

Filed by Ron Brynaert

The front page of Britain's The Independent on Sunday features a photo of a US soldier guarding a burning oilfield in Southern Iraq, which was taken on March 23, 2003, three days after the invasion of Iraq officially began. "The spoils of war" reads a large headline banner in grey type, with three letters highlighted in black boldface - taken from the word "spoils" - to spell out "oil."

Four articles based on a draft of an Iraqi law - crafted with help from the US government - which was leaked to the paper, detail "How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches."

Paul Krugman: First, Do Less Harm

The New York Times

Friday 05 January 2007

Universal health care, much as we need it, won't happen until there's a change of management in the White House. In the meantime, however, Congress can take an important step toward making our health care system less wasteful, by fixing the Medicare Middleman Multiplication Act of 2003.

Officially, of course, it was the Medicare Modernization Act. But as we learned during the debate over Social Security, in Bushspeak "modernize" is a synonym for "privatize." And one of the main features of the legislation was an effort to bring private-sector fragmentation and inefficiency to one of America's most important public programs.