We need a new kind of politician and President, one that embraces honesty and change. If you are reading this and saying that the American people will never be able to get someone like that for their President, I have a simple answer, "Yes We Can".

Bush has been getting smacked around for the past couple of weeks with veto-proof legislation getting passed left and right.  He must fell rather... lame.

Obviously Republicans in Congress are jumping off the sinking BushCo ship.  

Cause: Congress passes veto-proof legislation for stopping the filling of the strategic petroleum reserve.

Effect: despite George and Dick's whining, the filling will get stopped in July due to the Democrats' veto-proof legislation, see below fold for more on that.

This is a clear victory for Democrats.  If history is any indication, this might actually help with gas prices, unlike the gas tax gimic.

This is the headline for David Brooks' column today in the New York Times. I looked at it and said "WTF"? Well, of course, the implication in the headline is not really borne out in the story, but how many people actually read the whole story. In fact, the truth doesn't come out until the last paragraph. "Obama Admires Bush"

 Yes, it is true.  "By their fruits you shall know them".

  There were a couple of patriarchs of the Bush family named Sam and Prescott, one of them even being the senator from Connecticut (long before Lieberman got the job). One of their progeny, their grandchild is named George W Bush.  He actually gave an utterly ridiculous and hypocritical speech attempting to compare some Americans in the present day with the "appeasers" like Chamberlain who gave  half of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.  The "comparison" was a tortured twisted reference to negotiating with terrorists, as comparable to acting as appeasers with the Nazis, (more/jump]

George W(ingnut) Bush:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Mr. Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Hillary Clinton stood firmly with Barack Obama today, blasting President Bush and his implied comparison of Senator Obama to Nazi appeasers. From Ben Smith at The Politico:

Hillary, today in Rapid City, South Dakota, defended Obama from President Bush's apparent comparison of him to Neville Chamberlain, Ken Vogel reports.

She told reporters:

President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.

“There is a very clear difference between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy and that difference will be evident once we take back the White House.

McCain jumped at the chance to get in the mud, despite claims in his maverick speech this morning that he wanted to take the high road. When asked about the controversy, McCain replied that he took the Bush camp at their word that GWB was not referring to Senator Obama, but was quick to add:

"This does bring up an issue that we will be discussing with the American people, and that is, why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?"

If that's the high road, what does the low road look like?  No matter, Senator Obama responded "swiftly" and appropriately with the following statement:

"It is the height of hypocrisy for John McCain to deliver a lofty speech about civility and bipartisanship in the morning and then embrace George Bush's disgraceful political attack in the afternoon.  Instead of delivering meaningful change, John McCain wants to continue George Bush's irresponsible and failed Iran policy by refusing to engage in tough, direct diplomacy like Presidents from Kennedy to Reagan have done," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said

Senator Clinton also joined the fray:

"I think today we’ve had two examples of why this country is going to be voting for a Democratic president. And I hope that people really look seriously both at President Bush’s comment and at Sen. McCain’s speech and realize that the only way we’re going to restore our leadership and our moral authority and deal with the very real challenges we face in the world is by electing a democratic president and I believe that I am a stronger candidate against Sen. McCain and will be a president who could accomplish that," she said.

Isn't that nice?  Democrats attacking Republicans instead of each other? Is that the light at the end of the tunnel? Let's hope that Senator Clinton will continue to coalesce around Senator Obama and exit the race in a graceful fashion. It's time to heal our primary wounds and get busy attacking the entire Republican machine that has taken this country so far off track. If her comments today were any indication, she's ready to do just that......and not a moment too soon.

Joe.Biden's reaction to Bush's comments on Obama in an interview with CNN's WOlf.Blitzer.

In another of his usually quite good Think Again essays over at the Center for American Progress site, Eric Alterman is concerned about the Bushies continued drumbeat against Iran for supposedly providing weapons to Shiite anti-government insurgents. Overall, Alterman's piece is mostly about the drumbeat towards justifying an attack on Iran.

But he actually leads with the under-reported story of (at least) two recent weapons caches, one where the General making the presentation to the press notably did not blame Iran, and another where the press conference was cancelled at the last minute.

This sparked my thinking: Presumably the Saudis, and other Sunni States, are sending in weapons, cash and other goodies to the Sunni forces in Iraq. And presumably not all of what they send in winds up (or stays in) the intended the hands. So the country must also be awash in Sunni State supplied weapons.

It is an axiom of diplomatic behavior that one does not go outside the country and make negative comments on domestic politics. It is even worse, when the comments is about the future President of your country. It is precisely what Bush has done with his ill informed comments in Israel.

Keith and others are showing a lot of justifiable outrage at Bush's reasons for (*UPDATE per Keith - pretending to )give up golf.

But there is another piece of the story.    Is Bush lying by neglecting to tell us that this this clip from Fahrenheit 9/11 is the real reason he (pretended) to give up golf?

This, along with the special election results, underscores how weak, lame, and limp George and Dick, and by extension the entire Republican Party, are:

Both the House and Senate, which voted earlier Tuesday, exceeded the two-thirds vote required to override the president's expected veto: The House vote was 385-25, the Senate vote was 97-1.

President Bush opposes the reserve measure because, he said, limiting supplies to the reserve could have national security consequences in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

http://www.cnn.com/...

As I understand it, the reserve was around 97% full so the "national security" argument is overblown, as usual.  However George and Dick's oil buddies windfall profits may suffer if, as in the past, prices go down after they stop filling the SPR.  George got smacked down.  Ha ha.

Lachelle Jean, a 40-year-old Delray Beach nurse's assistant, is one such person in need. After leaving an abusive boyfriend, she said she has been living out of a motel with her two teenagers while saving money to put down a deposit on an apartment.

She, too, has applied for food stamps, but approval can take up to a month. In the meantime, she relies on donated food and meals from the Caring Kitchen and local churches.

"I was hanging on [to a bad relationship] because I didn't think I could make it on my own, but I just had to get the courage," Jean said. "I didn't want to go on food stamps . . . and my kids, they don't understand. But at least I'm alive."

Not that I'd be so callous to wish the need for a tumor to be removed from their brains, but if Lou Dobbs or Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ever had such a need, they'd be in good hands with Dr. Alberto Quiñones-Hinojosa.

At the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa has four positions. He is a neurosurgeon who teaches oncology and neurosurgery, directs a neurosurgery clinic and heads a laboratory studying brain tumors. He also performs nearly 250 brain operations a year. Twenty years ago, Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa, now 40, was an illegal immigrant working in the vegetable fields of the Central Valley in California. He became a citizen in 1997 while at Harvard.

The GOP has been almost comically unable to wrestle this seat away from Moore in a solidly Republican district. Either they run a right-wing hack (Kris Kobach) or they have a bloody primary that leaves a hapless and broke candidate (Adam Taff and Chuck "Don't call me Maynard" Ahner).

Of course the military dictatorship in Myanmar deserves utter condemnation but they are only following their self-interest much like their anti-democratic counterparts in Washington DC, i.e. George and Dick, have done all these years.

While politics shouldn't be inserted into this unfolding tragedy of biblical proportions, someone nevertheless needs to tell George Bush to shut his mouth.  George Bush has lost his right to say anything to anyone about slow responses to natural disasters for the rest of his life. He needs to leave such criticism to people that haven't themselves caused widespread death due to cronyism, corruption, and ineptitude.

Everything George McBush says here can and should be held against the Republicans in the fall:

"Either they are isolated or callous," Bush told CBS News radio in an interview. "There's no telling how many people have lost their lives as a result of the slow response."

He said the "world ought to be angry and condemn" the junta, which has been widely condemned for stalling the disaster relief effort.

http://news.yahoo.com/...

In February 2005, shortly after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, the pro-Syrian Lebanese government resigned.  The day it happened, I warned against any stupid pro-American triumphalism:

But whatever happens next in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to view it only through the lens of some kind of Middle Eastern "people power," a Cedar Revolution as soft and peaceful as the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 or the Orange Revolution of 2004.

Of course that's exactly what happened.  Within hours, what happened in Lebanon was being called the Cedar Revolution, and the Bush administration was taking credit for the change.  Over the next few days, bloviators like David Brooks were claiming that what happened in Lebanon was the result of the US invasion of Iraq.  The problem was that Brooks, like most conservative champions of neocon foreign policy, is a simpleton when it comes to understanding the politics of a complicated place like Lebanon.  One small piece of evidence is that he glowingly quoted Druze leader Walid Jumblat, who just a few months earlier had declared "we are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory."

Oops.  

"Oops" can describe much of what's happened in Lebanon since early 2005.  To be ever-so-slightly generous to nitwits like Brooks, in 2005-2006 there was some cause for optimism about reform movements in the Arab countries and the Middle East.  As Economist Middle East editor Max Rodenbeck explains in a review of the new book by WaPo reporter Robin Wright, in those years there were signs of reform from Morocco and Egypt through Lebanon, Syria and Iran.  

The Arab spring, [Wright] says frankly, did not endure...Wright is surely correct in ascribing some part of the blame to America's inept and counterproductive Iraq policy. As numerous interlocutors in the region tell her, not only did the debacle promote extremism and further isolate pro-Western liberals, it alerted people to the terrible risks of toppling tyrants. The Iraq adventure, in Wright's view, may have been the biggest American policy failure of all time. It could yet prove to mark the end of an imperial America's influence in the region, much as France and Britain's catastrophic invasion of Egypt in 1956 demolished the colonial powers' standing and dangerously boosted the fortunes of Egypt's reckless leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. That is surely a sound judgment.

Our debacle in Iraq has also strengthened and emboldened Iran, and there's little we can do about it.  While many of the claims about Iran made by the Bush administration are B.S., it is true that Iran has become more bellicose, and whether or not they are are trying to weaponize their nuclear program, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently wants people to suspect they are.  His standing in Iran has plummeted along with the economy, but he clings to power by stoking nationalism through the nuclear program.

Nobody knows the full extent of Iran's involvement in Iraq, but it clearly has strong ties to all of the Shia factions.  Last month, when Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki unsuccessfully tried to subdue the Shiite militias that control Basra, in particular that of Muqtada al-Sadr, it took the intervention of Iran to work out a compromise, suggesting that Iran dictates the balance of power within Iraq.  

Now we have Lebanon.  Instead of shutting up and quietly working with the new Lebanese government in 2005, Bush and his lackeys chose to claim credit for what was mostly an internal reaction to the assassination of Hariri, almost certainly perpetrated by shady forces from Syria.  (Whether the assassination was approved by, or even known by Syrian dictator Bashir Assad is less clear.)  Syria withdrew from Lebanon, but doing so removed a check on the actions of the Lebanese Shiite militia/social movement/political party Hezbollah.  Sure enough, with a year and a half Hezbollah was provoking Israel, with the result a several week war in southern Lebanon which seriously hurt both sides, but from which Hezbollah came out much better in terms of morale with its political base.  

UN resolutions have called on Hezbollah, which fields one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East, to disarm and cede military control in the south to the multi-sectarian Lebanese Army.  The problem is that there isn't any power that can disarm Hezbollah, and it has no interest in forfeiting its military power.  Far from some Cedar Revolution, Lebanon has seemingly intractable problems that are rooted in how power has been apportioned between the sectarian groups since the 1940's.  It was highly unlikely that the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon was going to usher in a new dawn of Lebanese political harmony, regardless of how badly its population craves peace and a stable social and economic environment.  

With 18 religious groups recognized by Lebanon's government, the situation is complex, but roughly speaking the main divide in the country is between the Sunni Muslims and Druze on one side and the Shiite Muslims on the other side, with the sizable Christian population split between the two camps.  The Sunni/Druze faction controls the government by a narrow margin, but not by enough to really do much.  All sides agree that army chief Michel Suleiman should be president, but the Shia faction is blocking his appointment.  

Whether urged on by the US and France, or acting on its own initiative, last week the ruling coalition decided to crack down on Hezbollah by going after it's phone grid.  Israel jammed cell phones in the zone where it fought Hezbollah in 2006, but Hezbollah coped by relying on a fiber-optic network it had constructed in the south that's independent of the national grid.  Since 2006 Hezbollah has secretively expanded the fiber-optic network to other areas of the country, to allow it to maintain contact between the south, Beirut, the Mount Lebanon region and the Bekaa valley.  In the event of a war with Israel, the government of Lebanon would not control the phone grid depended on by Hezbollah.  

Syria's role in Lebanon has been hard to discern in the last few years.  Iran is clearly closely tied to Hezbollah, but Jumblatt and others appear to have forged ties with Syria in recent years.  Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni, but the Assad clan that rules the country is Alawite, which is viewed by many Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, as an apostasy.  There are no religious affinities between Assad and Hezbollah, and some have speculated that Hezbollah's control of the airport would be required if it lost the patronage of Syria and had to fly in weapons and and people from Iran.  

Upon discovering that the phone system had been installed at Beirut's airport—the only international airport in the country—the government sacked the pro-Hezbollah head of security at the airport on grounds of spying, and demanded that Hezbollah dismantle the phone grid.  

Hezbollah's response:

Hezbollah and its allies decided on Wednesday and Thursday to make a show of force by quickly taking control of and closing Beirut's airport and seaport, and then shutting down all the Hariri-owned media (television, radio and newspaper). The message was clear: Hezbollah could take over all Beirut at any moment it desired. This was probably an inevitable moment, when Hezbollah felt it had to show the government the real balance of power between them.

Hezbollah also occupied neighborhoods across the city, demonstrating the impotence of the Army in controlling a sectarian dispute.  Hezbollah was able to rally it's forces in part by declaring the government a bunch of stooges of the US and Israel, which its audience was inclined to believe, since the US has been touting the government over each of the Shiite groups for over three years.  

Eventually the Army did intervene, by delaying implementation of the parliamentary decrees removing the head of the airport or dismantling the phone network.  Thus, Hezbollah retains the balance of power in Lebanon, just as Iran appears to have attained the balance of power over the Shiite forces in Iraq.  

Given Lebanon's vexed history since the 1940's, one can't honestly say that even if the US had handled the Lebanese situation more adroitly—by taking a smaller, quieter role instead of using internal Lebanese developments as evidence of the salubrious effects on Arab democracy supposedly brought about by our invasion of Iraq—that Lebanon would have avoided a power struggle between Hezbollah and the Sunni-Druze led government.  

But yet again, the Bush administration bumbled in to a complex situation in the Middle East, and made pronouncements that demonstrated its ignorance and dangerous naivety.  And once again, a situation arises where, because of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, we have no credibility to intervene diplomatically or help bring about a situation that would be both better for the local population and less likely to empower declared adversaries of the United States.  

May I just say that only Arianna could get a candidate who desperately wants voters to believe he's not George Bush to now angrily defend his support for George Bush. She has somehow forced McCain to waste his TV time intently detailing how much he supported, campaigned for, and voted for the least popular president in US history. This is a stroke of pure genius, and I just want to make sure she's getting the proper kudos for this. (If you haven't seen McCain detail his mancrush for Bush, it's here.)

cross posted from The Dream Antilles and docuDharma

This past week we were all treated to a proposed executive repeal of the venerable Law of Supply and Demand by McCain and Clinton.  Today, not to be undone, El Presidente made it clear that they were too late, he had already issued an executive order nullifying the Law of Supply and Demand.  And by golly, he was going to take credit for that.

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