In which, on our way to the polls, we remember that day five years ago today when the esteemed Colin Powell, retired general officer in the U.S. Army, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Secretary of State, argued before the United Nations General Assembly that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed an immanent threat and so paved the way for what has been called the greatest foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States.

Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war [Vietnam], vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.

My American Journey; Secretary Powell's autobiography, published in 1995; that is, 7 years before Powell Day.

I was reading through some of the YK coverage from this front-pager when I came across the following remark from a participant in the LA Times story:

"You can see a real noticeable change in the agenda in Washington already," said Kerry Foret, a Kentucky man who runs the social networking website Diatribune. "We are talking about the war in Iraq and not a flag-burning amendment or some other distraction. Still, people are dissatisfied and want more."

This seems to me to be a powerful way of responding to the beltway Conventional Wisedom that says people are as fed up with the Democratic Congress as they are with the corrupt-o-matic administration and their rubber stamp, obstructionist colleagues in the minority caucuses of both houses of Congress.

Let's see if a then and now comparison bears fruit?

Is there not a brilliant and juicy catch-22 for Rove and the Whitehouse with these RNC e-mails? As Marcy suggests over at the lakehouse, it looks like the WH will have to produce at least some of Rove's non-WH emails.

Redactions in these messages would beg the question why should Rove's non-government messages be protected? To not redact them...

Join me in the basement for an analysis of just how ugly this could be for Rove and the WH.

If the Democrats refuse to go along with Bush's "next-last-push" and put a stop to the Iraq debacle, a new war will break out. It will be the war for American memory and it will seek to enshrine an answer to the question: who lost Iraq?

Many congressional Democrats are no doubt wondering today about the long-term impact on their careers and on the place of the party in American life should they challenge administration plans to escalate the war. We know that polls indicate that voters and citizens are against escalation by a wide margin. We know that Democrats today hold majorities in both houses of Congress in large measure due to the electorate's dissatisfaction with the war. At the same time, we know that right wing war supporters are desperate to divest themselves of responsibility for the war. We well know that should the Democrats stop the war, the right will be flogging the message that the 110th Congress "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" replete with references to Vietnam. We know this is false and that the right will in no measure be inhibited from pushing their message by scrupples about the truth.

We raised money, we volunteered time and we voted for them. The netroots candidates, and most particularly the victorious netroots candidates, recognize often very graciously the crucial, even indispensible, role that we netroots activists played in making their campaigns successful.

We all anticipate by virtue of our belief in the integrity of "our" candidates and the debt that they owe to us for making the difference in their victories that they will align themselves with the pragramatic, progressive objectives that I think most accurately characterise the goals of the myriad netroots activists.

So far, so good.

Kos, a little known "front-pager" right here at Daily Kos, and Glenn Greenwald over at Unclaimed Territory have interesting posts rebuffing GOP post-election spin. Both address the twin pillars of said spin; that a) the newly elected Democratic majority will fail because of its out-of-the-mainstream, leftist-Pelosi agenda, and b) the newly elected Democratic majority will fail because it is so very conservative.

The fissures within the Democratic Party coalition are already tearing the party apart, don't-cha-know. For example, how will the Cindy-Sheehan-out-of-Iraq-now-ist radicals work with conservative, Democratic hawks like John "Immediate Redeployment" Murtha? Surely, the winds of another perfect storm of Demcractic failure are once again blowing.

Well, I want to let you in on a little secret. The progressive American left is moderate. Furthermore, the progressive American left is centrist. Let me explain how I arrive at this startling conclusion.

Turns out we've been using the wrong interrogative pronoun. The GOP has released the PSA below to clarify that it is not a question of if Hastert will leave the House, nor is it a question of when, rather, seek to answer the practical question of how.

GOP PSA: How Hastert may leave the House

There you have it. Straight from the horse's (elephant's?) mouth (ass?).

But what are you going to fucking do about it, Kos?

Malcolm used to draw a circle around the feet of an angry brother and ask him how he planned to move out of the circle. I'm asking Kossacks today: How are you going to move out of the circle? What's your first step? Literally, what is the first step you are going to take in response to the passage of The Military Commissions Act of 2006?

What is the first step you are taking today to act on your principles and convictions?

I've got a few suggestions:

I've excerpted the incredible quotes that Olbermann's researchers were able to uncover for this report. Watch the video if you can, but here is the heart of it. Read them and weep.

I say hello and the caller introduces himself as Charlie Brown from California. I'm a little stunned. He tells me that he is calling to thank me for contributing to his campaign and he was intrigued that someone from New York would be donating money to his campaign.

I took the titles of all the comments in order from the diary 9/11/2001 Kossack rememberances: Where were you that day?. I corrected some spelling, I added indenting for readability. I added spacing to break it into sections that pleased me. I took liberties, but few, and no civil liberties were harmed during the making of this poem.

The authors of the comment titles, the comments and the diary can all be found at the link above. The poem begins on the other side:

First, I have reason to believe I am the Untrusted User™ with the lowest UID so clearly I've been doing something right or wrong depending on your perspective. I was reading and commenting at DK before Scoop and I attended YearlyKos and not just because I live in Las Vegas which I don't. In fact, I hosted the first annual Untrusted Users Ball at YearlyKos. Attendance did not meet what, in retrospect I have to confess, were overly optimist expectations nor was the UUB part of the official convention program. Nevertheless, the mere fact of the event speaks volumes about my standing within the DailyKos community.

This year's Tour has seen, I think, nine different riders in the coveted yellow jersey (le maillot jaune) of the overall leader.

Three days ago, while wearing the yellow, American Floyd Landis cracked at the end of the 2nd toughest mountain stage and wound up over 8 minutes behind the new leader. For those who don't know, 8 minutes is an eternity in the Tour de France. For Landis, it looked like his pursuit of the championship was all but over after his collapse on the mountain.

All he wanted was a self-described "successful presidency". All along, in his unexamined ambition, lay the seeds of his failure.

George W. Bush had the formula worked out at least as early as 1999: "How to Have a Successful Presidency". Mickey Herskowitz, hired by the Bush 2000 campaign to ghost-write the candidate's autobiography, recalls Mr. Bush's thinking:

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade. If I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

Take the jump to see what "a force outside the system" might look like.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
    --Victor Hugo

Join me for a discussion of what we're listening to in the extended section.

For immediate release.

Acting quickly, the decider-in-chief has appointed Jeff Gannon and Jim Gukert to fill the role of Press Secretary recently resigned up by Scott McClellan.