The "L" Word

Should be my last post for today. Got to get some work done!!

Anyway, I've been noticing the "L" word, liberal, being mentioned more often these days on television and radio. As an example, Chris Matthews had Congressman Robert Wexler from Florida on Hardball last night. Wexler has a new book called Firebreathing Liberal in the title. And "liberal" just seemed to be thrown about a lot during the discussion. It's been weird lately but also heartening to hear the word "liberal" dropped more often these days. Paul Krugman does have his Conscience of a Liberal book, but his columns all still use the word "progressive". I have the book but have yet to read it.

It has always bothered me how leading left-leaning people had forsaken "liberal" and adopted "progressive" as the term for their ideology. Policywise, I could never tell the difference, but I think "progressive" has been viewed as less radical in the political climate of the last twenty plus years. But to me, it just represented the meekness of left-leaning politicians whose liberal policies were for the most part the right policies. Granted, the application of liberal policies may have had their mistakes, but it wasn't worth throwing out the whole label, let alone the ideology, in order to be viewed more politically palatable.

It will be interesting to see whether we hear "liberal" mentioned more often in the future.

More FISA Stuff

Reading Glenn Greenwald I get all kinds of stuff to read and reference about FISA, stuff worth passing on (to just me for now):

1) Chris Dodd's speech here, text and video, last night against the FISA bill.

2) A speech by Barack Obama inveighing against Bush anti-terrorism tactics including wiretaps. Greenwald has an excerpt in point 6 here.

The Corruption Relating to FISA

Here's a great study (h/t Glenn Greenwald) showing how much money has been given over the last three years by telecoms to House Democrats who switched their vote from opposing a FISA bill with telecom immunity this past spring to now supporting the current FISA bill which DOES contain telecom immunity. It's very disappointing and hard not to view the contributions as a corrupting influence.

Military Lawyer Defends Client and Constitution

A military lawyer, Major David Frakt, gave an extraordinary closing argument in defense of his client currently being held at Guantanomo.

Dan Froomkin has excerpts starting at the bottom of this page here.

ACLU Itemizes the Flaws in the FISA Bill

The ACLU provides a rundown here of the reasons why the recently House passed FISA bill should be strongly opposed.

We're all still waiting to see if Senate Democrats, Chris Dodd particularly, will filibuster this bill and whether Barack Obama will support a filibuster of such a bill that contains telecom immunity as it was said he would do back in 2007. Very disappointingly, Obama currently supports the "compromise".

Barack Obama's Speech on Father's Day

Good speech by Obama. Another one. Referred to me by my friend Pete.

Strange Bedfellows

The campaign to stop the gutting of FISA and the providing of telecom immunity is up and running. The campaign's makeup is an uncommon mix of lefty's (liberal bloggers) and righty's (Ron Paul supporters) but is one with the common goal of preserving our constitutional rights. Its website is appropriately called TheStrangeBedFellows.com.

Bad Democrats

Glenn Greenwald is getting really busy in his involvement in the campaign described here to target House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and some Blue Dog Democrats because of the upcoming FISA bill that provides immunity to telecoms who accommodated the Bush administration in its illegal wiretapping. One can give to the campaign here. I just did!

Guantanamo: Beyond the Law

Mainly bookmarking this for future reading: a comprehensive history at McClatchy of the detention system instituted during the War on Terror.

Nuke Gingrich, then Tim Russert

Glenn Greenwald has a great post today regarding the fear mongering of Newt Gingrich. It goes back quite awhile, and he's still adored by the mainstream press. Sad that the news organizations aren't willing to find more credible commentators, but then they go for the ratings, don't they?

Interesting to read the clip from Chris Matthews about Tim Russert earlier swallowing the Iraq nuclear threat from the Bush administration. A very mild but also somewhat brave comment from Matthews. He can surprise you sometimes.

There's been a lot of tributes lately to Russert, to his journalism, but in my mind, Tim Russert was more interested in maintaining access to key politicians and thus propping up his and MTP's stature than in pursuing the truth. I couldn't stand him during the run up to the Iraq War and afterwards. But of course, he went far too soon.

Turks beat Czechs in Euro 2008

Doing Ali's posting job here. In an exciting finish Turkey defeats Czech Republic 3-2 in Euro 2008. I'd like to catch the ending. Hopefully, ESPN2 has a replay this evening.

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

...to Turkey that is. An interesting article in the Times today about the Russians' ability to go abroad for vacations now. And a lot are heading to Turkey. Ali may pick some Russian up when he's there.

Press and Politicians in Each Other's Clutches

Glenn Greenwald has a good post about what I call the incestuous relationship between the mainstream press and the politicians they cover. He refers to a supposedly good Ken Silverstein article on David Broder's speaking fees. I need to read this.

Eating Less Meat

Some interesting help in this NYTimes article on transitioning to vegetarianism or just eating less meat. Maybe for whenever I decide I want to cook.

All His Eggs in One Basket

Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment here. I wonder how serious even Kucinich is. Lumping all kinds of stuff into his resolution dooms it even more than it might have already been. Here's some examples:

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries.

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare.

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency.

And there's other items relating to the lead up to the Iraq War that could have been combined. While I agree that the above and other articles described things that the President shouldn't have done, many people, including myself, are not going to consider these items reason for impeachment.

Unfortunately, this less serious stuff is being lumped in with the really serious stuff (misleading the country into war, torture, wiretapping, signing statements) that would have constituted an articles of impeachment that could be seriously debated. This will get shot done not so much because of the serious articles but because of all the other articles that representatives can understandably disagree with.

I would have split up the articles or just put the main articles in the resolution.

More Complicit Enabling

Here's video of Jon Stewart of the Daily Show doing his usually funny take, this time on the media's non-coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase 2 report. You know, the one that just happened to say that Bush et. al. exaggerated the intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq War.

Brian Williams of NBC is the only one shown who brings up the report. But after a few words, ho hum, it's back to the election.

Kucinich Presents 35 Articles Of Impeachment Against Bush

The beginning of Kucinich introducing his 35 articles of impeachment on the House floor. He started at 7:13 EDT, and I could swear that he was still going at around 11 EDT. About 4 hours. Guess so with so much crap to cover. Haven't seen the text anywhere yet.

A Lone Voice in Congress

Last night, Dennis Kucinich, Democratic Congressman from Cleveland, Ohio, introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. It's what should be done but will never result in impeachment, a testament to how politically precarious the Democratic leadership feels it to be should they impeach. They want to ensure Obama gets elected and more House and Senate seats are gained. Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans and enough American people are not interested in the constitution being upheld.

At the moment, one has to go internationally to get any press coverage of the articles' introduction. Google found me one blog.

TPM Presidential Poll Tracker

Good poll tracker page containing presidential tracking poll data between Obama and McCain from Gallup, Rasmussen, CNN, others. If Blogger was working, I'd get this link in the News/Current Events list. The latest data has Obama's lead ranging from 1 - 3%.

What We Always Knew

The long, long, long awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report about how the Bush Administration used the Iraq pre-war intelligence is finally out. It confirms what we already knew: that the administration exaggerated the intelligence in order to take this country into war.

A rather timid NYTimes article on the report and its history. A more damning, and rightly so, article from Huffington Post.

A separate critical report from the committee about the doings of the Pentagon's renegade intelligence operation set up by Rumsfeld and I think run by Douglas Feith.

So what's to be done about all this? Impeachment? Prosecutions? Probably not this year, but I've been wondering if once a Democrat got into the Oval Office, namely Obama, would some type of prosecutions begin, particularly of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Feith, etc. How can these people be allowed to get away with this? If nothing is done stateside, how about the International Criminal Court starting war crimes proceedings?

There's also the torture aspect, mainly in the overall "war on terror". Any accountability going to occur for the authorized torture at Gitmo, in Afghanistan, the extraordinary renditions, surely in Iraq beyond the "bad apples" at Abu Graib?

Our Feckless Senate

Here's an amusing but also disappointing article about the Senate debate (or lack thereof) over global warming. Having the whole 492-page bill read and OK Sen James Inhofe's inanity exemplify the Republicans' true colors (despite VA Sen Warner being a bill sponsor).

Barack Obama Democratic Nomination Victory Speech

Noticed my favorite band U2 playing in the background at the very beginning, Beautful Day. Apropos.

29 minutes long.

Finally!

Obama finally clinches the Democratic Presidential nomination (at least in terms of delegates). What an epic battle! In a way, I'm glad the process went all the way until the end of primary season. For practical purposes, it probably toughened Obama, and it also kept the focus on and excitement about the Democrats. The Presidential race is far from over, but it's already been an incredibly historic campaign season:

• The first black nominee from either major party.
  
• The first woman in a campaign who was a serious contender for the presidency (and who was original Democratic favorite).
• An epic Democratic battle in which two candidates went practically neck and neck throughout the primary season, and we saw it go all the way to the very last primary. Obama appeared though to have it mathematically locked up by April.
  
• Voting in all 50+ Democratic primaries mattered.

Let's just see if Hillary Clinton can bow out gracefully and not further any contentiousness in the lead up to the convention.

Ugh, Aggies Get Hammered

I forgot to catch game 2 last night, but maybe I'm glad I didn't. Arizona State beats Texas A&M 11-0 to clinch the national championship.

Perhaps there were too many Hillary Clinton supporters on the Aggie squad and they were already down from Clinton finally coming up short at the end of primary season.

Hopefully, the Aggies will be back next year. Gig'em!

The Scott McClellan Tour Continues

Dan Froomkin has an excellent blog today that's a catch-all of Scott McClellan's recent appearances on tv and fallout from his book. On the latter, questions are arising again about Dick Cheney's role in the Valerie Plame leaking scandal. His capture of the O'Reilly Factor appearance is great. Here's the links to video of that interview: one, two, three.

Using Froomkin's references, the Daily Show interview with Jon Stewart: starts getting very good at the end of part one, and Stewart furthering the excellent points about the Bush White House deception in part two.

Letter to the New York Times

I'm on an anti-Thomas Friedman binge. Here's a letter I just wrote to the NYTimes. Wonder if it will get published. It's been awhile since one has (haven't written to them much lately anyway):

In his "It's All About Leverage" column, Thomas Friedman offers poor advice to Barack Obama in regards to dealing with other nations. Mr. Friedman calls for the U.S. acquiring leverage before it talks with anyone. Granted, it is nice to have leverage, but what making leverage a requirement for talks really means is being able to have the U.S. strong-arm other nations into doing what it wants. This reflects a diplomatic poverty. It is not a diplomacy where there is mutual respect and a desire to achieve an outcome to which both sides are genuinely agreeable and from which both sides benefit. Even without leverage, two sides should still be able to talk and be resourceful enough to achieve a diplomatic objective. Mr. Friedman's advice is not far off from the disastrous George W. Bush style of diplomacy: be able to force an outcome or don't deal at all. This style of diplomacy has engendered much anti-American resentment, and I hope this similar advice is ignored by Barack Obama should he become president.

Thomas Friedman Sums Up the Iraq War:

Here's the philosophy in all its nakednes of Thomas Friedman, the Suck on This video, as he's talking about the Iraq War rationale and who in general is such a homer for the U.S. and Israel and so anti-Arab.

Friedman's Diplomacy: Strong Arming

Thomas Friedman has a pretty distasteful Sunday column about how the U.S. should run its diplomacy. The U.S. should have some leverage before it talks with other nations, particularly Arab nations. Granted, it's nice to have leverage or an advantage when negotiating, but this does not reflect an attitude of each side gaining from the negotiations and thereafter some mutual respect being achieved. It's more about the U.S. being able to strong arm with whomever it deals. This only brings distrust and resentment from other nations. In essence, this has been what the Bush administration's foreign policy has been: being able to force an outcome or not do anything at all.

Aggies Lose Game 1

The Aggies get stymied by ASU's pitcher, 11 strikeouts. At least it's two out of three. Game 2 tonight.

Aggies in Championship

The Aggies have progressed to the final round in the softball college world series. They play Arizona State tonight to start a best of 3 series. It's on ESPN2 at 6pm. Whoop!