Posting will be light today, as we are in various stages of transit. However, we will be back in business shortly, and Ana promises lots of dispatches from Yearly Kos. In the meantime, please look at this as an open thread and tell us what is catching your attention.
UPDATE, as I head to the airport: This story made me really angry. I’d …
In the ArenaUncategorized
The estimable Ed Kilgore, aka Newdonkey, formerly of the DLC, but now the official blogger of Democratic Strategist, had a problem with my column this week. I’ll let him explain:
In Joe Klein’s piece on the DLC, “Political Pariahs,” I was nodding along with much of his analysis until I came to a section where he accused Al From of
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Media Matters is having quite the Wonkette-esque week. First, they obsessed about obsessing over breasts.* Now: gay porn. Even better: Republican gay porn. No, wait for it, it gets better: Republican gay porn star and possible crook who was recently held out to be a paragon of virtue. It would be difficult to make up an ending to the …
On NPR’s Diane Rehm Show this morning, Joe Biden–the struggling presidential candidate who also happens to be Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee–said Barack Obama is “naive” in declaring he might order military strikes in Pakistan:
“In order to look tough, he’s undermined his ability to be tough, were he President.
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In the ArenaUncategorized
In which the future of the Democratic Leadership Council is discussed.
Interesting sidelight: While Bill Clinton spoke, and was his usual compelling self, at the DLC convention, the guy who really lit up the crowd was Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who delivered his usual–brilliant–alternative energy pitch. I’ve heard him do it …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Matt Yglesias makes some interesting arguments, as always, in this LA Times op-ed. The foreign policy priesthood has certainly wobbled from wrong to incoherent on the war–and the embarrassing squirmings of Michael O’Hanlon in an attempt to respond to criticisms that I and others made don’t help much. This part is especially
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Kinda light on serious news this morning — wifi problems at Cox-Lehmann HQ limited the surfing. Oh, and I changed the name of the feature so that I don’t feel guilty posting it after 10! kthnxbai!
• Second verse, same as the first: “The GOP message is that congressional Democrats are ethically challenged, practicing ‘business as …
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales replies to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy’s invitation to “correct and supplement” his testimony–Senatespeak for giving him one last chance to avoid a perjury charge–with a two-page letter in which he writes he is “deeply concerned with suggestions that my testimony was misleading, …
Remember all that gauzy talk about bringing democracy to the Middle East? Remember how President Bush was going to abandon the policy, pursued by previous U.S. administrations for decades, of propping up authoritarian regimes in the Middle East with military aid because doing so served our paramount interest in regional stability?
There …
In the ArenaUncategorized
To answer Karen’s question below, I thought Obama’s counter-terrorism speech today was just right…and not just because he sent the correct signal to Pakistan. There were a half dozen other ideas in the speech about terrorism prevention and public diplomacy that were smart and creative, including the idea of creating joint …
Media Matters totally put their stop watches and Tivos to good use this week, documenting exactly how much time each network spent discussing Hillary’s yaboobs. The most breast obsessed? MSNBC:
I wish there was something to compare it to, like, say, coverage of the ethics legislation or, you know, the war. Or, of course, any of the …
Forget last week’s silly back and forth over whether it is naive or not to meet with foreign badguys. Barack Obama makes news today with a speech on terrorism that included the far more substantive declaration that he would take military action against al-Qaeda in Pakistan without the consent of the Musharraf government. A key quote:
As
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This just in from the Tillman hearings:
Kucinich [irritated]: did the WH have a press strategy on the Iraq war?
Rumsfeld: If there was, it obviously wasn’t very good.
And, you know what, he’s right! There was a press strategy, and it wasn’t very good! It most consisted of Rumsfeld standing at podium being folksy and gruff. Also? There …
