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Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Bill W) Bless my soul, they actually talked about the Georgian/Russian conflict on Late Edition this morning! ** Nobody can claim that CNN is not on top of the issues of the day. As Jerome a Paris, who wrote this great article, put it in an email to me: Neocons are people that see danger everywhere and seem to crave military solutions in all cases. They endlessly blather about how we need to stand firm against bullies or other threats (Russia being near the top of the list), and protect our brave allies on the front lines, and along with them, democracy, freedom and our honor. They mock cowardly Europeans who think appeasement (read - any diplomacy) might have a chance. They fuel conflicts and perpetually tout military options. And yet, whenever given the opportunity to stand up to their words (and sent other people to fight, of course, they don t do that themselves), the results are surprisingly poor. Case in point, Sen John Cornyn, who had to wrestle with some serious pretzel logic on McCain s position to kick Russia out of the G8. BLITZER: Do you agree with Sen. McCain, Sen. Cornyn, that Russia should be kicked out of the G8? CORNYN: Well, I think, you know, we re not at that point, uh, yet. I think certainly - not over this incident, but I do think we need to recognize Russia for what it is and of course it was the Soviet Union that invaded Afghanistan back in the late 70s that has created so much hardship for the Afghan people, so much lack of stability in that area, so I think, you know, Russia is a superpower. They have the responsibilities of a superpower and they cannot claim that they are on any kind of equal basis or really legitimately threatened by Georgia from a military standpoint. But we do need to we do need a resolution here, and lest this thing spin out of control. Um, Sen. Cornyn? Have you heard of Iraq? I hate to be pedantic about this, but by your standards, the US should be kicked out of the G8. You really want to go down this road? For more about the Georgian/Russian conflict, see this article: The warmongers have lost yet another war. ** Correction: I initially lambasted CNN for their coverage of the conflict, but it has been brought to my attention that they did spend a significant portion of their program on it this morning. My apologies to CNN for the incorrect characterization.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) You gotta love the predictability of the framing from McCain s Media. John McCain challenges Barack Obama to go to Iraq, and so he goes. Then he makes the exact same courtesy calls with other heads of state with whom he would be in close contact should he win the presidency that John McCain made just a couple of months ago, but according to Suzanne Malveaux on CNN s Late Edition, some people are worried that Obama is just a little audacious for making this trip. Riiiiigggghhhhttt. Just who would be these people, Malveaux? Would they be those same GOP/RNC types that have been whispering these ridiculous slurs because Obama s trip was so successful and made their candidate look like an intemperate, ill-prepared and out of touch amateur? Senator, I want to use a word that you love to use, audacity. A lot of people looked at the trip and they saw the palaces, the world leaders, the 200,000 that were gathered in Berlin, and they said, The audacity of this trip, it looks like he is running for president of the world. Are we quoting Krauthammer and Brooks again on another media outlet? It appears so. The question goes out to McCain s Media yet again: by what standard have these two chuckleheads who have yet to be right on anything, mind you earned the privilege of framing the debate of this race? Kudos to Obama for responding the only way you should to these intelligence-insulting media narratives. OBAMA: Well, let me make a couple points. First of all, I basically met with the same folks that John McCain met with after he won the nomination. He met with all these leaders. He also added a trip to Mexico, a trip to Canada, a trip to Colombia, and nobody suggested that that was audacious. I think people assumed that what he was doing was to talk to world leaders who we may have deal with should we become president. That s part of the job that I m applying for. And so so I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in any way different from what Senator McCain or a lot of presidential candidates have done in the past. Transcripts below the fold MALVEAUX: Senator, I want to use a word that you love to use, audacity. A lot of people looked at the trip and they saw the palaces, the world leaders, the 200,000 that were gathered in Berlin, and they said, The audacity of this trip, it looks like he is running for president of the world. And a lot of people looked and they want to know, what out of this trip did you take away that you feel makes you a stronger candidate to be a leader here? OBAMA: Well, let me make a couple points. First of all, I basically met with the same folks that John McCain met with after he won the nomination. He met with all these leaders. He also added a trip to Mexico, a trip to Canada, a trip to Colombia, and nobody suggested that that was audacious. I think people assumed that what he was doing was (APPLAUSE) talk to world leaders who we may have deal with should we become president. That s part of the job that I m applying for. (LAUGHTER) And so so I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in any way different from what Senator McCain or a lot of presidential candidates have done in the past. Now, I admit we did it really well. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE) But that shouldn t be a strike against me. You know, if I was bumbling and fumbling through this thing, I would have been criticized for that. And so so that s point number one. I don t know the political effect of this when I come back. You know, I think people are worried about gas prices; they re worried about job security; they re worried about their retirement fund, as the stock market goes down. So probably a week of me focusing on international issues doesn t necessarily translate into higher poll numbers here in the United States, because people are understandably concerned about the immediate effects of the economy. And that s what we will be talking about for the duration. I do think that, in terms of me governing, being an effective president, that that trip was helpful, because I think I ve established relationships and a certain bond of trust with key leaders around the world who have taken measure of my positions and how I operate and I think can come away with some confidence that this is somebody I can deal with. MALVEAUX: Senator Obama, hold on to that thought. We re going to take a quick break.

On Sunday s Late Edition Rep, Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who reliably votes in favor of the Oil Download | Play Download | Play Blunt: If there was ever a test of this system it s in the one place that we do drill which is the gulf - 4,000 platforms in the gulf - thank God we ve got them. 238 of them were injured by either Katrina or Rita. There was really no oil loss of any appreciable kind at any of those. Less oil was lost than used to seep up out of the gulf floor. In fact, as we continue to note each time a new version of this claim has been made, there were at least 124 oil spills as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The website Skytruth.org even has posted satellite images of the spills as seen from space. Blunt added to his false assertion a repeat of what must be the new talking point on this issue that was offered on Thursday by McCain’s policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer (an energy lobbyist) after she was called out by MSNBC s David Schuster after trying to claim that hurricanes Rita and Katrina and did not spill a drop” of oil, a downplaying of the spills by comparing them to the amount of oil that naturally seeps into the ocean floor. As ThinkProgress notes, “the effects of seeps and spills differ hugely” in their environmental impact. It s an apples and oranges comparison, as seeps are natural, thus not preventable, and they have very little adverse ecological impact due to the fact that they result in a much lower rate of release over time over a larger area, while the effects of spills on the surface can be devastating. Rep. Blunt also attacked Speaker Pelosi s calling for a release of 10% of the oil in the strategic oil reserve and her pointing out many of the same facts I had written about a month ago that the oil industry has yet drilled in just 19 percent of the more than 40 million acres they already can that are not covered by the current ban — 40 million acres that represent 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves. Using generous estimates from the latest analysis from Bush’s own Department of Energy, allowing for unlimited drilling both offshore and in ANWR “would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents a gal. by 2025. Despite every claim made by Blunt through his entire interview, Speaker Pelosi was right on all counts: A Department of Energy analysis determined that opening the OCS to offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.” A much faster, more effective action to reduce oil prices would to sell a half million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supply, reduce prices, and burst the “speculative bubble” that leads speculators to buy oil futures based on the assumption that supply will remain fixed and prices will escalate.

Who knew Nancy Pelosi was such a straight-shooter? When Wolf Blitzer tries to pin part of the blame for the current energy crisis on the Democratic Congress, Pelosi shoots back by saying her House did everything it could to institute a sensible energy policy, only to have run into a brick wall in the form of Senate Republicans you know, the ones who broke the filibuster record for a full term last year. Download | Play Download | Play The price of oil is is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate. While it might be easy (and typically accurate) to blame everything on President Bush and Vice President Cheney, I don t think it s unreasonable to lay the current crisis at the White House s doorstep. Sure, there are some uncontrollable market forces at work, but both Cheney and Bush are oil patch guys; it would be the height of naivete to assume that they would have an energy policy that didn t benefit Big Oil. From Day One, Dick Cheney was plotting how to take over Iraq oil fields. Before the war, it was obvious to everyone that the invasion or Iraq, and the instability it would caused in the region, would only drive prices up further. For all the lip service President Bush pays to his commitment to renewable energy, the fact is spending has been on the stagnant since the mid-1990 s. What we really need is a leader with the wisdom to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem and the courage to tackle it head on. Green Screen John McCain is clearly not that leader.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) It s actually amazing in the divisive political climate in which we live that we can find consensus on subjects. Maybe it s a testament to exactly how bad the housing market is that there is no attempt at spin by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to dismiss or diminish how bad it is and to congratulate Chris Dodd on his legislation to get things on track. But that s not to say there isn t hackery afoot. Kyl says that the Bush administration is not to blame for the crisis, but it s Congress fault for not taking a tighter leash in regulations to the mortgage industry. BLITZER:(H)ow much of the blame does the Bush administration deserve for allowing this kind of situation to deteriorate, as it has? KYL: Virtually none. BLITZER: Why? KYL: We ve been predicting for years that this problem would come along. When I was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, we wrote papers on it. BLITZER: But isn t the federal government responsible for making sure this kind of situation doesn t happen? KYL: The problem is, there is very little regulatory authority. That s why this legislation that Senator Dodd has been working on, the one good feature of it is additional regulation. But we should have had that regulation four years ago. Um, who was in charge of Congress four years ago? Oh that s right, the Republicans. Can you imagine Tom Delay hammering tighter mortage regulations through the House four years ago? Me neither. But Kyl claims they were predicting it would happen. Hmmmm . Funnily enough, you know who was in office more than four years ago who did lay the foundation for this situation with the legislation he pushed through the Senate? Phil Gramm. Remind me again, what s he been up to lately? And before we absolve the Bush administration completely, it would be appropriate to remember that the watch-dogs to make sure this kind of thing doesn t happen is the SEC. Who appoints the SEC panel? That would be the Failure in Chief. Just sayin . Transcripts below the fold BLITZER: A lot of people, Senator Kyl in Arizona, in the housing market out there, they re suffering big-time right now. How much of the blame, and I know you re a blunt guy, how much of the blame does the Bush administration deserve for allowing this kind of situation to deteriorate, as it has? KYL: Virtually none. BLITZER: Why? KYL: We ve been predicting for years that this problem would come along. When I was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, we wrote papers on it. BLITZER: But isn t the federal government responsible for making sure this kind of situation doesn t happen? KYL: The problem is, there is very little regulatory authority. That s why this legislation that Senator Dodd has been working on, the one good feature of it is additional regulation. But we should have had that regulation four years ago. The other problem, here, is that much of the bailout here is for the people holding bad loans, not the homeowners. It s for the speculators, the investors. I know in the oil crisis, everybody s concerned about the speculators driving up the price. What do you think happened in the housing market? BLITZER: Senator Dodd, go ahead and respond. DODD: No, no, no. Very specifically, Jon, we absolutely seclude speculators from having any benefit all the under the act. That s very clear in the law. Of course, this is a highly regulated industry, Jon. This isn t like hedge funds. The mortgage market has been a highly regulated industry. Where were the cops? Why weren t they out there saying when brokers were luring people in and saying I m your financial adviser, a fully indexed price, don t worry about it, lie about it if you want, we ll get you into that home. Those were people that had a responsibility, that failed in that responsibility, and the regulators watching them should have been doing a better job and they didn t do it. That s a major reason why we re seeing the problems we re seeing today. KYL: Just one quick example. There s much to be said. The provision that Chris alluded to that the Bush administration opposes and would veto the legislation over are these CDBG grants. They don t help. BLITZER: You ve got to explain what that means. KYL: The community development to block grants, which enable local governments to purchase homes from the people who are holding them, the investors that are holding them. It doesn t help the homeowner at all. They re in foreclosure. It helps the people holding the paper, the money. It s a good example of how BLITZER: I want to move on, but I ll let Senator Dodd respond. DODD: The community development block grant is money that goes directly to governors and mayors in order to help them rehabilitate foreclosed properties so they can put them on the market and sell it. It doesn t go to the homeowner at all. KYL: That s my point. DODD: That money, because you have declining property values, that is the resources coming from for police and fire and other matters. These are things that mayors need. We provide that when you have floods and hurricanes. This is a national crisis and our communities need to help. But you re not purchasing mortgages with that money at all.

CNN s Late Edition dug from their archives this clip of John McCain in August of 1999: Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) McCain: I think that we must go back to the party platform of 1980 and 1984 - we include people who have specific disagreements who share our same goals. Ultimately, I would like to see the repeal of Roe v. Wade, but to do it immediately, I think, would condemn young women to dangerous and illegal operations. See, back in 1999, McCain was walking a tightrope by calling himself pro-life on a personal level while at the same time assuring pro-choice voters for pragmatic reasons that “in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade.” Yet, today, McCain says bluntly right on his website that John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned. It s really hard to overstate the audacity of those in the media who tried to make Obama s recent decision to opt out of public campaign financing out to be some colossal flip-flop without even mentioning the fact that McCain has now flip-flopped a gazillion times on almost every issue under the sun. To summarize just a few of Steve Benen s list of McCain flip-flops: McCain was against the repeal of Roe v. Wade before he was for it. McCain was against torture before he was for it. Really for it. McCain was against crazy right-wing preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson before he was for them. McCain was against Bush s tax cuts for the wealthy before he was for them. McCain was against shady Bush Pioneer Texas billionaire swift-boat financiers before he was for them. McCain was for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law before he was against it and began breaking it. McCain was against Grover Norquist, whom he called corrupt, a shill for dictators before he was for him. McCain was against BJU because of its hateful, racist and cruel policies before he was for it. McCain was against ethanol before he was for ethanol and then he was against it again. McCain was against a Martin Luther King holiday before he was for it. And that s not all. There s many many more. In fact, here s an even longer list. McCain has reversed his former positions to fall more in line with the Bush administration so many times now it s really hard to tell Bush and McCain apart (can you beat my 3 out of 5 on the first try?). It might actually be easier to list the issue(s) McCain hasn t (yet) flip-flopped on, although I can t think of a single one right offhand.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t David) Seymour Hersh has been writing about the Bush administration s aggressive stance against Iran for years now. His latest article for The New Yorker, Preparing the Battlefield , Hersh claims that the Bush administration has been carrying out clandestine operations in Iran for some time now, with the funding and cooperation of the Democratic leadership in Congress. HERSH: I think this is another example of putting an awful lot of pressure on the Iranian government. There s been a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos inside of Iran. Almost every other day, there s another story in the Iranian press I write about this in the article, too about things blowing up, et cetera, et cetera. It looks like things are falling apart, a little bit. And the central government certainly has more trouble. And I think the goal of this operation, this incredible operation, with all this money and, by the way, it s the Democrats in Congress who basically looked the other way and said, take the money and run. They did not stop this money, the leadership that I m talking about, the Democratic leadership. So, basically, my guess is that I don t think we can safely say that any military action is off the table, no matter what happens. And that s as I say, I wish I m going to be wrong about all that, but this is really, sort of, an amazing development. CROWLEY: Absolutely. I want to read a graph out of your book because it goes to the oversight of the Democrats you just mentioned. [snip] The oversight process has not kept pace it s been co-opted by the administration, the person familiar with the contents of the findings said. The process is broken and this is dangerous stuff we re authorizing. Tell me, first, what your sources say is so dangerous about this? HERSH: The president has to give a finding on covert action, any action that s covert. In other words, when CIA goes in some place, if they get caught, there could be spies. So he has to tell the Congress about it. And the military simply is the president, since 9/11, has decided anything we do militarily, we don t have to tell anybody in Congress about. Guest host Candy Crowley brings on Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker to officially deny that any cross border operations have taken place, but Hersh points out that Crocker may not be in the loop plausible deniability being the operative word. That is simply a reality, that when you run secret operations, if you re not telling the commander, the military commander of the Central Command, who is supposedly running the country you may not tell the ambassador everything. Sometimes it s better not to have the ambassador know. Full transcripts below the fold: CROWLEY: While the Bush administration has been emphasizing tough diplomacy with Iran, it s also been escalating covert U.S. military actions against the country. That s according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who reveals the details in a new article for the New Yorker magazine, titled Preparing the Battlefield. He joins us now. That sounds a little ominous. Let me ask you first, if you what is the headline that readers will take away from this article? HERSH: Well, one of the basic points is that, no matter what we say about diplomacy, you know, carrot and stick, the stick is working pretty hard and the stick is working overtime. This president did escalate the covert war, the secret war inside Iran. We ve been doing stuff inside Iran since 05 pretty much, pretty heavily, you know, looking at the nuclear facilities, collecting intelligence, trying to undermine the regime, et cetera, et cetera. But there was a significant escalation this year. First of all, they got a great deal of authorization to spend up to $400 million. That doesn t mean he s spent it all yet, but he s got that kind of authorization from one of the secret committees. Anybody who saw Charlie Wilson s War you know, Charlie Wilson was able to generate a lot of money secretly. That s what happens in Congress. And the other major thing is, we ve sent in a special task force that operates out of Afghanistan into Iran. I give notice what Ambassador Crocker said about not cross-border. And I have a lot of respect for him and I don t want to challenge him. But the fact is, we re inside; we re not necessary cross-border. We have teams inside Iran. And these include joint special operation forces, our most elite commando unit. And basically, they re guys that go after high-value targets around the world. You know, they capture them or kill them. So it s a significant increase in American potential for damage inside Iran. CROWLEY: I do want to let our audience hear from Ambassador Crocker, and then I want to ask you the difference between what he s denying and what you re saying. Here he is. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CROCKER: I haven t read the article, Candy, but I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else. (END VIDEO CLIP) CROWLEY: So they re not I mean, is he denying something you didn t say? I can t quite get the difference here. HERSH: Well, you know, it s complicated. Because one of the things in the article it s a long article in the New Yorker one of the things I described is that one of the problems Admiral Fallon, the former commander of CENTCOM, who ran into trouble because he spoke about not wanting to bomb Iran. Another factor in Fallon s problems with the White House, particularly with Mr. Cheney, the vice president, was that Fallon wasn t able to learn what was going on, all he wanted to know, about covert operations, CIA operations inside Iran and Afghanistan. That is simply a reality, that when you run secret operations, if you re not telling the commander, the military commander of the Central Command, who is supposedly running the country you may not tell the ambassador everything. Sometimes it s better not to have the ambassador know. But the other point is, we certainly are going cross-border, on short forays, grabbing Al Quds members, bringing them back. We ve been doing that for a long time. He may not know the extent to which we re operating deeply with commandos or not so much with our special forces inside Iran. So it s possible. Because he s not somebody he ll spin it, but he s not somebody who won t say something he doesn t believe. CROWLEY: So what s the end game here? What are they trying to accomplish? Is it to end the war in Iraq? Is it to overturn the government in Iran? Is it greasing the skids for a preemptive strike? What are they doing there? HERSH: That s a great question because I don t know. And, boy, do I wish I ve been writing about Iran for about three years, almost constantly, in the New Yorker, sort of, this, you know, Chicken Little, the sky is falling. And I sure wish I could be wrong about it. But the end game is, as far as and I do have some access into some of the thinking, particularly in the vice president s office. They do not want Bush and Cheney do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program, with, they believe, a nuclear weapons program. They simply don t believe the national intelligence estimate that came out late last year that said they haven t done anything in nuclear weapons since 03. They just don t believe it. So they believe that their mission is to make sure that, before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program. I do believe that. I think this is another example of putting an awful lot of pressure on the Iranian government. There s been a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos inside of Iran. Almost every other day, there s another story in the Iranian press I write about this in the article, too about things blowing up, et cetera, et cetera. It looks like things are falling apart, a little bit. And the central government certainly has more trouble. And I think the goal of this operation, this incredible operation, with all this money and, by the way, it s the Democrats in Congress who basically looked the other way and said, take the money and run. They did not stop this money, the leadership that I m talking about, the Democratic leadership. So, basically, my guess is that I don t think we can safely say that any military action is off the table, no matter what happens. And that s as I say, I wish I m going to be wrong about all that, but this is really, sort of, an amazing development. CROWLEY: Absolutely. I want to read a graph out of your book because it goes to the oversight of the Democrats you just mentioned. HERSH: Sure. CROWLEY: This is from your book sorry from your article. The oversight process has not kept pace it s been co-opted by the administration, the person familiar with the contents of the findings said. The process is broken and this is dangerous stuff we re authorizing. Tell me, first, what your sources say is so dangerous about this? HERSH: The president has to give a finding on covert action, any action that s covert. In other words, when CIA goes in some place, if they get caught, there could be spies. So he has to tell the Congress about it. And the military simply is the president, since 9/11, has decided anything we do militarily, we don t have to tell anybody in Congress about. That s all preparing the battlefield. That s the title of the piece. And so what Congress gets told is something about CIA operations, and that s why they had a finding, but nothing about what the military is doing on the ground inside Iran. And so the people in the Senate the House, particularly, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Charlie Wilson s old subcommittee, we re talking about Congressman Obey, Congressman Murtha, some of the others are really concerned because they re approving programs about which they don t have the whole story, and they know it. And they don t know what to do about it. And it s a source of enormous tension. The problem is it s also secret. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody can talk about it. It s a world that the White House controls because it s very top secret. The presidential finding that I m writing about is a document you don t discuss on CNN. If you re the ambassador, you don t talk about it. I understand Senator McConnell was here. And the senators are able to say those who know can say, I can t talk about it. So we in the public don t get much of a look. And for me, as a journalist, to write about this is difficult because, often, a lot of other journalists won t be able to make heads or tails of what I m doing, because they can t simply find the people that will talk about. CROWLEY: Right, absolutely. I ve got about 15 seconds. Can you give me, in a nutshell, why it s so dangerous? Is it because it could prompt a war with Iran if they were to find these special-ops people? HERSH: We have the special operations people, and they re great people. They re very loyal soldiers. They do what they re told, going around, killing people around the world without ambassadors knowing it, without the CIA station chiefs knowing it, without Congress knowing. If that doesn t sound like you know, with this president, if that doesn t make people nervous, I don t know what else would, I can just tell you. CROWLEY: Seymour Hersh, another blockbuster story, the New Yorker. Thank you so much. You all ought to go out and get a copy. We will be right back.

This morning on Late Edition, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) debate the issue of taxes, and Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain s attacks on Barack Obama s tax platform. Hutchinson s feckless attempts to promote the status quo are quickly drowned out, as DiFi lays out the reality of the disaster the Bush/McCain tax policies have created for our economy. Download | Play Download | Play McCain says Obama would spend more money on social programs which he claims would hurt our economy, but Feinstein quickly debunks that notion and points out that he has supported the President s Iraq debacle, which has not been paid for and has been wholly funded off budget and has lead to a bloated national deficit and skyrocketing interest on that debt that has to be paid for somehow. Feinstein: So I think, in terms of tax policy, this constant cut, cut, cut, no matter what the debt, no matter what the deficit, just puts this nation in jeopardy in terms of its future. There was a strange moment at the end of the segment where DiFi and Hutchinson give each other one of those terrorist fist jabs. (pictured above, right) Now, I m all for ending the partisan bickering in Washington D.C., but this was a rather odd moment. WTF?

Bless his little heart, let s have House Minority Whip Roy Blunt on every week to talk up John McCain s candidacy! Talk about living within a bubble, Blunt thinks nothing of touting the McSame presidency as a Bush third term, despite the record disapproval rating for the man and the vast majority of the country believing that the country is going in the wrong direction under his leadership. Apparently, Blunt didn t get the memo that McCain is trying to distance himself from Bush and as Rep. Chris Van Hollen points out, on the two most important issues to the American people, McCain absolutely equals Bush. And Roy, that s not such a good thing. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t David) BLITZER: When it comes to domestic economic issues, what is the major difference between President Bush s policies, what he wants to do, and what John McCain would do if he were president? BLUNT: Well, I think what John McCain wants to do is continue these pro-growth tax policies that our friends on the other side have been talking for sixteen months now… BLITZER: But that s what President Bush wants to do too. BLUNT: And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with that. BLITZER: So it would be in effect a third Bush term when it came to pro-growth tax policies? BLUNT: It would be. I think it would be. And I think that s a good thing. You can t go out in the country anywhere and find people who believe that doubling the capital gains rate is a good thing, that raising the highest rate on every small business in America is a good thing, that eliminating those bottom brackets, that mean that people at the lower levels of tax pay less taxes than they would otherwise. In fact, I think one of the reasons that the economy has slowed down the way it has is the fact that there s great uncertainty about how those tax policies move forward. ThinkProgress: (I)t’s nice to see Blunt conceding the point. McCain is promising more of Bush’s economic agenda — unaffordable massive tax cuts for the rich that offer no help for the average family. The McCain economic agenda includes: $1.7 trillion tax cut for corporations, $300 billion a year in tax cuts that aren’t paid for, and a plan that delivers 58 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers and only 9 percent to the bottom 80 percent. Full transcript below the fold BLITZER: When it comes to domestic economic issues, what is the major difference between President Bush s policies, what he wants to do, and what John McCain would do if he were president? BLUNT: Well, I think what John McCain wants to do is continue these pro-growth tax policies that our friends on the other side have been talking for sixteen months now… (CROSSTALK) BLITZER: But that s what President Bush wants to do too. BLUNT: And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with that. BLITZER: So it would be in effect a third Bush term when it came to pro-growth tax policies? BLUNT: It would be. I think it would be. And I think that s a good thing. You can t go out in the country anywhere and find people who believe that doubling the capital gains rate is a good thing, that raising the highest rate on every small business in America is a good thing, that eliminating those bottom brackets, that mean that people at the lower levels of tax pay less taxes than they would otherwise. In fact, I think one of the reasons that the economy has slowed down the way it has is the fact that there s great uncertainty about how those tax policies move forward. BLITZER: Do you want to respond to that? VAN HOLLEN: Sure. Look, I mean, the Bush economic policies have helped drive this economy into a ditch. The economy has lost $260,000 in the first four months of this year. And John McCain BLITZER: 260,000 jobs. VAN HOLLEN: Jobs in the first four months. And John McCain does represent a continuation of the Bush economic policy, as Roy just acknowledged. And the fact of the matter is, people are hurting. The one thing this president doesn t understand and John McCain doesn t understand is the economic squeeze the families around the country are feeling. And when it comes to Iraq, again, this is a continuation of the Bush policy. So on the two biggest issues on the agenda today, the war in Iraq and the economy, he represents a continuation of George Bush.

With even Republicans admitting that things are not going well in the country (don t pay attention to the fact that it s their policies that got us in this predicament) and Bush suffering from the highest disapproval ratings of any President in the history of the country, the only thing that John McCain can run on is that his presidency would not be the equivalent of a third Bush term. Of course, given that his strategy in Iraq matches Bush s, his economic policies are not predicted to work any better than Bush s has, and that he is woefully behind the curve on issues that really matter to Americans, that might be a tough sell. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) But don t tell that to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who appeared on Late Edition on Sunday to tell us that it won t be John McSame. Really. He swears. BLITZER: In our new CNN Opinion Research Corporation poll that came out this week, “Right Track/Wrong Track”, President Bush’s job approval numbers—as far as his disapproval numbers—it was a record 71% of the American public, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, say they disapprove of President Bush’s job performance. That’s even a higher number than Richard Nixon had at the height of Watergate when he was on the verge of being impeached. Are you surprised that so many Americans disapprove of President Bush’s record over these past eight years? GRAHAM: It’s frustrating times. You have uh, you have fuel prices going up, food prices going up, you’ve got a war in Iraq that was mismanaged for four years, so there is a very frustrating time in which we live. I’m confident of this, that Sen. McCain is doing well because of what he’s done over his life, over the policies he’s pursued, over his efforts to create bipartisan solutions to hard problems and his Commander in Chief credentials I think trump everybody running for President now and he understood the problems in Iraq better than anyone and calls for a change in strategy and that change has paid dividends, so I understand the frustrations people have. It’s tough being president. I think I know why Sen. McCain is doing much better than the Republican brand name because of the way he’s lived his life and politics and his personal desire to lead in this country and he really is an American hero. Of course, the reason Graham knows this? Because after seeing a DNC ad discussing McCain s economic policies, all that matters to him is that McCain won t raise taxes. Crippling deficit, bleeding money (literally) hand over fist in Iraq, but God forbid we raise taxes to fund the country s interests.

UPDATE: I ll be on with Sam Seder at 2:05 PST) Of course the media never critiques the Republicans over their relationship (should I call it a marriage?) to the extreme religious right in the same fashion as they do all Democratic politicians. There s an incredibly tough double standard in play here. We ve tried to get them to do it, but they even ignore McCain s new relationship with Pastor Hagee for the most part. Should we produce commercials about that? McCain s Media is going to be a force to reckon with in the fall. And Rangel is a Clinton supporter if any of you are concerned with that fact. Download | Play Download | Play Blitzer: The criticism of Barack Obama is that what Jeremiah Wright said at the National Press Club, Congressman Rangel, was no different than what he s been saying for some time, and he should have known that these controversial remarks would be made. Is this explanation that Senator Obama is making good enough for you? Rangel: It s disgraceful that he has to make any explanation for anything. The intrusion of the media and Republicans into the sacred relationship that worshipers have with their spiritual leaders I think is going to come back to haunt us. To think that we have to go into the lives and the beliefs of Rabbis and Priests and ministers and Imams is absolutely ridiculous. We ve got a war on. We ve got an economy that s splintered. I think the media should be more responsible and start dealing with those issues. I don t think many people care what reverend Wright thinks and I don t see why any candidate should have to explain what .. Blitzer: But Congressman, even Senator Obama last Sunday said this was a legitimate issue given the nature of He wants to be President of the United States. If there s a right wing politician, let s say a Republican politician that has an extraordinarily close relationship with a pastor who is making outrageous statements has been a member of that church for 20 years. Wouldn t that be fair game? Rangel: Of course not. Of course he s a candidate. He doesn t want to take all of you on and I m probably over the hill but the truth is that you guys know that his beliefs have nothing to do with someone that went to the church, and if we ve got to get into the Jerry Falwell s and into the Robertson s and to the number of people who have what appears to other religions to be bizarre beliefs we ll never get to the issues that Americans were concerned about. I know that every American is more concerned with who is going to be a better Presidential candidate and a better President more than they are on anything that happens in the church that Senator Obama went to. The Republicans have made it their mission to pander to extremists in religion so with Wolf s logic why then hasn t Blitzer ever gone after all the Republicans who are aligned with them? Because of a terrible double standard in the media. McCain s Media strikes again. billw made the videos and says: Even though the media is still trying to fixate on Obama s pastor, there are already plenty of signs Rep Rangel is right. A recent NBC-WSJ poll indicated that voters are much more concerned with McCain s close ties to the Bush administration and its policies, and the cash-strapped NRCC just spent more than $53,000 running attack ads trying to link Obama and Rev Wright to Don Cazayoux (D-LA), who won in a special election Sat in a solidly Republican district they had held since 1974, with the outgoing Rep. Richard Baker (R) having won with more than 70% of the vote in 2004, the last year he had a challenger.

Download | Play Download | Play Democratic Senator Joe Biden and GOP Senator Richard Lugar appeared on this morning s Late Edition and one thing was clear: they both agreed that the Petraeus/Crocker report card on Iraq showed nearly zero success and demonstrates how our drawn-out occupation has hurt our security, our military and our economy and clearly shows that President Bush is punting on the troops and the American people, leaving the next president to deal with his mess. Sen. Lugar speaks in realistic terms that are both rare and refreshing to hear from a Republican: Blitzer: Is the U.S. military over stretched to the point that it can t get the missions done with, Senator Lugar? Lugar: Well, the testimony seems to be to that effect. That is, that we simply do not have, presently, enough armed forces to accomplish or missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, quite apart from anything else that might occur in the world. And yet, in this hearing on Iraq, Iran kept being mentioned. That that the Iranians are intruding, a proxy war is being fought. In other words, it was almost as if we were justifying our continued presence in Iraq with the fact that we may be in a conflict in Iran and furthermore, the al Qaeda wherever they may be. It s a very confusing picture, to say the least. Now, it seems to me we re going to have to come to grips with what is possible in Iraq and what kind of forces are required for that, but we re certainly not at that point in the hearings. This is - I agree with Joe Biden, was simply punting the thing down the road and probably into the next administration and whoever the candidates may be right now, they face a awesome task of turning around a situation that really has not been resolved during this administration.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) Former head of the Iraqi Provisional Government and Neo-Con Apologist L. Paul Bremer comes on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq to admit, that yes, mistakes were made (and gosh, he had made recommendations that were ignored over assumptions that turned out to be false) blah blah blah, but even still, he doesn t think they would have done anything differently in retrospect. BREMER: Well, I respectfully disagree with the senator. I think under the circumstances the president faced and the country faced in 2003 with our intelligence agencies, the agencies of France, Germany, Russia, Israel, Britain all thinking that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and concerned about the possibility that Al Qaida terrorists, Islamic extremists would get their hands on this stuff, I think the decision to go into Iraq was the right one at the time. BLITZER: You still think it was the right decision? BREMER: Yes, I do. BLITZER: Despite everything we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that any connection between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein was very minimal if there was anything serious there. You still think it was the right thing to do? BREMER: I do. I think it was the right thing to do, and I think Iraq is on the road now to becoming it will take time a democratic government in the middle of the Middle East, which is, in itself, quite an accomplishment. So, I respectfully disagree with the senator. And I think it s not clear he makes the argument I don t think it s true that we are less safe than we were before. I don t think that s true. We have lost almost 4,000 Americans lives there, and that s a tragic cost that we have had to pay. Wow. A very tragic price to pay considering we went in for NO REASON, Bremer. And this tired meme that all these other countries agreed with our intelligence continues to be put out without any challenge. OUR OWN weapons inspectors questioned it. The UN questioned it. France and Russia questioned it. I posit that this is an auxiliary to the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result): knowing that you have brought forth a tragedy of global and epic proportions, saying that you d do it again make you not only mentally deranged but unworthy of being given a national platform to spout such insanity again. And Wolf? Maybe a challenge or two to the insanity spewed in front of you might make you seem a little less like a mouthpiece for the White House. Even Chris Wallace manages it occasionally. Transcripts below the fold: BLITZER: Welcome back. After almost five years of war and the loss of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said this week Iraq s leaders so far have failed to take full advantage of the reduction in violence that resulted from the so-called military surge in troops. And there are new reports that show that violence is actually beginning to increase somewhat, as the front line troops start to head home. So where is the U.S. in Iraq after five years? Joining us now to discuss this is Ambassador Paul Bremer. He was the director of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq during those crucial years immediately after the invasion, spent a year working there. Ambassador, thanks for coming back. BREMER: Good to be with you, Wolf. BLITZER: You write, in the New York Times today, on the op-ed page, this. I ll read it to our viewers. Prewar planning provided for fewer than half the number of troops that independent studies suggested would be needed in Iraq. And we did not have a plan to provide the most basic function of any government, security for the population. I would have pushed sooner for a more effective military strategy. Because, from 2004 to the end of 2007, Al Qaida took advantage of this gap. Those are three important points that you made in that little paragraph right there. Why weren t there enough troops deployed to begin with? BREMER: Well, you know, Wolf, I think part of the problem, both in terms of the number of troops and the strategy involved, a legitimate concern on the part of the military leaders, particularly the Army, that they would become overstretched and, indeed, it put a lot of strain, not only on the regular Army, but, as we have seen, on the National Guard and on the Reserves. BLITZER: But General Shinseki, who was the chief of the Army chief of staff, he wanted more troops. And he was, sort of, rebuked, at the time, by Paul Wolfowitz, among others, for even suggesting the U.S. might need hundreds of thousands, as opposed to 150,000. BREMER: Well, I had the luxury of being a businessman during the runup to the war. BREMER: So I don t know what happened all but during the war. I did say before I left for Iraq that independent studies showed we needed perhaps twice as many troops as we actually had at the time. BLITZER: 300,000. BREMER: Yeah, or more. And we didn t have them there, and in fact, we never got them. It s really only when the president changed the strategy and put into effect the surge a year ago that we ve seen some good news on the violence front. BLITZER: Second point, you say we did not have a plan to provide the most basic function of any government. There was a plan in place that retired General Jay Garner would go in and start to deal with the civilian infrastructure immediately after the military objectives were achieved. There was a plan. What was the problem? BREMER: Well, the plan for a reconstruction was based on, as it turned out, false assumptions. We assumed there would be large-scale humanitarian disaster, we assumed Saddam would set fire to the oil wells, we assumed there would be large-scale refugee movements inside the country. None of these things actually happened. So, General Garner, who is a wonderful, patriotic man, found himself in a situation where the planning that had been done before the war was based on assumptions that BLITZER: And that s when they sent you in? BREMER: Well, that s when I arrived. And I found that in fact the situation on the ground was far worse than we thought. The economy was completely devastated, and we had quite a job trying to reconstruct it. BLITZER: The basic criticism leveled against you is that you took charge instead of letting Iraqis take charge. BREMER: Well, I ve seen that argument. I just don t agree with it. Within 60 days of my arrival, we put in place an interim Iraqi government. I gave them full authority. They appointed the ministers who ran the government for the rest of the time I was there. I never overruled a minister my entire time I was there, though I had the authority to do it. [snip] BLITZER: I want you to respond to Barack Obama. He said this on Thursday, looking ahead, if he were president as far as his strategy in Iraq. Listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: The strategy of invading Iraq has been and continues to be a strategic failure of enormous proportions. My conclusion is at a enormous cost of blood and treasure that has also weakened our economy. It hasn t made us more safe. (END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: All right. What do you think? BREMER: Well, I respectfully disagree with the senator. I think under the circumstances the president faced and the country faced in 2003 with our intelligence agencies, the agencies of France, Germany, Russia, Israel, Britain all thinking that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and concerned about the possibility that Al Qaida terrorists, Islamic extremists would get their hands on this stuff, I think the decision to go into Iraq was the right one at the time. BLITZER: You still think it was the right decision? BREMER: Yes, I do. BLITZER: Despite everything we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that any connection between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein was very minimal if there was anything serious there. You still think it was the right thing to do? BREMER: I do. I think it was the right thing to do, and I think Iraq is on the road now to becoming it will take time a democratic government in the middle of the Middle East, which is, in itself, quite an accomplishment. So, I respectfully disagree with the senator. And I think it s not clear he makes the argument I don t think it s true that we are less safe than we were before. I don t think that s true. We have lost almost 4,000 Americans lives there, and that s a tragic cost that we have had to pay. BLITZER: Ambassador Bremer, thanks for coming in. BREMER: Good to be with you.

Senator John McCain landed in Iraq this morning on a official congressional visit taxpayer funded campaign stop with two members of his campaign, Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, and this morning on Late Edition Wolf Blitzer spoke with Senators Patrick Leahy and Diane Feinstein about the trip and whether it s appropriate. The clip begins with CNN s John King reporting from Iraq and he was more than willing to spew McCain s talking points on the surge and how Senators Obama and Clinton want to wave the white flag of surrender. Download | Play Download | Play King: John McCain says he s here as a member of the Senate, but it is a defining issue in the campaign. It is John McCain who says either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would wave what he calls the white flag of surrender by rushing to get troops out of Iraq at a time when John McCain, and he will make the case here, says the surge policy is working and that while he would like to get the troops home, if they need to stay, Senator McCain says as a Senator or as the next president he would make the tough decision to keep them here. Both Leahy and Feinstein point out that McCain has a right to visit Iraq as a member of Congress, but agree he shouldn t have taken two members of his campaign with him, even though they are also members of Congress. Leahy gets it right, this is nothing more than a photo op for McCain, who admits that he will be moving on to Great Britain for a fund raiser after his visit to Iraq. Maybe the McSurge Triplets will get to go on another shopping spree and find more great bargains while they re in Baghdad? Oh wait they can t go back to the same market they visited last year because that area of the city is now too dangerous. Will McSame exploit this trip to raise campaign cash? You bet he will

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) Dick Cheney has his go-to guy in Tim Russert; George Bush has Wolf Blitzer. Despite the fact that the president s petulant hysteria that refusing to include retroactive immunity will endanger Americans, a lie that even his own people can t support, has been thoroughly debunked, that s not going to stop Wolf Blitzer from serving up a hot, steaming pile of propaganda direct from the bowels of the White House to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes this morning on Late Edition. Unfortunately, whatever blinders that Blitzer has on that does not allow him to get facts about this FISA propaganda is also apparently affecting the House intelligence committee as well, as Reyes tells Blitzer that they are negotiating a compromise that could include telecom immunity. We are talking to the representatives from the communications companies because if we re going to give them blanket immunity, we want to know and we want to understand what it is that we re giving immunity for, he said. I have an open mind about that. Regarding a compromise deal, Reyes said: We think we re very close, probably within the next week we ll be able to hopefully bring it to a vote. Please, no. Jumping Jiminy on a popsicle stick, is there no blatantly illegal acts that this White House wants to commit that the Congress will fight? Maybe they re wishing for the telecom largese to come back. Studs Terkel, author and oral historian; Quentin Young, physician and advocate for health-care reform; State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie; and James Montgomery, former Chicago corporation counsel, are plaintiffs in Terkel, et. al vs. AT ve written an op-ed on Why We Sued The Phone Company. Clearly, we will have to deluge Congress with demands that they not cave into the Bush administration. Again. Your first stop is this PfAW petition as well as sending emails/snail mails and faxes to your representatives.

DNC Chairman, Howard Dean, appeared on today s Late Edition to talk about the campaign and the race on the Democratic side. Howard did a good job deflecting Wolf Blitzer s doom and gloom for the Democrats line of questioning. Each time Blitzer would ask him about the tension between Senators Clinton and Obama, Dean would fire back with the reality of John McCain s lack of ethics and credibility. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) While I don t completely agree with Dean s assertion that some of the negative campaigning that s occurred between the Democratic candidates isn t an issue, I was encouraged to see how aggressively he pushed back at Blitzer, staying focused, cutting through the spin and charging right at John McCain s weaknesses. Dean: Look, John McCain is a flawed candidate. Here s a guy who is a typical situational ethicist, he runs on his integrity, but he doesn t seem to have any. We re familiar with the fact that he got on the ballot in Ohio with what now turns out to be false pretenses. He qualified because he was taking public financing, and now he says he s not going to. He doesn t have the permission of the FEC to do that, and just this week he refused to denounce and reject John Hagee, a militant, anti-Catholic right wing pastor and John McCain has a history of doing what it takes regardless of what the ethics of this are. I think he s going to be a flawed candidate, I don t think people want four more years of what is essentially four more years of George Bush.

Download | Play Download | Play Democratic Senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, appeared on Late Edition and did a great job of debunking the lies and spin being floated by President Bush and the GOP on FISA. As Juan Williams did earlier on Fox News Sunday, Reed makes it clear that allowing the flawed FISA legislation passed last August to lapse does not mean the U.S. can t do surveillance on suspected terrorists. Host Wolf Blitzer floated out the exact same argument William Kristol did on Fox, which is this notion that Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, is some sort of apolitical figure and somehow that makes him more believable. Reed shot that down, reminding Blitzer that the previous FISA laws are still in place and that U.S. intelligence can still go after suspects for several days before requesting a warrant.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) Just like the rest of the Republican talking heads, former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell isn t willing to stand up behind John McCain just yet. Ever the dutiful soldier, he plays coy with his endorsement, a factoid from which the MSM is all ablaze. Honestly, I don t know why there s such a fuss. Obviously, the Republican slate leaves much to be desired, especially if you acknowledge how much ground has been lost during the Bush years. And THAT is the story that the MSM ignores. Listen how Colin Powell (albeit in a very removed, third person kind of way that doesn t acknowledge the role he played) says how bad things are now, how we ve lost our standing globally, how we ve been dealing with incompetent leadership that doesn t doesn t reflect America s goodness or vision: BLITZER: Who’s your candidate for President of the United States? POWELL: I am watching this race with the greatest of interest and I know all of the leading candidates now. I don’t know Mr. Huckabee as well I know Mr. McCain and senator Obama and uh and Sen. Clinton. But I’m watching this and I will ultimately vote for the person I believe brings to the American people the kind of vision the American people want to see for the next four years. A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world and starts to restore confidence in America. And starts to restore favorable ratings to America, frankly. We’ve lost a lot in recent years. I’m going to be looking for the candidate that seems to me to be leading a party that is fully in sync with the candidate and the party will also reflect America’s goodness and America’s vision. And I’ll be looking for the candidate that I think will be the most competent candidate. The one who can deal with problems and bring the government together with the Congress to solve these problems. And so I know them all. I’m a Republican but I’m keeping my options open at the moment, and I’m in touch with the candidates. And anybody wants to talk to me about an issue, I’ll do so. But sooner or later, as any other American, I will make my choice. I don t know about you, but that doesn t sound like McCain would be his candidate, does it?

This morning on CNN s Late Edition, The Beard uses a hit piece by the Washington Post s Dan Balz to show how some people see John Edwards as an angry, partisan and divisive candidate who has angered many Democrats. Download (517) | Play (634) Download (395) | Play (378) To be honest, I m happy with all the Democratic candidates we ve had to chose from and I m ecstatic about the huge number of Democrats who have shown up so far to vote this primary season but Edwards has gotten the shaft from the media and is not well liked by the wealthy elite who own them, so it s not surprising to see him being attacked for his populist message. There has been a growing chorus of pundits referring to Edwards as a possible Kingmaker, giving his delegates to Obama at the end of the primary season, but it doesn t appear that s even a consideration for him. Edwards handles the angry accusations exactly the way you d expect him to: Edwards: What I have said, and I stand by it and I believe it, is there are very well financed, entrenched interests in Washington that stand between America and the progress that needs to be made. And until we have a president who s willing to take those interests on, nothing will change

Download (960) | Play (788) Download (669) | Play (378) Joe Biden says the U.S. should consider Pat Leahy s proposal that U.S. aid to the Musharraf government should stop until constitutional order, civil liberties and judicial independence are restored, until political prisoners are released, and until free and fair elections are allowed. That s probably not a bad idea, especially seeing as how we re just finding out that the great bulk of the more than $10 billion we ve given to Pakistan since 9/11 has been in the form of unsupervised and unaudited cash transfers with which Musharraf has been free to do whatever he wants. He then sums up what we re facing in Pakistan right now about as well as anyone: Blitzer: How worried are you Senator about Pakistan s nuclear arsenal: the security of those nuclear bombs? Biden: I m very concerned about it, not immediately but over the next year to two years. Look Wolf, Pakistan is bigger than Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea combined. There s 156 million people. They have 24 to 55 nuclear weapons. They have not only the bomb, the thermonuclear device, they have the missile that can couple with the bomb and it can fly all the way to the Mediterranean. I mean, here we re fixating on Iran and here you have a country that in fact if you don t get some accommodation for the vast middle of that country, I worry that over time you wind up with a situation like you had with the Shah of Iran 30 years ago. The moderates got so frustrated, they joined with the extremists. What happened? The Shah got overthrown, then the moderates got crushed by the extremists. This is not an easy thing. This requires a policy, an overall policy including an Afghan policy which affects what s going on in Pakistan. That s why many now consider Pakistan to be The Most Dangerous Nation in the World. Emptywheel asks if you feel safer yet when the White House refuses to discuss the Pakistani nuclear program publicly.

Download (2558) | Play (2913) Download (1163) | Play (1484) (thanks to Dan for vids) What an amazingly refreshing and grown up admission from a former member of the Bush Administration. When shown a clip of Valerie Plame Wilson castigating him for revealing her identity to Robert Novak by Wolf Blitzer, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has really only one thing to say: She s right. Download (1397) | Play (1467) Download (358) | Play (725) In the second clip, Wolf asks Armitage about his work with the CSIS Commission on Smart Power. Armitage s response to the way that Bush War on Terror sounds amazingly like a *gasp!* progressive position: BLITZER: Are you suggesting that the “War on Terror” is not the central component of U.S. policy right now? ARMITAGE: There’s two different things. I’m suggesting that it perhaps shouldn’t be. The fact that we make a war on “terror” which I think is a bit of a misnomer—perhaps it should be a war on extremism, certainly Islamic extremism right now—is keeping us from focusing on other issues, both domestic and international. Look, these terrorists want to hurt us; they’re a real and growing threat. But absent the availability of WMDs to them, they don’t pose an existential threat to us. This is not like fascism during the second world war or communism. The threat they pose to us is whether we in response to their activities will actually do harm to ourselves by changing our way of life, by suspending writs of habeas corpus and by engaging in such activities as torture.

(guest blogged by Bill W.) Download (1932) | Play (1930) Download (1684) | Play (868) Huckabee, behind in the polls and not wanting to be outdone by the we must go to war with Iran Giuliani campaign, went on Late Edition this Sunday morning and tried his best to prove he s just as capable of starting an unnecessary war based on bad intelligence as any other Republican candidate. Repeating the lie that Ahmadinejad said he wants to destroy Israel, Huckabee swears he will do whatever it takes, and will not even rule out using tactical nukes in doing so. Huckabee: I think the President s right with trying to bankrupt them before we bomb them. That s a good way to start. He also thinks that Saddam really did have WMDs. Just because we never found them yet doesn t mean he didn t have them; and if he s elected President, the first thing he s going to do is dig up the end-zone in Giants Stadium to look for them. (OK, I made that last part up, but not by much).