Is it Civil War yet?

Yes, according to everyone but the reality-deniers-in-charge.

Bush's folly has endangered the entire Middle East.

Sectarian Strife in Iraq Imperils Entire Region, Analysts Warn

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 16, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- While American commanders have suggested that civil war is possible in Iraq, many leaders, experts and ordinary people in Baghdad and around the Middle East say it is already underway, and that the real worry ahead is that the conflict will destroy the flimsy Iraqi state and draw in surrounding countries.

Whether the U.S. military departs Iraq sooner or later, the United States will be hard-pressed to leave behind a country that does not threaten U.S. interests and regional peace, according to U.S. and Arab analysts and political observers.

Bush attacks Americans on Foreign Soil

In Asia, Bush takes on Democrats at home

SINGAPORE - From across the world, President Bush took on anti-war and anti-free trade Democrats who won control of Congress, saying Thursday any drift toward isolationism would hinder America's security and economic vitality.

"We hear voices calling for us to retreat from the world and close our doors to its opportunities," he said in a speech at the National University of Singapore. "These are the old temptations of isolationism and protectionism, and America must reject them."

My, my. Aren't we told by the right-wingers - including Bush's father - that it's a the Crime of the Century to criticize America on Foreign Soil (said with appropriate music playing in the background, of course)?

And I love "isolationist." Apparently, Bush thinks not wanting to nation-build and start foreign wars for no good reason is the same thing as being an isolationist.

And when are this guy's supporters - who, unlike Democrats, often actually ARE isolationists - going to realize that George W. Bush is the biggest globalist and internationalist we've ever had as President? The man is only American as an accident of birth.

Helmet Head Returns

Heh.

Trent Lott Wins Back Leadership Slot

WASHINGTON -- Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, ousted from the top Senate Republican leadership job four years ago because of remarks considered racially insensitive, won election to the chamber's No. 2 GOP post Wednesday.

What a GREAT WAY to signal to America that you are changing direction: recycle your old leadership.

What did they do? Hold a caucus to determine what would be the single stupidest move?

It pisses off the base. It gives giant ammo to the Democrats. It cements their
image as a pack of racists. It pleases NOBODY, except (I guess) Trent Lott.

Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott. Nothing says "Stuck on Stupid" like it.

Don't forget the levees

Ashley Morris puts it VERY succintly.

A Democrat's best friend

George W. Bush.

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that President Bush may have been the deciding factor that killed the GOP's momentum in some key Senate races over the last week. One Republican consultant is convinced that Bush's last-minute visit to Missouri on behalf of ousted GOP Sen. Jim Talent did the incumbent in. According to the network exit polls, Democrat Claire McCaskill crushed Talent among those late-breaking voters who decided in the final three days (a full 11 percent of the electorate). Bush also made a last-minute trip to Montana, where anecdotal evidence indicates the president's rally for Republican Conrad Burns stopped the incumbent's momentum in Billings.

Liberal Madia

Some clown send death threats and white powder to Nancy Pelosi, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Chuck Schumer and Keith Olbermann.

The article doesn't mention that every single one of them - whether politician, pundit or entertainer - is known to be very critical of George W. Bush.

An oversight, I'm sure.

Bush meets with Demcrats

The president, along with Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser chief Stephen Hadley, will meet Monday with a bipartisan panel studying the war in Iraq. - AP

But, wait a minute. I thought those Democrats were all traitors. Are you telling me that our President is meeting with traitors?

A tribute to 12 years of Republican Majority

Armistice Day

May this one finally BE the War to End All Wars.


Porkypine: "Y'know, it seems to me this is all backwards... We, ever'body, ought to keep our big mouths shut all the whole year long so's we'd have time to think of two minutes' worth of somethin' to say on the eleventh day of November."

Maureen Dowd

MoDo got the mojo.

Drapes of Wrath
By MAUREEN DOWD

The new Democratic sweep conjures up an ancient image: Furies swooping down to punish bullies.

Angry winged goddesses with dog heads, serpent hair and blood eyes, unmoved by tears, prayer, sacrifice or nasty campaign ads, avenging offenses by insolent transgressors.

This will be known as the year macho politics failed — mainly because it was macho politics by marshmallow men. Voters were sick of phony swaggering, blustering and bellicosity, absent competency and accountability. They were ready to trade in the deadbeat Daddy party for the sheltering Mommy party.

All the conservative sneering about a fem-lib from San Francisco who was measuring the drapes for the speaker’s office didn’t work. Americans wanted new drapes, and an Armani granny with a whip in charge.

A recent study found that the testosterone of American men has been dropping for 20 years, but in Republican Washington, it was running amok, and not in a good way. Men who had refused to go to an untenable war themselves were now refusing to find an end to another untenable war that they had recklessly started.

Republicans were oddly oblivious to the fact that they had turned into a Thomas Nast cartoon: an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney sneaking out of Congress with dollar bills flying out of their pockets. Denny Hastert playing Cardinal Bernard Law, shielding Mark Foley. Rummy, cocky and obtuse as he presided over an imploding Iraq, while failing to give young men and women in the military the armor, support and strategy they needed to come home safely. Dick Cheney, vowing bullheadedly to move “full speed ahead” on Iraq no matter what the voters decided. W. frantically yelling about how Democrats would let the terrorists win, when his lame-brained policies had spawned more terrorists.

After 9/11, Americans had responded to bellicosity, drawn to the image, as old as the Western frontier myth, of the strong father protecting the home from invaders. But this time, many voters, especially women, rejected the rough Rovian scare and divide tactics.

The macho poses and tough talk of the cowboy president were undercut when he seemed flaccid in the face of the vicious Katrina and the vicious Iraq insurgency.

Even former members of the administration conceded they were tired of the muscle-bound style, longing for a more maternal approach to the globe. “We were exporting our anger and our fear, hatred for what had happened,” Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, said in a speech in Australia, referring to the 9/11 attacks. He said America needed “to turn another face to the world and get back to more traditional things, such as the export of hope and opportunity and inspiration.”

Talking about hope and opportunity and inspiration has propelled Barack Obama into the presidential arena. His approach seems downright feminine when compared with the Bushies, or even Hillary Clinton. He languidly poses in fashion magazines, shares feelings with Oprah and dishes with the ladies on “The View.” After six years of chest-puffing, Senator Obama seems very soothing.

Because of the power of female consumers, some marketing experts predict we will end up a matriarchy. This year, women also flexed their muscle at the polls, transformed into electoral Furies by the administration’s stubborn course in Iraq.

On Tuesday, 51 percent of the voters were women, and 55 percent of women voted for the Democratic candidate. It was a revival of the style of Bill Clinton, dubbed our first female president, who knitted together a winning coalition of independents, moderates and suburbanites.

According to The Times’s exit polls, women were more likely than men to want some or all of the troops to be withdrawn from Iraq now, and 64 percent of women said that the war in Iraq has not improved U.S. security.

The Senate has a new high of 16 women and the House has a new high of at least 70, with a few races outstanding. Hillary’s big win will strengthen her presidential tentacles.

Nancy Pelosi, who will be the first female speaker, softened her voice and look as she cracked the whip on her undisciplined party, taking care not to sound shrill. When she needs to, though, she says she can use her “mother-of-five voice.”

At least for the moment, W. isn’t blustering and Cheney has lost his tubby swagger. The president is trying to ride the Mommy vibe. He even offered Madame Speaker help with those new drapes.

"Donald Rumsfeld , the fellow once hailed as a matinee idol for older women who watch C-SPAN, bungled every major decision in the war: how many troops to send (not enough); whether or not to dissolve the Iraqi army (he did); whether or not to mount an extensive de-Baathification campaign (he did); how to respond to the looting and the incipient insurgency in the weeks and months after the invasion (not expeditiously). Of course, Rumsfeld was wrong on the WMD question, and he was wrong to declare before the invasion that the war would last less than six months. His Pentagon was a home to neoconservative war advocates who cherry-picked intelligence data and factoids to craft the false case that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda. In the years after the invasion, Rumsfeld routinely and falsely claimed the Pentagon was making significant progress in training Iraqi security forces. Looking at his management of the war, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that a local weatherman using a Magic Eight Ball could have done better."

David Corn

If you think YOU'RE relieved...

Iraqis cheer Rumsfeld departure
09/11/2006 12:45 - (SA)

Baghdad - Iraqis on Thursday cheered the resignation of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, blaming him for policy failures and scandals they say helped spawn the daily sectarian carnage wracking their nation.

"Rumsfeld's resignation shows the scale of the mess the US has made in Iraq," said Ibrahim Ali, 44, who works at the oil ministry. "The efforts by American politicians to hide their failure are no longer working."

What were they thinking?

Ok, hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but when I think about the way things have been done by the Republicans in the last couple of years, I can't imagine what they were thinking, or WHY they thought it was a good idea.

For two years, they have been accusing everyone who was against the war, or didn't like Bush, of little things like treason.

Did they think that they could accuse people of treason, and still get their votes?

Did they think that it was a good idea to accuse New Yorkers of supporting the scum that flew jumbo jets into the World Trade Center, devastated their city and killed their friends? Didn't they realize that that would make the people so accused completely FURIOUS?

And when every single survey showed that Americans were sick of the Iraqi war, why didn't the Republicans actually try and figure out if maybe there was a REAL REASON for that? Instead, the response was to just call all of those people the filtheist names, and accuse them all of being TRAITORS and supporters of terrorists.

Did they not realize that in the last two years they were saying that about the majority of Americans?

And the idiots in Congress - what were they thinking?

Why would you rubberstamp every whim of a President with a 38% approval rating? Why would you think that that was a good idea? And why would you then expect the 60% who don't like him to vote for you?

"I don't like what Bush is trying to do."

"Well, as long as I'm in office, he can do anything he wants, traitor. Now vote for me."

Idiots.

Bitch-slapped twice

Lame Duck Senate Won't Approve Bolton

(CBS/AP) John Bolton's prospects for staying on as U.N. ambassador essentially died Thursday as Democrats and a pivotal Republican said they would continue to oppose his nomination during this year's lame-duck session of Congress.

Lincoln Chafee, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that he did not believe Bolton's nomination would move forward without his support.

"The American people have spoken out against the president's agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy," the Rhode Island moderate told The Associated Press.

"And at this late stage in my term, I'm not going to endorse something the American people have spoke out against."

It DOES tell you something about Bush, though, that the first thing he does after being bitch-slapped by the American People is play MORE games and try and ram through something ELSE that they don't like.

This is the sort of crap that caused the Republicans to lose Tuesday.

And Thursday, Bush tries more of the same.

Chafee gets it.

Bush, however, is apparently incapable of learning.

Rummy to be charged with war crimes?

The president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, is heading to Germany today to file a new case charging outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with war crimes for authorizing torture at Guantanamo Bay.

Would Rumsfeld stepping down leave him open to prosecution? In 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a criminal complaint in Germany on behalf of several Iraqi citizens who alleged that a group of U.S. officials committed war crimes in Iraq. Rumsfeld was among the officials named in the complaint. The Iraqis claimed they were victims of electric shock, severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation and sexual abuse.

Here's the interview with the guy who is filing the complaint.

You KNEW Bush wouldn't stop

Bush is trying to ram Bolton's nomination through before the Republicans become the Minority in January.

White House resubmits Bolton nomination
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Congressional source says the White House has re-submitted the nomination of UN Ambassador John Bolton to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an effort to get it considered during the lame duck session.
--CNN Correspondent Andrea Koppel

You didn't think the asshole would actually listen to America, did you?

Now is the time to filibuster. What can they do about it?

Allen conceded. It's official. Democrats control the Senate.

Memory Hole II

At 10 am this morning, the Stock Market started a little down. The AP said:

"Stocks Fall on Election Results ~ Stocks Fall After Democratic Congressional Wins"

With a little gloating copy, anti-Democrat copy:

Wall Street retreated Wednesday after Democrats scored a huge victory in congressional elections, raising questions about how sympathetic the federal government will be toward business.

Investors had largely expected Democrats to win control of the House of Representatives for the first time in a dozen years, but still undecided Senate races in Montana and Virginia that left the leadership of that house unclear created the type of uncertainty investors dislike.

Then, later in the morning, the thing turns around, and the SAME LINK says:

"Stocks rise after Democratic election wins ~ Wall Street welcomes big Democratic victory; Dow hits a new high"