Thomas Friedman has a truly frightening column in today's NY Times. He writes about how Iraq is so close to the tipping point:

The fate of the entire U.S. enterprise in Iraq now hangs in the balance, as the war has entered a dangerous new phase. It is the phase of barbaric identity-card violence between Sunnis and Shiites. In the late 1970's, I covered a similar moment in Lebanon, and the one thing I learned was this: Once this kind of venom gets unleashed — with members of each community literally beheading each other on the basis of their religious identities — it poisons everything. You enter a realm that is beyond politics, a realm where fear and revenge dominate everyone's thinking — and that is where Iraq is heading.
<..>
Once embedded, this cycle of fear and revenge is almost impossible to break. People conclude that the only thing that can protect them is a militia from their own sect, not the police or the army. Then these militias, which come to life to protect the neighborhood, take on a life of their own. They develop protection rackets, feel the thrill of power and, as that happens, start to do all they can to prevent the government from restoring its authority. Finally, as the BBC noted in a recent report from Baghdad, some Iraqi politicians are now concluding that "they can gain more power and influence from building on sectarian loyalties than from appeals for national unity." When politicians decide they can get ahead by appealing more to fear than to hope, national reconciliation goes up in smoke.

A Baghdad blogger, the Mesopotamian, quoted by AndrewSullivan.com...."I don't know anymore what can be done to rescue the situation. At least, those who are supposed to be in positions of responsibility should stop lying and painting a false picture. ... I regret sounding so pessimistic, but the alarm must be sounded. ... What is happening is Baghdad is something really awful."
<..>
The Iraqi Shiite community showed remarkable restraint in the face of the murderous provocations by these Islamo-nihilist gangs during the past three years. But that restraint is over. It's now clear that some Shiite militias are ready to match the Sunni nihilists, killing for killing. So the slide into a medieval barbarism has begun.

Do not believe any of the Bush team's happy talk. It doesn't matter if Iraq is quiet in the south and quiet in the north. If Baghdad, the heart of the country, is being ripped apart, then there is no Iraq — because there is no center.

Friedman is right. In the next few months, look for the insurgent violence to escalate mainly in and around Baghdad. As goes that key central city, so goes the entire country -- and the militias know this fact full well. While Iraq may be fairly large geographically, when it comes to obtaining power the acknowledged reality is only a small part of the country needs to be conquered.

Listen to the Dean

Today John Dean testified before a Senate committee concerning Feingold's move to censure Bush:

(CBS/AP) Nixon White House counselor John Dean asserted Friday that President Bush's domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss from power, and a veteran Republican snapped that Democrats were trying to "score political points" with a motion to censure Mr. Bush.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented," Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

Testifying to a Senate committee on Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold's resolution to censure Mr. Bush, Dean said the president "needs to be told he cannot simply ignore a law with no consequences."
<..>
"To me, this is not really and should not be a partisan question," Dean told the panel. "I think it's a question of institutional pride of this body, of the Congress of the United States."

He added in prepared testimony that if Congress doesn't have the stomach for Feingold's resolution as drafted, it should pass some measure serving Mr. Bush a warning.

"The resolution should be amended, not defeated, because the president needs to be reminded that separation of powers does not mean an isolation of powers," Dean said in prepared remarks.

And Sen. Orin Hatch had this to say:

Hatch said that passing a censure resolution would do more harm than good.

"Wartime is not a time to weaken the commander-in-chief," he said.

Oh give me a break! Enough of this "wartime" bullsh*t. So the commander-in-thief gets a free pass to break laws as long as this Iraq debacle continues. What an incentive to invade other countries and keep this "wartime" thing going!

Immigration

Another Karl Rove red-light special, an issue picked to inflame and arouse the base, but even more so to wag-the-dog by getting the MSM's attention off of Iraq and the countless other bad news items of the day. Rove has to give Rush and O'Reilly something new to talk about since promiscuity in teens has been played out and welfare abuse is just so 1990s.

So don't fall for it (although I see just this past week that Will, Tierney, and even Krugman have written columns about the issue). Karl wants you to take the bait and get mad as hell! Just don't. Always remind yourself we have much more pressing, important things to be fretting about than the folks who pick our vegetables, mow our lawns, clean our hotel rooms, and do so many of the other jobs most people in this country simply won't do.

From Media Matters:

Media ignored, underreported NY Times disclosure of explosive Bush-Blair memo

Since a March 27 New York Times article confirmed that a leaked British memo appears to contradict President Bush's repeated claim prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that he wanted to avoid war, media have failed to note the full significance of the document and in some cases ignored the story altogether.
<..>
Bush's positions as reported in the memo -- that U.N. inspectors were unlikely to find weapons, that military action would occur with or without the U.N.'s backing, that the war was unavoidable -- directly contradict many of his public statements in the weeks leading up to the invasion. Between that January 31 meeting and the start of the war on March 19, 2003, the president repeatedly told the American people that he was doing everything possible to avoid military action.

Yeah, it's called telling a lie, over and over. Clinton lied about blowjobs and it was treated as if he sold five of our nuclear bombs to Osama himself! Meanwhile, this memo appears offering evidence that GW was determined to take the U.S. to war against Iraq, regardless of what was found using inspections and diplomatic efforts, and then he lies about it to this date, and yet we hear nothing. No outrage, nothing. So apparently the public considers fibs about blowjobs to be MUCH worse than fibs about going to war on false pretenses (considered treason), resulting in over 2300 dead U.S. soldiers.... Just so I understand....

"No, that's okay, we got it covered, just let us honest folks look into our own dishonest deeds.... Trust us, we'll get back to you with any violations.""

"On a 67-30 vote, the Senate defeated a bipartisan proposal to create an office of public integrity, which its backers said was designed to strengthen enforcement of Senate rules and bolster voters' trust in Congress in the wake of the guilty plea in January of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff." -- LA Times

Look for more changes to come soon:

In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Although the situation remains fluid, it's possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation.

From the LA Times:

Following four years of study, senior EPA scientists came to an alarming conclusion: The solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE, was as much as 40 times more likely to cause cancer than the EPA had previously believed.
<..>
By 2003, after a prolonged challenge orchestrated by the Pentagon, the EPA lost control of the issue and its TCE assessment was cast aside. As a result, any conclusion about whether millions of Americans were being contaminated by TCE was delayed indefinitely.

What happened with TCE is a stark illustration of a power shift that has badly damaged the EPA's ability to carry out one of its essential missions: assessing the health risks of toxic chemicals.
<..>
If the EPA's 2001 draft risk assessment was correct, then possibly thousands of the nation's birth defects and cancers every year are due in part to TCE exposure, according to several academic experts.

"It is a World Trade Center in slow motion," said Boston University epidemiologist David Ozonoff, a TCE expert. "You would never notice it."

Great to see that the Pentagon protects us with bombs (paid for, handsomely, by us), but then works overtime to (slowly) kill us anyway. It helps when you have an administration that is in your back pocket and doesn't care about the public's health.

David Ozonoff makes an excellent point. Kill thousands of people suddenly, in one fell swoop, and it certainly gets noticed. But slowly kill off a portion of the population and it never gets the attention and public outrage it deserves. Just look at global warming: while over time it will be a disaster for the entire planet, it's not occurring at a fast enough pace to cause any sudden and fatal effects, and thus it's a big yawn.

From MSNBC:

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction is expected to issue a harshly critical report in May concluding that the CPA did not have disciplined contracting procedures in place, according to several people involved in drafting the report. If the Democrats manage to get control of the House later this year, it's all going to come in an avalanche of subpoenas and new investigations.

Just imagine if this were Clinton in office, we'd never hear the end of the cries of incompetence and foul-play, the neverending investigations -- and all of it would be justified! "Rule of law" my ass....

LA Times: Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried by wild birds migrating thousands of miles to their summer breeding grounds. The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe. "We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts. The hope was once that culling millions of chickens and ducks would contain or even eradicate the virus. Now, the strategy has shifted toward managing a disease that will probably be everywhere.

Given this administration's record of bunglings (Iraq, Katrina, prescription bill rollout, etc.), are you really that confident that they'll properly handle and be prepared for the bird flu arrival? Yeah, I didn't think so.

USA Today reports some good Iraq news: medical innovation due to war casualties/victims & constraints -- why, that's great! Let's invade Syria and Iran and who knows, a cure for cancer may be the result!

Mark Halperin on Card out, Bolten in: "While there are differences between the men to be sure, the change is likely to have as much impact on the Bush administration as the change from Dick York to Dick Sargent playing Darrin had on "Bewitched"....No Republican sources close to the White House are suggesting that Bolten's tenure will see any major shifts in the Bush agenda."

Translation: same old same old re incompetence.

I guess the MSM was covering too much bad news in Iraq to bother mentioning this little-known memo....

2,323: the number of U.S. soldiers that have died in Iraq -- why doesn't the MSM broadcast this bad news? Where's the outrage from Americans, the disgust? The number is fast approaching the figure of those killed on 9/11.

Suggestion: get a jar of pennies, 2,323 of them. Pour them out on a bed, spread them out, all around, then take a good look at them. Lots of them, right? It helps bring the number home. Imagine Lincoln's face as individual soldier faces -- or even your son(s) and/or daughter(s). Make a difference now?

Remember that flawed Pew study that showed Republicans are happier than Democrats (hmm, did they control for income, quality of life differences, etc.? Or ignorance (is bliss)?)? Well, here's a study that shows whiny brats grow up to be conservative. From William Saletan of Slate.com:

They "turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests." The authors suspect "insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority," whereas "the more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives." This matches a 2003 analysis that suggested "people who are dogmatic, fearful, [and] intolerant of ambiguity ... are more likely to gravitate to conservatism."

That last part -- "intolerant of ambiguity" -- is something I've regularly observed in most right-wingers, the need for black-and-white stark clarity and why the Limbaughs and O'Reillys deliver just that. It's also one reason why I renamed my blog.

The normally milktoast-lame John Dickerson had some refreshingly feisty words to say about GW's latest floundering tactic regarding the war:

In the fall of 2003, the president complained the media filter was distorting the news out of Iraq, and during the 2004 campaign, Bush political advisers told me about discussions in which they flirted with getting into a public debate with the New York Times over its war coverage as a way to build public support for the president.
<..>
No matter how many upbeat stories one might hear about better electricity or rebuilt schools in Iraq, it's never going to balance out the horror of violence. And it shouldn't. To talk about press bias in response to questions about violence suggests an equivalence between dead soldiers and new hospitals. An increase in the number of positive stories is not going to rebuild support for Bush's policies.

The genie is out of the bottle on that front. Just look at most Republicans scrambling to create as much distance between themselves and GW/Cheney.

Even assuming this latest MSM bashing rings true (it doesn't), why is it we never heard similar harsh criticism from the right about the media's lapdog, water-carrying coverage leading up to the war? Where was their objectivity then (in particular, the "liberal" NY Times)? It's a two-way street.

"Economic growth used to shrink the top and bottom while expanding the middle. Now, for reasons that are also partly mysterious, it does the opposite." Partly mysterious, Mike? Really? But since 1980, the gap between CEO pay and the average worker has exploded by more than ten times: in 2004, the average CEO made $11.8 mil., which was 431x more than the average worker, as compared to 1980, when the average CEO made "just" 42x more. Also, in 2004 the typical CEO received a raise of 15% while the average worker got just a 2.9% bump up in pay. (And note that about 1/4 of CEO pay is from bonuses).

I don't think there's much mystery as to why economic growth is not "expanding the middle" like in the good old days....

What I don't understand is many of the rightwing hack writers make stuff up all the time -- why the need to outright plagiarize?? Dishonest and lazy.

On your mark, get set -- BLAME THE MEDIA FOR YOUR FAILINGS AS FAST AS YOU CAN! (including FOX News)

What warms Karl Rove's big belly:

WASHINGTON — Gay rights advocates are pushing to legalize same-sex marriage with an unprecedented wave of lawsuits in state courts, while those seeking to ban such unions are gaining ground in state legislatures.

Culture war, it's the only thing Rove and the GOP have left. Fan the flames of hate and intolerance (note the ironic parallels to the Afghan man who converted to Christianity), incite the narrow-minded base, whatever it takes to get those votes.

Problem is perhaps the people are beginning to become more tolerant and accepting just when Rove needs to go to the "hate well" one more time:

Gay marriage remains a divisive issue, with 51% opposing it, the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found. But almost two-thirds, 63%, opposed gay marriage in February 2004.

"Most Americans still oppose gay marriage, but the levels of opposition are down and the number of strong opponents are down," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "This has some implications for the midterm elections if this trend is maintained."

A recent story in the LA Times was entitled, "Some U.S. Officials Fear Iran Is Helping Al Qaeda." Kevin Drum commented, "we've been down this road before. Only an idiot would believe the Bush administration a second time around unless they have some awfully good evidence to share with us."

Another example of how Bush's regular use of lies and deception has made us a less safe nation. Reasonable, reality-based people have come to learn they can't trust this administration about nearly anything. Now suppose this news concerning Iran and Al Qaeda is in fact true. Because BushCo has lost all credibility, we're correctly skeptical about everything coming from them. Per chance that something does come down the pike that is actually true, we'll have no way of knowing since all trust has been squandered.

We have a "boy who cried wolf" president -- thanks to his purposeful and negligent dishonesty, and we're much less safe because of it. Tragically, now more than ever, we may never know fact from fiction when it comes to imminent threats facing us -- and BushCo is solely to blame.

The Guy James Show

Fortunately, he's back. Guy James is once again on the air, only now we get to hear him Monday-Friday, two hours each day. You can hear his show via White Rose Society. Guy is simply one of the best liberal voices on radio, along with Mike Malloy and Tom Hartmann.

After viewing GW's recent press conference, Guy rightfully described Jr. as a "jerk," an arrogant, condescending, and most of all ignorant man who is all about power and getting his way and who couldn't care in the least about governing responsibly, with compassion and humility, not to mention with the Constitution always in mind. Guy stated while he didn't agree with the agendas of Nixon or Reagan, and even much of Dem LBJ's, he never believed that those men were jerks.

Though this distinction may sound overly trite and frank, it's an important one. It's one thing to have someone leading the country who you disagree with and yet can respect as a person. That's just not the case with this frat-house dunce, who even if for some unknown reasons you agree with his actions and views over the last 5+ years must admit he's a first-class A-Hole who deserves to already be ranked as our worst president ever, by far.

$8.965 Trillion: The nation’s new debt limit after Bush on Monday signed into law a $781 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority. Good to see those supply-side tax cuts have done much to solving our deficit problem (recall supply-side logic: cut taxes and revenue comes streaming in, and good-bye deficits).

$46+ Trillion: The federal government's fiscal exposure, up from $20 trillion in 2000, as reported by U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. Yes, in just six years this figure has more than doubled! Good to see the GOP-controlled everything has our fiscal house in good order....

300,000 Acres: Amount of national forest land the Bush administration plans to sell off to pay for other government programs. So to pay down the deficit, because tax cuts have only worsened the problem, we're now going to sell of our trees....? And the public just stupidly goes along with this....?

Cheney shows up at a fund-raiser and yet the candidate never showed -- seemingly dodging being seen with the ever-popular VP. Can you blame him? Get used to this trend (recall my post about how they'd rather run in '06 and '08 with old photos of Reagan than new ones of GW/Cheney).

Paul Krugman writes today:

"The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is 'incompetent,' and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: 'idiot' and 'liar.' " So says the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, whose most recent poll found that only 33 percent of the public approves of the job President Bush is doing.

He says beyond just the failure of Bush, "we're looking at the failure of a movement....Most of the conservatives now rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Bush still can't bring themselves to criticize his actual policies."

In light of the abysmal polls, those on the right see it politically expedient to criticize in general an unpopular president, but when it come to specifics, they're very careful. They avoid bashing all of the many things gone wrong in the last five years -- most of which are policies and actions long endorsed by the right and yet provide for the fuel behind GW's low poll numbers -- and instead attack the easy stuff, like overspending. They'll always go to the well when it comes to badmouthing "handouts' to the "lazy" poor or even pork projects, though conservatives have ruled the roost for the last half decade and are more guilty of such wasteful spending than liberals. Also, it's funny how you didn't hear any of them criticize the president for this runaway spending when 1) Bush's numbers were better, and 2) when the spending helped their chances for reelection.

Krugman writes how they "can't criticize the decision to start this war without facing up to their own complicity in that decision" nor can they pounce on the mismanagement of the war given their "years of insisting that things were going well in Iraq and denouncing anyone who said otherwise." (He also quotes William Kristol saying we never made a "serious effort" in Iraq; uh, $500 billion and 2300+ US soldiers dead = not serious?).

The bottom line is right wingers are finding it easiest to shoot the down-and-out messenger and not the message. The messenger is exceedingly lame with limited political life, yet the message continues to be this mythical bunch of hooey that many Americans still believe in -- like brainwashed zombies. To attack the message is to attack the very foundation of what these rightwing politicians run on. If they begin to peck away at the core beliefs, most of which have been tried and failed in the last five years, then they've got nothing left.

Although it's fundamentally wrong, what they're doing makes sense when you consider their alternatives -- they have none. Hello, Democrats, are you listening? ATTACK!

Regarding Feingold's censure motion, Kevin Drum simply states it's serving as a distraction:

Is this really helping convince the public that Bush deliberately and repeatedly violated the law when he approved the NSA program? I'm not seeing it. Political theater is only useful if it actually shines the spotlight into the dark corner where we want it shined, and Feingold's censure motion doesn't really seem to have done that. Instead of pinning our hopes on yet another bright and shiny silver bullet, maybe there's a place for all those boring hearings and investigations after all.