You want to see a guy with real moral clarity (unlike the sniveling, spineless GW), watch George Galloway kick some GOP ass.

WASHINGTON — The State Department, moving to react to damage it says was caused by a Newsweek magazine article alleging U.S. desecration of the Koran, is ordering its embassies to spread the word abroad that America respects all religious faiths.

This task is that much more of a tall-order given you have an administration that's in bed with the religious right. Another problem that comes with a president who so overtly endorses one religion. Anyone willing to link Muslim unrest to this fact?

I smell something - and it ain’t a copy of the Qu’ran sopping wet from being stuck in a toilet in Guantanamo Bay. It’s the ink drying on Scott McClellan’s resignation, and in an only partly imperfect world, it would be drifting out over Washington, and imminently.
-- Keith Olbermann

Read Keith's entire entry, it's great.

Once again, the GOP is overreaching, and once again, let's hope they pay for it.

A very good article by Morgan Stanley's chief economist, Stephen Roach, appears in TIME Asia. He discusses how Congress (on both sides of the aisle) appears to be readying to launch a trade war with China. The demand? That China revalue its currency -- something that is not likely to happen.

It's a no-brainer for politicians as many of them are not trained in economics (otherwise they'd realize the folly of their ways) and yet what they do fully comprehend is that this economic recovery has been the weakest on record when it comes to hiring and providing growing wages. Millions of Americans are not participating in this near-ghost-like recovery so what better than for politicians to feed off of this misery and hoist up a boogeyman.

The problem is China is not the problem. If anything, we should be thanking them. If it weren't for China, we'd have much less access to low-cost, high-quality products (thank you Walmart!), inflation would therefore be much higher, and also they buy our debt, helping to fund our whopping deficit. In addition, as Roach points out, the corporations in China are not Chinese per say but rather multinational corporations. It's like the scene in the classic movie, "Network," when Ned Beatty explains that there are no countries, but instead just huge multinational firms.

Sorry to say but we have met the enemy and we are they. The Fed's low rates after the internet bubble collapse has fueled and lengthened the American appetite for consumption. Greenspan has simply delayed the pain (Volcker has recently stated such publicly). Also, as Roach states, if the federal budget deficit were not as huge, our trade deficit would be lower, thus the politicians are also to blame.

I'll write more about this tomorrow, but make no mistake, this topic is a big one and it shows some disconcerting signs of becoming a game of U.S./China chicken.

Kevin Drum:

Anyway, let's get some things straight:

Newsweek's source blew it. But it was a source they had used before and they had no reason not to trust him.

Hundreds of items similar to Newsweek's story have been published in the past year, all of them true. The torture at Abu Ghraib was far worse than this, and other reports of Koran desecration have been published in the past year as well. They inspired no riots, and there was no special reason for Newsweek to think their report would inspire any riots either.

The Taliban stages a resurgence every spring, anti-Americanism has been on the rise for some time, and the rioters in Afghanistan are responsible for the riots in Afghanistan. The Newsweek story is clearly just a pretext, and another story would have done just as well given their obvious animosity toward America.

Under any other circumstances, conservatives would heartily agree. The phony outrage over this is just a cynical excuse for the usual press bashing. Newsweek should buck up.

As near as I can tell, the Pentagon has demonstrated more genuine outrage over this incident than they did over months and months of disclosures of similar (and worse) actions at Abu Ghraib. It's revolting.

Part of me can't help but appreciate the irony of a White House which took the country to war on shaky (and later discredited) evidence going to war against a news organization that published a short article on shaky evidence.

But set that aside.

I haven't followed every particular about the case of this blow-up over the article in Newsweek. But I do see a clear pattern -- a White House trying to decapitate another news organization. -- Josh Marshall

As I wrote, "I find it curious that the White House is bashing Newsweek before receiving more facts on the matter." Josh offers up a hint.

Oh, and as more proof that the GOP treats the public like a bunch of ignorant morons, Josh reports that the Republicans have circulated a memo stating, among other things, to refer to the "nuclear option" as instead the "constitutional option." That's it, somewhere they tested (polled) a bunch of words on some people people off the street to see what was deemed offensive and what wasn't. If you believe otherwise, you're a fool. The GOP has mastered advertising tactics better than many on Madison Ave. -- it's one of Rove's sinister gifts.

Get ready for another CBS-"Rathergate" firestorm from the right wingnut blogosphere, this time directed at Newsweek.

First, if the information was based on a dubious or tenuous source(s), Newsweek should absolutely apologize, issue a retraction, and above all, investigate until they get to the bottom of what went wrong.

That said, let's take a breath and think. Given what happened to CBS, are we to believe Newsweek is stupid enough to repeat? (All together now wingnuts: "Yes!"). If anything, many were concerned that the CBS debacle would make an already toothless news media that much less vigilant.

The initial reports on this today appear to be that government officials serving as sources for the story are frantically back-pedaling. Newsweek intends to thoroughly investigate and I lobby they do so with voracious determination, as Wendy's did concerning the found severed finger. If they find they were at fault, then they deserve the harsh criticism (again, esp. on the heels of the CBS incident). HOWEVER, they may just find out that good sources conveyed good info and yet these sources have been pressured to recant. Note that there's evidence what Newsweek reported is not new news, but rather recycled from prior reports.

Also, was Newsweek expected to know ahead of time that their story would cause such an international uproar? I thought everything was on the improve in the Arab world, particularly as it relates to the U.S.? (Every two weeks, the Wall Street Journal has a column that conveys all the cheery, lesser-known items). What do these intense demonstrations say about the state of affairs when it comes to how the U.S. is perceived by the Muslim community?

Finally, I find it curious that the White House is bashing Newsweek before receiving more facts on the matter. And didn't Rumsfeld once say that such ugly and tragic things happen when building a democracy (i.e. shit happens)? But apparently that all changes when the shoe is on someone else's foot.

A few others have written about LA Times columnist David Gelernter. Let's just say he makes David Brooks appear to be blessed with lucid reason. Gelernter is the poster boy for the right-wing lunatic fringe. With his column last week, Michael Kinsley (his boss) must've really been chuckling.

He starts out bemoaning the many troubles with public schools (despite other studies saying quite the opposite), and yet we finally arrive at the core truth that irks him so: public schools are liberal bastions. Of course! It was just a matter of time until I got to the oft-mentioned wingnut gripe about higher education in general: they're all pinko, commie, leftie, socialist breeding grounds. Sigh.

Better to send your kids to those academic stalwarts Liberty U. or Bob Jones U., two schools that oddly enough never appear on any "Best of" lists. Oh, right, that's because the people behind such lists are leftist, commie, pinko....

Isn't bad enough that we have a president that rules by fear, do we really
need a Pope that does the same?

I couldn't agree more Bruce and Michael:

WHERE WAS James Dobson when 60 of President Bill Clinton's judicial nominees were on hold in the 1990s? Did they, too, deserve an up or down vote? Or is that a privilege reserved solely for Republican nominees?

Dobson is wrong in many ways. He claims that the nominees aren't extreme. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales accused Priscilla Owen of trying to implement "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" when they were both justices on the Texas Supreme Court. Her work on the bench was deemed poor by 47 percent of the Houston Bar Association.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown of California has referred to a Supreme Court ruling in favor of minimum wage laws as ''the triumph of our own socialist revolution." When nominated to the California Supreme Court, Brown was rated unqualified by three-fourths of the California State Bar's Commission on Judicial Nominees.

Dobson claims that ''never in the history of the Senate has a federal judge nominee with obvious majority support in the Senate been held hostage to a filibuster." What of Judge Richard A. Paez, whom Bill Frist, Senate majority leader, voted to filibuster?

Dobson is right about one thing. The Republicans' nuclear option isn't really about Senate rules, traditions, or the reputations of the nominees. It's all about the Republicans getting and keeping power.

BRUCE PERRY
Chestnut Hill

I APPRECIATED seeing James C. Dobson's May 11 op-ed article opposite your editorial, ''A plot against the Senate." This highlighted both the Republicans' hypocrisy on the issue and their willingness to tell untruths while not strictly lying.

President Bush has gotten a higher percentage of judges approved than any president in recent history -- and in a timely fashion. Word-parsing Republicans like Dobson claim that court nominees have never been held up in committee by the filibuster. They ignore the scores of Clinton nominees, mostly non-controversial moderates, whom the Republicans denied up-or-down votes by preventing them from even coming up in committee. Where was Dobson's indignation then?

MICHAEL BIALES
Acton

Regarding Bolton, Voinovich said he's "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be. What message are we sending to the world [by appointing] an ambassador to the United Nations who himself has been accused of being arrogant, of not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally and of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves?"

Tough words indeed, but let's wait and see how he votes. If he votes for Bolton, it would be like an employer saying "this person is simply awful for the job -- you're hired!"

Fred Kaplan summarizes:

It takes enormous self-deception to believe that John Bolton is truly qualified-much less the "best man"-for this job. He has long held the United Nations in contempt. He has disparaged the legitimacy of international law (the basis for enforcing U.N. resolutions). As an undersecretary of state in Bush's first term, he repeatedly sought the removal of intelligence analysts who dared to disagree with him. He was such a loose cannon that Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state, forbade him to say anything in public without prior approval. A half-dozen officials, most of them Republicans who served in this administration, say that Bolton would make-in the words of Colin Powell's chief of staff-"an abysmal ambassador."

Voinovich said today that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured him that Bolton would be firmly supervised in his new job. Voinovich wondered, "Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?"

Meanwhile, a Chinese diplomat has said that Bush's tough language directed at North Korea, referring to Kim Jong Il as a "tyrant" in late April, has "destroyed the atmosphere" for negotiations.

Here's a perfect example of what could go wrong with a swaggering, speak-before-thinking Bolton as our UN face. Just look what his possible-boss did for diplomatic relations by mouthing off.

The world is already in an extremely dangerous and delicate state right now; do we really need to throw an 800 lb. brutish clod into the global china shop?

On another matter, use the Clinton rule ("if Clinton were president....") on this one. Imagine the outcry, it would be investigation galore.

Does anyone still believe that the Republicans stand for smaller government? If you do, first what are you smoking, and second take a good hard look at the following charts.



Source: NTU.org

The yellow bars represent spending cut bills and the orange bars represent spending increase bills, with the green line representing the net difference between spending increase bills to spending cut bills. The 103rd through 106th Congress = Clinton and the 107th through 108th = GW.

Hmm, very interesting. As I tilt my glasses to make sure I'm seeing things correctly, gosh darn if I don't observe that the orange bars are at new highs under GW (higher spending) and the yellow bars at new lows (less spending cuts) when compared to Clinton. This trend is made evident with the green line at its highest level.

And this expression of determined fiscal discipline occurred during the time of a GOP-ruled White House, Senate, and House of Reps. Without one veto from I-make-tough-choices Bush. Is it any wonder our federal deficit is over $400 bil. (not incl. Iraq)?!

The entire GOP is a sham.

From the "You've Got To Be Joking" file:

Conservatives to honor DeLay with gala

From today's LA Times editorial, about the recent energy bill:

If Congress truly wanted to reduce fossil fuel emissions and U.S. reliance on foreign oil — in other words, make rational energy policy — it could easily accomplish the task by raising fuel-efficiency standards for cars and gasoline taxes. As an MIT survey in 2000 showed, manufacturers could push the average fuel economy of American cars from today's 27.5 miles per gallon to 46 miles per gallon merely by taking advantage of existing technologies. That would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by nearly a third and reduce U.S. reliance on Mideast oil by three-fourths.

What a friggin moron!

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger does not want to destroy the moon.

A U.S. political commentator has admitted he failed to check his facts when he erroneously reported on the MSNBC cable news network last month that Schwarzenegger had jokingly advocated doing away with the moon.

In one of the stranger mea culpas from a major U.S. news outlet in recent years, the commentator, Joe Scarborough, a former congressman, acknowledged on Friday that the governor's purported lunar outburst on the nationally syndicated radio show of Howard Stern was actually a spoof.

I'd like to emphasize "failed to check his facts." Not surprising.

Another $80 bil. approved for the Iraq invasion, with the total now well over $200 bil. And more will be needed by October.

Why is it these Iraq spending numbers are excluded when deriving our federal budget deficit (approximately $400 billion)? Including them would have the deficit immediately balloon by another 50%. Unlike Social Security (also excluded), which is a trust fund that's been running for 50+ years and involves no discretion from one administration to the next, going to war is by choice and one that we as taxpayers fund, so why not count it? It will eventually have to be paid off along with everything else, no? That's probably why in prior times when we've gone to war, tax cuts have never been passed, i.e. fiscal discipline and prudence rules it out.

But then we don't really have a responsible leader, do we?

After applying controls to insure apples to apples comparison, public schools are found to outperform private schools. Interesting.

Oh, and recall that after much blabbering about capturing 75% of Al-Qaeda's leaders, when Condi Rice was asked what this meant exactly, she had no clue. On national TV, she (and the administration) was caught in a truly embarrassing moment.

Whelp, we now hear that the Al-Qaeda terrorist caught recently is NOT their third-ranking figure (as GW proclaimed) but rather a chump within the organization, a two-bit nobody “among the flotsam and jetsam.”

Another pronouncement in err. Par for the course. Look for someone to get promoted.

In today's NY Times, George Mitchell offers a voice of reason to what has become a wildly overblown issue. Of course I'm referring to this filibuster nonsense. As always, I recommend the use of the Clinton rule: if Clinton were president, do you think this 60 vs. 51 majority crap would be getting anywhere with the wingnuts? They'd be ballistic. After all, Clinton's confirmation "hit rate" is nearly 10 percentage points less than GW's number. Given the wingers are complaining about 96.6% not being 100%, or about a 3% difference, then Clinton's approx. 10% gap (vs. GW) is huge!

Well heck, why didn't Mitchell and the rest of the Dems propose ending the filibuster back then? Because as Mitchell correctly states:

During my six years as majority leader of the Senate, Republicans, then in the minority, often used filibusters to achieve their goals. I didn't like the results, but I accepted them because Republicans were acting within the rules; and we were able to work together on many other issues. There were 55 Democratic senators then. We had the power to take the drastic action now being proposed, but we refrained from exercising that power because it was as wrong then as it is now.

Bush Gets Tough Queries From Youths in Holland

Exelon says it will voluntarily cut greenhouse gas emissions

REPUBLICANS vs. DEMOCRATS ON THE ECONOMY....Did you know that Democratic presidents are better for the economy than Republicans? Sure you did.

Here are some interesting figures from the heavily-Bush-favoring American Enterprise Institute:

Judicial Nominations
Percent of nominees confirmed

Carter: 93.1%
Reagan: 96.1%
Bush I: 78.1%
Clinton: 87.9%
Bush II: 96.6%

Study these numbers and remember them the next time a GOP wingnut rattles off that tripe about GW getting the shaft from the Dems when it comes to his judicial choices. Bullshit. His father got it much worse (!), with Clinton coming in 2nd worse.

It's just more lies and deception being spun to the fact-deprived public. Also, the GOP is so far over the edge drunk with power that because GW's number is not 100% (but rather just short of 97%) it's enough for them to bitch and complain.

Serenity now!