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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Huffington Post, April 5, 2007

April 5, 2007

In 1968, my father, running for President, addressed in a speech, the White House’s proposal for a troop surge in Vietnam. Robert Kennedy had initially supported the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Forty years later, as Congress and the White House debate the further escalation of yet another war that has already claimed the lives of an astounding 640,000 Iraqis, killed 3,256 U.S. soldiers and wounded another 50,000, his words should have special resonance to those of our political leaders who are still searching for the right course in Iraq:

“I do not want–as I believe most Americans do not want–to sell out American interests, to simply withdraw, to raise the white flag of surrender. That would be unacceptable to us as a country and as a people. But I am concerned–as I believe most Americans are concerned–that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong. I am concerned–as I believe most Americans are concerned–that we are acting as if no other nations existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike. I am concerned–as I believe most Americans are concerned–that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world. I am concerned that, at the end of it all, there will only be more Americans killed; more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side of this war, more hundreds of thousands of [civilians] slaughtered; so they may say, as Tacitus said of Rome: “They made a desert, and called it peace.” . . .

“The reversals of the last several months have led our military to ask for more troops. This weekend, it was announced that some of them–a “moderate” increase, it was said–would soon be sent. But isn’t this exactly what we have always done in the past? If we examine the history of this conflict, we find the dismal story repeated time after time. Every time–at every crisis–we have denied that anything was wrong; sent more troops; and issued more confident communiques. Every time, we have been assured that this one last step would bring victory. And every time, the predictions and promises have failed and been forgotten, and the demand has been made again for just one more step up the ladder. But all the escalations, all the last steps, have brought us no closer to success than we were before. . . . And once again the President tells us, as we have been told for twenty years, that “we are going to win”; “victory” is coming. . . . It becoming more evident with every passing day that the victories we achieve will only come at the cost of the destruction for the nation we once hoped to help. . . .

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Robert Fisher, KRIB, Mason City, Iowa, April 4, 2007

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned in Mason City tonight, hours after announcing he had raised $25 million so far for his bid for the White House — slightly more than rival Hillary Clinton raised for the primary campaign.

“A lot of the media has been focusing on the fact that we raised a lot of money in this campaign, and they’re stunned,” Obama said. “They say: ‘How did this guy named Obama who hasn’t been in Washington that long — how did he raise that money?’”

Obama bragged about refusing to accept donations from political action committees or from registered lobbyists. Obama also boasted about the number of people who contributed to his campaign coffers. “100,000 people from all across the country — 90 percent of them contributed $100 or less,” Obama said. “That captures the spirit of this campaign.”

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Joe Conason, The New York Observer, April 5, 2007

Both Iraqis and Americans alike were stunned by the audacity of Senator John McCain’s heavily publicized (and heavily armed) excursion through Baghdad’s Shorja market last weekend. There was the leading proponent of the war on Capitol Hill, setting out to confirm his recent claim that the escalation of U.S. forces is greatly improving conditions on the ground, accompanied by a handful of Congressional colleagues. He seemed to think nobody would notice that their little shopping trip also included a platoon of soldiers, three Black Hawk choppers and two Apache gunships.

Neither the Iraqi merchants used as props in this strange exercise nor the American voters who were its intended targets could possibly have been deceived by such a charade. So the question that inevitably arises is whether Mr. McCain and company are still attempting to dupe us — or whether they have finally duped themselves.

Consider the happy talk from Representative Mike Pence, an ultraconservative Indiana Republican who has visited Iraq on several occasions. At the press conference that inevitably followed the Shorja photo op, Mr. Pence said he had been inspired by the opportunity to “mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis,” drinking tea and haggling over carpets. To him, the Baghdad shops were “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time.” Senator Lindsey Graham, the McCain sidekick and Republican of South Carolina, boasted of buying “five rugs for five bucks,” marveling that “just a few weeks ago, hundreds of people, dozens of people were killed in the same place.”

Then they climbed back into one of the armored vehicles that served as their tourist buses and returned to the Green Zone with Mr. McCain and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq.

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The Associated Press, April 5, 2007

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — For years, ATV-riding, gun-toting sport shooters have flouted gun laws in part of Idaho’s high desert by taking pot shots at ground squirrels and other animals. Now, officials say, they’re also setting their sights on National Guard tanks that train in the area.

Rifles and pistols have been banned in a 68,000-acre area of the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area since 1996.

But the federal Bureau of Land Management is considering expanding the gun-restricted area by 41,000 acres to try to limit shootings at Idaho Army National Guard troops who report slugs bouncing off their tanks on a regular basis.

”There’s a segment of the shooting community that will shoot at anything that moves,” said John Sullivan, the area’s manager.

National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Stephanie Dowling said she thinks the proposed expansion would help alleviate the problem.

”What’s happened over time, as the population has grown, we get more and more people out there,” said Dowling. ”Not everybody uses good safety precautions.”

Idaho is the third-fastest growing state, after only Nevada and Arizona.

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It’s 8:30 Wednesday and the whole world is celebrating the “imminent” release of the 15 Brit hostages by Iran.  CNN is wetting itself (as always) talking about the drop in oil prices now that the crisis has been “solved,” and everyone is counting their eggs before the chicken has a chance to lay any.

Trust me, with Iran, nothing is “solved.”

CNN is getting “reaction” to the “great news” from every donkey they can find, but doesn’t anyone remember the other Iranian hostage crisis?  Maybe they’ll let the 15 go, maybe they won’t. Iranians love to get our hopes up so they can dash them again and again – just ask Jimmy Carter what it’s like to deal with rhese religiously-insane handjobs.

Once they’re free and back on a British ship, THEN we should react, but nooooooo.     Now they’re talking about taking the 15 to the Brit Embassy where the crowds can take them hostage again.  Doesn’t anybody have a brain or a memory?

William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t, April 3, 2007

So all we could do was to
Sit, sit, sit, sit.
And we did not like it,
Not one little bit.
And then,
Something went bump …

- Dr. Seuss

When the new Democratic majority successfully attached a troop withdrawal deadline to the $124 billion supplemental Iraq spending bill in late March, the newspapers described it as a stunning development. If this bill made it through the Senate, Bush would be faced with a choice he wanted no part of: swallow an exit deadline, or veto a pile of money needed to keep the Iraq meat grinder spinning.

At the time, many antiwar activists were far from enthused by this development. An MSNBC report from March 23 explained why: “The supplemental spending bill would continue to pay for the US mission in Iraq and would authorize that mission at least for 12 more months and possibly longer. The bill tries to limit the length of deployment of Army soldiers to 365 days in Iraq and of Marines to 210 days. But it permits President Bush to waive those restrictions. It also permits US forces to be kept in Iraq beyond the bill’s August 2008 exit target date if they are training Iraqi soldiers or if they are engaging in missions to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.”

So, yes, there was this withdrawal deadline, and that was good. The bill, however, carried the provision allowing Bush to “waive those restrictions,” which amounted to a pre-emptive signing statement that essentially rendered the whole thing moot. Along with this were the bits that would keep US troops in Iraq past the deadline if they were “training Iraqi soldiers” or “engaging in missions to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda.” This has been the description of the “mission” for years now, and will be so in the Fall of 2008, which once again pulled the teeth from any real hope of an actual withdrawal coming from this bill.

It was a political victory for the Democrats, to be sure; at a minimum, watching a vote-passing Democratic majority in the House walk in the same direction long enough to pass anything with “Iraq” and “withdrawal” in the text was something new and interesting. Beyond that, the reaction from a flustered White House was worth the price of admission. Yet the bill itself had no hope, or so it seemed to many at the time, of actually putting a halt to the carnage. Beyond that was the commonly-held assumption that this legislation would die a swift death upon its arrival in the Senate.

And then, something went bump. Senate Democrats passed their own version of this bill, and will work after the recess to reconcile the details with the House before sending it on to the White House. The theoretical became actual, and the tooth-grinding decision facing Bush – eat the deadline or nix the cash – is now an unavoidable reality.

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Alex Koppelman, Salon, April 3, 2007

So far the lefty blogosphere is one for two in its campaign to keep Democratic presidential candidates from debating on Fox News. On March 9, after both John Edwards and Bill Richardson announced that they would not participate, the Nevada Democratic Party dropped plans for a debate to be broadcast by Fox. On March 29, the Congressional Black Caucus announced that it would go forward with its own Fox-sponsored Democratic presidential debate in the fall.

But boycotting debates is not the same as boycotting a network. Most of those national Democrats who’ve criticized Fox, like former Clinton advisor Paul Begala and pollster Mark Mellman, have stopped short of calling for the party to avoid Fox altogether. They would just like Democrats to realize what they’re getting into. “As long as you’re willing to treat Fox News as a political adversary, and you think you can use Fox News to further your arguments, you should do it, says Matt Stoller, a blogger at MyDD.com and a leader of the charge against the debates. “But don’t go on there assuming that Fox News is a neutral news outlet.”

Plenty of Democrats do appear on Fox. In fact, John Edwards, the first of the announced presidential candidates to drop out of the Nevada debate, has appeared on the network more than 30 times, most recently in late January of this year, and Mark Mellman has appeared more than 80 times.

But Fox also has a stable of regular commentators, some under contract to the network, who pop up frequently as representatives of the Democratic or progressive viewpoint. They do not appear to know what they have gotten into. Though these Democrats tell Salon they are doing their best to reach out and sway potential voters, they often seem to be used to further a conservative political agenda, fulfilling one of several roles that ultimately just helps the network’s right-of-center hosts make their arguments against liberals.

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Paul Krugman, The New York Times, April 2, 2007

I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.Let me explain.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

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