Bad news

For W:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two senators leading separate efforts to put Congress on record against President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq joined forces Wednesday, agreeing on a nonbinding resolution that would criticize the plan.

For all of us: RIP Molly Ivins.

Tetched

This is fun. New York gets some people to try to read W's mind. Here's John Heilemann from the intro:

[I]t's worth considering the possibility that Bush’s madman-at-the-wheel métier owes as much to psychological factors as to structural ones. For some time now, armchair psychiatrists have argued that Bush suffers from a classic case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, citing his sense of grandiosity ("I’m the decider"), his arrogance and lack of empathy, and his tendency to surround himself with sycophants as evidence. Certainly, Bush seems to be in the grip of something close to a bona fide delusion ("a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes," says the DSM-IV) about the situation in Iraq -- and in a state of near-clinical denial about the likelihood that his policy there has irretrievably failed.

The others are here.

'American Idol'

All right, we're watching, despite vowing not to. The other networks refuse to compete. So far, we like this guy. And not just because he's from Arkansas. He's got it goin' on. And no, never met him.

'Mass episodes of idiocy among our press corps'

You knew they were coming. This is exactly why a lot of people hoped Hillary wouldn't run. Not because we doubt her abilities; she'd make a fine president. But because the sneering D.C. media will parse her every utterance to twist its meaning into a Jimmy Kimmel-like joke about her marriage. The Post and Times had Anne Kornblut and Adam Nagourney, respectively, covering her campaign trip to Iowa. Both hate the Clintons. Sort of like when they assigned Ceci Connolly and Kit Seelye to the Gore campaign in 2000. That didn't work out so well for the country.

War protest; energy policy

Hillary's Iraq problem

At last

Hillary:

"I take responsibility for having voted to give [Bush] that authority. My focus is on what we do now. That is the proper debate."

Maybe she should talk to Charles Pierce:

Nuance away, you Circus of the Stars, you. By next Labor Day, any position other than Out Now is going to be a non-starter.

Labor Day will actually be too late.

What he said

Atrios predicts:

There's no chance in hell Timmeh will bring up the name "Wayne Dumond."

Sounds like a dare. The Huckster will be on "Meet The Press" on Sunday. Tune in. We'll see. Maybe Pumpkinhead will be pissed after having been exposed as Bigtime's tool. The spook predicts: There's no chance Huckabee will win the GOP nomination. More on Wayne Dumond.

Albatross

Every one of these 28 Republican senators should made to explain repeatedly to their constituents and prospective voters why they support the total repeal of the federal minimum wage.

What's missing?

Here:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats' promise of a quick increase in the minimum wage ran aground Wednesday in the Senate, where lawmakers are insisting it include new tax breaks for restaurants and other businesses that rely on low-pay workers.
On a 54-43 vote, Democrats lost an effort to advance a House-passed bill that would lift the pay floor from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour without any accompanying tax cut. Opponents of the tax cut needed 60 votes to prevail.

Those "lawmakers" in the lede are, more accurately, Republicans. And nowhere in the story does the word "filibuster" appear, as in, Senate Republicans filibustered an increase in the minimum wage. Senators who voted for cloture? Opponents of a tax cut, unable to keep their promise.

Double-teamed

Looks like AT&T finally got a plumber to remove whatever was clogging up the internets all day Tuesday. Blogger's still sluggish, though.

Let us pray

In case of catastrophic event, the surviving member of the Cabinet will be Abu Gonzales.

Ask your doctor

NYT:

Drug advertising aimed at consumers, a fast-growing category that reached $4.5 billion last year, will face hard scrutiny in the new Congress, according to industry critics in both the House and Senate.

It's about time. There are some First Amendment problems with banning them outright, but they should be regulated. As the article points out: "Consumer drug advertising is not permitted in most of the world, except New Zealand and the United States."

Bears/Colts

Can't wait to hear what Rusty has to say about two black head coaches in the Super Bowl. Colts by 24+.

Liars

Top 50

Most loathsome people in America, 2006.

Return of the Fairness Doctrine?

TV Week:

[Dennis Kucinich] was formally named on Wednesday to head the Domestic Policy panel of the House Government Reform Committee. Even before that announcement was made, Rep. Kucinich raised some eyebrows when he told a media reform conference in Memphis that his panel would hold hearings on reviving the Fairness Doctrine and on media ownership issues.

The Fairness Doctrine would have blown the Swift Boat liars out of the water. Broadcasters hated being required to be fair.

'Provocative'

Now Iran's trying to piss us off by equipping their tanks with anti-aircraft weapons.

U.S. attorneys purge

Worse than Bigtime

Fox News poll:
Unfavorable opinion of Bush: 58%
Unfavorable opinion of Cheney: 53%

Silver lining

Kevin's right. Sending more troops to Iraq is a lethally shitty idea, but if it will deep-six the GOP, then there's not much Democrats can do to stop it, something congressional Republicans should consider.

Power failure

Miserable night, afternoon.

Can't help themselves

McClatchy:

WASHINGTON - President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.
... Much like the administration's pre-war claims about Saddam's alleged ties to al-Qaida and purported nuclear weapons program, the claims about the bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra ignore inconvenient facts and highlight questionable but politically useful assumptions.

Accountability's gonna be a bitch.

The Texas Strategy

???

Local TV people are telling us what numbers to call if our power's off. They've also posted the numbers on their Web sites!

The speech

His flop sweat was palpable even if you turned down the sound to deflect despair-inducing
phrases like “Prime Minister Maliki has pledged ...” and “Secretary Rice will leave for the region. ...”

What is wrong with these people?

Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, is a prime example of why Republicans should be banished forever from anything resembling power in Washington. And he should be disbarred, just in case anyone forgets. But W will probably nominate him to be a federal judge.

Puerto Ricans are Americans

And this is ignorant racism. There are a lot of Hispanics around here. Many are illegal immigrants. Some are U.S. citizens. These probably aren't. But read the comments at the end of that second story. Hispanic Americans don't get the benefit of the doubt in some parts of Northwest Arkansas.

'Charlie Rose'

If you missed it, don't. Can we have more Chuck Hagel Republicans, please?

Worrisome, indeed

Weren't the neocons supposed to have been sidelined? Who could have guessed that this escalation might involve trying to provoke war with Iran and Syria? We're already losing two wars. Better start some more!
MORE: Galloway:

Pardon me if I'm reminded of a time long ago when another disaster of a president, Richard M. Nixon, thought that he could turn a losing war in Vietnam around by bombing and invading neighboring Cambodia.
It didn't work in Cambodia. It only set the stage for a Communist Khmer Rouge genocide that took as many as 2 million Cambodian lives after Indochina fell.
Perhaps it's time for all of us to hope for a miracle. We can all hope, and pray too, that this commander in chief comes to his senses before he sets our world afire in the two years he has left in the highest office in the land.

Perhaps they should invite Kissinger to these hearings.

Bloggered

Blogger's been cranky for three days now.

Presidential Speech Drinking Game

Couldn't find one specifically for tonight; too lazy to make one up. So Arianna's from June 2005 will have to do:

“Strategy for victory.” (Bottoms Up Bonus: “clear strategy for victory.”)
Something about our troops being the “finest in the world”.
“No artificial timetable”.
That we’re training “more and more Iraqi security forces every day.”
“Freedom.” (Bottoms Up Bonus: “They hate freedom.”)
War being “tough.”
The conflation of Afghanistan and Iraq - the war in Iraq with the war on terror (Bottoms Up Bonus: “shared murderous ideology”)
That the terrorists are trying to “shake our will.”
That we have to “complete our mission.”

That should do it.

Secondary priority

Baltimore Sun:

Already, a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.
According to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata and other senior U.S. commanders here, that will happen just as the Taliban is expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar. The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the place where the group was organized in the 1990s.
... [Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps,] said U.S. commanders understand that the Afghan war is an "economy of force" operation, a military term for a mission that is given minimal resources because it is a secondary priority, in this case behind Iraq.

Does this strike anyone else as 180 degrees ass-backward?
via Kevin.

Usual suspects

Mission accomplished

The Independent:

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

That's so 1999.

Is this a joke?

NYT:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — President Bush’s new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with a jobs program costing as much as $1 billion intended to employ Iraqis in projects including painting schools and cleaning streets, according to American officials who are piecing together the last parts of the initiative.

Of course it's no joke for 20,000 combat troops. But painting schools? Didn't we already try that, too?

McCain

The guy's torpedoing his campaign.

Even Joe Biden

Everybody gets it:

I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost. They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively.

Let the rain settle it.

Speechless

Houston Chronicle:

A 10-year-old boy who apparently was mimicking the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein accidentally hanged himself on New Year's Eve, authorities said.

via Eschaton.

Screwups

Good help is hard to find.

Surely he jests

Do as I say:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, facing a Democratic-controlled Congress for the first time, is urging lawmakers to work with his administration and warning that "political statements" in the form of legislation would result in a stalemate.
"Together, we have a chance to serve the American people by solving the complex problems that many don't expect us to tackle, let alone solve, in the partisan environment of today's Washington," Bush wrote in a guest column for The Wall Street Journal posted on the newspaper's Web site Tuesday night.
... "If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate," Bush wrote. ...

"Bush wrote" -- OK, sure. That's not a warning, it's a threat: I'll veto everything you pass if you try to get in the way of my escalation plan. "The partisan environment of today's Washington" is largely the creation of his deputy chief of staff, who probably wrote those words. Bring it on.

Best bowl game ever*

Wow.
*(Intentional sportscasterlike superlative)

Happy New Year

Go Hogs!
UPDATE: That sucked.