David Gregory commented to KO tonight during the post-debate coverage that Obama was weak relative to McCain and Clinton of foreign policy. (These are not his exact words, but it is the gist of what he said.)

I take strong issue with the idea that McCain is somehow superior on foreign policy. In fact, I challenge anyone to demonstrate where McCain has exuded this superior judgement.

Stephen T. Gheen (Political Junkies) has posted a wonderful analysis of the 2006 election results in a guest commentary on Buzzflash, debunking the tired, conventional explanations for the results (i.e., "it was really a vote for conservatives," "it was Mark Foley," "it was the corruption, it wasn't Iraq," and so forth).

I have a comment about the first example of conventional wisdom attempting to explain the election results:

A week ago, on 3/20/2006, Bush spoke  to the City Club of Cleveland about the "War on Terror." An audience member asked him a penetrating question about how we could trust the information Bush was getting about Iran:

Q Mr. President, at the beginning of your talk today you mentioned that you understand why Americans have had their confidence shaken by the events in Iraq.  And I'd like to ask you about events that occurred three years ago that might also explain why confidence has been shaken.  Before we went to war in Iraq we said there were three main reasons for going to war in Iraq:  weapons of mass destruction, the claim that Iraq was sponsoring terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11, and that Iraq had purchased nuclear materials from Niger. All three of those turned out to be false.  My question is, how do we restore confidence that Americans may have in their leaders and to be sure that the information they are getting now is correct?

See the answer below:

at Bush's "missteps" according to this article in the Kansas City Star (GOP growing increasingly angry, frightened by Bush's missteps") by BY STEVEN THOMMA AND JAMES KUHNHENN of Knight Ridder Newspapers.

"A series of political missteps has raised questions about the Bush administration's candor, competence and credibility and left the White House off-balance, off-message and unable to command either the nation's policy agenda or its politics the way the president did during his first term."

Are elected Republicans total idiots?

Representative John Conyers held a hearing today which was televised on C-SPAN. I just watched most of the rebroadcast of it on TV.

I do not have a source to go to at the moment to get the exact purpose of this hearing or a transcript of it. I'll explain my problems with the CSPAN video further down this post. I'll try to recap the sense of the meeting from memory.

I believe the meeting consisted of the testimony of six people, five of them lawyers or professors of law, and one an anti-war activist whose group has been spied on consistently who were invited to comment and submit briefs on the constitutiionality of domestic surveillance without FISA warrants. In addition, several representatives who attended the hearing also spoke.

I didn't see any evidence that this had been diaried, but I will delete it if this is redundant.

Rep. Curt Weldon said about 60 minutes ago on Lou Dobbs that he was promised that "Able Danger" will be the subject of an open investigation. The transcript is now posted.

Weldon said:

James Moore had stated in a recent interview with Buzzflash  that the transcripts of the press briefings from July 9th and 10th, 2003 had been scrubbed from http://www.whitehouse.gov.

And indeed they have been removed.

Out of a deep sense of nosiness, I started googling around on the terms "Ari Fleischer press gaggle July 9, 2003."

Elected Democrats, all Democrats, all people who cannot stand these fascist liars, you must speak up now and repudiate these vile people.

This was all planned. They set this up so that they could release these quotes. Here is their supposed weapon:

Mehlman Statement

It doesn't matter. If the bulk of Americans really feel that the Bush/Rove/Cheney path is the right way to go, then they should stick with it.

Stick with Bush/Rove/Cheney. Don't say we didn't warn you loudly and clearly day after day, almost every minute from the day this faker assumed his presidency. Except we did very generously forgive his incompetence and give him a chance after 9/11.

Excuse me, but I cannot stand still while numerous people on the Daily Kos say that Durbin is a traitor, lily-livered, weak, backstabbing the Democrats, etc. etc.

CAN YOU IMAGINE FOR ONE MOMENT how the man has been hounded, had his character assassinated, accused of being a traitor, had his resignation called for, been mocked, abused, harassed, day after day, hour after hour by the Republican bullies for over a week now? Then people in his own Party, little wiesels that they are, kick him in the balls and tell him to apologize?

I wish he had not done it; I wish he had told Mayor Daly to go fuck himself a la Cheney.

It sickens me and it infuriates me that the Republicans, who as far as I am concerned are no better than organized crime,

I saw a link to this article somewhere in the last three days, and I think it might have been at Atrios's blog; I don't think it was on the Daily Kos.

In any case, if someone did a diary about this, please let me know and I will add the link to this diary. I think this article in the New York Review of Books by Elizabeth Drew is worth calling attention to. Here is a juicy paragraph:

Selling Washington

"Abramoff's behavior is symptomatic of the unprecedented corruption--the intensified buying and selling of influence over legislation and federal policy --that has become endemic in Washington under a Republican Congress and White House..." The rest of the paragraph is below.

The White House has not made any move to remove material from the whitehouse dot gov website that provide transcripts of Bush's lies to the nation on his intentions regarding Iraq.

I continue to wonder if information will start to disappear. Accordingly I have made copies of the Bush press conference held on March 6, 2003. You can read it in its entirety here.

Bush is asked a question by a reporter whose name is "Ann":

This diary (which is more of a rant than a diary) is addressed to the complicit members of the Mainstream Media. I know that it is pretty much rhetorical. I should add the caveat that there are still a few wonderful journalists within the MSM who practice journalism properly and have real integrity, but they are few and far between.

Today I read a piece over at Atrios' blog describing how the members of our so very principled Washington Press Corps were so morally offended when Clinton lied about his affair. So collectively aggrieved were they that they felt they and "their town" had been personally assaulted.

What a bunch of crap this is.

Yesterday I went to the CBC website because of Hollywood Oz's diary telling us about the Cheney documentary aired by the Fifth Estate, a CBC programme. I browsed around and came across many interesting articles on an array of topics:

Under the topic CBC Analysis and Viewpoint an article by Don Murray:
Harsher Words

This is an article on Amnesty International’s Annual Report, in which the infamous words were uttered: “Guantanamo has become the gulag of our times.” It includes some history of the founding of Amnesty International and Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders.)

[editor's note, by lecsmith] Acknowledging Kossack Susie Dow's reminder that the papers that came from Downing Street are really minutes of a meeting, and not just a memo.

Last night I wondered aloud on the Conyers diary if "we" should get bumper stickers printed up for the Downing Street Memo, ask all lefty-liberal blogs to advertise them, purchase them en masse (and in all the other states as well!), and put them on our cars in a coordinated fashion on the same date, and start driving around. The Downing Street Memo bumper sticker would appear simultaneouly, more or less, on cars around the nation. People would start asking everywhere, "What is the Downing Street memo?"

Kossack highacidity over at Downing Street Memo immediately went to work.

Patrick D. Healy has written an article in the New York Times as a kind of exploration of how the media could regain its credibility. You can find it here:

Believe It: The Media's Credibility Headache Gets Worse

Like most discussions of this problem that I have heard or read, Healy seems truly perplexed as to why the media is so distrusted, and misses what the real problem is.

The way I see it, there will be no point in having equality of opportunity, good public schools, Pell grants, a robust scientific and medical community, invention and entrepreneuship. There will be no point in working hard in school and getting excellent grades. There will be no point in working hard at work. There will be no point in continuously educating yourself as work conditions change.

Here are my suggestions: [Note: Changed title due to fact that it confused people as to what the diary was really about.]

I never watched "24" much until this year, so I can't talk with a great deal of authority about the changes in its underlying message. While I have found it engrossing and suspenseful, I've felt somewhat uncomfortable this season with the characters who are supposed to be the good guys. In this evening's show, Jack resorted to torture with electrical wires to extract information from his girlfriend's estranged husband. I found this quite revolting and I've lost sympathy for him as a character. From that little episode of torture, Jack got supposedly "good" information. (There was at least one other episode where the female boss back at the agency they work for tortured an underling thinking she had betrayed the agency.)