My favorite John Lithgow role, Lord John Worfin from Buckaroo Banzai, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. Gawd I'm old.
Thanks for voting for Crooks and Liars, Driftglass, and Suburban Guerrilla (Susie Madrak) at the Weblog Awards. (links point to the voting ballots and may have busy servers. Be persistent!)
Open Thread below....
(h/t Howie for letting us know)
From The Detroit Free Press:
Ron Asheton, the influential guitarist for legendary punk band the Stooges, was found dead early this morning at his home in Ann Arbor, police said.
I feel like I was punched in the stomach, so I'm going to have to lean on the late Lester Bangs, from his epic, two-part (here and here) Of Pop and Pies and Fun (a 1970 critique of The Stooges LP Funhouse) do the heavy lifting:
Sanjay Gupta vs. Michael Moore on the national health care system on Larry King Live, July 2007
The Washington Post is reporting that Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Sanjay Gupta. He’s expected to accept the job, the Post says, citing two unnamed sources. Gupta declined the Post’s request for comment.
Besides his CNN gig, Gupta also appears on CBS and writes for Time Magazine. He was a White House Fellow and a special adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady. Oh, and he’s a neurosurgeon at Emory and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital.
There’s a certain logic to picking a TV talking head to be surgeon general, because the surgeon general is largely a talking head. The top doc does oversee the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, but the real work of the job is traveling around the country, using the title as a bully pulpit to advance a public health agenda.
Of course, it would be nice if he used that bully pulpit to advocate for Universal Health Care, which would be the single best news for public health in this country, but it doesn't appear that Dr. Gupta thinks there's a problem. Paul Krugman agrees:
I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.
What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion.
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It's been assumed that Barack Obama's planned nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA chief was intended to send a signal to the intelligence community about the use of torture. And Obama made that explicit in his press conference today:
REPORTER: Some are questioning Leon Panetta's lack of intelligence -- lack of experience on intelligence matters. Sorry about that. I know this is tricky for you since you haven't announced him yet but what does he bring to the table for you.
OBAMA: Well, as you noted, I haven't made a formal announcement about my intelligence team. That may be him calling now -- finding out where it's at. I have the utmost respect for Leon Panetta. I think that he's one of the finest public servants that we've had. He brings extraordinary management skills, great political savvy, an impeccable record of integrity. As chief of staff, he's somebody who, to the president, he's somebody who was fully versed in international affairs, crisis management, and had to evaluate intelligence consistently on a day-to-day basis.
Having said all that, I have not made an announcement. When we make the announcement, I think what people will see is that we are putting together a top-notch intelligence team that is not only going to assure that I get the best possible intelligence -- unvarnished -- but that the intelligence community is no longer geared toward telling the president what they think the president wants to hear but instead are going to be delivering the information that the president needs to make critical decisions to keep the American people safe.
I think what you're also going to see is a team that is committed to breaking with some of the past practices and concerns that have, I think, tarnished the image of the agencies and intelligence agencies and U.S. foreign policy. Last point I will make on this is that there are outstanding intelligence professionals in the CIA, DNI and others and I have the utmost regard for the work that they've done and we are committed to making sure that this is a team effort that's not looking backwards but is looking forward to figure out how we're going to serve the American people best.
Of course, a Panetta appointment would send such a signal, since he has been such a pronounced critic of waterboarding and other such practices indulged by the CIA under Bush.
As with all these appointments, though, we should also be looking out for disinformation from the right. Today on Fox, Bill Kristol was trying to stir up opposition to Panetta from the left, pointing out that he was chief of staff at the White House in the 1990s when it began the policy of "extraordinary rendition" (i.e., capturing terrorists and then shipping them to nations where they can be interrogated by governments with fewer prohibitions.
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It's true that Panetta was CoS at the time Clinton adopted that policy (he signed the executive order in June 1995, during Panetta's tenure), but that is not prima facie evidence he favored it. Moreover, rendition under Clinton occurred only occasionally; as compared to the massive program involving hundreds of prisoners it became under Bush.
Expect, however, for the question to be raised during confirmation hearings. If it's coming from neocons, though, expect it to turn out to be wrong.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will not run for the open Senate seat of Sen. Mel Martinez, he announced in a statement released moments ago.
"After thoughtful consideration, I have decided not to run for the United States Senate in 2010," said Bush. "While the opportunity to serve my state and country during these turbulent and dynamic times is compelling, now is not the right time to return to elected office."
Bush's decision robs Republicans of a top-tier recruit who would have immediately been favored to hold Martinez's seat. Without Bush in the race, Republicans are almost certain to play host to a crowded and competitive primary.
The announcement comes after 48 hours of rampant rumors among the Florida political community that Bush had decided not to make the race.
Finally a decision we can all back from the Bush family tree.
The explosions marked the second time in hours a U.N. school came under attack.
The Israeli Defense Force has shelled a UN school in the Gaza strip, killing 30 and injuring 55. Israel claims that Hamas militants were using the school as a base to mortar their troops, but the UN says that all the dead and injured were civilians. Even if the IDF were correct, something the Right accepts unquestioningly because the IDF never, ever lies like their enemies do, then Israel would only be responding to Hamas' war crime by committing another war crime. You can't get to the moral high ground - let alone win a COIN operation - by allowing the rules of war to be set by barbarians, something that the intellectually and morally bankrupt Right never seems to acknowledge.
And there are good reasons to believe that the IDF is simply lying as part of a propaganda war it admits has been eight months in the planning: the use of indiscriminate white phosphorus airbursts, in contravention of international law as it is understood everywhere except the US and Israel (the 1980 Protocol III to the Convention on Conventional Weapons containsa blanket restriction on dropping incendiary weapons from the air against military objectives "located within a concentration of civilians"); the way in which the IDF is throwing explosives around so freely that almost as many of its people have been killed by its own "errant' tank shells as by enemy action.
Of course they cannot acknowledge this - otherwise their only recourse for all the warmongering they've cheerled in the last eight years would be to commit symbolic sepukku and fall on the swords of their own punditry before vanishing from our public discourse forever.
Crossposted from Newshoggers
AOL used my post called...
Barack Obama highlights quick action and Oversight for his new stimulus package
...for the basis of their poll question. As I wrote in the post:
I hope Obama's love affair with bipartisanship will come to an end very soon. Not because I don't think it's a good idea to have both sides working together, but because Conservatives are incapable of doing just that. They do not want Obama to succeed because it will weaken their grip on American politics for years to come at the expense of average Americans just trying to get by.
It's about ideology for them and not about the healing that our country is in desperate need of. I think Obama will soon feel their un-partisan wrath sooner rather than later and hopefully it will snap him out of any thought he had that he could work with Conservatives, no matter how "centrist" he goes.
I doubt they will want to improve the latest Congressional polling numbers...
If this mess explodes on two fronts, the volatility of the situation increases exponentially. Just another piece of the BushCo legacy!
Lebanon's parliament majority leader Saad Hariri on Monday claimed that Hezbollah would not respond to Israel's devastating offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
Hariri said that Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told him that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant organization, would not attack Israel from Lebanon.
"What Jalili said greatly calms us," Hariri said.
The lawmaker's remarks came despite the fact that observers in both Lebanon and Israel are starting to believe some kind of escalation along the Lebanese border is likely if the military operation in Gaza continues.
It is far from clear what form this escalation might take. One possibility is relatively small-scale rocket launches, either by Lebanese groups affiliated with the cause of global jihad or by Palestinian groups in Lebanon, which generally coordinate their activities with Hezbollah.
Another option is an operation by Hezbollah itself, which would probably be broader in scope.
That Hezbollah has been increasing its forces' preparedness in recent weeks is no secret: The organization's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, announced it publicly the day Israel's operation in Gaza began, and Sheikh Nabil Kauk, the Hezbollah official in charge of south Lebanon, reiterated it Monday.
Lebanese analysts believe there is disagreement within Hezbollah: Some senior members favor restraint, while others charge that mere speeches in support of the Palestinians are insufficient, and must be backed up with attacks on Israel.
The prevailing view, however, is that if Hamas appears to be weakening, pressure on Hezbollah to intervene would intensify greatly. "Hezbollah cannot allow Hamas to lose this war," said Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, who is considered close to Nasrallah.
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John, my relatives are Sunni, Christian and Shi'ite. They've been living under Saddam's dictatorship for thirty years. I've lost more relatives in the last four years, than under 30 years of Saddam. So, I don't think that you can tell me how dangerous Saddam's dictatorship was. The good news is that the American people, who I love defeated Bush in the mid-term elections. That was really, really good news.However, you still can't make up this garbage that appeared in the NY Times.
No one could have predicted this would happen. John Yoo and John Bolton, in the NY Times, discuss the need to limit executive authority. Up next, David Addington and Dick Cheney write in the Washington Post on the need to reject Unitary Executive theory. I knew these wankers would do this, I just didn’t expect it immediately and so brazenly.Torture Yoo and John Bolton are embarrassments to this country. Whenever he appears on TV, he should be held up as the face of the complete and utter failure of the Bush administration and their Iraq war.(h/t Brian)
We've heard and seen many news reports about how unpopular Congress is with the American people. And it is at an all time low, but what most TV analysts are refusing to point out is that it's the Republicans in Congress that are dragging down the approval rating. As a new Gallup poll shows us--Republicans in Congress Less Popular Than Bush:
As Gallup showed last month, congressional Democrats are significantly more esteemed than Bush-- and significantly more esteemed than their Republican colleagues in Congress. According to the latest Gallup Poll, 67% of Americans disapprove of Bush, while 69% disapprove of Republicans in the House and Senate and only 55% disapprove of Democrats in the House and Senate.
I've talked to some of our Blue America candidates and they told me that since '06, the Republicans did everything they could to block and obstruct the daily business of the Congress in hopes that America would have a bad opinion of the House and Senate and it would lead to them retaking or making big gains in '08 and 2010.
The 25% approval rating for the Republicans in Congress establishes a new Gallup Poll low, surpassing the 26% measured about this time last year. Gallup first began asking about approval of the Congressional parties in 1999.
Well, Americans aren't buying their me first---America second attitude and in the end if they obstruct Obama's agenda from the outset then they will only fall deeper into the dark hole they have dug for themselves and America. I'm hoping they do just that so it knocks out some of the bipartisan rhetoric Obama is using, because they will not be willing players in the restoration of America and hand Obama a win. Never. Going. To. Happen. I think Obama will get his first stimulus package through with some grumblings from the Mitch McConnell wing and then it'll go downhill from there.
As the Gallup poll points out for all to see: Nobody likes "Republicans."
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Roland Burris makes his stand in defiance of Harry Reid today.
MSNBC's Chris Matthews talks it over with a panel including Howard Fineman, Pat Buchanan, CNBC's John Harwood, Brian DuBose of the Moonie Times, and Ann Kornbluth of the WaPo, and it's unanimous: Reid really doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
Being a right-winger, DuBose clearly relishes this mess:
No, the conservatives don't have to cause any havoc here. The Democrats are doing a fine job themselves. Pat is right -- Harry Reid has put the Senate in a very precarious legal position, constitutionally. They have no constitutional authority to not allow Burris to take his rightful seat in the Senate. Now, they could expel him for reasons that they come up with if they seat him, that's a much better position to be in. But by barring him from the door they put themselves on a path towards legal suicide with the Supreme Court, if Burris decides to go that route. They have no legal standing to stop a representative of a state -- which is what the Senate is, representatives of states in their entirety -- they have no legal position to stop him from representing that state, as he is duly bound to do, appointed by a governor who is in power. It's -- it's case closed. He is the senator. Period.
Well, if I embrace that philosophy, I can easily accept Leon Panetta as the new head of the CIA. Why? Because Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller, who both rolled over on torture, FISA and various other abuses, have a problem with him.
And under the circumstances, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it'll be a good thing to have someone who isn't buddies with the people who perpetuated the horrors of the past eight years. Or maybe it won't, but what the hell, it's worth a shot.
And Salon's Joan Walsh agrees with me:
In other Obama news: I wasn't sure what to make of the appointment of Leon Panetta as CIA director -- until I heard that Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller opposed it. That's not entirely true: I thought the competent and popular Panetta, who came out strongly against Bush administration torture, detention and interrogation policies, was a clear message that Obama wants to change the way our intelligence agencies do business. The two Democrats' pique -- they say Obama didn't vet Panetta with them -- is a good sign that Panetta's not viewed as an insider who will simply roll over for what the intelligence establishment wants, since Feinstein and Rockefeller did little or nothing to stand up against Bush policies (and Glenn Greenwald agrees with me.)
On MSNBC's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," I said I trust Obama and Panetta on these issues far more than Feinstein and Rockefeller. Pat Buchanan and David Shuster predicted the opposition of Feinstein and Rockefeller would liberate congressional Republicans to savage Panetta in confirmation hearings; I trust he'll make it through, with Obama's strong backing.
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MSNBC analyst Jim Warren, discussing the Rod Blagojevich-Roland Burris mess, sounded a deeply cynical note yesterday on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times. Cynical, but probably right:
Warren: And one vision you didn't -- along with, you know, Lynn's vision of what might happen tomorrow, one we should have that would make us slightly dyspeptic, is that of Rod Blagojevich back there grinning like a Cheshire Cat, because -- the Saturday Night Live caricature aside, the bipartisan animus toward him aside, the likelihood that he will be indicted aside -- he has every legal right to do this. And I think he has pulled one over on Harry Reid and Dick Durbin. And Harry Reid is left looking like some parent huffing and puffing and warning his kid that there's gonna be big punishment unless he does what he says, and then the kid doesn't stop doing it, and then Harry Reid doesn't have anything left to go to, unless what? He's going to send it to the Rules Committee? And Chuck Schumer, head of the Rules Committee? Who wants Al Franken seated ASAP because Minnesota's gotta have two senators on that floor as quickly as possible. Boy, I think Blagojevich has really played this in the most cynical but adroit of ways.
Sweet goes on to suggest that Reid may cave if Burris agrees not to run in two years, but then Warren appropriately notes that Burris doesn't believe he has anything to negotiate.
I'm not sure why Burris needs it explained to him that Blagejovich himself tainted the process of selecting this Senate seat by his own actions and words, and that anyone he chose would be similarly tainted. It's kind of sad, really.
Let's just say that this is not an auspicious start to a Senate career, much less a Democratic defense of that seat. A better man would not have let himself be so tainted. Hell, even Danny Davis -- who hasn't enough sense not to take part in coronation ceremonies for Rev. Moon -- thought better of this.
Roland Burris may believe he has the legal right to this seat. But politically, it's another story. The voters of Illinois have no reason whatsoever to believe that he was chosen with their best interests in mind, because they have very good reason to believe Blago was only looking out for himself. They have no reason to believe otherwise now. This selection was Blago's, and because of that, it will always be about Blago.
Burris may force himself upon the Senate, but he may want to savor his two years while they last.
Some thoughts on Obama's latest appointments
The Rude Pundit: Advice to Senate Democrats: Just seat Burris
The Brad Blog: The U.S. Election Commission's continued delay in providing guidance for states is a violation of Federal Law.
David E’s Fablog: Rick Warren - Aids Pimp
After Downing Street: How did a Democratic challenger defeat a Republican incumbent in an enormous rural district in southern Virginia?
Eye On Miami: Worst predictions of 2008
John Hinderaker just can't wait to get his Obama Derangement Syndrome on with this post.
So I confess to some satisfaction in seeing Obama's likeness paraded at a hate rally in Jakarta, along with those of Mubarak and Olmert. The protesters were blaming Obama for Israel's attack on Hamas, when he hasn't even been inaugurated yet!
Hinderaker once called President Bush a genius, which gives us some insight about his acuity and stability "mentally."
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
The Middle East is a horrible situation, as we are witnessing; for this wingnut to take pleasure in ugly scenes like this just shows the Conservative mind at its best.
It's true indeed that Obama hasn't been sworn in yet, but the world's sickness over Bush was caused by his policies. After 9/11, the world was with us like never before and it did take a true destructive genius to wreck that. By attacking a country that didn't do anything to us, Bush has created an international hatred of America like never before.
The wonder of Bush's tenure is that we actually have a country still standing after eight years of misrule. Now it's up to Obama to pick up the pieces of an economy that is in utter shambles, and a global reputation as torturers and thugs -- which inspires scenes like the ones Hinderaker seems to enjoy.
(h/t Kevin)
