...to give the bride away. My sister is getting married on Saturday and Brent and I fly to Chicago this morning for the celebration.
Neither one of them [Clinton or Obama] took the chance to do what Rudy [Giuliani] did: explain in a few short sentences why the country would be safer with a Democrat in the Oval Office. Is it really that hard? Giuliani's position is clear: more war, more domestic surveillance, more torture, and fewer civil liberties. And while it's true that the liberal position on making America secure is a little more complicated than the schoolyard version of foreign affairs beloved of Bush-era Republicans, it's not that complicated. So instead of complaining about how mean Giuliani is, why can't Obama and Clinton just tell us what they'd do?-Kevin Drum, on the tepid Democratic response to a speech by Rudy Giuliani in which the former NYC mayor laid out why a Republican should be elected president in 2008.
Whining just reinforces the message that Democrats are wimps. The real way to be "hard hitting" is to explain why Giuliani is wrong and what Democrats would do instead...Until they do, Rudy and the Republicans are going to win every round of this fight.
This past week has been like no other. On Monday the world witnessed the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. On Tuesday Oregon witnessed the passage of Domestic Benefits for same-sex couples (HB 2007) and Civil Rights based on sexual orientation.I understand that there are many Americans who are against gay marriage and a smaller number who are against civil unions. But when Republican lawmakers equate the passage of a civil unions bill with the largest mass shooting in recent American history...well...is it any wonder I refer to those lawmakers as Fascists?
Quote of the Day: I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc.-Film critic Roger Ebert, in a letter to his readers in today's Chicago Sun-Times, on why he plans to be in attendance at his 9th Annual Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana, Illinois this week.
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
...We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival.
P.S. to gossip rags: I have some back pain, and to make it easier for me to sit through screenings, the festival has installed my very own La-Z-Boy chair.
Photos of me in the chair should be captioned “La-Z-Critic.”
...about 20 former fund-raisers and supporters of former Vice President Al Gore will gather in Washington next month to talk about politics, memories and Mr. Gore’s future at a dinner being organized by Peter Knight, his close friend and political ally.Whether he runs or he doesn't, something tells me Mr. Gore will make the announcement at one of the "Live Earth" events this summer.
The dinner comes as speculation has intensified about whether Mr. Gore will be a late entry into the Democratic presidential race. Two people who plan to attend said that a possible presidential run by Mr. Gore in 2008 would inevitably be a topic, given the recent Oscar victory for "An Inconvenient Truth," the buzz about his recent congressional testimony on global warming, his new book that will be out two weeks after the May 8 dinner, and his global "Live Earth" concerts in July.
Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.He really is, I believe, our strongest hope for winning back the White House and restoring America's standing as the shining beacon to the rest of the globe. Believe me...there are a ton of voters out there who were undecided in 2000 - and who eventually came down on the side of Mr. Bush that year - who would gladly cast a ballot for Mr. Gore in 2008.
...aware that he may step into the wide open race for the White House, strategists are sounding out a shadow team that could run his campaign at short notice. In approaching...political strategists and communications officials, they are making clear they are not acting on formal instructions from Mr Gore, but have not been asked to stop.
I can't think of a better cheerleader for America than Bill Clinton, can you? He has said he would do anything I asked him to do. I would put him to work.-Sen. Hillary Clinton (Democrat-NY), telling a crowd in Marshalltown, Iowa that if she were president she would make her husband a roaming ambassador to the world, using his skills to repair the nation's tattered image abroad.
If the president's plan won't work, what will? History suggests only four other ways to keep together a country riven by sectarian strife:Republicans constantly moan and groan about how the Democrats don't offer up alternatives to the President's failed Iraq strategy, yet here is Sen. Biden laying out a detailed plan.
We allow or help one side to win, which would require years of horrific bloodletting.
We perpetuate the occupation, which is impossible politically and practically.
We promote the return of a dictator, who is not on the horizon but whose emergence would be the cruelest of ironies.
Or we help Iraq make the transition to a decentralized, federal system, as called for in its constitution, where each major group has local control over the fabric of its daily life, including security, education, religion and marriage.
Making federalism work for all Iraqis is a strategy that can still succeed and allow our troops to leave responsibly. It's a strategy I have been promoting for a year.
I cannot guarantee that my plan for Iraq will work. But I can guarantee that the course we're on - the course that a man I admire, John McCain, urges us to continue - is a road to nowhere.
One day Iraq, our post-9/11 trauma and the divisiveness of the Bush years will all be behind us — and America will need, and want, to get its groove back. We will need to find a way to reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad and restore America to its natural place in the global order — as the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration. I have an idea how. It’s called "green"...-New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, writing in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, on how America can regain its international reputation, soiled beyond recognition by the Bush folks, by taking the lead in the development of alternative energies and environmentalism.
How do our kids compete in a flatter world? How do they thrive in a warmer world? How do they survive in a more dangerous world? Those are, in a nutshell, the big questions facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green states — not an America divided between red and blue states.
Literally. That's the finding in a new Pew Research Center survey that tested knowledge of national and international affairs among Americans in relation to where they get most of their news.
I have no Plan B-Sen. John McCain (BushBitch-AZ) on the Iraq War, in an interview Saturday.
Not so much.
[Entering a not-guilty plea] was absolutely the right thing to do. He is not guilty. This is an event, not a crime. This is a combination of alcohol and testosterone that happened at a party.-Tony Brass, attorney to Brian Dwyer, after suspects were finally (FINALLY) charged in the beatings of the Yale University singing group, Baker's Dozen on January 1.
In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.How did the trial turn out? Three-years later, all but two of the fifteen subjects do not need daily insulin injections.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced yesterday that all active-duty soldiers currently deployed or going to Iraq and Afghanistan will see their one-year tours extended to 15 months, acknowledging that such a strain on the war-weary Army is necessary should the ongoing troop increase be prolonged well into next year.I could go into a rather long babble about a lot of things here, but I am pressed for time this morning. Suffice it to say, the President's incompetence from Day 1 (and by "Day 1" I mean the morning of 9/11) has taken the country to the brink. That dark day required a full-scale change in military and social strategy, including (much to the chagrin of my fellow progressives) a full-scale military and domestic service draft. The short-sightedness and incomptence of this President are unprecedented and have brought the United States to a perilous point. We have just less than two years to go under his "leadership." The thought of that, let alone the reality, makes me shudder.
The decision - coming three months after President Bush put forth his new security plan for Iraq, including the deployment of at least 28,000 additional troops there - reflects the reality that the new strategy is unfeasible without introducing longer Army tours.
As a 5-month-old pup, in July 2004.
You are totally unfair to Haley. If you would actually listen to her rather then use YOUR "one free hand" to type your weekly diatribe and your other hand occupied over Paula you would see she is a good singer!Whoa! Paula!?
Most Presidents find their influence waning in the final two years, but with Bush, it seems like that decline will be larger than usual. Bush lies almost constantly, except when he doesn't know what he's talking about and says something nonsensical. Domestically and internationally, that means it's useful to try to ignore him as much as possible and do business with the people that will be in charge when he's gone. Pelosi, in going to Syria, and in telling Bush to calm down, is looking much more like a President than Bush is. Bush is even having his role as commander-in-chief challenged, by both his own ineptitude and the public's willingness to strip him of power. By default, that power is slowly bleeding over to Pelosi, Reid, and whichever member of Congress is leading that day and filling the massive void Bush has left. This is not an ideal scenario, but it's the one that Bush set himself up for when he refused to acknowledge the results of the 2006 elections and what that meant for his method of governance.-Matt Stoller, on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent trip to the Middle East.
He may hold the constitutional office, but he is less and less the President every day.
Pelosi's trip is an embarrassment for the president because it shows an American actually involving herself in realities on the world stage rather than stuck in denial and fantasy. That may sound a bit starry-eyed. But think about it and I'll think you'll see that that's a lot of what this is about.-Josh Marshall, on the knee-jerk reaction of the incompetent White House over Pelosi's trip.
It’s horrifying. I wasn’t hurting anybody. I was playing on a hammock. And then they took me.-26-year-old Suzanne Marie Berghaus of suburban Boston, on being kidnapped by government soldiers in El Salvador during a 1982 flare-up in the long civil war there.
Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.It was the off-the-cuff stage banter heard round the world. I dare say that Natalie Maines, the Dixie Chicks lead singer who made the comment, wouldn't have thought twice about it had it not been for the knee-jerk reaction of the red-state right-wingers who have, since day 1, blindly backed the President.
The fog has been heavy all evening, the wind is gusting so hard the windows are rattling, and it's colder than a witch's titty in a brass bra out there. Yet, just down the hill in the Castro, the night is clear and the streets are bustling.
It's like one of those "find the hidden object" pages in Highlights magazine, only instead of a toaster in a tree, it's Dick in a tree.
This came out of left field, but I'm not surprised. It's been obvious for the last few weeks that the show has become a joke. Stephanie and Gina are gone but SippyCup Ma-boomba-laka is still on? It's obviously time to re-tool the way "America votes."
WRIGHT: "I want to make sure the United States treats people properly.."Cut her mic? If that isn't the perfect textbook example of a wimpy fuckhead losing an argument, then I don't know what is.
O'REILLY: "Sure you do. Sure you do."
WRIGHT: "I surely do. That's what I spent 29 years of my life trying to do."
O'REILLY: "Sorry. No you didn't. You know what happened...somewhere along the line you started to dislike your own country…."
WRIGHT: "I served 29 years. How many did you serve? Where did you teach the Geneva Conventions?"
O'REILLY: "Cut her mic."
Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit...-Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a 42-year-old Iraqi electronics salesman, on the recent visit by Sen. John McCain (BushBitch-AZ)
We are being killed by the dozens everyday because of them.
They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they were tourists and were visiting the city's old market and buying souvenirs...To achieve this, they sealed off the area, put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of armed American soldiers.-Karim Abdullah, 37, a textile merchant, on Sen. McCain's walk through the market.
San Francisco International Aiport, from the air, at night. Looks like some futuristic space station, doesn't it?
This is the largest fund-raising performance by a presidential candidate in presidential election history in the first third of the year before the year of the presidential election.Ok...and once you figure all that out you can get excited over this little morsel: Only 581 more days to go until Election Day!
