December 8, 2006

Roundup:
Bush clearly intends to take the Iraq Study Group as seriously as he took the 9-11 Commission Report. Remember how that was welcomed and then immediately filed?

The Right Wing media (including a VAST majority of the MSM) are trying to label President Jimmy Carter an Anti-Semite for his recent book about Israel and Palestine. Proof once again that you cannot openly criticize Israel in American and not face a smear campaign. CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed Pres. Carter last week, and if it were not for Carter being an ex-President, I don't think Blitzer would have allowed himself to be contradicted as Carter presented the facts as opposed to the propaganda. Read the transcript here, and remember that Blitzer used to work for AIPAC. And there was also this nice tidbit of info from Bob Gate's hearings about Israel and nukes... it seems no one bothered to tell the nominee that the U.S. never acknowledges Israel's nuclear capacity, or else it would have to treat them the way they treat every other country with nuclear ambitions.

Over at HuffPost, Steve Young prematurely announces the death of Right Wing Talk Radio, but he at least gives some examples of how desperate they are right now.

December 5, 2006:

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." That line from The Who seems to ring true with today's Senate hearings for Gates, the nominee for Secretary of Defense. While I am happy to see Rumsfeld resign and then admit that things are horribly off-course in Iraq, I'm not sure that the "anyone but Rumsfeld" mantra is any real change. Sure, it probably can't get much worse, but all accounts show that the democrats do not have enough time or political will to properly challenge Gates. He simply is the only person being offered up. The country is in such a rush to replace Rumsfeld at any cost, they will neglect to consider his past indiscretions during Iran-Contra.

What will also be missing from the hearings will be any talk or discussion about the tactics used regarding torture, extraordinary rendition, or pre-emptive war (we know he's for it). Gates is widely regarded as a "company man", and while he says he's open to suggestions, he will not propose anything that contradicts the Bush Agenda. And the situation could be escalated by increasing the number of troops on the ground in a last-ditch attempt to gain control over the situation, leaving us enforcing Marshall Law in Iraq for how long... ?

So other than being a new face and lacking Rumsfeld's mind-bending wordplay, is Gates really any different?