Via Atrios, many interesting things today.
Steven Benen:
It's disappointing, but not surprising. After the president scuttled a compromise between Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and congressional Democrats, Senate Dems did what many expected they would do: they caved...
Bush is getting practically everything he asked for. Indeed, under Bush's warrantless-search program launched in 2001, the administration could conduct oversight-free surveillance only if it suspected someone on the call was a terrorist. Under the bill passed by the Senate yesterday, that condition no longer exists.
This won Harry Reid Atrios's Wanker of the Day Award. But really, what else could Harry do? Abu Gonzo was threatening to release the tapes where Harry gets the payola from MGM Grand Casino for rolling over at the start of the Iraq war, not to even mention Patriot2.
Next, it's true, I didn't believe it, but HHHillary and Obama are talking nukes against Terra. Will somebody pour these two idiots a cup of shut the fuck up? This is Yearly Kos they're talking to, not the Tom Tancredo fan club. They doubtless managed to turn off a thousand or so of the most influential bloggers in cyberspace.
Juan Cole:
I'm going to hear Senator Barack Obama on Saturday afternoon at the Yearly Kos convention. Will report back on Sunday about his remarks.
On Thursday, he said he would not use nuclear weapons against al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then backed up and said "scratch that," there had been no discussion of nuclear weapons.
Hillary Clinton criticized Obama for (initially?) ruling out the use of nuclear weapons, saying that a president should not take any weapon in the arsenal off the table.
I really think the Democrats are misunderstanding the mood of the American people. Is Senator Clinton saying she would entertain the option of nuking Pakistan or Afghanistan? Wouldn't that kill a lot of innocents and spread radioactive materials around on the grass that cows eat, putting it into milk and thence into local children, increasing their chances of contracting cancer? Isn't Obama absolutely right that this is one instance in which nukes are useless for tactical purposes?
Pakistan, by the way, is a) an ally, b) a nuclear power in its own right, c) a major Muslim country of 160 million, the population of which will soon equal that of the United States, and d) an opinion leader among other Muslim states. Most Pakistanis are not fundamentalists but rather Sufis, traditionalists, mild reformists or secularists. Or at least that is the case now. If US presidential candidates push them to the wall, they can after all decide to turn radical...
But boy howdy those Company kids loved it. That was probably worth a cool million in war bucks for the campaign for them both.
Something else striking Atrios pointed to, the meltdown of Jim Cramer on CNBC about the bursting mortgage bubble.
No, it isn't the job of the Fed to bail out market speculators, but even though Cramer's hedge fund buddies are using them as a human shield, the possibility that 14 million people are about to be made homeless is not anything to shrug off with an "I-told-you-so" either.
The biggest tradgedy is solving this problem requires an intelligence and flexibility you are not going to find in any Bu$hCo-appointed Fed chief, even if a big chunk of Dear Leader's ba$e loses their shirts. And homes.
If chaos really is the plan, the people who have sown the wind are about to reap the whirlwind. And all the oil in Iraq won't save them.
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