This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Kinda sad. I remember watching this guy on Letterman. He was kinda funny. He spent a lot of time talking about how to be safe around bears. Oops.
Bear Mauling Kills Grizzly Advocate, Friend (Reuters on Yahoo! News)
The deaths were discovered when an air-taxi pilot flew to the site Monday afternoon to pick up the campers. He found the campsite damaged and a brown bear atop what appeared to be a human body, eating the remains.
OK, found the source of the report. The Sunday Mirror in London from their reporter in Baghdad. Looks legit. The story has lots of interesting details. Check it out. The administration is probably going to be annoyed this leaked early, especially the “It is just a ruse to find his location” spin on part of it. If this is actually the case, the next few days may be interesting.
Desperate Saddam Offers Americans Deal (Paul Martin, Sunday Mirror)
SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal.
The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash.
President Bush is being kept abreast of the extraordinary talks by his National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice. She is co-ordinating negotiations in Baghdad which are led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of American forces in Iraq.
(via The Agonist)
Haven’t seent this anywhere else yet, and the guy doesn’t even provide a link to his source. So I’m pretty dubious. But passing it a long because it is a cool rumor. :-)
Saddam in Secret Talks with US Forces (Aquafire, AppleInsider)
According to AFP sources..
Saddam has been in secret negotiations with US forces for the last few days..
He is seeking safe passage out of Iraq to a third country in exchange for imformation pertainng to WOMD and to his personal bank accounts…
President Bush is said to be fully aware of these developments..
I’ve been meaning for awhile to post something about Clark entering the democratic race, but I’ve been kind of distracted by other things lately. Today, at my Dad’s doing the birthday thing, I have a little time.
I don’t really have a strong opinion about Clark (or any of the rest) yet. I’ll start paying more attention over the next few months. We are still a year away from the election people! But in any case, the biggest thing I have noticed since Clark announced is just the absolutely heavy volume of strong negative comments about him all over the place since the announcement.
I flipped the radio past Rush the other day… non-stop Clark bashing. Checking various blogs, all sorts of negative stuff on his flip flop on the war. There was one article full of quotes from co-workers in the military slamming him for various things, etc. I was seeing very little positive comments.
From the Republican leaning sources, the negativity might indicate they think he would be a real threat if nominated, thus he needed to be slapped down quickly. From the Democrat leaning places, it is people who already have their favorite horse trying to make sure his impact isn’t that high. I mean, if either of the two really thought he had no chance and was irrelevant, wouldn’t they just mostly ignore him?
Anyway I notice today some polls are showing him right near the top of the Democratic pack already. This could get interesting.
Oh, and I’ve seen a variety of places posting conspiracy theories about the role of Bill and Hillary in this, and how it might be related to Hillary’s own plans for the Presidency. Here is one of those…
More Stupid White Men (William Grider)
Clark’s much bigger problem is that he is the Clintons’ candidate — Bill and Hillary’s pick to stop Howard Dean and keep warm the leader’s chair until ’08 when the stars are supposed to align for Hillary’s candidacy. If Clark wins the nomination and loses the election, that’s fully compatible with the Clinton restoration plan (and maybe would increase Dems’ hunger for the re-ascendancy).
If it looked as though the General was actually going to beat Dubya, you will hear a mighty clamoring next spring that he must put her on the ticket for Veep. This “grassroots” yearning for Hillary will be orchestrated by the same Washington political whisperers who whipped up enthusiasm for Clark’s entry.
(via MaxSpeak)
Yeah. OK. Maybe. If Hillary really wants to be Prez, I’m not sure this would be the most sensible strategy. But I’ll withold judgement for now. I’m not saying this sort of thing isn’t possible, it very well could be.
I was not a Bill and Hillary fan when Bill was in office. The disaster of W has made me miss them though. They were horrible in many ways, but nowhere near as horrible as W and his entourage. And I’d take Bill back in a heartbeat over W. However, both Bill and Hillary *are* scheming slimeballs. So I could see them thinking like this.
But for now, lets go with Occam’s razor, and just assume Hillary means what she says about the presidency and Clark is in it for himself and is not just a puppet of the Clintons, OK?
Apperantly Powell has indicated he is done at the end of this term.
State Dept. Changes Seen if Bush Reelected (washingtonpost.com)
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration’s national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.
(via Calpundit)
But I don’t think this is actually a big deal. Well, the fact that he is signalling it this early perhaps shows another insight into the obvious tension between Powell and the neocons on many issues and Powell’s frustration with that. But as I posted as a comment at Calpundit, it is standard operating procedure for presidents to reshuffle their entire cabinets between terms. The whole cabinet submits their resignations, and the president reappoints who they want where they want, which is usually significantly different than the first term.
This is a nice recap of the search for Bin Laden over the last few years (going back to the Clinton years). A reminder that despite the recent obsession over Iraq, this is still around.
The Search for Osama by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker
“He’s sending tapes and messages to his followers all the time, with instructions that could not have come from anyone else,” Yossef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told me recently. “They’re things like condolences to families of Islamic luminaries who have died,” he said. “People from the Philippines to Indonesia to South America ask bin Laden questions, and they get answers from him.” Bodansky was struck by the meditative tone of the letters. “They are written with a tremendous amount of peace of mind. There are no mistakes. He is not a guy on the run.”
(found via CounterSpin)
There isn’t too much brand new here that we have not heard before, but it is a good compilation. Sooner or later, our distraction with Iraq is going to cause us more problems.
Someone else had the same thought I did after hearing Blair’s speech the other day. But unlike me, they made a cool little website…
http://blair2004.com/
Between the babbling of George W. Bush on the right, the blathering of the anti-war left, and the cluck-clucking of media hens everywhere, stands Tony Blair, articulate and principled.
Many Americans understand and support Iraqi Freedom because of the leadership provided by Mr. Blair, and many of us would feel much safer if Mr. Blair occupied the White House.
Tony Blair took a considerable political risk in supporting Iraqi Freedom, and for that we would like to thank him and promote him to chief executive in charge of the world’s greatest super power, President of the United States of America.
I didn’t actually agree with Blair ont he war, but I do think he would make a much better President than W. Citizenship? Pshaw! I’d vote for him! :-)
(via Samizdata)
Ah yes, this is the way it is supposed to work…
The House That Roared by Juliet Eilperin and Albert B. Crenshaw in the Washington Post
Republicans recounted indignities of their own: When Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) had told Stark to “shut up” during the committee meeting, Stark denounced him as “a little wimp. Come on, come over here and make me, I dare you. . . . You little fruitcake. You little fruitcake. I said you are a fruitcake.”
Actually, while all the tensions of this situation are a bit comical, the real problem here is that we don’t have a divided government right now. The whole separation of powers between the branches was designed to put checks and balances in place between the branches. In the original design, part of this was making sure the house, senate, president (and court for that matter) were all decided in different ways and served different constituancies.
The house was elected in small districts directly by the people, and was the representation for the PEOPLE.
The senate was appointed by the state legislatures and represnted the STATES.
The president was appointed by the electoral college and represented the NATIONAL STATE
Unfortunately, very quickly after President Washington, the electoral college ceased to be a deliberative body as it was intended to be, and became a rubber stamp for those electing the electors, to the point today that we usually don’t even know who the electors are, and only who they are “pledged” to. They weren’t even supposed to be behoilden to a specific presidential candidate before the election in the way it was supposed to work!! You were supposed to choose people to be electors who had good judgement and who could make the decision to pick the president from those nominated by the electoral college when they met. Don’t even get me started on how much of a corruption even HAVING primaries is… Anyway, while the way electors are proportioned between the states is slightly different than how it is done in the house, it is very close, essentially making the constituancy of both the president and the house to be almost the same. Thus weakening the differences of interest inherant in the design, and weakening the checks and balances.
Anyway, it was further corrupted by the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which instituted the popular election of senators, thus depriving completely the states of a voice in the federal government, and once again aligning the constituancies and interests of the senate with the house and the president. Once again weakening the checks and balances.
And so we end up with a system that originally carefully seperated the interests of the three bodies, to ensure stong checks and balances and differences between the bodies, with one where the interests are now closely aligned. Now the ONLY time the checks and balances actually work as they were intended to work is when we have divided government, with the presidency and the congress in different hands. Because this is the only time the bodies will truely conflict with each other, resulting in the blunting of extreme actions on any side, and the forging of more reasonable compromises. (Although, I must admit, even in divided government, the congress often rolls over and does not protest at the encroachment of executive power into many areas that it should be protective of.)
Anyway… whenever there is no division, and we have all Republican control, or we have all Democratic control as has occured previously, you get the potental for unchecked abuses by both the congress and the presidency. Given that the other factors which attempted to ensure differences in interests between the branches have eroded or failed, divided government is really needed. Hopefully at the election the Dems will be able to take either the congress, or the presidency, BUT NOT BOTH.
Once again, this is a great speech. Read it. Read the whole thing.
Text of Prime Minister Blair’s Speech to Congress (Reuters at the Washington Post)
As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in fact, it is transient.
The question is: What do you leave behind?
And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty.
That is what this struggle against terrorist groups or states is about. We’re not fighting for domination. We’re not fighting for an American world, though we want a world in which America is at ease. We’re not fighting for Christianity, but against religious fanaticism of all kinds.
And this is not a war of civilizations, because each civilization has a unique capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage.
We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind — black or white, Christian or not, left, right or a million different — to be free, free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.
That’s what we’re fighting for. And it’s a battle worth fighting.
It may just be good speech writing and delivery, but it is *GOOD* speech writing and delivery. Conveying the message in a way I have not heard from W. Or if I have, it is somehow less convincing from him because of the other things he says and the stupid and disturbing things that come out of his mouth.
It may not convince me that the war was the right way to have gone about this, I think there were better ways that could have done less overall damage. But this leaves the impression that it comes from a man of integrity standing up for principals I can believe in and follow. One that thinks things through, and actually does have the world’s (and his country’s) best interests at heart.
By contrast, speeches by W make me feel like I am listening to a jingoistic idiot who has goals and objectives which I do not trust, and who I don’t believe thinks out or understands the full implications of his decisions and instead relies on the analysis of people who I trust even less.
Oh, and I liked his jokes near the beginning too:
Mr. Speaker, sir, my thrill on receiving this award was only a little diminished on being told that the first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to George Washington for what Congress called his “wise and spirited conduct” in getting rid of the British out of Boston.
On our way down here, Senator Frist was kind enough to show me the fireplace where, in 1814, the British had burnt the Congress Library. I know this is, kind of, late, but sorry.
Actually, you know, my middle son was studying 18th century history and the American War of Independence, and he said to me the other day, “You know, Lord North, Dad, he was the British prime minister who lost us America. So just think, however many mistakes you’ll make, you’ll never make one that bad.”
And true, he didn’t address the problems with intelligence and other factors which rushed this thing along faster than needed, which is being shown more and more by the day. But I don’t think he needed to during this speech. It wasn’t the time and place for that.
Anyway, read the Blair speech. It is very good. Made me feel more patriotic than anything I heard anybody say on July 4th.
Wow. I just listened to Tony Blair’s speech to Congress. He blew me away. He is so much more convincing than W, so much more reasonable, and said all the right sorts of things. I would probably vote for this man in a second, whereas voting for W is pretty much unthinkable to me. I thought the way W rushed into Iraq was irresponsible and reckless. I think Tony would have worked toward the same result, even perhaps including the same level of military action, but just done it in a much better way.
In any case, Blair was very very impressive. If you missed the speech, look for a transcript or audio/video of it.
Anyway, more thoughts once I find a transcript online and am actually home from work and have time to think, as opposed to now when I have to get back to work.
For now, here’s a link to the CNN story on the speech.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/17/blair/index.html
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