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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)
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)
(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)
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)
(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)
(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
(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…
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
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. 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)
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:
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. |
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