Read this:

In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.

But there are growing concerns among American officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq’s ability to provide basic services to its people.

The projects run the gamut — from a cutting-edge, $270 million water treatment plant in Nasiriya that works at a fraction of its intended capacity because it is too sophisticated for Iraqi workers to operate, to a farmers’ market that farmers have not been able to decide how to divide up space for, to a large American hospital closed immediately after it was handed over to Iraq because the government was unable to supply it with equipment, a medical staff or electricity.

I sure could go for another lecture about fiscal conservatism from Republicans right about now.

Here it is, in a nutshell:

News that the federal government seems interested in transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Thomson Correctional Center was greeted warmly in this small, rural farm town along the Iowa border.

After holding out hope that the sprawling $145 million prison might improve the economic conditions in this remote area of the state, residents say any prisoners would be a welcomed sight.

“It would help the businesses here, and God knows we could use that,” said Kay Lawton, 59, a Thomson resident. “It doesn’t matter to me who they bring here.”

They trashed the economy so bad they can’t even fearmonger successfully in some places.

This is exactly the right answer:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a blunt response on Friday to the latest broadsides from former Vice President Dick Cheney: “Who cares?”

In the latest exchange between old and new administrations, Mr. Biden rebuffed his predecessor’s criticism about President Obama’s handling of Afghanistan as “absolutely wrong.” And Mr. Biden rejected the last review of the war conducted by the White House under former President George W. Bush and Mr. Cheney as “irrelevant.”

They had their eight years, and their record speaks for itself. Why the hell the beltway media still have their lips planted on Cheney’s behind is beyond me, but Biden got this exactly right. The answer to any question involving Dick Cheney’s policy opinions is “WHO CARES?” And that goes double for his idiot daughter.

When we last visited steely-eyed warrior Peter Wehner, he was leading the chairborne rangers in an epic battle against George Will, who Wehner decided had grown weak at heart over Afghanistan. That was but a few weeks ago, but since then our valiant warrior has left the fields of battle and taken to the fainting couch:

The term “sister organizations” is important because it shows solidarity with a news organization under fierce attack by the White House. This is the kind of question one would hope to see when a president and his top aides target a news organization and then, for good measure, try to dictate to other news organizations what they should do, how they should act, and which stories they should follow. But so far, stunningly, the media — including the White House press corps — have mostly been quiescent. One might have expected more in the face of these extraordinary efforts at media intimidation and media control. If the situation were reversed, and a Republican White House were targeting an entire network in a similar fashion, criticisms, condemnations, and thundering editorials would be pouring forth; terms like “abuse of power” and “chilling effect” would be on the lips of virtually every reporter in America.

A few quick things:

1.) Fox is not a news organization. Period.

2.) Fox news helped to organize and promote partisan political rallies, including situations in which their producers were caught rallying the crowds and their rabble was shouting down and ACTUALLY intimidating reporters from other networks.

3.) Fox is not a news organization. Period.

4.) Peter Wehner worked for the Bush administration. The Bush administration, in eight years, conducted more abuses to the field of journalism than anyone I can recall. A partial recollection of the Bush administration’s wrongdoings include:

-Paying Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus, and Maggie Gallagher and others for favorable opinions about WH policies or to attack opponents of the WH.

-Planting Jeff Gannon to lob softball questions.

-Used reporters to out a CIA agent, then sat by and watched reporters go to jail to protect their sources.

-Fed reporters misinformation about WMD in Iraq, then used those reporters stories as corroborating evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq.

-treated Helen Thomas like a leper.

-waged a coordinated campaign against NBC.

-kicked all the NY Times reporters off of their planes.

-the Pentagon Pundit program, which sold the war by planting former military officers on networks. Uncovering this story earned a journalist the fucking Pulitzer.

-Staged mock press conferences with FEMA employees pretending to be reporters.

-allowed Ari Fleischer to tell everyone (but directed at journalists) they needed to “watch what they say and what they do.”

And that is simply off the top of my head, and god only knows what lies and abuses Peter Wehner was responsible for while working at the Bush era Office of Strategic Initiatives. By comparison, the Obama White House has merely stated the obvious, which is that the Fox news is not a news organization.

I’m thinking Peter Wehner can just stfu.

According to the NYT City Room blog:

A federal judge on Tuesday revoked bail for Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is facing conspiracy and fraud charges. Judge Stephen C. Robinson of Federal District Court in White Plains said Mr. Kerik could not be trusted to honor the consent order that prohibits any involved party from revealing confidential information pertinent to the coming trial…

Before revoking the bail of Mr. Kerik, Judge Robinson described him as a “toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance, and I fear that combination leads him to believe his ends justify his means.”

“He sees the court’s rulings as an inconvenience,” Judge Robinson said, “something to be ignored, and an obstacle to be circumvented.”

Of course, this is no doubt good news for President McCain, but is it also good news for Governor Guiliani?

This WSJ piece by Karl Rove says it all:

The GOP Is Winning the Health-Care Debate- Gallup says independents now favor Republicans by nine points.

Passing health-care reform could be harmful to the health of congressional Democrats.

Just look at how President Barack Obama’s standing has fallen as he has pushed for reform. According to Fox News surveys, the number of independents who oppose health-care reform hit 57% at the end of September, up from 33% in July. Independents are generally a quarter of the vote in off-year congressional elections.

When Karl Rove says they are winning the debate, he means nothing of the sort, because this is not about debate or ideas. It never is with the Rove Republicans. It is about political opportunism. Remember, you never roll out a new product in August.

They can’t help themselves/

Looks like we might one day see Rumsfeld’s handy work:

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) learned today of the existence of video and audio tapes of the abusive interrogations of client Mohammed al Qahtani, the victim of the “First Special Interrogation Plan” personally overseen by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

“After the intense scrutiny of the government’s torture and interrogation of Mr. al Qahtani, it is shocking that the government has hidden the existence of these tapes from the public for so many years,” said CCR Attorney Gitanjali S. Gutierrez. “The government’s interrogation of him has been the topic of multiple military, Justice Department and congressional investigations. These tapes should have been acknowledged long ago.”

Until recently, the Government had adamantly denied that any U.S. personnel engaged in acts of torture during Mr. al Qahtani’s interrogation, but on January 14, 2009, Military Commission Convening Authority Susan Crawford conceded that by subjecting Mr. al Qahtani to systematic 20-hour interrogations, prolonged sleep deprivation, 160 days of severe isolation, forced nudity, sexual and religious humiliation, and other aggressive interrogation tactics, the government had engaged in acts of torture. Much of this information appeared in interrogation logs leaked to the press as early as 2006.

I’m surprised these have not been disappeared like the other tapes. I wonder if like waterboarding, the wingnuts are going to recreate all of these interrogations to prove torture is not torture.

Did Hannity ever get waterboarded yet?

So while the Post and the Times are simultaneously concern trolling themselves, apparently worried they don’t read enough wingnut blogs and then publicize their bullshit enough (do the WaPo editors not recognize that mainstreaming right-wing bullshit is Howard Kurtz’s job description), we get another glimpse into what really motivates the GOP.

Torture.

(via)

This Ross Douthat piece will be an instant classic.

Ahh, the liberal media. Savor it.

Heckuva job, Bush:

Thursday’s annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau’s principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush.

It’s not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.

On the upside, teen pregnancy is through the roof in Red States. Wolverines!

Who will be the first wingnut to attempt to discredit the census findings as an Acorn plot to damage Republicans? I’m going to go with Malkin, as always.

(via)

*** Update ***

This.

The newest wingnut endeavor:

Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-Ga.) has rapidly signed up 99 co-sponsors for his Czar Accountability and Reform Act of 2009, which I wrote about last week. All but one of them are Republicans: the member of the majority party backing Kingston’s crusade to prevent presidential advisers who haven’t been approved by the Senate from collecting salaries is Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.).

From wikipedia:

Also according to wikipedia, this:

Turdblossom wasn’t the only nickname Karl Rove had. Another nickname for him was “Domestic Policy Czar.”

I understand that consistency is not the Republican strongpoint. But would it have really hurt for them to wait a year before going batshit insane? Even most of America still remembers the last eight years, but they are going to the full monty with the nonsense anyway. I mean seriously, what is left for them to do? How do you top the last couple of months? Release a competing budget with no numbers?

Oh, nevermind.

(via)

*** Update ***

If the Republicans really were concerned with fiscal responsibility, they would stop making up so much shit that someone has to be employed full time by the White House refuting their lies.

*** Update #2 ***

Apparently Clay’s inclusion on the list was a clerical error.

Feel the 2012 Dickmentum:

A Cheney nomination “would be a serious consideration because he really has been a defender of policies that the majority of people now think are successful,” McLaughlin told the Huffington Post. “Although right now a lot of people are focused on the economy, if there ever was some sort of foreign policy crisis people will look to Dick Cheney and say he had it right.”

Pointing to Cheney’s strong favorability rating among Republicans (66 percent in a May 2009 poll compared to Colin Powell’s 64 percent), McLaughlin also noted that the former vice president has a strong political platform from which to test the electoral waters.

“Right now he is writing a book, and I’m sure it will be very interesting to see how that book positions him,” McLaughlin said. “I always thought that Senator [Hillary] Clinton’s book positioned her for a run for the White House and I think it could be the same way with Dick Cheney.”

I don’t know if he frightens me more or less than Palin. And while I think either would almost certainly lose to Obama, there’s still something to the On Any Given Tuesday theory of general elections. It’s hard for me see a Cheney or Palin presidency as anything other than a sign of the apocalypse.

DougJ’s earlier post today on Cheney reminded me of this article from Walter Pincus the other day:

Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general’s review of the agency’s interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former intelligence officials, especially those associated with the program.

A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the third-ranking CIA official at the time of the use of harsh interrogation practices, said that although vigorous oversight is crucial, the public airing of once-classified internal assessments and the prospect of further investigation are damaging the agency. “Morale at the agency is down to minus 50,” he said.

At the same time, former inspector general John L. Helgerson, whose review of the program was largely declassified Monday, said that the release, though painful, would ensure that the agency confronts difficult issues head on, instead of ignoring or trying to bury them.

Unlike virtually everything else in Fred Hiatt’s fishwrap, I tend to trust Pincus and his body of work, so I have no doubt that morale might be low.

What astounds me, though, is that morale might be low at the CIA because the Justice department might prosecute people who- get this- BROKE THE LAW. Imagine that- the Justice department has duties other than politically motivated prosecutions, micromanaging US Attorneys, and stocking the department with religious nuts and gay-bashers.

And what I find even more astounding is that the Republicans and Dick Cheney are, so far, successfully pivoting and presenting themselves as the defenders of the CIA, when it has been Dick Cheney and the neocon establishment that has spent the last four decades undermining, attacking, and debasing the CIA. It wasn’t the liberals who cooked up Team B- that would be George Herbert Walker Bush who approved it, Paul Wolfowitz who was part of the team, and Richard Perle who was instrumental in making it happen. It wasn’t Ted Kennedy and the liberals who spent the entire last decade undermining the CIA and basically making George Tenet say whatever the hell Dick Cheney wanted them to say, that would be the Republicans. It wasn’t Dennis Kucinich who ignored the August 6th CIA memo about bin Laden, setting the stage for the largest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t the dirty hippies at the DNC who created the Office of Special Plans to create an excuse to attack Iraq and directly undermine the intelligence from the CIA, that was Dick Cheney and Doug Feith and company.

And let’s not forget that it wasn’t Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer who outed a covert CIA agent and then conducted a full-on media jihad against her and her husband. No, again the honors for that go to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Bob Novak.

So if morale is low at the CIA and they are feeling a little butthurt, they might want to think about how things have happened the last few decades. They aren’t in the position they are in because of Eric Holder. Far from it. And if they can’t figure this out on their own, and need me to point this crap out, then quite frankly, I don’t think they are smart enough to be handling classified intelligence in the first damned place.

For someone so enamored of enhanced interrogation techniques, Dick Cheney sure is a sensitive guy:

“I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’”

They disabled the embed on the YouTube video that describes this perfectly.

This is depressing because it is such a realistic portrayal of our discourse:

I’m surprised I didn’t see Captain Ed in there.

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