I’m glad William Jefferson will go to jail, but I wish Peter W. Galbraith (ambassador to Croatia under Clinton) were in there too. Greenwald:

Galbraith was one of the most vocal Democratic supporters of the attack on Iraq, having signed a March 19, 2003 public letter (.pdf)—along with the standard cast of neocon war-lovers such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Danielle Pletka, and Robert Kagan—stating that “we all join in supporting the military intervention in Iraq” and “it is now time to act to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.” As intended, that letter was then praised by outlets such as The Washington Post Editorial Page, gushing that “it is both significant and encouraging that a bipartisan group of influential foreign policy thinkers, veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations, has signed on to a statement of policy on Iraq that makes sense on the war.” Throughout 2002 and 2003, Galbraith appeared in numerous outlets—including repeatedly on Fox News and with Bill O’Reilly—presenting himself as a loyal Democrat firmly behind the invasion of Iraq. In 2002, he was an adviser to Paul Wolfowitz on Kurdistan.

After playing a key role in enabling the invasion of Iraq, Galbraith first became one of a handful of U.S. officials who worked on writing the Iraqi Constitution, and after he resigned from the government, he then continuously posed as an independent expert on the region and, specifically, an “unpaid” adviser to the Kurds on the Constitution. Galbraith was an ardent and vocal advocate for Kurdish autonomy, arguing tirelessly in numerous venues for such proposals—including in multiple Op-Eds for The New York Times— and insisting that Kurds must have the right to control oil resources located in Northern Iraq.

The Times (in an excellent piece of reporting) yesterday:

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

If the Norwegian oil execs had dressed as pimps and hos when they signed the contract or if Galbraith was delivered the $100 million via a freezer, this would be a bigger story, obviously. As it is, he’ll probably soon be writing editorials in the Post and Times about how we should invade another oil rich nation!

I honestly have no idea what the “transnational left” is, but anything that pisses off NRO birther and all around insane person Andy McCarthy is alright by me.

Actually a pretty nice morning here- not as cold as it has been lately, so I am offto the rails to trails with her royal highness.

I hate to burden you with more Broder, but I honestly believe that you can hear a civilization—our civilization—crumbling when you read this:

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision—whether or not it is right.

I believe we should get the hell out of Afghanistan, the sooner the better. And I hope that is the decision that Obama arrives at, the sooner the better.

But to suggest that it is more important to make a quick decision than to make a correct decision, to suggest that an extra few weeks of reporters’ and civil servants’ time is more important than the the next six months of 40,000 American soldiers’ lives…the fact that a journalist can suggest this and still be taken seriously does not bode well for where we are headed as a country.

It’s all part of the cult of the “tough decision”, the “gut decision”. It’s easy to laugh at that. But I just don’t see all of this stupidity ending in anything other than collapse.

I have a ton to do tomorrow, so here are some earworms for you to tide you over:

I’m going to have weird dreams.

Yes, I still love Tunch, and yes, I have had a cocktail or three, but hands down the best decision I have made in the last ten years was adopting Lily. Every time I come home, I’m treated like the king I think I am.

*** Update ***

Laphroiag on the rocks, also. With a Tunch hair in it! Which is the only way it has ever been served in my household.

So, while I was out eating nachos and watching the football game, Ann Althouse has figured out Sarah Palin is a moron (what are the odds on “libertarian” Glenn Reynolds linking that Althouse post?) and the AP has figured out she is a liar:

I’m tempted to go back out for another drink to give the rest of the media the opportunity to figure out the Republicans are nuts, but I don’t want to push my luck, so I’ll roll with this gambit tomorrow night.

Up next, Matt Welch discovers he’s pimping an unworkable political ideology.

I’m off to watch WVU either get killed by a far superior team or stage a miraculous upset. Not going to be an in between, I’m afraid. I’ll leave you with this:

That is the “you know I’m cute gimme treats” look.

*** Update ***

This comment cracked me up, because I found it in the spam filter:

Woohoo! Multi-paragraph blockquote success!

Someone fights mightily with WP, manages to pull off a successful double paragraph blockquote, and their celebratory comment goes into moderation. That is all kinds of awesome.

FYWP.

This Palin book is going to be THE… GREATEST… THING… EVAH:

One of the whackiest claims Sarah Palin makes in her new book is that she agreed to her disastrous interview with Katie Couric — a central event during Campaign 2008 — because a top McCain aide told her Couric had low self esteem, leading Palin to take pity on the CBS anchor.

A McCain adviser I just spoke to adamantly denied the claim, and provided a counter story: Palin was repeatedly urged by McCain aides to prepare for the interview, but refused.

Palin claims in her new book that she agreed to sit down with Couric partly because she felt sorry for her, after senior McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace told her that Couric suffered from self-esteem problems. It’s understandable that Palin would try to deflect blame for the interview: It was a disaster that hastened her unmasking as unqualified for the presidency.

“It’s not true,” the McCain adviser I just reached said, laughing heartily at the claim. “It’s ridiculous.”

I’m positively fucking dying for Mark Halperin’s take on this, because this is devastating news for the Obama campaign.

(via)

This will be entertaining:

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.

In an address at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, Ms. Napolitano sought to dispel any notion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — might postpone the most contentious piece of an immigration overhaul until after midterm elections next November.

Laying out the administration’s bottom line, she said it will argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes enacting tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and the people who hire them, and streamlining the system for legal immigration, but also what she called a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the ensuing right-wing freakout will lock up the Hispanic vote for the Democrats in the 2010 midterm. Only, of course, after Bart Stupak and the blue dogs make sure no illegal aliens get abortions.

I hate what the gays are doing to our traditional values:

There are 30 nude photos and eight sex tapes of former Miss California Carrie Prejean, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively.

***

Now a RadarOnline.com investigation has uncovered that there are SEVEN more “biggest mistakes” of her life – all of them solo performances, just like the one sex tape that the religious beauty queen has admitted to. And there are 30 photos of Carrie, most topless, some showing everything, and most taken by Carrie using her reflection in a mirror.

On the bright side for the wingnuts, at least it wasn’t Joe the Plumber filming himself.

You know what would be awesome? If they were actually required to turn a profit to spew their nonsense, rather than begging for money to top off the money from the Koch foundation.

And I just love how they are using the market collapse as a Reason to keep them in wingnut welfare. Let the financial market crash, and then deregulate even more! Invisible hand!

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damned happy that all the fevered discussion of Lady Starburst’s new book is drowning out some of the screaming that Obama is letting a super-genius criminal set foot on American soil.

But I’ve got to think that Palinpalooza would be even more attention-consuming if the Levi Johnston Playgirl issue was coming out right now, in the middle of Palin’s book tour. Why are they waiting til January? Isn’t that like rolling out a new product in August?

Mario Piperni, Solar Tristan.

cdcarr, Self Discovery.

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

Click on the photos for a link to the photographer’s website. To see all photo threads, click on ‘photo blogging’ at the bottom of the post.

If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.

How could you people laugh at earnest rightwing civil servants like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann? Just pause for a minute and think about the abuse dished out by cruel and terrible people.

The former governor, who in the book says her dream was to be a sportscaster alongside Howard Cosell, takes aim at ABC anchor Gibson, whose interview preceded Couric’s. He “peered skeptically” at her over his glasses, Palin writes, and had no interest in the substantive issues.

It must have felt especially galling to get peered at skeptically over glasses when so many reporters literally teabag John McCain.

GIBSON: The administration has said we’ve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?

GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran?

GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?

GIBSON: But, Governor, I’m asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government.