"To prepare the full range of options..." (VIDEO)

This is not the President saying it's "go" time, rather it's the President saying "I'm trying to determine whether or not it's "go" time".

When it comes to turning to Mercenaries from Chad, and using Air Power on demonstrators, I hope the Colonel's memory hasn't failed him.  There's are things America can do about that...and it can involve the user of cruise missiles.

BREAKING: Richard Holbrooke has died.

It's too bad. I was hoping that since he was in critical, but stable condition today, things were looking better.

Thoughts, prayers and love to his family. I am so, so sorry for your loss.

Julian Assange remains a clown - Part V. An unfortunately ongoing series.

My low opinion of Julian Assange remains.  He's a clown and an asshat.  He gets people killed, but he doesn't care, as long as he gets his fifteen minutes.

Apparently, he told TIME in a SKYPE interview:

"[Hillary Clinton] should resign, if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she should resign over that."

So let me get this straight.

Low-down, snake-oil, underhanded, borderline illegal behavior should get Hillary Clinton fired...

...but low-down, snake-oil, underhanded, borderline illegal behavior should result in Julian Assange being hailed as a hero.

Carl Bernstein: "There's no there--there." (VIDEO)

It's amazing how hard Carl Bernstein (yeah, that Carl Bernstein) is working to debunk the story about Hillary swapping jobs with Joe Biden.  (Carl says it's a non-story puffed up by the chattering class and ex-Hillary supporters seeking a cure for boredom).  It's just as amazing how hard Lawrence is working to keep it alive.  It's all Carl can do from pounding his fist on the table and yelling out: "BULLS#$%!!!"



I also don't know about Lawrence's "theory", isolating the entirety of the vote in favor of Obama in its historical context kinda misses the point.  (The War in Iraq and the Economy played much bigger roles than history.)

Theories work wonderfully in a vacuum.  Lawrence's point is salient, assuming the country doesn't react with mass panic over the prospect of a Sarah Palin or a Newt Ginrich running for President.  I have the feeling that once the country gets a load of them, it may not matter what the President does.

Also, Lawrence made a mistake in his interview with Joe Klein. President Obama did not start the Bank Bailout (aka TARP). Joe Klein said he did.

President Obama annouces the new Start Treaty (VIDEO)

Half the time, I'm posting video of speeches and/or Town Halls I don't think are going to get coverage...even on supposedly Democratic-friendly MSNBC.

This speech is one of them. (As I type this, this story is fourth on the Washington Post's headlines, behind the Iraqi Elections, Abstinence Funding, and Bart Stupak's Editorial justifying his vote for Health Care Reform).

Oops, now it's number five, changing the ways of the Senate jumped ahead of it.

God, I hate agreeing with Joan Walsh...

There is a nice list of Liberal-slash-Progressive Pundits that frankly, I don't trust: some of those people I've talked about on this blog. Joan Walsh is on that list.

I've always found her, personally, to be a wishy-washy Limousine Liberal. Someone who talks a good game, but when it comes to the brass tacks of understand certain things (race), doesn't have the first clue.

And add to all that the fact that she was, at least in my mind, a Clinton Partisan during the Campaign.

The conventional wisdom has to give Obama the best shot -- he's got the most money, the freshest story, and in a year when everyone, including many Republicans, is craving someone new, he is that guy. I'm just not sure he can shoot beyond the 25 percent or so of the Democratic electorate to grab the lead.

And:

I still think the race is Clinton's to lose, and the media, having once overstated the perfection of her campaign, is now overstating its troubles.

I also won't mention that she's been a big Barry Bonds apologist.

Boy, times have changed alright. She's become a Obama Convert in the best possible way.

But when it comes down to a match between Christopher Hitchens and Joan Walsh...man there's no contest.




From her Salon Piece this afternoon, which for purposes of this piece, is pretty much the whole thing:

I had to debate Christopher Hitchens, Clinton-hater-in-chief, on "Hardball" today. I thought I held my own, but when I watched it I caught many outright falsehoods that I missed, like his calling Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist leadership the "main clientele" of former President Clinton. Hitchens has allowed himself to be deranged by his Clinton hatred, and it's unfortunate to see a smart guy disabled by his own bias.

My bottom line is, if Hitchens is right, and Hillary Clinton is an utterly unqualified political hack who only cares about her political future and her husband's, what does her selection say about Barack Obama? Either he's naive and wimpy, and hasn't availed himself of the superior knowledge of the Clintons that Hitchens claims (or he knows and doesn't care about it); or he knows everything Hitchens does and picked her anyway for craven domestic political reasons: to get the Clintons inside his tent, not outside of it, and to co-opt a potential 2012 rival. That would be more politically venal than almost anything Hitchens accuses Clinton of doing: sacrificing our nation's global diplomatic interests to his domestic political ambitions.

So now Hitchens is extending his baseless charges of corruption against the Clintons to smear Obama. This, of course, makes me admire Obama all the more: He's taken both Clintons inside his tent because he needs them and recognizes their formidable domestic and foreign political and policy skills. He's spending political capital on them, because he thinks they're worth it, and saying a big, polite "up yours" to the Clinton haters who've made a career out of spreading this garbage. Those are my words, not Obama's, of course; he's much more diplomatic.