Lawrence O'Donnell: This is how George Bush got himself re-elected without going after OBL (VIDEO)

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Apparently, Christiane Amanpour pretty much nailed OBL's location back in 2008 (VIDEO)

Maximum credit where credit's due.

Watch Jon get lied to, TWICE in his interview with Pervez Musharraf (VIDEO)

From before the days this Blog existed. Interesting, given the context of the times.

"Do you know where he is?  We'll follow you."

Well, apparently that's what happened.


Part 1:

The Daily Show - Pervez Musharraf Pt. 1
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Hmm.  Watch the where Musharraf emphasizes over and over again that Pakistan eliminated Al-Qaeda from their cities.

You know...little bit of a problem there...

Methinks Jon got upset...at the wrong lie.

Part 2:

The Daily Show - Pervez Musharraf Pt. 2
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Jed Lewinson's four questions every undecided voter should ask Republicans

From Jed's post on the Daily Kos:

1. What was the average monthly private sector job growth in 2008, the final year of the Bush presidency, and what has it been so far in 2010?

2. What was the Federal deficit for the last fiscal year of the Bush presidency, and what was it for the first full fiscal year of the Obama presidency?

3. What was the stock market at on the last day of the Bush presidency? What is it at today?

4. Which party's candidate for speaker will campaign this weekend with a Nazi reenactor who dressed up in a SS uniform?

The answers (which if you are a reader of this blogs won't surprise you) are right here:

Maybe the American People are smarter than I thought.

Maybe I should apologize to my fellow citizens, because according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll:

The 71% saying Bush should get blamed was a modest decline from the 80% who felt that way about a year ago, in July 2009. [...]

In the July 2009 poll, a third, 32%, said [Obama] should shoulder a great deal or moderate amount of the blame. That percentage has risen — no surprise, given that he’s been in office for 20 months. Now almost half, 48%, do. But 51% say he’s dealing with problems he inherited, not created, saying he deserves not much or none of the responsibility for economic problems that include high unemployment and a faltering housing market.

There was, predictably, a yawning partisan divide on the question. Republicans by 4-1, 44%-10%, were more likely to give Obama a great deal of the blame than Bush. Democrats by more than 20-1 targeted Bush: They said the former president bore a great deal of the blame; just 3% said that of the current one.

More on ThinkProgress.

Too Funny not to post (NSFW)

Hypocrisy? Priceless.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), you know, the guy who thought withdrawing from Iraq was a mistake, thinks that George Bush hasn't been getting enough credit for the ending of the Combat mission in Iraq.

A Second Look...

Looking at the extended cut of the John Yoo interview, Jon Stewart did way better than I originally thought, particularly in parts 2 and 3.

There was no hammer moment, like with Cramer, but he did put it to him. Yoo had some intelligent things to say (though I still think they're still wrong).

That being said, it would have helped if Jon Stewart had started off with the basic question: "Do you think Torture or any of the methods you describe are a reliable means of collecting Intelligence?"

You probably would have answered: "It's not up to me. I'm not a strategtist. I was asked a legal question by the Bush White House, and I provided a legal answer."

Even though that question, to me and a lot of Legal scholars, had been answered by the drafting of the Geneva Conventions.

What the @#$% was that?!?!? (VIDEO)

Watching the interview with John Yoo, I was looking forward to a Jon Stewart skewering. But it wasn't meant to be...

There's a part of me that believes, John Yoo was doing this @#$% on purpose. Clearly, it was making Jon's head hurt. Hell, it was making my head hurt. Maybe Yoo was dropped as a kid or something. I'm really starting to figure that these arguments make sense only to him, and the Bush Administration just say "Hell, go with it!"

Part 1:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Daily Show: Exclusive - John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Part 2:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Part 3:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

MSNBC: "Doesn‘t it seem weird to build the same failed system all over again with the same known obvious loopholes?" (VIDEO)

It's rare when I put up some Rachel, so...bear that in mind.

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That is the implicit and sometimes explicit charge here, that President Bush somehow did it right, and President Obama is somehow doing it wrong.

It‘s worth noting that whatever we as a country were doing on September 12th and in the weeks after, doesn't seem to have worked all that well. It was about three months after September 12th that we got the failed terrorist attack that was essentially exactly like the one that happened this Christmas Day. Three months after 9/11, Richard Reid tried to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner with explosives that had been hidden in his shoes. Whatever we were doing with our 9/12 mentality wasn't enough to prevent that.

Our 9/12 mentality also wasn‘t able to prevent the growth and maturation of al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, al Qaeda chapters in Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, strong enough to pull off major terrorist strikes like the raid on the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2004, which left nine dead, the attack on oil company compounds in Al-Khubar in Saudi Arabia that same year that left 22 people dead, and the brutal murder of American engineer Paul Johnson also in Saudi Arabia in 2004.

An article in Sunday‘s “Washington Post” detailed the extent to which United States‘ missteps in Yemen allowed al Qaeda to expand and grow there as well.

This super-focus 9/12 mentality that conservatives now say we need to return also wasn‘t able to capture the perpetrators of 9/11, as we learned incidentally from last week‘s suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers in Khost, Afghanistan. We are still looking for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Jordanian double agent recruited by the CIA was brought in to help U.S. officials find Zawahiri, 8 ½ years after our super focus 9/12 mentality.

The danger in these Bush policies being romanticized and retroactively imbued with some sort of magical efficacy they didn‘t really have is that we may start putting those failed policies in place again.

Today, we heard President Obama announce a new program for screening passengers coming into the United States.

That program was formally announced by the TSA this week. It calls for extra screening procedures for passengers traveling to the United States from 14 foreign countries.

That type of program, of course, evokes roughly one of the things the Bush administration did starting in 2002 when John Ashcroft announced a new system wherein any male under the age of 25 from this list of countries would have to register with authorities if they were working or visiting or living in the United States. It was called the NSEERS System.

That system that performed extremely well, produced precisely zero terrorism prosecutions. But it did turn a whole lot of people against the United States for a lifetime. It might make us feel better to have that sort of list, but those countries we just scrolled on the screen, you may have noticed didn't include the nations of Jamaica or England. Remember the shoe bomber, Richard Reid? He was a British citizen born to a family of Jamaican immigrants. He was radicalized at a mosque in London.

So, our super focus 9/12 mentality came up with the hugely costly, arguably quite counterproductive system that would not have screened out the next attempted bomber anyway.

By the way, the new Obama administration list from the TSA also doesn't include Jamaica and England. Not that it should. Not that there‘s anything special about Jamaica or England, but if we're trying to apply even the wisdom of hindsight here, doesn't it seem weird to build the same failed system all over again with the same known obvious loopholes?

It‘s one thing to pound your chest and brag on profiling because it makes liberals mad and it makes you feel tough. But how does the fact that it doesn't work intrude on your macho, macho feelings about it?

The danger of the Bush administration‘s approach being lauded as this good, tough approach that we wish we went back to is that it will currently increase the political appeal of emulating those failed approaches, being gratuitously unconstitutional in order to look tough is not the same thing as actually keeping us safe. No matter how much Mr. Obama's critics may want it to be so.

WaPo: Newsflash...believe it or not, George Bush Compromised, too...

From Erza Klein:

The Bush Record of Tax Cuts, Failure and Betrayal

I'm not sure what good it does for progressives to delude themselves about Bush's success in passing pure domestic policy initiatives that easily overcame the opposition of Republican moderates, but the reality is that he saw his initiatives watered down at every turn.

Bush initially sought a $1.6 trillion tax cut. The votes didn't exist. So the price tag was reduced to $1.35 trillion, and since a filibuster looked unbreakable, the bill went through the budget reconciliation process, which meant that its deficit-increasing provisions — that is to say, most all of it — would sunset in 2010. For that reason, much of that bill evaporates this year. Interestingly, Olympia Snowe advocated a "trigger" option that year, too, which would have revoked the tax cuts if the budget surpluses were beneath expectations.

The 2003 tax cuts were trimmed from more than $700 billion to about $300 billion by a coalition of Senate moderates. Social Security privatization was, of course, quickly abandoned. Medicare Part D was loathed by many House conservatives. Tellingly, Dick Armey wrote an op-ed opposing it, and Tom DeLay had such trouble passing it over conservative objections that the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the tactics he used to pass it.

There's a sort of comfort in believing that George W. Bush got everything he wanted, because it suggests that if liberals could only emulate his tactics, they too could get everything they want. But Bush's domestic policy was appalling to most conservatives. His tax cuts were a victory, but he never matched them with spending cuts. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and McCain-Feingold looked a lot more like liberal efforts to increase the welfare state than anything the Heritage Foundation would produce. Ted Kennedy, in fact, was a key mover in each of those bills, though he voted against the final version of the Medicare expansion. Social Security Privatization was a bust.

The Bush White House was very good at leveraging 9/11 to ensure congressional support for Middle East adventurism, but they didn't crack the code unlocking a compliant Congress for a hard-line conservative agenda. That's why most conservatives think their domestic policy was a mixture of tax cuts, failures and betrayals, and they're right about that. The problems posed by the Senate are part of the system, not specific to a particular party.

Keith with John Dean: Busy Night Part 1 (VIDEO)

This was a busy damn night. Lots of stories to cover, plus the Special Comment.

Keith's Interview with my personal legal fave, John Dean. (He too, sees some wiggle room for the President to go after John Yoo.)

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Keith: Bush targeted Reporters for Surveillance (VIDEO)

According to a former N.S.A. Analyst, Russell Tice, the Bush Administration's surveillance program was far, far, far wider than earlier guessed. The Bush Administration was targeting specific groups for surveillance, especially Journalists.

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"We wouldn't expect this type of behavior out of our press corps"??

Like I said, I got a guy who needs protecting.  My guy is under more threats than any other President in history.  God forbid, should something happen remotely like this, I don't wanna hear these excuses from the Secret Service...

No one should read anything more into it than what it was, which was an individual throwing a shoe.

Eric Zahren, a Secret Service spokesman.

Or...

They are already so protected as it is that it's hard to imagine how they could guard against something like this. It just comes with the territory.

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank on defense and security issues.

Or...

This was a room full of cleared and screened press, and that could be the case anywhere. We wouldn't expect this type of behavior out of our press corps, but within the security structure, people can still misbehave.

Eric Zahren, again.

Uhhh, fellas.

No offense, you guys are doing a fantastic job, normally.  You are protecting the Obama Family very well, but I seem to remember, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the closest thing America had to an ally in Afghanistan, pre 9/11 was assassinated by Al-Queda on September 9, 2001 masquerading as guess what? Journalists wanting to interview Massoud.

Please explain to me again how "We wouldn't expect this type of behavior out of our press corps"??

Where was the Secret Service??

I enjoy a throwing shoes at Bush story as the next guy, but since I've got a guy under threat himself, I'd like to hear why this Reporter throws a shoe, and no one reacts until he's out of shoes.



The Secret Service has had a bit of a year, this year. First, they blew it in Dallas during the Primary. They did get the meth heads in Denver, but the next four years are going to be the Super Bowl for the Protective Detail. This ain't a season of 24.

David Sirota. Still a tool.

This is what annoys me about Left-wing tool, David Sirota.

He wrote an article for Salon.com today, saying that should President Bush attach a Columbia Free Trade deal to the Economic Stimulus Plan, the President-Elect  shouldn't fall for the trap that David Sirota has conveniently spotted for him, and should say no.

Umm, he said no...last week.  Yeah.  Ain't happening.  Via his new Chief of Staff.  Sunday, last week.  It was on the Television Shows.  Where you been?

Reuters: White House will listen to auto ideas from Congress

Gee, isn't that swell of them?

It wouldn't be because we're ready to move on without them, is it?