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Today President-elect Obama threw the political world a curveball and chose former California Congressman Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Although Mr. Panetta brings with him little experience in intelligence affairs, the pick signals that Obama recognizes the dangers of politicizing the CIA like Bush has. Expect Panetta to play the role of "public face" while he allows the real intelligence experts to do their jobs. We should all welcome that after eight years of crap like this.

MSNBC:

Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA.

Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California.

He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war.

We should probably also expect some unhappiness among the Village set.

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In a somewhat understandably soft ball interview with Chris Wallace, former President George H.W. Bush defends what is by most accounts his son's epic failure of a presidency and defers to "the Google" when asked about which things W could be "fairly criticized for."

Bush: He's gonna come home with his head high, knowing he ran a clean operation and he kept this country strong and free after an unprecedented history attack of 9/11. He'll have a lot too be proud of and he can start by his mother and father being very proud of him...and we always will be.

Wallace: You said there earlier there are some things he could fairly be criticized for. Would you like to tell me any of those?

Bush: "No. You can go back to your, what do you call it.... Your Google, and you figure all that out."

On some level you gotta feel sorry for Papa Bush. It's pretty clear that he always wanted his other son, Jeb, to be the second Bush President.

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I've always had a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for Zbigniew Brzezinski. And after this epic smackdown of the eminently ignorant and simple-minded Joe Scarborough, I know that affection was well-placed.

Scarborough: "You cannot blame what's going on in Israel on the Bush administration."

Brzezinski: "You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you."

Ouch. Make sure to watch the entire clip because the intellectual beat down continues to the very end.

Former Bush aides go on record saying that Hurricane Katrina was the "tipping point" of George Bush's presidency and that, after the federal government's pathetic response, he couldn't recover. Unfortunately for the residents of the gulf coast, President Bush wasn't the only one.

AP:

Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

How can you tell when the economy is in really bad shape? Maybe when FBI special agents go on record saying that terrorism is less of a threat to the United States than rampant financial fraud.

Bloomberg:

The FBI has engaged in “triage,” taking agents off terror and other crimes to respond to a cascade of financial frauds such as the alleged Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, the head of the bureau’s New York criminal division said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was forced to reallocate its manpower in New York to deal with recent frauds involving subprime mortgages, auction-rate securities and Madoff, who prosecutors said confessed this month to bilking investors out of $50 billion, FBI official David Cardona said in an interview.

I always love when Tom Tomorrow does these year-end reviews. Here's part 1 of his "wholly subjective and thoroughly incomplete look back at the year that was."

(click image to see full comic)

Yes, she actually said that. And yes, this is what happened when she was actually allowed to speak to the press. And this. And this. And this. And... oh, you get the point.

Human Events:

GIZZI: What was the biggest mistake made in the ’08 campaign?

PALIN: The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts.

But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that’s how you get your message out to the electorate.

Seriously...what is wrong with these people? Palin thinks McCain lost because he didn't let her embarrass herself enough in the press? I bet the dead-ender wingnuts think she just didn't wink enough.

I'm with John Cole here:

Seriously, the only people more excited about this than the Palin dead-enders are… every single Democrat in the country. Hold her close. Embrace the Palin. Show the country this is your vision for the future GOP.

Pretty please?

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Always the class act, VP Cheney admitted to Chris Wallace yesterday that he did indeed tell Patrick Leahy to "go f*ck himself" on the Senate floor four years ago when the Vermont Senator chided him about his connection to Halliburton's war profiteering.

WALLACE: Did you tell Senator Leahy, “bleep yourself”?

CHENEY: I did.

WALLACE: Any qualms, second thoughts, or embarrassment?

CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time and we’ve since patched over that wound.

In case you forgot the context, here it is from a June 25, 2004, CNN story:

Cheney, who as president of the Senate was present for the picture day, turned to Leahy and scolded the senator over his recent criticism of the vice president for Halliburton's alleged war profiteering.

Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton, and Democrats have suggested that while serving in the Bush administration he helped win lucrative contracts for his former firm, including a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq.

If there's one thing you have to admire about Dick Cheney, it would have to be his eager willingness to speak his mind with little to no regard for the consequences.

Cheney really is some sort of potty mouth. Remember, back in 2006, Bob Woodward revealed that Cheney cursed him out over his Kissinger meeting revelations.

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In the wake of Dick Cheney's steadfast refusal to admit any wrongdoing, Chris Matthews and David Corn absolutely demolish wingnut/neocon extraordinaire and Cheney-apologist Frank Gaffney over the necessity of the Iraq War and Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction.

Matthews: "You guys sold the war as a nuclear threat to the United States. You sold every trick you could to get us into this war. And now you're backpedaling. And I do find it astounding....four thousand people are dead because of the way you feel and, Frank Gaffney, you're wrong about this."

Gaffney: "It is regrettable that they had to die, but I believe they did have to die. The danger was inaction could have resulted in the death of a great many more Americans than 4,000. And that's the reason I'm still delighted that we did what we did."

It astounds me that people like Gaffney can continue to cling to the idea that Saddam really did pose an imminent threat/that he really had WMD/that the intelligence wasn't cooked etc. and still be regarded as some sort of foreign policy expert who should be taken seriously. It's 100% clear now that the administration "fixed the facts around the policy" by cherry-picking dubious intelligence reports that supported their case while ignoring others (that were far more credible) that disproved it. Not only should Gaffney and his ilk be laughed out of town, they should be committed and/or indicted.

You can catch the entire glorious smackdown here.

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Mitt Romney was wanking forth on MTP Sunday about the horrendous disadvantage American automakers have because of labor costs, only briefly mentioning the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- namely, health-care costs -- as "benefits."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan set him straight:

One of the reasons there is a cost disadvantage is that other countries provide health care for their citizens. In America, we put that entire burden on business.

Mittens nonetheless tries to regurgitate the "$70-an-hour" lie:

Romney: The companies across the ocean have come here, made plants in the U.S. -- Nissan, Toyota, and Honda -- they're able to make cars at $45 an hour labor costs plus benefits and legacy costs, our cost is $73 an hour --

Granholm: It is not! That has been totally debunked -- now, you know, Mitt Romney, that this is not --

Romney: Labor costs and legacy costs and benefits is $73 an hour.

Maybe Romney should ask those companies where they stand on national subsidization of their industry. Because back in Japan, they understand that underwriting their manufacturing capacity is the key to a competitive economy ... which is why they keep the yen artificially low. This subsidization is part of why those same automakers can operate at lower cost here.

Romney and the Republicans have made it clear that Detroit can go suck eggs. They just don't want to say it on TV.

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During a press conference in which he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki marked the singing of a U.S./Iraq security agreement, a man who was later identified as an Iraqi TV journalist rushed the podium and hurled both of his shoes at President Bush while shouting, "This is a goodbye kiss, you dog."

McClatchy:

An Iraqi television journalist hurled two shoes at President Bush on Sunday during a joint news conference Bush was holding with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to mark the signing of a U.S.-Iraq security agreement.

Bush had just finished his prepared remarks in which he said the security agreement was made possible by the U.S. surge of troops earlier this year, when the journalist, Muthathar al Zaidi pulled his shoes off and hurled them at the president. "This is a goodbye kiss, you dog," Zaidi shouted.

I don't know what's more remarkable: That this guy was able to get close enough to the President to almost hit him with a shoe? Or the ease and quickness with which President Bush dodged it? Either way, you have to appreciate Bush's sense of humor as he says, "All I can report is a size 10."

Wow. Just when you thought the anecdotes of just how incompetent the McCain campaign was were over, we get this...

MyFox:

Private information at bargain prices. It was a high-tech flub at the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters in Arlington when Fox 5’s Investigative Reporter Tisha Thompson bought a Blackberry device containing confidential campaign information.

It started with a snippet we read on page A23 in Thursday’s Washington Post. The McCain-Palin campaign was going to sell its used office inventory at low prices.

I can understand trying to recoup some of your election season loses, but is there any excuse for this kind of incompetence? Geez.

The FOX reporter called a few of the numbers stored in the phone's memory and got this classic response.

“They should have wiped that stuff out,” another said. But he added, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

Yep. That bout sums it all up.

Who could have predicted that the Federal Reserve would abuse its authority by giving away over $2 trillion in "emergency loans" and then refuse to disclose the recipients of those loans when faced with a FOIA request by Bloomberg?

Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.

Hmmm... I wonder why they would want to hide from the public who is getting all that money? It's sometimes hard to wrap your head around that huge sum of money, but when all is said and done, that is our money. We deserve to know who's getting it.

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Jon Stewart says goodbye to Alan Colmes with a brutal montage of all the abuse he's received over the years at FOX and a special rendition of "She's Gone" from none other than 80s pop music duo Hall and Oates.

"The man who singlehandedly put the 'Colmes' in 'Hannity & Colmes' is leaving that program. For Colmes, it has been no easy task being the sole liberal voice on the FOX network. But through all the tough times, Alan Colmes always had one thing to lean on: The respect he earned from his colleagues."

UPDATE: Full song lyrics and a response from Hannity below the fold.

Continue reading »

CNN's Michael Ware is easily one of the bravest (and best) journalists in America, so when he tells "Men's Journal" about how radically covering the Iraq War has changed him as a person, we should all take note.

Men's Journal:

“I am not the same f#&@ing person,” he tells me. “I am not the same person. I don’t know how to come home.”

It’s October, six months after our first meeting, and Michael Ware, 39, is at his girlfriend’s apartment in New York, trying to tell me why after six years he absolutely must start spending less time in Iraq. He’s crying on the other end of the telephone.

“Will I get any better?” he continues. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t see the — right now, I know no other way to live.”

Make sure to read the whole thing. It's truly fascinating.