No More Mister Nice Blog: Things that normal people are opposed to on principle, conservatives are opposed to only when they are happening to the "wrong people" or done for the "wrong reasons."

Washington's Blog: The woman who invented credit default swaps is one of the key architects of carbon derivatives, which would be at the very center of cap and trade

The Liberal OC: Stay classy, wingnut

Bitter Lawyer: The Profane, Pornographic, Anti-Glenn Beck World of Marc Randazza

his vorpal sword: Pearl Harbor Day + 68

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: BTC News, plain view, Petulant Rumblings, bastard.logic

Tweety really let "Americans for Prosperity" President Tim Phillips have it on Hardball last night. Boy, he's really got a bug up his butt about health-care reform and he just won't let go:

MATTHEWS: "How do we get around the problem that there's so many people out there, and this is why we're having this debate, sir ... the question that's bothered the American people since, what? since Teddy Roosevelt's time, is some people have health insurance and some don't. How do we reconcile that with our sense in this country of looking out for each other, to some extent, to some extent."

"Here's my problem with you guys. The conservatives talk reasonably when the Democrats get in power and say 'well, we've got an alternative that's more free-market, it's less onerous, it's less big-shot, big-government stuff...' but when you guys are in power, you don't do anything on health care. And that's what happens, and that's why for, god, almost a century of foot-dragging on this, the Democrats get in power, whether it's Truman or it's Bill Clinton, or it's Hillary Clinton, or it's Barack Obama, they try something and it fails, because you guys are good at playing negative politics. You're really good at destroying Democrats plans, chances for reform..."

It's been said before: "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt," but this might be a whole new low for delusional thinking.

  ThinkProgress:

In Oct. 2004, President Bush finally admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction: "Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there."

Yet according to former White House chief of staff Andy Card, this statement was just rhetoric. In his new book on Bush, Robert Draper writes that the President continued to privately insist through April 2006 that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction:

Bush, for his part, was not disposed to second-guessing. Througout 2006, he read historical texts relating to Lincoln, Churchill, and Truman - three wartime leaders, the latter two of whom left office to something less than public acclaim. History would acquit him, too. Bush was confident of that, and of something else as well. Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card's departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs. [p. 388]

 Oh, help me.  Is he trying to lay a case for utter incompetency?  He certainly has me convinced.

Harry S Bush...This country is run by children.

Durbin said he challenged Bush’s analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that’s what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now - work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.

Bush, Durbin said, “reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response” and emphasized that he is “the commander in chief.” ...read on

Doug Brinkley: Bush's speech in Jackson Square was a phony

Historian Doug Brinkley, appeared on Scarborough Country and hit the President hard over his apparent abandoning of the people and the region that has been decimated by Hurricane Katrina. The residents are fuming down there because the politicians that talked tough after being embarrassed by the initial response have since not followed up to help the region. In order for confidence to return to the area-the levees must be repaired first and foremost.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

BRINKLEY: It's about leadership.

When you look at presidents, a Theodore Roosevelt or a Harry Truman or a Ronald Reagan, the great American presidents would not let a region die and suffer. They would have seen this as the bell ringing. This would be the moment that would define their presidency, and it is not too late for President Bush to do that. But he gave a very powerful speech in Jackson Square. The blue lights were behind him, and, if you read that speech, it was wonderful.

But the reality is, the speech is—was phony. And we are not getting the funding. We are not getting the federal attention, and I think that it's tragic. And if President Bush wants to ignore New Orleans, then just say so. Let us know. Let us know not to come back, there are never going to be levees built, that we are not going to be—there isn't going to be a massive public works project.

You know, there are people where I'm at, in Houston, that want to work. They are looking to go back to New Orleans. Why not create a WPA, look at the leadership of somebody like Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression? Let's see a little bit of that out of this president.

Don Boyle trapped in Harry Truman Middle School in Marrero, LA. (Sept 4th) made this call and explains the nightmare.

Download | play -MP3

(Hat tip DMB-DU Thread)

so says Instapundit: via Oliver Willis

Nope. And, as I keep repeating, this is no strategy for building a Democratic majority. Similarly, stuff like this is comforting to the true-believers, but it's not likely to win votes. (Via Peg Kaplan.) And read this, too.

This is where I have to agree and disagree simultaneously with Hugh Hewitt, who writes about Peter Beinart:

Peter is without question the very best face of the Democratic Party. Folks love him because he is earnest and very committed to Harry Truman's Democratic Party, which is a lot like being committed to the Edsel.

But the Edsel was a bomb from day one. No, more like the Nash Rambler -- a good car, popular in its time, that's no longer made. The Truman / FDR style of muscular Democratic thought has been supplanted by the '68-ers in the Democratic party, and their ideological descendants at MoveOn, MediaMatters, etc. They lack the essential faith in America possessed by their predecessors, and by the voters they'd like to win over. Beinart's views are marginal in the Democratic Party -- heck, the kind of patriotism that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd demonstrated in Davos is indiscernible in the MoveOn / MediaMatters end of the Democratic Party -- while the Seymour Hersh Vietnam-nostalgia strain runs strong. That's bad for the Democrats, and bad for America, but it's nonetheless the case.