It's never a good idea to outsource your thinking.
Arianna Huffington's looking forward to the debate -- and she, too, predicts a Cheney meltdown:
Edwards has made a very successful career out of eating folks like Dick Cheney for lunch in courtrooms all across America. He’ll know exactly how to wield Halliburton like a stiletto. I give Cheney 30 minutes before he drops his first F-bomb. I can’t wait.
So the wingnuts' delicate sensibilities were offended by some off-color comments during the Democrats' event at Radio City Music Hall the other night.
Whoopi Goldberg and some of her cohorts expressed themselves rather forcefully.
I'm sure they felt better after they did it.
I for one felt that what they said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue.
The New Republic breaks the kind of story you'd expect from the NY Times or the Washington Post (if they still engaged in investigative reporting):
This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism....This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November....
A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must."....according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
More proof that there is nothing these people won't politicize:
In a report released yesterday, a scientific advocacy group cited more instances of what it called the Bush administration's manipulation of science to fit its policy goals, including the questioning of nominees to scientific advisory panels about whether they had voted for President Bush.
Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.
Read all about it in the NY Times.
Washington Monthly resident blogger Kevin Drum sympathizes with National Review's Kate O'Beirne (who is not happy that such atypical Republicans as Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger will be trotted out in primetime at the GOP convention). Kevin's take:
Whenever you hear anyone — and you hear it from both liberals and conservatives — crowing about how conservative the country has become in the past couple of decades, just remember this: if America is so damn conservative, why is the Republican party afraid to put any red-blooded conservatives on prime time TV shortly before the election? Why are they so afraid of the social conservatives who make up the heart and soul of their party?
From Eschaton:
From reading the AP and NYT's political coverage, I've come to understand John Kerry has a little coin to his name. That unlike our plainspoken, plastic-turkey-eating preznit, he windsurfs. And talks about policy. With a servant. Or something.
I suggest we all take a look at a candidate for president who is, in fact, very, very wealthy.
Pass it on.
Tad Devine of the Kerry campaign on the VP decision:
This decision was made in a serious, deliberative process. We believe it was the best selection process in history for a vice president. Certainly better than the one which Dick Cheney headed, resulting in the selection of himself.
(From the Washington Post via Oliver Willis)
Kerry's first major presidential decision, and a very good one it is. I look forward to a debate in which Edwards carves up Dick Cheney like a Thanksgiving turkey. (Ol' John may even provoke him into another outburst involving the F-word.)
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