Well, it’s taken friggin’ forever, but the Downing Street memo is finally getting some press her in America. “The Sunday Times said the memo is the minutes of a meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had with some of his top intelligence and foreign policy aides on July 23, 2002, at 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence. The story said the memo indicates that Blair was told by the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service that in 2002, the Bush administration was selectively choosing evidence that supported its case for going to war and ignoring anything to the contrary. The war began in March 2003.
“‘Intelligence and facts were being fixed’ by the Bush administration ‘around’ a policy that saw military action ‘as inevitable,’ the newspaper quoted from the memo.”
Hopefully, this is the start of an avalanche of coverage.
I think that Howard Dean’s comments about the Republican party were pretty much spot-on. I don’t understand why other Democrats are distancing themselves from him, nor why some Democrats are actively criticizing Dean for the comments he made. These comments are exactly what the Democratic party needs. Right now, the Dems look like they are just whipping boys for the Republicans. The Dems need to show that they have a spine, and that they are willing to stand up and fight.
Dean’s comments?
Dean told a forum of journalists and minority leaders Monday that Republicans are “not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party … it’s pretty much a white, Christian party.”
Challenged on that during the NBC interview, Dean said “unfortunately, by and large it is. And they have the agenda of the conservative Christians.”
“This is a diversion from the issues that really matter: Social Security, and adequate job opportunity, strong public schools, a strong defense,” Dean said.
After the following rant on Wil Wheaton’s blog WWDN, how could I not love him:
“Mostly, it’s when I want to rage about what a colossal fucking liar George W. Bush is, what a disgrace he is to my country, and how the mainstream corporate media have completely failed to hold him and his administration accountable for countless lies. I’m a passionate person, and I’m passionate about politics. I’m going to write about it, and I’m not going to pull any punches. It won’t be my primary focus, and I will never be as great a political blog as The Moderate Voice, Josh Marshall or Atrios, but I’ve turned away from political posts for too long. If the world were a bar, America would currently be the angry drunk waving around a loaded gun. Yeah, the other people in the bar may be afraid of him, but they sure as hell don’t respect him. And as soon as he drops that gun, he’s going to get his ass handed to him. I’d rather my country be respected than feared, and I’m going to do whatever I can, however small, to make that happen.”
Bravo, Wil. And welcome to the world of political blogging. We need more high-profile people writing about what’s wrong with our country. Fire away!
Okay, this is just plain creepy! These posters are apparently showing up on the rail line that runs between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Welcome to the world of 1984, alive and well here in 2005.
So what does the Bush administration do when confronted with reports that seem to support the concept of global warming? edit the reports to downplay the tie to global warming, of course! “A White House official who previously worked for the American Petroleum Institute has repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
“Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, made changes to descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists and their supervisors, the newspaper said, citing internal documents.
The White House denied that Cooney had watered down the impact of global warming.”
Why does this surprise me? I should expect stuff like this: it’s only been happening for the past four years. But still, the gall!
