Chris Matthews' Vampire Imitations

This soo funny!

Townsend: fear of subpoenas ‘crippling’ White House.

In an interview with the NY Times, President Bush’s outgoing homeland security aide Francis Fragos Townsend said she was concerned about “the acrimony” that hangs over Bush’s last year in office. “I find it both offensive and crippling,” she said. “When both career people and political people are worried about getting subpoenaed, it’s hard to get a lot accomplished.” Steve Benen responds, “Oh, those poor, poor White House officials. If only Congress would go back to ignoring the administration’s scandalous, sometimes criminal, behavior, the president and his aides would find it much easier to go about their business without the fear of accountability.”

Snow: Situation In Iraq Was ‘Sour’ For Only ‘15 Months’

In a new interview with Reason magazine, former White House press secretary Tony Snow attempts to whitewash the failures of the Bush administration in Iraq, claiming that the only time the situation was “sour” was for 15 months, between Feb. 2006 and early 2007:

Reason: There’s a strong sense, borne out by action or the lack thereof, that the president is impervious to his critics. So for a long time, people had been telling him that the Iraq war wasn’t going well, but he was not listening.

Snow: The critics quite often have criticisms but they don’t have recommendations. The new narrative is that somehow the Iraq war has been a failure for a long time and that everybody knows that it’s been a failure for a long time. The period when Iraq went sour was from the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara in February 2006 until really the surge in 2007. Fifteen months, maybe?

Even out of the administration, Snow is still repeating the talking point that the Feb. 2006 bombing was the start of Iraq’s deteriorating security situation. In January, Snow also claimed that no one anticipated the “eruption of sectarian violence.” While such fighting did escalate after the bombing, it wasn’t calm before that point. A look at the pre-Samara situation one more time for Snow:

– “The numbers of car bombs, suicide car bombs and roadside bombs all doubled from 2004 to 2005.”

– In 2005, there were more U.S. casualties in Iraq (846) than there were in 2006 (821).

– On Feb. 27, 2005, Knight Ridder quoted then-Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim warning about sectarian violence, “It’s the beginning, and we could go down the slippery slope very quickly. … Both sides are sharpening their knives.”

– On Sept. 26, 2005, CBS News reported that “there is an undeclared civil war already underway in Iraq, between the Sunni minority who ruled this country under Saddam and the Shiite majority.”

Furthermore, it’s premature to declare victory in Iraq. Military commanders and other Iraq experts have warned that the “positive” momentum is “not yet irreversible” and Iraq is “going nowhere” in “political terms.

Joe Klein Gives Huckabee Political Courage Award, Ignores His Backtracking On Immigration

In his new Time column, Joe Klein hands out “Teddy Awards” — in honor of Theodore Roosevelt — to figures who have “performed honorably” in the public arena. One of his “honorable mention” recipients? Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, for his supposedly strong position supporting undocumented immigrants:

Mike Huckabee gets an honorable mention for standing by his position in favor of scholarships to public colleges for illegal immigrants who do well in high school. “We never should grind our heel in the face of a child” is a sentiment that should go without saying, but needed to be said to his Republican colleagues.

The problem with Klein’s endorsement is that Huckabee has largely abandoned his scholarships plan. It’s true that as Arkansas governor, Huckabee supported providing college assistance to undocumented immigrants.

But early this month, Huckabee announced his Secure America plan, which would require all 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States to leave within 120 days. Those who failed to do so would “face deportation if arrested and would be barred from re-entering the U.S. for 10 years.” (It’s awfully tough to get a college education if you’re forced to leave the country.)

Additionally, Huckabee recently received the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, president of the right-wing anti-immigrant Minuteman Project.

Perhaps Klein had “neither the time nor legal background” to look into Huckabee’s record.

OUTRAGE OF THE DAY!

Dumbass Billo' Fucking Fascist

Off topic but funny!

MPAA Rejects ‘Taxi To The Dark Side’ Movie Poster Because It Depicts A Hooded Detainee

Alex Gibney’s new critically-acclaimed documentary Taxi to the Dark Side follows the path of Afghan taxi driver Dilawar, who was innocent of any terrorist ties but still “tortured to death by interrogators in the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base.” It also examines the Bush administration’s torture practices at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has rejected Taxi’s poster, displayed to the right, as being “not suitable for all audiences.” The poster for the film simply shows two soldiers walking away from the camera, holding a hooded detainee between them. Variety notes that the military has also tried to censor the photo on the poster:

The “Taxi” ad art is actually an amalgam of two pictures. The first, taken by Corbis photographer Shaun Schwarz, features the hooded prisoner and one soldier. Another military figure was added on the left. Ironically, the original Schwarz photo was censored by the military, which erased his camera’s memory. The photographer eventually retrieved the image from his hard drive.

According to ThinkFilm, which produced the documentary, the MPAA objected to the “image of the hood.” Last year, the MPAA also censored the poster for the documentary The Road to Guantanamo, because it showed a detainee “hanging by his handcuffed wrists, with a burlap sack over his head and a blindfold tied around the hood.”

As Gibney notes, Taxi is “not a horror film.” It is “a documentary and that image is a documentary image.” ThinkFilm plans to appeal the MPAA’s ruling.

More war, More war!

This idiot could only be on Faux Noise

Prager’s Hypocrisy: Romney’s Religion Shouldn’t Matter, Ellison’s Religion ‘Undermines America’

Last November, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress. When he announced that he was going to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran, right-wing talk show host Dennis Prager protested, arguing that Ellison would “embolden Islamic extremists“:

He [Ellison] should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization. […]

Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress. […]

Ellison’s (taking the oath on the Koran) will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal — the Islamicization of America.

Prager’s outrage was based on nothing but his own need to create controversy. What’s most interesting is that today — when a Republican candidate, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, is under attack for his Mormon beliefs — Prager seems suddenly concerned about the role religion plays in the political choices of some Americans:

(T)he theological beliefs of a public figure should matter only when one is choosing a theological leader, never a political leader — unless those beliefs form the basis of social and moral values that one abhors. It is very important to know the theological beliefs of one’s clergyman or the head of one’s seminary, but as far as the head of one’s country is concerned, only his moral and social values matter. I would much sooner vote for an agnostic whose values I shared than for a believing Christian or Jew whose values I did not share.

Ah, Dennis, but what if Romney wants to swear-in on The Book of Mormon?

Flip Flop Mitt hearts Bush