4 more cabinet members resigned today, Colin Powell among them.
I used to respect the man; perhaps I will again some day. But I thought he had more integrity than to be a party to the tissue of lies that Iraq has turned out to be.
The Bull Moose gets an award for “most unintentionally funny” nomination for his successor. Lieberman? Not in a thousand years.
From Newsday:
The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.
“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”
Ran across a blogad for something truly different this morning and I had to give them some props. An extremely smart musician in Chicago has come up with the idea of remaking classic Xmas carols as Klezmer tunes. The result is hysterical:
Go listen to a few of their samples or download the free complete version of “Oy To The World”. You’ll either kvetch or kvell.
Digby delivers a big fat kick in the pants this morning and he’s got a hugely valid point, which is: all the trumpeting about how ‘moral’ the Red States are is plain old hypocracy. We should not pander to it.
the fact is that somebody in the red states is watching Will and Grace and somebody is watching Girls Gone Wild and a whole bunch of somebodies are downloading pornography. I’m sure they tut-tut those terrible liberals while they pass the popcorn and laugh over The Bachelor’s latest catfight.The biggest hit of the TV season is the sexually adventurous Desperate Housewives and it ain’t just because people in New York and LA are watching it. The National Enquirer and the Globe are hugely popular in Middle America with their fascination with Hollywood dirt.
This is mass consumer culture and it plays very successfully all across that great swathe of red. Somebody’s watching all this stuff and buying all this stuff and consuming all this stuff.
I could quote the whole thing becasue it’s all good, but that’s the gist. Enjoy.
The Rude Pundit says it well about our new AG, Alberto Gonzales:
We get to be happy that the guy who feared marble breasts is gone and that the guy who thinks torture’s okay is in as Attorney General.
Click through for the rest, but if you’re reading this from work, remember that he’s not called the Rude Pundit for nothing.
Balkinization give more in-depth reasons why this is not a good thing:
he has done something that is, in my mind, inexcusable. He commissioned and put his name on a series of despicable legal memos that justified torture and prisoner abuse and that tried to avoid America’s obligations under international law
To be fair, though, the Washington Post points out some potential positives about his track record. However, given his longtime history as a loyal friend of President Bush, I seriously doubt we’ll see any deviation from the administration party line on Gonzales’ watch.
So Arafat is really dead this time.
At one point I might have been sad to see the man go, but taking his legacy all in all, he could not bring himself the be the man who made a real peace with Israel. And all I can say is, good riddance.
What will happen next, we don’t know. Depending on the outcome of the political infighting, it could be good or bad. But at least there’s a chance to get some new cards on the table now.