Scarecrow

Sooner or later, American generals are going to realize that the way to damage your career is to be assigned to the military prison at Guantanamo. The latest general to find out is Major General Jay Hood, commander at Gitmo between 2004 - 2006, who just got kicked out of Pakistan because Pakistanis don't want someone who sanctioned forced feeding of detainees in their country.When the Pentagon announced in

In Barack Obama's speech last night, he told Americans they could choose not to be distracted by the Republican's phony issues even when rentlessly enabled by the media. His message was directed at the fall campaign, but part of it was aimed at the media, telling them he understands they are distracting the country and he's willing to take them on.

The New York Times turned over an entire page of its Sunday Opinion section to allow the champions of America's disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq to explain how we can achieve "mission accomplished." Not one of the 8 contributors said, "wrong question," and none suggests we should just leave, that our invasion was a strategic and immoral blunder and that our continued occupation is part of the problem.

Paul Krugman has a column this a.m. discussing comments make by Obama in an interview on Fox in which Obama gave credit to Republicans for certain ideas. I usually agree with Krugman on not pushing Republican talking points, but I disagree with him about sharing credit on the idea for emission trading systems, an idea for which we'll need bipartisan support.

John McCain yesterday described just enough of his health care proposal to illustrate why his ideological preference for unfettered markets cannot solve America's health care crisis. Not only would it fail to cover everyone, his proposal would effectively strip millions of Americans of the employer-based coverage they now have without any certainty that what replaces it would work or be affordable.

The progressive blogosphere is going to be tested today. Thomas Friedman is back on the New York Times op ed page, after a leave of absence. His column is about the absurdity of the "Dumb as we wanna be"gas-tax holiday. I think he's essentially correct. This is not an intelligent energy or economic policy.

After watching Bill Moyers interview Jeremiah Wright, it's now obvious that Fox News and a complicit media have outrageously defamed a respected and righteous man, and by association his congregation, his church, and a respected branch of Christian theology, all intended to smear Barack Obama. It's time for the media to apologize for this journalistic travesty.

It may be that this is such an ideal year for Democrats -- the voters hate Bush, all the issues are favorable, etc -- that Clinton and Obama can have a bruising elimination process and still beat McCain in November. But the notion that a prolonged Presidential primary helps Democrats is missing a critical point: we need a mandate, not just a win.

The Bush Administration has denied for years that we were bogged down in an Iraqi civil war, but now there is no doubt we're not only in the middle of a Shia-on-Shia war but carelessly inflaming it in ways that could easily benefit Iran. The last thing this explosive situation needs is more gasoline from Secretary of War Condi Rice, who just called al-Sadr a coward.

As the nation sinks into what may become the worst recession in decades and Americans are worried about their own economic security, John McCain is struggling to prove he's not clueless about economics. But his proposal this week for a "gas-tax holiday" from Memorial Day to Labor Day would, according to experts, "do only one thing: send more money to oil producers." It's a "clunker." Now he's backing off.