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pAt emThe Denver Post/em, Ed Quillen a href="http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_11351363"writes/a:/p p/ptable width="96%" align="center" style="background-color:rgb(250,250,200);border_collapse: collapse; border: 1px dashed black;" cellpadding="5%"trtdOne of the few positive media developments in 2008 arrived after the national political conventions, when Rachel Maddow got her own nightly hour on MSNBC./p pNot that I always concur with her politics, but unlike most such hosts, she doesn't badger, talk over or needlessly interrupt her guests. She might argue with them, but she always offers them a chance to speak. Nor is she full of herself like Keith Olbermann, who can elevate pomposity to stratospheric levels./p pLately Maddow's show has offered a nightly feature called "Lame Duck Watch," which observes that George W. Bush is still president of the United States of America, and thus in position to issue regulations, pardons and executive orders that deserve scrutiny, especially when most eyes are focused on the impending presidency of Barack Obama./p pThis got me to wondering about the origin of the phrase "lame duck." We use it to describe an office-holder whose replacement has been elected but not sworn in. It connotes a sense of being crippled, even though the lame duck still holds the full powers of office. .../p pThe phrase did not originate in politics. According to my favorite bathroom reference book, "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," the expression originally came from finance, and referred to "a stock-jobber or dealer who will not, or cannot, pay his losses" and has to "waddle out of the alley like a lame duck." It also applies to a defaulter on a loan, and goes back to 18th-century London./td/tr/table/p pWhat Mister Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney defaulted on was not a loan but rather their oath of office. Scarcely a more appropriate pair of lame ducks in U.S. history deserve to be flipped the bird./p p#8226; #8226; #8226;/p pThe Overnight News Digest is a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/123553/0850"posted/a and includes the story a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/01/southafrica-race"Anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman dies at 91/a./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/voNkzh2E2thlnLxDNNPymze_-Ek/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/voNkzh2E2thlnLxDNNPymze_-Ek/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=3XBJAKqQ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/VQvtcrqzheA" height="1" width="1"/

object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/p7AywRM33joamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;rel=0" width="300" height="243"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/p7AywRM33joamp;amp;hl=enamp;amp;fs=1amp;amp;rel=0" /param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash" /param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /param name="width" value="300" /param name="height" value="243" //objectp A video in support of a href="http://alternativeinvocation.wordpress.com/"The Alternative Invocation/a blogswarm. /p pPS. The Weblog Awards voting has started. In an embarrassment of riches, Crooks and Liars is competing with its own writers David Neiwert (Orcinus) and Blue Gal (Blue Gal) for a href="http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-liberal-blog/"Best Liberal Blog/a. Our own Susie Madrak (Suburban Guerrilla) is up for a href="http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-midsize-blog/"Best Midsize Blog/a, and regular Camp;L contributor Driftglass is up for a href="http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-individual-blogger/"Best Individual Blogger/a. You can vote once in each category every 24 hours. Open thread below.../p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z2lYX1erRgBK66G1nZV2Nlji6hg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z2lYX1erRgBK66G1nZV2Nlji6hg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?a=GMMu4gUO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

pThis evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, taylormattd, jlms qkw (pulling a double shift), dopper0189, and grog with shayera editing./p ulliemjoetex/em recounts how he and his neighbors got through the power failure following Ike in a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/4/183439/9064/192/680175"Hurricane: Saved by the Electric Mini?/a (Louisiana 1976)/lip liemVladislaw/em gives us a potpourri of science and science fiction news in a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/152157/4323"Burt Rutan: "Houston, we have a problem." Kennedy Quote. Poll Results/a. (jlms qkw)/lip liemMichael Alton Gottlieb/em writes an essay speculating what the future holds after the breakdown of the current international order: a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/111124/4788"End of Empire: Beginning of Wisdom/a. (dopper0189)/lip liemsupak/em wanders through depression, chemistry and emotional demands in a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/13406/84692/977/680407"A Crock Full of Happiness/a. (grog)/lip liemSchopenhauer Telescope/em contrasts his current teaching position and the children of a private school with his previous experience in a public one in a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/4/195153/0405/176/680191"The Educator Diaries, Part I: Educating the Elite/a. (Louisiana 1976)/lip liemnewfie53523/em shares an easy way to make someone happy in a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/162426/0248"Making a difference in the life of a child one birthday cake at a time/a. (jlms qkw)/li/ul pemjotter/em has a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/9485/38356/49/680318"High Impact Diaries: January 4, 2009/a./p pemEddie C/em has a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/175335/2816/890/680510"Top Comments 01-05-2008 Sixty Years Ago Today Edition/a./p pEnjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/NmdOF6uXl_e7bILTca6X6GjouxA/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/NmdOF6uXl_e7bILTca6X6GjouxA/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=R5nilh1F"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/71OqYmuR4DU" height="1" width="1"/

pAn old song that's still as fresh, delicious, and downright decadent as room service blueberry pancakes at the Hilton./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/zF213y69t4-Sob4otgy2JFVr__I/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/zF213y69t4-Sob4otgy2JFVr__I/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?a=ZbkzqO7W"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

pOops:/p pobject width="425" height="344"param value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Aen7OY6cTvQamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;rel=0" name="movie"/paramparam value="true" name="allowFullScreen"/paramparam value="always" name="allowscriptaccess"/paramembed width="425" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Aen7OY6cTvQamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="344"/embed/object/p ph/t: a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200811190019"Media Matters/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/P_4RzYb_mvjyyROSr5jczEIxldg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/P_4RzYb_mvjyyROSr5jczEIxldg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=EDtdbPjb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/dKjZNdLSRaM" height="1" width="1"/

Doctor: Israel Iintentionally targeting/I civilians pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/4tgC-XFGwkpfEF95sWG3Yt_-8Xc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/4tgC-XFGwkpfEF95sWG3Yt_-8Xc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ev6ojm62qwAamp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1" width="300" height="243"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ev6ojm62qwAamp;amp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;amp;hl=enamp;amp;feature=player_embeddedamp;amp;fs=1" /param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash" /param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /param name="width" value="300" /param name="height" value="243" //objectpstrongMads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population./strong/p pThe people of Gaza continue to be a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSB81320"caught in the middle/a of the power play between Israel and Hamas:/p blockquotepJERUSALEM, Jan 5 (Reuters) - People in Gaza were in dire need of food and medical supplies, aid agencies said on Monday, but Israel's ground assault and air raids were hampering relief efforts./p pFreezing cold is compounding the misery of children caught in the conflict. And body bags for victims are in short supply./p p"The situation in Gaza since the Israel Defense Forces launched their ground offensive on Saturday night has become both chaotic and extremely dangerous," the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a situation report./p pAir raids had damaged hospitals, water supply systems, government buildings and mosques but it was difficult for ICRC staff to move around to assist, it said./p pstrongAbout 530 Palestinians have been killed, at least a quarter of them civilians, since Israel launched its offensive on Dec. 27 to curtail Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza./strong/p pGround troops invaded the enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, on Saturday night after a week of bombardments from the air and from naval vessels./p pstrongHospitals were inundated with Palestinian wounded, the ICRC said. Fresh supplies were urgently needed, including painkillers and anaesthetics but also body bags and sheets to wrap corpses/strong./p/blockquote pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/OqGduAGizdqnzD6bHzgAISoKVaY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/OqGduAGizdqnzD6bHzgAISoKVaY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?a=RXRCEsWl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

pIn the following I make three claims, which I will state upfront in exaggerated terms, both to get the point across and so my errors are more visible. (1) The United States (or factions in it) has more of a stake in the outcome in the Israel/Palestine conflict than Israel does. (2) Israel does not need the U.S. (3) Understanding (1) and (2) is key to resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict. Or so anyway I want to try to argue. My argument will take the form of a discussion of a post from Juan Cole, although what I want to say is not primarily about Cole's post./p pOn Sunday, Juan Cole posted a href="http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/gaza-2008-micro-wars-and-macro-wars.html"a longish piece/a about Israel, Palestine, and the current fighting between them. Typically for a Cole piece, it provides a good bit of historical background and original thought. He makes a more-or-less elaborate argument about The Big Picture for the two peoples, to which I will get in a moment. The argument he makes is worthwhile and non-simplistic; but I think he overlooks or slides past an obvious point -- and I think that addressing that obvious point requires making the Big Picture, Bigger./p pAs an aside, I am not here attempting to argue for a position in The Standard American I/P Debate. I have a position in the SAI/PD -- I largely agree with a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/4/135223/2599/892/678482"david mizner's recent diary/a -- but knowing my position in the SAI/PD is about as helpful, I think, as would be knowing my opinion of the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense in chess, if the real issue were that Sicily was burning down. Chess has nothing much to do with the flammability of Sicily, and The Standard American I/P Debate has nothing much to do with the problems in Israel and Palestine. The frame of the SAI/PD is all wrong. The debate misses the point. And what is "the point"? Well, (1), (2), and (3) above. I'll get to them. First, back to Cole. The next few 'graphs are about his piece./p pCole argues that the fighting between Israel (or "the Israeli government" if you prefer, though at the moment Israeli a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051852.html"opinion polls/a show that most Israelis support their government's actions, or did prior to the ground invasion) and Palestine, and more generally the ongoing and often violent dispute between Israel and her neighbors, is ultimately a war for global public opinion. How the conflict is resolved will depend crucially on what the world thinks about the players in the region. This is so, Cole argues, because Israel relies heavily on commerce, tourism, and immigration of Jewish people from abroad. Israel can win every battle, but if in doing so Israel disgusts the world so much that the world wants nothing to do with it, Israel will collapse. Israel knows this, and so do her neighbors. a href="http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/gaza-2008-micro-wars-and-macro-wars.html"Cole writes/a:/p blockquote pThe Israeli leadership knew that it could not reply to Hamas's microwar without engaging in total war on the Gaza population, and that this step would be unpopular with the world's publics. But the Israeli leadership has successfully thumbed its nose and world public opinion so often and so successfully that this sort of consideration does not even enter into their practical calculations (except to the extent that they are careful to do a lot of propaganda for their war effort). Their estimation that they will suffer no practical bad consequences of attacks on civilians is certainly correct in the short to medium term./p p-- snip --/p pIsrael will suffer no practical sanctions from any government. Egypt and Jordan are afraid of Hamas and are more or less handmaidens of Israeli policy toward Gaza. Syria and Lebanon are weak. Iran, for all the hype it generates, is distant and relatively helpless to intervene. European governments have largely ceded the Palestinian-Israeli issue to the US and Israel./p p-- snip --/p pWar on them [the Palestinians], circumscribe them, colonize them all you like. They aren't going anywhere, and you can't keep them stateless and virtually enslaved forever, occasionally exterminating some of them as though they were vermin when they make too much trouble. emThat/em, sooner or later, will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state./p pIt may still be 10 or 20 years in the future. But because of Israel's economic and demographic vulnerabilities, for it to lose the war of global public opinion may ultimately be more consequential than either macro-war or micro-war./p /blockquote pAs an related factor, Cole makes the sometimes stated but often overlooked point that the one of the real goals behind Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks is to scare Jewish people from immigrating to Israel, or to provoke Jewish moral condemnation of Israel's response -- in any case, to keep Jewish people from wanting to move there. Israel is small enough, the thought would go, that Hamas and Hezbollah can ultimately win even if they lose every battle, simply through demographic attrition. This seems like it should be a sobering thought for Israelis: no one wants to live in a place like the one the conflict creates, no matter who wins the conflict./p pIn any case, let me restate Cole's conclusion:/p blockquote pIt may still be 10 or 20 years in the future. But because of Israel's economic and demographic vulnerabilities, for it to lose the war of global public opinion may ultimately be more consequential than either macro-war or micro-war./p /blockquote pThere is a curious and non-trivial lacuna in Cole's argument, here. As he surely knows, Israel emhas/em lost "the war of global public opinion." The people of planet Earth have made up their minds about this issue, even if America has not. March 2007 BBC report quoted at the University of Maryland's a href="http://www.pipa.org/"PIPA/a (a href="http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/mar07/BBC_ViewsCountries_Mar07_pr.pdf"PDF, page 5/a):/p blockquote pIsrael is viewed quite negatively in the world, possibly because the poll was conducted less than six months following the Israel/Hezbollah war in Lebanon. On average, 56 percent have a mainly negative view of the country, and just 17 percent have a positive view, the least positive rating for any country evaluated. In 23 countries the most common view was negative, with only two leaning towards a positive view and two divided./p pUnsurprisingly, the most negative views of Israel are found in the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, with very large majorities in Lebanon (85%), Egypt (78%), Turkey (76%), and the UAE (73%) having negative views./p pLarge majorities also have negative views in Europe, including Germany (77%), Greece (68%) and France (66%). Indonesia (71%), Australia (68%) and South Korea (62%) are the most negative countries in the Asia/Pacific region. Brazilians (72%) are the most negative in Latin America./p pThe two countries with mostly positive attitudes about Israel do so in modest numbers. Forty-five percent of Nigerians and 41 percent of Americans have positive views of Israelrsquo;s influence in the world, while nearly one-third in each country has negative views. Kenya and India have populations with divided views of Israel./p /blockquote pThis would seem to refute Cole's argument. World opinion is against Israeli actions towards her neighbors; the world takes Israel to be a belligerent nation. Yet, this fact is not, so far, doing anything like, in Cole's words, "lead[ing] to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state." nbsp;So that would seem to undermine the Big Picture being painted by Cole./p pBut, why not? If I could ask a blockheaded question: why isn't Israel subject to more boycotts? After all, there a href="http://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict.asp#UN"have been more/a U.N. resolutions against Israel than any other country, both in the General Assembly and the Security Council, even if the U.S. tends a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/11/un.israel/"to veto/a the latter. nbsp;/p pWell, it's obvious. Israel doesn't get boycotted because it is an ally of the United States. But emthat/em makes the following remark from Cole all the more interesting: "sooner or later, [Israeli actions] will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state." Cole is here imagining a future in which "rising economic powers" and "Europe" are willing to cross the U.S. nbsp;/p pThis means we can't discuss the future of Israel or Palestine without discussing the future of U.S. dominance in the world. nbsp;The three are, at the moment, inextricably entwined. nbsp;I take it that this is the primary reason that we as citizens of the U.S. have such a hard time discussing the I/P conflict -- the range of acceptable opinion in the U.S. on this matter is even more restricted than it is in Israel itself. In a funny kind of way, the U.S. has an even bigger stake in the I/P conflict than Israel does. Hence, (1), my first claim in the first paragraph of this post./p pNow, (2): Israel does not need the U.S. nbsp;Let me put this as strongly as possible, so it can be most easily disagreed with: The United States creates more problems for Israel than it solves, and it creates more problems for Israel than Palestine, or Hamas, or Hezbollah do. nbsp;In exchange for military assistance, Israel is willing to play the part of the US's Western Bulldog in the Middle East; it is willing to make itself into practically a giant military base for US control of ME resources. This is a bad deal for Israel: it creates the illusion of necessity of conflict, strife, and ill feeling between Jewish and Arab peoples. It creates, and this is the devilish part, the illusion that Israel emneeds/em all that military assistance in the first place. Thus, we have a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one whose spell can be broken./p pPerhaps the longstanding dream of a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Israel and Palestine is itself just a trick, meant to keep us from seeing that what is emreally/em needed is for Israel to broker a peace between the U.S. and Palestine, and between the U.S. and the Middle East more generally. But in order to see things this way we have to readjust a lot of perceptions and biases -- perceptions and biases even deeper than the ones motivating the endless Standard American Israel/Palestine Debate. Dare I call those biases "racism against Arabs emand/em Jews"? Sure, why not; this is just a blog post, and if I am accusing emeveryone in America/em of getting sucked into it then I am also accusing myself./p pThinking about the good of Israel, as opposed to the good of the U.S., perhaps the best thing Israel could do is make its own peace, and tell the U.S. (or, as I say, factions in it) to piss off -- to abandon the bulldog deal. Now emthat/em would be giving peace a chance. And that would be (3), and my conclusion./p pI don't know if this is right, but I do know that engaging in the same old Standard American Israel/Palestine debate is no better. My suspicion is that the SAI/PD is not about Israel and Palestine at all (two peoples who would both do well to tell us to shove it), but about us, and the occasional American vanity -- even on the left -- of trying to rule the world while convincing ourselves we are saving it./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/-ZDury97cNmoX8J_bYlazIFx75c/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/-ZDury97cNmoX8J_bYlazIFx75c/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=MsHlzfpI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/v0c2rkKE030" height="1" width="1"/

Franken wins, but no seat yet; Friedman: ua href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6791"state law prohibits it/a/u. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/tkecsDK6c3L8w4kS8aygMTOgZBo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/tkecsDK6c3L8w4kS8aygMTOgZBo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Ex-British PM Tony Blair, Australia's ex-leader John Howard to be 'awarded.' pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/9_0ymMYFXjy6WG3hl5PB5H8gVSM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/9_0ymMYFXjy6WG3hl5PB5H8gVSM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pA post at HuffPo jumps the megladon. Now admittedly, I don't know much about the site. But most of the articles I've read there were decent. Which makes this one all the more out of place for a premier website like a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/"Huffington Post/a: /p blockquote pSo, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. /p /blockquote pFor starters, the author spends several previous grafs implying that changes in climate contributed to everything from the fall of Rome to charred witches. From which he then, somehow, draws the curious conclusion that climate change is an oxymoron, and then goes on to make the even froggier leap that it's a big lie and should therefore be casually dismissed. It manages to go emdownhill/em from there./p pThe writer, I'm sad to say, lives in my beloved hometown of Austin. A cursory search reveals he runs a href="http://talkingabouttheweather.com/"talkingabouttheweather.com/a, which is a non stop tirade of wingnut catnip, antiscience buzzwords employing every transparently dishonest trick in the fossil fuel lobby's big black oily book. I gotta assume this nitwit doesn't represent the views of HuffPo, in which case we have to wonder why his incoherent screed shows up under the 'green-as-in-environment' tab./p pIs it flamebait looking for links, sloppy editorial control, or some kind of too clever by half attempt to portray the right in the most unflattering light possible? Beats me. But none of those possibilities reflect particularly well on HuffPo. Because, there really is such a thing as credibility. And this kind of crap is a big step on the road to losing it./p pFurther discussion and debunking is going on in a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/5/14844/61715/988/680420"A Siegel's/a recommended diary./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/TPGLLz9QOJunLo3gVInJdVM_soA/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/TPGLLz9QOJunLo3gVInJdVM_soA/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=RtQxnPug"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/eLgZRdKs4L0" height="1" width="1"/

pspan class="clmediaDirectImage"img src="http://static.crooksandliars.com/files/movieimages/2009/01/7047.dl.jpg" alt="Bill Richardson presser" //spanbr /span class='clMediaOld'img src='http://static.crooksandliars.com/files/mediaimages/video_wmv_icon.gif' alt='icon' / a href='http://movies.crooksandliars.com/BillRichardson.wmv?mid=7047'Download/a | a href='/media/play/wmv/7047/25026' onclick='return mediaOpen(this)' Play/anbsp;nbsp;nbsp;img src='http://static.crooksandliars.com/files/mediaimages/video_qt_icon.gif' alt='icon' / a href='http://movies.crooksandliars.com/BillRichardson.mov?mid=7047' Download/a | a href='/media/play/qt/7047/25026' onclick='return mediaOpen(this)'Play/a/span/p pIt probably a href="http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/latino-vote-can-democrats-lock-it-ge"goes without saying/a that I avidly support appointing Latinos to key positions within the Obama administration, but I've always been hesitant about Bill Richardson. Not only is it well known behind the Democratic scenes that he has certain horndoggy vulnerabilities in his personal life, but he's always carried a certain air of corruptibility peculiar to Western politicians. I know that scent well and it always made me leery./p pSo I can't say I'm sorry to see him bow out, because my gut instinct was that he spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E for Democrats generally and the Obama Administration in particular./p pHis press conference today did nothing to alter that impression, especially when he flatly refused to discuss the investigation into the influence-peddling matter and wouldn't even say whether or not he had lawyered up. It all smells very fishy to me./p pNote that Richardson wants us to think he had been perfectly forthcoming with the Obama transition team about the case. a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17040.html"Turns out that's not true either./a/p pI'm just glad all this happened before confirmation hearings arrived./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/LDzlFKqKouOlG2LwgF8tFEoGDBk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/LDzlFKqKouOlG2LwgF8tFEoGDBk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?a=oBUmEobx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

pAfter two months of counting and recounting every eligible ballot in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, Al Franken has won fair and square and will be the state's next U.S. Senator. Nonetheless, a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0109/Reid_Coleman_will_never_ever_serve.html"he won't be in DC/a tomorrow as the rest of his class gets sworn in because Norm Coleman is vowing a legal fight to delay the inevitable./p pLest there be any question over how this will turn out, Harry Reid has flatly stated that it's over for Norm Coleman./p blockquote p"Norm Coleman will never ever serve [again] in the Senate," Reid told Politicorsquo;s Manu Raju. "He lost the election. He can stall things, but he'll never serve in the Senate."/p p...Reid added that he will not be trying to seat Franken in the Senate on Tuesday. nbsp;When asked if Franken would be sworn in tomorrow, Reid said: "No."/p pIn his victory statement today, Franken said he was "ready to go to Washington and get to work just as soon as possible." But a Franken campaign spokesman said he has not yet made plans yet to travel to Washington. /p /blockquote pDespite the fact that Al Franken is still in Minnesota, RNC chairman Mike Duncan is a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/23845/rnc-chair-accuses-dems-of-stealing-minn-senate-seat"accusing/a Franken of having stolen the election./p pFortunately, Duncan is on a bitter little island of his own. Nobody (outside of the far right) who's looked at the situation thinks that Coleman won the election./p pIt might not cause that much harm to humor Norm Coleman for a short period of time, but Democrats need to spell out Coleman's legal wrangling for what it is: petty, obstructionist tactics from the GOP in the middle of a national economic crisis./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PToA51-3UsV2tzuUWf3mPEx61tk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PToA51-3UsV2tzuUWf3mPEx61tk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=ozA60Q38"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/haX8mM2N7R0" height="1" width="1"/

Obama on his Gaza silence: 'one president at a time' pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/YihBUB_Ra7cVV4dXdi9_PCBzAXs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/YihBUB_Ra7cVV4dXdi9_PCBzAXs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Philip Bennett, The Washington Post's managing editor, said today he is stepping down this week after four years as the paper's second-ranking news executive. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FC04i2gngFhNEu6Gx1F9TPMxW0w/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FC04i2gngFhNEu6Gx1F9TPMxW0w/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Prosecutors seek revocation of bail for disgraced fraudster. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/LExOr2wqSOoN0TqF0gb8-EoSyFs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/LExOr2wqSOoN0TqF0gb8-EoSyFs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

A voter registration recruiter working for the group ACORN has been indicted on two felony counts of voter registration fraud. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/QfFdO9QaOCDIq909p2OqfWMhYMY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/QfFdO9QaOCDIq909p2OqfWMhYMY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Wealthy Republican plans run after Schwarzenegger term ends in 2010. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/CEi5taTv-KQ7LZade524dmgVGrQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/CEi5taTv-KQ7LZade524dmgVGrQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pAnd a a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0109/Coulters_Today_show_interview_canceled_.html"new day is born/a./p blockquotepAnn Coulter was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show Tuesday morning to promote her new book, a href="http://www.amazon.com/New-Ann-Coulter/dp/030735346X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1227628050amp;sr=1-1""Guilty."/a But it's now been canceled, a href="http://www.anncoulter.com/"according to her website. /a/p p"I guess this ends the 'they just want to get ratings' argument about liberal media bias," Coulter wrote underneath./p/blockquote pAs a href="http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200901050013?show=1"County Fair notes/a:/p blockquotep Coulter emis/em still scheduled to appear on CBS' emEarly Show/em tomorrow, according to her web page. This follows the a href="http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200812230006"recent revelation/a that CBS considered including Coulter on the "independent" panel it created to investigate a 60 Minutes report on President Bush's National Guard record./p/blockquote pMatthews will still beg for her to come on Hardball I would imagine./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/FSy2YRJxfpxjYHGNdetiqO_LT4o/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/FSy2YRJxfpxjYHGNdetiqO_LT4o/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?a=tIExsLjL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/crooksandliars/YaCP?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

pBecause it's not good enough to set up a href="http://www.livescience.com/environment/081218-redford-bush.html"drillling rigs in the sightline of national treasures/a, or a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/1/171345/3570/118/679240"poison more water/a, or a href="http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=california-sues-bush-administration-2008-12-31"gut the endangered species act/a, BushCo is a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010301715_pf.html"upping the potential permanent damage/a one more notch./p pIn a massive FU to the people of Montana and Senators Tester and Bingaman (who've been battling this effort for months), former timber lobbyist and current Forest Service chief (for just 15 more days, thankfully), is granting Plum Creek timber company one of its fondest desires./p blockquote pThe shift is technical but has large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands./p pBut as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company's 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West./p pScenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns. /p /blockquote pIn one of his many visits to Montana during the campaign, Obama took aim at the Bush administration over this very proposal: "At a time when Montana's sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off." Hence, Rey's rush to push this last effort through, despite united opposition in local and state government./p pMissoula County, the entity that would have to provide all those services to would-be mountain residents, has strongly objected to Rey's proposal, and has demanded to see all of the documents relating to this decision, documents which still haven't been released, and a href="http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2009/01/01/news/local/news03.txt"won't be, if Rey has anything to do with it/a, which, of course, he does./p blockquote pRey suspects Missoula County's request for documents is a tactic - "an attempt to run out the clock."/p pBecause if a decision is not made before the Bush administration - and along with it, Mark Rey - leaves office, then perhaps the amendment push will falter./p p"They're hoping they'll get a different legal decision from a different administration," Rey said, adding that "elections are meaningful in that way."/p pMcCubbin, however, insists "you cannot amend a document that you haven't identified and they still haven't identified the documents. We made our request six months ago and they've just now made what they themselves call a lsquo;cursory review of the documents?' This isn't Missoula County delaying anything." br /According to McCubbin, the Forest Service recently identified 176,000 documents that are "directly relevant" that have not yet been provided./p pRey said he remains committed to providing all relevant information needed to make an informed decision, which is not the same as providing "every last scrap of paper." /p /blockquote pLike most of BushCo's midnight efforts, this one will inevitably end up in court, because there's no way Rey is not signing the easement that would allow Plum Creek's development. Missoula County has substantial ground to sue, and will very likely do so. So this is essentially an obnoxious and arrogant exercise in futility, likely to do nothing more than secure Mark Rey an extremely healthy salary with some timber interest in the not too distant future. But it's also placing a large financial burden a small Montana county that has plenty of other demands for its resources./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/xSAOCjEXHFJdkmS6h5qAD42tyrU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/xSAOCjEXHFJdkmS6h5qAD42tyrU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://rss.dailykos.com/~f/dailykos/index?a=hHNnDmOE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/dailykos/index?d=120" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailykos/index/~4/Keu7ZBamaLo" height="1" width="1"/