The fact that Bush has given infinitely fewer press conferences than his modern predecessors has always been a bone of contention for me.  But to be fair, I can’t say I blame him.  In fact, after six years, I can’t imagine why anyone in the White House would think that allowing Junior to wander unsupervised through the press room would be a good idea.  Yesterday was no exception. 

For the time being, I’m going to ignore the irony of this president, within hours of jetting off to Crawford, chastising Congress for going on vacation (770 vacation days and counting for Mr. Lazy-in-Chief).  No, the real main event was when the press were pressing him on the dismal performance of the Bush/McCain troop increase - a surge almost universally opposed by the American people.  And this child in a grown-up suit had the audacity to claim that it was never his idea; he was only following the advice of the commanders in the field.  Which would be fine.  If it were true. 

The problem is that all the joint chiefs, along with the head of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Marines sort of, you know … universally opposed the surge!  Oh, and there was also the little matter of the commanders in the field who, wait, let me think … oh yeah … universally opposed the surge!  That is, they opposed it until Bush fired them all and replaced them with a more pliable bunch. 

I would sooner fault a bird for flying than Bush for lying – it’s just in his nature.  But it would be nice if the mainstream media would call him out once in a while.

I don’t know how many of you checked back in to notice LaPopessa’s update to yesterday’s post on McCain’s April Fool’s Day stroll through Baghdad.  Well it seems that every time the Americans publicly announce that something is working in Iraq, insurgents are there the next day to blow it up. 

Horribly prophetic and tragically predictable, it turns out that McCain’s little photo-op cost the lives of 21 more innocent Iraqis: 

The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress. 

John McCain: the tragedy that just keeps on giving. 

UPDATE: Juan Cole has a really great piece on “McCain’s Magical Mystery Tour” which is worth a read.  Here is an excerpt: 

Look, I lived in the midst of a civil war in the late 1970s in Beirut. I know exactly what it looks and smells like. The inexperienced often assume that when a guerrilla war or a civil war is going on, life grinds to a standstill. Not so. People go shopping for food. They drive where they need to go as long as they don't hear that there is a firefight in that area. They go to work if they still have work. Life goes on. It is just that, unexpectedly, a mortar shell might land near you. Or the person ahead of you in line outside the bakery might fall dead, victim of a sniper's bullet. The bazaars are bustling some days (all the moreso because it is good to stock up on supplies the days when the violence isn't so bad). So nothing that John McCain saw in Baghdad on Sunday meant a damn thing. Not a goddamn thing.
It makes my blood boil.

Because McCain, you see, knows exactly what I know about guerrilla wars and civil wars. Hell, people used to shop freely in Saigon in the early 1970s! And if he is saying what he is saying, it is because he is attempting to convey an overly optimistic picture with which to deceive the American public.

Hold onto your brain socks, the world is about to get that much more vacuous.  6 and ½ hours more to be precise.  Remember that “comedic” abortion FOX News rolled out a couple of months ago?  Well, apparently being universally lambasted by critics of all political stripes is the formula for success at the most fair and balanced news network in history. 

Yes, the FNC has just ordered 13 more episodes of fart jokes and canned laugh tracks virtually guaranteed to assist those poor souls whose pesky brains just won’t leak out of their ears no matter how hard they try.

The enemy of my enemy?  Here we go again: 

U.S. intelligence admitted that it as been supporting a pro-Taliban militant group conducting operations inside the Iranian border.  Known as the Mujahideen Jundullah, they operate just across the border in Pakistan and have claimed responsibility for dozens of deaths and kidnappings:

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight. 

snip

Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.

The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians. 

"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members. 

"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said. 

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan. 

It’s astounding how the very same people who screwed up the world 30 years ago are now back in power, screwing it up in the exact. same. freakin'. way!

By now, most of you have probably seen the coverage of McCain’s little stroll through downtown Baghdad. You know, the leisurely promenade he took to show all those good little FOX News fans how the middle of a war zone is, in fact, as safe as downtown Detroit. Seriously, safe as houses – as long as those houses are scrutinized and sanitized by a military explosives unit, surrounded by a crowd of informants, covered by an armed perimeter, and you're accompanied by 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships.

Look, I don’t fault the man for wanting to be safe. Hell, you won’t find me wandering outside the green zone without a fully-armed entourage. But this little photo-op was advertised as a demonstration of how safe conditions are in the city and that is a complete lie. Frankly, that pisses me off. And judging from the local reaction, it looks like I’m not the only one:

Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a 42-year-old who sells electrical appliances at the Shorja market that the Republican congressmen visited on Sunday, said the delegation greeted some fellow vendors with Arabic phrases but he was not impressed.

"They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests," he said. "Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit." … I didn't care about him, I even turned my eyes away," Thamir said. "We are being killed by the dozens everyday because of them. What were they trying to tell us? They are just pretenders."

And:

Karim Abdullah, a 37-year-old textile merchant, said the congressmen were kept under tight security and accompanied by dozens of U.S. troops.

"They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they were tourists and were visiting the city's old market and buying souvenirs," he said. "To achieve this, they sealed off the area, put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of armed American soldiers."

John McCain: winning the hearts and minds of “liberated” Iraqi’s – a comedy farce brought to you by FOX News and the Flat Earth Society.

UPDATE: Big thanks to reader LaPopessa who pointed out this gem from the New York Times:

Several merchants said Monday that the Americans’ visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents.

“Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,” said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety. 

Arianna has a great post on all the brouhaha surrounding Hillary’s fundraising release that’s worth checking out.  A few bullet points: 

First of all, of the $36 millions she supposedly raised, at least $10 million was rolled over from her senatorial campaign. 

Secondly, this is her combined total for both primary and general election, at least some of which can’t be used for the former.  Other fundraises, such as John Edwards, released these figures, but according to Clinton’s spokesman, her campaign is unable to do so.  In other words, we really have no idea at this point how much Hillary has for the primary race.

Finally, the big (completely ignored) story is how Obama, a newcomer to the scene, has done so well against one of the most recognized names in modern politics.  Moreover, while Clinton received funding from 50,000 donors, Obama boasts a financial base of 83,000.  In other words, nearly 70% more people are donating to his campaign.

Can somebody please explain to me the mainstream media's quirky obsession with this woman? 

I’ve been trying to find time to express my feelings about the NYPD spying on peaceful protest groups but have been to busy to articulate my thoughts.  Fortunately for me, Julian Sanchez has saved me the trouble: 

It would be disturbing is if the city's keeping dossiers on peaceful people's political activities, and Lindsay Beyerstein is certainly right that the city shouldn't be able to block the release of records from that surveillance on the grounds that some of us might find it newsworthy. But I also don't think it's hugely problematic in principle for police to be attending public meetings or following public message boards to get some sense of how a major event like this is likely to unfold. 

I can, however, think of at least one way in which this sort of practice might be counterproductive from the police's own perspective. Even completely peaceful protest groups will sometimes be planning acts of civil disobedience that are essentially harmless but technically illegal. If you create the expectation that these groups are invariably going to be monitored or infiltrated, their natural response is going to be to adopt a more closed structure, limit membership to known, committed activists, cultivate a stronger us-versus-them mentality, and so on. And it's a well established phenomenon that if you gather a group of like-minded people and close them off from moderating external feedback, they will over time become more extreme than the median group member was at the outset. Encouraging that tendency seems likely to promote lawless or violent forms of protest, not preempt them. 

Sanchez reminds me of JFK warning that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  And if we open our minds a little to this kind of reasoning, we may gain some insight into the process from which terrorists emerge.