Happy Bloomsday eve to all my Irish readers! First Draft has (as always) a phenominal parsing of Chimpy's little post-visit press conference. Enjoy!

In other news, apparently we're lazily floating in a sea of Zarqawi booty while the National Review cautions against a post hoc connection between Zarqawi's death and justification for a Forever War; Bob wonders where is Feodosia and why do we have Marines stationed there; and Team America may be finally getting around to trying Gitmo detainees (secretly, of course).

Republicans are pushing to scale-back Katrina aid in the face of monetary improprieties. That's some pretty big talk for the disseminators of no-bid contracts to their corporate cronies. Meanwhile, it's the people who would suffer the loss. Again.

The ACLU sues the Pentagon for spying on anti-war groups while even conservatives remain skeptical that the spy program has or will produce any security gains.

Is that the familiar stench of political distration in the air or is it simply the smell of our heads in the sand?

Farewell Good riddance to Bush's mouthpiece, leaving a giant shiny hole in the middle of the President's face.

Meanwhile, Planet Earth loves the You-Ess-of-Ay ... not so much.

This just in from the Washington Post:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday proposed a limited amnesty to help end the Sunni Arab insurgency as part of a national reconciliation plan that Maliki said would be released within days. The plan is likely to include pardons for those who had attacked only U.S. troops, a top adviser said.

I have to wonder what is going on here. Bush hand-picked this guy after a strong-armed push to oust the previous democratically-elected stooge Prime Minister. Yet this is not the first time the guy has enacted a controversial policy that seems to fly directly into the face of Bush's Cowboy Foreign Policy without a peep of protest from the White House. My guess is that President Bush Cheney has cut some kind of deal with the guy to play the role of maverick in order to help Bush justify an early retreat with his right-wing base. Either that or Bush has finally come around to the fact that his position is a miserable failure with no hope of success. I'm inclined to believe the former.

Until now, I have been loathe to dip my toe into the murky waters of Connecticut’s impending Senate race. It’s not that I have any love for Lieberman. On the contrary, I think he is a poison that needs desperate cleansing from the Democratic roster. However, I just don’t know enough about Lamont to offer anything intelligent to the debate (other than the fact that he is beginning to look electable).

However, the recent move by Schumer to imply that the DSCC would continue to support Bush’s Demmie Bud as an independent makes me a little ill. Tell me, what is the point of holding primaries if the Party is just going to choose the candidate anyway? Why not just go ahead and tell all the bourgeois subjects to simply eat cake and shut up? For that matter, why not just go ahead and do away with the election altogether since there really doesn’t seem to be any value, in Schumer’s mind, for the voice of the people?

What's worse, to refer to the opposition (i.e. the will of the people) as terrorists to simply to co-opt a GOP scare tactic in the most obsence fashion. What's next? Maybe Wal-Mart will call all K-Mart shoppers consumer terrorists?

You gotta love this little gem from the always-entertaining George Will (another George W?):

To understand the diabolical genius of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that pornographer of violence, begin with this:

He was a primitive who understood the wired world and used an emblem of modernity, the Internet, to luxuriate in gore. But although he may have had an almost erotic enjoyment of the gore, it was also in the service of an audacious plan. And he executed it with such brutal efficiency that he became, arguably, the most effective terrorist in history.

This only betrays the GOP strategy of dehumanizing insurgents in order to justify killing, torture, and civilian collateral damage. It's much easier to convince ordinarily good people to do these things when you convince them they're facing a slasher addict / pornographer who is gleefully masturbating behind his keyboard while watching Americans die. It's quite another to acknowledge your own complicity in his creation (while simultaneously abhorring his tactics). But I suppose to do that would be to admit that all this gratuitous killing has been in vain.

I know Bush's teasing of a blind reporter has been making the rounds through the blogs over the last couple of days. I, myself, am certainly guilty of having posted this story on a few comment boards. However, I will give credit where it is due. Bush did follow-up immediately with a phone call to Wallsten to offer an apology for his insensitivity, claiming he wasn't aware that the reporter was blind.

"He said, `I needle you guys out of affection,'" Wallsten said. "I said, 'I understand that, but I don't want you to treat me any differently because of this.'"

Wallsten said the president said he would not treat him differently, so Wallsten encouraged him to "needle away."

"He said, `I will. Next time I'll just use a different needle,'" Wallsten said.

Wallsten said he thought that was a pretty good line. And his only complaint is that the president didn't answer his question at the news conference.

So, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but give the guy a break. It was an embarrassing slip and he made a sincere effort to apologize for it in a timely fashion. If you want to complain about anything, you can ask why Bush has yet to apologize for the much greater sin of mass murder in an elective and unnecessary war, or you can join Wallsten in wondering why Bush never answered the question. Barring that, I consider the matter now closed.

ATR is offerning an exhaustive parsing of Peter Beinart's lies overstatements on WMDs in his interview with Kevin Drum. Go check it out, it's definitely worth the read.

But this brand of fact-checking is a hallmark of the modern Republican ideologue. Rather than testing a hypothesis, they begin from an unwavering opinion and then cherrypick the information supporting it while discounting evidence to the contrary - regardless of how preponderant it may be.

At best this is simply poor scholarship, at worst it is a concerted revisioning of a means vs. ends argument; the very revisioning that totalitarian regimes have always espounded.

It reminds me of that quote by Hannah Arendt, "Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself."

Bush 'Inspired' to Have Traveled to Free, Democratic Iraq. Ahh, Chimpy's sense of irony is as diminutive as his intellect.

I think that instead of putting quotes around 'Inspired' it should have been around 'Free' and 'Democratic', but I'm only saying that because I'm biased by 'Reality'.

Hurrican season is upon us and FEMA has still failed to secure any coordinated leadership . 

Chertoff said the agency is still working to confirm a regional director to oversee a seven-state region that includes the nation's most frequent hurricane targets.

Three other regions - the Gulf Coast, the mid-Atlantic and the northern plains states - lack permanent directors, although experienced interim officials are in charge.

I can readily admit that I've never trusted, liked, or even much tolerated Bush's presence in government.  I was living in Austin while he was governor, so my distaste for the man has roots very much pre-dating his presidency.  However, I have to say that were his policies or competence tolerable in any aspect, I could look past his irritating smirk and priviliged hubris.  However, the guy just makes tragic mistake after mistake and just never learns.  Even this might be somewhat humerous were it not that people - real people - die for his mistakes.

As I said before, Zarqawi's death poses a serious security risk to what little containment there was to his cell in Iraq. Despite whatever website claims to be the authority on his replacement, the fact is that a power struggle now appears to be in full swing over who will lead the beast:

Even al Qaeda’s adherents in Iraq are stumped by the identity of their new commander – doubly confused by the bulletins on similar Web sites which all name different successors.

Our Iraq sources list them as: Abdul Rahman al Iraqi, Zarqawi’s deputy; Rashid Baghdadi, an Iraqi believed to head the shura council; Abu Asil, an ex-colonel in Saddam Hussein’s general intelligence service.

This is a situation that really ought to be taken seriously. The single biggest danger of Al-Qu'eda is its fragmentation. The Bushies' desire to classify this organization in a pre-9-11 contruction of a centralized army is understandable given that this is a much more familiar and contained enemy with which to engage. However, this is simply not the case and I would say four or five smaller enemiesm, each trying to outdo the other, poses a far greater risk than a single large cell ever could.

This struggle will never be secure until we start focusing on the ideology and conditions leading to terrorism rather than their armed expression.