From the Huh? Department Via Mark Kleiman, Time is reporting that It’s not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that’s exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba […]

Bush’s Disapproval Ratings The bad news for Bush throughout late March and April – including the Clarke revelations about Bush’s lack of focus on terrorism, his reluctantly-given personal testimony in front of the 9/11 commission, and the sharp increase in violence in Iraq – all seemed to have no effect on how the US public […]

Looks Like Kash Was Right Earlier this morning, Kash wrote, “this Could be a Bad Day for Wall Street.” Now from CNN, we see that Stocks tumbled for a second straight session Monday on worries that interest rates will rise soon, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average below 10,000 for the first time since December. […]

The Triumph of The Hacks Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman covered little new ground, but they did pen a great overview of how and why policy-making — domestic and foreign — is so consistently wrong in this administration: … Bush has also discouraged the sort of free-wheeling policy debates that characterized previous administrations, and he […]

Who Wrote This? The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was […]

This Could be a Bad Day… …for Wall Street. Sharply higher US interest rates have spooked many markets around the world: NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks were set to sink at the open on Monday as fears the Federal Reserve (news – web sites) will raise interest rates as early as June weighed on markets […]

That Sinking Feeling Apparently more and more of the US military’s leadership has it. From today’s Washington Post: U.S. May Be Winning Battles in Iraq But Losing the War, Some Officers Say Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers […]

Baghdad Art Mirrors Baghdad Life Submittted with only one comment: it “was fashioned two months ago“: We are living in an American democracy AB

Why is George Bush President? Matt Yglesias asks this question today, with a follow-up from Kevin Drum. Specifically, he says: There was no reason whatsoever back in 1994 to think that George W. Bush was the best choice the Republicans had to run for governor of Texas — he was totally unqualified. His entire political […]

Food for Thought If Rumsfeld resigns heeds an urge to spend more time with his family, wouldn’t that mean that Paul Wolfowitz will, at least temporarily, be in charge of The Pentagon? Can Wolfowitz’s family preemptively ask him to spend more time with them? AB