Those who have been reading my comments the last few days know this:  once again, I am very concerned about Bush and Cheney going after Iran.  We know now, for example, that

In the face of these three I's, what do we have left to stop this criminal administration? We cannot wait for the election and until January.

Impeach! Impeach! Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!

More arguments, discussion below the fold

Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where George, hard pressed to come up with a lie to his girlfriend admitted

It occurred to me last night, listening to the punditocracy, that this captures McCain as he approaches the selection of a vice presidential candidate, in contrast to the surplus of excellent choices offered Obama.

He's got nothing!

Did not see this posted here-made it on
Ezra Klein, Political Wire, and a brief mention
on Countdown tonight.

If we believe the unminced words of Harry Reid, quoted in the Las Vegas Review Journal, the party is working to end this nomination battle.

Let's hope Reid's words hold up this time.

This is a brief diary, but there is an additional piece of news here I feel delighted to convey to at least the larger world of DKos.

Some of you will know from my comments over the past year that I have a 90 year old father-in-law who has never once voted for a democrat his whole life.  A 90 year old republican who has promised his daughter (my wife) that if Barack Obama is the nominee he will vote for him.  

Now, he not only says that, he says this:  ``I want to contribute to the Obama campaign.'' And, one or two choice things to say about McCain.

I had a little fun last night with the HuffPost Fundrace last night.  Using it you can see who made contributions (through last year) to which candidate.  There are some you probably knew-Steven Spielberg gave equally and maximally to Edwards, Clinton, and Obama; George Clooney gave only to Obama (maximally); many celebs of African-American descent gave to Obama (Halle Berry, Samuel Jackson, Denzel Washington, to name a few); Kelsey Grammer gave (maximally) to Rudy Giuliani.

For Obama, I thought it would be interesting to search by employer-he is well known at the U of Chicago where he was a lecturer in constitutional law (a colleague in the sciences I know there who has personal ties with his family raves about him), and it confirms what we are seeing about the Obama phenomenon: those who get to know him really like what they see.

Data below the fold.

Howard Fineman has suggested that Hillary needs to win big in at least OH, TX to be considered viable. While it is true that I see no viable route for Hillary to claim more pledged delegates than Obama in the upcoming races, I think that Fineman is not quite right-I think if Obama does not win with his typical margins in at least 2 of 3 of OH,TX,PA, that this race will remain a practical draw and the superdelegates could potentially lean to Hillary.  This assumes that MI, FL delegates remain unseated.

In other words, the firewall strategy could work for Clintoneven if her pledged delegates gains in the remaining primaries leave her behind Obama.  

So fellow Obama supporters, we need to work hard in those big states!

Reasoning below the fold.

UPDATE: FTR, I have always been for Obama. This is to encourage work on his behalf, not to discourage.  

My personal response to the hiring of William Kristol by the NYT? Fire the NYT! Below the fold is the letter I just sent to
the publisher, editorial page editor, public editor, managing editor, and executive editor of the times.  If you agree with  me, I encourage you all who still subscribe to the Grey Lady to do the same.  

Freedom's Watch, the PR group founded by Ari Fleisher to help pump up the surge, is now focus testing language to help make war against Iran palatable reports Laura Rozen at Mother Jones.

Once again, war as a product rollout.  

Once again, a PR group helping to foment war.  

A few choice paras and comments about one of the group's main funders can be found below the fold.

With the anxiety levels about Iran ratcheting up, you can imagine my consternation when I heard this (paraphrased here) on the Thom Hartmann show this AM: ``Are DEMOCRATS rushing to war too?  UN Weapons Inspector Mohammed El-Baradei is slamming a report by democratic rep. Rush Holt.  ''

This sensational quote was gleaned from Amy Goodman's headlines today at DemocracyNow!.

Allegedly, El-Baradei slammed a report he attributed to democrats, specifically Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, that Al Baradei said distorted IAEA reports by overstating the level of uranium enrichment achieved by Iran.  

While I respect el-Baradei and the work he is doing and has done, and his efforts to stave off crazies like Cheney, this one is off the mark as far as I can tell and unfairly slams Holt and the dems- more below the fold.  In fact, with a little reading in the congressional record, they look pretty good.

Message to Thom Hartmann and Amy Goodman whose shows I really enjoy and view as vital: please do due diligence on a matter this vital and fear producing.

I am delighted to read that UC Irvine chancellor Michael Drake reversed course after the national uproar about his hiring-then-firing of Edwin Chemerinsky and that now Prof. Chemerinsky is firmly back in the fold as the founding UCI law school dean.  Whatever bizarre machinations in-or-out of Drake's mind he is saved from an almost certainly ungainly exit, at least for today.  

Academic freedom lives!

Then there is this nugget from the UC System:

UC yanks speaker's invitation: Controversial ex-Harvard president was scheduled to address regents Wednesday

...
After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento. The dinner comes during the regents' meeting at UCD next week.

Given my strong views about academic freedom, I dislike this action even though I share the concerns of women everywhere about what Summers said.  I invite your responses in a poll.

Wow.  

You may recall the execrable events of two weeks ago, first Bush saying he didn't know why the policy to keep the Iraqi army in place wasn't held in place, then L. Paul Bremer being granted an op-ed to rebut that Bush was out of the loop.  Bremer did his best to argue in his op-ed that this was a sound decision.  

Charles Ferguson, director of No End in Sight, eviscerates Bremer in a video letter to the editor posted on the NY Times web site.  Here is the web site-you can get there also by linking to the http://www.nytimes.com/... section of the NY Times and clicking on the letters to the editor.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/...

I would encourage you to watch the whole video.  A synopsis below the fold. Why care about this now?  How many US and Iraqi lives would have been saved had this ridiculous decision not been carried out?  

Following this observation at Atrios, I am really very angry.  

Erwin Chemerinsky, a distinguished constitutional scholar at Duke (formerly at USC), was slated to be the inaugural dean of the new UC (University of California) Irvine law school.  

Until a few days later, after getting the offer and getting ready to come, Chancellor Michael Drake flew to Durham NC to tell Prof. Chemerinsky he was fired.  

The reason?  

This is a sad day for the University of California.  Would they have preferred
Ken Starr (dean at Pepperdine Law School)?

UPDATE:  Another good diary posted as I was writing this.

We all have been trained by now to get that for unfathomable reasons lead stories on such as the Colin Powell speech or now, General Petraeus' testimony, will not be dealt with on a level playing field of objectivity by the media dependent upon beltway access, such as the NY Times and Washington Post (although in prep for Petraeus' presentation both ran some excellent pieces).  

Again, McClatchy (nee Knight-Ridder) is proving a leader.  Contrast this front page headline from the Times today:

Petraeus Warns Against Quick Pullback in Iraq

with this, on the front page of today's Sacramento Bee, by Nancy Youssef and Leila Fadel:

Iraq report, between the lines.

After you see more below the fold, I would urge you to send Ms. Youssef an email of kudos for her good work.

First let me say this:  I will be happy if we have a democratic president from this list next year:  Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dodd.  I strongly favor Obama at present.  I think the others are way too flawed to be considered.

But I am really, really bothered when the paper of record puts forward what seems to be clearly an effort to favor one candidate (Hillary) above all the others.  Especially when the headline is

For Democrats, Primary Field Gives Confidence

Does that not sound optimistic?  Does that not sound like there are several great candidates? NOT SO FAST, DEAR READER!

More below the fold.

UPDATE:  error about JFK pointed out in comments is corrected.

Looking at today's NY Times, my heart was broken open.  There is a new and devastating exhibition of photographs called ``Purple Hearts'' opening in NYC by the photographer Nina Berman.  

To see these photos is to deepen the disgust with today's talk from our elders.

With inapt and inept contrasts of Iraq with Vietnam.

With news that we cannot send armored vehicles quickly enough.

With an unrolling of an ad campaign by a former flack who doesn't know the name of the soldier he is using as a prop to shill this horrific conflict.

We must have the Senate and House see these pictures and show them to the world.    

Sidney Blumenthal, with his usual elegant prose, has  a piece on Salon  laying out the White House fears that Colin Powell will come out of hiding in time to deny them the impact of Petraeus' september report.  

Although the piece focuses in main on Powell, the fuel for the fire of fear comes from Charles Ferguson's excellent documentary   No End in Sight

Blumenthal says:

The release of a documentary on the administration's failures in Iraq, "No End in Sight," directed by Charles Ferguson, has the White House spooked. Bush's aides are not worried because the film is brilliantly shot and edited, or because it is compelling, but because of what -- or whose appearance -- it might augur to upset their September rollout.

In particular, Ferguson snagged Richard Armitage, Powell's right hand man.

This confirms my suspicions:  this movie, which tells of the Iraq occupation fiasco from the insider's perspective, has the potential to push people off the fence, and, in my view, towards veto proof majorities in congress, and the White House wants to squash it. Is that why he is virtually blacked out from the TV and most major radio outlets?

10. Such pleasant weather in DC

9.  Gives Pat Leahy more chances to kiss Dick Cheney

8.  Fox news can identify more new democrats in congress

7.  Gives the corporate media more copy about that nasty Harry Reid guy.

6.  Last chance for a summertime barbecue of administration rump roasts by Congress

In parallel a number of people, myself included, and the group at Ezra Klein's blog were motivated to fact check David
Brooks' column from today's NYT. It is different from the typical Brooks in that (1) he does not set up his ritual dualistic argument in an explicit way, (2) he practices instead power point cognition (let's do bulleted items folks!), and (3) in a few cases, he cites sources.  

I found two misleading uses of government data (for more look at the above blog) and
one claim that I could not readily trace involving, interestingly enough, the number 10,000 that got Mr. Brooks in trouble the other day.