I just found this…

– Sen. John Kerry tells supporters, “We cannot win this election,” congratulates President Bush. Watch CNN or log on to http://CNN.com for the latest news. More Americans watch CNN. More Americans trust CNN. ******************************************************************** Play the Anderson Cooper 360 Challenge. Find a location near you: http://www.CNN.com/challenge ******************************************************************** To unsubscribe from CNN.com’s Breaking News E-Mail Alert, log on to: http://CNN.com/EMAIL/breakingnews.html To sign up for additional e-mail products, go to http://CNN.com/EMAIL (c)2004. Cable News Network, LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Interactive email id:73951408062638350

A few interesting articles……starting with a reminder about Bush’s DUI…and ending with a Gore item.

Nobody should think that this is Alberto Gonzalez’s first brush with the truth. His deceit goes back decades. Literally. Guess who helped GWB hide his DUI? Yep, you guessed it, Alberto “Absurd” Gonzalez. A good synopsis of all the issues involving Secretary Absurd are here….

Remember right around the 2006 elections the fracas between Howard Dean and the Democratic party’s traditionalists like Carville and Begala? Remember how they kept saying that Dean’s 50 state strategy was a disaster, and how he lost the Dems about 30 additional seats because he chose to devote resources to the 50 state strategy instead of more 30 second ads? Well, turns out, Dean was right. Read this great article about how some of the reddest states are at least turning Purple.

Fred Thompson is a giant Flop. F-L-O-P, Flop. Floppy Thompson. These are Hunter Duncan-esque Numbers.

And, lastly, the GOP is nervous as hell about 2008. Very, very nervous.

and, of course, one little Gore item….. from Laurie David:

“I don’t personally believe that everyone is in the race yet…. I’m going to wait and see what happens…. I’m waiting until October…. There isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t think about running.”

Olbermann, again….

Pure poetry:

Let’s hope Cheney doesn’t do anything cute tomorrow while Bush is getting his colon examined.

Olbermann hits a home run, why can’t Democrats sound like this?

See for yourself.

The Elephant in the Room– good news for Progressives

As Bush Hits an All-Time Low, there is tons of good news in this recent Newsweek article.

EVERY TOP TIER DEMOCRAT NOW BEATS ALL 3 TOP REPUBLICANS NATIONALLY!!!

That’s right. Edwards beats Rudy, beats Romney, beats McCain. Obama beats all three. Hillary beats all three. 60% of Republicans are unhappy with their candidates. Dems are overall pleased….

A few snippets:

The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979. This remarkably low rating seems to be casting a dark shadow over the GOP’s chances for victory in ’08. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds each of the leading Democratic contenders beating the Republican frontrunners in head-to-head matchups.

I love Jimmy, but Bush can’t be pleased about that comparison. And this:

Like Obama, Edwards defeats the Republicans by larger margins than Clinton does: the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee outdistances Giuliani by six points, McCain by 10 and Romney by 37, the largest lead in any of the head-to-head matchups. Meanwhile, Sen. Clinton wins 49 percent to 46 percent against Giuliani, well within the poll’s margin of error; 50 to 44 against McCain; and 57 to 35 against Romney.

Yes, it’s early, but I’m much happier being a Democrat now than I would be as a Republican.

But, I do still want Gore in the race. Does anyone doubt that this isn’t a means to gather names for a netroots appeal once he’s in?

Buy his book, The Assault on Reason, out in 2 weeks. This book tour has to be the opening salvo. Do the tour, lay low, then hit the media again for the Live Earth concerts, win the Nobel Prize, then get in to the race in the early fall…..

I See Bad News A-Risin’

I’m reading a book, News: The Politics of Illusion, which broaches the subject of Bush’s at first tenuous, later discredited claims about terrorist connections and WMD in Iraq — a subject the media were glad to continue discussing as possibilities long after they were proven to be fairy tales.

I’m experiencing an eerie sense of familiarity with a few articles in the “liberal” media in the past weeks — starting on Jan. 26, “Bush Defends Moving Against Iranians Who Help Shiites Attack U.S.-Led Forces in Iraq,” with this lede (preempting criticism, yes, it’s spelled that way):

President Bush and his senior aides on Friday justified American actions against Iranian operatives inside Iraq as necessary to protect American troops and Iraqis, and said they would continue as long as Tehran kept up what they called its support for Shiites involved in sectarian attacks.

A full ten graphs down the page comes some detail I would have appreciated a little sooner, and which most readers never hit:

President Bush kicked off a campaign of escalated rhetoric against Iran during a televised address to the nation on Jan. 10. For months, officials from across the Bush administration have accused Iran of supplying Shiite militias with high-tech explosives and training them to carry out attacks with roadside bombs.

Administration officials have thus far provided little detailed public evidence to support these claims. Officials said that Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador in Baghdad, is planning a news conference for Wednesday during which he will present a dossier of Iran’s efforts to fuel sectarian violence in Iraq.

Incidentally, Khalilzad spoke of trying to help increase security and open a bank, but that’s neither here nor there — the US is giving Iran the silent treatment, anyway. In today’s “Iran May Have Trained Attackers That Killed 5 American Soldiers, U.S. and Iraqis Say”, it gets better.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 30 — Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the inquiry.

The officials said the sophistication of the attack astonished investigators, who doubt that Iraqis could have carried it out on their own — one reason a connection to Iran is being closely examined. Officials cautioned that no firm conclusions had been drawn and did not reveal any direct evidence of a connection.

The worst part of the Bush’s lies in the run up to Iraq is that he cried wolf. And the worst part about the media is they keep loading their shotguns, reporting suspicions as facts, then only later revealing they lack substance. Bush should learn a different way to deal with hostile nations, and the press should think about the implications of reporting such claims as news– otherwise the U.S. is in for another round of hype, topple, truth, and quagmire.

POTUS: The decision-maker

Today W. added to his array of possible WWF wrestling names and new identities. In speaking to press after a meeting with military advisors, W. said to a raucous crowd amid fireworks and blasting heavy metal rock:

I’m the decision-maker.

When adding this to how he referred to himself on 60 minutes as “the educator-in-chief,” we might have a bit of a problem with conflicting characters on our hands.

Daily Kos has it that he has also called himself the “Commander” and “Decider.”

Aides might be concerned that the several names will cause consumer confusion and will mess with any marketing promotions that were planned for later this year.

It’s a slow news day, and what do we do here at ProgressiveIntelligencia on slow news days? That’s right folks, pick on President, uh, right, Decision-Maker Bush.

Can I get a shout-out……

If I asked you yesterday what Dikembe Mutumbo, Julie Aigner-Clark, Tommy Raymond, and Wesley Autry have in common, what would you have said?

Interesting group to get the annual presidential shout-out at the State of the Union….

A few quick thoughts while the speech is concluding–
The first half, I thought, was terribly written. I’m in healthcare, I’ve read a bunch of previews of his speech, and I can honestly tell you I have no idea what he was talking about with this health insurance reform piece. My understanding is that it will offer tax cuts for certain people, and will increase taxes on others. Another part of the plan is supposedly taking money from public hospitals and giving it to the uninsured. Kind of silly– nothing like this has a prayer of getting out of Congress.

The other domestic agenda items were odd too. The congressional reform piece sounded nice– certainly no one is going to argue against earmark reform, or against balancing the budget, but it was awfully thin on details.

I thought the portion on foreign policy started strong, and was actually fairly well written, but once it got to the meat of the escalation policy Bush is pushing, it lost all steam. I thought the line, “please give this a chance to work” sounded incredibly weak.

The laundry list items at the end sounded like weak fluff too. Of course everyone wants to eliminate AIDS in Africa, or end the genocide in Darfur, but it’s tough to forget that he has actually been president for the last 6 years. Where’s he been on some of these issues?

All in all– weak, not exactly full of passion (although, like I said, the piece on the global threats of terrorism started strong but ended weakly when it got to Iraq), and a meaningless laundry list that will be ignored.

Remember the days when presidents used to go out to the country to push their agenda outline in the SOTU? Does anyone think Bush has a chance to do that now

Best part of the speech was his touching tribute to Pelosi at the outset. Sounded genuine….

Now onto Webb.

Olbermann is simply the best….

For those who haven’t been watching, I strongly recommend tuning into MSNBC at 8 pm on weekdays. Keith Olbermann has been the most outspoken journalist against the war, and he recently has started a series of “Special comments” addressing many different political issues, a la Edward R. Murrow . I thought his special comment on 9/11 was outstanding, but tonight’s is simply the best I’ve heard. He delivers it better than it reads, Crooks and Liars has the video, and here’s the link to read it in it’s entirety:

Bush’s legacy: The president who cried wolf
Olbermann: Bush’s strategy fails because it depends on his credibility
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, ‘Countdown’
Updated: 8:53 p.m. ET Jan 11, 2007

Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me” — only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake … in Iran.

Only this president could extol the “thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,” and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — “engage Syria and Iran” — and transform it into “threaten Syria and Iran” — when al-Qaida would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy’s friends, “Ok, which one of you is next?”

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer “what are you thinking?,” but rather “are you thinking at all?”

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16583889/
© 2007 MSNBC.com

Bush Addresses Nation…Nation Watches “Armed and Famous”

President Bush addressed the Nation at 9pm tonight. The Full Text can be found here

First of all, I believe that most of America didn’t watch this because American’s are far too depressed with the situation in Iraq and have no faith in the president. But for those who did give up their valuable Friday Night Lights viewing time to watch this speech, what did they get?

They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

This is the closest he came to apology or admitting failure. He believes with all his heart that he is fighting people who hate “freedom” not U.S. foreign policy, and that while things aren’t peachy, we will win because we are “right.” His delusions get worse…

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity – and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

The war in Iraq is just the beginning. While the 20,000 troop escalation (in fact just making 20,000 troops already there more miserable) we can now await President Bush making provocating steps toward Iran and Syria. This war will cross borders into Syria and Iran and (not that we have many Islamic friends in the region anymore) we can count on completely alienating about a billion Muslims worldwide. But forget that. How about a military that our generals say is already stretched too thin that we are now (at least speaking the language) of adding theatres to this war.

Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my Administration, and it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas – where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny.

Oh Joe. Joe Boy. The only individual named in the speech is the esteemed Independent from Connecticut who just loves the War. I don’t even want to start with the fact that it can’t be bipartisan talks since Lieberman isn’t a Democrat. Essentially Mr. Bush is saying that he too knows that his ONLY support in Congress comes from Joe, John Mcmaniac, and Lindsey “Whatever John Says” Graham. This administration has no experience and no intention of listening to alternative ideas, and the mention of Joe is simply a naming of Bush’s remaining contingency.

What are your thoughts on the speech, its effectiveness, and the response?