I just happened to pick up my little local paper here in Central PA and a small Page 3 column outlines that our friends in the White House have somehow misplaced/lost/deleted/crashed a boat load of emails dating back to 2003.

Oh my my!  What will they do now, as Rove is getting closer to plopping his behind in front of the Judiciary Committee.  Claim that someone shredded the last 8 years of Presidential memos?  

When I went to Pennsylvania to canvas for Obama before the primary, Tim Kaine spoke to us at the Wilkes-Barre headquarters.  I had very much liked his speech in response to Bush's 2006 SOTUS, in which he laid out a better way for our future, and he did not disappoint that morning.  He had us all fired up to go out and brave the rural Pennsy electorate.

Governor Kaine is a very intelligent and engaging man.  He is not boring.  He does not have baggage. He has run a state.  He has not had to cast votes in Congress that the Republican spin machine can cast in a bad light.  He, too, went to Harvard, which does not have a weird, God help us, Skull and Crossbones secret society, but has a positive, uplifting open atmosphere that emphasizes learning and solutions, not the macabre.  Heaven knows, we've had enough of secrecy and death under this administration, and we are gasping for a breath of fresh air and change.

McCain: "I know war. I can win wars.  There will be more wars. It's okay with me if we stay in Iraq for 100 years." Yes, with McCain as president there would be lots more wars and he's just shown us how. Even David Ignatius criticizes Dangerous McCain quips about Georgia!

Poland signed onto a US missile system today that included US Patriot Missiles in the fine print. Shield deal for Poland/neocons  The Georgia/Russia fight helped change public opinion to make this deal possible. Bush admired Saakashvili's dancing so Poland signed on for a missile shield.

NATO will not fight with Russia. Period.

Post partisan my ass! That MIGHT be a good theme as a campaign strategy. It MIGHT appeal to an electorate tired of the incompetent,  ineffectual and just plain stupid brand of government they have been getting for the last ten years....you know, since the incredibly partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republican Congress....

It might sound ... nice ...and evenhanded and reasonable and mature and responsible and all that. But it ignores the simple and undeniable fact that since the Republicans lied, cheated and smeared (including smearing their current champion when he was running against Bush) their way into having full unfettered dominance of the government.....just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and the country is in sad, sorry shape.

Because of the Republicans.

Everything the Republicans has touched in the last decade has turned to crap. From the micro (life saving stem cell research) to the macro (Climate Crisis) the Republicans have had full power to implement their vision, programs and policies....and have gotten it wrong every single time.

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The "meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’" according to one of Hersh’s sources.

Think Progress

For those of you not paying attention to who is running the show in the Whitehouse for past 8 years, here is a little "Idiots Guide" summary:

Bush some of the time, Cheney all of the time.

With this in mind, I would like to make a quick observation, rather than a prediction, on the current suspense surrounding the question, "Who will be McCain's running-mate?".

Hollywood, CA (APE) - "Blackman, the Dark Knight" America's latest ballot box office smash hit featuring newcomer Barack Obama was knocked out of the top slot this past weekend. "Epic Blunder ", a new dark comedy of errors featuring the triple threat comic genius of old-school Republican celebrities Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and presumptive president John McCain knocked the Dark Knight out of the top slot this weekend despite dismal showings of $21 million versus over $56 million for the month of July.

Oh, you just have to see this.  
Yesterday, I did a long background story called "Shale" on Crazy Tom McClintock's "energy" policy which he had released on August 10.  http://www.dailykos.com/...

When Crazy Tom wrote this Aug 10, I knew I had hit black comedy gold because the thing was so riddled with errors that anyone seriously following energy issues and planning would think the person who wrote it was incompetent.  Crazy Tom had lots of public feedback on it,  and being an inflexible sort, instead of trying to get rid of it, he kept giving speeches with it.  Tom McClintock seemed intent on drilling his way to China on that, but last night, anticipating the Auburn Journal's story here,  http://auburnjournal.com/... ,  "China Cuba oil drilling gaffe has McClintock backpedaling, he finally caved.  

Recently, on Aug 10, Tom McClintock(R, Thousand Oaks) trying to carpetbag his way up into federal level congressional office by using our Northern CA district, released his version of an "energy" policy.  http://blog.tommcclintock.com/...   I looked at it, and I thought, this is seriously so bad, somebody must have been smoking crack when they composed it.  
That bad.  The entire thing, start to finish, is riddled with factual errors. This is what happens when Republicans running around here want something. They just make stuff up.
When you make stuff up, and then base your decisions on fantasy or deceit, the outcome is not good.  If you try to do this in engineering, the results are failure.  Let's learn about shale.

Submitted for your reading enjoyment, it is titled "Mr. Bush, Please!" and you can fry an egg on it!

I will just post a couple snippets below. It's a two-page rant that is a blast to read.

George W. Bush is the worst president in history! As the last months of his lame duck presidency are drawing to a close, we have and will continue to find out more that calls for his impeachment.

Why you want to join:

Since its inception in 1995, the United States - Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC) has been a vital resource for American companies seeking to establish long-term business ties with Azerbaijan. Its deep membership pool consists of a diverse group of businesses from all sectors of the economy, including Fortune 500 companies.

.... The USACC was a key driving force behind two of the world’s most strategic and ambitious regional energy projects, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum gas pipeline, both of which are operational today.

.... The USACC organizes an impressive annual schedule of trade missions and conferences, and arranges business meetings where key government and business leaders from both countries can meet, share ideas and forge partnerships.

Members of the USACC enjoy high level access to key contacts and are invited to a host of invitation-only events in both countries each year.... flagship annual publications, the USACC Investment Guide to Azerbaijan and the USACC Business Directory.

http://www.usacc.org/...

The Bush Administration has made every mistake imaginable in the run up to the Russia-Georgia crisis.  They will continue to make the same kinds of mistakes because they're power mad crazy people.  But Russia isn't innocent by any means.

So I have a chance to hear James Carville and Mary Matalin speak next week. Before the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, no less.  

Interesting take on why, in a piece by Juan Cole in Salon. The article is entitled "Putin's war enablers: Bush and Cheney." Here's what Cole argues:

Historical background on the Lie Factory:

Remember the lead up to the Iraq War?  The hype was thick and well orchestrated. Cheney's gal Friday, Judith Miller, was dishing his dirt in the New York Times from an anonymous source (Scooter Libby, pardoned by Bush), and he cited her articles as proof that his ballyhoo was substantiated by a venerable newspaper (no longer).  The New York Times stood idly by, letting Cheney play this trick on the American public, anonomously corroborating himself via their reknown reporter (infamous now). The NY Times aided and abetted Cheney's artifice, which would unleash death and destruction on thousands, while sweetening the pot of special interests at our expense, without so much as a correction.

The Globe and Mail today :
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...

carries Misha Glenny's intriguing geopolitical piece on Russia's invasion of Georgia:

GEORGIA IN THE MIDDLE
The Russians set a trap, and prodded by the neo-cons, Saakashvili walked right in.

Apparently Dick Cheney's meddling in Georgian affairs is driven in part by his desire to influence our November election and to turn it away from a mandate on who could best serve our economic woes to who is perceived as most ready to deal with national security issues.

Vladimir Putin has gone from being Russia's president to being Russia's Dick Cheney.  As Prime Minister, he still has all the real power but has shed the accountability that goes with being the head of state.  So while Putin is undoubtedly the dastard who decided to put the clobber on Georgia, the guy who has to take criticism for it is Putin's political Pinocchio President Dmitry Medvedev.  Being the man in the hot seat sort of makes Medvedev Russia's George W. Bush, except that Bush has never really been held responsible for anything. (Bush is only sixty-something and he's only been on the job for seven and a half years, what do you want?)