...I'm sure you have the very best of the Democratic Party in mind when you puke all over your Cheetos stained keyboard and this comes out.

The case of Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani woman who was likely tortured in U.S. custody, underscores the depravity of the current defects in our approach to intelligence gathering.  Even the best intentioned of torturers should be educated about the value of information obtained through such methods.  A victim of torture will tell his torturers anything they want to hear, eventually, but rarely tell the truth.  They are merely desperate to make their suffering end.

Mas below

If you dislike the idea of Evan Bayh on the Democratic ticket this November, join together on Facebook against him.  Writers welcome you.  The page.  Even if Bayh had a fantastic record on liberal issues, he wants to be Vice President almost as bad as McCain wants to be President.  That is a very bad thing.  Power corrupts, and Evan Bayh has been sipping from the fountain.

If FISA is a precedent, then the Facebook page won't make any difference.  Even less so. Get in on it while it's young (only  [tens of?] thousands strong so far).  Be a charter member of the "Bayh Not VP" Facebook movement.  T-shirts will be available, if you make them.  So not news.

[Funny, Kos, but only painfully so]

More, Check It

Sorry, Team F.O.O. - I don't have too many functioning brain cells left for a catchy intro. I hope to have pictures of yesterday's festivities in the next day or so.

R.I.P. to Isaac Hayes. I'll ready myself for slings & arrows; I'd never heard of him until South Park. I was born in 1971; I wasn't exactly "of age" for Shaft!

It's 85 days until the election. Hopefully, we won't be at war with Iraq, Iran, AND Russia by then.

Let's count down tonight's Countdown!

In his NY Times op-ed today, Bill Kristol literally tells Americans to be afraid.

Why?

Because Barack Obama is winning the election.

More after the jump.

It's pretty odd that the New York Times has hired Bill Kristol as a "national" commentator, when he so often writes like a local D.C. gossip columnist.

Late last week, the media, prodded by John McCain, launched a massive effort to smear Obama as a "flip-flopper" on Iraq. The point of this lie is to confuse undecided voters on the issue and demoralize Obama's supporters while falsely portraying him as inconsistent on the issue. The smear itself involves the following false premises:

1. The Democrats had previously been arguing for "precipitous withdrawal"

2. "Listening to commanders" would mean no withdrawal

3. Conditions on the ground would rapidly deteriorate if we started to withdraw now

4. John McCain wants to withdraw when the country is stable (hence, Obama's new position is pretty much just like McCain's)

Of course, without regard for the veracity of any of these claims, the likes of Mark Halperin and George Stepaenopoulos repeated it without any critical appraisal while Bill Kristol took the mass deception as cover to make the erroneous argument that "Obama's move to the center on Iraq shows how radical the Democratic Party's position on Iraq has been for the last year and a half."

Rabbit...Rabbit...Rabbit! According to my Marconi - award - winning morning radio silly guys, Bob & Tom, you're supposed to repeat this phrase the first day of a new month for good luck. What the heck...it couldn't hurt!

Last night's live diary was great fun! Thanks to all of you who showed up with your great comments whenever you were able to make it. I appreciate it and your continued support of my Countdown diary efforts awfully very much!

Now, on to tonight's diary!

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to come out different."

-- attributed to Benjamin Franklin

One problem with using the rational actor model to forecast what the George W. Bush administration may do next is that the model wasn’t designed to analyze people referred to as "the crazies in the basement."  There is near universal agreement, for example, that for the U.S. to attack Iran would be the ultimate act of insanity.  Unfortunately for us, the more insane any given course of action is, the more likely it is that the Cheney-centric Bush administration will pursue it.  

OK there may have already been a diary of this with the video clip, but I cannot find it if there was. Kristol's comments have become famous today and for good reason.

Bill Kristol said yesterday on FOX News Sunday that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama is likely to be elected President. He added that if McCain were elected Bush might feel that it would be "more appropriate" to let him make his own decision as commander in chief.

Not only does this reinforce the notion that McCain and Bush are joined at the hip when it comes to middle east foreign policy, but it also suggests that military decisions by the Bush admin. might be influenced by political poll numbers! That is absolutely unbelievable... the tone with which Kristol says "its difficult to base... on guesses about poll numbers" is astonishing to me and from the looks of even others like Hume on the panel I may not be alone.

If you missed it check out the clip below and weigh in with your thoughts / opinions:

Once again, neocon Bill Kristol, by missing the point of the MoveOn ad entitled, "Alex" is spewing untruths from his (how-in-the-hell-is-it possible?) perch at the New York Times.

As anyone who has seen the ad knows, the message it conveys is specific to Iraq.  In it a young mother is holding her infant son, Alex, and addresses her words to John McCain.  She informs Sen. McCain that if he's counting on Alex to be a party to McCain's 100 years in Iraq, he can count baby Alex out.  

The right-wing of the foreign policy establishment started making serious predictions about a sudden attack on Iran, either before the election or before the next president takes office.

Today on Fox News Sunday, NY Times pundit extraordinaire Bill Kristol predicted that either Bush OR Israel OR Saudi Arabia and Egypt would launch a preemptive strike against Iran.  Kristol went so far to utter the word "nuclear" before catching himself.

More after the jump...

Bill Kristol first became famous  as Dan Quayle's brain. Sort of like being known was Mini-Me's height.
After securing Quayle's reputation as a mental midget, Kristol turned to punditry. In the ways of Mainstream Media, the dumber his pronouncements, the more prominent he has become.

This is the man who shamelessly pimped the Iraq war:

What all of this means is that the president has been right in saying that the coming war to remove Saddam is part of the overall war on terrorism. Regime change in Iraq and the destruction of al Qaeda are two related fronts in one war, and both fronts should be prosecuted aggressively and simultaneously.

based in part on what he  read in Vanity Fair.

Just as insightful he is about the thinking of Arab leaders:

So I think they're going to begin, over the next few months, developing a rationale, these Arab leaders will, in the Arab world, for why they can go along with a U.S. attack on Iraq.

You would think he understands Bush's work habits better

Well team, I've thought about possible F.O.O. jersey "scenerios." If our "shirt rep" visits tonight, maybe she'll be kind enough to post the link again! As far as colors, we could go with navy blue and white (for Keith's beloved Yankees - sorry they're in last place! Start rootin' for the Cubs!), carnelian and white (Cornell's colors - carnelian appears to be a darker shade of red), or, perhaps, purple and white (in "honor" of those purple ties that people love so much!). As far as a jersey number for Mr. Olbermann, we could go with 59 (the year he was born), 67 (the year he saw his first major league baseball game - Yankees & White Sox), 79 (the year he graduated from Cornell after a 28 - credit - hour spring semester. I sure wasn't your academic advisor; WTF were you thinking?!), or 03 (the year of Countdown's debut). I think we should put our DailyKos "names" on the jerseys because that's how Keith knows us if he shows up here to see what kind of shenanigans we're getting into here; I'll take care of Mr. Olbermann's jersey as I'll already pay through the nose for lettering for "CityLightsLover". Just some ideas...feel free to tell me I'm full of $hit should you deem it necessary.

Now, onto tonight's Countdown diary!

People like Bill Kristol say things like this, on Fox News Sunday, December 17, 2006...

KRISTOL: You know, Bill Clinton won a nomination in 1992 against a weak field. Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York, chose not to run. George Mitchell, the Senate majority leader, chose not to run. Al Gore and Dick Gephardt, who had run in '88, chose not to run. The heavyweights didn't run. Bill Clinton had a sketchy field against him and won the nomination, despite various missteps and flaws.

Hillary Clinton, it looks like to me, is now going to follow in Bill Clinton's footsteps. If she gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. She wants to be the centrist.

I think she's taking some risks in staying on the center, not going to left, which is intelligent. She can still beat the left-wing democratic candidates, I think. And then she's pretty well-positioned for the general election. So this is all good for Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.

And, for being so wrong, they get columns at the NY Times. It's nice work if you can get it.

From the sound of things, when John McCain went to address the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 2, he took along his buddies Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham and a pair of kneepads.  Senator McCain might as well have come right out and said that President McCain would make protecting Israel America's number one foreign policy objective come hell or Hezbollah.  After all, isn't that our top foreign policy priority now?  Why change losing strategies in midstream?

Something just didn't sit right with me with Billy K's latest Op-Ed in the birdcage liner formerly known as the "Paper of Record". And while I was sitting on the V train home from work I realized what it was.

Alas, irony.  White House Press Secretary Dana Perino calling former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan "sad" is like McClellan calling Perino a "Bush administration whore."  They’re both right, but look who’s talking.  

No, Scott didn’t really call Dana a Bush administration whore—not in public, anyway.  Dana really did call Scott sad though, and she really is a Bush administration whore.  

Dana should have taken it easy on Scott.  He’s just the latest in a long line of former Bush liegemen who wrote books so they can make enough money to buy their way out of hell.  Dana’s time will come.  After her press secretary gig is over and people start calling her out for fibbing about the surge, she’ll get to dwelling on the fate of her immortal soul and boy, will her tune ever change.