The Blue State

(Video) Murtha calls on McCain to apologize for IED joke

Congressman John Murtha is furious at John McCain for a joke that he made about IED's while appearing on the Daily Show this week.  Here was what McCain said:

STEWART: So what do you want to start with: the bomb Iran song, or the walk through the market in Baghdad?  What do you want to start with?

MCCAIN: Uh, let's see.  Which one have I seen most on your show?  I think maybe, maybe shopping in Baghdad.  I had something really picked out for you too.  It's a nice --

STEWART: Did you really?

MCCAIN: Yeah.  It's a nice little IED to put under your desk.

On the House floor the very next day, Murtha said many of the military families that lost loved ones to IED's would find that offensive.  He called on McCain to apologize:

MURTHA: Let me talk a little about IED's.  In the last four months, we've lost more troops than any other period during this war.  And I'm sorry to hear from a friend of mine's wife, who called me and said there was a joke on one of the shows last night of a Republican presidential candidate who said that he brought an IED back and put it under this guy's desk.  That individual owes an apology to every troop that serves in Iraq.

McCain's campaign is a train-wreck.  It will be very important for him to rebound during the GOP debate on Thursday.

All I know is that if McCain were a Democrat, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would have gone crazy because of that comment.

Report: Worldwide terror attacks increased 29%

A State Department report due for release next week will show that worldwide terror incidents went up 29% in 2006.  Here is the raw data:

• 2005: 11,111 attacks, and 14,500 noncombatants killed.
• 2006: 14,338 attacks, and 45% of the attacks took place in Iraq.

Unlike the figures that the Bush Administration is using for public relations purposes, these numbers do include car bombings.

Could it be that the war in Iraq has played into the hands of terrorist recruiters throughout the world?  The American public is beginning to see through the media spin that Republicans are strong on national security.  A new UPI poll shows that only 26.5% of Americans give Bush an "excellent" rating on keeping the U.S. safe from terrorism.

4.28.07 Blue Radar

As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:

• It looks like some Republicans are violating the all-important 11th commandment.  On CNN yesterday, former Governor Jim Gilmore (R-VA) exposed that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is left of center.  "Governor [Mitt] Romney, his views ... have been moderate to liberal in[the] North, in the Northeast, and it's all on videotape," said Gilmore.  Maybe Gilmore was referring to this video (Romney gets torn apart by Kennedy in that video!).
• The Iraqi Parliament is planning to take a two-month vacation this summer.
• Bush Administration official Randall Tobias resigned yesterday in the wake of his connection to a prostitution scandal.  Tobias served as the head of Bush's foreign aid programs.
• Justice Department official Robert Coughlin II has resigned due to his poor handling of the Jack Abramoff probe.
• On Monday, the U.S. Department of the Interior will unveil its five-year plan for offshore oil drilling.
• House Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman has invited former CIA Director George Tenet to testify in front of his committee.  No word on whether Tenet has accepted the invitation.  No subpoena has been issued.
• In the members section on Rush Limbaugh's web site, there is a parody song called, "Barack, the magic Negro."  A Youtube user put together a montage of each Rush Limbaugh parody song.  (So Imus gets fired and Limbaugh does not?)
• Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army claims they have a special division assigned to hunt down and kill Prince Harry, who is being deployed to Iraq.  I am only reporting this because this is a huge story in Great Britain.  Apparently, on the flip-side, Prince Harry has threatened to quit the military unless he sees real combat action.
• Spain plans to prosecute three U.S. soldiers that were involved in the death of a Spanish cameraman in Iraq.

If we left anything out, feel free to add any new stories in the commentbox.

Blue Nightowl Clips

We've reached the end of the week!  Here are the popular political clips making their rounds on the blogosphere at this hour:

1. Even AC is sick of O'Reilly.
2. George Tenet says Administration was warned about Iraq chaos.
3. Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart on PBS.
4. Extreme Makeover - Baghdad Edition.
5. Gravel frightened by other Democratic candidates.
6. McCain repeats call for Gonzales to resign.

More clips later today and tomorrow.

(Video) Democratic Presidential Debate from SCSU in its entirety

Due to popular demand, and partly because MSNBC has refused to provide us with a downloadable version, here is the Democratic presidential debate from South Carolina State University in its entirety (note: these videos might soon be deleted by NBC, so watch them while you can):

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Now that many of you have seen it twice, feel free to comment.  I still say Edwards was the winner.

(Video) Powerful poem about Bush's 'mission accomplished'

On the four-year anniversary of President Bush's declaration of mission accomplished in Iraq, a group called Tell Us the Mission put together a powerful piece on how George's misbegotten war in Iraq is everything that Osama bin Laden could have ever wanted:

That same group has put together a petition to change the U.S. flag code so that each day that a soldier dies the flag is lowered to half-staff.

Tenet: Irrelevant to Administration whether Iraq was a threat

This is from the new book by former CIA Director George Tenet, titled At the Center of the Storm:

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within theadministration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenetwrites in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for manyyears. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” aboutthe possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Tenet went on to add that his infamous "slam dunk" comment about WMD's in Iraq was taken out of context, and that it had no impact on whether the Administration went to war.  His frustration with Vice President Dick Cheney was quite evident on one passage:

Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet thePress” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s“slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me  to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.

Tenet, who is scheduled to appear this Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes, will lash out at the Administration for throwing him overboard.

4-year anniversary of 'Mission Accomplished" in Iraq

Today marks the four-year anniversary of the President's declaration of 'Mission Accomplished in Iraq.  However, earlier this year, Bush claimed that the mission was not yet accomplished:

"We’re winning and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done."

That contradicts what he said four years ago today while wearing a flight suit on-board the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln:

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, theUnited States and our allies have prevailed.

A total of 3,189 U.S. troops have lost their lives since President Bush declared victory.

So what is next?  Well, Bush does not really know.  This is what the President said when asked if he had a plan B just in case the troop escalation does not work:

"The Plan B is to make Plan A work," he said. "You know, the problem isyou start talking about Plan B, that's where everybody defaults."

And the madness continues!

The response that won Edwards the debate

After reading some of your comments and emails, many of you were a bit perplexed why The Blue State picked John Edwards as the winner of the first Democratic debate.  Overall, Edwards looked the most prepared for that kind of format.  His answers were well thought out, thorough and less dry than the other candidates.  All of this is generally speaking, of course.

But if I had to point out one specific instance during the debate that illustrates why he clearly won, I would direct us to his response to criticisms about his wealth:

MODERATOR:Senator, thank you. Senator Edwards, you've spoken with great passionand energy and eloquence about the issue of poverty in the UnitedStates, your "two Americas" theme.

And yet I want to read you a quote from the political journalist RogerSimon: "Many people miss the point about the haircuts. The point is notthe cost. John Edwards is a very rich man and could afford even a$4,000 haircut. But why did he pay for his haircuts out of campaignfunds?"

Senator?    

EDWARDS: Well, that was a mistake, which we've remedied. It was simplya mistake. But if the question is, Brian, whether I live a privilegedand blessed lifestyle now, the answer to that's yes.

A lot of us do. But it's not where I come from. And I've not forgotten        where I come from.

Many people in the audience and the viewing audience know thatmy dad worked in textile mills all his life, and I can remember vividly-- my dad is here tonight. I was born here in South Carolina. I canremember vividly my dad after church once Sunday, when I was about 10years old, taking us -- it's our whole family -- into a restaurant. Iwas dressed up.

I was very proudto be there, and we sat, got our menus, looked at the menus, and thewaitress came over and my father said, "I'm sorry, we have to leave." Ididn't understand. "Why? Why do we have to leave?" And I wasembarrassed. I found out when we got outside the reason we had to leaveis he couldn't pay the prices that were on the menu.

The reason I'm running for president of the United States is so thateverybody in this country can have the same kind of chances I've had.

His response was direct, real and personal.  Let this be a lesson to some of the other presidential contenders.  Voters like genuine candidates.  Voters also like relating to them on a personal level.  Edwards allowed them to.

The number one attack on John Edwards is that he is phony, disingenuous, rehearsed, overly calculated, and a career presidential candidate.  By sharing personal stories like this, he brought out the human side of John Edwards -- the side that adds color to a subject like politics that is often perceived by many Americans as dry and lifeless.

4.27.07 Blue Radar

As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:

• Pew Research Poll: 59% of Americans want their congressional representatives to vote for a bill that provides for a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
• The Iraq spending bill, which calls for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq starting in October, passed the Senate on Thursday by a 51 to 46 vote.  It will head to the President's desk, where it is expected that he will veto this funding for the troops.  Republican senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) voted with the Democrats.
• On Thursday, John McCain tried his best to distance himself from the President's Iraq war policy.  "I understand the frustration and sorrow that American people feel about this war. It's a great tragedy," McCain said while on the campaign trail.  But almost immediately thereafter, he added that ending the war on a timetable was not a good idea.
• A new CBS Poll indicates that 60% of Republicans believe the government should do more to curb the effects of global warming.
• "Make soup, not war," read a sign as Dick Cheney gave the commencement speech at Brigham Young University.  100 people or so people protested the event.  The dissent was notable because it took place in the most heavily-weighted Republican state in America.
• U.S. generals, not just the White House, are drawing increasing fire from a number of high-ranking military officers.  "America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq," said Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq war veteran.
• According to an MSNBC poll, as of last night, most viewers thought that Barack Obama won the Democratic debate.  He received 34% of the vote, followed by Hillary Clinton with 24%, John Edwards with 13%, then Bill Richardson with 10%.
• In what was probably the quote of the night during Thursday night's debate, Mike Gravel said Osama bin Laden was so happy the United States invaded Iraq that "he must have been rolling in his blankets."
• McClatchy is reporting that at one point the Bush Administration considered firing Thomas Heffelfinger', the U.S. Attorney from Minnesota.  Congressional investigators discovered that Heffelfinger's name turned up on a version of the list, but did not make it to the final tally.

If we left anything out, feel free to add any new stories in the commentbox.