Flashback from The Daily Show: Ed Helms shares with us what its like in "The Big House"

Okay, the video is lame clips from "Sleeping With The Enemy" but the chorus of this song is one that my beautiful brown-eyed daughter and I sing together when she's feeling bad.

The Best of Van Morrison

Wikipedia: Van Morrison (born August 31, 1945 as George Ivan Morrison) is a singer and songwriter from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He plays a variety of instruments, including the guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and saxophone. Featuring his characteristic growl - a unique mix of throaty folk, blues, Irish, skat, and Celtic influences - Morrison is widely considered one of the most unusual and influential vocalists in the history of rock and roll. Famed critic Greil Marcus has gone so far as to note that "No white man sings like Van Morrison."

Bob Woodward sat down with Mike Wallace to talk about his new book, State of Denial, and had many, many interesting things to report. The title of the book really says it all; the Bush administration is so convinced that what they're doing in Iraq is right that they refuse to acknowledge the reality on the ground. What's worse, they refuse to level with the American people.

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(video and review - Mike L. Transcript - Jamie H.)

Full transcript below the fold.

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SF Chronicle

One wonders at what point a political edifice starts irredeemably to crumble.

First this. Then this. Followed by this .

While Bush administration defenders say critics are drawing the wrong conclusions from the leaked parts of the NIE report, that Bob Woodward's book is full of "myths", and that the Mark Foley affair is no worse than various Democratic congressional and presidential indiscretions, it is hard to see how things won't get worse before they get better (if they do) for Republicans, with mid-term elections just four weeks out.

Apart from the fallout from what some will construe as a GOP leadership coverup in the Mark Foley affair -- one Republican has already said House Speaker Dennis Hastert "lied" about what he knew and Connecticut Republican Chris Shays has said anyone in a leadership comes position who knew about it should step down -- along comes Colin Powell's new book which will only add to the "state of denial" flames.
Also lurking out there, in what appears to be an increasingly leak-happy atmosphere is another "damning" Iraq intelligence report , which, California Rep. Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wants released. Read on...

So the question becomes, can the Democratic Party capitalize on this non-stop reports of ineptitude, scandals, leaks, and corruption and regain control of one or both houses of Congress come November 7?

Think Progress :

Most of the world has now seen the infamous picture of President Bush tending to his ranch on August 6, 2001, the day he received the ultra-classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that included a report entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." And most Americans have also heard of the so-called "Phoenix Memo" that an FBI agent in Phoenix sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the "possibility of a coordinated effort" by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.

As a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I became very familiar with both the PDB and the Phoenix Memo, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure to detect and stop the plot. A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward's new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001:

They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and "sounded the loudest warning" to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.

Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, "They felt the brushoff."

Read on...

(h/t DtMP)

This is officially a huge coverup now. ABC

A Republican staff member warned Congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page. Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk's office. Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don't get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff.

There's no way for the Republican leadership to feign ignorance or miscommunication any longer. Hastert and Co. should be held accountable.

Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) accepted $100k from Foley in back July.

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CNN's special on Donald Rumsfeld details his dismissal of troop level suggestions, failure to anticipate the insurgency and marginalization of dissenters.

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(guested by Mike L)

FDL features Sidney Blumenthal and his book "How Bush Rules"

The book begins by chronicling the events that culminated this week in the passage of the Bush Torture Act, but as Sidney notes, they have been constructing the architecture of that particular monument to George Bush's ego, barbarism and amorality for quite some time.

Go over there and ask a few questions

Mother Jones:

It's a rotten time to be an Iraqi journalist. If being kidnapped and murdered by insurgents or detained indefinitely by the U.S. military aren't bad enough, now the government is cracking down. From today's New York Times:

Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.

Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. Read on...

Bartlett was in damage control today and literally is in denial himself as he spews the White House propaganda. Watch the segment and read the transcript to see what I mean.

Mike L says: White House in Full Damage Control: White House Counselor and close Bush-confidant, Dan Bartlett, was on This Week w/ George Stephanopolous in full damage control. George touches on every significant story in the news and Bartlett had a response for each and every one: On State of Denial: Woodward was biased, came to pre-conceived conclusions and "didn't connect his own dots". Apparently his books are worth buying/reading when he sucks up to the administration but when it comes to being critical, he's biased.

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On the pre-9/11 meetings between George Tenet, Cofer Black and Condoleeza Rice: Those meetings, in Condi's mind, "didn't happen." Bartlett claims the first eight months of Bush's presidency were some of the most investigated eight months in history yet 9/11 Commissioner's are saying they didn't know about the meetings. Thoroughly investigated? Or covered up by executive Director and Bush-insider Phillip Zelizow? Jack Abramoff's extensive access to the White House?: Abramoff's "contacts" were benign and simply used as an "excuse to bill his clients." On Predatorgate: House leadership "appears to be very aggressive" in pursuing the investigation. Again, aggressively investigating or agressively covering up prior knowledge and inaction?

Full Transcript from ABC:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, in 2004, Bob Woodward wrote a book, "Plan of Attack." You went out publicly, urged people to go buy it and read it. I take it you're not going to do that with "State of Denial?"

BARTLETT: Well, George, it is a book that we participated at various levels within the administration, both in the White House and other parts of the administration, Department of Defense and State. But I must say, George, I think as we worked with Bob on this project from the very outset, it was unfortunate that we felt he had already formulated some conclusions even before the interviewing began.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's a pretty stiff charge. You're saying he is a biased reporter on this?

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