Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith at The Nation write:

Thanks for the memories:

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, March 11, 2003 – "The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not come as a conqueror. Our plan – as President Bush has said – is to remain as long as necessary and not a day more."

Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens on Jan. 28, 2003: "This will be no war – there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention. ... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling ... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."

Hours until Mister Bush leaves the White House: 7149

Direct cost per hour of the Iraq occupation: $16.68 million

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are Avila, grog (x2), jlms qkw (x2), joyful, pico, taylormattd, and vcmvo2, with Unitary Moonbat shuffling the scrolls.

March 27 is a day for new beginnings: previous todays have seen the dedication of the first Mormon temple (1836); Nikita Khrushchev being named Soviet premier (1958); and FDA approval of Viagra (1998).

*******

• Did you know that Your RFID-Chipped Passport Is Made In Thailand and China Stole the Chip Tech? Magnifico outlines the latest Bush administration example of outsourcing inherently governmental functions with disastrous consequences. (grog)
• Asinus Asinum Fricat wants us to know more about The Evil We Know Very Little About in this latest installment on food rights and safety. (jlms qkw)
• Avenging Angel comprehensively analyzes John McCain's transformation as he seeks the presidency in From Maverick to Prostitute: The Untold Story of John McCain. (vcmvo2)
• dawnt takes notes on a new comparison between British and American political leanings and wonders Is America Turning Left? Not according to The Economist. (joyful)
• NYCLU Jen illustrates justice miscarried outside of Arkansas or Washington, D.C. in Surprise, surprise - poor people getting the short end of the stick. (jlms qkw)
• dmhit 66 brings damning links aplenty to Anniversaries of McCain's Own "I Misspoke" Moments Noted Here. (Unitary Moonbat)
• Ouroboros gives us an interesting view across the Pond at what American journalists could be in Yo, American Press: Want Ratings? BE THIS GUY! (vcmvo2)
• StormBear reviews slavery in the western hemisphere and provides context in Black History: Sailing To Arabia. (jlms qkw)
• Mash marks the 37th anniversary of Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan, as well as the beginning of the Pakistani army's brutal war against the Bengali, in Remembering A Forgotten Genocide. (taylormattd)
• Talking politics at a bar can often lead to fights but in the case of cybrestrike, it led to understanding and potential friendships, as he outlines in The Power of The Speech: A Personal Story. (grog)
• pfiore8 describes the difficulty in discussing the horrors of radical Bush administration policies with friends and relatives: bearers of bad news. (taylormattd)
• Theory & Practice of Liberalism Roundup:  First-time diarist Michael Stone grounds us in basic belief and gives us a tool for our battles in Justice as the Path to Equality (jlms qkw), while AndrewMC gives us an Open Thread on "What is Liberalism?" and continues the discussion of a recent WAPO article. (jlms qkw)
• TheCrank tells us Why Conservatives Should Love Illegal Immigrants. Snark or Real? (grog)

Enjoy, and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

Saying that 'the surge is working' ...

...has worked pretty well for the Cheney-Bush regime the past few months. It certainly calmed down the megamedia, which – after years of publishing and broadcasting stuff about Iraq quaffed from the Kool-Aid fire hose – had actually started doing the job they should have started in January 2002 when the White House initiated its march-to-war publicity tour. After years of fawning and phony patriotism in the aftermath of September 11, the megamedia finally began to make visible some ugly truths that had previously been confined to the world of the bloggerati.

Then came the "surge," the escalation designed to undermine the lukewarm recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Within a couple of months, the coverage, except for the McClatchy people (and a few others whom you can call journalists without meaning the word as an epithet) were right back where Editor and Publisher Editor Greg Mitchell wrote about in So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq.

As clammyc points out today in his Diary, Iraq is imploding right before our eyes, the surge isn’t working. It never was.

CNN senior military analyst Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Sheppard, says: "This is intra-Shia. This is not Sunni vs. Shia, this is not civil war, this is not sectarian violence, it's intra-Shia politics for control of the government." Yep, all those previous problems have been resolved, this is something new and it’s being dealt with. Uh-huh.

Of course, intra-Shi’ite violence is occurring. But something new? Do the names Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr not ring any bells? Moreover, it’s not just a clash in Basra, as if the situation in Basra weren't bad enough.

From the BBC – Baghdad under curfew amid clashes:

A curfew has been imposed on Baghdad amid continuing clashes between Shia militias and Iraqi security forces.

From The Guardian - Mass grave found in Iraq

American and Iraqi troops today unearthed 37 bodies in a mass grave north-east of Baghdad, the US military said.

The corpses were discovered near Muqdadiyah, an area that has seen frequent fighting between US troops and Sunni insurgents in the volatile Diyala province.

From Der Spiegel – Americans Caught in Crossfire between Radicals and Iraqi Government:

With its swimming pools, manicured gardens and friendly Iraqis, Baghdad's Green Zone was long seen as a luxurious, high-security enclave for Americans and their friends in a country rocked by violence. Now the oasis of security is under siege.

The attacks on the "IZ," or "International Zone," as the US military has dubbed the former Karkh neighborhood, represent one of the biggest challenges to the American forces in Iraq to date. The enclave covers less than seven square kilometers (2.7 square miles) and houses the headquarters of the US armed forces and their allies. Until the beginning of the week, the enclave was considered the safest place in a country plagued by violence and terror.

From The New York Times: Thousands in Baghdad Protest Basra Assault

The United States ordered embassy personnel to stay in reinforced structures because of incoming fire that killed an American on Thursday, the second U.S. fatality this week in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Meanwhile, says McClatchy, the President makes a speech. Bush: 'Normalcy is returning to Iraq'.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a CNN appearance Sunday that there's been "foot-dragging" by Iraqi leaders on key political disputes. What's needed, Wyden said, is to get troops out of Iraq. "It seems to me you put off those troop withdrawals, you send exactly the wrong message to the Iraqis," he said. ...

"When it takes time for Iraqis to reach agreement, it is not 'foot-dragging,' as one senator described it," Bush said. "They're striving to build a modern democracy on the rubble of three decades of tyranny." He noted that the U.S. Congress itself has been on a "two-week Easter recess."

Bush gave a litany of economic and political developments in Iraq, such as falling inflation and the approval this month of a provincial powers law, that he said showed that the "surge" of 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq last year has met its goal. That goal was to improve security so that Iraqi leaders could begin political reconciliation.

"The surge has opened the door to ... strategic victory," Bush declared.

Ah yes, stay the course. 4004 dead American military personnel as a consequence of an invasion and occupation based on lies. If you don't count the suicides. 4313 dead "coalition" fighters altogether. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more dead Iraqis.

Normalcy in Iraq.

Win Friends!  Influence People!  Kill Social Securty!

A new report is out on the long term health of Social Security.  There's little change from last year's numbers, with the fund staying solvent through 2041, and a change in employee payroll deduction of less than 1% required to make the system solvent for at least 75 years.

The social security trust fund shows a 75 year actuarial deficit equal to 1.70 pct of taxable payroll, 0.26 percentage point smaller than last year's estimate.

Naturally, the media joined Republicans in calling this a grim report of a huge, looming crisis.

Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said the report showed the looming crisis in entitlement programs “is not a phony issue, as some Democrats have stated, but a very real problem that is on our doorstep.”

$3 trillion war bill over the next ten years?  That's looking too far ahead.  Severe sea level rise in two decades?  Just a guess.  Social Security problem in 2041?  A very real problem that is on our doorstep.

But that's not how the Prince of Dumbness, Robert Novak, sees it.  Rather than making very minor increases in the payroll tax that would fix Social Security, Novak's advice to McCain is to cut payroll tax to win friends.

A major strategist in John McCain's campaign was asked privately this week whether his candidate might propose cutting the payroll tax. "Yes," came the reply. "No problem. Not a big deal." He was wrong on both scores. Cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, would not be easy but would offer a rich economic prize in this lean Republican year. ... Neither McCain nor his advisers seem to realize the value of the political prize that they can grasp.

Yes, the value of cutting off the flow of money to Social Security.  That's sure to attract votes among the people who think Grandma thrives on a nice bowl of kibble.  And what about the problem with meeting that gap in Social Security?

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished. The truth is that there is no such fund, and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well.

That paragraph is such a masterpiece of condensed obfuscation and idiocy, that I'd like to present: Robert Novak, the annotated edition.  

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished [There's this idea that people who have paid into Social Security expect to get something out]. The truth is that there is no such fund [But the fund is empty], and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" [despite a reform that would have kept it solvent for a century] not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well [because we've been paying for lots of things -- including Iraq -- using the money Social Security has brought in].

In Novakia, the fact that we've run the Social Security fund dry and are dependent on the influx of new funds to not only pay Social Security but fund other programs is a good thing.  It means we can safely cut payroll taxes because that would just... immediately wreck Social Security and lots of other programs.

As part of the Democratic obsession with making a progressive tax system still more progressive and redistributing income, Obama actually would raise the $102,000 cap on the payroll tax, and his tax credit would not change payroll tax withholding for employees or employers. There is an open field for John McCain, if he has the wit and will to enter it.

So, Obama's solution is to raise the cap on high earners, bringing more money into Social Security and keeping it stable.  Novak's suggestion is that McCain screw Social Security immediately.

It's an open field, Sen. McCain.  Please take that ball and run, run like the wind!

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