You know all those times when Bush told us things were going great in Iraq? Turns out he didn't really mean it.

"How worried were you?" Raddatz asked.

"I was worried. Look, I'm worried any time it looks like we're going to fail in Iraq," Bush said.

During that time in 2006, when many were saying Iraq was in a full-blown civil war, Bush kept his rhetoric upbeat saying in speeches that, "We're winning" and "We have a plan for victory."

Raddatz asked the president about that and the president insisted he did it to keep up troop morale.

"That's as much to try and bolster the spirits of the people in the field as well -- you can't have the commander-in-chief say to a bunch of kids who are sacrificing that either it's not worth it or you're losing. What does that do for morale?" Bush said.

Apparently the president's job isn't to tell the American people or the American military the truth, it's to tell them a comforting (and self-aggrandizing) lie.  You can't tell soldiers that they're dying for no good reason -- especially if you expect them to keep on dying indefinitely.

Shake those pom-poms, George.

An endless war or a decent education: which one of these two does John McCain want for American veterans?

While McCain is willing to have troops in Iraq for a hundred years (and hey, in the interest of fairness, let's admit that what he actually said was... a million years) he's not willing to put support behind an improved version of the GI Bill that would help see more veterans through four years of college. General Wes Clark and VoteVets.org chairman Jon Soltz call on McCain to do his duty for veterans.

Sen. John McCain served his nation with honor in Vietnam, and he is right to be proud of his service. But by hedging on whether he will support a "GI Bill for the 21st Century," he is casting doubt on his own commitment to the newest generation of American heroes.

The Post-9/11 Veterans Act has an estimated cost of $2.5 to $4 billion -- or less than two weeks of what we're spending in Iraq.  It was put forward by Senator Jim Webb, and enjoys broad support from veteran's groups. McCain has already helped to block another important pro-veteran bill authored by Webb, the one that would have assured soldiers time to recover between deployments.  Now he's stalling improvements to veteran's education.

The Pentagon has come out against the bill for the most sickly cynical of reasons.

The Pentagon and White House have so far resisted a new GI Bill out of fear that too many will use it - choosing to shed the uniform in favor of school and civilian life.

In other words, how can you keep them putting their neck on the line if you give them options?  McCain hasn't made that argument against the bill, but then he hasn't made any argument at all.

There are three other Vietnam veterans in the Senate.  All have signed onto this bill.  Senator John Warner, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the top Republican on the committee when McCain is on the campaign trail, has signed on.  In fact, there are already 51 cosponsors, but with the Republicans filibuster-by-default in place, it will take 60 to make this happen.

So where is McCain?

As de facto leader of the party, McCain could signal to other Republicans to sign on to the bill and assure passage. Instead, McCain has said he hasn't had time to read the bill and isn't sure if he could support it. It's hard to believe that neither he nor anyone on his staff has had time to read such an important bill, which has been around since before he started running for president.

Hillary Clinton made time to read this bill, and she has signed on.  Barack Obama made time to read this bill, and he has signed on.

John McCain has plenty of time to drone on about the danger of al-Qaeda being a Shi'ite faction, but he doesn't have time to consider a bill helping veterans?

And remember the sacred purpose for which it was created... a Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film promoting the Nazi-sponsored games in 1936.

But the idea of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins.

It was invented in its modern form by the organizers of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

And it was planned with immense care by the Nazi leadership to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence.

The torch relay in 1936, and in 2008, is symbolism.  Protesting this torch relay is also symbolism.

No one should be advocating violence of any sort in connection to this event.  But those folding their arms and ignoring China's atrocities in Tibet (and elsewhere) with the pretense that the Olympics should be above the yin and yang of politics need to drop the sense of high moral outrage.

John McCain continues to have trouble sorting out that oh-so-complicated Muslim thing.

McCain: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view Al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?

Petraeus: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago.

McCain: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites overall?

Petraeus: No, no sir.

McCain: Or Sunnis or anybody else then? Al Qaeda continues to try to assert themselves in Mosul, is that correct?

Petraeus: It is senator, as you saw on the chart. The area of operation of Al Qaeda has been greatly reduced in terms of controlling areas they controlled as little as a year and a half ago.

McCain still seems fixated on the idea of just tagging them all al-Qaeda so we can let God bombs sort it out.  McCain's umpteenth fumble on the same issue doesn't seem to feature in the front page coverage of the story.  But Kevin Drum urges you not to worry.

I suppose that eventually the press is bound to notice that McCain is seriously confused about the religious and political dynamics of Iraq and the greater Middle East, right? Maybe around December or so.

Robert Zubrin is best known for his daring "Mars Direct" plan, but his most recent book, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil is set a lot closer to home.  His proposal on solving America's oil addition is simple -- some critics would say too simple.  Here's what Dr. Zubrin has to say.

1. Your book draws a direct line between our dependence on foreign oil and the distorting effect this has on American foreign policy.  Why do you think this connection isn't getting more play in the presidential campaign?

I don't know. This is the most vital issue facing the country. This year, the USA will import 5 billion barrels of oil. At $100/bbl that is $500 billion dollars taxed out of the US economy by the collection of foreign governments known as OPEC, some of whom are using it to promote terrorism directed against the United states and numerous other countries. When George Bush took office in 2001, we were paying $90 billion per year for foreign oil. So the Bush administration has effectively responded to 9-11 by increasing our financing of the enemy fivefold -- and now we are actually paying OPEC more than we are paying our own defense department (the US DOD budget this year is about $435 billion).

Not only that, but this OPEC price rigging is driving our economy into a recession. Consider this: The Congress just passed a law to take $150 billion out of the treasury to pass out to taxpayers in the hope that they will spend it and thus stimulate the economy away from falling into a recession. However, even as Congress is raiding the treasury to try to put $150 billion into our pockets, OPEC is taking $500 billion out of our pockets. That is an economic de-stimulus package three times as big as the effort Congress is paying for. We need to fight back. The response from the candidates so far has been completely inadequate.

A few weeks ago, I saw a speech John McCain gave in Texas. He proclaimed we had to break free of foreign oil, and that is why we need nuclear power. The same day, I saw Barack Obama give a speech. he said we have to break free of foreign oil, and that is why we need solar and wind power. So we are about to be entertained with a dramatic right/left debate pitting nuclear power against solar and wind power. But in fact, the US gets only 3% of its electricity from oil, so neither nuclear, solar, or wind power have anything to do with the issue of breaking us free from foreign oil. It's all pure farce. Unless these people want to continue to fail to defend the vital interests of the nation as badly as George Bush has done, they need to get serious about this issue.

2. In the book, you propose a surprisingly simple solution to the oil crisis -- making all cars biofuel capable.  This seems like a very easy out to what many view as a very difficult problem.

Yes, well the problem is fundamentally simple. The oil cartel has a vertical monopoly on the world's fuel supply, and that is why they can raise prices without constraint. To defeat them, what is necessary is to create fuel choice. As I explain in the book "Energy Victory," the US congress can deal the fatal blow to OPEC with a stroke of the pen, simply by passing a law requiring that all new cars sold in the USA be flex fueled -- that is able to run on any combination of alcohol or gasoline. These cars are current technology. In fact this year Detroit will be selling 24 models that have this option, and they only cost about $100 more than the same model without flex fuel capability. But they only currently comprise about 3% of the auto sales, because in most places there is no upside to owning one, as there are no alcohol fuel pumps to be found. and the reason, of course, why there are no alcohol pumps out there is that service station owners have no reason to set up such pumps while there are so few cars that can use them. But within 3 years of enactment of a flex fuel mandate we would have 50 million cars on the road in the USA capable of running on alcohol fuels, and under those conditions you would see E85 (85% ethano/15% gasoline) and M85 (85% methanol/15% gasoline) pumps popping up everywhere.

And here is the key thing: These alcohol fuel pumps would be appearing not only all across the USA, but all over the world. Because if we made it the law that to sell a car into USA it had to be flex fuel, that would make flex fuel the INTERNATIONAL standard. The Japanese, Koreans, and Europeans are not about to walk away from the American automobile market. So they would simply switch their entire production lines over to flex fuel. What that would mean is that any car being marketed in any serious way anywhere in the world would be flex fuel, and we would see hundreds of millions of them all over the globe in just a few years. This would create an open-source fuel market, that would force gasoline to compete at the pump everywhere against ethanol and methanol produced from any number of sources all over the world. This would break the vertical monopoly of the oil cartel, eliminating forever their power to raise prices without constraint. The price of oil would be forced back down to about $50/bbl, because that is where alcohol fuels become competitive, and then pushed down further as the huge non-monopoly controlled market mobilized capital into R&D to drive cost-reducing process improvements.

3. A lot of calculations -- from back of the envelope to full-bore university studies -- have suggested that we can't match out fuel needs with the kind of biofuels we're producing today.  Are they wrong?

We can't replace oil with corn ethanol alone. Corn ethanol has replaced 4% of our gasoline supply, which is an impressive achievement, and it might be able to replace 8%. But certainly not 100%. However corn is just one crop. Any sugar-rich or starchy crop can be used to produce ethanol using current technology. New cellulosic ethanol technology is coming on line with allow us to use currently worthless crop residues, which will vastly expand the available ethanol supply. Methanol can already be produced from all kinds of biomass without exception, as well from coal, natural gas, and recycled urban trash. There is enough crop residues in the world right now, that if they were all converted into methanol we could replace all the oil of OPEC. And in fact we probably would only have to replace about 20% of OPEC's production into order to break the cartel and send oil prices tumbling. There certainly are the resources available to do that. But we need an open fuel market to make it work.

4. Many people feel that the increasing demand for biofuels plays a major role in driving up food prices.  Is this a major factor, or has the competition between food and fuel been overblown?

It's completely false. Over the past year, food prices have risen 4% internationally, while fuel prices have risen 40%. These higher fuel prices impose increased costs on both farmers and fishing fleets, as well as adding to the cost of transporting their products to market. So in fact, it is rigged up fuel prices that are driving up food prices, as well as the prices of many other types of goods.

People need to understand this: OPEC's price rigging amounts to a huge extremely regressive tax on the entire world economy. Setting oil prices at $100/bbl is harmful to the advanced industrial countries, but it is brutally destructive to the third world. It is one thing to pay $100/bbl for oil when you live in a country where the average worker makes $45,000 per year. It is quite another when you make $1000 per year. Effectively, the high oil price amounts to taking hundreds of billions of dollars away from the world's poorest people and giving it to the world's richest people.

Think about this: In 2006, Saudi Arabia, with a population of 24 million people (15% of whom work) raked in $200 billion in foreign exchange from its oil exports. In the same year, Kenya, with a population of 36 million people (the majority of whom work) earned $2.5 billion in foreign exchange in exports of all categories combined. Distributed elsewhere, the $200 billion taken by the Saudis for their overpriced oil would double the foreign exchange of 80 countries comparable to Kenya.

By switching to an open source fuel economy, we could make such redistribution possible. Instead of paying out to buy their oil from OPEC, tropical third world countries could grow their own fuel, and not only that, gain precious income by exporting ethanol to the US, Europe, and Japan, where huge markets for such produce would exist. Effectively, we could take something like a trillion dollars a year now going to the oil cartel, and redirect it to the world agricultural sector instead -- without about half going to advanced sector farmers and then other half going to the third world. This would create a huge financial engine for world development, and allow hundreds of millions of people to be lifted out of poverty. They would then become customers for our industry, and create jobs and economic growth here. Instead of selling controlly blocks of stock of our banks and media organizations to Saudi princes, we could be selling tractors to Africa. That is the way forward for achieving a just and prosperous world.

5. How does timing factor into your solution?  Nearly half the cars on the road are replaced in less than five years.  Does is make sense to modify existing vehicles, or should we just require biofuel capability in new cars as they appear?

It's much cheaper to simply mandate that new cars include the flex fuel feature. There are modification kits for existing cars being sold in the $500 range, but no one knows which of them are any good. A government certification for such kits would be very useful in providing consumers the confidence they need to buy them.

6. Do you think of biofuels as a permanent solution, or an interim solution?  That is, should we implement this biofuels switch now, but place further requirements that would move our transportation toward some form of electric vehicle in the future, or can we implement the biofuel option and say "there, that's done."

The first step is to open the fuel market via a flex fuel mandate. This can be done very quickly. The next step is to make the cars more efficient by gradually transitioning to flex-fuel plug in hybrids that could get much of their motive power off the electric grid. But that will be a more gradual process.

7. Though 10% ethanol fuel has been common through much of the country for over a decade, there are still few locations where you can find E85 or biodiesel blends.  Would simply equipping cars to be biofuels capable be enough to encourage the availability of these fuels?

Yes, absolutely. The problem right now is lack of market. If you own a gas station, and you have three pumps, you are not going to dedicate one of them to a kind of fuel that only 3% of the cars can use. But within three years of a flex fuel mandate we would have 50 million cars that can use alcohol fuels, and under those conditions the pumps to sell to them will start appearing anywhere.

Any gas station owner can mobilize the capital to install a new pump. Any group of small town entrepreneurs can mobilize the capital to build an ethanol plant. But what they can't do is make automobiles. That's why we have to tackle this with legislation at the demand end. Once we have the market in place, all the rest will follow.

8. There have been a number of studies showing wildly divergent results on the amount of energy returned by biofuels compared to the input.  There's no doubt that moving to biofuels would allow us to decrease our dependence on oil, but would it actually increase our use of coal and other fuels in generating the biofuels?

Coal, might, in certain places be used for process heat for biofuel production. In other places biomass itself might be used, as it currently is in the Brazilian ethanol process. These issues could be addressed over time with regulation if increased use of coal presented a global warming concern (it might not be, if such plants were situated in places where extra CO2 produced from coal could be sequestered underground.) Solar power (for small scale plants) or even nuclear power (for large scale plants) could also be used to generate process heat without greenhouse gas emissions. In any case, the use of biofuels gives us the option to produce carbon neutral fuels which we simply won't have if we stick to petroleum.

9. Right now, some independent truckers are calling for all federal and state taxes on diesel fuel be suspended.  Would broader availability of biodiesel have any effect on the cost of fuel?  Should we implement any additional taxes on these fuels that could be used to help steer changes in the infrastructure (such as research on new technologies, or improving rail transport)?

Alcohol fuels are not used in diesel vehicles. However, by competing against gasoline, they would force down the price of a barrel of oil, and thus diesel fuel, jet fuel, and ship bunker fuel as well.

10. What about your own vehicle?  Has it already been converted to run on biofuels, and do you have availability of the fuels in your area?

I'm still driving my old 1999 car, which is not flex fuel. But as soon as it gives up the ghost, I'm buying a flex fuel vehicle. There are only a few E85 stations in my area, but I think there will be more soon enough, because we are going to win this fight.

Hillary Clinton is against the proposed bilateral trade deal with Colombia.  So it makes perfect sense that Mark Penn met with the Colombian ambassador to tell him... that he favors the trade deal.

Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist met with Colombia's ambassador to the U.S. on Monday to discuss a bilateral free-trade agreement, a pact the presidential candidate opposes.  Attendance by the adviser, Mark Penn, was confirmed by two Colombian officials.

How can that be that Hillary's top surrogate was out supporting a deal she's against?  Ah, for that you need Mark Penn's collection of invisible hats.  

He wasn't there in his campaign role, but in his separate job as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, an international communications and lobbying firm. The firm has a contract with the South American nation to promote congressional approval of the trade deal, among other things, according to filings with the Justice Department.

So Penn wasn't wearing his Clinton Camp Top BS Artist hat, he was wearing his Smarmy Lobbyist Against US Workers hat.  How nice it must be to have such a collection of invisible hats that no matter what you're up to, you always have an excuse.

A good thing, too, because without those hats, Penn would come off as a cynical jerkwad who would sell out anyone or anything just to put another buck in his pocket.  And then Hillary would be putting her campaign in the hands of someone whose beliefs are no deeper than the oil stain on top of a mud puddle.

What do you want to do this weekend, Joe?  Same as we do every weekend, Pinky, smear Democrats.  What makes Lieberman so mad he's willing to stand by and whisper sweet nothings in McCain's ear?  He's mad because of how radicals have taken over his Democratic Party.

"Well, I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000," Lieberman said, his voice ragged and hoarse. "It's not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government.

"It's been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and ... very, very hyper-partisan."

Does calling your (supposed) own party "hyper-partisan" and accepting John McCain's invitation to dance at the Republican prom mean that Joe is ready to admit his seething hatred for a party he kicks at every opportunity?  No, no.  When he says "taken over," he doesn't mean the people occupying positions in D.C., or the party chairs, or the consultants, or anyone actually in a position of power.  He means you.

Lieberman said his critique against the "small group on the left" was directed at the online advocacy group MoveOn.org and liberal bloggers like Daily Kos, not any colleagues.

Congratulations.  You -- without a vote in Congress, without a dime from K Street, without a no-bid contract or the cushion of a nice check from a "think tank" -- you are the people really in control of the party.  

Well, you are in the mind of Joe Lieberman.  And really, isn't that all that counts?

What's the upside of global warming?  Why, once the ice is gone from Greenland, it will open up whole new regions for oil exploration.  

Joern Skov Nielsen, deputy director of Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, said Thursday that there might be more oil in his country than the entire past production of the North Sea. That would be about 50 billion barrels. Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Husky Energy last year received licenses for exploration, which will be made easier by the melting of Greenland’s ice.

By the time we've burned all the oil in Greenland, Antarctica is bound to be ice-free.  Just imagine all the resources we'll find down there!

Please remind the presidential candidate of your choice that changing the sources of energy in the United States isn't a nice option at the end of a long list of "gotta haves."  Energy -- the source of which will determine everything from our foreign policy to our economy -- needs to be first.

As the results some in, it looks like that Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, has lost control of parliament.  And it looks like Mugabe himself may also be leaving at long last.  

Official figures said the combined opposition had taken 105 seats in the 210 seat parliament with one going to an independent. Mugabe's ZANU-PF has so far taken 94.

The mainstream Movement of Democratic Change faction of Morgan Tsvangirai said he had won 50.3 per cent of the presidential vote and Mugabe 43.8 per cent according to its own tallies of results posted outside polling stations.

If those results hold up, we can only hope that Mugabe leaves quietly, and that Zimbabwe can start to rebuild its shattered economy.

James Buchanan, that is.  Some people might be concerned about what's going to happen in the next term, but McCain is introducing the first presidency that is all about the past.  

Republican presidential candidate John McCain took a stroll down memory lane on Monday, opening a tour to show Americans the places where he grew from rebellious youth to war hero and politician.

God forbid there was an opening paragraph of a news story on McCain that did not include the phrase "war hero."  But McCain set the start of his story much further back than Vietnam.

A weeklong "Service to America" tour for McCain began on Monday in Mississippi, where generations of McCains were born and raised on land that had been in the family since 1848.

McCain goes onto to recount the many generations of war heroes in his family, including the fact that the naval base where he trained was named after his grandpa, leading to many oh-so-cute events in which McCain reminded the folks training him that his daddy and granddaddy were admirals.  What a scamp.

McCain made a similar sentimental journey during his campaign in 2000, during which time it was pointed out that his family history in Mississippi included some activities that were less than heroic.

The family's storied military history stretches back to Carroll County, Miss., where McCain's great-great grandfather William Alexander McCain owned a plantation, and later died during the Civil War as a soldier for the Mississippi cavalry.

But what McCain didn't know about his family until Tuesday was that William Alexander McCain had owned 52 slaves. The senator seemed surprised after Salon reporters showed him documents gathered from Carroll County Courthouse, the Carrollton Merrill Museum, the Mississippi State Archives and the Greenwood, Miss., Public Library.

Oddly, though this fact became known at least by 2000, in the articles published today by dozens of papers and "news" networks this story seemed to be left out of the "storied history."

Even in 2000, it took an online publication to ferret out the documents of the less savory side of the McCain family history.  Major newspapers and broadcast media apparently couldn't find information hidden in such secret sources as a "public library" or "county courthouse."  But I'm sure they were enjoying the BBQ in 2000 just as much as they are in 2008.

Update [2008-3-31 18:59:48 by Devilstower]: Because I'm tired of saying it multiple times in the comments.  No, it's no reflection on John McCain that his family once kept slaves.  That's exactly the point, damn it.  His sins -- and his achievements -- are his own.  Having slaveholders in the family should not be counted against him, just as having admirals in the family should not be counted for him.  But if you're going to go down to Mississippi, talk about how many generations of McCain were reared there, and claim their good qualities as your own, you're also liable to being hit with their less than heroic actions.  

Bush and McCain are already editing the present.  I'm not inclined to hand them the past.

It's reprehensible enough when an American president puts soldiers in harm's way to make a political point.  But the GOP has placed American soldiers at the whim of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, turning our forces into pawns between political rivals.

Analysts say Maliki's decision to launch the Basra crackdown, instead of carrying through with a promised offensive against Sunni Islamist militants in the northern city of Mosul, lends weight to the Sadrist accusations of a political agenda.

The attacks have targeted the Mehdi Army while leaving two other powers in Basra, the Fadhila party and the militant Badr Organisation of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) -- which supports Maliki's Dawa Party -- largely untouched.

Our soldiers may never surrender, but the Bush administration, John McCain, and blind supporters of this war have been more than willing to surrender our forces to outside control. Coming right on the heels of Iraq visits from both McCain and Cheney, it's clear that Maliki knows the real situation.  He knows that he can strike openly at his enemies, and the US military will be forced to expend blood and dollars to back up his threats.  

But there is little prospect of a swift victory. The fighting has spread through southern regions, drew the U.S. forces and led to protests in Baghdad by followers of Sadr, who say Maliki is using force to weaken his political rivals.

As the US is increasingly forced to bear the cost of Maliki's political decisions, and Bush, Cheney, and McCain continue to sing of "progress," you have to wonder if any of these men has learned what Maliki clearly knows.

When the puppetmaster tries to control the puppet, the strings go both ways.  

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!

Don't you just hate it when people pick on John McCain by repeating what he actually said?  By God, the press sure does.

Within hours of uttering the phrase “maybe a hundred” years at a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire in January, Senator John McCain came under attack by Democrats and antiwar groups for promoting a seemingly endless troop presence in Iraq.

Well that's clearly not fair.  A hundred years isn't actually endless.

And in later clarifying his remarks, Mr. McCain took a long, if not limitless, view: "Could be 1,000. Could be 1,000 years or a million years." At another point, he said: "A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years."

And even ten million years is "not limitless."  That's especially true when you consider that, at current rates, in ten million years US losses alone would exceed the total population of the Earth.  So fighting is bound to end way sooner than that.

So treating it as if McCain said we would be there forever is just wrong.  In fact, using anything McCain said is wrong.

He offered those as possible timelines, but only hypothetically, to make his points that terrorism had rendered the region unstable and that he would support a continued troop presence if warranted. But the timetables, flippantly tossed out, have been condensed into sound bites by his Democratic opponents, turned into fund-raising appeals and mashed into YouTube parodies. ...  The original exchange began when a self-described Democrat, whom Mr. McCain jokingly referred to as Ernest Hemingway because of his resemblance to the author, said, "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years —— "

"Maybe a hundred,” Mr. McCain interjected, almost cavalierly."

See there?  McCain was speaking hypothetically, he said it cavaleirly, and most importantly the person he was talking to was a "self-described Democrat."  So none of it counts.

According to the Pentagon, massive street protests and violence that's already led to more than a hundred deaths is just the kind of progress we wanted in Iraq.

The Pentagon says the fighting in Basra between government troops and Shiite militiamen is a good sign because it shows the Iraqi government's resolve and its newfound ability to take on its problems.

Other people might mistake days of chaos fought with the weapons we've provided to both sides as just another pulse in the Iraqi civil war.  You know, the one that will only happen if Democrats practice premature evacuation.  It's nice to know the smoke rising from the US embassy after days of mortar attacks is the desired result.

How can we know this is a success?  Because it means that the troop levels that we once defined as "the surge" will now become the baseline.

An increase in fighting would effectively rule out the chances of additional large-scale U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq this year. U.S. and Iraqi officials have credited Iraq's recent security gains to three distinct but related trends: the "surge" of 30,000 additional U.S. combat forces, the willingness of Sunni tribal fighters to turn against religious extremists, and a cease-fire by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Few things of late have so highlighted the spectacular break between reality and the "news" as watching reporters talk about "the danger of the cease fire collapsing" against a backdrop of machine gun fire.  Clearly the spirit of Baghdad Bob survives.

For your handy reference, here's the Surge in Sixty Seconds.  

• US forces are expanded by over 30,000.
• The situation in Iraq moves from "insanely awful" to "oh my God it's hideous."
• We start paying and arming most of the people who were shooting at us to not shoot us
• The situation moves back to "insanely awful" but with a side of "now they all have better weapons."
• Media declares victory.
• People we armed decide to carry on their civil war without us -- back to "oh my God hideous."
• We now have to keep more troops in place, just to prevent the badometer from soaring to "10,000 nuns and orphans eaten by rats with a side of Hiroshima" bad.
• Win!

The surge worked so well, that we can never, ever "unsurge."

There's little doubt that the Rev. Wright's words, with 30 years of sermons trimmed down to a few three word phrases, was enough to cause trouble for Senator Obama.  

On March 18 - the day of Obama's speech - after clips of Wright's sermons had permeated the media, Clinton held a seven-point lead over Obama.

But after the speech?

The first major national poll taken since Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race in America shows Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in a virtual tie, reversing Obama's slide in the polls after the wide airing of controversial remarks made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"It's hard to disentangle the impact of (Obama's) speech," Gallup Poll Editor in Chief Frank Newport said Tuesday. The latest Gallup Poll, taken March 22, showed the Illinois senator with 47 percent of the national Democratic vote and Clinton with 46.

Despite desperate efforts by the pundits to slice and dice Obama's speech into loose phonemes and reconstruct them in some way they could ridicule, it seems that a good percentage of people actually listened to the speech.

Hopefully this is not just a good sign for Barack Obama, but a good sign that the country is ready to engage in honest dialog over divisive issues.  So all the naysayers -- from Juan Williams to Pity-Pat Buchanan -- who declared that Obama should have instead thrown away all connection to his church and groveled for forgiveness, can now move on to their analysis of how the American people just don't get it.

NPR's On The Media can be as frustrating as the rest of the network's lineup.  They often offer amazing "behind the scenes" insights, but rarely do any of the facts presented there translate into a change in coverage -- even on NPR.  

After five years of the Iraq War, reporter Bob Garfield has created a retrospective of media failures; a "greatest misses" of the war that just won't end.  The string of Fourth Estate failures includes not simply failing to challenge the obvious misinformation in the run-up to the war, but actively participating in the creation of the Iraq is a Threat mythology.  The "best" of our media didn't just parrot what the administration said, it created an ouruboros of lies.

To support the case came the next gambit, leaking phony intelligence to key reporters, notably The New York Times' Judith Miller, in order that the independent media be seen as validating administration claims about Saddam's nuclear weaponry ambitions. Here's Vice-President Dick Cheney talking on Meet the Press about aluminum tubes.

VICE-PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: There's a story in The New York Times this morning that says – and I want to attribute The Times. I don't want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources.

Her eager participation in the deception has already earned Miller much deserved scorn (and her own category in the Opprobrium Awards).  But even this was just the warm up act.

BOB GARFIELD: But in terms of managing public opinion, this was mere prologue. The past five years have seen a perverse symbiosis – the yin of government deception joined with the yang of media credulousness. And it began quickly.

What did Media Santa bring us as the war began?

• Thrilling images of Sadaam's statue being toppled, all carefully cropped to make it look like a spontaneous demonstration when it was knowingly staged -- complete with Iraqis literally trucked into position and posed by a military psy-ops team.  The media knew from the moment it happened that this event was staged, but they not only went along, they expanded the lie.
• The daring rescue of Jessica Lynch, complete with dashing into a hospital under heavy fire and making off with a captive -- and photogenic -- soldier.  Though the truth started to appear long before the Movie of the Week made the screen, the media showed little interest in correcting the story.  And as NPR's own Brooke Gladstone explained "it's because the war is over."
• The war over?  Absolutely.  That was the week of Action Figure Bush, complete with flight suit and "Mission Accomplished" banner.  At the time, Garfield asked New York Times White House correspondent Elizabeth Bumiller about the media celebrating spectacle rather than trying to learn the truth.  Bumiller's reply?  

  BUMILLER: I don't perhaps think it's as dangerous as you think it is.

Garfield goes on to recount the "spontaneous" press conferences that were run from a script, the death of Pat Tillman, the... hell, the everything that came out their mouths of the last six years plus.

The invasion of Iraq is the single stupidest thing the United States has ever done as a nation, and not all the fault lies with Bush, or with the Senators who voted him authority.  A big, heaping, stinking, steaming load of blame goes to the media that tried to treat this as the next great news spectacular.  They spent more time picking theme songs and graphic designs, working out electronic maps and cool ways to use Google Earth, than they did trying to learn the truth.  

It's not the blogs that are a threat to the traditional media.  The fingers around their throats are their own.

But don't worry.  I'm sure new sets, more dramatic sound effects, spiffier graphics, and more screaming pundits will set things right.

Deaths.  Injuries.  Long tense days never knowing what might happen next. The Iraq Invasion sure is hard... on George W. Bush.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.

Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.

If any one sentence could hold all the contempt that the Republicans feel for the military and for military families, this is the one. Who is this war hardest on? Poor ol' George. What about the 4,000+ who have died? Hey, they volunteered.

There may be greater dicks in this century, after all there are nine decades left, but Cheney has set a standard that will be hard to match.

"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously," Cheney said. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us."

Not me, actually.  But Virginia Foxx, Republican Congresswoman from the 5th Congressional District of North Carolina, doesn't believe you're scared enough.  

Rep. Virginia Foxx says she believes God will judge people for sins of omission as well as commission, so the Banner Elk Republican had a message she couldn't keep to herself.

"You should fear for your country," Foxx told a gathering of members of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.

The Democratic majority in Congress has become "bolder and bolder" with tax dollars and the rules of the House, she told the business leaders at their annual Washington meeting.

"I am trying to scare you to death," she said.

God will judge our country for its sins, and we should fear for our country?  Wait a second, the Congresswoman can't really think that God should damn America.  Otherwise, the story would be running 24/7 on her namesake network, right?

As for the two Democratic presidential candidates, Foxx pulled out her reserve can of fear.  

"I believe they are socialists, and if you look at their platforms you will see their plan is to take money from part of the population and give it to other people in the population," she said later, referring to their universal health care plans.

"I don't know the dictionary definition of socialism, but most people would see that as socialism."

Actually, I believe what you've defined is called taxes.  Not to worry, Republicans have proved that they can run a massive military on only the money made from our conquests and that the economy perks aloing peachy keen on nothing but the good will and selflessness of the investment community.

The folks from the Charlotte Chamber of Congress, who had listened to Foxx's call to More Fear, had the appropriate response.

After she left the room, a member of the Chamber joked about leading the group out to jump off a balcony.