Obama sure got crushed in West Virginia last night, receiving only 91,652 votes. John McCain sure must be pleased, right, knowing that his opponent could only get ninety thousand people to vote for him?

Well, too bad McCain only got 89,683 votes. Link

Yes, you heard me, even in the heart of Appalachia Barack Hussein Obama pulled in two thousand more votes than the Republican presumptive nominee.

Seems to me that this should be the spin coming out of the Obama camp this morning.

Everybody wants to know, will Bush pardon Libby, and if so, then when? It would seem that Bush will need to weigh various factors, including damage to his own historical reputation versus loyalty to Libby versus preventing the possibility of a flip.

Personally I would prefer Libby not be pardoned and he serve a lengthy prison sentence. However, if he is going to be pardoned, I hope it does maximum damage to Bush and the Republican party. Bush, of course, will be seeking to minimize such damage. What then, can we guess now about pardon possibilities given the legal situation and when a pardon might happen? I haven't seen much analysis of this question other than on Olbermann last night and, ironically enough, in the New York Sun today. In this diary, I will argue that the key timing issue is whether Judge Walton allows Libby to remain free pending appeal, and that this is where we should focus our thoughts for now at least.

Mmm, cloneburgers. Is that what you are having for lunch? Beef taken from cloned cows? Gross?

Well, get ready for it, today the FDA ok'd food from cloned livestock, saying that it is "virtually indistinguishible" from conventional livestock.

Labelling will NOT be required. So, yes, non-vegetarians will be eating cloned meats soon enough.

... more below

Michael Gordon has gotten ahold of a memo that Stephen Hadley wrote for Bush about Iraq. Hadley doesn't have nice things to say about Iraq PM Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

"His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shia hierarchy and force positive change,” the memo said of the Iraqi leader. “But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."

So let me get this straight. Bush says that things are going ok in Iraq, it's just Al Queda that's the problem. Meanwhile, he's getting unvarnished memos from his National Security Adviser saying that Maliki is either "ignorant" (aka stupid), "misrepresenting" (aka lying), or incapable of getting things done.

I work for a very small, private, highly profitable company in the finance industry. This year the company started hosting an occasional speaker series as a morale booster. The first speaker was John Cleese and it was amazing. Tomorrow we've got President Jimmy Carter. (Yes, I'm not kidding about the profitability.)

There will probably be about 300-400 people in the room, and I expect that President Carter will give some sort of a talk, and hopefully questions will follow.

I'd like to ask him a question if I get the opportunity, and I'd like to engage your help to figure out what to ask ... follow me below if you want to help.

Another corrupt Bush administration flunky. This time its the guy in charge of nonimmigrant visas at the US consulate in Toronto. You know, the guy in charge of keeping the terra'ists from Canada from making it into the US. But at least he had some fun before he took the fall.

A State Department official accepted free flights to Las Vegas with exotic dancers, expensive meals, hotel rooms in New York and other bribes to speed up the visa process for a jewelry company, federal prosecutors said Friday.

According to the indictment, Michael John O'Keefe fast-tracked applications and approved some that had been rejected for a jewelry company notwithstanding the fact that some terrorists use jewelry to raise money.

Yawn. Another one bites the dust. I'm sure it'll make the news. NOT.

I read in the NYTimes today that Cheney thinks that Lamont's defeat of Lieberman aided the terrorists.

[Cheney] cast Mr. Lieberman's loss in ominous terms, suggesting that it would hearten American terrorist enemies. Terrorists, he said, are "betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.

"And when we see the Democratic Party reject one of its own, a man they selected to be their vice presidential nominee just a few short years ago, it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today."

Well you know what I think? I think that Dick Cheney and George Bush aided the terrorists when they decided to invade Iraq, and I think that they are continuing to aid them today by not withdrawing our troops. And I also think that Democrats should be saying so at every opportunity.

more on the flip ...

I don't believe that it's been diaried on Kos yet, but there's an important new development in the war in Afghanistan. It's a major new operation called Operation Mountain Thrust and it involves more than 10,000 American, Canadian, British and Afghan soldiers pushing into the desert in Afghanistan in a likely futile chase after the Taliban. You might have noticed that four US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan yesterday. Well, there's a lot more to it than that as I'll discuss below the fold.

I got engaged on Saturday. My fiancé and I plan to get married next summer. We live in a nice co-op in Brooklyn, both have good jobs, and life is good.

Well, our lives are good anyway, at least as long as we pretend that the rest of the world isn't going to hell in a handbasket. My fiancé definitely wants to have children, and I think that I do too, but every time I think about this issue I start to think about the way things are going in the US and in the world and the likelihood (or lack thereof) that our kids (if any) might have actually grow up and live ok lives. So I'd like to solicit your advice: should we have kids?

More (plus poll) on the flip ...

Dan Froomkin's got the scoop. Apparently Lawrence Wilkerson was on NPR yesterday and was talking about the abuse of prisoners by US soldiers. He says that there may be documentation tracing the torture policies to Cheney himself. Froomkin says that no other media outlets are pushing the story. This could be big. We've got to help push this into the media ciculation.

details below ...

On CNN, Bush just said "The results are not acceptable." Finally! Acknowledgment.

He also referred to the convention center debacle. He looked like he's on serious drugs.

Next step hopefully: fire Mike Brown and install someone who can handle the situation.

This is front paged on CNN.com right now. I'll provide a link to the video when it makes the Internets.
Update [2005-9-2 9:23:8 by Loudocracy]:
Here is the MSNBC story on this. The link from their front page right now says "President Bush rips relief efforts" I do believe this may well be the tipping point in the ongoing hurricane story. Blaming the victim will no longer work.

Katrina is only one part of a triple whammy that is going to lead to a vast increase in poverty this fall. I don't know if this has hit most people's radar screen's yet given the horrifying loss of life and ongoing situation in the affected area, but the NYTimes is reporting that most hurricane insurance policies only cover wind damage, not flood damage. In New Orleans, a good half of the population does not have flood insurance. In places like Mississippi it's more like 75-90%.

more below ... bankruptcy bill ... gasoline

Today the UK government revealed new rules regarding criteria for deporting or excluding foreign nationals that will cover "writing, producing, publishing or distributing material, public speaking including preaching, running a website; or using a position of responsibility such as teacher, community or youth leader to express views which foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs; seek to provoke others to terrorist acts; foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts; or foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK". (emphasis mine)

Apparently the government will also be creating a database of persons who have beached this anywhere in the world, and that such persons will be barred admission to the UK.

So, query me this? Will violent cleric Pat Robertsen be barred from entering the UK based on his public support of terrorist activities?

Bush is weak. There can no longer be any doubt. In less than a year he has gone from being a popular war-time president to being a person who barely has influence on his own party. These high profile news stories tell the tale.

• Bush Administration renames the "Global War on Terror" the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" and then just days later Bush reverses himself and it's back to the "War on Terror".
• Lapdog majority leader Bill Frist opposes Bush on stem cells.
• Bush's most trusted political adviser if facing possible indictment for treason, and Bush doesn't have the guts to fire him.
• Bush had to appoint milquetoast nobody John Roberts to the Supreme Court in order to avoid provoking a battle with Democrats who don't even control the Senate.
• In one of the most Republican districts in the country, Republicans pull only 52% of the vote in a special election for a congress seat.
• Bush's poll numbers totally suck
• Even Rush Limbaugh says that Bush's upcoming five week vacation is "excessive".

there's more below ...

Let's face it, the Catholic Church has gotten a lot of bad publicity over the last few years. This is particularly true in the US, but the rest of the world heard about the pedophile priests too.

The Church now has a unique opportunity to reverse the trend of bad publicity. No, it's more than that. The Pope's death offers the Church the opportunity for its greatest PR ever. This is the first papal succession in the modern media age, and John Paul II is about as big of a world-wide celebrity as has ever existed (bigger even than Princess Di?).

My question is this: to what extent did the Papacy plan on how they would milk the Pontiff's death for maximum publicity? And a related question, is there an investigate journalist intrepid enough to research and publicize the PR plans that must surely exist somewhere in the Vatican.

more below ...

In the past two days, tunesmith has led a charge to unite right and left blogistan against the bankruptcy bill. See here and here. This movement has been picked up by the right, including various well-known right-of-center bloggers (see the diary and Politology for more info). And the media is now taking notice as well.

Moreover, as tunesmith noted in comments in his or her second diary, "We can talk about left vs right until we're blue (or red) in the face, but there are plenty of matters where it's simply the politicians versus the public, and the blogosphere is on the side of the public."

This is so true. Ever since the election, I have been thinking about how polarized we are and how politicians take advantage of this to press their own interests. I've been wondering whether there might be fundamental bedrock principles that everyone, lefty and righty, can agree on. Surely there are many. If we can find and establish these bedrock principles, then we can perhaps do a better job of advancing the interests of the public as opposed to the interests of elites and politicians.

more below ...

Update [2005-1-12 13:45:9 by Loudocracy]: This has already been covered here. The previous diarist didn't use the term "trade deficit" so I missed it in my search. I am not going to delete this because we had a bit of a discussion and I like my poll, but I suggest you comment in the previous diary if you'd like to discuss further.

I hope y'all have been buying Euros and stuffing them under your mattress, because the dollar is down practically a whole percentage point today on news that the trade deficit is the highest EVER. Details below the fold.

Andy Borowitz has the scoop on Rumsfeld's attack on the White House for failing to provide him with body armor before scheduling his meeting with the troops in Kuwait.