Well, If Snowflake Says It…..

Via ThinkProgress:

In an interview with the AP, outgoing White House Press Secretary Tony Snow claimed that the United States is now winning in Iraq:

“If you had asked two months ago, ‘Is the surge succeeding?’ people would have said, ‘Ah, we’re getting killed.’ I mean literally,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said in an interview. “But now it’s very obvious that on the military side there has been some profound progress. And that progress also has real political implications in terms of the Iraqi people standing up to the folks who have been trying to blow up the government.”

Hey Tony, whatever it takes to be able to look in the mirror every morning, right? Wanker.

–All cartoons are posted with the artist’s express permission to TPZoo.

To see more of Paul’s cartoons, visit Jamiol’s World.

CIA DIRECTOR SAYS, “IT FEELS LIKE SEPTEMBER 10″

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Friday that his agency was being thwarted in their pursuit of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups by the public’s distaste for counter-terrorism tactics. Hayden, who rarely addresses the public blamed the media for swaying public opinion against aggressive tactics and complained the politcal climate was apathetic to threats as it was in the period leading up to 9/11.

When I get in the car at Langley and drive down the George Washington Parkway,” Hayden said, “it’s not long before it begins to feel like September 10th. “I’m not talking about the threat,” Hayden said, but rather “the willingness of the broader political culture to be comfortable with the things we believe are both lawful and necessary to fight this war.”

A Tongue Lashing

Mrs. Ashcroft and the Hospital “Tongue” Lashing
By Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer
via Truthout.org

The wife of former Attorney General John Ashcroft stuck her tongue out at two Bush administration officials as they left the hospital room of her seriously ill husband, according to a new account by the man who triggered that now infamous nighttime visit, former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall that night. Many of us Americans have wanted so very badly over the last seven years to get up close to some of these people running our government and do something: yell; scream; punch someone in the nose; get in someone’s face. We just want to make our feelings known and our voices heard. I guess I would settle though for being able to stick my tongue out as long as it was in person.

Well done Mrs. Ashcroft, well done.

Photo used by permission – drcorneilus’ photos

The Trouble With Toilets..

Senator Larry Craig is apparently not alone in his toilet troubles… Perhaps these two gentleman should get together. They might have a lot to talk about.

Finally…..Fred

All cartoons are posted with the artist’s express permission to TPZoo.

For more of Jack’s cartoons, visit Jack Ohman.

Gay bar

From BostonHerald.com:

A Boston man has asked a federal court to dismiss his lawsuit in which he claimed that his refusal to answer a Massachusetts bar exam question related to gay marriage caused him to fail the test.

There is some background here, which has a quote from an earlier Boston Herald article:

Dunne claims the question was used as a “screening device” to identify and penalize him for “refusing to subscribe to a liberal ideology based on ‘secular humanism,’ ”according to his lawsuit.

Photo courtesy of armcurl. Used by permission.

Think “progress”

NOTE: toasterhead writes that this video originated on The Daily Show. Credit where credit is due.

Halfway house

Why is it so difficult for these folks to agree on what “ending the war” means?

“We’re working on consensus,” Reid said. “We’re willing to go halfway with [Republicans] as long as everyone understands that we’re not going to do something that’s cosmetic in nature.”

Some Republicans, like presidential candidate John McCain, say Reid is talking with Republicans only because Democrats are losing the war of public opinion.

“They’ve lost the momentum,” McCain said. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t want to sit down with Republicans and negotiate a different resolution.”

Another Bin Laden Video Just in Time to Sideline the “Petraeus” Report

“The new video message from Osama bin Laden appeared on militant Islamist Web sites Saturday, a day after it was released by a U.S.-based terrorist monitoring organization.”

Open question: How can Osama mastermind and pull off a complex attack on the United States from thousands of miles away, yet not have access equipment capable of taking a clear picture? For that matter, how can contemporary video equipment not take clear pictures?

Hint: “it was released by a U.S.-based terrorist monitoring organization.”

~Briseadh na Faire

UPDATE: toasterhead has blogged about the latest bin Laden tape on his blog Vituperation Toxicity. [~Egreggious]

Born With a Silver Foot in His Mouth….

 

All cartoons are posted with the artist’s express permission to TPZoo.

For more of Jeff’s cartoons, visit Jeff Danziger.

No more platitudes from North Platte

Chuck Hagel announces that he will not run for the Senate or the Presidency in 2008.

[Photo courtesy of oxfordmate17. Used by permission, but not an endorsement of the views expressed at TPZoo.]

UPDATE: Lawyers, Guns and Money speculates that Hagel’s departure might mean the return of Lieberman’s bosom buddy Bob Kerrey.

Justices for Jesus

The Chicago Tribune reports that Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, may well have played a major role in helping to transform the tenor of the Supreme Court.

“He is, I think, more responsible than any other person for John Roberts being chief justice,” said Peter Irons, a constitutional scholar, civil liberties lawyer and author of the recently published “God On Trial: Dispatches From America’s Religious Battlefields.”

Sekulow said he was invited soon after President Bush took office to join what came to be called “the four horsemen.” The group, which also included former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, was formed “to be a kind of outside counsel on the judicial nomination issues, particularly the Supreme Court,” Sekulow said. He also worked on the nomination to the Supreme Court of Samuel Alito, which the ACLU strongly opposed. Alito took the bench in 2006.

[Photo courtesy of Wikinews]

Get ‘em out of there!

Gov. Bill Richardson has a piece in today’s Washington Post on his plan for a quick withdrawal from Iraq.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards reflect the inside-the-Beltway thinking that a complete withdrawal of all American forces somehow would be “irresponsible.” On the contrary, the facts suggest that a rapid, complete withdrawal — not a drawn-out, Vietnam-like process — would be the most responsible and effective course of action.

O vs. O

It’s hard to believe that Bill O’Reilly still beats Keith Olbermann in the ratings game (but just barely in the 25-54 age bracket).

Maybe if Keith wouldn’t give Bill so much publicity…

“Elaborate contraptions”

From The American Prospect:

Correspondent Spencer Ackerman visited with Petraeus in Iraq.

Politics in the country was moving slowly, he conceded, but he was impressed with the performance of the Iraqi Army in Baghdad. I wasn’t exactly sure what the connection was. Could a competent Army really convince Sunnis to accept minority status, or stop Shiites from hoarding power? But nothing is a non sequitur to Petraeus. Instead, the strategy he describes is one where each small contingency exerts an ephemeral but real influence on every seemingly unrelated aspect of the war. Think of the elaborate contraptions Tom hinges together to catch Jerry, all funnels and twists and levers snaking around the room.

The trouble is that interconnectedness is a two-way street. What Petraeus doesn’t emphasize is that, for instance, the collapse of meaningful politics consigns his intricate strategy to, at best, a tourniquet. Right now, there’s credible talk of a parliamentary coup to depose Nouri al-Maliki, possibly with U.S. backing — a symptom of the fundamental sectarian instability in the Iraqi political process. Whatever amount of greater security Petraeus has created in Baghdad, the city now accounts for about the same percentage of the war’s civilian deaths as it did a year ago, which is progress — politics has deteriorated rather than improved. That means the rationale for the surge has collapsed. Better, in Congress, to emphasize the discrete achievement instead of the bigger picture.

What Are We Waiting For?

President George W. Bush has committed Treason by giving aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war. He is giving your tax dollars to insurgents who once fought against, and likely killed, American forces. His act of Treason cannot be defended, nor the charge denied. We have what we need, so why isn’t President Bush being impeached as we speak? (more)

Murky Math

By Spencer Ackerman
via TPM Muckraker:

It seems the numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties compiled month-to-month for 2006 from the UN just don’t want to jive with the numbers month-to-month from the AP-reported figures put together by the Iraqi ministries of defense, health and interior. In fact, they don’t even come close. What’s wrong with this picture?

Photo used by permission: by PSD