Monday Morning News and Views

Good morning!! I’m beginning my news browsing a little late this morning. Here the most interesting stories right now from my point of view. Please add your own links in the comments.
Afghanistan
The Hill: McChrystal not backing down from request for more troops
Speaking on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, the new U.S. [...]

Eric Boehlert Needs to Get a Grip

I love Eric Boehlert. His book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, was terrific. And he even mentioned The Confluence in his recent effort, Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press. But really, this is too much.
A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred [...]

Shoot the message and the messenger

For some one who was supposed to be the nation’s  hip professor with that smooth oration style holding us all rapt  and breathless, President Barack Obama sure has turned into to the teacher who has lost control of the classroom.   I can’t recall any president–other than LBJ on Vietnam–that has rolled out a major policy [...]

CDS never dies

Sometimes you read stuff that makes you want to go townhall on the author.  From Political Punch:
ABC News’ Kirit Radia reports: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost her cool Monday after a Congolese student, speaking through a translator, asked her what “Mr. Clinton” thought about a Chinese trade deal with the [...]

Wednesday Morning Coffee and Links

Dear Conflucians;
Well, it’s my turn to be the morning news diva which means I completed the assignment while you were asleep and now that you’re reading this I’m asleep!  Old Jazz musician habits die hard and I have two more weeks of sleeping in late before I have to be lucid at 8 a.m.  in [...]

A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

I’m liberal. I’m not ashamed to say it. In fact, I’m proud of it.
Wikipedia defines liberalism as:
Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophies that considers individual liberty and equality to be the most important political goals.[1]
Liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. Within liberalism, there are various streams of thought which compete over [...]

We’re Winning This, at Least

Victories should be taken when they come. With the passage of Proposition 8 and all the Drama with Miss California and Perez Hilton, the LGBT Community needed something good, and it came.
We all love the Big Dawg. Regency said it best in what is possibly one of the best posts ever written at the Confluence.
I [...]

Why It Will Never End (Part 1)

Sarah Palin is not qualified to be the President of the United States. She is dreadfully inexperienced. She is a Fundie. That alone is normally a disqualify, but let’s continue. When it comes to women’s reproductive freedoms and choices, she disappoints. Her energy policies are mediocre at best, and her obsession with drilling in ANWR [...]

Who sez?

So I’m reading this Huff&Puff piece by Peter Daou about Sarah Palin and I see this line:
More recently, she had the audacity to allow her camp to take on a teenage boy while decrying attacks against her own family.
That sentence links to this piece by Greg Sargent:
You may have heard that Sarah Palin’s spokesperson [...]

Smoking Kool-aid in a crack pipe

I was bored and I hadn’t been by Blogstalkers for a few days so I dropped in to see what they were up to. Naturally, they’ve been talking about us.  People ask me why I visit their site and the reason is that it gives me a glimpse into the minds of the Failbots.  If [...]