"A near universal lack of recall"

Must be the Ambien:

A "striking lack of recollection" by White House and military officials prevented congressional investigators from determining who was responsible for misinformation spread after the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a House committee said Monday.

Although military investigators determined within days that the onetime NFL player was killed by his own troops in Afghanistan following an enemy ambush, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire.

Also:

The committee says that in their quest to find out when officials first knew about the possibility that Tillman's death was not due to enemy fire, they were "frustrated by a near universal lack of recall," according to the report.

The committee interviewed several senior White House officials including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, communications director Dan Bartlett, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and chief speech writer Michael Gerson.

"Not a single one could recall when he learned about the fratricide or what he did in response," says the report.

Perhaps a large public outcry could result in their firings. Oh, right.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers told the committee that he learned by the end of April that Tillman's death was possibly due to friendly fire, but that he could not remember whether or not he passed that information to Rumsfeld.

Members of Tillman's platoon, however, knew "almost immediately" that Tillman had been killed accidentally by fellow Rangers, according to the report. Within days of his death, Colonel Craig Nixon, a top officer in Tillman's battalion, passed on that information to the commander of the joint task force in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChyrstal, who in turn sent a message to top generals, including General John Abizaid, commander of CENTCOM. ...

"I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," McChrystal wrote on April 29th, 2004.

A deputy commander of SOCOM told the committee that as soon as McChrystal's message was received, Tillman's family should have been notified.

Yet on the same day that McChrystal sent his memo warning that officials may be making erroneous statements, Tillman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star medal for "gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States".

Damned erroneous statements. Not just Tillman, either:

The committee also examined the circumstances surrounding the misinformation that was released following the capture and rescue of Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq in 2003. Sensational media reports attributed to military officials erroneously said that Private Lynch had engaged insurgents before her capture, firing until she ran out of ammunition. But as in the Tillman investigation, the committee said that it was hampered due to a "pervasive lack of recollection" about how that misleading information got released.

This is that "fog of war" thing, isn't it?

Person Jessica Lynch

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"Asian stocks fall as confidence in U.S. financial system erodes"

That's a great headline to wake up to, now isn't it?

I suppose if I owned any Asian stocks I might be concerned, but I'm not even all that worried about my bank's 35% drop in stock price yesterday, as it prepared to report a second-quarter loss, laid off workers, and "moved to reassure investors that it was sufficiently capitalized".

I mean, whaddya gonna do? Make a run on the bank? Pull out all your money and hide it in the mattress, or bury it in the back yard?

It's all just a mental recession anyway, right? Why should I -- or anyone else -- whine about it?

Really now: don't the Republicans deserve continued stewardship of the nation's economy? They got us in this ditch, they can get us out (that's something I heard about four years ago, I believe).

Oh well, maybe we can drill ourselves out of it.

The Weekly Wrangle

Time for yet another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly round-up, including the posts of some our newest members this week.

South Texas Chisme got what they were asking for: a spotlight on the Webb County Sheriff's race. BlackBox Voting's Bev Harris has asked for relevant auditable materials. CouldBeTrue can hardly wait to find out what happened.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the "rail-rage" that's hitting Central Texas: Rail, Rail, Rail - Do It Right, Not Fast.

President Bush hasn't seen President Medvedev since his 'election' to the Russian presidency. Last week, he had his first opportunity to look into his eyes. Check out McBlogger to see what he saw.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos tells the chilling tale of Goodhair and the Fire at the Governor's Mansion. Governor Rick Perry didn't light the match, but decisions laid at his door certainly made things a lot easier for the arsonist who did.

The Texas Cloverleaf examines T. Boone Picken's plan to save us from evil oil men and move forward with greener energy.

Texas Senators Cornfed and Bailey scored a perfect ten in synchronized flip-flopping on the Medicare bill last week, shortly after they and the rest of the Republicans exhibited mirror-image coordination on FISA. PDiddie at Brains andEggs has the details.

BlueBloggin sees Maliki making the same mistakes as King George: Iraq Hands Out Stimulus Money As US Shifts Occupation.

BossKitty worries about the consequences of revaluing human life in America:Dollar Value of American Life drops - Now What.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that Texas Senate Democrats have taken a strong stance on calling for reform of the Texas Department of Insurance, with one senator even calling for the Insurance Commissioner to be an elected official.

MeanRachel wonders when politics became unpatriotic on July 4th.

Off the Kuff had a guest post from Rep. Pete Gallego about the HDCC and its efforts to reclaim the statehouse for the Democrats.

WhosPlayin was impressed that Ken Leach, candidate for U.S. Congress in CD 26 got good coverage in the Gainesville Register, even though his totally honest quote didn't pass the "smell" test.

jobsanger took a look at the lies being told in a McCain campaign ad.

Nat-Wu of Three Wise Men ponders whether long-suffering American Indians could actually make a difference in this presidential election.

Bay Area Houston details the record $52,000 fine by the Texas Ethics Commission against State Senator Craig Estes.

Additional Sunday Funnies

*This last one above, sadly, was no joke.

289-196-53

To demonstrate what an uphill task poor John McLame has to win the presidency, this week I moved into the undecided column all states where the polling indicates either a tie (Missouri, North Dakota) or a slim one-point lead for either candidate (Alaska, Indiana, Ohio, and Nevada).

If McSame managed to win them all he would still lose.

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

We'll get back to reality -- an Obama total in the EV of 300+ -- next week.

DeBakey, Snow, Murcer

They went in threes yesterday:

Dr. Michael DeBakey, the world's pre-eminent cardiologist, at 99 of natural causes (though did undergo one of his own procedures a few years ago).

"As I studied the charts, it occurred to me that no face on them was any more important in the history of medicine than DeBakey himself,'' said (Dr. Sherwin) Nuland, a retired surgeon at the Yale University School of Medicine and author of Doctors: The Biography of Medicine. "I can't think of anyone who's made more of a contribution to the field of medicine.''

Chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine and a surgeon at Methodist since 1949, DeBakey trained thousands of surgeons. During his career, he estimated he performed more than 60,000 operations. His patients included the famous — Russian President Boris Yeltsin and movie actress Marlene Dietrich among them — and the uncelebrated.

"He was a great contributor to medicine and surgery," said Dr. Denton Cooley, president and surgeon-in-chief at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and a former rival of DeBakey.

"But he left a real legacy in the Texas Medical Center and at Baylor College of Medicine, where he's brought so much attention," Cooley said. "Together, we were able to establish Houston as a world leader in cardiovascular medicine."

Tony Snow, former White House press secretary, at 43 of colon cancer.

Snow resigned as Bush's chief spokesman last September, citing not his health but a need to earn more than the $168,000 a year he was paid in the government post. In April, he joined CNN as a commentator. ...

As press secretary, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president's policies. During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

Although a star in conservative politics, as a commentator he had not always been on the president's side. He once called Bush "something of an embarrassment" in conservative circles and criticized what he called Bush's "lackluster" domestic policy.

And Bobby Murcer, New York Yankees center fielder and broadcaster, at 62 of brain cancer.

When he made his Yankee debut in September 1965 as a teenage shortstop, Murcer evoked images in the press of a young Mantle. Murcer batted left-handed while Mantle was a switch-hitter, but both were Oklahomans, both had been signed by the Yankee scout Tom Greenwade, both possessed speed on the bases, and both had played at shortstop in the minor leagues. ...

Murcer eventually succeeded Mantle, his boyhood hero, in center field. He never approached a Hall of Fame career, but he proved an outstanding hitter and a fine fielder in his 17 major league seasons.

Murcer moved to the Yankee broadcast booth, as a commentator, the night of June 20, 1983, hours after George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner, offered him the job during his second stint with the Yankees, when he was playing infrequently. He teamed at the outset with Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer and Bill White and remained a Yankee broadcaster most of the time after that until his death.

Murcer recalled how he mangled syntax and offered a few baseball clichés as he learned his craft and how “one critic sniffed that my Oklahoma accent sounded a bit incongruous.” But, as he put it, “I’d spent almost four decades perfecting that accent, and I sure wasn’t going to change now.”

RIP, gentlemen.

Sunday Funnies: The McCain Follies

John McCain's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week

During just this past seven days, McCain described Social Security as "a disgrace", his top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, called the American people "a nation of whiners", he released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip-flopped on Iraq, joked about killing Iranians with tobacco products, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. He capped it off on Friday by fudging details about an incident during his captivity as a Vietnamese POW, contradicting what he claimed in his memoirs.

Yet watching and reading the mainstream media you would think he skated through all of that. At least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him, after all.

Let's unpack McCain's lousy week in greater detail:

1. McCain unambiguously called Social Security "an absolute disgrace." This is not a quote taken out of context. This is shocking -- and if it had been uttered from Obama's mouth would have dominated the news coverage and the Sunday talking heads, as pundits would speculate about the massive damage the statement would cause him among seniors in Florida.

2. McCain's top economic policy adviser called Americans a bunch of "whiners" for being worried about the slumping economy. Words cannot fully explain how devastating this statement should be from Phil Gramm. But it's also what the candidate believes as well; that our economic problems are psychological.

3. Iraqi leaders call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, McCain gets caught in a bizarre denial and flip flop. The Iraqis now want us to begin planning our withdrawal -- so what does McCain say? First, he refuses to accept Maliki's statement as being true. Then he concedes that it was an accurate statement, but was probably just a political ploy to curry favor with his own people and WOULD NOT influence his determination to keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely. Yet McCain in 2004 at the Council on Foreign Relations said that if the Iraqis asked us to leave, we would have to go. No matter what. But that was apparently a younger and less experienced John McCain.

4. McCain's economic plan to cut the deficit has no details and is simply not believable. There are so many things here. McCain pledges he would eliminate the deficit by the end of his first term (the campaign latter flip-flop-flipped about whether it was four years or eight years), but does not provide any details about how he would do it. Economists on both sides of the political aisle said that this was simply credible, especially given McCain's other proposals to a) cut individual and corporate taxes even further, b) extend the Bush tax cuts, c) massively increase defense spending on manpower -- 200,000 more troops; and d) maintain a long-term sizable military presence in Iraq.

5. McCain's deficit plan includes bringing the troops home, and that represents his greatest Iraq flip-flop to date. Speaking of the long-term military presence, a story that has gotten absolutely no attention is that McCain now believes the war will be over soon. The economic forecasts made by his crack team of economists predict that there will be significant savings during McCain's first term because we will have achieved "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The savings from victory (ie the savings from not having our troops there) will then be used to pay down the deficit. The only way this could have any impact on the deficit in McCain's first time is if troop withdrawals start very soon. So McCain believes victory is in our grasp and we can remove soldiers from Iraq right away.

That doesn't sound much different from Obama's plan, does it?

6. McCain campaign misled about economists support. In the press release the McCain campaign issued to tout its Jobs for America economic plan -- that would balance the budget in 4 years -- it included the signatures of more than 300 economists who, the campaign claimed, supported the plan. Only problem is that the economists were actually asked to sign up to SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Um, hello?

7. McCain makes a joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes. There's that Straight Talking Maverick we've been looking for. According to the AP this was just a humanizing moment between candidate and spouse.

8. McCain denies, flatly, that he ever said that he is not an expert in economics. Are you kidding?

9). McCain distorts his record on veterans benefits in response to a question from a Vietnam veteran, who then proceeds to call McCain out on it.

There's video of this one:



10.) McCain demonstrates he knows nothing about Afghanistan and Pakistan. McCain said "I think if there is some good news, I think that there is a glimmer of improving relationship between Karzai and the Pakistanis." Pat Barry notes how crazy this comment is..."Just what "glimmer" is McCain talking about?? Maybe he's referring to President Karzai's remarks last month, which threatened military action in Pakistan if cross-border attacks persisted? Or maybe McCain is talking about Afghanistan's allegations that Pakistan's ISI was involved in a recent assassination attempt on Karzai? Maybe in McCain's world you could call that a silver-lining, but in realityland I'd call it something else."

11.) To wrap up the worst imaginable week ever in any presidential campaign, McCain misquoted himself by describing an incident during his POW captivity in Vietnam, substituting the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Green Bay Packers in the anecdote regarding the names of his squadron-mates. Of course McCain was speaking to a Pennsylvania television reporter at the time, so I'm sure it was an honest pander.

This morning expect these incidents above to get short shrift from pundit after pundit, because after all Jesse Jackson said he wanted to cut Obama's nuts off.

Synchronized flip-floppery

Yesterday our illustrious Texas Senators Cornfed and Bailey scored a perfect ten on a twin reverse-three-and-one-half forward tuck on the Medicare bill, (which immediately followed their mirror image conga-line on FISA). Let's excerpt liberally from the mighty BooMan:

==================

As CQPolitics explains, the Democrats were not the only party to show a shameful degree of fear-based voting yesterday in the Senate. Last month the Democrats failed in an effort to pass this year's Medicare bill when they fell one vote short of the needed sixty votes to invoke cloture. The only reason the Democrats did not have 60 votes was because Teddy Kennedy was in treatment for his cancer. No Republican was willing to acknowledge this and toss their vote to Kennedy out of respect for his years of service and his commitment to health care. It was shameful, and I said so at the time.

The Democrats reintroduced the bill yesterday and the Republicans assumed that they still had the votes to block cloture. They introduced ridiculous amendments and demanded the Democrats cave in because they knew they couldn't pass their version. But then Kennedy suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the Senate floor. All Senators, from both parties, erupted in applause at the sight of an upright and walking Teddy Kennedy. They gave him a two-minute standing ovation.

Kennedy, 76, entered the chamber midway through the roll call vote. With an arm around his shoulder was presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama of Illinois. As they walked through the door, stunned fellow senators, aides and gallery watchers broke into raucous applause.

With the cheers still cascading, Charles E. Schumer , D-N.Y., walked to the center of the aisle and blew a kiss at the Republican side, grinning.

Sen. Schumer blew them a kiss because he knew that the Democrats now had the needed 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass the Medicare bill. And then a funny thing happened.

And this time around, Republicans fled the president once it became obvious that Kennedy’s vote would give supporters of the bill the 60 votes needed to advance it.

Nine Republicans who had voted against the bill on June 26 switched to vote in favor of the Medicare measure.

Here are some typical explanations for the flip-flop:

“We’ve had a very dramatic moment in the room here,” said Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. “I voted for the bill. It’s not the way I would have written it,” she added.

Even as he criticized the bill, John Cornyn , R-Texas, explained his vote for it. “It reversed the cut. That’s the commitment I made to the physicians in my state,” he said.

Cornyn is referring to the portion of the bill that will prevent a dramatic cut in doctors' compensation. In opposing the bill, he was reneging on a promise he had made the physicians' groups to prevent the cut. In supporting the bill, he sought to take credit for keeping his promise. Hutchison's explanation was more honest, but not honest enough. Both Texas senators were more than willing to kill the bill, but they were not prepared to be on the record as opposing it if it passed. This is the exact kind of behavior that has many Democrats seething at Barack Obama. This 'against it before I was for it' voting strategy doesn't inspire any confidence or respect from voters. It is not an example of moderation. It's a matter of fear.

The Republicans are discovering that very few seats are safe. Ideally this would lead the Democrats to press their advantage and repeatedly probe for weaknesses and ways to crack Republican unity. On the Medicare bill, they found a fissure in Republican resolve. But on many other issues, the Democrats are afraid to rock a boat that seems to sailing with so much wind at its back. FISA was a case in point. The Republicans have tried unsuccessfully in several special elections to turn the Democrats' respect for civil liberties into a weakness against terrorism. But, even though they haven't won any elections using this strategy, they did succeed in making a rump of Democrats afraid that opposing FISA would lead to damaging 30-second spots. It's the same reason that John Cornyn caved on Medicare and it comes down to this ...

It's easy to say in a 30-second spot that John Cornyn voted against the Medicare bill and broke his promise to doctors. But it takes too much time to explain that John Cornyn only kept his promise when it became clear the bill would pass without his support. Cornyn flipped to add ten seconds of explanation to a 30-second ad. It's as simple as that. That's what politics has come to in this country. Sometimes it is even worse. Politicians will make bad votes in an effort to prevent an opponent from distorting their record. I'm sorry, but if you distort your votes to prevent someone from distorting your record, you are doing their job for them. There was a lot of shame to go around in the Senate yesterday.

=====================

Three things, tangentially related:

1. Corndog is scrambling, because he is really scared he's going to lose to Rick Noriega.

2. Rick Noriega had the right thing to say on FISA:

"Many times throughout my lifetime I have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. This isn't a part-time Constitution. We as a nation cannot grant anyone sweeping amnesty if they break the rules. It's appalling that my opponent, John Cornyn, puts his special interest campaign contributors ahead of the Constitution. Texanshave had enough.

Americans will not accept an abuse of power, and they will not accept corporations getting away with breaking the law.

We already have a law in place that balances national security concerns while adhering to the Constitution. This is not the time to compromise the privacy of the American people and not the time to disregard the Constitution of United States. I regret that the Senate has voted this way."

3. Barack Obama voted for cloture on FISA. Which killed the possibility of a Dodd filibuster (it needed 41 votes and got 26). Which says, "Let's get this show on the road so I can get back out on the campaign trail".

I expect a lot more leadership than that out of my presidential candidate, especially when it comes down to defending his oath of office as well as the 4th Amendment itself.

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