Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 Commission tomorrow morning is shaping up to be even more Must See than Richard Clarke's testimony a few weeks ago.

But in the last week or so, it's all become simply bizarro. This Administration's behavior vis a vis the 9/11 Commission, the disasters unfolding in Iraq and their odd behavior in respect to it. Self-preservation and all of that, I suppose. But it just gets curiouser and curiouser as if these guys seem to be living in an alternate universe or something.

I once again associate myself with the excellent Josh Marshall, who points out the following the quote from an Evening Standard article:

Oddly enough, that quote refers to the FBI's interrogation of Saddam, not George W. Bush as one could similarly argue.

In the meantime, the Whitehouse is still fighting to keep Condi's Foreign Policy speech, planned to be given on September 11, 2001, out of the hands of the 9/11 Commission. On what grounds? National Security? Executive Privelege? It was to have been a public speech for crying out loud. What the hell are they so afraid of?

And then there's Richard Clarke again today on Hardball pointing out that Tom Clancy's 1997 book, Debt of Honor featured hijackers that fly a plane into the US Capitol Dome! Again, along with Clarke's admission that he cobbled Anti-Aircraft Defenses into place for the '96 Atlanta Olympics, a stunning counterpoint to Condi's now infamous May 2002 comments: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people.. would try to use...a hijacked airplane as a missile." Bush said as much himself this past Monday in his bizaare presser in North Carolina.

Would anybody in America hold it against these guys if they simply said "We under-estimated the terrorist threat before 9/11, but have learned our lesson since?" I understand the current need to lie about the screwups which have now entangled us in Iraq, but surely they could come clean on 9/11. Again, unless they have something even more damaging to hide than what we already can figure out on our own. I don't know that they do, but their bizaare behavior and coverups and constant kicking, screaming participation with the Commission sure doesn't look good.

It's all simply falling apart for these guys. It's Bizarro World.

John Dean's new book is now the #2 Best Seller at Amazon.com. The man who was instrumental in exposing the Constitution busting Nixon Admin offers some insightful information on what we're dealing with today.

Dean's appearance on Hannity & Colmes last night was predictably met with a feckless attempt at personal attack by Sean - about something or other from the 70's. He didn't make much headway. Obviously, Sean is now officially over his head in flacking for this indefensible administration.

Haven't read the book myself, so what do I know? But in case you haven't heard of it, I thought you might enjoy seeing the cover of the book as much as I enjoy posting it here.

Have I mentioned it's about the Bush Administration and it's called Worse Than Watergate?

As Air America Radio and the proud return of the word "Liberal" sweeps the nation (or not - hard to tell so far), there are a few things that occur to me as I listen and watch.

For one, after the last two decades of the Right having developed their own insular Conservative Echo Chamber, they have become desparetely out of touch with what is actually going on in the Country. Instead, they simply repeat over and over to each other exactly they wish to hear and believe, and come election time, if things don't go their way, they are shocked and left wondering what could possibly have gone wrong.

And now, the Left is finally catching up and putting together their own Echo Chamber. A good thing on it's face, because there is finally developing a reliable outlet for Liberal opinion and information to be shared and dissemanated to counter the endless (and almost entirely misleading) propoganda from the other side. (It should be noted that I'm impressed, so far, with the information in general coming from the Left, which is far more --- truly --- Fair and Balanced, detailed, sourced and accurate than the Right's one-sided, taken-out-of-context, often-wholly-unfactual, hot-button propoganda. So far anyway.)

But is the increasing network of Progressive Blogs, Radio Networks and Best-Selling Books --- the number of Left-Leaning Best Sellers now finally far outnumber those from the Right --- creating an insular and self-delusional Echo Chamber for the Left the way Rush and Sean and Fox and Drudge have created theirs for the Right?

As things continue --- seemingly --- to unravel for the Bush Administration on every front, it appears at least like the evaporation of support for the Right is real. The latest Pew Polls show Bush's Approvals disintegrating at an alarming level on nearly all points.

Yet if you listen to Rush, all is well and it's the Dems that are falling apart.

What's the real story? Perhaps it's somewhere in the middle, where neither DittoHeads nor AirHeads care to venture. Or perhaps things really are unravelling for one side or another.

I suppose the point of this article is mostly to say: Yo, AirHeads - Be careful to avoid the self-delusional trap the Right has created for itself after all these years. Preaching to the choir is all well and good, but words must translate into hearts and minds won. Then, those hearts and minds must be translated into motivating folks away from their radio or website or best-seller list to actually show up at the polls and throw the bums out.

It remains to be seen if that most difficult hurdle has yet been leapt by the Lefties. I suppose we'll find out this November.

I've had many other thoughts on Air America over their first blessed broadcast week --- both good and bad --- but I'll hold those for another day.

Is it just me? Or is this odd? From a press session Monday morning with Bush in North Carolina:

...Okay...and then, shortly after, this:

...Touchy?...The rest of the session then rambled as follows, with this burst seemingly out of nowhere. Picking up precisely where the above left off, which was the only allusion to 9/11 at all to this point:

Wish I had seen the above on video, cuz the official transcript from the Whitehouse just reads...like he's coming unglued? Bizaare...

On the front page of Rush's website today, you'll find the following link to a transcript from a call about Condi Rice: "Like Clarence Thomas, this self-made black leader must be destroyed..."

Apparently, this is the stunning next chapter in the Right's desperate attempt at the Defense of Condi Rice. This bizarre strategy was first floated by Bob Novak last week when he sandbagged Rahm Emanuel on Crossfire:

Huh? Emanuel was as flummoxed as I was by the odd question.

I believe it was The Daily Show who later complimented Novak on having "played a race card from a deck which nobody even realized had one".

A day or two later, like clockwork, one of Brad Blog's favorite DittoHead commenters did his good soldier Right Wing Echo Chamber duty by repeating the suggestion: "I hope it doesn't turn out to be a 'high-tech lynching of an uppity black.'"

Mission accomplished.

Have we ever seen an Administration so freaked out by the merest suggestion that they - perhaps - haven't done everything perfectly? It's rather astounding to watch.

Are these guys that desperate to defend Bush at all costs that they're already falling back to the Clarence Thomas "defense" here? Apparently so. Last week Rush answered a Liberal caller's question about why --- if the Bush Administration had such a wonderful Anti-Terrorism program from Day 1 --- why it wasn't actually ever implemented until after 9/11.

The answer was classic Rush. First, he informs us, it was because the Bushies were too busy at first because the Florida Election Debacle cost them so much valuable time that they had to work with Clinton Appointees like Richard Clarke (never mind that he was actually a Reagan appointee - DittoHeads aren't big on Facts).

But then there's this:

Well, okay. I guess that explains that.

I guess I'll have to do some research on Condi to find out exactly where "she didn't have to use affirmative action." Perhaps she was admitted to Yale with a C+ grade average and received a Legacy admittance like Dubya. I'll get back to you on that.

By the way, if you do click-through to the Rush transcript posted above, be sure to note the section where Rush has been going on and on, until the caller finally breaks in with:

I hate it when those callers filibuster poor Rush and never let him get in a word edgewise. Classic. And the DittoMonkeys eat it up.

As the bad news for the Administration continues to unfold over the next several months (continuing trouble in Iraq as we approach 1 July, a passel of new books that they won't be able to stand any more than they could stand Richard Clarke's, the 9/11 Commission Report, as well as fallout from the widening investigations of the outrageous and still under-reported Medicaire hoax and the growing Plame outing scandal) someone is gonna have to take a fall or two for Bush's re-select chances to survive.

Thus, I offer my stunning prediction that at least two of the following will not be a part of the Administration by the time we get to November 2nd. CYA Mitigator --- While I believe at least two of them will actually resign, the worst case scenario is that instead of actually resigning they will announce *ahead* of the election that they will not be serving in a second Bush term:

(Listed in order of likelihood that they'll be gone - sez me)
George Tenet
Richard Foster
Dick Cheney
Karl Rove
Paul Wolfowitz
Condoleezza Rice
Colin Powell

Anyone I missed?

On late Friday afternoon --- the best time to hide embarrasing information from the news media and the public - Colin Powell finally admitted in regards to his United Nations testimony that would eventually send this country to war and 600 Americans (so far) to die, that the information he presented now "appears not to be the case that it was that solid."

Um, duh? Anyway, will anybody ever take any responsibility for this debacle? Powell seems to continue the idea of blaming it all on the Intelligence Agencies. So, who is it who takes responsibility for those agencies anyway? Apparently nobody.

...That the proposed changes in FCC fines for "indecent speech" currently moving through Congress and chilling broadcasters will change the penalty for individual performers (not the stations owners!) from the current $11,000 after a first-warning to a whopping $500,000 per incident with no warning whatsoever? Read about it here, since MSNBC hasn't gone out of their way to tell you about it.

...That, according to an audit by the US Governmental Accounting Office (GAO), the vast majority of companies in America didn't pay any federal income taxes at all from 1996 to 2000? Read about it here, since Dubya keeps forgetting to mention it.

...That despite what you may have heard from the majority of the Media (controlled almost exclusively by Conservatives) about George W. Bush still being ahead of John Kerry, that Kerry actually leads Bush in the two most recently released polls? Read about it here, since Sean Hannity forgot to announce it.

...That Great Britain's conservative newspaper, The Independent, reports that a former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance testified to the 9/11 Commission that she "saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes" and that she gave the Commission "details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation....everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily." Which, of course, makes Condi Rice's claims that "we could never have foreseen planes being used as missiles" even more incredible than they already were? Read about it here, since Scott McClellan keeps leaving these things out of his morning briefings.

...That if Donald Trump is as good a businessman as he would like us to believe, he will see to it that hot couple Amy and Nick will be the final two contestants left on The Apprentice? No need to read about it anywhere else, cuz I just told you, and you've got other reading to do!

Yesterday, there was a horrible Mogadishu-style attack against Americans in Fallujah. Nine Americans were killed, and four of them were burnt, dragged through the streets, dismembered and hung from lightposts and bridges.

The American Media, perhaps taking their cue from the Whitehouse who will not allow pictures of coffins returning from Iraq, decided that Americans are simply too fragile to be shown the horrible images that came out of Fallujah yesterday. The rest of the world saw them, but not Americans.

All of which brings me to a point I've been pondering for a while. After Richard Clarke last week displayed the first real act of contrition from an American Official since the 9/11 Attacks by apologizing for the Government's failure to protect us, there was one lone member of the Media, Rick Mercier - sadly from a tiny paper in Fredericksburg, VA --- who had the courage to admit the Media's culpability in this whole fine mess:

Since the attacks of 9/11 (but also in the months leading up to it) the complicity the Major Media outlets have shown by simply going along with the Whitehouse line, wholly unchallenged and uninvestigated, is a National Disgrace. They have, by and large, played Hired P.R. Hand to virtually every hollow, misleading and frequently out and out incorrect line that the Whitehouse has tried to sell the American People since that day.

Their sycophantic behavior shows little sign of abating. Last week's Radio & Television Correspondents Association Dinner featured a slide-show narrated by Dubya, with photos of him looking around the oval office along with the repeated lines: "Those WMD's gotta be somewhere!"

The packed house of DC Media and Insiders yucked it up together. What a riot. 600 or so Americans and countless Iraqis are now dead because they all failed to do their job of keeping the Government honest by actually investigating their claims and by and large wholly shutting out or even mocking (ask Scott Ritter) all viewpoints which ran contrary to the Whitehouse line. Alternative viewpoints which turned out to be correct in the end, right in front of their noses, but they were too busy - I suppose - hoping not to be branded "unpatriotic" or otherwise losing their much sought insider status.

Is it any wonder then, that Americans have such a high view of themselves even while seeming to have no clue why the rest of the world could possibly hold us in such contempt?

The swamp is hardly being drained --- and there is plenty of blame for that to go around.

It's nice occasionally to come across the intellectually honest Conservative. A rare breed these days. So it was nice to catch this blog item from Andrew Sullivan today. Of note...

Not sure if it's because he's British or gay, but it's certainly nice to see a bit of both "nuance" (overworked word of the year so far in 2004) and honesty from the Right.