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.

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.

So the Whitehouse has finally come to their senses and will "allow" Condoleezza Rice to testify in public under oath before the 9/11 Commission. How very thoughtful. I guess I was wrong, they really do wish to investigate what went wrong that day and how it might be avoided in the future.

But wait, another caveat or two from the Whitehouse counsel before proceeding:

...That way, they won't have to bother with cleaning up any inconvenient loose ends in the future.

Furthermore, they care so much that they will not only have the President testify (in private, not under oath) to the Commission, but they'll be kind enough to throw in the Vice-President on that same day, at that same session at no additional cost! More from the counsel to the President:

Why waste time asking the President and Vice-President to testify separately, when they can be in the same room at the same time in a "joint private session" to keep their stories straight and avoid any confusion?!

These guys are amazing.

From Drudge just now...

...Could that be right? Condi's first testimony was not even allowed to be recorded? By order of the Whitehouse?!

So she not only had to testify under oath, but they wouldn't even allow the session to be recorded or a stenographer to take a verbatim transcript of the National Security Advisors testimony with the Commission investigating the greatest National Security failure in the history of our nation!

Man...Of course, the pundit echoes continue to the effect of "We've heard Condi on every show in the world, clearly she has nothing to hide! She should testify".

The more I keeping hearing that "Condi has nothing to hide" from the talking heads, the more I begin to wonder if she must!

Keep in mind, all the Whitehouse "precedent" protestations aside, including Condi's own tortured logic on 60 Minutes, to wit:

...Which is valid only if you disregard Sandy Berger (Clinton's NSA) and Zbignew Bzerzinksi (Carter's NSA), both "sitting national security advisors" at the time having testified in the past and consider their testimony to not have been about "policy" but about a criminal investigation. More to the point, though, the precedent being shoehorned into this situation concerns an NSA testifying before Congress. The 9/11 Commission, however, is not "congress". It was created by a vote of Congress with it's Head chosen by the President of the United States. A fact conveniently omited by the dubious and ultimately self-defeating explanation from Condi and friends.

As, once again, Josh Marshall so brilliantly put it:

UPDATE: Since writing the above yesterday, when this site was down due to a network outage, the Whitehouse has finalized their "accommodation" with the 9-11 Commission for Condi to testify. Well, that took long enough, huh? More on that shortly....

Never one to shy away from tooting my own horn, regretfully or otherwise, I came across this item this morning about a crop of babies born in Gaza today, named after the Hamas Leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated yesterday by Israel.

On September 14th, 2001, I wrote a "Speech to the Nation�were I President" to no one in particular that I shared only with my family and a friend or two at the time (the family, by the way, was quite critical of it).

Reading the news item above, I recalled the following paragraph from that "speech":

I've heard Bush and Israeli Officials over the last 24 hours describe Yassin as "Israel's Bin Laden". And today, we seem to - quite literally - have quite a few more "Yassins" born in his place.

Something to ponder as we continue down the short-sighted, narrow-minded, fear-based, vengeful, seek-and-destroy strategy currently employed as our own "War on Terror". I have no reason to believe that this strategy will work any better for us than it has for Israel.

And here I thought it possible that the Bush Administration would figure out that decieving, misleading and keeping secrets from the American People was actually counter-productive to their chances of staying in office.

What was I thinking?!

A stunning report today from AP uncovers a recent memo from a National Park Services Deputy Director that not only outlines planned cutbacks to our National Treasures, but the directive to keep them a secret from the public, the media and even congress!

From the memo:

It then goes on to say:

"If you must inform the public"?? Good lord. Anyone up for an 'executive branch adjustment' this November?

Youch...Great piece of tape posted today by MoveOn.org. Check it out. Somehow, I guess the Administration hasn't yet heeded the warnings of my "Lessons from Madrid" article yet. Oh, well.

After pondering and reading and pondering some more...It seems there is a real lesson to learn from the horror of Madrid. The knee-jerk one, of course, is that Terrorism works. At least that's the one that al-Qaeda will take away, and the one that ought to terrify everyone. But that's a lesson al-Qaeda already knows, in no small part, from the capitulation to Bin Laden demands that has already quietly occured when Bush pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Just as Osama requested on 9/12.

The real lesson is one for the Bush Administration. Though it may contain a bit more nuance than the true DittoHead believers are capable of understanding as I mentioned yesterday. They certainly won't have this nuance explained to them by Lord and Savior Rush.

The lesson that the Bush Administration may or may not begin to understand is that the Conservatives in Spain were ousted by the people not for their stand on Iraq or their complicity with the Bush Administration, but because - in the face of the bombings and the impending elections - they lied to the electorate and expected the people to be dumb enough to fall for it.

The Spanish people are well aware of the type of attacks to expect from ETA (the Basque Terrorists that they have been dealing with for years), and they were smart enough to immediately recognize that the Train Bombings were most definitely not the work of ETA, but the work of al-Qaeda.

None the less, the Conservative Aznar government insisted on trying to sell the idea to the people that it was the work of ETA - a long-time opponent of the Aznar government.

The people knew better. The people didn't appreciate being lied to for political purposes. And so the people removed the Aznar government.

It is that lesson which ought to be sending a chill through the Karl Rove Bunch right about now. But they've proven themselves willing to put their head in the sand before, so only time will tell if they will finally get it, or if they will continue on their current trajectory towards defeat this November by trying - as Aznar did - to obfuscate what the People are able to see quite clearly.

See the fascinating broken English letter to Tom Tomorrow from a Spanish voter for one inside account of what happened there last week.

On the homefront then, Bush needs to put the lesson learned into action immediately if he wants a chance of hanging onto Power this November (and we all know they want nothing more desperately than that).

They best heed the warnings coming from inside their very own base and come clean about their various and numerous failures in their mismanaged "War on Terror".

As the excellent David Corn pointed out, the "Washington Post quoted a Senior CIA official last week as stating that thanks to the war in Iraq, the CIA 'is stretched beyond their limits.'"

He goes on to point to more failures and misdirections currently being obfuscated by this Administration:

We know that Bush doesn't much listen to the common folk (or bother reading their Newspapers), but if they wish to stop the hemorrhaging of their own base, not to mention the all-import "middle", they may want to start coming clean on the only issue on which the American people are still barely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They need to begin telling the truth about their failures in the "War on Terror" and stop under-estimating the ability of the Electorate to smell a rat and turn insulted enough to hold them accountable for it at the next Election.

Otherwise, they risk missing the real lesson to be learned from Spain last week. I have no idea whether this bunch will "get it" or not. It would certainly be much better for the country if they did.

It seems to me that the most dangerous internal threat to our country, may just be the coup d'�tat by the Right to counter what they see as Liberal Media Bias by taking over said media and spinning it so far beyond reason to the Right, with such daily lockstep consistency, that it's become very difficult for the average American to even realize they are being spun anymore.

Thus, the Brad Blog - as a public service to America - is pleased to offer the occasional correction to the record.

True, we don't have a 3-hour-a-day radio show (yet), but we gotta start somewhere. So here we go:

Dear DittoHeads: Today Riush is telling you that "Liberals were in a panic" after the terrorist attack in Madrid last week because it demonstrated that Bush was proven right about this being a dangerous world. The "Liberals were terrified", Rush told you, until, of course, they began dancing with the joy three days later after the surprise victory of the Socialist Party in the elections which ousted the Conservative Administration that was complicit with Bush and his elective War on Iraq.

The result of those elections, Rush instructs you, was that "the terrorist have won" (true) and thus Liberals in this country are beside themselves with happiness over those results (a complete and total fabrication made up to suit Rush's agenda).

Now despite Rush's misinformation to the contrary - he doesn't actually know any Liberals or what they actually think about anything, or if he does, he won't waste his time by reporting it, but rather will simply makes up an absurd position for them that best fits his need to fill 3-hours-a-day with Pro-Republican propaganda.

Yo, Rushies, you are being played by your Master! Don't be a DittoChump!

It was the Bush Administration that was, and continues to be in a panic over these attacks. At least they should be (you see, I don't actually know anybody in the Bush Administration, so I'd merely be speculating on what they feel. See how I've actually told you about that? - That's what intellectual honest folks do. Get it?) But, if I were them, I would certainly be concerned. Both over the attacks, and the chill that must be running through their bones upon seeing the reactionary results of the election that followed.

It was the Bush Administration who didn't want to admit to you over the weekend (see Colin Powell's contortions on Sunday's Meet the Press for example) what was so obvious from the beginning: That these attacks were clearly the work of al-Qaeda. The same al-Qaeda that you have previously been told are "on the run" and "decimated" and "crippled". They are - clearly - no such thing. They have been radicalized and enthused by the West having fallen into the sand trap they've laid for us. We fell for it. Lost the focus on the War on Terrorism by our distraction in Iraq. An invasion which is the very Public Service Announcement that The Terrorists were looking for to display to their potential recruits that America is a threat to Islam.

That can't be admitted, of course, because it wouldn't do for the Bushies to be seen again as misleaders. Especially on the issue of Terrorism. Not for now, anyway. Not until they do their inevitable pre-Election switcheroo and go into The-World-is-More-Dangerous-than-Ever-and-only-Republicans-Can-Save-You! Mode. Coming soon to a Presidential Campaign near you!

It may take a while, but we will do our best to de-Spin you, DittoHeads! It's our patriotic American duty at least to try.

For the record, anybody who could speculate that the attacks in Madrid weren't the work of al-Qaeda, should note that the attack in Madrid came on March 11, 2004 - the precise 2� year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and exactly 911 days since that day! Coincidence? We report, you decide. But try not to be a sucker in the meantime. Really, it's just not good for the country - or the world.