Woodward: Bush Said His Iran Strategy Was "They're A**holes"
Posted by Jed Lewison, Huffington Post on October 5, 2008 at 8:57 AM.

There's been so much going on with the campaign lately that I hadn't paid much attention to Bob Woodward's newest book, The War Within.

Recently Woodward was on Real Time with Bill Maher and he relayed a couple of interesting items.

First, he said that during White House discussions on Iran, a senior military leader asked Bush what his strategy was. Bush's answer? "They're assholes." Just gives you a sense as to how crude and clueless our current president is, and how desperately we need a change.

Second -- and this was really interesting -- he maintained that the surge was not the cause of the decrease in violence in Iraq. Instead, Woodward said a covert program run by the U.S. military was the primary reason for the decrease in violence. Woodward didn't get specific, but it basically sounded like a targeted assassinations program.

According to Woodward, the administration has confirmed his account. Seems like that might be something for McCain to ponder the next time he wants to say that the surge is the defining reason he ought to be elected president.

Bush 2000 = Palin 2008
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on October 4, 2008 at 2:00 PM.

On MSNBC, Countdown aired a video compilation showing the similarity in rhetoric between George W. Bush in 2000 and Sarah Palin in 2008. Keith Olbermann reported that “the people around [Palin] — the top-level campaign staffers crafting her message of change and reform — are almost all from the inner-circle of the same Bush campaigns and administration from which she offers that change.” He concluded, “Small surprise then that even in the very act of claiming her background, her experience qualify her to offer us that change from Bush, she does so sounding almost exactly like Bush.”

Progressive Accountability put together its own Bush-Palin video compilation earlier today. Check it out here.

Cancer Expert Discusses Dangers of McCain's Health Record Secrecy
Posted by ZP Heller, Meet the Bloggers on October 4, 2008 at 8:21 AM.

"If there's limitation to the transparency of anybody's medical records, it always raises the suspicion, 'What are they hiding?'..."  Those were the words of Dr. Richard Sagebiel, co-director of the UCSF Melanoma Clinic and yesterday's special guest on Meet the Bloggers.  Dr. Sagebiel was one of over 2,750 doctors who signed the open letter urging John McCain to provide full disclosure of his medical records.  And really, "What are they hiding?" is the question we need to be asking ourselves again and again as this story unfolds.

What is McCain hiding?  He released a portion of his medical records back in May under extremely restricted circumstances, allowing a handful of hand-picked reporters to view nearly 1,200 pages for just three hours, without the use of the Internet, cell phones, or copying equipment.  As The Nation's Ari Melber pointed out during yesterday's show, most of these journalists were not medical experts.  But even if they were, this was an insufficient amount of time to examine so many pages of McCain's health history.  That's why CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta--one of the journalists who got to see this portion of medical records--told Sam Stein at The Huffington Post that McCain's lack of candor amounted to "cloak and dagger" secrecy. 

And why is the corporate press censoring any discussion about McCain's medical records?  Yesterday's Meet the Bloggers came in part because both CNN and MSNBC refused to air Brave New PAC's ad about McCain's record secrecy.  Both complained about the graphic images in the ad--images that both networks aired earlier this year.  Even more amazingly, MSNBC actually banned the ad after shock jocks Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh self-righteously ranted about it. 

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Cokie Roberts Accuses Biden of Gaffe for Using Word She Doesn't Know
Posted by Rachel Weiner, Huffington Post on October 4, 2008 at 3:02 AM.

TPM noted last night that Joe Biden used a word that would probably be misinterpreted as a gaffe:

Watching the debate I noticed that Biden referred to the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina as "Bosniaks". This is actually the correct term, though in English people often say simply Bosnian Muslims. When he said it, the first thing I though was, I wonder how many right-wingers would jump on this as a gaffe on the model of candidate George W. Bush's reference to 'Grecians.'

Democracy Arsenal has more on the term's use.

Red State fell for it. So did Powerline and Mona Charen at the National Review.

Journalists at the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer got it wrong too. As did Cokie Roberts:

Rachel Maddow: John McCain's Celebrity Birthday Bash
Posted by Rachel Maddow, MSNBC on October 3, 2008 at 4:45 PM.

Mark Ames and Ari Berman have a great scoop over at the Nation involving John McCain, Rick Davis, Hollywood's Anne Hathaway, and an all too familiar con-man on a yacht together in Montenegro (read it).

Ames and Berman's look at McCain's love of celebrity became Rachel Maddow's first exclusive. Watch it:

Colbert Report: Naomi Klein Warns of Wall Street Shock Doctrine
Posted by Staff, The Colbert Report on October 3, 2008 at 3:42 PM.

Naomi Klein wants us to be prepared for leaders to take advantage of us in moments of crises.

For more of Klein's thoughts on Wall Street's Shock Doctrine, check out her recent Huffington Post piece.  

Debate Was an Open Book Test for Palin
Posted by Liza Sabater, Culture Kitchen on October 3, 2008 at 2:58 PM.

No wonder I was confused about Sarah Palin's body language. She didn't just sound like she was heavily scripted. She sounded like she was reading cue cards or even a tele-prompter.

Because the cable and network television stations did not show a split screen of the debate, most viewers could not see that, during Joe Biden’s answers, Palin spent almost all her time looking down and studiously reading her notes. But viewers did see that when Palin delivered her answers, she would repeatedly glance down to check her talking points.

ThinkProgress has compiled a video documenting some of the instances where it was clear to the audience that Palin was propped up by written responses.

What's outrageous is that I actually questioned my judgment and bias when I mentioned last night that it looked like she was reading off cards. I couldn't fathom her reading off cue cards she'd have hidden in her jacket.

Wow.

The Hidden Cost of War: Watch How Fast $3 Trillion Adds Up
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on October 3, 2008 at 11:43 AM.

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is over 10 times that figure. And by the time the war is finished, it will be 50 times that much.

What's behind the ballooning dollar signs?

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilme's exhaustedly researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs we'll pay for years to come.

Brought to you by GOOD Magazine.

For more perspective on just how much $3 trillion really is, go on The $3 Shopping Spree.

Homer Simpson's Election Day Nightmare
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on October 2, 2008 at 3:20 PM.

Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama, but ends up voting for John McCain again and again until he's killed by the electronic voting machine. A not so subtle reminder about the all too serious issue of voter fraud from this year's Treehouse of Horrors Halloween Special.

Preview for Tonight: Palin and Biden Talk Church and State
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 2, 2008 at 12:48 PM.

Katie Couric: Thomas Jefferson wrote about the First Amendment, building a wall of separation between church and state. Why do you think that's so important?

Sarah Palin: His intention in expressing that was so that government did not mandate a religion on the people. And Thomas Jefferson also said never underestimate the wisdom of the people. And the wisdom of the people, I think, in this issue is that people have the right and the ability and the desire to express their own religious views, be it on a very personal level, which is where I choose to express my faith, or in a more public forum. And the wisdom of the people, thankfully, engrained in the foundation of our country is so extremely important. And Thomas Jefferson wanted to protect that.

Biden: The best way to look at it is look at every state where that wall's not built. Look at every country in the world where religion is able to impact on the governance. Almost every one of those countries, there's real turmoil. Look, the founders were pretty smart. They had gone through, you know, several hundred years of wars—religious wars. They were in the midst of religious wars in Europe. And they figured it out: The best way to do this is keep the government out of religion. They took religion out of government, but they didn't mean religion couldn't be in a public place, in the public square.

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