Blogito, Ergo Sum - 15 December 2008

Get the American television shows ready for the guy who threw his shoes at Bush:

Like many Iraqi reporters at the news conference, Mr. Nassar said he did not think this was an effective way for Mr. Zaidi to make his points. “This is so silly; it’s just the behavior of an individual,” Mr. Nassar said. “He destroyed his future.”

He's going to get rich on American talk shows and television, plus his book deal! Meanwhile, there ought to be a few guys on Bush's American security detail who destroyed their futures. I mean, a shoe isn't very dangerous, to be sure, but it could have been anything,

Shirzad Rasheed al-Barazanji, an agricultural engineer, said: “What happened showed the hatreds planted in Iraqi hearts. I am a Kurd, and if I was in his place I would ask Bush an embarrassing question, but not act like that. I do not set aside that behind that journalist, there is a political agenda against Bush and Maliki.”

“When the American army entered Iraq,” he added, “people welcomed them by throwing flowers, but Bush was told farewell by a shoe. So the new American authority has to be careful in their strategy in Iraq.”

...

“This is unsuitable action by an Iraqi journalist,’ said Kamal Wahbi, a 49-year-old engineer. “I was watching TV last night when I saw it. His action served terrorism and radical national extremism. I think he could send the same message by asking Bush embarrassing questions.”

“I spent five years in Saddam’s jails,” said Saman Qadir, a 51-year-old mechanic. “This journalist has to throw flowers on Bush, not a shoe, because Bush saved the Iraqi people from a bloody regime. Malaki has to raise a case against this journalist.”

American journalists have spent years trying to convince the American public that American troops were not initially greeted as liberators with flowers and candy.

And Howard Kurtz reveals his desperation over how well things are going in Iraq:

When people can take off their shoes and throw them then the country clearly isn't safe! Had to get in that "mission not accomplished" line somehow, no matter how hard he had to struggle for it. It was just too damn bad there were no suicide bombs that day.

More people were murdered in Detroit and Washington D.C. last night than in Iraq.

They're bumping into each other running interference for Obama in the Chicago affair, as you can see from two clips from Kurtz' Media Notes:

Salon's Joe Conason: Everyone playing by the Clinton rules also knows that it is virtually impossible to prove a negative -- to prove, for example, that Obama didn't know how Blagojevich was abusing the Senate appointment. (Which is why civilized judicial systems presume innocence and require proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, of course.)

Slate's Jack Shafer:

"If Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is immediately guilty of anything, it's of making overt what other politicians make covert, and doing so while the wiretaps roll.

...says that other politicians do the same thing, only covertly...but, presumably, he means every other politician besides Obama, The One Pure One. Or the most covert.

Obama has clearly known quite a wide variety of people who turned out to be corrupt, or radicals, or advocates for racial intolerance, or...well, the list is long and seemingly only getting longer. What's fun is watching Obama backpedal and argue how he didn't really know them, not that well, even spiritual advisors he spent 20 years huddling with as the man officiated at his marriage and baptized both of his daughters. And he said he only knew Ayers from seeing him around the neighborhood, until it turned out that he served on not one but two different boards of directors with him and attended at least one political function in the man's home...not bad for a total stranger.

We haven't heard from Biden for an awfully long time, and Politico says that may not change much:

"Joe Biden is laying plans to significantly shrink the role of the vice presidency in Barack Obama's White House, according to an official familiar with his thinking. "It's not just that Biden won't sit in on Senate Democrats' weekly caucus meetings -- a privilege Republicans afforded outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney. He won't have an office outside the House floor, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert gave Cheney early on. "Biden will not begin every day with his own intelligence briefing before sitting in on the president's. He will not always be the last person Obama speaks to before making a decision. He also will not, as a transition official calls it, operate a "shadow government" within an Obama administration."

The essential expert that Obama needed to provide foreign policy credentials is going to be treated like John Nance Garner.

WASHINGTON (AP) - When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.

None of that, of course, is true. Hansen's NASA numbers turned out to be incorrect...not just once, but twice. The hottest year on the record is 1934. The sea ice is now freezing faster than it has in several years and there hasn't been any measurable increase in global temperatures in a decade. NASA recently admitted that there probably won't be for the next few years because "natural factors" are overwhelming the warming trend.