Have pledged to fillibuster the telecom immunity billl (via HuffPo):

This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.

“If the Senate does proceed to this legislation, our immediate response will be to offer an amendment that strips the retroactive immunity provision out of the bill. We hope our colleagues will join us in supporting Americans’ civil liberties by opposing retroactive immunity and rejecting this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation.

There’s a word to describe these kind of people.

Damn:

A Times/Bloomberg Poll says that in a two-man contest, 49% of respondents favor Barack Obama, while 37% support John McCain. With Ralph Nader and Bob Barr added to the mix, Obama holds 15-point edge.

Those aren’t good numbers for McCain. And there’s more:

Moreover, McCain suffers from a pronounced “enthusiasm gap,” especially among the conservatives who usually give Republican candidates a reliable base of support. Among voters who describe themselves as conservative, only 58% say they will vote for McCain; 15% say they will vote for Obama, 14% say they will vote for someone else, and 13% say they are undecided.

Eroding and lukewarm support. And we haven’t seen any more of those contrast-and-compare speeches like the night Obama wowed 20,000 while McCain stumbled through the Green Screen fiasco.

Thankfully, McCain won’t be able to read this article until tomorrow, when they take it from the magick internets (of which McCain is aware, but doesn’t use) and print it in tomorrow’s edition.

David Brooks:

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Winston Wolf:

Well, let’s not start suckin’ each other’s dicks quite yet. Phase one is complete, clean the car, which moves us right along to phase two, clean you two.

Reading Brooks’ column today, it’s clear that (put into The Wolf’s terms) he’s disregarded the advice of The Wolf and gone straight to sucking Bush and every other surge enthusiast’s dick. Phase one is complete — we’re now down to hundreds of political murders each month, instead of 2-3 thousand — but Iraq remains a patchwork of tribal, sectarian and ethnic divisions which the weak central government (from which Juan Cole reports another coalition party has withdrawn) remains unable to reconcile. The reduction of violence in Anbar has been accomplished by arming and paying former Sunni insurgents who have no fealty to the Shiite government in Baghdad. And never mind that the reduction in violence has been achieved in part due to the completion of ethnic cleansing which has resulted in 2.5 million internally displaced refugees, and a series of truces and ceasefires which periodically threaten to dissolve into more fratricidal violence on a massive scale. Pay no attention to the central government we are backing in Baghdad canoodling with Iran’s leadership and Iran exerting increasing influence in Iraq, by giving and withholding support for the various Iraqi Shiite factions, despite our emphasis on excluding Iran from Iraq’s power structure.

So here we are, with more troops in Iraq than we had pre-surge, negotiating an agreement to expand our presence from 30 to 58 bases on a indefinite basis, with no clear plan or clear path to ending our commitment in American lives and treasure in the foreseeable future.

Bush and Brooks are standing like Jules and Vincent, drenched in Marvin’s blood and brains, still without a plan that will get the car and Marvin out of sight and their own sorry asses cleaned up — or our troops out of Iraq in the next 10 years. Phase II or Phase III?? They’re too busy congratulating each other — not how The Wolf put it — to bother with that. . .

MORE: Right Blogostan is having an orgy of fellatial self-congratulation, but at least one conservative isn’t buying it. At the same time, a GAO report sheds more light on the administration’s ongoing political failures in Iraq:

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the “New Way Forward” strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets.

Gunned down a group of US troops?

A disgruntled local official opened fire Monday on U.S. soldiers attending a municipal council meeting southeast of Baghdad, killing two of them and wounding four other Americans, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The assailant died in a hail of gunfire after the attack, which occurred in the town of Madain, also known as Salman Pak, about 15 miles south of Baghdad in an area with a history of Sunni-Shiite tension.

U.S. officials confirmed two American soldiers died and that four Americans, including a civilian interpreter, were wounded.

Iraqi police and witnesses said the attack took place in front of the Madain municipal building where the Americans had come to confer with local authorities.

U.S. officials said the Americans were leaving the building when the assailant opened fire about 1 p.m. However, the U.S. officials released no further details except that the assailant was killed.

“The attacker came out of his car with an AK-47 rifle in his hand and started firing on the American soldiers until he was killed by the return fire,” said Hussein al-Dulaimi, 37, who owns an agricultural machine shop across the street.

McCain continues to peddle his fable about a warm, safe, friendly occupation of US troops in Iraq stretching on for decades, but he’s drinking the same Kool Aid as the “greeted as liberators” crowd who preceded him. Five years after the conclusion of conventional combat, Iraq is still a mess, economically, politically, and militarily. By committing our military beyond its resources we’ve been able to reduce the level of violence, but the causes and stresses which contribute to political violence in Iraq continue to boil slightly beneath the surface.

The combatants may have concealed their arms and may be standing down for the time being, but any attempt to compare our military presence in Iraq to post World War II experiences in Germany or Japan, which were stable and violence free for years by 1950, is an exercise in abject stupidity.

. . . but it might be time to go to rehab, after all.

LONDON (Reuters) - Soul singer Amy Winehouse has developed the lung condition emphysema and has been warned by doctors that she will die if she continues smoking drugs, her father said in an interview on Sunday.

Mitch Winehouse said the incurable illness, which leaves sufferers struggling for breath, was diagnosed when his daughter had series of health checks in hospital.

“The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs it won’t just ruin her voice, it will kill her,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mirror. “The doctors have said that if she had continued the way she was going she could have ended up an invalid — she wouldn’t have been able to breathe.”

He added: “She’s got emphysema. It’s in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there like an old person with a mask on her face struggling to breathe.

“With smoking the crack cocaine and the cigarettes, her lungs are all gunked up. There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She’s got 70 percent lung capacity.”

Or was it seven words. . . . George Carlin dies.

I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but there is language in this video. . .

still, it was better than this one:

I’ve been busy, but there are just too many worthy candidates, so I’ll go quickly

1. Steny Hoyer for enacting the Nuremburg Defense into US law for the first time.

2. Kalra Mauerova. I think we can rule out Mother-of-the-Year.

3. President Dumbshit, for his whole body of work. Oh, and the fact he’s a War Criminal.

4. The Boston Celtics. We hates them. May all their future draft picks be named “Len Bias.”

5. Bernard Goldberg. What a fucking tool.

6. Fred Hiatt. There aren’t enough cockpunches for the WaPo’s OpEd crew.

7. Jonah Goldberg. For being an idiot and an admitted viewer of bestiality pornography. We’d cock-punch Pantload more often, but hitting a target that small requires too much concentration and precision. We’re not Bruce Lee here, you know.

8. Larry Johnson. It’s not only all the crock of shit about the “Whitey” tape, it’s the ugliest fucking haircut in the history of humanity.

9. George Bush, again. For being an ignorant bastard with no manners. Without a dook of an idea about how to comport yourself public-wise.

10. Joe Lieberman. If he has a cock anymore.

11. Assrocket.

What do YOU think? Who do YOU think needs a good cock-punching?

Duncan writes:

What did that say again? Oh yes.

Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.

While actually, it was closer to:

Bin Ladin Determined To Strike In US

While it might just as well have said:

bin ladin determined to strike in us

For all the attention that President Dumbshit and his incompetent NSA, Condi “I thought it was historical” Rice paid to the Bold, Capitalized Warning, just because it said bin Ladin wanted to “follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramsi Yousef” and warned “bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft.”