Columnist Robert Novak attacked the way Bush handled the Rumsfeld resignation, saying it “fits the pattern of a president who is secretive and impersonal.” “[L]oyalty appears to be a one-way street for Bush,” Novak wrote. Vice President Cheney was also “profoundly disturbed” and “melancholy” after the firing.
Marine Corps ‘can’t maintain [a] surge’ in troop levels.
At a press breakfast yesterday, Marine commandant Gen. James Conway said that any decision to increase the number of Marines in Iraq – currently around 23,000 – would have “long-term repercussions.” “The payback is you can’t maintain that surge,” Conway said. “‘And it’s probably going to have an adverse impact’ on the ability to provide ready troops in the future.”
North American Union
Tom Tancredo accuses George W. Bush of having a secret plan to replace the USA with a “North American Union” of some sort. Personally, I favor a union, but my idea was always to give it a corporate-style name like AmeriCAN.
Malajube
Tom’s right, Tromp L’oeil by Malajube seems pretty great to me after a couple of listens. I also checked out their previous album Le Compte Complet briefly and wasn’t really as taken with it, but it probably deserves a bit more thought. I will say, though, that unlike most people I know, I really do care about song lyrics which makes it a bit hard for me to get into foreign language tunes. These guys are French Canadians so I can understand the occassional line, but mostly it’s jibberish. Maybe if I see the words written down somewhere I can figure it out.
Turkeys pardoned by Bush may not last long.
“The birds, bred for their meaty breasts, quickly grow too heavy to move themselves around, and usually die before the next Thanksgiving. Last year’s winner and its understudy, also pardoned by Bush, were no exception. Billed as the ‘Happiest Turkey on Earth’ at last year’s Disneyland Thanksgiving Day Parade, where it was honorary grand marshal, both ‘Marshmallow’ and its sidekick ‘Yam’ already have passed away, of natural causes, according to a spokeswoman for Disneyland.”
Dobson: I Want To Cure Ted Haggard of Being Gay But Don’t Have Time, It ‘Could Take Four or Five Years’
Ted Haggard was one of the most prominent evangelical leaders in the nation until he admitted to having a sexual relationship with a male prostitute and buying meth.
Focus on the family founder James Dobson, who considers Haggard a “close friend,” told CNN’s Larry King last night that he was “asked to serve on a three person restoration panel.” One purpose of the panel, Dobson acknowledged, was to “restore [Haggard] from being gay to not gay.” Dobson said he didn’t have time to participate, however, because such a process “could take four or five years.” Watch it:
Transcript: Read more
“In the deadliest attack
since the beginning of the Iraq war, suspected Sunni-Arab militants used three suicide car bombs and two mortar rounds on the capital’s Shiite Sadr City slum to kill at least 145 people and wound 238 on Thursday,” the AP reports. “The Shiites responded almost immediately, firing 10 mortar rounds at the Abu Hanifa Sunni mosque as Azamiya, killing one person and wounding seven people in their attack on the holiest Sunni shrine in Baghdad.”
Hollinger Versus Berri
It’s an NBA stats throwdown, as David Berri critiques John Hollinger’s PER formula, backed up by Malcolm Gladwell. Hollinger fires back saying Berri’s misunderstood how PER is calculated. On the issue at hand — the “break even point” for shooting efficiency — the two formulas are actually very close, Hollinger is only slightly more forgiving of missed shots. This long post by Dan Rosembaum on Wins Produced gets into some interesting business; Rosenbaum’s point seven, dealing with defense, seems especially persuasive.
Obviously, as problematic as trying to quantify individual contributions to team offense based on box score numbers may be, quantifying individual contributions to defense is way more problematic. One point Berri makes time and again on his blog is that payroll size and wins correlate only very weakly in the NBA even though individual players’ statistical production is fairly consistent from year to year. That, he points out, is good evidence that conventional thinking about player evaluation is often mistaken. So far as it goes, that seems correct, but my guess what be that an awful lot of the mis-evaluating just has to do with the extreme difficulty of assessing people’s contributions to team defense. Beyond defensive rebounding, the numbers available strike me as next-to-worthless; giving people credit for steals, for example, doesn’t make much sense unless we understand something about steal rates and the costs of failed steal attempts.
21 Reasons To Give Thanks
This Thanksgiving, progressives have a lot to be thankful for. Here’s our list:
We’re thankful for our country’s troops.
We’re thankful America dumped the 109th Congress.
We’re thankful Rick Santorum will have more free time to find the WMD.
We’re thankful we don’t have to go to war with the Secretary of Defense we had.
We’re thankful for “red state values,” like protecting reproductive rights, supporting stem cell research, and rejecting discrimination.
We’re thankful Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who calls climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will no longer chair the Senate environmental committee.
We’re thankful Matt Drudge does not rule our world.
We’re thankful Al Gore helped the country face an inconvenient truth.
We’re thankful Bill O’Reilly does not resort to name calling – well, besides labeling ThinkProgress as “far left loons,” “kool-aid zombies,” “hired guns,” “vile,” “haters,” a “far left smear website,” and “a very well-oiled, effective character assassination machine.”
We’re thankful minimum wage ballot initiatives passed in six states.
We’re thankful the Dixie Chicks aren’t ready to make nice.
We’re thankful Ted Haggard bought the meth but never used it.
We’re thankful for the 100,000 readers who responded to our Tell the Truth About 9/11 campaign.
We’re thankful for “the Google” and “the email” (and the “series of tubes” that make them possible) — but not iPods, which are endangering our nation.
We’re thankful Maf54 isn’t online right now.
We’re thankful people send us Jack Abramoff’s email.
We’re thankful Keith Olbermann’s ratings are up and Bill O’Reilly’s ratings are down.
We’re thankful President Bush’s secret plan for Iraq is safe with Conrad Burns.
We’re thankful we won’t spend Thanksgiving turkey hunting with Dick Cheney.
We’re thankful the “Decider” only gets to make the decisions 789 more days.
And last but not least: We’re thankful to the Think Progress readers for their tips, energy and support.
Happy Thanksgiving! — The Think Progress Team.
Happy Thanksgiving
Whatever else may be true, you can almost certainly at least be thankful that George W. Bush hasn’t tried to liberate your country.
