Annual war expenditures have risen from $48 billion in 2003 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, thanks to the expected largest emergency spending bill in history.
Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on a lot these days, but they do agree that the U.S.’ new spy chief, John Negroponte, is “creating just another blanket of bureaucracy, muffling rather than clarifying the dangers lurking in the world,” according to the N.Y. Times.
Nearly every large metropolitan city lost more people than it gained from 2000 to 2004, as people of all demographics sought out the exurbs for cheaper housing.
The liberal U. of Michigan historian and outspoken Bush administration critic is reportedly close to receiving a tenured teaching position at Yale University. But a group of conservatives, led by a Yale and a Harvard student, are trying to queer the deal by painting Cole as anti-Semitic. Glenn Greenwald has the goods; Jane Hamsher has more.
The journalist posed as a potential recruit and mingled with a cavalcade of zombie-like followers, among other oddities. “I have rarely felt more fearful for my sanity,” she writes.
In the continuing White House shake-up, the presidential spokesman bows out, and Rove, who was just recently promoted to deputy chief of staff, relinquishes those duties to focus on politics.
In a moment of satire, the Washington Post surfaces a letter that Bush wrote to his daughters explaining why he’s decided to replace them with Chelsea Clinton.
The magazine is said to be on the verge of running a story in which a leading American historian concludes that the Bush presidency “appears headed for colossal historical disgrace.”
The former vice president is going high profile with his climate-change film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Speculation is rife that he is using the issue as a stalking horse for the White House in 2008.
Check out an early review of the movie.
The famously anti-intellectual president tells reporters: ” ... I read the front page and I know the speculation. But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.” (Via Huff Po.) “I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best”... someone call Jacob Weisberg to update his “Bushisms” book.
Despite recent polling showing red states turning blue, true color-blending will require “electoral reform that changes the way votes are counted, districts are proportioned and views are represented,” argues the editor of The Nation.
In anticipation of a movie version of “Fast Food Nation,” along with a similarly-themed upcoming book co-written by the same author, the fast food giant will promote its salads and fruit options.
America’s top sex researchers envision a mainstream adoption of technologies like “teledildonics,” which allows remote mutual manipulation of devices like vibrators.
Josh Bolten has told senior staffers thinking about leaving the White House that “now is the time to come to such a decision,” according to Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.
Two Gulf Coast newspapers took home the big award for their hurricane reportage; Risen and Lichtblau of the N.Y. Times won for their stories on Bush’s eavesdropping; and Dana Priest of the Washington Post earned a Pulitzer for reporting on secret CIA prisons. Full list of winners.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, asks, “Is there a retired general left in the States who hasn’t called on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to fall on his sword?”
When a Time Bomb Is Ticking
