Promoted by Brendan.

Iowa's over, thankfully. Obama & Huckabee won there. That in itself is telling, but it's not the story I'm focused on.

This morning I read an Op-Ed by Joesph Galloway (McClatchy News Service) titled: Sins of Omission and Sins of Commission Haunt Bush in Pakistan . He said some very telling things that our next president will have to deal with. That's because bush43 isn't going to do a thing about them during the course of the next year. One thing he said that we all know now:

Not to take away from a great Clash song....Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, has been accused of giving his sometimes girlfriend, Shaha Riza , SIGNIFICANT raises above what the regulations allow. He ended up paying her $193,000, some $60,000 more than the grade she worked as a transfer employee at the US State Dept. He didn't send the raise requests through the proper review boards, but odered it himself.

Wolfowitz, who was nominated by President Bush, joined the bank after serving as deputy defense secretary at the Pentagon, where he was one of the chief architects of the U.S. war strategy in Iraq.

Who here has seen the exchange between Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe during Wednesday's testimony by Al Gore before the committee she now chairs? If you haven't had the chance, go over to Crooks & Liars and watch this. It's short, only about 1 minute or so. Barbara was in prime form.

And that's the subject of this thread....Elections HAVE consequences. We've seen so many instances of late where the Republican MINORITY in the House and the Senate, as well as the dimbulbs of the Executive branch, still haven't quite adjusted to this new reality of being the MINORITY. They carry on with the hubris of the majority and continually fail to make the connection that they don't control the flow anymore. The fact is their dumb macho act is getting them in even deeper crap than if they just were more honest about what they want and what they stand for.

We've all seen the most recent thrust for the mind, soul & more importantly, the wallet, of conservatives here in America called The Pledge . Basically, it states that signatories of said Pledge will withhold moral, physical and monetary support from politicians that do not support President Bush's recent "surge" in troops for Iraq.

I would like you all to consider reading Joshua Trevino's newest post titled The Wrong Pledge . In it, you can see why a progressive like myself, has so much in common with a conservative like Joshua.

So we're all starting to adapt to the new Republican Minority in our capitol and we're starting to see how it will try to build itself, how it will burnish it's image and present it's facade. I wasn't sure how they were going to go. I mean, it's been since '94 that the Republican Party took over the House & the Senate majorities. And 2000 that they won the Executive branch. It's been a long time that they've been able to put forth their preferred image to the public and the media lapped it up as if it were mana from heaven & ordained by god. Life was easy for Karl Rove and the backroom RNC media geeks then. Now, it's a whole new ballgame.

by By Joshua Muravchik (JOSHUA MURAVCHIK is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute).

Essentially he calls for us to do just that, bomb Iran. He states it is needed, of course, to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But he seems to spend more time devoted to implying bombing Iran will increase our leverage with them and the rest of the non-aligned muslim world.

1st clue - goggle the American Enterprise Institure. Somewhat under 1 million links all of them sying this is a very right wing think tank. Not just right wing, VERY right wing.