Year: 2015

It is Primary Election Day in Philadelphia. The current Mayor, Michael Nutter, has served two full terms and is term limited. So with this being an open election, we have several notable candidates: former longtime District Attorney Lynne Abraham, City Councilman Jim Kenney, State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams, former City Solicitor Nelson Diaz and insane crazy man Milton Street (entitled brother of horrible former Mayor John Street). Until recently, this looked like a close contest between ex-City Councilor Jim Kenney and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams. While labor is heavily backing Kenney, Williams is benefiting from a super PAC funded by wealthy pro-charter school businessmen. However, a recent independent poll gave Kenney a massive 42-15 lead, with former District Attorney Lynn Abraham also at 15, and no one has released any contradictory numbers.

Nine people have died after a shootout between rival motorcycle gangs in Waco on Sunday, when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a Twin Peaks restaurant in the central Texas city.

Where is the White leadership on this? Why aren't moderate Whites speaking out and condemning this? What is it about the white community that allows this culture of violence to flourish?

I am personally loving that we have been discussing whether the Iraq War was right again, and I am loving how every single Republican, even Jeb Bush after some indecision, have declared that the last Republican President's greatest legacy was nothing but a horrible mistake that should have never happened. Paul Krugman hails the opening of a much-needed and long-postponed debate about the Iraq disaster, made inevitable by Bush 3.0. E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes in his latest Washington Post column that "other hawks would rather see the was-the-Iraq-War-right question magically disappear because they know it's a no-win for them."

"Most Americans now think the war was ill-advised. Why remind them that most of the same people who are super hawks now brought them an adventure they deeply regret? Thus did the Wall Street Journal editorial page on Friday come out firmly and unequivocally in favor of -- evasion. "The right answer to the question is that it's not a useful or instructive one to answer, because statesmanship, like life, is not conducted in hindsight." On the GOP side it may be that Jeb's blundering is very bad news for Lindsey Graham and other Iraq war supporterts and equivocators, but good news for Rand Paul.

NY Times:

So Jeb Bush now says he would not have invaded Iraq if he knew then what he knows today. Neither would Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John R. Kasich, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum or Marco Rubio. In fact, Mr. Rubio said, “Not only would I not have been in favor of it, President Bush would not have been in favor of it.” Which raises an interesting question: Would George W. Bush still have authorized the invasion in 2003 had he known that Iraq did not actually have the unconventional weapons that intelligence agencies said it did? Mr. Rubio’s staff said he based his comment on the fact that Mr. Bush had expressed regret about the false intelligence he relied on and — since the war was predicated on it — it is reasonable to assume he would have decided differently, if he had known differently. But in fact, while Mr. Bush has said he was sick to learn the intelligence was off base, he has always defended his decision to invade Iraq as the right one, arguing that the world is still better off without Saddam Hussein.

This really presents a logical conundrum for Republicans. Because for the last two years, hell, for the last seven years, every single Republican has criticized President Obama for withdrawing from Iraq, and then they blamed that pullout for the rise of ISIS. But how can that be? If they all now think that the U.S. invasion was wrong, then they have to blame President Bush for the consequences. And the consequences were sectarian violence and terrorism. We liberals said so at the time. And we were right.