memeorandum: Rice Outlines Saudi Arms Package (New York Times)

4:50 PM ET, July 30, 2007

Top Items:

A War We Just Might Win — VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility.

Discussion: The Newshoggers, Think Progress, Lawyers, Guns and Money, Times of London, Election Central, Power Line, Townhall.com, The Atlantic Online, TigerHawk, The Swamp, Althouse, Angry Bear, NewsBusters.org, Winds of Change.NET, A Chequer-Board of Nights …, Right Wing Nut House, Liberty Street, The Belmont Club, Eschaton, The Carpetbagger Report, Villainous Company, WTF Is It Now??, Commentary, Hot Air, Political Punch, No More Mister Nice Blog, rubber hose, Wake up America, Thomas P.M. Barnett, BBC, TIME: Swampland, Middle Earth Journal, Taylor Marsh, BLACKFIVE, USS Neverdock, The Strata-Sphere, Connecting.the.Dots, Informed Comment, The Sundries Shack, Balloon Juice, Gateway Pundit, National Review, JustOneMinute, Donklephant, Neptunus Lex, Clayton Cramer's BLOG, Flopping Aces, Captain's Quarters, The Moderate Voice, Weekly Standard, Right Wing News, Dr. Sanity, Jules Crittenden, WILLisms.com, UrbanGrounds, Blue Crab Boulevard, Betsy's Page, QandO, PrairiePundit, Dean's World, Macsmind, Transterrestrial Musings, Comments From Left Field, TIME, The Young Turks, Sister Toldjah and INDCJournal

Glenn Greenwald / Salon:

The really smart, serious, credible Iraq experts O'Hanlon and Pollack — (updated below) — What is the most vivid and compelling evidence of how broken our political system is? It is that the exact same people who urged us into the war in Iraq, were wrong in everything they said …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Norwegianity, skippy the bush kangaroo and NewsBusters.org

Joe Klein / TIME: Swampland:
What's Missing in this Column?

Discussion: TigerHawk, Open Left, NewsBusters.org, BLACKFIVE, PoliBlog (TM) and Grasping Reality …

White House:

President Bush Participates in Joint Press Availability with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom — PRESIDENT BUSH: Welcome, thank you. It's good to have you here. So everybody is wondering whether or not the Prime Minister and I were able to find common ground, to get along, to have a meaningful discussion.

Discussion: First Draft and The Carpetbagger Report

George Pascoe-Watson / The Sun:

PM hails Bush's leadership — Tee cosy ... Brown & Bush in Camp David golf buggy — GORDON Brown last night praised George Bush for leading the global war on terror — saying the world owed America a huge debt. — The Prime Minister vowed to take Winston Churchill's lead and make Britain's ties with America even stronger.

Discussion: NEWS.com.au, Guardian, Right Wing News, Spectator, Barcepundit, Hennessy's View and Pajamas Media

Michael Abramowitz / Washington Post: Bush, Brown Present United Front on Iraq

Mike Allen / The Politico:

Fred's funds raise fear of flop — Fred Thompson plans to announce Tuesday that his committee to test the waters for a Republican presidential campaign raised slightly more than $3 million in June, substantially less than some backers had hoped, according to Republican sources.

Discussion: Comments From Left Field, The Carpetbagger Report, PoliBlog (TM), ComMITTed to Romney! and Daily Kos

Porkbusters:

weak tea indeed: democratic leaders water down ethics & earmark reform bill — Porkbusters obtained the latest version of the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007'', and as expected, the Democratic leadership has worked some funny business to dilute some of the Act's key provisions.

Tapscott's Copy Desk:

Reid and Pelosi are gutting earmark reform — Some of my Senate sources have gotten a copy of the 107 page "ethics and earmark reform" bill crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. — What they are finding in it confirms what I've suspected for months …

Discussion: Bluey Blog

Reuters:

Taliban: Male hostage shot dead — KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) — Taliban kidnappers shot dead a male South Korean hostage on Monday, a spokesman said, accusing the Afghan government of not listening to rebel demands. — "We shot dead a male captive because the government did not listen to our demands …

Agence France Presse:
Taliban kills South Korean hostage: spokesman

Discussion: Hot Air and Macsmind

Mervyn Rothstein / New York Times:

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89 — Ingmar Bergman, the "poet with the camera" who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said.

Discussion: Washington Post, DownWithTyranny!, Roger L. Simon, David E's Fablog, Pajamas Media, Reason Magazine, Connecting.the.Dots, Althouse and Marginal Revolution

Michael J. Totten:

Baghdad Raid Night — BAGHDAD - "We want to use you as bait," Sergeant Eduardo Ojeda from Los Angeles, California, told me before I embedded with his unit on what was shaping up to be a night raid. — "Excellent," I said. "That's why I'm here." — This is what passes for black Army humor in Baghdad.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, michellemalkin.com and PrairiePundit

The Atlantic Online:

The Meta-Go-Round — Sam Boyd notes the media's bizarre flip-flops and double-reversals on the subject of the Obama-Clinton debate spat. The pathology he's identifying is the exact one James Fallows focuses on in the piece I plugged this morning — a pathological aversion to talk about the substance of things.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Who Is IOZ? and Brian Beutler

Sam Boyd / American Prospect: The group blog of The American Prospect

ABCNEWS:

Surveillance Cameras Win Broad Support — Majority of Americans Favor Extra Safety Factor of Cameras — Crime-fighting beats privacy in public places: Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras — a measure decried by some civil libertarians …

Discussion: Heading Right, Comments From Left Field, The Gun Toting Liberal™, At-Largely, Reason Magazine, JammieWearingFool, The Heretik, Captain's Quarters and Vox Popoli

Robert D. Novak / Washington Post:

Bush's Turkish Gamble — The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation …

Discussion: FP Passport, Firedoglake, Booman Tribune, Who Is IOZ?, Shakespeare's Sister and The Atlantic Online

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: An Immoral Philosophy — What kind of philosophy says that it's O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, The Carpetbagger Report, Liberal Values, All Spin Zone, Brian Beutler, Shakespeare's Sister, Middle Earth Journal, Dohiyi Mir, Crooks and Liars and Grasping Reality …

Rob Hotakainen / McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Congress eyes pay raise for itself — WASHINGTON — After raising the minimum wage by 70 cents an hour this week, many members of Congress are ready to give themselves a pay increase of roughly $4,400 per year. — That would take their annual salaries to nearly $170,000.

Discussion: The Swamp

New York Post:

NERVY JUDITH RATTLED HILLARY — JUDITH Giuliani is an opportunistic, puppy-killing homewrecker who has a full-time hairstylist and needs an extra seat on planes for "Baby Louis," her Louis Vuitton handbag - at least according to a hatchet job on the former mayor's wife in the September issue of Vanity Fair.

Discussion: DownWithTyranny!, Taylor Marsh, TIME, Charleston Daily Mail, National Review and Inside Long Island Politics

Robin Toner / New York Times:

Anti-Abortion Leaders Size Up G.O.P. Candidates — After 30 years of political organizing within the Republican Party, the anti-abortion movement has won a series of victories in legislatures and courts and stands tantalizingly close to winning even more. But these are anxious days for the movement.

Discussion: All Spin Zone, DownWithTyranny!, The Crone Speaks, TPMCafe blogs, Shakespeare's Sister and The RBC

Dan Balz / Washington Post:

A True Political Partner — John Edwards's Wife Has Helped Shape His Presidential Bid and Often Shares Its Spotlight — Aboard a small chartered jet, Elizabeth Edwards — lawyer, mother, author, cancer patient, candidate's wife — was flying recently from New Hampshire to Iowa.