The Senate is moving closer to a vote on PEPFAR, but there is still time to fix the bill allowing the work horse of prevention to pull the cart of treatment, lightening the load by reducing the number of people infected. Congress has burdened the horse with ideology, and put the cart in front.

Originally posted at RH Reality Check.

A Mississippi congressional district that voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin in 2004 recently elected a Democrat to Congress.  In fact, Republicans have now lost three special congressional elections in a row in previously reliable Republican districts.  What is wrong with the Republican Party?

For a self-proclaimed expert on Iraq, John McCain certainly spends a lot of time being wrong about it. Yesterday McCain made the laughable claim that troop levels in Iraq are back to "pre-surge levels." Said McCain:

I can look you in the eye and tell you it is succeeding.  We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.

Wrong.  There are currently more than 150,000 servicemen and women in Iraq, versus the 130,000 that were there before George Bush's "surge."  And what was the McCain campaign's reaction when they were called out on this?

Advisers to Sen. John McCain said the flap over whether the senator was mistaken about the troop level in Iraq is nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."

And on a conference call, McCain's foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann "refused to acknowledge that McCain had been mistaken," obviously following the Bush administration tradition of never being wrong, even in the face of pesky little things like reality and facts.  And McCain advocate Senator Jon Kyl?  His reaction to McCain's latest screw-up would make Donald "The troops are fungible" Rumsfeld proud:

"So what?" he asked. "What does that amount to?"

Only 20 or 30,000 people's lives.  

Update:  Great diary from beachmom on this subject here.

Federal agents interviewed staffers for likely Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) as part of their corruption case against Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.).

U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Diane J. Humetewa and fellow prosecutors disclosed the interviews with aides for McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl in a written response to Renzi’s attorneys, who asked for the contents of the interview to help prepare for Renzi’s upcoming trial, which is scheduled for October.

The aides were interviewed about land exchanges, according to an April letter from Humetewa filed with the U.S. District Court of Arizona late last week. The letter did not indicate when the interviews occurred.

A federal land swap critical to developing a $3 billion copper mine southeast of Phoenix is at the heart of the case against Renzi, who is facing 35 public corruption charges, including conspiracy, money-laundering, extortion and insurance fraud. Renzi is retiring at the end of this session.

They also mentioned that they have requested documents from both Arizona senators’ offices. http://thehill.com/...

Chris Matthews needs the masses to ask him to watch this video FOX Lies!!! Is Rev. Wright .Support Barack Obama since he apparently doesn't know it exists, and he'd like to know if John McSame should run on National Security or not. John Kyl thinks that the Democratic Congress has acted like Hoover, and apparently black people are a new high risk group for loans, Chuck Todd admits to the media bias shown by the press for McBush, Lindsey Graham is really good at not answering questions since he's allowed to fillibuster instead of actually having to answer to anything, Hagel gives George Stephanopolous a piece of his mind, Hume thinks McCranky just had a "senior moment", Peggy Noonan thinks Richardson looks like Rod Steiger in Dr. Zhivago, and apparently Pat Buchanan doesn't know the difference between gay people and pedophiles. And Bill Maher had a few things to say as well.

Videos below.

You have to wonder how Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson
would deal with this dog Mitch McConnell

[Click here for larger image]

This Republican minority in the Senate is the WORST MINORITY PARTY EVER. They are the Superbad Minority. Not only do we have to suffer the WORST PRESIDENT EVER, but we have to endure the most obstructionist Senate minority in history. Will Democratic Leadership use political skill and media savvy to make this an issue that resonates with voters?

Superbad Minority is a gut-buster of Senatorial proportions.

[Click here for larger image]

A group of hapless dorkwads use laugh-a-minute shenanigans to block any progress on behalf of the American audience. Posing as Mitch McLovin, Mitch McConnell leads the the geek boys on a Capital Hill raunch-fest too laughalisious to be missed. Joined by a veterans of the intestinal blockage genre, John Cornyn and Jon Kyl, McLovin and company take us on an adolescent romp down obstructionist lane. These misfits have a simple goal in life. They need to get PAID. And they will do anything to achieve satisfaction.

Don't miss Superbad Minority in chambers today.
Write your own review in comments.

John Edwards released a statement today about Hillary Clinton's newest slogan (video):

"The war in Iraq isn’t even history yet, but the Bush Administration is repeating the march to war with Iran – and they’re getting help from a person who should know a lot better – Senator Clinton.

"On Saturday at the Iowa Jefferson Jackson dinner, Senator Clinton unveiled her new campaign slogan to ‘turn up the heat’ on the Republicans.

"Well, somebody will have to tell me how you ‘turn up the heat’ by voting with Bush, Cheney and the neocons on their path to war with Iran. Because I don't believe that's turning up the heat – I think that's giving them exactly what they want.

"Senator Clinton had her chance to stand up and she chose not to use it. Our nation needs leaders who have the strength and backbone to fight the president on his march to war with Iran – not quicken the pace."

In yesterday's diary entry, I disproved the Clinton campaign's claim that it was hypocritical to support S.970 but oppose the Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

Today, I turn to a couple of other myths:  that a vote for Kyl-Lieberman was a vote for diplomacy, and that her co-sponsorship of the Webb amendment (which would prohibit expenditures for an attack on Iran) effectively balances out her vote for Kyl-Lieberman.

More ugliness below the fold.

General Wesley Clark published an article in the Huffington Post the other day titled "I Support Hillary's Position on Iran."

It's a short article, and doesn't elaborate all that much.  But it does make clear that General Clark supports the Kyl-Lieberman amendment passed in the Senate last week -- with solid Republican support (only Hagel and Lugar voted "no"), and the votes of quite a few Democrats.

(hay mas:)

If we've learned one thing about the Bush administration, it's that if at first they don't succeed with a stunt, they'll pull, pull and pull it again until they get away with it.  Thus it is that even as Senators Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) and Joe Lieberman (?-Connecticut) attempted to sneak a declaration of war against Iran into the defense spending bill, the military's propaganda machine in Iraq was spoon feeding the press more "evidence" that Iran is helping Iraqi militants attack U.S. troops.  

We've seen this sort of thing before.

So, our frontrunner, our "leader" seems perfectly willing to stand side by side with Joe Lieberman and the neocons on the march to war with Iran.
It's with great sadness that I present today's Headzup cartoon.

***UPDATE- I forgot there is a swear word at the end- so NSFW

There appears to be some confusion in reaction to a Think Progress post and a recommended diary based on it.  Both the post and the diary begin:

By a vote 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran via "military instruments."

But this is not true, as an update to Think Progress, also posted in the diary, points out.  The two paragraphs from which these quotes were taken have been entirely removed from the amendment.  The amendment still designates recommends designation of (h/t: Little) Iran's Revolutionary Guards forces as a terrorist organization, however, and that does take us closer to military action against Iran.

UPDATE: The Carpetbagger Report includes more about the current version vs. the earlier version.

ThinkProgress is reporting that:

By a vote 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran via "military instruments." Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment "Cheney’s fondest pipe dream" and said it could "read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action."

Brought to you by...
News Corpse
The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.

With Al Qaeda having already stated it's plan to entangle us in the Middle East and thus bleed our economy white, it's clear that the expansion of the war into Iran would suit that goal.  Bin Laden and his lieutenants understood the strategy of avoiding set-piece battles and bleeding the Russians in a 10-year war of attrition, the only way to bring down a superpower.  So a vote for the Kyl-Lieberman declaration of war on Iran is a vote for Al Qaeda.

This Al Qaeda strategy goes hand-in-hand with the goal of an American presence which fuels resentment of our allied regimes and eventually causes them to fall.  With worldwide revulsion at 9/11 taking its toll on bin Laden's popularity, it was up to George Bush to overplay his hand.  

This he did nicely.  Now bin Laden is taking advantage of our being bogged down in Iraq, and the inflamed anti-American climate the occupation has caused.  It's time for Osama to send Bush a big rum-soaked fruit cake for allowing him to go forward perfectly according to plan in Pakistan, even as we contemplate war with Iran...

There have been 2 great diaries on this already... and they gone down the DKOS black hole.
Please see:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
&
http://www.dailykos.com/...

There might still be a vote today or it might still be in the pipe line to a vote in the Senate for the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment Seeks To Escalate Possibility Of Military Action Against Iran: SA 3017 !
see:
http://thinkprogress.org/...  ,is only Fox/propaganda covering this?!
&
http://thinkprogress.org/... Sen. Webbs take on this amendment:

More below:

I know I'm under the weather today and more than a little light-headed, but I didn't know I was downright delusional. However, as I read DKos I only see one diary languishing down page about the impending amendment authorizing an attack on Iran.

What the hell are we waiting for, Kossacks? Why is Stop the Kyl-Lieberman Iran War authorization (up today) not on the rec list?

We all know what happens when we allow the media to cheerlead us into a war in the Middle East. We all know what happens when this administration gets a blank check to start dropping bombs.

So why aren't we taking a stand right now?

The Kyle-Lieberman (and now Coleman and Alexander) amendment that I diaried about a few days ago is likely to be voted on today. The amdendment is nothing short of another blank check authorizing military "retaliation" to "contain or roll back" Iran and designate Iran's military a "terrorist" organization. The key part of the amendment says:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments in support of the policy...

Please call your Senator right now and ask for a No vote on SA 3017.

More background info, including statement from Sen. Webb below the fold.