Interested (a photo that I took recently)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that he was disappointed by criticism from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates over the release of about 76,000 pages of U.S. documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

Gates said Thursday that the massive leak will have significant impact on troops and allies, revealing techniques and procedures.

Assange rejected that assessment Friday, saying in a release that Gates "has overseen the killings of thousands of children and adults" in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, also criticized Assange and the person who gave him the documents. WikiLeaks, Mullen said, was risking lives to make a political point.

"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," Mullen said Thursday at a Pentagon news conference.

I still think Assange is a useful idiot. He's being used because his self-righteousness is his Achilles heel. The intelligence and defense communities know how to exploit self-righteousness. I don't care whether you're talking about the United States, Britain, France or wherever else--self-righteousness is what turns the screw when it comes to justifying a bloated defense budget. There are players, and then there are the people being played. Who has mastered the game? Assange? Please.

He represents a world view that is inherently anti-American and anti-Western, provided that he is still able to make money in Western society without being incarcerated or marginalized. The events of the last few months have inflated his sense of entitlement. Well, he has the freedom to be a powerful, influential figure solely because the intelligence gathering agencies and the defense ministries and the larger national security community of the Western nations (mostly just NATO) have not done what their counterparts in most of the world would have done and that is kill him outright.

If you need further proof that there is a judicious hand behind what we're doing, look no further than the fact that Assange is still alive. Speaks volumes.

Here's Nate Silver on what might be "in play" this silly season:

In fact, there are 101 Democrat-held seats that are rated as something other than safe by at least one of the "Big 4" forecasters (Cook, CQ, Rothenberg, Sabato). And if you include Real Clear Politics' forecasts in the mix, the total rises to 108.

That's a fairly liberal definition of "in play", but at least it's one with some concrete standard attached. By a slightly more conservative definition -- a seat is "in play" if at least three of the five forcasters noted above think it is -- the figure is 89 seats, still higher than the range that the DCCC memo suggests.

But I don't know that we should be erring on the side of conservativism in defining the number of seats that are "in play". Occasionally, in a wave election, a few seats that nobody was polling and nobody was paying attention to might wind up switching sides: one instance I recall is the IA-2 district in 2006, which was won by then-obscure political science professor Dave Loebsack, who edged out 15-term (!) Republican incumbent Jim Leach. (I was following the race intently because Leach, although a moderate Republican overall, was a leading proponent of the legislation to prohibit online poker, from which I was making a portion of my living at the time.)

I sense that the apathy is stronger than the noise. Sure, there is a fair amount of "throw the bums" out being generated. But what if a few economic indicators begin to tick upwards this fall? What if there's good news on the job front after the summer is over?

Obstructionism does not inspire people to vote. I know that this was the strategy adopted by the beaten and cowed Republicans when President Obama took office, but that strategy comes with its own pitfalls. It's one thing to make a lot of noise and say that your opponent is not doing the right thing. It's another thing when all you've been doing is blocking the wrong things and the right things and everything else.

Obstructionism is a temporary strategy, one that has to be followed by substantive proposals, statesmanship, and a bit of inspiration. If you can get people talking about what you stopped, what you want to do, and how that might benefit the country, you have the chance to roll a national election into a takeover of Congress.

When the Republicans took back the House in 1994 and when the Democrats took it in 2006, there were clearly defined examples presented in many races as to what the party would do and what it stood for. You could argue that those were elections where ideas counted and where the national sentiment was such that anyone with a decent idea and a good head of hair stood a pretty good chance of getting their ticket punched for at least one term in Congress.

Okay, but how does this translate into what's necessary to take back the House this year? What are people voting for? More obstructionism?

Where are the ideas, in other words? I'm not hearing any.

Many wish Howard Dean had retired to a farm in Vermont

I admire Nancy Pelosi because she is tough, gets things done, and doesn't take crap from the right wing or any one else. After the year and a half this country has just been through, it is pretty obvious that the right-wing has no intention of cooperating with anyone, and that they will do anything to regain power, just as they were willing to do anything to hold on to it. The only reasonable approach is to stand up to them as you would any group of bullies. Call them out for what they do- or don't do as the case may be. If the Tea Party can call out some of their own members, surely we can call out a group of people who have put their party ahead of their country.

I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough. The fact is that the stimulus package has reduced unemployment from where it would have otherwise been in this Bush-induced recession (based on policies most of the Republicans now in Congress voted for). The fact is, as 60 members of the House and the CBO showed last week, the Public Option, or Medicare Buy-in, as it should more correctly be called, would have reduced the deficit over ten years by an additional $68 million dollars. The fact is that President Obama -- despite Republicans killing the climate change bill -- has done more in 18 months to change America's approach to the environment and green jobs than any president in memory.

The fact is that if we are going to tackle the deficit, it makes no sense to cut taxes for people with plenty of money while we tell people who depend on Social Security and Medicare that they have to do with less, or to play games with unemployment insurance for those who need it most.

Let me point out that:

1. The Democrat Party won a major, major landslide in 2008 and immediately began governing as if it had barely won the election.

2. The Democrat Party had few options available to it in January 2009, but drawing down our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, reforming the financial and banking sectors, bringing competent leaders to the Executive Branch, getting Americans back to work in real jobs not phony, temporary ones, and reducing the number of government contractors were options that weren't even on the table, but they should have been. The best way out of a bad economy is to find a way to create and sustain job growth while reducing unemployment. Tell me how a lobbyist-driven health care bill accomplished any of that.

3. The Democrat Party has always been a bullied party of cowards, physical or moral and sometimes both.

4. The Government shouldn't create jobs on a temporary basis because the results and the benefits don't sustain economic growth over the long term.

5. Raising taxes is a sure sign that you don't want people to vote for you.

Poor Howard Dean. He was the most effective voice of the Democrat Party when his part took control of the Congress and then the White House and all he has to show for it was the loss of his job, the damage to his professional reputation, and the cold shoulder of the man who wouldn't be President had it not been for the radical shift in strategy and organization that Dean put into place when the Democrat Party was on its ass.

Sounds like American Politics 101 to me.