Democrats.com is holding a contest for the best video comparing Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon and making the case for impeachment, with a $1000 prize going to the winner. All you have to do is make it and upload it to YouTube by noon ET on Thursday, August 9th—the 33rd anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation. More information here.

Kenneth Pollack, writing an op-ed for the New York Times with Michael O’Hanlon today:

A War We Might Just Win

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with…

[T]here is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Kenneth Pollack, writing in The Threatening Storm in 2002:

Saddam has a twenty-eight year pattern of aggression, violence, miscalculation, and purposeful underestimation of the consequences of his actions that should give real pause to anyone…

Even when Saddam does consider a problem at length…his own determination to interpret geopolitical calculations to suit what he wants to believe anyway lead him to construct bizarre scenarios that he convinces himself are highly likely.

Rick Perlstein tells a dreadfully sad story involving his grandmother and Fox News, here.

There really are no words for people who make it their life’s work to encourage Americans to hate and fear each other. By contrast, some days it seems like it’s only anti-American America-haters like us who actually like other Americans.

BLURG: Borrowed from here.

Tom Engelhardt: “The Withdrawal Follies: The Bush Administration Plants Its Flag in the Future”

Chalmers Johnson reviews the new history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes

Ira Chernus: “The Democrats’ Iraqi Dilemma: Questions Unasked, Answers Never Volunteered”

The well-known hate site BillO’Reilly.com is being investigated by the Secret Service for threatening Hillary Clinton’s life. Well, actually it was just some commenter, but by Billo’s own standards, if the comment is on his site, that means he condones it. Why does Bill O’Reilly want Hillary Clinton to die?

Funny thing. As it turns out, when the cost of one of the basic necessities of life, i.e. shelter, triples and quadruples within a few short years, the rest of the economy is impacted as well.

Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, said yesterday that more borrowers with good credit were falling behind on their loans and that the housing market might not begin recovering until 2009 because of a decline in house prices that goes beyond anything experienced in decades.

The news from Countrywide, widely seen as a bellwether for the mortgage market, initiated a sell-off in the stock market, which is at its most volatile in more than a year. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 30.53 points, or 2 percent, to 1,511.04, its biggest one-day drop in nearly five months. The dollar dropped to a new low against the euro, edging closer to $1.40 to 1 euro. Stocks opened sharply lower in Japan this morning.

The slumping housing market has become the biggest worry for the stock market, which just four days ago set records, because of its potential impact on the broader economy and financial system.

Countrywide’s stark assessment signaled a critical change in the substance and tenor of how housing executives are publicly describing the market. Just a couple of months ago, some executives were predicting a relatively quick recovery and saying that most home loans would be fine with the exception of those made to borrowers with weak credit who stretched too far financially.

Executives at Countrywide had for some time been more skeptical than others but the bluntness of their comments yesterday surprised many on Wall Street. In a conference call with analysts that lasted three hours, Countrywide’s chairman and chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo, said home prices were falling “almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression.”

Related cartoon here.

Actual quote from O’Reilly: “Doing business with people who traffic in hate-filled diatribes is unacceptable.”

On Friday John Conyers appeared at an event in San Diego. While speaking there he said that he would support the introduction of articles of impeachment if three additional members of Congress ask him to do so. (He seemed to say he meant in addition to the 13 current co-sponsors of Kucinich’s bill H.Res. 333 regarding Cheney.)

Below is a transcript of Conyers’ remarks. Video should be available soon.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Call Conyers at 202-225-5126 and ask him to start hearings on the impeachment of Dick Cheney. Phone your own Congressmember at 202-224-3121 and ask them to co-sponsor H.Res. 333 and express their support for impeachment to Conyers.

CONYERS: Now, let me close with this one suggestion, is that I need some Members of Congress to come to me and say Mr Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I heard you were out in San Diego, and they really put it to you, and you made commitments that we don’t know if you were just saying… saying something to get out of that hotel alive (laughter) or were you, or were you serious and here’s what we need to do. We need to have three Members of Congress from anywhere come and say, “Congressman, if you, if you are willing to support an inquiry into a resolution of whether there had been acts of impeachability conducted by the Vice President of, and the President of the United States, that could lead to High Crimes and Misdemeanors, then we will join you if you introduce such a resolution”…

QUESTIONER: We do have House Resolution 333.

CONYERS: I’m talking about more. Look. And so let us see how many people would be willing to back us up…

I want to examine and put forward as we move along a close, critical examination of all of the benefits and the costs involved in making this momentous decision. Um. It’s easy to say that this is, this is a no brainer. It’s, the logic is all on one side, and I wish that were so. If it were so, you would be here congratulating me for doing what you had been asking me and others to do for so long.

So let’s think soberly about it. I have to think about the future. I have to weigh what this, the impact of this is going to be. And, by the way, you probably know, that there is such a thing as the retroactive impeachment process…If you introduced the resolution of impeachment after the person is gone.

Comics fans in NYC should be sure to go see my friends Peter Kuper and Kevin Pyle on Sunday night. Details here.