Oh the Condescenscion we'll See

With apologies to Dr. Suess...

It was only 12 hours late, but we now know who the Democrat VP nominee is. Everybody's favorite blowhard, Joe Biden. On paper, in terms of experience, he's certainly helpful. But then after you start to really look you realize his mouth is a bigger liability than his experience is an asset.

Conservative/Republican reactions include the following:

From the "I wish I'd thought of that" category: One last thought before bed: Imagine McCain picking Gov. Bobby Jindal. First line at the debate, "Senator, before we begin our debate, let me clarify for you that I don't work at a 7-11."

Hugh Hewitt, never a Biden fan, shreds the pick: Rob Long asks "Isn't [Biden] sort of the stupid person's idea of the smart person's candidate?" Yes, he is. But that's not fair to stupid people. Even stupid people who watched Biden embarrass himself during the Alito hearings --remember the "I hate Princeton" moment followed by the donning of the Princeton cap?-- know that Slow Joe is all tenure and no talent.

I was worried that the Dems had pointed out to Obama that his serial gaffing had brought the campaign close to a break point and that he needed Hillary. I was worried he'd actually go find Anthony Zinni or Sam Nunn or someone of accomplishment and purposefulness in foreign affairs. Webb would have been hell on the stump. Kaine or Bayh would have put different states into play. Sebelius was a wild card.

Jim Geraghty again: Man, the attack ads on Obama featuring quotes from his own running mate are just going to be brutal:

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’”

Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.”
(ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)

Picture the voice over: "If his own running mate has doubts about whether he's ready for the job... shouldn't you?"

The ever-wimsical Tom Maguire says of it: By way of the Ace we see this image hosted at the Obama website (I am not the most computer-savvy guy going, but I am satisfied this is no spoof.)

Coupled as it is with the Biden announcement, I can only infer that the Obamaites think they laid an egg (no dissent here).

I'll be saving a screen shot, you can bet.

Bigger Media says:

"The candidate of change went with the status quo."


If my pick were Biden...I'd wait until late Friday night to leak it, too. It seems appropriate to wake up to that and Saturday morning cartoons.

RELATED: No Biden bump. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll completed last night, three-quarters of voters said picking Biden would not sway their votes one way or the other.

Foreign policy experience? How difficult is it to follow the French?

This is gonna be fun...

Biden's mouth is going to do it's level best to talk McCain to a comfortable--landslide?--electoral vote victory. He's like most Democrats in that regard; he can't help himself.

It's 3 A.M., do you know where your President is?

We woke up to war yesterday, with pictures flooding CNN and Fox of Russian tanks rumbling through South Ossetia, a 'breakaway' province of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. And today things are seen escalating with Russia attacking the provincial capital of Tskhinvali.



Hugh Hewitt rightly noted yesterday the inherent danger of the situation--as have others since--with the apt reference to Hillary Clinton's '3 A.M.' ad. To the best of my knowledge, we haven't heard much out of Senator Obama's campaign on this subject...

Yes, Virginia, Republicans do have a Spine

This was great political theatre yesterday...

The Other -ism

I'm relieved to hear that the McCain campaign is not guilty of racism:

Republican candidate John McCain's presidential campaign is cynical, not racist, in its efforts to distract voters from real issues, Democratic rival Barack Obama said Saturday.

"In no way do I think that John McCain's campaign was being racist," Obama said in his first meeting with reporters since predicting that McCain and other Republicans would try to scare voters because Obama looks unlike "all those other presidents on the dollar bills" - most of them older white men.

"I think they're cynical," he said. "And I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues."

Did he let Big Media in on the secret?

What qualifies as 'Progress'...?

This, it would seem:

The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization.

Steve Schippert at NRO certainly believes so:

Read the entire article, as it is perhaps the most important dispatch from Iraq yet. It will prove to be the seminal report affirming the decisive disintegration of al-Qaeda in Iraq and confirmation that the insurgency in Iraq has collapsed.

There are reasons to be quite optimistic that this report is (and will hold to be) accurate. Conditions on the ground in Iraq for al-Qaeda are undeniably bleak, with no visible window for turnaround. The surge, a strategy that brought lasting security to Iraqis within their neighborhoods, emboldened Iraqis to stand in their own defense — an act that had equated to suicide until U.S. forces left their garrisons and made camp among the populations. And Iraqis are growing exponentially more self-confident. Al-Qaeda's future in Iraq holds diminishing returns, a reality not lost upon bin Laden and the global leadership holed up inside Pakistan.

Not only are foreign terrorist influx rates down to about 20 per month, as the Post notes, but al-Masri left with 15 other al-Qaeda leaders. If he had left simply to discuss strategy with an angry bin Laden and return, he would not have sapped the Iraqi theater of significant leadership and appointed an "interim" commander (likely with little expectation the "appointee" will survive). But he did.

Schippert seems to get a little ahead of the Post's actual report but, generally speaking, it sounds like there's good reason to think the insurgency--at least as we've known it to-date--is all but done for.

And that is a good thing...

Give in to your anger...

In response to a good-faith argument about Iraq, what are you likely to get?

Well, in this case it's all about me and the rest of the rats...

Solid.

What should be a no-brainer...

Congress deadlocked over offshore drilling:

With a gallon of gas hovering at $4, energy prices are the No. 1 issue on voters' minds. But congressional leaders are increasingly deadlocked over what to do. In response, frustrated rank-and-file members on both sides of the aisle are stepping up efforts to find common ground.

Opt out

I really don't need to be saved from myself...

In a state that is desperate for more power, saddled with a sluggish economy and bearing the brunt of the 'housing crisis', it's nice to see the Governor tackling the big and urgent questions of the day.

I know you are but what am I!?

Nancy Pelosi says today of President Bush (not the Administration, but the President himself):

"God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.

"For him to be challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again -- at the end of the day, Congress will have passed its responsibility to pass legislation," she said.

It would be bracing criticism if not for the fact that Bush--the object of so much derision and ire--is more than twice as popular as Pelosi's 110th Congress.

A Challenge of my own

I've got a challenge of my own...can Al Gore stay away from microphones and television cameras for even one day?

That's why it's called a Futures Market

Yet another lesson in the basics of Free markets today...

The Mainstream press reads: Crude oil was little changed below $139 a barrel in New York after tumbling more than $6 yesterday because of concern a slower U.S. economy will curtail demand.

Prices dropped as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said risks to growth and inflation have risen, in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. He abandoned a June assessment that the threat of an economic slowdown had diminished.

Then there's this alternative analysis from a bit earlier in the day: In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

Now isn’t this interesting?

Regardless of the reason, the larger point is still the only point--the market reflects the future possibilities of increases, decreases in supply, demand and even the occasional indirect effect (think Iranian missile tests). And Democrats continue to be wrong and or stupid on the entire subject...

Why you should wait for History to catch up

From the Telegraph UK:

Hating George W. Bush is not only dull and unoriginal, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of the world in which we live in.

You want liberty but you don’t want to defend it... right.

Does your wife know about this?

More is in fact almost always better it turns out...

Liberals meet World

Might make for a truly interesting reality-TV program watching lefties run head-first into the real world...

The Pew Center's latest survey reveals that it is self-identified liberals who have most changed their attitude about drilling. Indeed, a slightly higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans now say that more energy production is important.

It would be even more amusing if it weren't so painful.

Ironically Ironic Post of the Day

How Mature Democrats think...

A round of Applause

This post has gotten quite a lot of notice in the last couple of days and for a number of reasons. First off, it neatly if not very cynically nails the NY Times' coverage of President-in-waiting, Barack Obama:

In this morning's lead editorial ("New and Not Improved"), they detail and denounce many of Obama's post-Hillary pivots to the center. As their irritation builds, I'm thinking that there are only three positions that could explain this editorial. First, that the editors genuinely believe that Obama could win the general election with his primary season policy ideas. It is believable that they think this because they live inside a Manhattan cocoon, but silly. Second, that the editors would rather that Obama lose than compromise his principles. This seems unlikely in the cold light of a November morning, however satisfying it might feel to spew such romantic drivel on the Fourth of July. Or, third, the editors know that Obama's pivots will be much more believable to the swing voters if the Times denounces them. This theory holds that the editors are pretending to be outraged so as to further deceive the rubes who prefer the Flop to the Flip.

However, what I found most appealing was this pie-in-the-face tothe Times' editorial board found in the following couple of paragraphs:

For bonus comedy gold, note well the gun-control lie embedded in the editorial (emphasis added):

Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms.

Dudes. In the just-decided Heller case, all nine of the Justices of the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment describes an individual right to bear arms. Are you lying to your own readers, or are you so wedded to your own reading of the Constitution -- the anti-freedom reading -- that you will not give it up even when Ruth Bader Ginsberg (for example) disagrees with you? (emphasis added)

Similarly as I did here, Tigerhawk not only points out but also nails the absurdity of the lefts argument on guns as made plain in the Instapundit post but goes deeper and puts meat on the bones. And quite honestly, he does a better job.

All the linkage and twice the sarcasm. Well done...

When measured meets insane

This is what you get when a left-leaning blogger attempts something resembling a measured argument about George W. Bush...in this case, Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum.

LOL at the insanity. I especially loved the letter-writer:

I am appalled. Does Washington Monthly as a magazine support this errant, inaccurate, and uncaring opinion?

I daresay that those unfortunate souls who have been secretly, illegally, and unconstituionally renditioned in unmarked white CIA planes to other countries to be tortured for months -- without recourse to counsel, legal proceedings, or habeas corpus protections -- would be the first to say that Bush's crimes are worse than Bush's. And would they be wrong?

Well -- would they? I'm asking you to defend Kevin's assertion. And if you don't support it, to apologize to your readership. Whether on Kevin's behalf, or not, I don't care -- I'm talking to you. I'm making an ethics and morality check on YOU, the editors.

Yeah, I'm mad. This is how the country slides further and further down the slippery slope to authoritarianism and despotism, when the opinion leaders can't be bothered to call a war criminal a war criminal and a destroyer of the Constitution exactly what he is.

I await your response, and I expect to hear personally from one of you.

Regards,

Rob Conrad
Chicago, IL

The most obvious point (So obvious that it's one of those things you feel guilty pointing out but only for a moment) is of course his confusion of Bush's crimes with those of...Bush; apparently he's so angry he forgot who he was writing about.

Rob needs a big dose of Get Over Yourself...demanding answers from the magazine editors for Kevin's audaciousness. 'Cause after all, he's mad!

I'm no fan of most of Kevin Drum's work as anyone who looks around will notice. But he has all the sympathy in the world on this one.

Kevin's no fan of the President but undertook, as best I can tell, an honest appraisal of the difference, as he sees it, between President Nixon and Bush the younger. And what does he get for his trouble?

The lefty venom that so usually pervades his regular readership turned back onto the unsuspecting author, that's what. I guess though when you've been feeding the bears for years you shouldn't be surprised when one of them takes a bite out of you.

While we're on the subject of Oil

And oil prices...

Buy, buy, buy and drill, drill, drill!:

It’s unfortunate the administration doesn’t seem ready to back this strong rhetoric with some old-fashioned intervention. The Treasury has the authority to buy dollars and sell euros in the open market. Better yet, it can coordinate these efforts with Jean Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. President Bush and Treasury man Paulson also are forgetting the key word: “appreciate.” As in appreciate the dollar. That would be a head turner on Wall Street and on global foreign-exchange markets.

Meanwhile the ECB is raising interest rates which will appreciate the currency against the dollar, and you guessed it, more likely than not boost the price of oil.

Is anybody in D.C. paying attention...?

Why Democrats are wrong...

...when they tell you starting to explore and/or drill for new oil won't affect the price:

Now here is the good news. Any policy that causes the expected future oil price to fall can cause the current price to fall, or to rise less than it would otherwise do. In other words, it is possible to bring down today's price of oil with policies that will have their physical impact on oil demand or supply only in the future.

For example, increases in government subsidies to develop technology that will make future cars more efficient, or tighter standards that gradually improve the gas mileage of the stock of cars, would lower the future demand for oil and therefore the price of oil today.

Similarly, increasing the expected future supply of oil would also reduce today's price. That fall in the current price would induce an immediate rise in oil consumption that would be matched by an increase in supply from the OPEC producers and others with some current excess capacity or available inventories.

Any steps that can be taken now to increase the future supply of oil, or reduce the future demand for oil in the U.S. or elsewhere, can therefore lead both to lower prices and increased consumption today.

But I leave it to you...you can believe the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan or Chuck Schumer.

When a Cartoonist goes Wrong

What happens when a cartoonist goes off the rails? They look dumb. Really dumb:

What's most striking about Heller is that absolutely everybody -- majority and dissents -- says the Second Amendment protects an individual right.

It's true that the dissenters' view of that right is somewhere between "minimalist" (to be charitable) and "incoherent" (to be accurate). But nonetheless, all nine Justices specifically said the right is individual, and thus rejected the "collective right" position on the Second Amendment, a position that's been the mainstay of gun-control groups, newspaper editorialists, and lower federal courts for decades, and one that was presented by those adherents as so obviously correct that those arguing for an individual right were called "frauds" and shills for the NRA.

Yet the collective right theory could not command a single vote on the Court when actually tested.

Here at the end of all things

We ran this bit of ridiculousness from the AP on the front page (yes, above the fold). How I managed to summon the strength to get on with my day after reading it I still am unsure.

Others better and stronger than I have taken turns ripping it to shreds and rightfully so. James Pethokoukis sheds light on the bad math and Lileks--as only he can do--dismantles everything else.

Question of the Day

Anybody at work paying attention?

"I don't know jack..."

From the Washington Times' report on Scott McClellan's waste of Congressional time, a.k.a. his House testimony on Friday morning:

Under questioning from Democrats he was unable to name anyone who specifically engaged in deception in the run-up to the Iraq war, instead blaming the style of Washington politics for the problems.

He got paid how much to write a book...?

P.S. I think Politco's John Bresnahan is onto something:

The problem: He doesn’t know the whole truth himself.

P.P.S. Saving the best for last, Joe & Val pledge to fight on:

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson released the following statement following former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee today:

“Scott McClellan’s book and his congressional testimony shed some light on — as we alleged in our lawsuit — the decision by senior government officials to betray the identity of a covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson. Many questions, however, such as the role of Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney remain unanswered. Our civil suit, now before the Court of Appeals, is designed to permit us to uncover the truth, to hold to account those who would use their public positions to engage in private political vendettas, and to ensure that future generations of public servants do not engage in such despicable behavior against fellow Americans.

Mr. McClellan’s testimony today underscores why we need to continue to pursue our rights under the American judicial system, and why Congress should also fully investigate the circumstances of the leak, and the subsequent obstruction of justice which is ongoing.”

It's not even funny anymore how absurd this is...

Apologize already...

John Murtha owes a bunch of Marines an apology...this is me holding my breath waiting for that press conference.

Embarrassing

It's been over since last Thursday though it only finally ended tonight. No proof of life at all in the second half and that's just embarrassing.

Will anyone notice that the Guru is 3-8 in his last two trips to the Finals?

Devoid of Common Sense

Oh, but for some common sense from the courts...

Instead, we get things like this:

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected for the third time President Bush's policy of holding foreign prisoners under exclusive control of the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the men have a right to seek their freedom before a federal judge.

The justices said the Constitution from the beginning enshrined the "privilege of habeas corpus" -- or the right to go before a judge -- as one of the safeguards of liberty. And that right extends even to foreigners captured in the war on terrorism, the high court said, particularly when they have been held for as long as six years without charges.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court majority: "The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing. . . . Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the executive to imprison a person."

U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E

The Supreme court earlier this week granted the rights, nay the single-most important constitutional right we have as US citizens, to enemies of the country and foreigners acting as unlawful enemy combatants.

I am not a lawyer, I don't pretend to know or understand the legal concepts here. But I do recognize the absence of common sense when I see it.

Conservative reactions to this ridiculousness:

Start with the minority dissent:

America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 60–61, 70, 190 (2004). On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and 40 in Pennsylvania. See id., at 552, n. 9. It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane anywhere in the country, to know that the threat is a serious one. Our Armed Forces are now in the field against the enemy, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed.

The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.-- Justice Scalia


So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court’s analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation to determine the content of their new habeas right, followed by further litigation to resolve their particular cases, followed by further litigation before the D. C. Circuit— where they could have started had they invoked the DTA procedure.

Not Congress, whose attempt to “determine—through democratic means—how best” to balance the security of the American people with the detainees’ liberty interests, see Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 636 (2006) (BREYER, J., concurring), has been unceremoniously
brushed aside. Not the Great Writ, whose majesty is hardly enhanced by its extension to a jurisdictionally quirky outpost, with no tangible benefit to anyone. Not the rule of law, unless by that is meant the rule of lawyers, who will now arguably have a greater role than military
and intelligence officials in shaping policy for alien enemy combatants. And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s
foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.

I respectfully dissent.

Mark Levin: And what was once considered inconceivable is now compelled by the Constitution, or so five justices have ruled. I fear for my country. I really do. And AP, among others, reports this story as a defeat for "the Bush administration." Really? I see it as a defeat for the nation.

Stick a fork in 'em

The series is over. Good teams don't lose games at home after leading by 24 points...

What she really meant to say...

What Nancy Pelosi said today about gas prices in America:

"We cannot drill our way out of this," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California countered. Opening the wildlife refuge in Alaska would reduce U.S. gasoline prices by one penny per gallon, she said. She and other Democrats blame President George W. Bush's energy policies for the gasoline price spike.

"A barrel of oil now costs four times more than it did when President Bush took office," Pelosi said. "Two oil men in the White House, cost of oil four times higher. Price at the pump: $4 a gallon."

I'm sure she didn't mean it. I mean, how could somebody of her stature be that stupid? Well, judging by this, it's not real hard:

She said oil companies already lease about 68 million acres of land that is not being drilled. She questioned why oil companies were pushing to open up the ANWR in Alaska when so many acres they currently hold are not being developed.

On that point, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation that would compel oil companies to drill in lands they are now leasing from the federal government.

"Oil corporations are trying to take control of as much land now during the oil-friendly Bush administration years, but are holding off on drilling until the price of oil soars to $200 or $300 a barrel so they can make even greater profits," said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat and a sponsor of the drilling bill.

The bill would force oil companies to pay fees for leased lands that go unused. The fees would increase over time. Republicans argue current law already requires oil companies to "use or lose" the lands they lease.

I'm sure what she meant to say was that we can't conserve our way out of this, given the large increase in Global demand coming from China and India in the last few years. I mean, after all, members of Congress can't possibly be that stupid...

Thanks for the Help!

To get the full gist on what exactly this is and where it comes from check this post at Powerline.

To otherwise enjoy the direct and powerfully humurous contrast between the parties simply requires 10 seconds of your time to enlarge and read.

Kinda speaks for itself...

Stupid Congressional Act of the Day

A new feature? Maybe...Lord knows we don't hurt for entries.

At least on this day though it's a one-time deal, courtesy of everybody's favorite Congressional loon:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential contender, said Monday he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi consistently has said impeachment was "off the table."
Kucinich, D-Ohio, read his proposed impeachment language in a floor speech. He contended Bush deceived the nation and violated his oath of office in leading the country into the Iraq war.

Be Less Informed

Jimmy Margulies putting his ignorance of life in the real world on display for all...

Clownshow

Bush is a Traitor

And Clint's a hack...

Job Security

It's all about being the irreplaceable one...

The Height of Economic Illiteracy

Stop the war, fix the economy:

Forty-eight percent said a pullout would help fix the country’s economic problems “a great deal,” and an additional 20 percent said it would help at least somewhat. Some 43 percent said increasing government spending on health care, education and housing programs would help a great deal; 36 percent said cutting taxes.

“Let’s stop paying for this war,” said Hilda Sanchez, 44, of Waterford, Calif. “There are a lot of people who are struggling. We can use the money to pay for medical care and help people who were put out of their homes.”

The subject of leaving Iraq shows a sharp partisan divide — 65 percent of Democrats think it would help the economy a lot, but only 18 percent of Republicans think so.

Oy...

God is Great

God is good...

There was a palpable expectation of history here on chilly night in the Arizona desert. Super Bowl XLII delivered on that score, but history of a different sort was made Sunday.

The Giants, 12-point underdogs, ruined the New England Patriots' quest for a perfect season. New York, which lost six of 16 games during the regular season, prevailed 17-14 at University of Phoenix Stadium.

18-1 is great...unless the 1 is the last game of the season.

I've been saying for weeks that the Pats were due; all the tough games in the playoffs and at the end of the regular season and finding ways to win even on an off night...it couldn't last forever. And it didn't.

Where to Now?

McCain wins Florida and Rudy dropping out...where do conservative voters go now?

I think I'm gonna hurl...

Bad Mood Rising

VDH wonders about California's Groundhog day:

Our poor state is $14 billion plus now in the red, and the Governator has promised no new taxes, wise inasmuch as our sales and income taxes are already among the highest in the country. The University of California system is panicking and sending out emails to us alums, to march en masse on Sacramento for redress!

But lost in the furor is any self-reflection, such as why would UC Davis recently pay John Edwards, multimillionaire trial lawyer, $50,000 plus to give a brief lecture on poverty? Such questions are never answered, much less raised, since the problem is always framed as a matter of a shortage of income, never a surfeit of unnecessary expenditure.

We in California, given the past budget implosions, know the script to follow. We expect that police, fire, prisons, parks etc will be threatened with cut-backs and closure while the state-funded "Center for this" and the "Department of that" will remain untouched, since cutting the essential while protecting the politically-correct superfluous is the only way to scare the voter and achieve higher taxes.

At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world's richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation's largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes.

I suspect that there can be no meaningful compromise in the capitol...not when Democrats in the legislature long to increase taxes and the Governor--for whatever it's worth--keeps saying he won't do such a thing as Hanson points out. So now what?

In the meantime, real estate continues to take it on the chin--the house next door has been on the market for over a year and the owner can't unload it even with a fire-sale sticker of $289,000.

I'm upside down to the tune of $30-$40K on mine, revenues are way down yr-to-yr at work and my income for '07 was down a cool 10% from '06 while the outlook for '08 is no better.

So yes, now what?

Idealogical Purity and Iowa

Iowa goes Huckabee. If the GOP is serious about '08 this is where the madness ends.

Happy Birthday to Me!

On the plus side, I share the day with Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Ramano, Comedian Andy Dick and Television tough-guy Kiefer Sutherland.

On the down side...how 'bout Josef Stalin. Oy...

Principles of Negotiation

Soundtrack of Youth

Well...not exactly, though their music will always remind of High School and College. Caught it this morning and enjoyed the short, entertaining ride to a long-ago past.

It should be the end of it...

But it probably won't be. From late last night:

Richard Armitage appeared on CNN today, discussing Pakistan but also addressing his role as the original leaker in the CIA leak affair. He took the blame for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson's identity, but he also gave us a bit more evidence to show that, from his perspective at least, it was entirely unintentional. But there must be a conspiracy in there somewhere.The segment began with CNN showing a video clip of a recent Valerie Plame Wilson interview:

VALERIE PLAME WILSON: Mr. Armitage did a very foolish thing. He has been around Washington for decades. He should know better. He's a senior government official. Whether he knew where exactly I worked in the CIA, he had no rights to go talking to a reporter about where I worked. That was strictly off-limits.

BLITZER: Those are strong words from Valerie Plame Wilson.

ARMITAGE: They're not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative's name in a memo. The only reason I knew a "Mrs. Wilson," not "Mrs. Plame," worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don't disagree with her words to a large measure.

BLITZER: Normally in memos they don't name covert operatives?

ARMITAGE: I have never seen one named.

BLITZER: And so you assumed she was, what, just an analyst over at the CIA?

ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that's what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.

BLITZER: So, when you told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador's wife, worked at the CIA, and she was involved somehow in getting him this trip to Africa to look for the enriched uranium, if there were enriched uranium going to Iraq, you simply assumed that she was not a clandestine officer of the CIA.

ARMITAGE: Well, even Mr. Novak has said that he used the word "operative" and misused it. No one ever said "operative." And I not only assumed it, as I say, I've never seen a covered agent's name in a memo. However, that doesn't take away from what Mrs. Plame said, it was foolish, yeah. Sure it was.

BLITZER: So you agree with her on that.

ARMITAGE: Yeah. Absolutely.

Seems clear to me that Novak's initial contention that Val wasn't covert was a perfectly logical assumption.

Disincentives

Work is hard enough, how management thinks erecting road blocks is cool has always escaped me...

Sanity Returns

Along with my hour...

The Brand is Everything

When cash isn't King...

Eternal Pessimists

It is a continual dilemma...is the glass half-full or half-empty? Pessimism abounds in the media.

These links today struck me as perfect examples of how every silver-lining has a cloud:

Joe Klein of Time is fishing for bad news in Iraq:

The apparent progress raises two questions: First, as always, what's the catch? And second, if the progress is real, if the Sunni extremists have been routed, if Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed to the point of near pacification, if the bottom-up reconciliation efforts are gaining momentum, what is the U.S. military mission now? Why can't we start bringing home the bulk of our troops immediately?

Paul Krugman, the pessimist's pessimist is at it again. The naysayers were right and the rest of wrong. As usual.

Krugman is actually right this time and there are plenty of negative things to be said about the sub-prime lending mess that we're working ourselves through these days. Krugman's problem, however, isn't his argument or logic--as I said, he's right on this.

It's the persistently and routinely pessimistic outlook that gets him in trouble. He's been predicting recession for going on 5 years now.

Like the proverbial blind squirrel who can't help but stumble upon an acorn, he's bound to be right at some point. But in the meantime, he's cried wolf so often I'm left wondering who is left to hear, much less heed, his warnings.

Where does the time go?

Tomorrow is 15 years. Has it really been that long?

Postcards from Moronica

I'll let this one speak for itself:

There was a small news article about five hostages being traded for prisoners in Afghanistan. Yet it is a large piece of information about Mr. Bush's failure to be a proper leader.

When a government is forced to turn over prisoners for hostages, you get more hostages taken, to force the government to do more things it should not do. Thus, the Afghani government of Hamid Karzai set up by Mr. Bush after the invasion will be increasingly unable to govern.

The one good war Mr. Bush had to fight, Afghanistan, was shoved aside for his personal vengeance against leaders in Iraq. Had Mr. Bush, with the blessing of most countries after 9/11, spent only about half of the money and sent about half the troops to Afghanistan as he has sent to Iraq, Afghanistan would have been rebuilt and shown that democracy works in Islamic countries.

But he did not. We know Iraq is lost, but Mr. Bush won't admit it, leaving our boys to die there for his glory. Now it looks like his stubbornness to keep up pretenses in Iraq will lose Afghanistan, too.

Of a different magnitude

Having survived Maliburn '85 and watched it's repeat in 1993, I'm somewhat sceptical of headlines like this:

Wildfire threatens Pepperdine University...

That is until I started to read. This is already in less than one short day well beyond any previous episodes that I recall:

The blaze had charred at least 1,000 acres, or more than a square mile. Wind that gusted as high as 65 mph carried embers across the Pacific Coast Highway, closing the popular road and setting fire to cars and trees in the parking lot of a shopping center where several stores were damaged.

Television news video showed several other buildings also in flames in the area, including clusters of beach-side homes.

Flames consumed the landmark Castle Kashan, a stately fortress-like home with turrets and arched windows, as about a dozen residents watched from across a street. Chunks of brick fell from the exterior of the burning building overlooking the coast.

...

Erratic wind gusts hampered efforts to drop water from aircraft and pushed flames toward HRL Laboratories, commonly known as Hughes Lab, a research and engineering facility jointly owned by Boeing Co. and General Motors Corp. about a mile north of Pepperdine. One outbuilding caught fire, Boeing spokeswoman Diana Ball said.

Flames engulfed Malibu Presbyterian Church, which had been evacuated, said youth pastor Eric Smith. “That’s the really good news, that everyone’s out and safe,” Smith said.

In addition, high winds have carried burning embers to the beach-side of the Coast Highway reportedly leading to the burning of several beach-side homes and damage to retail buildings and cars at a shopping center across the highway.

The Castle and Malibu Presbyterian Church both sit on the beach-side of Malibu Canyon road as it runs out of the canyon and begins it's descent to PCH. Both have sat there as landmarks for decades. I'm amazed at the thought they are now gone.

In past episodes such as this LA County firefighters have always dug in at the top of the University which sits carved into a horseshoe in the hillside. There in 1985 and in other years, firefighters waited for the fire to move over and down the hills, killing it before it could damage any of the University structures. With the recently finished Graziadio School of Business now sitting on that hillside, I'm wondering exactly how they'll approach the University's protection.

Video of the Fire Dept. newsconference earlier this afternoon is avaialable here.

Back with a Bang

OK, maybe not. But it's something. And something is more than nothing. Or so I learned in a Stats class in grad school.

I don't agree with many of the angles in this Roger Cohen piece (especially the gloss-over on neocons as uniformly imperialist), but I do agree with the central thrust about how 'neocon' has become shorthand for any 'hawkish' position or any 'conservative' position or, frankly, any position on any subject that someone doesn't like.

Though I'm not a neocon, it's a pet peeve of mine because I don't like imprecision when it comes to language.

The Congress that couldn't Legislate straight

I've lost track of how many times Senate Dems have gotten Mitch-slapped in recent months. Now it seems that House Republicans are joining the party:

Republicans successfully maneuvered to derail a Democratic government eavesdropping bill Wednesday, delaying a House vote until next week at the earliest.

The bill, which seeks to expand court oversight of government surveillance in the United States, fell victim to a gambit by the chamber's Republican minority. Democrats were forced to pull the bill from the House floor with no certainty about how it might be revived.

If it weren't such serious stuff, it'd be hilarious. The Keystone Cops never looked this bad...

&^*# Fantasy Sports

I quit. I'm officially going AWOL at Fanball. An un-attended squad can do at least this poorly...

I'm the King of the World!

Er, I'm running the shop. Haven't a clue what I'm doing but we'll see what happens...

New meaning to the phrase

"You can't afford me."

Well, that can't be good...

When your employer shows up on somebody's analysis as at-risk for bankruptcy...

In last week's post I calculated Z scores, an index used to forecast bankruptcy risk, for the New York Times (NYT) and several key competitors, including the Washington Post (WPO), News Corp (NWS), and the McClatchy News Group (MNI) using the 10K and 10Q reports. Since then I did the calculations for four more newspaper publishers, Gannett (GCI), Journal Register (JRE), Lee (LEE), and Scripps (SSP). The results are consistent with the respective business conditions facing each company

NYT WPO NWS MNI GCI SSP LEE JRE Z Score 9/2007
1.835 4.118 2.139 0.812 2.755 4.137 1.282 0.752


News Corp., The Washington Post, Gannett and Scripps all score well above the 1.8 high risk threshold. These companies are diversified communications media companies with a number of high performance segments offsetting the structural decay of their newspaper properties. The other companies in the danger zone are all mainly pure-play newspaper businesses that made the fatal decision to buy out competitors at a false bottom similar to Movie Gallery's bad move.

McClatchy, Lee, The Journal Register and to lesser extent the New York Times should be placed on the watch list.

The Numbers Phenomenon

On Numbers:

Wow. Numbers shouldn't be reported because they're "tricky," "at the beginning of a trend," and there's "enormous dispute over how to count" them?

No such moral conundrum existed last month when media predicted a looming recession after the Labor Department announced a surprising decline in non-farm payrolls that ended up being revised up four weeks later to show an increase.

And, in the middle of a three and a half-year bull run in stocks, such "journalists" have no quandary predicting a bear market every time the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls a few hundred points.

Yet, when good news regarding military casualties comes from the Defense Department, these same people show uncharacteristic restraint in not wanting to report what could end up being an a anomaly.

"Jeez," indeed.

What we're Facing

Or, an ode to Sim:

An e-mail, in response to my McCain thoughts this past week:

Perhaps if Katheryn Jean Lopez feels this country is in mortal danger and needs to continue this war of imperialistic aggression against the Muslim world, she should grab a gun and head for the front. I have had enough of the lunatic right telling us that we need to keep murdering and oppressing a people half way around the world. How many dead and displaced must we produced before we recognize the criminal acts we have committed. We are not buying the scare tactics of the radical right anymore. These Americans aare the true terrorists. This was was foisted upon our country by some very evil men that are currently running the country. Americans are the bad guys. Our country is being used by the energy corporations for our military and national treasure to try to gain profitable, long term access to the middle east oil fields. The charade is over. The American people are not being fooled any longer. Spare us any further propaganda.

Where do you start to argue with that?

The First rule of Holes

The First rule of Holes is...stop digging:

it's very simple. his religious beliefs call into question his ability to ethically perform the tasks he was contracted for. now as i said earlier, if he wants to open a soup kitchen, build shelters for the homeless, spend time with sick kids, run for office, whatever, by all means go for it. i have no problem with that.

but under no circumstances should he be trusted to put together and train a group of armed mercenaries to rally around a muslim country determining who and what is a threat.

Pure religious bigotry.

Blackwater Loon-acy

There is much criticism--much of it perhaps deserved--of US firm Blackwater Inc.'s conduct in Iraq. Then there is this:

also, i'm saying his interests and the interests of his company need to be called into question because of his own religious and political extremism....

it's not a stretch that this stems all or in part from some form of ideological indoctrination or supremacist mentality, where arabs and muslims are viewed as being inherently inferior and unworthy.

So apparently Blackwater is incapable of any sort of professionalism in its conduct as a result of Erik Prince's "fundamentalist" Christian beliefs and involvements. Loon-atic.

Brutal

Chants of "Marty..." from Charger fans after the Bolts turn the ball over on downs inside the KC 10-yard line at the 3-minute mark of the 4th Qtr.

1-3 and giving up 24 unanswered points to the likes of the Chiefs will do that to you, I guess.

"...Ours is a just and decent God.”

So begins Jonah Goldberg's column today about Dan Rather's latest adventure. Boy is he right!

The take away for my money is here:

Frankly, we need this. And by “we,” I mean a grand coalition of people who delight in watching one of the 20th century’s most pompous gasbags fall from the top of the laughingstock tree and hit every branch on the way down. These are dour times, and if Gunga Dan and Hurricane Dan and What’s-The-Frequency-Kenneth Dan want to trade their Afghan robes, yellow windbreakers and enormous tinfoil hats for some baggy pants, bright-orange wigs and floppy shoes, I say let them. I just hope all of the Dans show up at the courthouse in a teensy-weensy clown car.

Oh, wait...that was the funny. Here was the near-serious: The beauty of this lawsuit, which has most legal observers laughing so hard that their neck veins look like one-pound sausage casings with five pounds of ground chuck in them, is that if it goes to trial (shortly after unicorns file my taxes), CBS will be put in the position of having to prove that the story was bogus, while Rather will be forced to look even more like a grassy-knoll theorist, climbing back to the top of the laughingstock tree.

Which of course anybody with a functioning brain would have figured out by now, this will never see the inside of a courtroom and for various reasons, this not least among them. But the thought of it all I find amazingly titillating.

On the other side, the producer of the original 60 Minutes II piece, Mary Mapes, unloaded at the Huffington Post on the topic:

And we showed for the first time a cache of documents allegedly written by Bush's former commander. The documents supported a mountain of other evidence that young Bush had dodged his duty and not been punished. They did not in any way diverge from the information in the sketchy pieces of the president's official record made available by the White House or the National Guard. In fact, to the few people who had gone to the trouble of examining the Bush record, these papers filled in some of the blanks.

We reported that since these documents were copies, not originals, they could not be fully authenticated, at least not in the legal sense. They could not be subjected to tests to determine the age of the paper or the ink. We did get corroboration on the content and support from a couple of longtime document analysts saying they saw nothing indicating that the memos were not real.

Instantly, the far right blogosphere bully boys pronounced themselves experts on document analysis, and began attacking the form and font in the memos. They screamed objections that ultimately proved to have no basis in fact. But they captured the argument. They dominated the discussion by churning out gigabytes of mind-numbing internet dissertations about the typeface in the memos, focusing on the curl at the end of the "a," the dip on the top of the "t," the spacing, the superscript, which typewriters were used in the military in 1972.
It was a deceptive approach, and it worked.

These critics blathered on about everything but the content. They knew they would lose that argument, so they didn't raise it. They focused on the most obscure, most difficult to decipher element of the story and dove in, attacking CBS, Dan Rather, me, the story and the horse we rode in on -- without respite, relentlessly, for days.

For a complete dismantling of Mapes' revisionist treatise, visit the Captain. As for myself, all the blustering indignation and self-deluding righteous anger does nothing to change the simple truth of the matter.

The devil was in the details and the details were wrong. They were shown to be wrong and while Mapes and others may argue that was never proven conclusively, it was obvious enough to most not blinded by Bush-hate that something was rotten in Denmark. Namely, that Burkett's "documents" were at best re-productions of old documents not available for corroboration and at worst--what most suspected for a number of reasons best laid out in Captain Ed's post--sheer fabrications.

I'd love to see this dirty laundry paraded around a NY court room but alas, I'm sure it is not to be. Oh well.

Nothing New under the Sun

Harry Reid gets bitch-slapped...again:

Reid and the Democrats did their head-counting this afternoon, and thought they finally had a window of opportunity in order to declare rhetorical defeat in Iraq in the Webb troop rotation bill. The Democrats moved up the vote, tried to spring the anti-war trap, had one extra vote going in with the appearance of Tim Johnson, and got 56 votes, four short of what he needed. Reid got beat again. Instead of marching through the Carl Levin defeat bill, or any of the myriad of defeat bills he had hinted was coming earlier in the day, Reid retreated. As Joe Lieberman said to the media outside of the Senate chamber, the Webb amendment was the last chance of victory for the anti-Iraq crowd, and they lost.

Mitch McConnell is making a habit out of kicking Harry Reid's teeth in on the Senate floor. If it were a boxing match or even a staged wrestling event, they'd stop it.

Choose Victory

Not likely but NY Guardsman Jeff Nuding implores Congress in this withering piece:

Back in 2003, you — including both of my senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton — voted to authorize the President to take military action. You voted, and by virtue of your authority, that means the U.S. government went to war.

You approved the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus, who last week sat in front of your committees and explained the progress of the war and the difficulties of the way ahead. It was an honest and forthright assessment from a soldier who thinks the military can achieve our objectives and that the military can create the environment for real change in Iraq.

Critics seemed to tune him out even before he began. They seem to believe that this war has already been too long and too painful to continue. Sen. Clinton, you rejected Gen. Petraeus' testimony as a "positive view of a grim situation," stating that accepting his testimony at face value required a "willing suspension of disbelief."

I wonder if being a politician means knowing how to call your opponent an opportunist and a liar to his face, without ever stating it plain.

I voted for you in 2000. Could I take that vote back, the way you seem to want to take back your vote to authorize force?

My soldiers know about the long and painful costs of war. All of us left our civilian jobs for a year and a half, and left our families and loved ones behind. Some lost their families or their marriages, and some lost their grip on home or health.

Yet none of us in the military serve under any illusion. We know what we signed up for. That's why so many of us reenlist.

Wars take time. They require steady will and determination. They compel commitment.

If fighting Saddam Hussein, and later Al Qaeda, in Iraq was important when earlier in this mission, they should still be important today. Al Qaeda is badly wounded there and elsewhere, but they aren't dead yet. Iraq is making gains as a democratic nation, but they still need help.
They still need time.

Dear Senators and Representatives, you criticize President Bush relentlessly — picking apart the speech he gave last week with withering words, looking for any and every chance to bring him down.

But at least he maintains steady attention to this war. At least he seems to grasp the stakes of losing and the danger of giving up. Not so Congress.

Leaders influence the morale of their people, for good or bad. I wish you wanted to lead your constituents toward victory rather than defeat.

Bravo!

Speaking of video, Rudy scores a 10 with this web-ad.

Imagine, another Clinton acting out of political expediency. Who would have thought!?

Stupid Office Tricks

I presume that this video made the email circuit a few years back and so is not necessarily new and exciting. But it's funny and makes for a nice test of the new Video feature.

Buyer Beware

Did MoveOn.org get screwed? Maybe:

Discount explained:

The disastrous MoveOn ad in the New York Time calling General Petraeus "Betray Us":

Cooking the Books for the White House

New York Times editorial board:

...Pentagon numbers so obviously cooked...

But I think the real lesson here is for MoveOn: sure, you got a great discount, but if you'd waited a day you could have gotten the same message out for free.

My Senator in Action

Embarrassing...

You Voted for It

You wanted these clowns in control of Congress, so enjoy.

Irish Coffee

Liquor, coffee and whipped cream...what's not to love!?

Timing is Everything

Just as successes on the ground in Iraq are beginning to sink in with some of the Democratic hard-heads in Congress, Republican Senator John Warner shows us just how much you can accomplish by not paying attention.

From Newsweek: ...eyewitness reports from individual Democratic lawmakers who've recently visited Iraq appear to have changed the dynamic in the debate over the war. The Kansas City Star's "The Buzz," for example, reports Democratic Rep. Brian Baird "saw enough progress on the ground that he will no longer vote for binding withdrawal timelines." Rep. Jerry McNerney "suggested that his trip to Iraq made him more flexible in his search for a bipartisan accord on the war." Also changing his tune is Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida, who says the troop increase 'has really made a difference and really has gotten al-Qaida on their heels.'" As the Washington Post says this morning, "Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with...Bush on the Iraq war." Instead, "Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political factions."

And here comes Warner: Sen. John Warner said Thursday President Bush should start bringing home some troops by Christmas to show the Baghdad government that the U.S. commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.

The move puts the prominent Republican at odds with the president, who says conditions on the ground should dictate deployments.

Warner, R-Va., said the troop withdrawals are needed because Iraqi leaders have failed to make substantial political progress, despite an influx of U.S. troops initiated by Bush earlier this year.

You're going the wrong-way Senator. Events on the ground are passing you by or have you not been reading the papers?

Retire already...

Break out the Asterisk

*Barry Bonds has done it. The Giants slugger hit his 756th career home run, setting the new all-time major league record.

Ick.

A Blown Opportunity

Barry Bonds left LA without tying Henry Aaron's home-run record. Under anything resembling normal circumstances I'd call that 'Mission Accomplished.'

The inherent irony of the whole thing was just too good...what a marvelous setting the Dodgers provided Barroid last night. Shamefully, he didn't deliver.

Commitment to Mediocrity

I'm not normally very big on sloganeering. But sometimes a good slogan just works.

I've reserved this in the past for the worst franchise in football. Today, however, I've been forced to conclude that the Minnesota Timberwolves have devised a new and exciting strategy to render themselves hopelessly mediocre for years to come.

Odd Duck

Scott Thomas has a real name.

For a guy who fancies himself some sort of creative genius, he didn't do a great job in creating a nome de guerre. It turns out that Scott is more accurately known as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a private currently serving in Iraq.

He has a blog--one it seems that was only ever updated sporadically--and dreams of literary fame. He's also a bit odd, least as I can tell based on the digging of some others:

Michelle Malkin's thoughts on Scott are here, Dean Barnett's are here.

Bigger questions remain however, primarily awaiting answers from TNR. At least one blogger is reporting that our would-be Kerouac is married or about to marry a TNR staffer.

Which of course goes to exactly how Mr. Beauchamp got his gig. It still however, does not explain how TNR managed to publish three diaries with seemingly no (public anyway) corroboration of any of the supposed facts 'reported' from Baghdad.

Whatever becomes of it, as many point out, Mr. Beauchamp and his comrades may see some hard time(s). Were I a betting man, I'd wager a dishonorable discharge may be his best hope for how all this ends.

Rolling Deep

No fear of drowning in the depths of this 'Get out of Iraq' editorial.

Making Idiots Everywhere look Smart

This Democratic Congress is all about stunts. It's latest comes courtesy of Wisconsin's Russ Feingold who will introduce a resolution to censure the President for, among other things, assaulting the Constitution of the United States.

My first thought was, would it be possible to censure Feingold for assaulting our intelligence?

Shades of Rather

The New Republic published a pseudonymous piece this week that has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. It appears that author "Scott Thomas" may have taken a page from our good friends at CBS with a tale that appears fake and inaccurate.

Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard has done yeoman's work in compiling and asking questions about Thomas' story. His work, in turn, has led to numerous contributions from many in positions to know of what they speak.

Some of my favorite responses include but are not limited to the following:

Military units don't blatantly disregard orders- So, it's not just a story of one soldier dancing around with human remains. Rather, it's a story of an entire military unit and its command structure defying orders and forgetting one of the main reasons why they were there.

The author doesn't know the military- This came home to me in particular with the description of the alleged soldiers mocking a female burn victim. This might happen in a high school cafeteria, but not in a war zone where men risk this same fate on a daily basis, and have seen their buddies maimed and killed. I have never heard of service people making sport of the combat wounded.

Timing is everything- This was supposedly a Saddam-era mass grave, buried underground in a desert climate for years or even decades. The human remains purportedly included "bones" that were anatomically identifiable even in fragment form — tibias, shoulder blades, pieces of hands and fingers. And then the platoon discovered "the top part of a human skull, which was almost perfectly preserved."

Now imagine what that looks like — a "perfectly preserved" piece of human skull that has been buried for no fewer than five years and perhaps many more, deep in the ground in a desert climate and surrounded by bare bone fragments. Form a mental image.

As for me--like the active duty CO writes at the Worldwide Standard--it's almost something straight out of the movies. My initial reaction when I read it was that it easily could have been something adapted from the "Deleted Scenes" feature on the 20th Anniversary edition of Oliver Stone's autobiography.

Thomas' tales are just too much in lock-step with everything bad you've already ever heard about the US Military. Not to mention, it sounds like he doesn't know a thing about driving a Bradley...

Stupidity on Parade

It is Keith Olbermann after all...why would you expect anything different?

Taking Incompetence to new Heights

Mitch McConnell beat the hell out of Harry Reid this week; if it were a fight, they'd have stopped it.

Harry Reid: Ignorer-in-Chief

What does Harry Reid ignore when he tries to force-feed America the Levin-Reed amendment?

For starters, there's this which is perhaps the best hour of participatory radio ever. Then there's this and this.

Let's not forget this or this and this. And wanting to make as complete an argument as possible, let's absolutely not forget this:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of American voters say that the United States should wait for the September progress report before making major policy changes in Iraq. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 38% disagree.

Benchmarks are not Reality

Another note from yesteday's FNS telecast. Bill Kristol is right and Congress and Liberal pundits ignore the fluid nature of things in Iraq when the Levin's and Juan Williams' of the world tout their short-sided commitment to 'benchmarks' and time-tables:

KRISTOL: But you know, benchmarks are not reality. Reality is reality. And I do believe, despite the media, if reality continues to progress in Iraq itself, in the real war we're fighting in a real country called Iraq, with real provinces like Anbar, with real American troops going after Al Qaida -- if progress continues at the rate it has for the last two months or three months, I think that changes the political dynamics here, first of all.

And secondly, the Democrats have overreached. Mara is absolutely right. It's one thing to say, "Oh, we're tired of it. It's difficult. Let's get out." Really concretely, what are you going to do?

Are you going to let Al Qaida establish safe havens or not? How are we going to get out? Are we going to watch slaughter go on 10 miles away as we pull American troops into bases?

So I think the politics here, as people focus on what's happening on the ground and on the real choices in Iraq, could well change over the next two months.

Win the War!

Win the War! Win the War, win the war, win the war.

Win the War; win the war win the war win the war win the war. Win the War? Win the war...

Kudos to Brit Hume

Finally! When Senator Levin--for the umpteenth time in the last six months--spouts on and on about the lack of progress and political 'failure' in Iraq, Brit brings the obvious and natural response. Watch here.

Such criticism about the slow pace of political progress in Baghdad from this congress borders on hubris. That and mind-numbing stupidity.

Meanwhile, to round-out the experience watch Fred Kagan explain how Levin's assessment is simply not accurate.

Freudian or otherwise

A moment that encapsulates all the utter ridiculousness of Plamegate.

This follow-up lands high on the Moronic scale also:

After Joseph Wilson's citation of "I. Libbis Lewey," the only interesting, or at least amusing, portion of the hearing came from wild-card Democratic freshman Rep. Steve Cohen, who wondered whether the Libby pardon should be the stimulus for a constitutional amendment limiting the president's pardon power. Cohen suggested that once the president proposes to pardon someone, the pardon go to the Supreme Court, where if six of the nine justices objected, then the pardon would not be issued. The somewhat surprised witnesses answered that yes, the Constitution could conceivably be amended in many ways, but they politely offered no opinion of Cohen's idea.

Had they been able to harness all that brain-power they might have been able to burn a bulb or two. Maybe.

Good Luck with That

Florida reservist will sue the US Military over a 5th deployment to Iraq.

All commentary about the current state of the US Armed Forces and their rotation schedules aside...read the contract. Uncle Sam owns you and you go where the Commander-in-Chief tells you to go when he tells you to go.

Don't like it, don't sign on the dotted line...

Ponderiffic

I think about these kinds of things since I work in sales and depend on the good fortune of others for my own:

More good news came from the June income numbers: Real wages for workers—not managers—increased by 3.9 percent, year over year. Deflate by the core May inflation rate of 2.3 percent—the latest numbers available—and you get real wage growth of 1.6 percent. Not too shabby. Right now, Wall Street recession expectations are pretty low. "The threat of recession has abated, as job and income gains provide the wherewithal to support consumer spending," is the analysis of former Federal Reserve governor Lyle Gramley. In fact, the Big Money Crowd is more worried about China than U.S. housing as a source of future trouble. Case in point: this missive "What Would the Next Recession Look Like" that Goldman Sachs just sent me:

"So, what constitutes a recession in modern times, and when do they occur?...We suspect it would almost certainly involve a major economic slowdown in China. On almost any criteria (and topic), it is impossible to underestimate China's positive impact on the buoyancy of world growth this decade. That said, our China proprietary indicators show no sign of an imminent slowdown. In addition, our various proprietary indices suggest that the underlying global macro environment remains favorable...Moreover, if we and the consensus are correct, then the period 2003-2008 will have been one of the most powerful periods of economic growth globally since accurate data has been collectable for much of the world."

Unreasoned Outrage

I chuckled all the way through this low-key, sharp-tongued dismantling of EJ Dionne's latest Bush Outrage of the Week:

Having failed coherently to analyze the merits, Dionne proceeds to drink the Kool-Aid of conspiracy theory. He cites approvingly the suggestion of left-wing blogs that, by not pardoning Dionne, Bush avoided the prospect of Libby testifying before Congress at this time. He also says that, by commuting the sentence, Bush removes the incentive for Libby to give the prosecutors new information.

As to the former point, Bush's action merely delays any congressional appearance by Libby until his appeal is decided, which likely will occur next year. That's a more advantageous time for the Democrats, whose interests are always Dionne's paramount concern.

As to the latter point, whatever incentive Libby might have had to "help" the prosecutors vanished a while ago. In any case, nothing supports Dionne's assumption that he had anything he honestly could offer them. Nothing, that is, other than Dionne's partisan-based outrage.

Giving up

Another Republican who won't try:

Senator Pete Domenici joins a handful of Senate Republicans demanding an exit from Iraq.

I will invite the senator on, but suspect that like Senators Warner, Collins and the few others who are refusing General Petraeus the opportunity to succeed, he will take a pass.

What had been a very bad week for al Qaeda with the foiled attacks in England and the desperation in Zawahiri's recent video just got a great deal better with proof that their strategy of defeating the U.S. in the United States Senate is working.

Coming as it does on the heels of Senator Lugar's effort to put the Senate in charge of US foreign policy, it seems clear that at least some Republicans have given in to the siren-song of defeat. What is frustrating is that these admissions come on the heels of some of the first real, good news in Iraq in almost two years.

What is galling, maddening and most awful in all of this is not that Senators Lugar, Domenici et al think we've lost, it's that they don't even want to try to win.

He Said "Balls"...

Quite the headline.

Libby kisses Sister

It's not the best one could have hoped for, but I'm sure he'll take it. As will I...this never should have come to this.