Our visit to the People’s Daily indicates that the folks in Beijing felt something was important in the Washington Post interview in my post right below that I glossed over: the President rejected Secretary Powell’s statements that there was an Iraqi withdrawal timetable, and it would be well underway (if not complete) by the end of the year. It seems that even with Powell a lame duck pending the ascendancy of Incompetentalleezza Rice to Foggy Bottom, the President continues to delight in treating General Powell as some kind of court jester. It seems that almost without fail, whatever Powell says...

The President gave an interview on Air Force One to The Washington Post. (Hat tip for the heads up to Bruce the Veep and the Daou Report.) The President said his reelection constituted a complete and total endorsement by the American people of everything– EVERYTHING, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY THE MISTAKES– associated with the Iraq war. While this will constitute liberal apostasy, I agree with him. COMPLETELY. Indeed, Democrats supported the President on this– why else would we have nominated someone who voted for the war if we didn’t think the war was a good and noble thing? Especially when we...

This week’s visit to Pravda gives us this analysis David Galland of Defense Watch called Insurgency 101, Misunderstood, or some of the things I have been saying about why our current strategy in Iraq is doomed. In short– what matters not are Rummy’s “metrics” to show a dim-witted President (and largely apathetic public) that “we are winning” because we have captured… 2/3. 3/4, 99% or whatever of “insurgent leadership” (excepting, oh, Zarqawi, or bin Laden, or, you know, anyone whose names the public knows). What matters is winning hearts and minds. The fact is, having done such a piss-poor job...

Israel considers its response to the Hamas/Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade attack on Gaza’s main checkpoint into Israel proper that left at least six Israelis dead. Newly elected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has not even formally taken office, and already, he is being dissed. Spokesmen for the terror groups insist that the attack is aimed at Israel, and not at Abbas himself. For its part, the Israeli government will, almost certianly, not engage in the usual heavy handed response of a military incursion. Why? To give Abbas an opportunity to get things in order, and internally crack down on, or...

Just 70 days (same number as the virgins…) after achieving the purpose of the Iraq adventure (that would be the successful reelecton of the Imperium), the American government very quietly announced the termination of the mission of the Iraq Survey Group. Simply put: the great snipe hunt for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist is now ignominiously over. Impressively, the former paper of record that continues to employ Judith “Warmonger” Miller, principal journalistic (so to speak) legitimizer of the “Saddam is really bad and no matter how many Midwestern rubes we kill in the process of removing him...

The gang over at Wampum have nominated this blog for a much-coveted Koufax award (blog most deserving of wider recognition); last year, you will recall, we were up for “best non-liberal blog”… yes, I know. Well, right now, things are looking grim for this blog in that category at press time, so for those of you care enough to vote for this humble source of screeds and rants, well, you will have my gratitude. Those of you willing to contribute to the mammoth dollar cost that Wampum is incurring to run this annual contest, please contribute generously. You will have...

While the President is too busy proposing to destroy the (not broken) social security system for future benficiaries, his brother, Florida Governor JEB Bush, attempts to confront a much more pressing and current problem: how to destroy the Medicaid system for current beneficiaries. His answer, obviously, is called “ration care”. Remember when Saint Hillary of Chappaqua first proposed her 487 volume health care proposal (because she was afraid that simply saying “mandate that employers pay 80% of health insurance premiums for all workers” sounded too much like “employer mandate” which is bad, and had to be obscured by 487 volumes,...

And so, the asinine decision by Dan Rather and his crack team of zealots to beat the dead-horse-story of the President’s use of his Daddy’s name (as always) to evade military service, rather than a RELEVANT STORY LIKE ABU GHRAIB, has caused CBS to sack four producers responsible for the TANG (Texas Air National Guard) story and subsequent defense of said story. I realize the conventional wisdom is that bloggers somehow brought this story to light. Of course, this conveniently overlooks that those “bloggers” were Republican operatives, just using the cool new medium and some pseudonyms, and the speed it...

This brief visit to the People’s Daily tells us of the arrival of the 1.3 billionth Chinese citizen. China regards this as a success insofar as they managed to put off this day (thanks to brutally repressive family planning measures) for over four years (the target date for this number was the end of the 20th century). Well, one massive, now mobilized labor force, all working for low wages, and kicking our ass, while acquiring claims against our assets. What can you say. A scary number. Obviously, it could be a lot more, if the family planning measures were lifted...

Obviously, we’re not talking about Iraq. Iraq will have something called an election in precisely three weeks’ time, but “democracy” implies something different from the Kurdish/Shiite self-governance referendum and Sunni boycott/aremed assaults with a preposterous “national list” system (used only in “I” countries Italy and Israel, both notorious for a lot of fringe parties and wildly complex parliamentary maneuverings and frequent failed governments; it means literally that if party A gets X% of the national vote, it gets X% of the parliamentary seats; not ideal where an ethnic group of around 20% of the country probably can’t vote because of...