OBABBITT?

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/09/president_obama_not_this_time/

Y'all know I don't like to cut and paste but you gotta read this.

Don't think I completely buy it but I have said several times that a skyrocket that goes up fast usually disintegrates just as quickly.

OTOH, if this guy keeps the predicting the same thing over and over, eventually he's gonna get one wrong.

READ THE PIECE!

MCCAIN'S POLITICAL DIRECTOR PACKS IT IN: WORST COVER STORY SINCE CHENEY SHOT HARRY

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/05/mccains_politic.html

McCain's political director is going back to New Hampshire because the schools are better there for his son. So noble. So phony. When he came to work for McCain, he didn't know the schools were better in N.H. than they were in Washington D.C.? He says his family is his "number one" priority and he didn't check the schools out before he moved?

He didn't know how long his commitment to the campaign was? He couldn't look up when the General Election was scheduled?

I'm sure the Senator had a great, incisive mind like this working on really cutting edge stuff. Ever since Nixon, Repubs have to have a cover story when the truth would serve just as well.

N.H. just changed its motto "Live Free or Die Spinning."

GASOLINE ON ITS WAY TO FOUR BUCKS A GALLON

When the price gets high enough to reduce consumption, wake me up.

ROVE'S DOG ATE HIS RNC EMAILS: THE PROBLEMS OF A SHADOW GOVERNMENT IN THE INFORMATION AGE

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OFRA1O0&show_article=1

I think your view of this one depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Just read it. I can't add anything that makes it any more bizarre than it already is.

THE ULTIMATE CRAPPY DEAL: EDWARDS OUT, EVERYTHING HE VALUES IN JEOPARDY

I know a little bit about cancer. This suspension will become a termination. At a time when our country is becoming less literate and lazier, these two high achievers now face dark struggle together.

Stuff like this happens, it reminds us of how trivial it might be whether Limbaugh and Schwartenneger are in or out of love with one another and whether Karl Rove is or is not exercising presidential appointment powers.

Health and family. We have that, we can figure the rest out. GodSpeed to the Edwards family.

"DETROIT RED"--MALCOLM MATURING

I must confess I have, all my adult life, had a fascination with "Risk-it all" leaders. Mao, Abe Lincoln and Malcolm Little a/k/a "Malcolm X" are among my favorite case studies. Little had about four different incarnations and his Junior High School Life is about as fascinating as his prison time. On top of that, I know four people well who intersected planes with him at various stages of his life and death. Think what you will about him, there are endless layers to peel back.

Delancey Place brings us this one, as Malcolm was already starting to outgrow the Nation. He might not even have realized it yet. He accessed the legal system and laid the groundwork for police reform that he would never see.

In today's excerpt--the Los Angeles police kill and wound several black members of the Nation of Islam in a highly controversial 1962 incident. For the trial that follows, these members need legal representation, but find it very difficult to secure given the controversy. Malcolm X, little known but already with a feared reputation, spearheads the effort to secure a lawyer by approaching Earl Broady, a former police officer and perhaps the only black lawyer with the expertise and connections to adequately handle the case:

"For Earl Broady, the Malcolm X who appeared unannounced at his office seemed quite different from the daredevil Black Muslim in the news. He spoke with evenhanded precision to reconstruct the chaos and asked for Broady's representation in the criminal trials he felt were sure to come, calculating that the state must prosecute the Muslims in order to ward off civil damage suits. Broady turned Malcolm away more than once, saying he was too busy and too close to Chief Parker. As a policeman himself from 1929 to 1946 before entering the law, Broady saw Parker as a reform autocrat in the style of J. Edgar Hoover and gave him credit for modest improvements over the frontier corruptions of the old Raymond Chandler-era LAPD.

Broady's wife, a devout Methodist, objected vehemently to the case on the grounds that the Muslims were openly anti-Christian, unlike the worst of his ordinary criminal clients, and Broady himself resented the Nation of Islam, drawn largely from stereotypical lowlifes, as an embarrassment to the hard-earned respectability of middle-class Negroes. The Broadys recently had acquired an imposing white colonnade home in Beverly Hills, where Malcolm X visited when he could not find Broady at the office--calling day after day, always alone with a briefcase, playing on Broady's personal knowledge of the harsh, segregated inner world of the LAPD precincts. His patient appeals, plus the largest retainer offer in Broady's career, finally induced the lawyer to take the case. ...

"[This] case marked a turning point in the hidden odyssey that surfaced Malcolm X as an enduring phenomenon of race. He saw the shootings as a fundamental crisis in several respects--first as a test of Muhammad's teachings on manhood and truth. Ever since the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955-56, Malcolm had criticized Martin Luther King as a 'traitor to the Negro people,' disparaging his non-violence as 'this little passive resistance or wait-until-you-change-your-mind-and-then-let-me-up philosophy,' and he did not hesitate to ridicule a national movement built on sit-ins and Freedom Rides. 'Anybody can sit,' said Malcolm. 'An old woman can sit. A coward can sit. ... It takes a man to stand.'

Always there was an element of swagger in Malcolm's appeal, and at times a bristling, military posture: 'You might see these Negroes who believe in nonviolence and mistake us for one of them and put your hands on us thinking that we're going to turn the other cheek--and we'll put you to death just like that.'

Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire, Simon and Schuster, 1998, pp. 10-13.

Taylor Branch can flat-out write but, in fairness to Malcolm's journey: The quotes were from the 50's and, by the time he approached Broady, he was already moving to the realization that the One God he knew as Allah was an inclusive entity.

Who among us cannot identify with someone who got smarter and perhaps more truly spiritual as he aged? Of course, with associates like he picked up, he didn't have long to age.

OATH? YOU SAID OATH? WE THOUGHT YOU SAID "OAF"

Rove will not testify under oath. The Senate Can have the Oaf without the Oath. Be Still my heart! I'm so shocked the Rovie doesn't want to do the oath thing. No more Scooters to take the bullet.

NORTHERN ILLINOIS U.S. ATTORNEY: PROSECUTE SCOOTER, GET BAD EVALUATION--GONZO'LL GET YO' MAMMA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031902036_pf.html

In-freaking-credible! Pat FitzGerald may not be my all time favorite prosecutor but it is a little hard to argue that he has not been diligent and effective in representing the government's, as opposed to the Bushies', interests.

So when a political loyalty policeman rates him as "not distinguished" it adds another level of aroma to the idea that a review on the merits was done and US Attys were fired because of poor evaluations. It's time to as the musical question "Who evaluates the evaluators?"

In an otherwise sub-standard performance on "Larry King Live" Senator Obama said Gonzo has abandoned the position of "People's Lawyer" to become a "Presidential Enabler". That's the net effect, even if the "Loyalty Police" were Gonzo's true believer staff and not his Gonzo-ness hisownself.

Next president of either party is going to have to go in there with a wide and deep dung shovel.

URGENT TO JOE WILSON: JUST SHUT UP!

Valerie Plame has lost her career. She is an extraordinarily sympathetic figure. In the meantime the Bushies are still casting about in search of a workable spin, finding none. (In the meantime, they are on about their seventh version of the US Attorney thing but that's for another day). There has been a conviction. On cue, these Repubs have stupidly talked openly about a pardon.

From the perspective of showing this administration for what it is, things couldn't be going much better. Still, there is an "X" factor that could screw it for all of us who want to see the next spin continue to spiral them toward where they deserve to go: Joe Wilson's chops.

Joe, you're in the lead. Everybody loves your wife and feels badly she was outed to bust your chops. But, Ambassador, I have news: you're about as lovable as a laboratory rat in an AIDS testing facility. You're smug. You're gabby. You look like a child of the leisure class. Whether you really are or not, you look like your eastern educated. Even liberal people out here in flyover country are suspicious of that. Everytime you open your mouth, you lose some public opinion. Hide out. Don't even be seen. Let your lawyers fight out your civil case. Quit speculating publicly about who did what to whom.

Your wife should talk and look sad a lot. You should imitate a deaf mute polar bear eating marshmallows in a snowstorm.

When your opponent wants to commit slow-mo hari-kari, it's best not to stand in his way. Please, take heed.

OPEN GOVERNMENT? MAYBE LOCALLY BUT NOT POTUS

We hear candidates for president promising "open and honest" government, like the words are fused together.

I contend it is possible to have a president conduct an honest administration.

It is, however, no longer possible to have open government at the leader-of-the-free-world level. POTUS' security people keep him away from interactive situations. POTUS' advisors do their best to keep him away from contrary messages (this is not necessarily sinister, just how it is.) The prez, despite his or her best intentions, is gonna be in "the bubble" and shielded from RW experiences. Nixon liked it. Clinton fought it, but basically lost. It is necessary for shrubbie's governance. He could not stand interactive exposure, given his level of stubbornness and the influences he must satisfy.

I'll give you honest as a possiblity. Open has been off the table since Kennedy was shot, maybe before.

GREAT SPEECHES BUT I'M STUCK ON A DIFFERENT QUESTION

I still remember exactly where I was when I first saw the photos of "Bloody Sunday"

It was probably the single biggest screwup by those desperate to hold onto Jim Crow. It was a Ghandian masterstroke by the sponsors. The discipline it took by the group leaders to prevent retaliatory violence was as good as in any military organization. It is difficult to argue that it wasn't a very important day in U.S. History.

I heard the Obama and Clinton speeches yesterday. They were both excellent but I'm not here to handicap them. Bloody Sunday was carried out by people looking to help a larger group. I'm just not sure a Bloody Sunday commemorative service is a place for politickin'.

Yeah, Yeah, you can say these were just dignitary sermons. Both dignitaries just happen to have a claim on the black vote in the Southern primaries. I also know both congregations gladly embraced their speakers. Still, I think I'd have found it more appropriate if maybe Cornell West and Cheryl Mills had come down, or Magic Johnson or Norm Early. Or Maybe Ernie Ladd could have come by (of course he knows too much--would have been declared an enemy combatant.)

Anyway, That's just the creepy feeling I got about the whole thing.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: THE LEAKS JUST KEEP ON COMIN'

Today, kiddies, we have learned in the public media not only that the Bushies want bombing routes and targeting for Iran but what our some of our Generals and Admirals plan to do about it. Some of our flag officers are said to have threatened to resign before they'll fight in Iran.

Now, I happen to agree that military action in Iran is an even bigger bonehead than invading sovereign Iraq, but that's almost beside the point.

Boys and girls, when you sign up to be a military officer, you sign up to follow the orders of the commander in chief. You don't sign up to make yourself look swell by leaking that you disagree and you don't sign up to select or prescreen your wars.

If the Admirals and Generals are just internally stating their disagreement, I have no problem with that. If they are leaking their protests, they are putting their own principles and vanity over their service to country. Nobody ever promised them we'd never have a president with limited intellectual ability surrounded by neocolonialists. The president gives you a military assignment, you explain to him the problems with it, then follow it unless he rescinds it.

Otherwise you can just practice saying "You want fries with that?"

TO OUR IRANIAN FRIENDS: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FIGHTER/BOMBERS AND THE RECON TEAMS

There is no truth to the nasty, vile rumors that our President has asked for precision targeting information within your country. Other than maybe a few refineries, major arterials, bridges and the odd centrifuge, we really don't have any more than about 1600 tactical sorties in our playbook. You are a secular democracy, so we don't have to bring you representative government by bombing the snot out of your infrastructure, like we did those weasels in Iraq. Your REAL enemy is the New York Times, which is trying to make you believe that our Defense Department has a plan to blow up your back yard. The fact that Secretary Gates has just googled your chicken house is a mere coincidence. Not to worry.

Those guys in black up in the hills, looking through the bi-knocks? That's tryout camp for the new QND Raider mascot.

You have nothing to fear from the peace-loving United States of America and its peaceful leaders.

Still, when you put your winter things away, you might want to keep the lead-lined Jockeys within easy reach.

THE ISOLATED EXECUTIVE, REMOVED FROM REALITY: THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME

A look back at a not-so-different time, courtesy of our friends from Delancey Place


In today's excerpt, the remote management style of Richard Nixon (1913-1994):

"Nixon fashioned an ingenious device to enhance his own personal authority. Where Lyndon Johnson had worked to the blare of news broadcasts from three televisions mounted on the walls of the Oval Office and to the constant clatter of two wire-service teleprinters behind his desk, Nixon preferred to have his news closely sifted and filtered.

He arranged for a daily summary of stories from the newspapers and the networks to be compiled overnight in the West Wing by trusted political aides for him to check out when he came to work in the morning. Not only were the summaries tailored to his tastes and political needs, but the president could use them as a launchpad for instructions to his aides that often took the form of angry outbursts against enemies, real or imagined, inside and outside the administration. 'FIRE HIM,' he would scrawl when learning of some bureaucratic outrage. These written orders minimized his exposure to subordinates outside the powerful threesome [Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger]. Somehow, amid the intense and even frenzied interaction of scores of West Wingers, the president of the United States remained a loner, seated in an Oval Office as hushed and solemn as a hermitage. ..."Within the executive branch, Nixon was almost as distant from his own cabinet. He utterly lacked any wish to work with his party in Congress or with his department heads as a team. 'I must build a wall around me,' he had told Haldeman on the very first evening of his presidency. ..."

One of the most poignant moments of Nixon's final departure from the White House was when he apologized to his staff for not having been in better touch with them. 'I just haven't had the time.' he said."

James MacGregor Burns, Running Alone, Basic Books, 2006, pp. 98, 105.

Other than the names of the insiders, is it so different today?

SCOOTER'S MEMORY IS SO BAD, HE FORGOT TO TESTIFY IN HIS OWN DEFENSE!

Near as I can tell (and news coverage is a lousy way to keep up with a trial), Scooter Libby's defense is "I didn't have anything to do with leaking and whatever I said to the Grand Jury was the best recollection my bad memory would allow".

ln the evidence, it sounded like his attorney did an excellent job of proving Scooter didn't leak Plame's CIA connection. Only trouble is, that's not what the Scootmeister was charged with. He was charged with lying to a grand jury about a material matter. He's put other people on to testify to his bad memory. I think the jury will want to hear a denial from him. I think the judge will limit Mr. Wells' closing argument if Scooter doesn't take the stand.

I'm not saying not putting Libby on isn't the best strategy. I'm just saying the "I forgot" defense is harder to make without the jury hearing from the Defendant.

THE LINCOLN COMPARISONS JUST KEEP ON COMIN'

Many of the candidates, most notably Obama, seem fond of creating similarities between their candidacy today and Lincoln's initial path to the presidency. Lincoln was universally the third or fourth choice of a recently reorganized party filled with self-doubt. His party's convention was held in his home state but he and his advisors believed he would have a better chance if he didn't attend (thus he didn't). His people at the convention could not put together a majority until a man with the last name of Cameron, recalling Lincoln's kindness and good manners from past interactions, directed his supporters to throw in with Lincoln on the last ballot.

So, if we assume the Lincon comparisons are accurate, we can safely assume anyone who's a rock star now is doomed to failure and the rest of 'em had best not piss your friendly bloghost off.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

-- Abraham Lincoln, when considering placing Republican Rivals
in his cabinet

SOMETIMES WE BUILD AN ANTI-IMMIGRATION WALL AND SOMETIMES WE RECRUIT LIKE USC

(This from our friends at Delancey Place)

In today's excerpt, having completed the transcontinental railroad in 1869, U.S. businesses and the U.S. government try to recruit individuals and families to settle in the middle of the country to create farms and towns along railway.

For the businessmen in particular, it was not only a way to support the operations of their railroads, but a way to increase the value of the landholdings they had received from the government as part of the inducement to build the railroads:"It had at first been thought that no settlers could survive anywhere on the semiarid, mostly treeless Great Plains that rolled all the way from Montana and the Dakotas south into Texas ... but the Homestead Act of 1862 began to change all that. It promised 160 acres of public land to any person who filed a claim, paid a ten-dollar fee, and agreed to work the property for five years. As it happened, the 1870s and early 1880s were unusually wet years in the West, and the prairies, plowed and planted for the first time, yielded bumper crops.

Promoters made the most of it ... [but] most of these efforts came to nothing. Factory workers [from the East] weren't farmers, and even those who might try it could rarely afford it. Land itself was cheap, but getting to it, getting started, and surviving for the five years required to get title to a homestead cost money that most of them didn't have."Prospects seemed better overseas. The Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society recruited Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe to establish farming communes in Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, and the Dakotas. The First Swedish Agricultural and Galesburg Colonization Companies started the towns of Salemsborg and Lindsborg in Kansas. Small groups of Dutch, French, Bohemian, English, and Irish families scattered across the Plains. Two hundred Scottish families settled together on the Kansas-Nebraska border. By 1875, more than half of Nebraska's 123,000 settlers were members of families headed by foreign immigrants. ..."

Then C.B. Schmidt [of the Santa Fe railroad] was dispatched for the biggest prize of all--the German- Russian Mennonites. They were pacifists who had fled Prussia rather than serve in its army three- quarters of a century earlier. ... There was plenty of competition for these able and prosperous farmers. After Canada offered them immunity from military service and free transportation if they would settle there, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota all also solemnly offered to exempt them from military duty-- although they had no legal authority to do so. Everyone promised them the right to govern themselves in their own communities, to speak German in their own schools, plenty of land at good prices, and easy credit."

Mennonite emissaries were taken to Washington to meet President Grant. ... Secretary of State Hamilton Fish personally assured them the United States would not go to war again for at least fifty years."

Geoffrey C. Ward, The West, Back Bay Books, 1996, pp. 243-7.

UMRBLOG ISSUES THE PRESIDENT A "SURGE WARRANT"

It was my considered opinion, that the invasion of a sovereign foreign country was bad policy, resource allocation and of questionable utility. With every day that has gone by, it has become clear that our leaders had absolutely no concept of how to handle the period of occupation.

Moreover, it has always been obvious that they had no defined, measurable goals which, when achieved, would be a "victory."

Even at that, of the removal of the top-level bureaucrats and the dismantling of the Iraqi army showed a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity. It will probably never be clear in my lifetime why an ambitious diplomat essentially superseded reconstruction expert General Garner.

All of this woeful performance in the occupation of Iraq simply served to confirm my initial impression of that this seemingly imperialistic adventure was wrong on any number of levels. Given this background, it would be a fair guess that I would adamantly oppose President Bush's proposed "Surge". Much to my own surprise, I find myself in tepid agreement with His Flightsuitness on his proposal to insert approximately 21,000 additional troops into the occupation areas and have them function essentially as an "anti-gang unit".

Make no mistake; I still believe that the original invasion was a grievous error. The whole neocon concept of installing a representative government into the center of a land mass that we generally refer to as Arabia was borderline demented. The value of the targets was vastly overrated. The value of the infrastructure that we destroyed in the adventure was vastly underrated. No value was placed upon artifacts we had no plan to preserve. The value of the public service bureaus and the lower grades in the army resources to reconstitute the country was disregarded. In other words the whole undertaking was lame. In a land war, ground is taken to be liberated on behalf of someone who will occupy it and care for it, to be temporarily held for strategic fighting purposes or to be occupied for colonial purposes. We took ground for no purpose other than to change a regime with no considered thought about the identity and trustworthiness of those who would occupy it.

All of that aside, we are there now. Nothing can change that. We have broken up the Iraqi civil service system, its defense system and the only peacekeeping mechanism it had. Iraq, with any form of government, has historic enemies. The grudge between Iran and Iraq is not going away anytime soon. The need for basic civil infrastructure in Iraq is not going to disappear. Now that we have broken this country, we need to leave it at least as functional or before. As Colin Powell so correctly said, the first rule of post-modern society regarding invading another sovereign is "You broke it, you fix it. " we cannot fix it, which means we it cannot leave this engagement honorably, if there's not sufficient security for American and Iraqi engineers, construction professionals and technocrats to safely rebuild. To put the same thing another way, we have, as a consequence of our stupendous bad judgment, placed ourselves under an obligation to create sufficient security in Iraq to repair its broken to defense system, civil infrastructure, justice system and governance. We have adequately demonstrated we cannot do that with the troop levels and assignments currently in place.

Having placed us and our fine military in this position, the President was presented with essentially three oversimplified options " go big, go long or go home ". To his credit, he worked on refining these simplistic categories. In essence be decided upon " go big " modified by what I will call " go short " and " go specific ". He proposes to insert proactive troops into problem areas, take ground for the purpose of pacification and gradually let the Iraqi army maintain each area's pacification.

Certainly, he is not tell us precisely how "Short " this adventure will be and is understandably shaky on the details of how this risky undertaking is going to be handed off to risk-averse Iraqis. It is a fair criticism to suggest that, in coming to this decision, he sought meaningful counsel only from people he believed would agree with him.

It seems to me that all the objections to his plan have fallen to one of four categories: First are the moral objections from people who are more or less pacifists; Second are the people who believe the original incursion was a bad idea and believe any additional troops is throwing " good after bad "; Third are the people who correctly state that this is administration has not been correct about much in the way of foreign or military policy and justifiably ask " why should we believe you now? "; finally, come the people who simply believe that there is no credible and certainly no compelling evidence that this strategic modification will prove successful.

For the categorical pacifists and conscientious objectors, I have no satisfactory answer. There will never be one. We elect the commander-in-chief. Any time he or she elects to use military force the pacifists' moral objection is implicated. Those of us who happen to agree with the president on this phase are simply left to respect the pacifists' high moral principles and respectfully disagree.

To the people who argue " good effort on top of bad ", I say that argument minimizes the stakes. On September 12, 2001 the entire civilized world was our friend. We have done much since then fritter away the good feelings, which came our way back then. There are, for whatever reason, still governments and still people in this world who hold us in the relatively high regard. If we leave things in their current status, that is, we busted up this country beyond measure and then left it in a heap, we lose almost all of the remaining respect there is for us in the world. For those interested in World War Two history it will be the diametric opposite of the Marshall Plan.

I quickly concede that it would be useful if our administration would set measurable benchmarks assess when progress is actually made. There is nothing more maddening than to hear the President and his minions talk vaguely about " victory" as if it were simply a happy state of mind immediately to follow the insertion of just a few more troops. At the end of the day, we can find the President's intentional vagueness and sembling description of the outcome he desires repugnant and still agree with his conclusion that we have undertaken, by our actions, an obligation under multinational law to honorably repair what we have broken by initiating this adventure.

Great respect should be attended to those who argue " Why should we believe you now?” They make an excellent point. They are not factually wrong. Still, the president is our commander- in-chief under the constitution that we all embrace. That position and the information that flows into deserve some deference. Additionally, the practical question is "Can we exclude or eliminate the possibility that this plan might lead to some success in restoring the country? " Responsible people of all political persuasions with the training and access to knowledge to make that judgment have stated that this limited buildup has a chance to achieve some success in pacifying particularly difficult, insurgent neighborhoods and regions. Beyond that, when listening to the few specifics that have been made available, the proactive nature and a change of Rules of Engagement suggest a more adaptive warfare which could assist existing troops in clearing and perhaps maintaining dangerous pockets. "Yes" to all who say it is hateful that we are in this mess to begin with. We understand and sympathize with all who say this exercise is not worth one additional American life or limb. Still, however ill conceived the original attack may have been, we are in this, is a military operation and must be staffed by military personnel. It is possible, if not plausible, that the additional troops with an aggressive, proactive mission might reduce the origination points for the explosive devices which are harming so many of our personnel. In other words it cannot be excluded that the surge might actually reduce gross casualties. Of course we'll never know because it will be impossible to determine what casualties would have been taken without the surge.

The same arguments apply to the "No credible evidence" crowd. In the final analysis, this is the province of expert witnesses. If there were a majority of independent generals, admirals and warfare experts stating that this concept has no chance, such a view would be entitled to great weight. As we begin 2007, however, that is not the case. One can shop for about any view of this plan and find plausible and accomplished military men to for support that view.

To some extent anyone of my generation would be colored by our country's Vietnam experience. That influence is there. Still, when I look at the proposal and the reasoning and the incredible morass in which we find ourselves, I cannot say I disagree with the president on this one issue. Whether or not the original decision to invade Iraq was wise, moral, just or even legal is left for people at other times and in other places to decide. The question before the country, right now, in real time, is "How best to see to the balance of our military mission?" The President's plan is not fatuous.

In 1975 we saw what "Phased redeployment " looked like. It is hard to do practically, honorably and geopolitically. The commander-in-chief is entitled to an opportunity to identify a way, which promises to lead to a better, safer and more constructive outcome.

Decent people can reasonably disagree about this. Certainly the president has earned a jaundiced view of anything he says about military and foreign policy. The President insists on harming his own credibility by invoking "the war on terror" to justify his neoconservative adventure. He should be taken more effectively to task about not assigning metric goals that would equal "Victory." We can't and shouldn't forget about the method or the outcome of the decision-making which led us into this costly and foolish adventure. It was a stacked deck of questionable, if not dishonest, premises. The fact is that we are there. Given that unfortunate fact, the President's plan is the only one we have heard which holds out the possibility of meeting at least our baseline legal obligations to the world community and our promises to the Iraqi people.
J.C. Watts' father once said, "A black man voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders!" I kind of feel like that chicken as I type these words. This blog supports the President's "Surge" plan and hopes it is successful.

LIBBY'S LAWYER SAYS ROVE SET LIBBY UP TO TAKE THE FALL

Gee, that's embarassing for the Yale Law School. A Yale Law Honors Grad outfoxed by a guy who never graduated from college, anyplace.

If it's true, I guess it proves that Republicans actually do eat their young. Well, wait, even if it's not true, Libby's still a Republican. I guess it proves they eat their young whether it's true or not.

WELCOME TO A METHODIST INSTITUTION, MR. PRESIDENT!

Some of my methodist brothers and sisters are objecting to the George W. Bush Presidential Library being on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

I do not join in that anti-intellectual position. I agree with nearly nothing this man stands for but he is and has been the President. He has a point of view. His administration will be an important learning tool for all of us for years to come (likely and object lesson).

A university is a place where all points of view should be presented fairly and the students come away with their own, balanced view. Simply because this President is not our cup of tea, we shouldn't refuse to house his history. After all, it's our history as well, like it or not.

Please, don't let my faith be the "thought police."