Marc Cooper:
Hillary Clinton is out on the campaign trail attempting to make a pivot on the war in Iraq.
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Oh, says Hillary now of the notorious vote for war: “I accept responsibility.”
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This, of course, begs a burning follow-up question from some enterprising reporter: “Senator Clinton, just exactly for what are you accepting responsibility? For the [...]
Fred Kagan last December, quoted by Gregory at Belgravia Dispatch.
Conducting Tal Afar-type operations across the entire capital region all at once would require concentrating all available forces in the area and a “surge” of about 80,000 U.S. soldiers–a large number, to be sure, but very far from the “hundreds of thousands” or even “millions” generated [...]
Tom Toles
Andrew Brown on the Lancet study.
helmintholog: 600,000 and deNazification
… At about the same time [1951], a poll found that 37% of Germans thought it would be better for Germany to have no Jews on its territory, and 25% of them had a good opinion of Hitler.
This doesn’t prove the unique depravity of Germans, only their [...]
A nice extended account of the recent history of North Korea and nuclear weapons. With links.
Do You Feel Safer Now?
Those ridiculous knee-jerk Democrats. Why on earth would they think that the person who has had complete control over America’s foreign policy for the last six years should be blamed in any way for a [...]
Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed AB 2948, the bill that would have effectively done away with the Electoral College in favor of direct election of the president, once enough states passed similar bills (and they overcame the inevitable court challenges).
Schwarzenegger’s veto message reads,
To the Members of the California State Assembly:
I am returning Assembly Bill 2948 [...]
Michael J Smith at Stop Me Before I Vote Again:
Shock the donkey:
What makes the Democrats tick? Surely, you’ll say, it’s the obvious thing — the thing that drives any political party: the desire to take power.
I don’t think so.
Go ahead, read it. You know you want to.
Ariel Dorfman expresses better than I can my discomfort with the arguments against torture, valid as they may be, that appeal to efficacy or to self-interest.
It was always the same story, what I discovered in the ensuing years, as I became an unwilling expert on all manner of torments and degradations, my life and my [...]
Bruce Schneier.
What the Terrorists Want
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The [...]
There’s been a lot of virtual ink spilled on the subject of Judge Taylor’s decision on the (il)legality of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping. For a discussion of fine legal points you’ll have to go elsewhere, but the view I’d like to associate myself with is expressed by historian David Kaiser at HIstory Unfolding.
Judge Taylor’s [...]
Digby, over at Hullabaloo.
Stepping Into The Breach
Back in 2000, I had a standard argument for Naderites who claimed “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them” because they both are beholden to big business. I always said that you had to look at the coalitions that formed both parties and as long as Democrats [...]
BBC headline: [Deputy Prime Minister John] Prescott denies calling Bush crap.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has denied saying the Bush administration had been “crap” on the Middle East road map - the plan for peace in the region.
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[Labour MP Harry] Cohen said he believed Mr Prescott’s comment had been “an honest and good point, well [...]
Skeptics are raising questions about the credibility of the airplane bomb threat uncovered in Britain on August 10. (BBC news & background 8/17, 8/15 & 8/17.)
Here’s James K Galbraith in The Nation, 8/16.
On September 11, nineteen hijackers commandeered four airplanes and succeeded in killing some 3,000 people. On August 10, we are told, British [...]
DarkSyde:
Perspective: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get a Grip
Here’s a message for both our homegrown Neoconservative, bloggy, gutless wonders and the Jihadi nutcases overseas: I grew up in the cold-war, my parents went through WW2 for crying out loud. We are not paralyzed with fear over Osama. Despite your best efforts, [...]
Last June, a parcel tax proposal by my local school district failed, for the fifth time in recent memory. This Tuesday, Californians will vote on Proposition 88, an initiative that seeks a perpetual statewide $50/year parcel tax.
Sidebar: California School Funding
California school districts are primarily funded by the state, through a complicated formula that needn’t concern [...]
Billmon at Whiskey Bar: Babes in Toyland:
To paraphrase a slogan, Manichaeism is not a plan. Other than Tony Blair, even our closest allies no longer buy the shining-city-on-the hill act — if they ever did (and Blair may just be a good actor with an eye for the main chance.) The French, like the [...]
Matt Taibbi.
… Which tells you just about everything you need to know about the modern Democratic Party. Why is anyone surprised that the Republicans never lose?
More Gideon Levy.
Who started?
We started. We started with the occupation, and we are duty-bound to end it, a real and complete ending. We started with the violence. There is no violence worse than the violence of the occupier, using force on an entire nation, so the question about who fired first is therefore an [...]
I can’t do better this morning than to crib Mark Thoma’s crib of Paul Krugman. March of Folly:
Since those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it — and since the cast of characters making pronouncements on the crisis in the Middle East is very much the same as it was [...]
Gideon Levy in Haaretz:A black flag:
A black flag hangs over the “rolling” operation in Gaza. The more the operation “rolls,” the darker the flag becomes. The “summer rains” we are showering on Gaza are not only pointless, but are first and foremost blatantly illegitimate. It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from [...]