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"The practical meaning of "The Surge" has changed while the pretended meaning has stayed the same. The pretended meaning is, The US increased troop strength in Iraq for a period of time beginning in 2007. The actual meaning is, the US increased troop strength WHILE ramping up a program to pay off Sunni resistance leaders WHILE Iraq’s warring ethno-religious factions finished completely remaking Iraq’s demographic patterns, owing to tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of exiled and internally displaced, WHILE the US turned the capital into a warren of barricades. The net result of all those changes has been a less obtrusively violent Iraq for the time being, and the whole arrangement is "The Surge" in practice, but the cheerleaders talk as if it was all due to The Surge in pretense. Meanwhile Iraq’s "calm" would count as calamity almost anywhere on earth but Darfur or Zimbabwe. That’s leaving aside the essential truth that The Surge is not The War and The War remains a massive waste and a monstrous crime."
"Since effectively capturing the Republican nomination when Mitt Romney dropped out of the race on Feb. 7, John McCain has held just one public campaign event on a weekend. Instead, after workweeks full of fundraisers, town hall meetings and interviews, McCain has been, in campaign parlance, “down” on nearly every Saturday or Sunday for 20 weeks, largely sequestered away from the news media."And let's look at where today's Republican Party stands:
"These are poll numbers that make the GOP's blood boil: 66% of Americans support health coverage for all, even if it means raising taxes; 76% of Americans think global warming in "a proven fact"; only 16% of Americans think abortion should be completely outlawed; 77% of Americans believe we should meet with leaders who are hostile to the United States; 57% of Americans support either gay marriage or civil unions; and 85% of Americans say a candidate's position on Iraq is extremely important" or "important" to their vote. Thus, the core beliefs and principles of the Republican Party are held generally by a minority of Americans. How then does a Republican candidate win a majority of the votes in the fall?"
"Media Bloodhound caught a perfect example of the Entertainment Industrial Complex doing its best to ensure that Americans stay as uninformed as possible."
"The key to understanding how the elders define bipartisanship is recognizing that whatever your beliefs or principles, you "get things done" in Washington by doing what conservatives want you to do."
"It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet."
"The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of 'Weekend With Bernie,' handcuffed to a corpse."
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On NBC Nightly News last night, anchor Brian Williams reported that on a recent trip to Afghansistan, “several U.S. commanders complained” to NBC that they lack “resources, aircraft, soldiers and support because of the war in Iraq.” Williams noted that the commanders’ complaints were echoed earlier in the day by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, who said that the military’s resources are “constrained” because of Iraq. As Williams noted, Mullen told reporters yesterday that in Afghanistan, “violence is up this year by every single measure.” Mullen then said that “we don’t have enough forces” to deal with the challenges there because of troop commitments in Iraq.
U.S. consumer confidence this month “to its lowest in 16 years as high inflation continued to sap confidence and pushed expectations for the future to a record low."
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned today that “the U.S. economy was ‘on the brink' of a recession, with the chances of that happening at more than 50 percent.” Greenspan added that a quick recovery of the sour economy is unlikely. “A rebound at this stage is not something I think is in the immediate outlook,” he said. “There are still very considerable structural problems remaining in the financial system. They will remain for a while. It’s going to be very difficult.”
The Republic has a page one brief on the weather. Headline: 7 straight days of 110+ and now, summer starts. Reporter John Faherty writes, "Last year set a record when the high temperature hit or exceeded 110 on 32 days...On average, that happens 10 times per year." Oh, and there's an unhealthy air alert. Sadly, this is the new normal. The summers have been getting hotter and lasting longer for years now. This is a man-made phenomenon: replacing agriculture with subdivisions, sprawling the urban island across 1,500 square miles or more, and throwing down asphalt, concrete and rocks with no thought to their consequences.I grew up in Tempe and I tell people all the time that summers are getting hotter. And while the daytime heat is brutal I think the bigger problem is that the temperatures at night do not drop as fast or as low as they used to. This massive heat island around Phoenix is also changing the patterns of our annual monsoon rains. For me it has reached a tipping point. I don't think I like it here anymore. If I can't stand the heat, maybe I should get out and stop bitchin'.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks. "A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared," said Bob Janjuah, the bank's credit strategist.Uh-Oh.
"America's real drug problem is its addiction to prohibition. It hasn't worked in the last 40 and more years and it won't ever work. For a fraction of the billions we spend on failed policies that rely on radication, interdiction and incarceration, we could invest in treatment facilities that would actually solve the problems of addiction and abuse, which are the only real dangers of drug use and allow responsible substance consumers to live in peace and productivity."
"John McCain has a YouTube problem. For McCain, the dangers of the digital age lay not in a single lie spread wide by email, but in his own multiple lies and panders, presented in his own words, on video. There are countless of mash-ups on YouTube and other video sites of McCain vs. McCain, offering up in delicious clips the devastating sound-bites of McCain taking one position (when it was political convenient to do so) and then taking another."The heat on McCain will slowly rise with every video that bounces around the Internet showing his current positions and contrasting them with his former positions. This isn't a flip-flopping issue, it's a pandering issue and a character issue. John McCain will say anything to get elected, and then deny he ever said it!
"The Golf Pack is great, but when are you going to offer a Joe Lieberman Certified McCain Ball Washer?"
"But the significance of McClellan's book is that his detailed recounting of what he saw from the inside vindicates pretty much all the central pillars of the Bush critique that have been chronicled here and elsewhere for many years now."
"What happened yesterday was not that the Clinton campaign was robbed of 4 delegates by the DNC, but what happened was an attempt to steal dozens of delegates by the Clinton campaign was stopped."
