THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Some marching music

2009-12-03T00:18:00.002-05:00

For the surge. From the English Musical film "Oh What A Lovely War"

Richard Milhous Obama

2009-12-02T22:37:00.002-05:00

Andrew Bacevich offers his 2 cents on the Kabul Quagmire, a 2 cents of greater value than the usual base metal opinions being offered on all sides of the country today.

Which is the greater folly: To fancy that war offers an easy solution to vexing problems, or, knowing otherwise, to opt for war anyway?

In the wake of 9/11, American statecraft emphasized the first approach: President George W. Bush embarked on a "global war" to eliminate violent jihadism. President Obama now seems intent on pursuing the second approach: Through military escalation in Afghanistan, he seeks to "finish the job" that Bush began there, then all but abandoned.

Through war, Bush set out to transform the greater Middle East. Despite immense expenditures of blood and treasure, that effort failed. In choosing Obama rather than John McCain to succeed Bush, the American people acknowledged that failure as definitive. Obama's election was to mark a new beginning, an opportunity to "reset" America's approach to the world.

The president's chosen course of action for Afghanistan suggests he may well squander that opportunity. Rather than renouncing Bush's legacy, Obama apparently aims to salvage something of value. In Afghanistan, he will expend yet more blood and more treasure hoping to attenuate or at least paper over the wreckage left over from the Bush era.

However improbable, Obama thereby finds himself following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon.

And this time around, wiretapping is a time honored executive custom.

Do something good for the holidays

2009-12-02T22:26:00.000-05:00

Whether it is for the 170,000 troops stuck in one of the Bush/Cheney sandtraps or any of the other thousands of US military personnel away from home and family, do something to show your support for the troops beyond a cheap, made in China bumper magnet.

DONATE TO THE USO

Your Two Minute Ed

2009-12-02T19:45:00.002-05:00

Tonight Ed thinks the Pentagon will let Obama start withdrawals from the Kabul Quagmire in 2011.

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Watch out for those flying pigs.

With photographic clarity

2009-12-02T18:39:00.002-05:00

The Rude Pundit perfectly describes Dickwahd al-Cheney.

Dick Cheney, one of the most vile people ever to be allowed to walk into the White House, the man whose mere presence in this world led to the creation of the abyss we're trying to avoid finally plunging into, the motherfucker who advocated policies that actually and really reversed the course of this nation's progress in order to demonstrably profit a very few people, a deranged sadist whose death would instantly lead to more light on the earth, says that Barack Obama is against America and is tearing it down, although he never actually explains why. Maybe that's just what presumptive liberals do. More likely, Dick Cheney just hates you, all of you, all of us, for daring to think you could fuck up everything that he had put in place.

And that is just the view from the front.

Who will weep for Goldmine Sachs

2009-12-02T18:21:00.002-05:00

Dylan Ratigan speaks with his panel about the sad plight of Goldmine Sachs and how it has shattered the joy of their financial supremacy :-p.

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I don't know anyone who would weep for GS.

Republican rape supporters furious

2009-12-02T17:32:00.002-05:00

At Sen. Al Franken for showing their position to the world. And let's face it, Hell hath no fury like a Republican shown to be acting as a Republican.

Republican senators feel burned by Al Franken — and not by his old jokes.

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

We all know the old saying about if the shoe fits and those 30 GOP seem very comfortable in their wingtips so they should just STFU.

Is this what you want to pay for?

2009-12-02T16:59:00.002-05:00

Along with the increase of 30,000 troops to the Kabul Quagmire, there will be an increase in the number of private contractors and mercenaries hired to support their effort. As the Army Times reports, we would be much better off without some of that "support".

Ill-disciplined private security guards escorting supply convoys to coalition bases are wreaking havoc as they pass through western Kandahar province, undermining the coalition’s counterinsurgency strategy here and leading to at least one confrontation with U.S. forces, say U.S. Army officers and Afghan government officials.

The security guards are responsible for killing and wounding more than 30 innocent civilians during the past four years in Maywand district alone, said Mohammad Zareef, the senior representative in the district for Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.

Highway 1, the country’s main east-west artery, runs through Maywand and is the route taken by logistics convoys moving west from Kabul and Kandahar to coalition bases in Helmand province. The Afghan government’s district chief for Maywand says the men hired to protect the convoys are heroin addicts armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.

So if they are junkies at least are money is going back to our friends the Karzais, who may be the only friends we have if the mercs keep shooting up the countryside.

How you can tell when you have really, really fucked up.

2009-12-02T16:45:00.003-05:00

Sarah Palin agrees with you.

Sarah Palin says she supports President Barack Obama's decision to boost the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

The former GOP vice presidential nominee noted she had urged Obama to increase U.S. forces there three months ago. She said she was glad he had "mostly heeded" the advice.

Palin said she especially welcomed Obama's decision since he had opposed President George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq in 2007.

With Caribou Barbie on your side Mr. President, how much longer before Glen "The Mad Mormon" Beck joins her?

Now we have a link and a video

2009-12-02T13:25:00.003-05:00

We posted a few days back about John Marcotte and his California ballot initiative to ban divorce. If you want to know more, his website is rescuemarriage.org

Dueling headlines

2009-12-02T13:13:00.002-05:00

The home page of McClatchy had two similar headlines today involving defense of the indefensible.

Clinton, Gates defend Obama's Afghan plan before Senate

and

Sanford's lawyers defend use of state airplanes

I leave it to you, astute reader, to determine which involves the greater application of manure.

A wednesday twofer

2009-12-02T13:01:00.002-05:00

Pat Oliphant

Tom Toles

click pic to big

If ice cream could cure cancer

2009-12-02T12:23:00.001-05:00

Jon Stewart and Mr Six Months discuss the Kabul Quagmire and Mr Six Months still won't apologize for being so wrong about Iraq.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Thomas Friedman

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Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

We send e-mails

2009-12-01T22:25:00.000-05:00

And tonight we sent the following to President Obama.

Congratulations sir on buying a used war from the Bushies. Now that you own it, I hope you will support a war tax to pay for it. I am tired of your predecessors policy of putting the war on the tab. Even though it would increase your taxes, you should know that I and millions of Americans know that you and other financially successful citizens will not mind doing what is right for our country.

PS. Will you be returning the Nobel Peace Prize now that you no longer qualify?

No doubt the "memory hole" will be active tonight.

Your Two Minute Ed

2009-12-01T20:03:00.001-05:00

Tonight Ed & Dr Dean talk some more about HCR with a pinch of Blanche Lincoln

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Strange place, that blogosphere

2009-12-01T17:59:00.001-05:00

Where an economics teacher can learn the science of war winning from a lobster.

And the good news

2009-12-01T16:47:00.002-05:00

The CBO, in addition to their positive report on the Senate HCR bill, has issued a report on the results of the stimulus to date.

Between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs were created or saved through September as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.

The data, released Monday, say the real inflation-adjusted gross domestic product was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been had the $787 billion stimulus package not passed in February. Also, the stimulus lowered the unemployment by between 0.3 and 0.9 percentage points, according to the report.

The new figures are slightly higher than CBO’s March estimates that between 600,000 and 1.5 million jobs were saved or created by the third quarter of this year, the report said.

Bet you won't see this in the NY Post.

Dickwahd says "Who me?"

2009-12-01T16:29:00.002-05:00

From Politico:

But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

The man with the cast iron heart never made a mistake in his life.

EXTRA: Steny Hoyer unloads on the chickenshits from the previous administration.

And I thought I was disillusioned

2009-12-01T14:04:00.001-05:00

If this is the best the new president and his Congress can do, then God help us. We might just as well have kept George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for another four years. Those guys wouldn't have dashed anybody's hopes.

Joe Galloway's conclusion after looking at the first year of President Obama.

Will Goldmine Sachs execs really shoot themselves in the foot?

2009-12-01T13:30:00.002-05:00

Alice Schroeder reports that the word on the street is that the top executives at Goddamn Sachs are getting their pistol permits and loading up their gun cabinets in anticipation of the day when the peasants show up at the gates with pitchforks and torches.

Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.

No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms.

Somehow the idea of the Masters of the Universe defending the castle with guns blazing brings to mind images of a plethora of friendly fire casualties, which is not such a bad idea.

Weakness posing as strength

2009-12-01T13:05:00.003-05:00

And Bob Herbert does a good job of pointing out that Obama's decision to continue funneling dollars and troops into the Kabul Quagmire instead of working to rebuild our own country is the true sign of weakness.

I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole...

...The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.

Why does the GOP always score points when they display their hatred of our country?

Tuesday Toon

2009-12-01T13:01:00.001-05:00

From the pen of Tony Auth

Quote of the Day

2009-12-01T12:50:00.002-05:00

My word to Mr. Huckabee is man up and own what you did.

Larry Jegley, Pulaski County Ark. Prosecutor calling out Mike Huckabee for trying to shift the blame for releasing Maurice Clemmons.

Your Two Minute Ed

2009-11-30T19:34:00.000-05:00

Wherein health care returns as the Senate begins debate today.

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Quote of the Day

2009-11-30T18:17:00.001-05:00

We've been told for a year that we need to pay for every dollar that it's going to cost us to reform our health care system. That's about $900 billion over 10 years. If we wind up being committed in Afghanistan for eight to 10 years, that's also going to approach $800 billion to $900 billion. And if we're going to do that, it seems to me that if we're being told we have to pay for health care, we certainly ought to pay for this effort as well.

Rep. David Obey D, explaining to John King on CNN why we need Pay to Play for Afghanistan.