Informed Speculation

…and the tune never was a good one.  How hard it is to keep one’s hopes up about Iraq when the predominantly Shiite government continually favors its own! A department of the Iraqi prime minister’s office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some [...]

…I bring you an incredibly addictive weekend time waster.  Just get started on the Rotten Tomatoes countdown of the 100 worst-reviewed movies of all time, and watch the hours tick by!  I tell you, it hurts so good…and if you’re still in a movie mood, check out Kim Masters’ account of the $500 million movie [...]

…and if it involves Europe, believe nothing you read. Typical of the coverage of the Paul Wolfowitz World Bank scandal is this from the Washington Post: Paul Wolfowitz encountered stiffening opposition Saturday to staying on as World Bank president amid allegations he showed favoritism in arranging a promotion and pay package for his girlfriend. European [...]

One reader noted that, when I graded the Democrats’ performance in Thursday’s debate, I said Obama was pretty awful, yet still gave him a B+.  The consensus among most watchers was that Obama did indeed underperform, but yet, he’s still perceived as doing pretty well, all things considered. Why? Leave it to Mickey Kaus: Several [...]

I’ve added a store, powered through Amazon.com (they handle the checkout, delivery, etc., so it’s totally safe, and I don’t get to see your credit-card info).  You can see it in the navigation links below the site logo above, by Archives, Links, Odds, etc.  Why should you go there? Well, it’s true I make a [...]

General observations: the front-runners didn’t suffer any huge gaffes, but they were pretty unimpressive for the most part. Mike Gravel: F-.  My God, what a nut…anyone who watched that debate and would still consider voting for Gravel must be a blood relative.  ‘Nuff said about this VERY marginal candidate. Dennis Kucinich: B.  Kucinich is a blazing [...]

…but I was, of course, in deep, deep mourning over the news Rosie is leaving The View. In all seriousness (though this, too, may seem like a joke), the Democrats are debating(!) right now on MSNBC.  My thoughts later…

I’ve been too busy (nothing fun, I assure you) to comment on the blog much over the last few days, but I didn’t want to let the passing of Boris Yeltsin go by unobserved.  Yeltsin may not be the towering figure of his era that Reagan turned out to be, but compared to Putin, he’s [...]

Very, very sad news from California, as one of the giants has died in a car crash. David Halberstam is the author of any number of extremely worthy books, including his Pulitzer-Prize-winning masterpiece The Best and the Brightest [correction - Halberstam did win his Pulitzer while reporting on Vietnam, but it was in 1964, while [...]

Barack Obama spoke in front of the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs today in an attempt to shore up his foreign policy bona fides, and for the most part, the speech suffered from the Obama tendency to spout rhetoric that soars at first glance, but reveals itself bereft of content when examined more carefully: “America [...]

Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, has an absolutely essential piece in today’s Washington Post that takes on the foolish subset of (mostly liberal) Americans who somehow manage to come to the conclusion that there is no need for a war on terror: As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no [...]

In the post below, I stressed my belief that if real signs are progress are not made by late summer, the surge will have to be considered a failure, at least on a political level.  That brings up the quite real question of what ‘progress’ in such an environment is.  In this article from the [...]

There of those of us who still believe in the idea of a united, democratic Iraq, though our hopes have been dashed time and time again and the remnants are fading.  I never thought the idea of a partitioned Iraq was worth fighting and dying over.  You can understand, then, my disappointment that it has come [...]

I had to do a double-take when I saw this item – I had no clue that over the next two weeks, the debates (!!!!) will start – at a time when many candidates have yet to even declare: While for many of us, the presidential campaign started months ago, the contest will truly kick [...]

The White House officially stands by their man, but behind the scenes, the prognosis is grim: White House insiders tell CNN that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hurt himself during testimony before a Senate committee Thursday on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. The sources, involved in administration discussions about Gonzales, told White House correspondent Suzanne [...]

That’s the upshot of the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, which has Giuliani at 33 percent and McCain at 21 percent.  Thompson and Romney each clocked in at 9%.  Romney is not gaining appreciable ground, but Thompson is clearly cutting into Rudy’s support.  I had earlier speculated that Rudy’s support among Republicans seemed to hold [...]

I see people on both sides of the aisle, people whom I respect, and people that I don’t, trying to use the Virginia Tech killings to push one political agenda or another. I also see all sorts of wild speculation going on. My advice, though I’m aware no one asked for it: don’t go there. [...]

Sigh…it’s a good thing there’s not real work to be done in Congress: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates in the primary field, declared in a letter sent to his Democratic House colleagues this morning that he plans to file articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. Kucinich [...]

…from the NY Times showing where the various candidates Q1 expenditures came from, by ZIP code.  The biggest recipient of Austin funds? One Hillary Clinton.  The only surprise is that it wasn’t Obama or Edwards…then again, I should have remembered that 99.7% of Austin progressives haven’t got two dimes to rub together…it’s the old school [...]