Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
In other news, Richard Perle seems to be writing comedy for the Washington Post. He writes an op-ed in which he claims that George Tenet personally stole all Saddam's WMD and hid them so that President Bush would look bad. Or something. Like I said, either it was written as a satire, or Perle is convinced he can personally rewrite history. You be the judge.
Rend Al-Rahim's got the best idea I've heard in a long time for some sort of acceptible solution to the whole problem of Iraq: convene a Dayton-type meeting with all the factions, and hammer out an agreement they can all live with. Who knows what the chances of success would be, but like I said, this is the first truly original idea I've heard in a long time, so it deserves to be debated, at the very least.
The time has come to federalize presidential elections.
I do not call lightly for this step, and realize it would face an uphill fight to becoming reality. It would probably require amending the Constitution, which is always tough. This doesn't mean it isn't worth attempting, or that it won't eventually happen.
The federal government must take control of the election process for the presidential elections, including the primaries. This would simultaneously solve two problems that have been getting successively worse with each election cycle: the primary calendar race to the front of the line, and the questionable voting practices in certain areas of the country.
I wrote an article predicting how the Iraq war would be ended by Democrats in Congress back in January which prognosticated that it wouldn't be until this fall that Republicans would start supporting Democratic efforts to end the war.
David Broder, of the Washington Post, has finally come around to my way of thinking. Since he's seen as being a kind of "dean of the chattering classes" I must admit I feel a bit vindicated.
While much has been said about the French elections, the thing that struck me was the fact that 85% of them turned out to vote. In our last presidential election, south of 60% exercised their franchise. Maybe it has something to do with scheduling the voting on a weekend, instead of a Tuesday? Just a thought....
The symbolism of a Republican crowd sitting in "Geneva" is bad enough, given George W. Bush's penchance for ignoring international laws (especially those which emanated from Geneva), but am I the only one to see shades of Kafka or Orwell in GOP audience members sitting in "Moscow"?
Now, this doesn't mean I'm about to vote Republican or anything, but Romney raised his profile considerably (for me) when he told Jay "my sons just gave me a car as a present -- a 1962 Rambler American."
For context (for those of you who don't know me personally), here is the car I learned to drive on:
A not-so beautiful 1968 Rambler American. Man, if that car could talk....
Last night on PBS' News Hour With Jim Lehrer, Republican Senator (from Texas -- where else?) Kay Bailey Hutchison apparantly does not live on this planet. She was speaking of (in her opinion) the ridiculousness of running a war in Baghdad from Washington, D.C., but the way she put it earns her a Biggest Whopper Of The Week award. She said we can't try to run a war "from 30,000 miles away," putting the Capitol building somewhere between the Earth and the moon (Distance from Washington, D.C. to Baghdad as the "great circle" flies: 6,222 miles; Earth's diameter: 7,900 miles; Distance from Earth to moon: 240,000 miles; Kay Bailey Hutchison's science IQ: ???).