Nail-Tinted Glasses

The Mad Decider

Clean cup! Clean cup! Move down! Move down!

Not an option

If failure in Iraq is "not an option", why is the administration making decisions as though it were manditory?

Random Irresponsible Speculation

Josh Micah Marshall, over at Talking Points Memo:

Setting aside legalities, someone who works for the president did something reckless and wrong. The president either knows who it is or could have found out easily at any point along the way. He could have solved the matter at the outset by firing or reprimanding the person. He preferred to do nothing.

Hmm, maybe we can work backwards from the President's response to the source. Could the source be someone that the President cannot dismiss?

Was the First Lady on the grassy knoll?

Picture worth a thousand words

via Daily Kos, but the picture deserves more play...

from http://icasualties.org/

Connecting the dots

Via Daily Kos, a story of three tax payers being ejected from a government sponsored event because of the bumper sticker on the car they drove to the event.

My question: how were they tied to the car? The easy answer is that they were marked getting out of the car, then intercepted as soon as possible after a decision was made. I'm a little uncomfortable about the alternative, that the plate was phoned in to get the owner from the registration. You are only paranoid if no one is out to get you.

Presidential Priorities

Can the President be fairly judged by his actions.

Headlines

From The Onion: Documents Reveal Gaps In Bush's Service as President.

Play ball

So the Senator, in the capitol of his home state on the eve of his party's national convention, gets booed by some notable portion of the fans? Even taking into account the fact that I was sitting in right field, this is not a good omen.

Then he can't find the plate with his fastball from - what, five feet in front of the mound?

Sigh.

Vogons

orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Looks like they managed to skip a step - how efficient.

The Judicial Coup

The US did not end up with a second Bush administration by judicial coup. The US ended up with a second Bush administration because a significant proportion of the enfranchised thought him a reasonable choice.

Fix the problem, not the symptom.

Veep

OK, so McCain doesn't want to leave the Republican party. Would it be fun to have him run as Kerry's VP as a Republican?

Yeah, I'm dreaming, and even in the dream I'm not convinced it is tactically wise. If a Bush reelection is a catastrophe for the nation, it might be a reasonable gambit.

Falluja

"You morons! You're running around with ski masks, try to blow things up, what did you think was going to happen?!"

Mourn the loss of our sons. Grieve, that a people have fallen so low as to take joy in that fashion. It is both fitting and proper.

Righteousness, however, is horribly misplaced. This is part of the price we choose to pay.

Update: American commanders on the ground have a lot of bad choices.

Pretty Soon It's Real Money

Does the extra $25M added to the OBL bounty make any real difference?

Some sinister business conglomerate which has worked out that they could bring in the target, but doing so would require a $38M cost outlay, such that until today it simply wasn't profitable?

Or perhaps a legion of amateur Greedos out there, who had decided that the original reward did not justify a change in career path?

Political Thought of the Day

There has to be a better way of demoralizing your enemy than deliberate stupidity.