Thanks, Spanks
 

I don't think that's true. I think that you're a closet Huckabeeliever!!!

aV

Time to spin...
 

I hate to dissapoint the liberals but there is some good news coming out of Iraq. Sorry to ruin your day.

By Paul Tait
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Civilian deaths from violence across Iraq fell by 50 percent in September, according to government data published on Monday, matching a drop in U.S. military casualties attributed to a boost in troop numbers.
Information provided by the health, interior and defense ministries registered 884 civilians killed in September, the lowest monthly total this year, down from 1,773 in August.
The casualties were also the lowest since Washington began pouring an extra 30,000 troops into Iraq as part of a last-ditch security crackdown aimed at al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants and Shi'ite militias across the country.
A total of 850 civilians were wounded in September, the figures indicated, also well down on the previous month's 1,559.
The crackdown, which was launched in Baghdad in mid-February and then spread into other troubled areas, was designed to buy time for Iraq's leaders to reach political benchmarks aimed at reconciling majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni Arabs.
The drop in civilian violence came despite a warning by al Qaeda at the start of Ramadan, more than two weeks ago, that it would escalate attacks during the Muslim holy month and target tribal leaders who were cooperating with security forces.
The U.S. military said on Sunday that, while violence levels were still too high, attacks so far during Ramadan were down 38 percent on last year.
This was mainly because of the "surge" of extra troops and a change in strategy to move troops out of large bases into smaller combat outposts where they live and fight alongside Iraqis, military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox said.
ONE-OFF ATTACKS
However, U.S. commanders have also voiced concerns that the Sunni Islamist al Qaeda may still be able to launch "spectacular" one-off attacks that cause mass casualties.
Coordinated suicide bombings aimed at the minority Yazidi community in northern Iraq killed 411 people on August 14 -- over a quarter of all violent civilian deaths that month.
The previous lowest monthly death toll during the "surge" was in June -- the month when the U.S. troop buildup came into full effect -- when 1,227 Iraqis were killed.
The government figures showed that 78 members of the Iraqi security forces were killed, down slightly from 87 in August.
The figures also recorded the deaths of 366 militants, a drop of 106 from August, with the number of detentions also down by about a quarter despite the security crackdown.
The U.S. military death toll in September was the lowest since July 2006, with 62 killed, according to the Web site icasualties.org, which tracks military deaths in Iraq.
Washington has also focused on the success of a strategy of helping Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs in the westerly Anbar province to form local police units to drive al Qaeda from their areas.
Anbar was once the most violent province in Iraq for U.S. troops and Iraqis, but is now relatively safe. U.S. commanders have since worked on adopting similar models elsewhere in Iraq, although the strategy has yet to be tried in major urban areas.
U.S. President George W. Bush told Congress this month that successes in the unpopular war would allow for limited troop withdrawals of between 20,000-30,000 by July.

Anyone want to call?
 

These people need a hobby...

Keep the Calls Coming!
Action Alert-Call Governor Schwarzenegger!


The following bills are still on Governor Schwarzenegger's desk. Please continue to call, fax and email the Governor urging him to veto the following anti-family bills.

Please take immediate action by calling and writing Governor Schwarzenegger about the following dangerous bills:

SB 777-Homosexual Indoctrination in Schools (Kuehl)

SB 777 would ban any textbooks, teaching or activities in schools that "promotes a discriminatory bias against" homosexuals, transgenders, bisexuals, and those with gender (perceived or actual) issues. SB 777 goes much further than any other past attack on the moral and religious beliefs of Californians.

AB 43--Homosexual Marriage (Leno)
In 2000, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, which clearly stated that marriage in California is defined as between a man and a woman. Despite the people of California clearly deciding this issue, AB 43 seeks to redefine marriage as being between two people-regardless of gender. This is yet another example of the arrogance of lawmakers in their belief that they better than the citizens they supposedly represent.

AB 14--Homosexual 'Discrimination' (Laird)

This legislation would grant more special privileges to homosexuals by enacting the "Civil Rights Act of 2007." By changing over 50 areas of the law, this a sweeping piece of legislation that continues to advance the radical homosexual agenda.

AB 102--Marriage Licenses for Domestic Partners (Ma)

AB 102 would require the Declaration of Domestic Partnership form to contain spaces for either party or both parties to indicate a change in surname (last name). CRI opposes this back-door attempt to grant special privileges to domestic partners. By granting domestic partners this element of traditional marriage, lawmakers are blurring the line between traditional marriage and the "faux marriage" of domestic partnership.

AB 394--Enforcing Homosexual "Rights" in Schools (Levine)

AB 394 would require the State Department of Education to "monitor adherence" to the requirements of AB 537, passed in 2000. AB 537 added sexual orientation (including actual or perceived) to all discrimination prohibitions applying to public schools. In other words, lawmakers are passing a law to ensure the law is enforced. AB 394 will further coerce schools into complying with a radical social agenda.

Time to spin...
 

Great News! Mission Accomplished!

It's always good to see less death and destruction, but we're all still waiting for a plausible and compelling reason to be there. Why do you think having 884 people die last month for no discernable reason is something to be happy about?

Anyone want to call?
 

Can't you convince these people to enlist?

Anyone want to call?
 

From you mouth to God's ears.

Time to spin...
 

Well they have had a couple of free elections with very high participation and have a democratically elected government. Wouldn't it be nice to leave the country in a situation where those elections can continue?

Time to spin...
 

And ponies! Wouldn't it be nice to leave everyone in Iraq a pony?

http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/24467-large.jpg

health care
 

This sums up the debate pretty well:

• On each side, the plans are basically united. The Republican plans make you pay more for your healthcare so you'll buy less. They do this by weakening the protection that insurance offers from health expenses. The Democratic plans bring everyone into the system, then use that leverage to reform the insurers and extract savings through efficiencies of scale.

link

I know which I prefer.

health care
 

And ponies! Wouldn't it be nice to give everyone in America a pony?


http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/24467-large.jpg

health care
 

Yes! [eta: Not as nice as affordable health care, but still pretty sweet.] But if we only have so much money to spend on ponies, I would buy them for Americans first. And legal permanent residents. Why do you conservatives hate America?

Time to spin...
 

Marc Lynch:

• After years of failed warfare against the Sunni insurgency, the US decided to talk with and then cooperate with "former" insurgents with a lot of American blood on their hands. They discovered that it worked (at least for the short term). It's ironic that the same people who currently most vigorously defend the "Anbar Model" of working with these "former insurgents" usually strongly oppose any serious dialogue with Syria or Iran. If there's one good thing which could come out of the current American Sunni strategy in Iraq, perhaps it will be the recognition that talking to one's enemies can sometimes have positive results.

Thousands dead in Burma?

You'd think Bush would give this more than lip service - maybe send an aircraft carrier or something, or a few of his Blackwater mercenaries. After all, Burma has natural gas.


But the biggest WTF for me: why do people suggest we should be pushing China to do something about Burma? China? Has anyone looked at their government lately? Not a lot of strong democratic values there.

Send an aircraft carrier to do what? What is to be done? The Chinese at least might have some leverage.

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

• Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.
  
  Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.
  
  Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.
  
  A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

Peter Schmidt/Boston Globe

That's how he rattled the sword with Iran; it's highlighting the relative priority he's giving Burma versus Iran.

It at least shows a state of readiness, though I think, like Iran, it would quickly be read as a bluff. After all, we generally don't intervene in other countries' affairs for humanitarian reasons.

But don't count on the Chinese for squat other than window dressing. I suspect they find it quite comfortable to have a regime that is more blatantly and openly repressive than they are right on their doorstep. Keeps people focused elsewhere. There's more reason to work with India or Thailand.

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

I'd suggest law firm hiring works the same way.

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

W went to Yale and Harvard B School. Is this really news?

Back in the olden days
 

Who did security and stuff for diplomats? Has it always been people who aren't military or employees of the government?

Back in the olden days
 

I would have assumed that most security for diplomats would be provided by the host nation. Embassies are guarded by their countries' militaries, but it would be odd to have many armed security types otherwise guarding diplomasts. By what authority could they use force?

Our use of Blackwater is remarkable because of (a) the complete failure of the Iraqi government to provide security, and (b) our ability as the occupying power to interpose our own contractor.

Spanky makes the drudgereport
 

Look. I am in the druge report:



SPANKY: Alabama Judge Accused Of Paddling Jail Inmates Resigns...

Back in the olden days
 

Has anyone read any commentary on the Ken burns "the War?" I know there was some pre-buzz talk about how it is politically slanted, but i didn't hear how. (Burns said he started it well before Iraq war).

Having seen most of it, it strikes me that if anything, it is biased as Pro-Iraq war. It routinely lists dead in a day at staggering numbers, it routinely lists the number of civilians killed (100,000s) and in at least one instance recounted our troops violating conventions with prisioners.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the message, if there is one, is war is fucked up and shit like this happens. unless he means that WWII was wrong, and I don't think that is his point.

It's funny because I would have expected something anti-Iraq if it were biased at all.

Back in the olden days
 

The only controversy I heard about it was that it didn't really cover some of the actions of Hispanics and Native Americans that were in the war, and he had to recut it to be more inclusive. I'm sure my grandfather would be happy to hear that were he still alive.

I haven't heard anyone suggesting that he's opining one way or another about the current war.

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

I'm pretty sure Wellesley isn't doling out athletic scholarships.

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

Pillow fighting?

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

That's just an intramural sport. No scholarships provided.

The Wall Street Journal is Better than Ever
 

Republicans no longer the party of fiscal conservatives. WSJ

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

FWIW, when Great great grandfather Pennypacker offered the endowment, he included the provision that all of his direct decendants get admitted, even those of us who have 2.6 GPA. Fair? fuck no! If he had simply invested what would have been my share of that money I wouldn't have to work today.

So, in my opinion, You can all suck it.

The Wall Street Journal is Better than Ever
 

So is this the parting shot of the old editorial board before the Merger closes? One last attempt to report what is really happening in politics before the spin begins?

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

After this fiasco, how can anyone argue that the New York Times is simply not a daily Mother Jones. Fox is no more slanted to the right than the NYT is slanted to the left. Liberals just read the NYT to have their preconceived notions reconfirmed.

Sauce for the Times

By George Will

Two days before Christmas in 1967, President Lyndon Johnson, visiting the Vatican, presented Pope Paul VI with a foot-high bust of Lyndon Johnson. Small choices can reveal the character of a person.


Or of an institution. Consider the New York Times' choices concerning MoveOn.org's issue advocacy ad calling Gen. David Petraeus "General Betray Us" and accusing him of "cooking the books for the White House."


In June, the Times was in high dudgeon — it knows no other degree of dudgeon — about the Supreme Court's refusal to affirm a far-reaching government power to suppress political speech. The court ruled that a small group of Wisconsin residents had been improperly refused the right to run an issue advocacy ad urging the state's two senators not to filibuster the president's judicial nominees.


Because one of those senators was seeking reelection, the group's ad was deemed an "electioneering communication" — one that "refers to" a candidate for federal office. McCain-Feingold bans such communications by corporations, including incorporated nonprofit citizens' groups, in the weeks before an election — when the Times' editorial page is in full-throated enjoyment of speech rights it would deny to others.

Concurring with the court's judgment that the Wisconsin group's ad should have been permitted, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that although McCain-Feingold was written to prevent "corrosive and distorting effects" by entities with "immense aggregations of wealth," it actually muzzled — with the Times' strenuous approval — a small group of Wisconsin residents.


Less than three months after the Times excoriated the court for weakening restrictions on issue ads, the paper made a huge and patently illegal contribution to MoveOn.org's issue advocacy ad. The American Conservative Union, under Chairman David Keene, immediately filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, noting that the purchaser of the ad, MoveOn.org Political Action, is a registered multicandidate political committee regulated by the mare's-nest of federal laws and rules the multiplication of which has so gladdened the Times.


The Times, a media corporation that is a fountain of detailed editorial instructions about how the rest of the world should conduct its business, seems confused about how it conducts its own. The Times now says the appropriate rate for MoveOn.org's full-page ad should have been $142,000, a far cry from $65,000, which is what the group paid. So the discount of $77,000 constitutes a large soft-money contribution to a federally regulated political committee. The Times' horror of such contributions was expressed in its enthusiasm for McCain-Feingold.


FEC regulations state: "The provision of any goods or services without charge or at a charge that is less than the usual and normal charge for such goods or services is a contribution." Individuals are limited to contributing $5,000 in a calendar year; corporations such as the Times are forbidden to make any contributions.


MoveOn.org is going to send the Times a check for $77,000. The Times has apologized, which is sweet, but normally the FEC does not accept apologies in lieu of fines. And often FEC fines are levied after intrusive investigations into motives and intentions. Will there be such an investigation of the Times? The FEC is not lenient when dealing with individuals who, less lawyered-up than the New York Times Co., fall afoul of regulations much more recondite than the bright line the Times ignored.


Bob Bauer, a Democratic lawyer specializing in laws regulating political speech, notes — not approvingly — that the Times supposedly has a policy of rejecting ads involving "personal attack" speech. But the Times accepted MoveOn.org's ad accusing a soldier of betraying his country. According to the Times' public editor, a Times official said the ad was "a comment on a public official's management of his office."


Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., defending the decision to run the ad, said: "If we're going to err, it's better to err on the side of more political dialogue. . . . Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to people." Bauer notes that Sulzberger might have used words from a Supreme Court decision: "In a debatable case, the tie is resolved in favor of protecting speech." And: "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor." So spoke Chief Justice John Roberts in the Wisconsin decision that Sulzberger's paper denounced because it would magnify the voices of, among other things, "wealthy corporations." The Times Co.'s 2006 revenue was $3.3 billion.


The Times' performance in this matter confirms an axiom: There can be unseemly exposure of mind as well as of body.

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

But they still give out full scholarships to hetero women, right? For diversity and all that?

Affirmative action for dim white kids.
 

You're confusing it with Smith.

With a little push you could almost be a neocon. We should send in the marines and install the democratically elected leader (Aung San Suu Kyi).

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

In your version of reality, whose campaign was the Times contributing to when it charged MoveOn less than its normal rates?

eta: I've read Will's thing twice now, and I can't figure out why he would call what the Times did "patently illegal." So maybe someone can explain that one.

Hey, now that the WSJ has us welcoming you into the Democratic Party, why not. There's room under the tent here for Sebby, Burger, and Slave too - we're just all throwing darts at the religious right and getting a good chuckle out of creationism. Teddy's tending bar and Greenspan's making toasts.

We're all just one big happy family. Except Hank, of course.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Moreover, it appears that the NYT gave Giuliani the same deal.

health care
 

One has been implemented and found a Byzantine bureaucratic mess, funding the administrative ass-sitting jobs of useless clerks to the detriment of patients.

The other has yet to be implemented and found a Byzantine bureaucratic mess, funding the administrative ass-sitting jobs of useless clerks to the detriment of patients.

Pick your bag of shit. I'll be forking over the cash for a personal retainer plan and supplemental inusrance, which the market will provide. So it'll cost me. What are you going to do? It's your health. You lose it and you haven't much else...

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Oh, duuuuuuude. You broke my brain... So if it only subsidizes ALL of the Democrats then it's not subsidizing any single one candidate. Fucking brilliant, man.

But I'm with you on George Will being an idiot. When he ripped Jerry Garcia on the day of the fat man's death he lost me. How in the fuck can you rip Jerry Garcia? It's like hating Santa Claus.

NYT = just a little to the right of Pravda
 

Moveon is not the Democrats, and it's not like there's an election going on. And since the GOP has been trying its damnedest to talk about the Moveon ad instead of, say, Iraq, you might deem the ad a subsidy of Republicans rather than all the Democrats who lined up to vote to condemn it.

Unless I'm missing something, Will is willfully (heh) confusing speech about an issue of current interest with speech aimed to benefit a candidate during an election. I know that those categories are somewhat slippery, but here it's just not that hard.