I Don't Like You Either.

Andrew Sullivan on McCain

by Teh Nutroots | As he mulls over his former support for the war in Iraq, provides a summary of McCain's militarism  in a nutshell .

For him, it is always 1938 somewhere; America's duty is to control, occupy or intervene wherever any rival seeks influence and any group does not share our alleged values. And so American power must be brought to bear in Georgia and Iraq and Iran and Burma and Darfur and Bosnia and anyplace else where American interests are threatened or democratic allies seek help. And for militarist American exceptionalists, this all makes sense. This is the higher purpose McCain lives for: the glory of liberation, the thrill of conquest, the adoration of the soldier, the defeat of evil.

I've never understood in the first place why this attitude was ever meant to be "conservative."   The only thing they're conserving is American arrogance at the expense of everything else.

Ride the Wayback Pony: Edwards' Hypocrisy Gets A Democrat Down

by Blue Stockings | Sometimes The Huffington Post really gets on my last nerve.  I know, I know, THEY TOLD US SO and we told them to shut up till they had proof.  Still:  it's a tragedy for Dems and they shouldn't be quite so full of piss and judgment.  Read the smuggery here (Say It Ain't So, Elizabeth -- You Knew But Supported His Run For President?) and here (What is Wrong With Men?)

The first bothers me more than the second.  It's not Elizabeth's fault.  And Stranahan is as wrong as he can be when he implies that there would ever be a time when it wouldn't matter to Edwards' presidential bid.  His rebuke to Clinton would have come back to haunt him no matter what. 

As for what's wrong with men:  same old same old.  You could say it's a refreshing change from Republican-style sex scandals such as this one (involving a 14 year old girl and a Missouri state rep).

But I am not letting Edwards off the hook.  Far from it.  From The Raleigh News and Observer:

Harry Shearer: "Addicted to Oil"

Posted by Damozel | "Addiction always seems to wind up with a foreigner and a gun." 

Ride the Wayback Pony---Bush Sings: How to Talk to the Press About the War

From Songs in the Key of W.  Bush explains how to talk to the press.  This is incredibly creepy. 

Jim Kunstler: "Not Your Grandma's Depression"

Posted by Damozel | Speaking of depression, that's how you're going to feel after you're done reading his analysis.  Kunstler  points out all the ways in which our society is less in a position to recover than it was back in the thirties.

Our debt problems today are of a magnitude so extreme that astronomers would be hard pressed to calculate them. By any rational measure our society is comprehensively bankrupt. From the federal treasury down to the suburban cul-de-sacs so much loaned money is either not being paid back, or is at risk of never being paid back, that the suckage of presumed wealth has passed through an event horizon out of the known universe into some other realm of space-time, never to be seen again in this realm. This would seem to be the very essence of monetary deflation -- money defaulted out-of-existence.

This condition is partly disguised by both the loss of credibility of US currency and real-world scarcities of oil and food, but the upshot will be something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it. 

Complicating matters is a global oil predicament that is really not hard to understand, but which the organs of news and opinion have obdurately failed to explicate for an anxious public. Call it Peak Oil. There are only a few elements of it you need to know. 1.) that demand has now permanently outstripped supply; 2.) that new discoveries are too meager to offset consumption; 3.) That under under the circumstances, the systems we rely on for daily life are crumbling. I've called this situation The Long Emergency.

     Our chances of mitigating this, and of continuing our current way-of-life is about zero. I've tried to promote the idea that rather than waste remaining resources in the futile attempt to sustain the unsustainable (i.e. come up with "solutions" to keep suburbia running), that we should begin immediately making other arrangements for daily life -- mainly by downscaling and re-scaling everything from farming to commerce to the way we inhabit the landscape -- but my suggestions have proven unpopular even among the "environmental" elites, who are too busy being entranced by new-and-groovy ways to keep all the cars running.  (More...and more...)

Enjoy.  I'm off to stick my head in the sand again.  I'm starting to think it's lucky I don't really own anything and rarely drive. 

The Scope of the NSA's Domestic Spying

The Wall Street Journal discusses the role of the National Security Agency in analyzing the data they sweep up via FISA.  Apparently "A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance." (WSJ)  And, points out one expert somberly, the constitutional questions of whether the government can probe the wide array of data it's currently examining without violating reasonable expectations of privacy has never been resolved. (WSJ)  "NSA officials say the agency's own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it's increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information," the article observes.(WSJ)

Do you mind?  Should you mind?  Let's take a look at exactly what they're sweeping up, and in.

Sobering Statistics Relating to Iraqi Deaths; the Fall Out from the Housing Market Fiasco; Unreliable Polls

D Cupples discusses the World Health Organization's New Study of Iraqi deaths by violence. 

In addition, you might want to consider how the fall-out from the housing crisis affects consumers (that's you and me).

Finally:  What about those New Hampshire polls, huh?  But many polls have been consistently off, and not only in New Hampshire.

A Couple of Christmas Eve Observations

With this family anxiety at the moment, I am not in a holiday mood.  I'm not in a political argument mood either, though.  So I'll content myself with a couple of remarks at least for now. 

At our sister blog----and what I think of as my main political blog---- BN-Politics, The Nutroots (a new friend!), who isn't bothered about preserving a conciliatory tone the way I am, wrote a pretty searing response---according to me----to Sister Toldjah's Christmas post.   

He received the following comment (his first!  Congratulations, Teh Nutroots!)

[Commenter] Was there an argument, concept, or any content in any of that word puke?

[The Nutroots] Yes.  Sadly, it seems to have gone right over your head.

As he's often remarks, he's not a nice person.  And there ain't a damn thing D Cupples or Rob or I can do about it.  What is it everyone is always saying these days?  "It is what it is."  And Teh Nutroots is what he is.   Shame really, as Robin has observed.

Speaking of the question of goodness or niceness, at Slacktivist, Fred Clark wrote a searing response to Mona Charen's distressing recent column on whether waterboarding is torture.  Thanks, Slacktivist, for doing this so other blogs don't have to.  I also found via Slacktivist this site:  The National Religious Campaign Against Torture.   For some reason, the group limits membership to organizations (i.e., to churches), but you can sign a statement, as follows:

Eyebrow-Raising Stuff

BN-POLITICS. Damozel is out of town, so PBSmind and I are covering.  Eyebrow-raising stuff has transpired.  Here are some highlights:

House Republicans Plot to Slip Senate the Big Blue One

BN-POLTICS BY D CUPPLES.   As the Senate struggles with the immigration bill, some House members lay in wait--wringing hands and dabbing drool--for the opportunity to "blue slip" the bill.  Read about it on Buck Naked Politics.