In for a Broder, in for a Brooks. Am I alone in thinking that “prairie background” sounds like a euphemism? And why do so many profiles of Republican presidential candidates read like soft-core gay male pornography (not that there’s anything wrong with that)?

As you may or may not know, Thune is the junior senator from South Dakota, the man who beat Tom Daschle in an epic campaign five years ago. The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune’s face he’d be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you’d pick Thune.

[....]

He says his prairie background has given him a preference for small companies and local government.

Broder:

While House Democrats spent the week congratulating themselves for squeezing out the midnight passage of their version of health-care reform, neutral observers were reminding them: You’ve left the job half done.

I know some of you think that I spend too much time reading Broder. But “neutral observers”? This stuff is gold, readers, gold.

Bad Horse’s Filly writes:

I’m off with family, getting ready for my youngest brother’s wedding. I’ll be the one in the pretty bridesmaid dress, my 3-year-old niece and I playing princess in our matching dresses while mom and dad get hitched. But I didn’t forget you guys. I thought a fish recipe would be nice since we haven’t had one in a while. This fish is courtesy of my friend Alton Gunn.

On the board tonight:

1) Pico De Gallo Fish
2) Rice
3) Tomato-Avocado Chutney
4) Fresh Pineapple w/Ice Cream

Click on the blue highlight for recipes and shopping list.

(Enjoy your princess dress, BHF!)

Soonergrunt posted this late last week, and I’m just sorry it didn’t get front-paged sooner:

I don’t have all the answers. I have said before that I have very little faith in anybody who speaks about Afghanistan as if they know exactly what to do, or they have a single, un-nuanced answer.

Again, I write now strictly from my own experiences in the eastern and northeastern parts of the country, as well as some stuff that I have picked up in open source news. I was there last in 2006-2007 when things were really starting to heat up.

When I arrived in Afghanistan, there hadn’t been any activity in the Kabul region for over a year. By the time I had left, every base in the Kabul area had been directly attacked at least once. I was a member of an Embedded Training Team. I, and one other ETT (we were supposed to be in teams of four, but there weren’t enough of us) were embedded directly into an Afghan National Army Infantry company in the 201st Corps in the eastern and northeastern part of the country. This was my third combat deployment, my first in Afghanistan.

In my experience, as well as recent reporting from sources such as NPR, there is no fundamental difference between the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and Al Quaeda.

As most of you know, the Taliban was financed and managed for years by ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. The ISI saw the Taliban as a way to control Afghanistan, keeping it out of the Indian orbit, as well as a place for Pakistani militias to train and get combat experience before going to fight in Kashmir. Al Quaeda was also deeply involved in this aspect of the taliban. I fought against all three groups, sometimes all at once. There were almost always Pakistanis mixed in with Afghan Talib and other AGM (Anti Government Militia).

When I first got there, it was routine for the Taliban to winter over in a place called the Korengal. Some of you may remember Richard Engle’s series on NBC last year following a US Army unit in the Korengal.

I helped build the road into the place and I helped build the Korengal Outpost, Camp Restreppo, and some of the other places you saw in that series. The Taliban would go there because the terrain was unpassable in the winter and they could hole up there and wait for spring. They did this until we built the Korengal Outpost, the KOP, or as the 10th Mountain guys called it, the Purple Heart Factory. I also worked in a place called the Tagab Valley, just east of Kabul and Bagram.

As an ETT, I spent a large amount of time going into villages and meeting with village elders and headmen. I did more and better counter-insurgency sitting on my ass drinking chai than I did actually shooting, and I shot an ass-load of ammunition. I went into villages on market day and bought stuff I didn’t need as an excuse to talk to the locals, and I had my trusted interpreter and a couple of ANA I trusted do the same. This is the way you win a counterinsurgency war. One village at a time. It’s fucking hard. The shortest, most glib way to describe it is to say that we want to show the people that we offer a better life than the other guys do.

What I know from that time, and this has only been reinforced by my study of the region and current events there since, is that we cannot simply leave these people to their fate. I’ve seen what the Taliban do to people who defy them. God knows that ISAF/US forces have made mistakes, and there have been western troops who have abused prisoners. We’re not perfect, and we’re not angels. But we don’t gut-shoot children to make a point, and we don’t burn teachers to death in front of their students. As I said earlier, I’ve been places in eastern Afghanistan where the capitol of Kabul was as foreign as Washington, D.C. Most of the Afghans I met couldn’t care less who was the president of Afghanistan. It has no bearing on their lives. The level of governance that actually affects people’s lives is at the district and provincial level. That’s where things get done. This is the main reason that the country was most successfully ran as a feudal state from the 1930s to the 1970s before the communist coup.

In the short term, we need to keep building up the Afghan National Army. When I was there, the unit to which I was attached was considered one of the better companies in the entire brigade, which was considered the best brigade in the corps. They and their parent Kandak (Battalion) could barely keep themselves supplied in the field. Logistics were at their bare minimum, and the we frequently used money from our petty cash fund to buy firewood good supplies for the ANA. When I left, they were a lot better, but still not what I would’ve considered reliable or capable. Their unit level tactics were vastly improved over the “everybody run towards the gunfire” level when I got there, but still left a lot to be desired.

Continue reading Afghanistan: Another Perspective

I read this earlier, but forgot about it, so thanks to D-Chance for reminding me about this abomination:

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims.

The charge stems from a Franken-sponsored amendment that would prohibit the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve workplace complaints — including complaints of sexual assault — through private arbitration rather than the courts.

Thirty Senate Republicans voted against the amendment, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, liberal commentators and state Democratic Party chairs have been merciless.

***

But the campaign could also be detrimental for Franken, complicating his efforts to redefine himself as a low-profile pol who wants to work with Republicans to solve the nation’s problems.

“Franken’s amendment may make sense for national Democrats in laying down lines of attack heading into the 2010 campaign — but this is not what Franken needs to build a base in Minnesota,” said Larry Jacobs, an expert in state politics at the University of Minnesota. “Being a poster boy of a hard-hitting campaign against the Republican Party is the opposite of what he needs in Minnesota.”

Thirty Republicans are exposed and vulnerable with an objectively pro-rape voting record, and it is bad news for… the Democrats. We haven’t seen wankery like this since Mark Halperin claimed that McCain not knowing how many houses he owned during an economic meltdown was bad news for Obama.

You just can’t make this shit up. I’m adding the Politico to the blogs we monitor and mock category on the blogroll.

I’m hoping Anne Laurie will post the weekly recipe here, because I think I deleted it.

Via the comments, this jerk:

State Sen. David Schultheis said he didn’t intend for a Twitter post accusing President Barack Obama of “flying the U.S. plane right into the ground” and ending with “let’s roll” as a threat or a reference to United Flight 93, which crashed during the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“Let’s roll” reportedly were the last words of Todd Beamer before he and other passengers tried to gain control of their hijacked jet. The plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field short of its intended target.

The tweet stirred ire and some support for the Colorado Springs Republican, whose standard eschewal of political correctness has earned him criticism in the past.

Schultheis’ full tweet Tuesday was: “Don’t for a second think Obama wants what is best for U.S. He is flying the U.S. plane right into the ground at full speed. Let’s roll.”

***

Schultheis voted in February against a bill requiring pregnant women to be tested for AIDS to prevent spreading the disease to the children. He said then that infected children would set examples for women against sexual promiscuity.

Just another Colorado Springs evangelical, spreading God’s word.

I was going to write something about this syrupy ode to George Bush by Caroline Glick and this PUMA nonsense from the Hillbuzz, but Daniel Larison handles it so much better:

Yes, this is what you would expect from Glick (or from anyone, for that matter, who thinks that the last two years of Bush’s foreign policy were his worst), but it’s offensive all the same. As tempting and easy as it would be to turn this formulation around on one of the worst Presidents of all time, I don’t assume that Bush did any of the things he did because he didn’t have “American values” or didn’t love his country. I don’t assume that he trashed our relations with Europe, Turkey and Russia because he wanted America to be isolated or because he loathed these other nations. It is certainly true that he harmed American interests, weakened American power, wrecked our fiscal house and isolated us from many of our allies and potential partners, but the world is full of stories of people who harm that which they love. Bush’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t love America. The problem was that he had no idea what he was doing and substituted ideological fantasies in place of understanding.

Indeed, most of his catastrophic blunders came from an excess of sentiment and emotion concerning these things, combined with absolutely incompetent execution and an ideological obsession with American virtue and strength that ensured that his actions would be excessive, arrogant, ill-conceived and unrelated to the real world. Bush’s love of country was something similar to what the Apostle called in another context “zeal not according to knowledge.” The man was actually overflowing with saccharine, do-gooding, Gersonian sentimentality and he had no shortage of emotional, demonstrative professions of patriotic devotion. So what? What good did it do anyone? It might even have been better had Bush been less enthusiastic in trying to protect the United States, since he would not have been so ready to see dire threats around every corner where none existed. America needs fewer paranoid, jealous lovers, not more.

Can a brother get an Amen?

I’m struck by how much Lou Dobbs’ quitting to go “beyond my role” sounds like Sarah Palin’s “choice is to take a stand and effect change” by quitting. And lest we forget, there are many who believe that the best way to fight Obamafascism is to go Galt.

This all makes me miss the days when people quit to spend more time with their families.

I had a friend check out what was going on with my local Sarahpalooza book signing. Here’s what he said:

I talked to one of the clerks and she said they’ve been getting calls non-stop since it was announced, from places as far away as Oregon and Yonkers. One of the other clerks was on the phone fielding Palin questions as I spoke to this one.

The appearance is at 6 PM. She’s not doing anything but signing books for 3 hours—no remarks. They’re handing out 1000 wristbands at 9 AM. Each is good for one “family”—two adults and their kids—to have a maximum of two books signed. The clerk expected that all the wristbands would be gone at 9, considering the volume of calls they’re getting.

Sounds like a pain in the ass hassle to get an autograph…

Two pics today by reader woolie. I can’t get over the use of light in these photos.

The Machines Rest At Night

Construction Worker

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

The findings of this research really suck:

When Seattle oncologist Dr. Marc Chamberlain was treating his brain cancer patients, he noticed an alarming pattern. His male patients were typically receiving much needed support from their wives. But a number of his female patients were going it alone, ending up separated or divorced after receiving a brain tumor diagnosis.

Dr. Chamberlain, chief of the neuro-oncology division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, had heard similar stories from his colleagues. To find out if these observations were based in fact, he embarked on a study with Dr. Michael J. Glantz of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute and colleagues from three other institutions who began to collect data on 515 patients diagnosed with brain tumors or multiple sclerosis from 2001 through 2006.

The results were shocking. Women in the study who were diagnosed with a serious illness were six times more likely to become separated or divorced than men with similar health problems, according to the report published in the journal Cancer.

I’m really not sure how some people live with themselves.

Some good info from Jake Tapper:

In Wednesday’s meeting, Pentagon officials presented more details about four strategies—two from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and two others—but President Obama was not satisfied with their assessments.

Specicially, he pushed the generals to clarify how and when U.S. troops would be able to turn over responsibility to the Afghan government.

“The key sticking points appear to be timelines and mounting questions about the credibility of the Afghan government,” an administration official said, adding that the President “wants to make it clear that the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan is not open-ended. After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of time to ensure a successful transition to our Afghan partner.”

I’m sure this will be met in greater Wingnuttia with abject horror, as they all have their marching orders from the Cheneys and will need to pursue the “dithering” story line no matter what. In fact, a quick perusal find that Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive is very close to soiling his camouflaged knickers:

If this is true then just about all the worst fears we had about Obama as Commander in Chief are coming true.

Meanwhile, Colonel Mustard, with his years of military and geopolitical training, offers up his sage advice:

Will someone tell our President this is not a term paper. You don’t get to move the paragraphs around, tweak the punctuation, and cut and paste until it reads just right.

I’m sure there is more, but why bother digging it all up? And while the usual suspects are all getting the vapors, it is probably worth remembering that the conservative position, back when there were actual conservatives, and not just reactionary loudmouths and know-nothing war-mongering idiots, was to weigh all the options before making momentous and important decisions. We even used to call it the “Powell Doctrine”:

The Powell Doctrine states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Funny that. Caspar Weinberger and Colin Powell, both of whom served under St. Ronald of Reagan, the man who single-handedly beat the Soviets. Now granted, the Powell Doctrine was there because some folks in the Pentagon and in the National Security apparatus actually learned some lessons from Viet Nam, and tried to avoid making that same mistake again. In fact, as Jake Tapper notes, someone with more brains than the 101st Chairborne is urging Obama to take his time:

“This is a very difficult one for him,” Powell said. “And it isn’t just a one-time decision. This is the decision that will have consequences for the better part of his administration. So Mr. President, don’t get pushed by the left to do nothing; don’t get pushed by the right to do everything. You take your time and you figure it out. You’re the commander-in-chief and this is what you were elected for.”

Powell said he had “advised him is to not be rushed into a decision because this one is the decision that will have consequences for years to come.”

The fact that Obama is concerned with details like timelines and a schedule for handing over control makes me feel about as positive as I have regarding the Afghan dilemma in a long, long time.

It never, ever ends.

If this country avoids becoming a Franco-style dictatorship in our lifetime, praise be to FSM.

Sadly, despite our best efforts, Bitsy did not make the top four:

Good Morning to All,

Little Bitsy was not chosen as one of the 4 Finalists for the Cutest Dog Competition. I had such high hopes that she would be chosen by the judges. But I know that she IS the Cutest Dog and has been the perfect poster dog for animal welfare in our area.

I would like to personally thank everyone who worked so hard to get her chosen as Week 12 winner and I cannot tell you how many positive things have occurred as a result of her being in the contest. A special thanks to Sylvia and Barney Evans for giving Little Bitsy should a wonderful and loving home and for spearheading her being a contestant.

The Balloon-Juice (initiated by Laura Winzler), the Flybabies (initiated by Marla Cilley), the Don’t Bully My Breed groups were so instrumental in helping get votes. Sean Trapp at the Transylvania Times ran front page stories. Our local radio station, WSQL interviewed Little Bitsy and gave regular updates. The Asheville Citizens Times ran a story. Asheville TV station had a featured story.My granddaughters, Lauren and Kaytlin, had Little Bitsy on Face Book as did Sylvia’s daughter, Rachel, and my daughter Heather too. And of course, our dear Erma Rhodes and Cherie Henderson spent countless hours on the computer spreading the word. Debbie Deaver at Steve Owen and Associates helped bring all of us at work closer together. Brevard Board of REALTORS spread the word to all real estate agents. I could go on and on and know that I am surely leaving out so many others who helped. It was definitely a community effort.

Our goal of creating a 501c3 non profit for animal rescue work is progressing. Brian Philips, Attorney and John Moore, CPA, are working on it now. It will be called Charlie’s Angels Animal Rescue in honor of my Daddy, Charlie Powers, and Gault Beeson who loved his Gault’s Angels, his beagles.

With heartfelt thanks to all..Please send this on to others that you know are interested in knowing the results.

Oh, well. We tried.