The Mountaineers take on the Thundering Herd today in the big intrastate rivalry.
Go ‘Eers!
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Sports
The Mountaineers take on the Thundering Herd today in the big intrastate rivalry.
Go ‘Eers!
by John Cole| 28 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture
Names from my youth are dropping like flies:
Madeleine L’Engle, who in writing more than 60 books, including childhood fables, religious meditations and science fiction, weaved emotional tapestries transcending genre and generation, died Thursday in Connecticut. She was 88.
Madeleine L’Engle at home in New York in 2001.
Her death, of natural causes, was announced today by her publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Ms. L’Engle (pronounced LENG-el) was best known for her children’s classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which won the John Newbery Award as the best children’s book of 1963. By 2004, it had sold more than 6 million copies, was in its 67th printing and was still selling 15,000 copies a year.
My mother used to teach adolescent literature, and I was a willing test market. You name it, I read it as a child.
by John Cole| 24 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
This is amazing:
Two weeks after Doris Anderson disappeared while on a hunting trip with her husband, the 76-year-old lay next to a creek surrounded by thick brush, alone and with no food or supplies.
Rescue teams had been through the mountainous area but found no sign of her. Knowing that she was only lightly clothed in temperatures that had dipped into the 30s at night, they had scaled back the search nearly a week earlier.
But they hadn’t given up.
On Thursday, a day after a sheriff’s deputy asked Anderson’s husband once again how the couple had become separated in the woods, the deputy and others returned to an area they had checked before and found her, alive, alert and in surprisingly good condition.
“We just asked her if she was hurt and talked to her about her family,” Trooper Chris Hawkins said Friday as Anderson recovered in a hospital from dehydration and a hip injury.
Doris Anderson is one tough cookie. Period.
by John Cole| 89 Comments
In case you wanted to fact check Petraeus’s report to Bush, compare it to his testimony before Congress, or do a comparison between what Petraeus tells Bush and what the White House writes, forget about it:
A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. “There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony,” the officer said.
The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus’ opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.
Meanwhile, at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb writes:
The Dems are already in full retreat over the war in Iraq, having failed completely to peel off enough Republicans to pass a date-certain for withdrawal and having already voted to fund the war. As news of progress mounted this summer, there were numerous attempts to puncture Petraeus’s credibility–but if the Democratic leadership has now decided they must separate the man from the report, then they clearly view those efforts as a failure.
But that still leaves one question unanswered: Do the Democrats believe that Petraeus will be saying whatever the administration wants him to say–that he will essentially be lying to the U.S. Congress? If that’s what they believe, why dance around it? They ought to just come out and call the general a liar–or another of the countless victims of the BushCheney war machine.
Got it? The guy who spent hundreds of hours crawling up Scott Beauchamp’s ass to find out whether or not he actually saw someone run over a dog in a Bradley thinks it is silly for you to be able to fact check the General leading our war efforts in Iraq.
Oh, and for the record, here is my prediction for how the Congressional testimony will go:
1.) Petraeus will enter the room, and Joe Lieberman and several other moderate Democrats will faint when they see him in Class A’s with lots of ribbons and medals.
2.) Petraeus will offer a mixed report, citing temporary tactical advantage and listing points of progress. Lots of cheese charts with arrows pointing in the right direction, but little to no sourcing, will be on display.
3.) Lieberman, freshly revived from his initial fainting, hears Petraeus utter the words “our brave men and women in uniform,” and promptly passes out again.
4.) Petraeus mentions, in passing, that we are facing difficulties. Democrats fail to press him. The difficulties are not mentioned specifically, but in vague generalities.
5.) Petraeus states the situation is too tenuous to drawdown troops before fall of 2008.
6.) Lieberman is revived yet again, only to hear the phrase “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” and promptly falls to the ground in shock and horror. Ron Paul gives him the finger.
7.) Afterwards, numerous Blue Dog Democrats state to the media that the General was impressive, and has assured them that we are making progress, and, as such, they are reluctant to do anything.
8.) Republicans, when speaking to the press, state that this is clear proof we are winning, and evidence that we do not need to cut and run like some of the Democrats want.
9.) Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and John Warner all state how impressed they are, but note that they have some unspecfied concerns and that we need to proceed cautiously.
10.) Some cranky Democrat notes that there was no real information presented, and wants to have some hard data to compare to the numerous negative reports we have received from independent organizations. Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, NRO, and the Weekly Standard promptly call him a traitor. Malkin breaks out a cheerleader outfit. Michael O’Hanlon goes on Hardball and claims the GAO is the most corrupt organization in Washington.
11.) The rest of the media cover the story until about 7:45 EST, at which point it is learned that Lindsey Lohan may have smoked pot while in rehab. The Petraeus story dies.
12.) Seven more members of the military die.
We will see how it actually turns out.
*** Update ***
Apparently I am “lost in space” because I am a little chagrined that we have no way to document what Petraeus is telling the White House. I am well aware that the WH is actually writing the report- I want to know what Petraeus tells the WH, what the WH writes in their report, and what Petraeus tells Congress. You know- that whole accuracy thing, because never in the history of the Bush administration have they been told one thing privately and said something completely different publicly. Apparently to our authoritarian ‘libertarian’ friends, that makes me crazy. Or something. I have decided that “neo-libertarian” means taking whatever the President says at face value- provided he cuts taxes.
Why don’t our libertarian friends understand that this is my money we are spending in Iraq? These are my fellow citizens dying in Iraq. This is my military, our military. Not Bush’s. I not only have every right to know what is going on, I demand it. Since when did government accountability and transparency become anathema to libertarian principles?
*** Update ***
Apparently I am now in a tizzy.
Spin this, McQ:
All of this is just so odd, I wonder if the Washington Times, which isn’t exactly known for high journliastic standards, somehow got this wrong. A month ago, Tony Snow told reporters, “Now, let us keep in mind that the full burden of this report does not fall on his shoulders. A lot of the key judgments, especially about politics, will fall on Ambassador Crocker. So this is — although I know a lot of people talk about ‘the Petraeus report,’ in fact, you have a report that is a joint report by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.”
In three sentences, Snow referenced a “report” (the noun) four times. And now there isn’t going to be any such document?
Or this:
Two things are worth noting in advance. First, according to Petraeus’ spokesman, there will be no report per se. The word is being taken as a verb, not a noun; that is, the general and the ambassador will report to Congress, testifying before the House on Monday, the Senate on Tuesday, and, as a follow-up, the National Press Club on Wednesday.
It is cute watching grown men hinge their credibility on whether or not the word “report” was used as a verb or a noun. The WH pretends for months there will be a report from Petraeus, then days before the expected report, we are told that the report is actually just a private talk between Petraeus and Bush. We are now down to Clintonian parsings from these guys, and McQ is lapping it up. I guess it depends on what the meaning of report is, ehh?
I also like the notion that we are supposed to fact check Petraeus’s oral testimony. Here is how that will work:
1.) Petraeus will make a claim, offer no data to back it up (BUT HE HAS CHARTS!!!!!!!).
2.) Numerous independent sources will sift through available data and their own data, disprove it, or prove (as was done here), that Petraeus is misrepresenting things.
3.) McQ will call them liars and question their patriotism.
The only excuse for no written report is that it provides no paper trail. Petraeus’s command has time to reserach, print up, and distribute dossiers on VIP’s visiting Baghdad, but they can’t be bothered to put their accumulated knowledge about progress (or lack thereof) in Iraq on paper?
And as an aside, McQ, does your back ever get sore from carrying these guy’s baggage? Is there ever anything they say or do that you don’t just look at it and say to yourself- ‘Screw it. Even I can’t spin this shit.’
This post is in: Sports
Just go away:
The Pittsburgh Pirates began to reshape their front office under new principal owner Robert Nutting by firing general manager Dave Littlefield on Friday.
Littlefield’s dismissal is effective immediately, the team said in a statement. A formal announcement will come at a news conference Friday afternoon. The decision comes after six-plus seasons in which the team showed little progress on the field or in its farm system.
The firing came with only three weeks left in the season and the Pirates in their customary spot in last place in the NL Central, with a 61-79 record — three losses away from a 15th consecutive losing season, one off the major league record.
No decision on the status of Littlefield or second-year manager Jim Tracy had been expected until after the season. Managing general partner Kevin McClatchy, who has run the day-to-day operations since 1996, is resigning when the season ends and his successor was expected to evaluate Littlefield and Tracy.
“It’s tough,” Tracy said upon hearing the news. “It’s real tough. He’s more than a friend to me.”
Littlefield, a former executive with the Marlins and Expos, succeeded Cam Bonifay midway through a 100-loss season in 2001 and was expected to make major changes in a team that had shown no headway since winning three division titles in the early 1990s.
But Littlefield’s efforts to rebuild the Pirates failed, and the Pirates never had fewer than 87 losses or finished higher than fourth in a full season during his stay.
If this guy ever works in baseball again, it is not because of his skills. It is because he is a warlock and can control people’s minds and convince them to hire him. Really- he is that bad.
by John Cole| 64 Comments
The Belgravia Dispatch this morning highlighted this FT piece:
President George W. Bush’s campaign to stay the course in Iraq is taking a new and constitutionally dangerous turn. When Senator John Warner recently called for a troop withdrawal by Christmas, the White House did not mount its usual counterattack. It allowed a surprising champion to take its place. Major General Rick Lynch, a field commander in Iraq, summoned reporters to condemn Mr Warner’s proposal as “a giant step backwards”.
It was Maj Gen Lynch who was making the giant step into forbidden territory. He had no business engaging in a public debate with a US senator. His remarks represent an assault on the principle of civilian control – the most blatant so far during the Iraq war.
Nobody remarked on the breach. But this only makes it more troubling and should serve as prologue for the next large event in civilian-military relations: the president’s effort to manipulate General David Petraeus’s report to Congress.
Mr Bush has pushed Gen Petraeus into the foreground to shore up his badly damaged credibility. But in doing so, he has made himself a hostage. He needs the general more than the general needs him. Despite the president’s grandiose pretensions as commander-in-chief, the future of the Iraq war is up to Gen Petraeus.
The general’s impact on Congress will be equally profound. If he brings in a negative report, Republicans will abandon the sinking ship in droves; if he accentuates the positive, it is the Democrats who will be spinning.
In fact, if not in name, it will be an army general who is calling the shots – not the duly elected representatives of the American people.
And according to the NY Times, at least we don’t have to wait until the 11th:
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, has told President Bush that he wants to maintain heightened troop levels in Iraq well into next year to reduce the risk of military setbacks, but could accept the pullback of roughly 4,000 troops beginning in January, in part to assuage critics in Congress, according to senior administration and military officials.
General Petraeus’s view is considered overly cautious by some other senior military officials and some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, officials said. But they said it reflected his concern that the security gains made so far in Baghdad, Anbar Province and other areas were fragile and easily reversed.
Notice the language- “Could accept.” It is a good thing we have Generals out there to set our policies. Civilian control of the military would suck.
If there is anyone out there who honestly thought Petraeus would come to Congress on the 11th and tell us it was time for a substantial drawdown or anything other than that “the surge is working,” please surrender your car keys to someone sane. I don’t want you on the road. Bush made it clear in his interview with Draper that we are here for the long haul, and that is what is going to happen. We are going to be there, in large numbers, until the military breaks. Or longer. Just get used to it. There is nothing you can do, because the Decider has decided. The dog and pony show that comes next week is just to make things easier politically for continuing the course of action that has been chosen- the reports we may withdraw some troops were just something thrown out there to mollify the opposition before getting back to Operation “DO WHATEVER THE FUCK WE WANT.”
All of the reports of problems by independent and respected group and backed up by hard data don’t matter. Their recommendations don’t matter. All the administration needs to do is count on the Weekly Standard and Michael O’Hanlon and the rest of the crowd to go out and do what they have been doing for years, and this administration has the cover they need. And if you argue otherwise, Bush and his supporters will claim you aren’t giving our troops what they need to win. Or that it is just the liberal media reporting only bad news. Or that the Democrats want to screw the country again, just like they did in Vietnam. The fact that the GAO is now caught in the crossfire and they can smear it is just an extra bonus- they don’t like accountability in ANY form. If the GAO is collateral damage, that is just a lucky break- those guys have been a pain in the ass for Republicans the last six years.
And if you honestly thought anything different would happen, you are a complete and total idiot and have not paid one bit of attention the last few years. Welcome to permanent war, bitches.
*** Update ***
The Cunning Realist pulls it all together– if it is bad, we have to stay, if the situation is good, we have to stay. And for how long?
by Tim F| 44 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
The Republican debate, via Benen:
Fox cuts to Hannity, who is now, inexplicably, wearing a blue tie. Hannity introduces pollster Frank Luntz, who has a focus group of 29 Republican voters at a restaurant in New Hampshire. […]
Luntz asks the voters to raise their hands if they think the candidates exceeded their expectations. No hands get raised. He asks how many were disappointed. They all raise their hands. “This is not a good night,” Luntz concludes.
Try to read the bit about Ron Paul without thinking of Alice at the tea party.