The last best hope
July 20th, 2007 at 7:49 pm . by el nuko
Harry Reid was despondent after the all-night Senate session produced yet another defeat for the Democrats.
“We did the very best we could,” he said. “I strongly believe we should have a bipartisan foreign policy…We need to do something to change the course of the war.”
“We need to do something to change the course of the war.”
What that “something” is has been and remains a mystery.
After his pre-emptive declaration of defeat in April, the majority leader has nothing to offer. His plaintive cry for “bipartisanship” may play well with the blue-state ponytails, but the fact is, to compromise with Reid means to accept defeat in an arena that just two years ago was described as “not an option.”
It also plays well with AQ, and Baathist elements in Iraq who have only to hold out and continue to murder civilians with the knowledge that Reid will deliver to them a victory that they are unable to win themselves.
I do hope you take the opportunity to read Mike Yon’s latest dispatch from Baqubah, 7 Rules: 1 Oath. Yon’s dispatches from Operation Arrowhead Ripper have provided some of his most compelling writing since Mosul. And, given the fact that the western media has largely decided to sit the war out, Yon’s on-line magazine has become one of the very few outlets for real journalism in this difficult, and often brutal struggle.
His closing paragraph gave me more reason for optimism than I’ve had since the surge began.
Seeing “God is Great” written on the Iraqi flag might provoke some to protest “Why did we come here just to stand up a country who would write such things on their flag?” But I sat there in that meeting, which was completely civil and professional, and I thought about another flag, the one flying over South Carolina. Some people call that flag “heritage,” while others call it “hateful,” “painful” and “demeaning.” And today in that meeting, I thought about the descendants of slaves who are now top military commanders in the American Army, and in that moment I knew that Iraq could make it.
Reconstruction officially took twelve years in the US, and unofficially took one hundred years. It’s going to take the Iraqis a while as well. And, just as the Democrat party has become the last best hope for an AQ victory in Iraq, it is the US Military’s leadership of the counterinsurgency that is providing the last best opportunity for the Iraqis to make it.
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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Right Truth, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Pet Haven Blog, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Church and State, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, DeMediacratic Nation, 123beta, Jeanette’s Celebrity Corner, Adam’s Blog, Maggie’s Notebook, Webloggin, Phastidio.net, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Allie Is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Comment posted by bonz
at 7/21/2007 8:06:39 PM
“But one element we tend to forget is that Connery was already sporting a hairpiece by this time. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the most visible male sex symbol alive had saved the world from Goldfinger while sporting a gleaming chrome-dome? What a difference it might have made for baldies the world over.”
http://film.guardian.co.uk/patterson/story/0,,2131390,00.html
“Connery’s hairpiece”
Comment posted by Robert D
at 7/21/2007 8:01:48 PM
And LLL thinking. And I think most men bald with grace, not ponytails.
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/21/2007 7:53:46 PM
On men, it’s most associated with lack of hair on top.
Comment posted by Robert D
at 7/21/2007 7:49:29 PM
I would like to take this opportunity to inform everybody that my ponytail is of the redneck variety.
Comment by SwampWoman — July 21, 2007 @ 5:58 pm
Ponytails on women need not be defended. In fact, I encourage them. On men however…..
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/21/2007 6:55:53 PM
My working theory is still remote control injury or telephone injury.
/Disclaimer: Mostly because I never get to use the one and hate the other.
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/21/2007 6:54:46 PM
Hunh. Well, that would be easy to check by putting something underneath your keyboard to raise the level to see if you get any relief. Do you normally have your wrists resting on the surface of the desk (or whatever) while you type, or keep them in the air above the keyboard?
(I don’t rest the wrists myself; however, some people that have developed wrist problems do. Not sure if that may be a cause, just curious.)
Comment posted by no2liberals
at 7/21/2007 6:47:22 PM
I don’t know if I ever actually enjoyed any phone, or if I ever will. At this point, the new v3xx is one big pain. The SIM card in my old phone was turned over to the Smithsonian, so I have to enter all of my contacts in this phone, one name and number at the time. After a few hours, several breaks, and dinner, I am now almost finished with the R’s. I also think I know what’s going on with my wrist and this computer…the keyboard tray is too low…or my seat is too high…either way.
Comment posted by Blog @ MoreWhat.com » Blog Archive » MoreWhat Matters: Today’s Blog List
at 7/21/2007 6:17:27 PM
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Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/21/2007 5:58:58 PM
I would like to take this opportunity to inform everybody that my ponytail is of the redneck variety.
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/21/2007 3:55:22 PM
Hope you’re enjoying that new Razr phone. I kinda like the old huge kind that we used to have in the early 90s because they were a lot harder to lose.
I’ve been “helping” change spark plugs. Apparently all mechanics are anorexic contortionists; I could barely get my hands into some places that SwampMan’s big hands wouldn’t fit at ALL. I was putting the last plug wire on one side, the old one was REALLY stuck so I had to give it a mighty heave, and accidentally dislodged all of them off the distributor as I hadn’t put them on securely because I was in a hurry to get everything in place before the storm arrived. Then SwampMan got out from underneath the truck and was staring at what I had done, speechless, (speechless is good) and the rain started pouring down.
It’s no big thang, I suppose, just annoying that we have to go back and trace wires. In the meantime, I smell like orange cleaner and grease, so I think I better hit the shower before I head to the feed store.
Comment posted by no2liberals
at 7/22/2007 6:24:31 PM
Well, chocolate in a diet, sure sounds a lot better than no chocolate in a diet.
We’re entirely too green and lush to burn right now, and for the foreseeable future.
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/22/2007 6:10:02 PM
N2l, I saw that. I didn’t see anything about chocolate covered cherries, though.
We had 3 more fires in the county caused by lightning yesterday.
Comment posted by no2liberals
at 7/22/2007 5:52:54 PM
Swampie, I refer you back up to #67.
Just had a major headbanging thunderstorm roll through, complete with power outage lightening strikes….and it’s late July in Texas.(?)
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/22/2007 5:22:31 PM
And via Tim Blair comes this story in the Telegraph to be filed under the “you have GOT to be kidding me” category: A police force withdrew plans for a televised appeal to help catch an Afghan suspected of sexually assaulting women after a race watchdog warned that it might spark a violent backlash.
Is it still okay to say that the suspect is a male, or is that too specific as well?
Officers working on the case believed the appeal, due to be shown in May, could have proved vital in the search for Seddiqi. They thought he might be working as an unlicensed taxi driver in the south of England.
But the Chief Constable of the Devon and Cornwall force, Stephen Otter, told officers not to go ahead with the programme after the Devon Racial Equality Council, funded by and affiliated to the Commission for Racial Equality, said the appeal could lead to a racist backlash.
Detectives had at first refused to pull the plug on the appeal but were overruled by Mr Otter.
The police are prevented from doing their jobs, and the citizenry are disarmed. What a nice set up for those that are criminally inclined, but only if they belong to a certain category that must not be named because it would be “racist” to do so.
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/22/2007 4:44:34 PM
Texas Tells FEMA “Don’t Mess!”
“If FEMA shows up, good,” said Jack Colley, chief of the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management. ”But we’re not waiting.”
Call it one more example of the lingering Hurricane Katrina effect, but Colley and his team are looking past the traditional go-through-FEMA-to-get-ice kind of emergency management model.
This new strategy, borne during 2005’s Hurricane Rita and fine-tuned in the two years since by the state’s emergency agency, has retailers conducting mock drills alongside government officials.
“FEMA was an old contact point for ice, water, etc,” Colley explained from his agency’s state operations center in the basement of Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Austin. “The private sector is willing and able to do this for us.”
… These large retailers, including Wal-Mart, H-E-B and Home Depot, are part of the state’s emergency prep team, invited to brainstorm about strategy and problem solve when there are questions about the best way to respond to a disaster. In exchange for their know-how, they’re given advance notice about when the state is about to make critical decisions on evacuations, school closings or when highways will be “contraflowed” into one direction away from a storm.
… This new model, in which retailers’ flexible delivery systems are paired with government’s network of local emergency responders and powerful communication tools, has received rave reviews from those involved in recent Texas emergencies.
“I don’t know Jack Colley, but I can’t wait to meet him and shake his hand,” said Burnet County Judge Donna Klaeger, whose county includes Marble Falls, which flooded June 26, killing one person and sending 300 others from their homes.
“We could not have made it through without the state emergency management team,” Klaeger said. “They were amazing. I never was stressed about how we were going to get through, because I knew we would.”
EXACTLY! I HATE the complacent people/places that think that they can just sit on their asses with no preparation and that FEMA will magically appear on behalf of the Great Bureaucracy in Washington to do all the work and make everything whole once again. It is not going to happen. You rely on local. And Wal-Mart and Home Depot.
Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 7/22/2007 2:51:36 PM
Hey, Robert D! Sorry I missed you.
In the meantime, here’s something interesting: Putting the radiation release in the Japanese nuclear plant in the proper perspective. Knowing that there are people right out walking around in public that have received many times that amount of radiation in medical treatment sort of changes things, doesn’t it?
Comment posted by Robert D
at 7/21/2007 10:36:21 PM
G’nite Swamps and n2l…. check with ya next week.
Comment posted by Robert D
at 7/21/2007 10:34:41 PM
“Celebratory gunfire kills 3 in Baghdad after soccer victory, 25 others wounded.
I expect they’ll get that whole cause and effect thing figured out any day now.
Comment by SwampWoman — July 21, 2007 @ 9:46 pm”
You can’t fix STUPID!
Comment posted by no2liberals
at 7/21/2007 10:34:10 PM
Night Swampie.
My day begins at pre-dawn.
Comment posted by no2liberals
at 7/21/2007 10:32:44 PM
Check it out.
As for the ice cream I had, it was cherry flavored ice cream, with dark chocolate swirls, and these little bell shaped chocolate covered cherry chunks, a little larger than a big kernel of corn. Pretty good.
Comment posted by Laser Tag, You’re It, Weekend Open Trackbacks | Adam’s Blog
at 7/22/2007 9:13:56 PM
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