A Spork in the Drawer

We Saw This Coming

On Nancy Pelosi:

"Come January, we'll take her head off every day," said a top GOP aide involved in the planning. "It will be a pure war of ideas over the next two years."

Leading the battle with be incoming House Minority Leader John Boehner and his conservative team. Insiders say that the goal is to pick at Democratic initiatives as pro-tax, pro-spending, or unworkable.

Let's face it: That's all they have. But it is going to be brutal.

Happily, we have a strong, skeptical news media to expose the Repub's lies.

On second thought, we're fucked.

.

Prediction

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri-al Maliki said today:

“I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready,” Mr. al-Maliki said in an interview with ABC News.

My prediction: In June 2007 al Maliki will either be dead or in exile.

.

What's A Winger To Do?

George Will, one of the more sensible* of the Righties, takes umbrage at Jim Webb's altercation with LameDuck George. Unfortunately, he has to "creatively edit" the transcript to make his point.

*"Sensible" being a relative term.

.

To Lighten Up The Mood

HuffPo:

Al Gore appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night to promote the DVD of his hit documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Leno asked Gore about special features the DVD might have, and Gore joked that it included an uncensored version called 'Global Warming Gone Wild'...including "hot glacier on glacier action."

Video at link.

Draft Gore 2008.

.

Forever

Never gonna leave:

In Amman, Bush sought to pre-empt the growing clamor to draft plans to withdraw the more than 140,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, most notably by a high-level commission headed by former Secretary of State James C. Baker III and former Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton. Although he was not asked directly about the panel's recommendations, which will be made next week but were partially leaked to news reporters late Wednesday, Bush seemed to have the group in mind when he said, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."

Bush has a track record of changing policies on a dime, such as when he ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld only days after saying he would stay until the end of his term. But his comments today, coupled with other statements in the past few days, seemed to set firm lines on Iraq beyond which the president will not be pushed, despite growing discontent with his policy at home.

As Jim Wolcott wrote:

...not only is Bush unable to avoid catastrophe, he's unwilling to, because that would mean he was wrong, and Bush can't admit he was wrong--the cracks of doubt would bring his entire psychic superstructure crashing. And at that point we'd have a presidential crisis that would make Nixon's lunar unraveling look like a teddy bear's picnic.

Keep this in mind.

.

I Have No Words

Jonah "The Thing From Lucianne's Vagina" Goldberg has a column in today's LATimes of such spectacular dimness that it doesn't even meet Jonah's own pathetic standards. One example:

Given the enormous scope of World War II, it was a remarkably short war. (Just think of the Hundred Years War by comparison.)

It takes a special kind of stupid to write that sentence.

.

Free Tommy Chong!

LameDuck George picks another winner:

President George Bush announced yesterday that Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, has been appointed to a national post within the Department of Justice.

Ms. Buchanan, 43, will serve as the acting director of the Office on Violence Against Women.

She will continue to serve as the U.S. attorney here and will split time between the two posts.

From Amanda:

Unsurprising news: BushCo has an opportunity to appoint another flunkie to head up a federal office and that’s just what they’re going to do. This particular flunkie appointee is particularly distressing because she’s to head the Office on Violence Against Women. Her name is Mary Beth Buchanan and she’s one of those Ashcroftian “moral” crusaders more worried about people smoking pot and masturbating than in the privacy of their own homes than any real issues. How badly are her priorities screwed? She was a big player in the War on Drugs, spending $12 million to put 55 people in jail for selling bongs.

That last bit includes the infamous jailing of comic Tommy Chong.

Buchanan is no friend of the First Amendment.

.

This Can't Be Good

What awaits in 2007:

Senior administration officials are working on what one dubbed a "big, big" agenda the president plans to unveil at the start of the new year via the budget and State of the Union address.

[...]

"There will be no cruise control," said an associate. "These are big, big ideas and we will be pushing them with all our might and energy."

Looks like LameDuck George is going to throw the dice.

Heads up, Tehran!

.

Brilliant!

The inestimable watertiger brings us an outstanding video and one of the best acting jobs by a child I've ever seen.

Watch it!

.

Clean Sweep

Behold the power of the Peace Wreath:

Last week, a couple were threatened with fines of $25 a day by their homeowners’ association unless they removed a four-foot wreath shaped like a peace symbol from the front of their house.

The fines have been dropped, and the three-member board of the association has resigned, according to an e-mail message sent to residents on Monday.

Two board members have disconnected their telephones, apparently to escape the waves of callers asking what the board could have been thinking, residents said. The third board member, with a working phone, did not return a call for comment.

For once, sanity prevails.

[Via Think Progress.]

.