This has to be one of the more dangerous new NeoCon lines of thinking to come out of the mouths of the All War, All the Time republicans. I don't know why Gingrich wasted so much space in the Post, he could have just cut the whole column down to this "USA USA USA" and had a picture of himself with one of those big foam fingers.

...an Iran armed with nuclear weapons is a mortal threat to American, Israeli and European cities. If a nonnuclear Iran is prepared to finance, arm and train Hezbollah, sustain a war against Israel from southern Lebanon and, in Holbrooke's own words, "support actions against U.S. forces in Iraq," then what would a nuclear Iran be likely to do? Remember, Iranian officials were present at North Korea's missile launches on our Fourth of July, and it is noteworthy that Venezuela's anti-American dictator, Hugo Chávez, has visited Iran five times.

Even assuming that Iran were so irrational as to launch a nuclear strike on Israel, there is no guarantee that Iran or its neighbors would survive a first strike. Talking in absolute terms of such a strike and discounting diplomacy is exactly what the hardliners in the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon adminstrations wanted when dealing with the Soviets.

What Gingrich apparently wants is a preemptive third world war, to settle the fact of American primacy in global affairs into the new millenium. Yeah, that's worked out so well in Iraq, hasn't it?

Eschewing diplomacy for direct military action is hardly a solution, and certainly not one when we have most of the active forces of the Army committed to either being in Iraq or in transit one way or the other for another tour there. The NeoCon fantasy of "shock and awe" air power is not a practical reality either. An educated guess would be that after GWI, most countries that had anything to hide put it in places where conventional munitions dropped from attack aircraft or targeted by cruise missles would do little to no damage.

As a goal this is precisely wrong. Defeating the terrorists and thwarting efforts by Iran and North Korea to gain nuclear and biological weapons must be the first goal of American policy. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if violence is necessary to defeat the terrorists, the Iranians and the North Koreans, then it is regrettably necessary. If they can be disarmed with less violence, then that is desirable. But a nonviolent solution that allows the terrorists to become better trained, better organized, more numerous and better armed is a defeat. A nonviolent solution that leads to North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons threatening us across the planet is a defeat.
...
Holbrooke represents the diplomacy first-diplomacy always school. We saw its workings throughout the 1990s, as Syria was visited again and again by secretaries of state who achieved absolutely nothing. Even a secretary of state dancing with Kim Jong Il (arguably a low point in American diplomatic efforts) produced no results; such niceties never do in dealing with vicious dictators.

Or maybe I misread the whole thing, and Gingrich is just going to "fight the war of ideas" with these states from his air-conditined office. The dying will be left to someone elses father/mother/son/daughter/wife/husband.

Seems that Beloved Leader wants to keep the hardline republican economic stuff ticking...he's got to pay for those tax cuts somewhere, and where better than on the backs of those who can least afford it?

The Bush administration has begun sounding out lawmakers and other key figures about mounting a new bipartisan effort to rein in the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security after the midterm elections, according to officials in the administration and on Capitol Hill.
...
The new Treasury secretary, former Goldman Sachs chief Henry M. Paulson Jr., has made it clear that a major reason he took the job is to tackle the rising cost of government health and Social Security spending, which he described last week as "the biggest economic issue facing our country."

The hard choice is whether to stop hemorraging money in Iraq, or begin to counter all that waste by raising revenues. I suspect that support for the war would fall even lower if it were presented to the average American as a pay-as-you-go option. To date, the 1600 Crew has largely financed it off the national credit card...and they have shown no willingness to responsibly change revenue generation without hurting the most-vulnerable citizens of our nation.

If there is a shift in Washington, this will probably become a non-issue, I doubt that too many Democrats are going to sign onto any of the fake "bi-partisan" legislation that comes out of the Oval Office. We're not all Joe Lieberman (or Ken Salazar), after all.

Seems that with all the excitement that was here in early July, I forgot that it was something like my Fourth Blogiversary in late June. I can't believe this has been going on this long. Thanks everyone who has hung with me...

Have a virtual beer on me.

What coincidence...the day after Joey Loserman is sent swirling down the drain of losing politicians, we get another "Terror Alert" from the folks who make incompetant government employees look good. In the pantheon of color-coded Terra™ Alerts, this one is Brown for full of shit.

Yes, the Department of Homeland Cronyism has decreed that because of an alleged plot in Poodleland, no one in this country can pass through airport security carrying a cup of coffee.

"No liquids or gels. Shaving cream, shampoo, contact lens solution -- all of it has to be checked," Strum shouted to the would-be vacationers and business travelers who surrounded her. "You cannot carry any of that on. If you try to carry it on, you will be sent back."

The timing of these alerts is interesting to say the least. I wondered how long before the November elections Karl Rove would wait before ratcheting up the fear level in response to the republican's shitty poll numbers.

Oh, and a note about the utterly incompetant DHS and the TSA, didn't we spend some gazillions of dollars buying and installing "bomb sniffing" technology at all the major airports? I guess those machines were just another way for the DHS to reward whatever companies contributed to the 1600 Crew political campaigns in 2000 and 2004. Because it sure doesn't seem like there was much value for the dollar for anyone besides the manufacturers.

I guess if the TSA people can't distinguish a hot cup of just-purchased coffee from an unknown substance, what in the hell good are they? Just askin'...

Joey Lieberman announced in his graceless concession speech that he will run as an "I" independent. I use the diminutive Joey because he's acting every bit the spoiled, self-entitled, self-indulgent child that he is.

"I" because it's all about him. It's never been about what's best for his party, his country or his constituents (unless there was a payoff for Holy Joe). It's always been about "I".

If he doesn't take himself off the ballot as an independent and do what every other person who loses a primary does, accept his loss with poise and grace, then he needs to be made Persona non grata in the Democratic Party by noon tomorrow.

There's too much at stake in other races this year to be focusing on re-defeating a guy who is now taking his electoral cues from the vanity run of Ralph Nader.

Hey Hey Ho Ho,
Holy Joe has got to go!

Apparently the LieberButt Munchers are claiming that their site joe2006.com was victim of a Denial-of-Service attack because it was down. Now, Holy Joe has the media, most of whom would not know a flash drive from a flash bulb buying his story.

But wait. This might actually be a calculated move on the part of Liebemans' otherwise not-so-competant DC campaign staff.

Follow me here: ISP's usually sell their hosting plans with a fixed bandwidth allocation. Go over it, and they'll cut you some slack up to a point. Go way over it, and they'll put a message up that your site is suspended until you contact their billing/customer service department to pony up for extra bandwidth (after all, the InterTubes are not really free). Everyone who has ever bought a hosting package knows these rules going in, most ISPs want to avoid becoming another dot-bomb and enforce things like bandwidth that affect profitability.

Now, supposing as Christy over at FDL says, that the Lieberman folks knew that the 24 to 36 hours before the polls open would logically be the highest/peak usage time. So they underbuy knowing that their quotas will be pushed to the limit, before primary day, but not enough to cause problems. But in that magic window, BOOM! Out goes the site for the bandwidth qouta, and out comes a ready made explanation, it was the HaX0rz. Particularly of the Lamont variety.

Makes sense to me, and it's a perfectly untraceable "dirty trick". All you have to do is underbuy and blame Lamont for bringing down the website and you get Noron and Tweety being shrill about the mean old bloggers.

Update: apparently the Lieberdems were only ponying up $15/month for hosting. Would it have been irresponsible to speculate about the LieberLovers Asshattery? It would have been irresponsible not to.

If the Lamont campaign can get a commercial on in less that 24 hours, this ought to be meat of it: Here's the guy that Lieberman has been enabling for lo, these six years in every way possible...

You know, I hear people say, Well, civil war this, civil war that. The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box. And a unity government is working to respond to the will of the people.

It's well documented that Lieberman believes that everything in Mess O'Potamia is just going so well.

There won't be any "stand down as they stand up" bullshit. Come the November elections, there's going to be another "Mission Accomplished" moment with Bunnypants looking all sober (or maybe it'll be Deadeye Dick), and the keys to all the Humvees, Strykers and weapons lockers will be turned over to the militia leader who can assure that we won't have mass casualties inflicted on us enroute Baghdad International. And then Rove will blame the Democrats and American who feel that this war was in the wrong place and fought for the wrong reasons for the entire debacle.

(cue Earth, Wind and Fire)"That's the way of the world".

OMG, does Lanny Davis imagine he's talking to developmentally-challenged five year olds? The cocktail-weenie Democrats are getting muy desesperado to recast history to make Joementum not be the enabler of Beloved Leader that he is.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," meanwhile, a supporter of Mr. Lieberman, Lanny Davis, sought to explain a statement the senator made last December that Mr. Lamont's supporters have used against him. In those remarks, Mr. Lieberman said it was "time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that, in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

Noting that Mr. Lieberman had gone on to criticize the Bush administration's handling of the war on many occasions, Mr. Davis said on NBC that his friend had not been referring only to Democrats.

"That comment was made about exploiting the war politically," he said. "He was referring as well to Republicans, trying to use the war on terrorism for electing purposes."

Mr. Davis added, "I think if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn't have used those words."

Lieberman's only sorry that he used those words now because he's in the political fight of his life. There has been no point in the last six years where he has not backed up that assertion with both his words and his deeds from his enabling of the Bankruptcy bill to enabling the elevation of Samuel Alito the Supreme Court as a proud member of the "gang of 14", whose Democratic component is less in the vein of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and more in the mold of Neville Chamberlain and Vidkun Quisling.

Joe's Gotta Go!

1. Gingrich: All War, All the Time
   
2. Borrow and Spend republicans...there you go again
   
3. Almost forgot
   
4. The Great Exploding Hair Gel Alert
   
5. Ned! (or Joe No Mo)
   
6. Holy Joe's DoS attack?
   
7. Yes, he's really that stupid
   
8. We're not children