Sundaaaaaaarrrggregator

How cravenly stupid must David Ignatius be to think we'll swoon at his wisdom?

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It's hard for anyone to take American power seriously when prominent members of Congress are declaring the war already lost.

Because our opponents would take us far more seriously if we just denied reality like.... David Ignatius!

Whose fault is this anyway?

Future military planners will have to recognize that American democracy, in which political mandates must be renewed in two-year increments, makes us uniquely unsuited to fight protracted counterinsurgency wars.

That's right, it's your fucking fault, you goddamn democratic bastards.

There's a bone for the Democrats

The most sensible comment I heard on Iraq in the past week came from one of the Democratic presidential candidates -- indeed, from the one with the strongest antiwar credentials, Sen. Barack Obama: "I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in."

but you can guess what's coming:

Obama is right, and so, for that matter, is President Bush when he says much the same thing.

I ask again, how cravenly stupid must David Ignatius be to think we'll swoon at his wisdom?

Pathetically, pompously, stupendously stupid.

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• Thomas Schaller on the profound suckitude of the GOP presidential field.
• Henley sums up Anne-Marie Slaughter's nonsense so you don't have to.
• Because it would be totally partisan of me to point out that Bushco is composed of liars and pathological partisans, yes?
• Greenwald address the first link in last line.
• Actually, that second one deserves the first paragraph from the article:

  A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

• Blue Texan on Rove's bullshit offensive against his own. Yes, it is all Mark Foley's fault.
• Frank Rich on Jesus Petraeus (h/t Greenpagan)
• We are the enemy. No, really.

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Some powerful elitist calisthenics from Jim Hoagland

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Watch in awe as he rifs from sports scandals to - - - vindicative bloggers!

And it is not just in sports that faith in leaders and heroes flags. We in journalism are no strangers to the process of building up celebrities, idols and politicians -- and then tearing them down. But the destruction arrives more quickly and with greater violence and vengeance today. The sports controversies are only a highly visible part of the zeitgeist of this Inquisitional Age.

But

The most vindictive bloggers and many others eager to push the mainstream media, established politicians or other remnants of the status quo off a stage that they want to occupy smash reputations with abandon to call attention to themselves. What do they have to lose in the unpoliced badlands of the ether? They contribute to a general deepening of cynicism in the land at no perceived cost to themselves.

Inquisitional age? Vindicative bloggers? Why the hell can't every just shut the hell up and let Washington's Power Cocktail Circuit rule the goddamn world without scrutiny?

We are well, and truly, fucked, vindictive ladies, vindictive gentleman.