You've probably read how John McCain explained yesterday that he wasn't wrong about the timing in Iraq, because

"First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy," Mr. McCain said in Bethlehem, Pa. "And it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel MacFarland in Anbar Province, relatively on his own. And I visited with him in December of 2006. He had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in, and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is quote ‘the surge,’ part of the surge, would be, would be, successful."

Implied, of course, is that the Surge would have been the Surge even if it had involved no increase (what the uninformed would call a 'surge') in troops.

Vanity Fair has produced a Blogopticon classifying blogs on two dimensions:

1.  Earnest v Scurrilous, and

2.  News v Opinion.

It's time.

Our beloved Democratic Party is in trouble.  

The train-wreck is before us.

"Vote for me or the kitten dies" has become the mantra of both campaigns. "Her voters will vote for me but mine won't vote for her" versus "He hasn't crossed the commander-in-chief threshold".

I don't know if or how it can be done, but hey, aren't we the "Yes we can!" party?

Friends, our Democratic Party has trouble.  That's Trouble, with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Deadlock.

We've all heard about post-partisan politics and that we should support Senator Obama because he knows how to persuade people over to his point of view, haven't we? End the divisiveness and all will be well; there's a top-rated diary on the Recommended List right now making that case. There are, I've been told, 'reasonable Republicans' in the Senate and the House of Representatives willing to enact a progressive agenda if the Democrats would work with them.

Is that true?

As many of you know, the San Diego Chargers have stumbled into the AFC playoffs of the NFL and have 'earned' the right to play the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.

Yes, I know this may sound peculiar, but the NFL uses antiquated and very undemocratic rules that result in absurdities like this.

By showing up on Sunday, though, the Chargers are selfishly and thoughtlessly endangering the rematch all American waits for next week: Indianapolis at New England.

I have analyzed this game in breathtaking depth and can only conclude:

San Diego MUST withdraw TODAY.

Follow me below the fold for an exhaustingly boring explanation  ...

Following his brilliant appearance on The Colbert Report, I have no choice but to announce my support for the one, the only

This has to be short, but I think it is very important.

Watching Wolf Blitzer just now, Sen Lindsey Graham has said that if the Iraqi government does not resolve the issues before it within 90 days, it will be 'a failed state' and the U.S. will have to consider 'political change'.

Can you re-invade a country you are already occupying?

What happened to the myth of Iraqi sovereignty?

Can you spell P.U.P.P.E.T.?

The New York Times has just put up an article by Elizabeth Bumiller At Army Base, Officers Are Split Over War, describing interviews she was permitted to conduct at Fort Leavenworth, the 'intellectual center' of the United States Army.

Are these field-grade officers (majors and colonels) debating whether mistakes were made in Iraq? Hardly! As Bumiller puts it, the question is

[W]ho bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq — the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him[?]

But wait! It is even more significant, I think, that

Discussions ... focused on where young officers might draw a "red line," the point at which they would defy a command from the civilians — the president and the defense secretary — who lead the military.

Savor that, then join me below the fold ...

Ken Burns's The War is ending this hour, and it's been a heckuva ride.  George Bush has recently alluded to the illusion that the current generation is 'The New Greatest Generation' - since I have heard nobody accept this designation, I will just assume that everyone realizes how bizarre and ridiculous that comment is and how it tells much more about the buffoon in the White House than about any generation.

[Note: I found that citation at www.whitehouse.gov a week ago, from a talk given in the last month, but it doesn't show up in a search at that site now and Google doesn't find it, and I feel silly even looking for it. It happened, he said it, that's all I know.]

Update: deben in the comments provides this link to Countdown referencing Gen. Petraeus's describing 'a new greatest generation'. Thanks, deben!

There is a long back-story here, but I'll try to be succinct:

On Sunday 8/19 a journalism professor named Michael Skube from Elon U in North Carolina had published in the LA Times an op-ed piece titled Blogs: All the noise that fits.  It can only be described as a very very silly bit of fluff and might easily have fallen into the obscurity it richly deserved. But, no doubt to his regret now, Skube included the following

[H]ere are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free. And not just write. Many of the most active bloggers -- Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall and the contributors to the Huffington Post -- are insistent partisans in political debate.

I'm sure you are laughing already, so stay with me below the fold ...

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.

It's cited every 4th of July, but it is scarcely uniquely ours; it is the inevitable product of the Enlightenment of Europe. Still, since the idea was formulated in these 5 uncompromising words (in English) by 'our' Thomas Jefferson, we Americans take it to be especially ours.  

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.

What could be simpler? What could be less ambiguous?

The Los Angeles Times has an editorial today titled Bush's Folly excoriating the President for his Iraq policy.

"His fixation on Al Qaeda's role in Iraq reveals the shallowness of his thinking"

they aver.  Hurrah! Yes! They get it! They're on our side!

Or ... not?

I found this program to be stunningly informative as to both fact and analysis.

Disclaimer: I cannot do this program justice here.

Here are the links: the video and the transcript.

Go watch it. Go now. You will not be sorry. It runs nearly 30 minutes, but it's the best 30 minutes you will spend today.

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo is reporting here that the Republican CNN/YouTube debate will probably not take place as scheduled, because Rudy Giuliani is indicating he will not participate and Mitt Romney appears inclined to follow his example.

Imagine that!

Bill O'Reilly has been scathing about the Democratic candidates declining an invitation to a debate on Faux, contending in his smarmy way

If they can't stand up to Fox, how will they stand up to Al Qaeda?

Well, isn't that just special!

I am furious.  I am dismayed.  I am irate.

On the NewsHour (PBS) just now, David Brooks has made the point that many Republican Senators want to vote for withdrawal from Iraq, but could not and cannot because of the way Harry Reid is managing the Senate schedule.

Specifically, I am a programmer, or a 'software developer', or a 'software consultant', or - with apologies to all the real train-drivers among us - a 'software engineer'.

I am very good at what I do. That means that I am also an 'analyst', for the reason that I have frequently been in the position of telling someone "When I get to that point, I will put in a messagebox with your phone number telling anyone who encounters it that you had assured me 'That will never happen'" - almost always I have received back a rational analysis that guides further code development.

I am not incorporated, for various reasons, which means that I end up working for a contracting agency that bills at one rate and pays me at another rate.  The rates are, of course, tendentially related and the only sure thing is that mine is less than theirs.

Last week, Howard Kurtz wrote a column in the Washington Post Strafing the Speaker (I route you to page 2 because that is where the peculiar content resides), in which he cites support for his (absurd) position from two blogs, with what he terms 'some typical blog reaction'.

Our own oznick stepped up almost immediately to point out in this excellent diary that the two blogs linked by Kurtz were (a) 1 and (b) 8 days old, and that oznick was unable to re-create any circumstances under which Kurtz might have discovered these 'typical reactions' by normal search or other processes. No way!