Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

Eventually, yes.

A few notes. I’ve just found that a friend of mine, goes by the nom de guerre Tully, is blogging at a place called Stubborn Facts. There a four of them at this group blog. I haven’t yet had the chance to peruse it, but anything with which Tully is associated is of the highest quality.

Another friend, whose name I will not presently drop, interviews Donald Rumsfeld tomorrow. She’s not a journalist; rather, she’s interviewing the SecDef as a blogger.

Another friend, Jason High, is going to work as the legislative director for our local, freshman state senator.

It will be cold tomorrow. In the evening.

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have met in Baghdad and agreed not to partition Iraq into there autonomous regions, a plan pushed by former CFR President Leslie Gelb and Joe Biden.

“The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence,” Bush said after nearly two and a half hours of talks aimed at stabilizing Iraq. “I agree.”

Who is stupid in this instance? National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley thinks Maliki is stupid. Various lightweights repeat the mantra that Bush is stupid. John Kerry has proclaimed that our troops are stupid.

Maliki and Bush think Gelb and Joe Biden are stupid.

It would be stupid here to quote from that Hollywood movie Forest Gump.

What’s the official NBC News policy? I assume it’s stupid.

He was never really in, but former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he’s out of the race for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.

He left the party without a Senate majority and was unable to rally Republican Senators to much of anything. Great guy, wonderful doctor, maybe a good Senator. Not a good majority leader and certainly not Presidential timbre.

In a possible effort to sabotage the President’s meeting in Amman with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, someone at the White House — “[a]n Administration official” — has leaked a classified memorandum written by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to the President and the New York Times has seen fit to publish it.

In their story accompanying the memo, the Times decides:

The memo suggests that if Mr. Maliki fails to carry out a series of specified steps, it may ultimately be necessary to press him to reconfigure his parliamentary bloc, a step the United States could support by providing “monetary support to moderate groups,” and by sending thousands of additional American troops to Baghdad to make up for what the document suggests is a current shortage of Iraqi forces.

All the while, Tony Snow is expressing the Administrations support for Maliki, something crucial to the success of the President’s meeting with Maliki on Wednesday and to the success of the government in Iraq and the ultimate success of the U.S. effort their.

Someone in the Bush Administration has teamed with the New York Times to undermine U.S. policy. Again.

Friends, Iraq is now in a state of Civil War. It’s official.

On Sunday, CBS News’s flighty Lara Logan told Centcom chief General John Abizaid on their 60 Minutes infotainment program that he should be “talking about how to manage defeat in Iraq.” (HT, Michael Rule at NewsBusters.org.) That’s the buzz, and what we have evidently lost is, by journalistic decree, a CIVIL WAR.

Proof that Iraq is now a civil war comes from no less as source than the NBC morning entertainment program Today Show, the Matt ‘n Meredith vehicle. Again, NewsBusters has the transcript.

Matt Lauer, who many would sooner see interviewing the dancers from Little Shop of Horrors, has spoken:

“As you know for months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war and for the most part news organizations like NBC have hesitated to characterize it as such but after careful consideration NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted. That the situation in Iraq with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas can now be characterized as civil war. We’re gonna have more on the situation on the ground in Iraq and on our decision coming up.”

Wow! A bunch of giggling journalists have put on their serious caps and decided: “I’m serious, yes, and I think that this is a civil war. I’m profound. Okay, hands up, who wants to be the North? I’m not going to be the South! No fair! You got to be the North last time! I never get to win this civil war game!”

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Earmarks are earmarks. Outgoing Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) knows this, and incoming Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii) knows it as well. With the chairmanship of the subcommittee handling the largest portion of discretionary spending changing hands, and changing parties. It stands to reason that Alaska’s loss is Hawaii’s gain.

That’s not how things work, as Alaska’s Anchorage Daily News boasts:

Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska and Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii are the best of friends in the Senate, so close they call each other brother.

Both are decorated veterans of World War II. They have worked together for nearly four decades as senators from the two youngest and farthest-flung states. And they share an almost unrivaled appetite for what some call political pork.

Stevens, an 83-year-old Republican, and Inouye, an 82-year-old Democrat, routinely deliver to their states more money per capita in earmarks — the pet projects lawmakers insert into major spending bills — than any other state gets. This year, Alaska received $1.05 billion in earmarks, or $1,677.27 per resident, while Hawaii got $903.9 million, or $746.05 per resident, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group that tracks such figures.

Read More…

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Over at the New Yorker site, Ken Aulette has some unkind words for CNN’s Lou Dobbs, whose found his shtick in warning of evil brown Mexicans under the floorboards. (NOTE: I’m characterizing Dobbs’s prattle.)

he new Lou Dobbs often surprises those who recall the old Lou Dobbs of “Moneyline.” Daniel Henninger, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote, “Old admirers are aghast. It’s as if whatever made Linda Blair’s head spin around in ‘The Exorcist’ had invaded the body of Lou Dobbs and left him with the brain of Dennis Kucinich,” a reference to the left-wing Ohio congressman and former Presidential aspirant. After an angry altercation on the show with James Glassman, a former New Republic publisher and current conservative supply-sider, Glassman said of Dobbs, “How did he transform from a business sycophant to a raving populist?” Glassman’s answer was that Dobbs had begun to “demagogue these issues.” (In questioning Glassman’s economic theories on his program, Dobbs accused him of talking “like a cult member.”) As if to answer such critics, Dobbs has recently published a book whose title is almost as long as the menu at the Grill Room: “War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and HOW TO FIGHT BACK.”

The hat tip goes to Penraker, who has up a lengthier piece on CNN itself as a “propaganda organization.”

I assume that CNN told Dobbs to grab a gimmick to boost his ratings, so Dobb’s latched on to the Mexicans. They’re an easy target, and the solution can be made to sound simple.

This morning, Matt Stoller of the MyDD blog is on Washington Journal with some other fellow. I always listen to the show on XM, and I’ll listen whenever a blogger of whom I heard is offering analysis. Either stripe, I don’t want them to fall on their faces and embarrass us all. Stoller’s being Stoller, but he doesn’t sound stupid on the show. This is a good thing. He’s repeating meaningless pop lines, but that crap passes as intelligent political thought these days, so though his premises are bogus, he’s doing fine.

He writes on his blog:

At 8:15a, he had gained one comment. From “dataguy”:

Where do you stand on this impeachment(none / 0)

nonsense?

There are more and more posts advocating it.

Myself, I think it’s nuts.

Oh, whatever.

Good morning.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

On FNS, Chuck Rangel did not address the Heritage Foundation’s report indicating the contrary but insisted that today’s U.S. military is comprised do dumb, poor kids because that’s how it was when he dropped out of high school to sign up to go to Korea in ‘48. Barney Frank accused Chris Wallace of not being balanced because he asked controversial questions not ones about positive agendas. John Dingell wants to hold hearings into Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force, the one which met in the opening months of 2001.

On MTP, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did not rule out running against Barbara Boxer in 2010 and told Russert, in response to a question about quitting his political party, that of course he was a Republican and would remain one in perpetuity.

On FNS, Trent Lott declared that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has to take control of his own country or we should leave.

On TW, Jordan’s Hashemite Royal Excellent Majesty King Abdullah II said Iraq was a problem, so was Lebanon, cry me a river. The real problem, he said, was the plight of the Palestinians. On the same show, Durbin urged the President not to nominate extremists judges like John Roberts and Sam Alito. He spoke in favor of Reed-Levin. Steph hassled Sam Brownback about a Judge Janet Neff who is being blocked, Brownback insisted, until he knows where she stands on the issues surrounding gay marriages. (She spoke at a lesbian wedding in Massachusetts.)

On FTN, incoming Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker indicated that he is looking toward Baker-Hamilton for a way out of Iraq. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill said that Congress cannot change Iraq policy, as it’s all the President’s fault. She and Sherrod Brown of Ohio agreed with guest host Gloria Borger that the last election was a repudiation of President Bush, and Borger asked Corker how he was going to “pay for” extending the President’s tax cuts.

On LE, Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie told Wolf Blitzer that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would meet with President Bush next week despite Moqtada al-Sadr’s threats to pack up his toys and leave the government if he does. He said that the government enjoys broad support and that a few people leaving won’t matter. Without missing a beat, he then said that al-Sadr’s delegation to the parliament was the largest.

See the entire show-by-show review at RedState.com

I just heard a caller to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal tell us that he’s done the research and has determined that Maine’s Senator Susie Collins would be the best President. I cannot imagine any amount of research and/or calculus which came to this conclusion.

Susie Collins. I can’t imagine anything recommend her sitting in the U.S. Senate, for gawdsakes.