For my money, THE definitive word on both Iowa and NH

without question, there is nothing else to be said...

ONE DAY AFTER IOWA:

(D) version: Obama is invincible. His campaign is legendary. He sweeps all those before him aside with his aura of manly inevitability. Hillary is doomed.

(R) version: The Godbillies of Iowa have shamefully nominated some know-nothing. This is a great victory for McCain, whose teenish-percent finish is evidence of his tremendous strength among the rest of the country, which is not nearly as populated with dumb-as-rocks Bible chewers as Iowa is known to be.

ONE DAY AFTER NEW HAMPSHIRE:

(D) version: Hillary is invincible. Her campaign is legendary. She sweeps all those before her aside with her aura of competent inevitability. Obama is doomed.

(R) version: I'm sorry, every pundit within a thousand miles of Washington has just reached orgasm. Please check back for wisdom later.

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A highly articulate, front-page Daily Kos post describes the problem and misses the entire point

another tragically myopic daily kos front page post, this one by hunter...

the problem, as he sees it...

In battle after battle the House and Senate Dems have made it crystal clear that they do not give a flying shit about their base. They wish we'd just curl up and die. They're happy to have the free help spreading their points, but that help does not reciprocate in any way. There's not a damn thing they'll do on our behalf, or on behalf of the voters who made their regained power possible -- not one thing. They'll even sell out Move On by name -- and all in fear of this mythical overwhelming conservative tide of voters who will wag their fingers sternly and supposedly dangerously at the slightest provocation. They spend a hell of a lot more time worrying about what the racists think about brown people, and the religious extremists think about non-extremists, and the corporate lobbyists think about corporate needs, than they've ever once worried about any of us. Their strategy is all about placating, of all fucking things, the Republican base. That's who they're absolutely obsessed with: making sure the Republicans aren't mad at them, that thirty percent of voters who would rather join militias and drift off into the countryside than vote against hardcore Republicanism anyway.

They really have learned nothing, in their decade-plus of being out of power. Not a damn thing. They're still obsessed with strategic, plodding, inoffensive timidity as the answer to all possible situations and questions. We can only be glad that the civil rights battles are largely over for black Americans, because these people would sell out absolutely anyone and anything in order to continue their consultant-honed strategy of taking absolutely no stand on anything the slightest bit difficult.

It seems hard to come to any other conclusion but that a large part of the party, people like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer foremost in that group, wants to cripple and kill us every bit as much as the Republicans do, all for the lazy-assed sake of avoiding hard fights on hard issues and being able to go back to the milquetoast, visionless blandfest that the party is at this point rightfully famous for. And the majority of the rest are more interested in their goddamn strategists than their goddamn consciences.

and that terribly mistaken point...?

It is crystal clear that the Congressional Democrats are divided and incapable at best, and incompetent at worst. We have been through month after month of similar "showdowns", followed by similar collapses. This time, it at least has a financial price attached: if the Democrats are willing to sell out on the one overriding issue that brought them back into power, in the 2006 elections, at least we know they are able to use it as bargaining chip for other issues. Somehow, that is the exact opposite of comforting.

How do we work for them, in the next election, knowing that on the central issue the last election, they are unapologetically uninterested? Nationwide, Democrats were thrust into power in an overwhelming tide due to voter anger over the course of the war, and over the governance of the nation in general. What is there, in 2008, to vote for? What possible credibility do Democrats have over Republicans in ending the war, after time after time after time of abandoning all responsibility for it?

ok, fine... i'll keep banging my lonely drum... i'll continue to play the voice crying in the desert... hey...! what's yet another exercise in futility...? here goes...

the dems are NOT INCOMPETENT... they're NOT ACTING OUT OF FEAR... they're NOT "LAZY-ASSED" ABOUT "AVOIDING HARD FIGHTS"... and they're certainly NOT "OBSESSED WITH STRATEGIC, PLODDING, INOFFENSIVE TIMIDITY"...

one more time...

THE DEMOCRATS ARE COLLABORATIONISTS, CO-CONSPIRATORS, and TRAITORS.*

the sooner the united states fully wakes up to this tragic fact, the sooner we can get on with hosing the accumulated sewage and encrusted excrement off of the principles that were designed to make the united states a bright beacon of truth and hope to all of humanity...

* qualifier: not ALL democrats, to be sure, but a sickeningly large majority, and, to be fair, not ALL republicans, to be sure, but an even more sickening and even larger majority...

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Waterboarding - an interrogator's manual

over at daily kos, hunter offers us a detailed, step-by-step guide to waterboarding...

a small snippet of a long post that should be read in its entirety...

WARNING...! don't try this at home...

The goal of this interrogation technique is to recreate that experience in a controlled fashion. A normal drowning death lasts mere minutes: using this process, however, it is possible to prolong the experience almost indefinitely. It is possible to take the initial sensations of panic, of water flooding the body, of pain, of oxygen deprivation, and indeed of imminent death, and extend them over hours, or days. It is a God-given gift to the interrogator: can you imagine the abject terror of drowning, not just lived as a brilliant flash of memory set beneath the surface of unfamiliar water, but prolonged for breath after breath, repeated time and time again, in a small room, over an indefinite span? It is impossible to adapt to, or even to learn to tolerate.

required reading for every american...

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Hunter waxes eloquent on the Libby deal

and, believe me, nobody, and i mean NOBODY, can wax eloquent like hunter...

a teaser...

When seeking clemency for a criminal obstruction of justice, it is always considered a stroke of luck to have committed the obstruction on behalf of individuals with the power to grant such clemency.

read it all...

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Hunter on Iraq: This is a situation that is impossible to win. (But he's not saying what you think.)

i've read hunter's posts for a couple of years now, and i respect his ability to articulate very complex perspectives in an intelligent and logical way... however, i find the following to be among the most despairing, defeatist things i have ever read from him or any other progressive writing on iraq, and i'm not sure i can put into words the depths or even the sense of those feelings... i've excerpted below what i found to be the parts of his post i have the most difficulty with... i'll offer them to you, and if you have any thoughts, i'd be happy to hear them... as for me, i'm going to let the whole thing simmer on the back burner for a while, let the emotional adrenaline work its way out of my system, eat a decent dinner, and maybe come back to this later...

Let me offer some grim predictions as to the outcome of American involvement in Iraq:

1) There are going to be American troops in Iraq for the next ten years, though the numbers will be substantially reduced.

2) There are going to be permanent American bases in Iraq, just as the neoconservatives had desired.

3) Iraq is going to continue to be in a period of instability for years, and become a true haven for terrorism and religious strife, and there is very little we can do about it.

[...]

America made this mess, and America bears responsibility for the bloody aftermath -- whatever that aftermath turns out to be. If leaving the current troop levels in place could truly prevent another 100,000 Iraqi deaths, then it would be our duty to do it. If Petraeus' plan had a reasonable chance of working, it would be our obligation to try. A miserable truth, yes, but a moral truth nonetheless.

[...]

I suspect the odds of a complete troop withdrawal from the country to be vanishingly small.

[...]

[A] Vietnam-style abandonment of the country seems extraordinarily unlikely. American forces may retreat to fortified bases in the country and leave most day to day operations to the Iraqis, but I find it hard to conceive that any president, Republican or Democrat, would abandon the already-built major bases in an extremely turbulent portion of the world threatening at constant collapse, unless circumstances crumbled so badly that even those positions became utterly untenable.

It would require a metaphorical abandonment of the country: impossible for this president, unlikely for others. It would require a physical abandonment of the country: equally unlikely. It would require a reshaping of Mideast policy such that those bases, located in the middle of a region of unstable nations, were considered less liability than strategic advantage: absurdly unlikely, regardless of whatever future American policy morphs into.

[...]

Short version: this is a situation that is impossible to win. Having Democrats in charge doesn't change that, and the answers on how to fail the least catastrophically are not easy. That is, after all, the definition of quagmire.

what he seems to be saying, if i am understanding him correctly, is that, owing to the disaster we have created, there cannot be other than a lose-lose outcome, and he is laying out what he believes to be the MOST likely and the LEAST disastrous of the possible scenarios... am i getting that right...? anyway, comments appreciated...

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