Obsidian Wings

This is insane, yes.

I mean, really, really insane. We're talking transcendently insane:

Bush/Clinton in 2004 (Clinton being, of course, Hillary).

Isn't that lunatic? I got the idea from a poster from this dKos thread about that popularity poll. dKos is especially amusing today, by the way: the post after that one is sort of about how Dean doesn't need to win in the South to win the election and sort of about how Kos is planning away at an upcoming campaign* against The New Republic. 2004 is going to be fragging hysterical...

But I digress. Let's see that again: Bush/Clinton 2004. I don't know about you, but the sheer malignant beauty of the train wreck that such a simple slogan represents is almost overwhelming. I mean, the craniums of hundreds of pundits on both sides of the spectrum would explode from the strain of trying to hold in the white-hot outrage... OK, in most cases that's arguably a plus, true, but somebody would still have to clean it all up afterwards.

This is the problem that I have with the notion: it's quite possibly one of the fabled So Bad It Went Out The Other Side And Makes An Insane Sort of Sense ideas (more often spoken of than seen). Bush gets a paper-perfect balance to the ticket; Clinton gets an enviable position by which to run for President in '08 (as a clear centrist, no less); lots of pundits' head explode. I'd pay a dollar to watch this all happen.

(pause)

Oh, did I mention that I'm coming down with a cold?

Moe

*If it were pre-9/11, I'd be using either 'jihad' or 'crusade' in the place of 'campaign'.

Proxy charity request

Gary Farber of Amygdala is apparently in a bit of a hole financially and could use some help. He's an all right guy (when he isn't correcting our grammar) and it is the Christmas season... your call to make; I didn't begrudge him a twenty.

Moe

Petty Annoyances

Just in from Fox News :

BAGHDAD, Iraq — At least five people were killed in a large explosion that ripped through a restaurant in central Baghdad Wednesday and there were reports that Iraqi police said it may have been caused by a homicide bomber.

This is not an occasion to try to score political points, or to hold a referendum on the War in Iraq. Innocents have died and, regardless of your political views, Iraq has become a battle that we cannot afford to lose. With all those good things in mind, however, I'd like to make an extremely petty point about linguistics of the Fox News report.

As the report shows, it has become fashionable to refer to suicide bombings as "homicide bombings." I understand that some like the term "homicide bombing" because it supposedly dramatizes the fact that innocents have died in the attack, while the term "suicide bombing" would seem to emphasize the death of the perpetrator of the attack. I can see the emotional draw of such a tactic.

Nonetheless, this is idiotic. The reason is fairly simple: All bombings that intentionally kill an innocent or innocents are homicide bombings. The Unibomber, for instance, committed homicide bombings. A suicide bombing, by comparison, is a bombing in which the perpetrator commits the additional sin of killing him- or herself.

Using the term "homicide bombings" in place of "suicide bombings" manages the rare trifecta of being redundant and misleading, while simultaneously minimizing the very crime(s) being committed.

Now, I have little pull with Fox News, but perhaps I can convince our modest readership of the following: Please, friends, it's thinking like this that gets us nonsense like "freedom fries" and "freedom wine" (the latter from "Free-nce," one supposes). Please don't go down this route. Don't use the term "homicide bombing."

And have a safe and happy New Year's eve. My best to all.

This entire contest meta-theme

It's interesting: we've had this blog up and running for just over a month, and already we've jumped into at least three contests. There was Wizbang's 2003 Weblog Awards (it was a shame that our site was still jumping up and down the Ecosystem at the time, because I felt too weird about voting for my site under those conditions to do it very often); then there was Wampum's 2003 Koufax Awards*, which I'm sure Dwight will be posting a status report on any day now; and now Blogmadness 2003. Check the active ones out.

Moe

*Hey, that's the great thing about being a centrist site; invites from both sides of the spectrum.

Is it Godwinization to compare a dictator to Hitler?

While flipping through the site of a certain new smart-aleck visitor I came across this gem that I had read about earlier: Castro Photo Gets a Hitler Makeover. I respect the cojones of whoever did this*, and humbly suggest that they stand not on the order of their coming but go at once. I'd further suggest taking a quick sea jaunt north, but apparently creativity is no longer esteemed by our border patrols.

Yes, dammit, I'm still pissed about that.

Moe

*Or the ovarios, to be sure.

Obligatory Google Search String post.

I'd just like to note for the record that we're currently #2 for Google searches using naked women as the search string. #1 is a Salon article about Mr. Spock's nudes.

(pause)

The Internet is weird, man.

UPDATE: My smarter half has pointed out that we're #12, not #2. Oh, well, something to aim for.

Thought-Resolution Experiment.

Thanks to regular Tacitus poster Timmy the Wonder Dog I was alerted to this piece of Lileksian amusement. Amusing stuff... and, in the spirit of the holiday, we're going to designate this as...

THE NEW YEAR'S POLITICAL RESOLUTION THREAD!!!!!

Right.

Anyway, the rules are simple:

1) Come up with a political resolution that applies to your side. Let me repeat that: to your side. We don't care about resolutions for how The Other Side should do better: we can get those every day. And no trying to come up with a way to weasel around this.

2) Come up with a relevant political resolution that applies to your side; this is self-criticism (amusing self-criticism, to be sure), not boosterism. Don't try to weasel around this, either.

3) No getting ticked off by somebody else's post.

And, obviously,

4) Keep a sense of humor about it all.

We'll start with one from me:

I resolve to admit in public more often that the entire Freedom Fries thing was kinda lame and petty.

Game on.

Do the right thing.

Ashcroft has opted out of the Plame game, recusing himself in favor of Peter Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Although there were a few ruffled feathers when Fitzgerald was appointed -- he's not a native son of Chicago, but rather a carpetbagger from New York (so to speak) -- all accounts are that he's nonpartisan, sharp, and relentless.*

This is an excellent decision by Ashcroft. But why now?

Chickens, on their way home to roost.

From the Washington Post, troubling news about our attempts to rebuild Iraq's police force.

As the U.S.-led governing authority in Iraq attempts to build a security force of 220,000 in the next few months, the competing priorities of speed and thoroughness have prompted shortcuts in the recruiting and training process. The consequences are starting to become apparent. . . . more than 200 Iraqi policemen in Baghdad have been dismissed and dozens of others have had their pay slashed for crimes ranging from pawning government equipment to extortion and kidnapping. . . . . In addition, roughly 2,500 people on the payroll of the Facilities Protection Service, which guards government buildings, either do not exist or have not been showing up to work . . . . [A] number of Border Patrol officers have been disciplined for accepting bribes in exchange for allowing people without proper identification to enter Iraq.

The importance of building a capable Iraqi police force cannot be overstated. Iraq needs substantial foreign investment to rebuild its infrastructure, institutions, and public services. The principle barrier to that investment is security.*

Many (including I) have chanted the mantra of "more troops, more money, more international involvement" as a solution to Iraq's security issues. Our chanting has gone unheeded. The US lacks the will to commit the troops necessary to do the job, and the period during which a massive show of US force might have been effective has slipped us by. The time for chanting is past. The Iraqis must pick up the slack.

Indeed, the US military could have provided, at most, only tempory relief. And resort to the rebuilt Iraqi army -- tempting though it may be -- is also no substitute. It is the role of the Iraqi police to protect Iraqis. Having the police actually police is what is meant by "the rule of law."

"[W]hen have you ever seen the police lead a coup?" Casteel explained. "If you build a strong police force, you have a republic. If you build a strong military, you have a banana republic."

What are we building in Iraq? What shape do we wish Iraqification to take? And, if anything is an improvement over Saddam, does that make everything acceptable?

It's time to stop celebrating the capture of Saddam. There's work to do.

von

OK, maybe I'm just too tired

...but this Dave Barry year in review thing got funnier the farther in I read. Equal-opportunity skewering galore.

(via Peevish, which has also been belatedly blogrolled)