But if you're blog-starved, here are a couple of things to tide you over:
- Scott at Poetic Leanings translates selections from C-Plus Caligula's inauguration speech. (Based on listening to about 10 minutes each of NPR and Al Franken in the car on the way home at lunchtime, you'd think they were talking about two different speeches.)
- Jazz at Running Scared visits some Iraqi blogs, which really should go on this blogroll as well.
- Waveflux has a bunch of good stuff today, including thoughts on Juan Cole's post-mortem on the genuflecting before Condi Rice by everyone but Barbara Boxer.
- Steve Gilliard has some graphic photos and an analysis of the kind of winning over of hearts and minds Bush's policy is doing in Iraq. Presumably we can look forward to more of this as he does PNAC's billing for the next four years.
- John Howard has had quite enough reductio ad absurdum about Bill Clinton, thank you very much. And don't miss his thoughts on so-called Intelligent Design theory, which pretty much shoot that concept right into oblivion where it belongs.
- Tresy at Corrente is moving to Canada, and invites the rest of us go come along. It sure is tempting...
Now, about that "Hunks of the Left" calendar I promised you a few months ago. This is something I really wanted to do, and had the guys all picked out. This is going to be a really fun sort of little throwaway, but watching Barack Obama, who was going to be Mr. January, capitulate to the forces of evil in his first two chances, I've kind of lost my enthusiasm for this project honoring some of the unlikely male sex symbols of the left. So I'm asking you, fair readers: What should I do? Should I plug away with Messrs. February - December, even though they're a frighteningly white bunch? Should I give up? Should I just wait till next year?
Anyway, those links ought to hold you for a while. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this little tidbit from Sy Hersh's must-read New Yorker article on what we can look forward to as we leave Iraq a complete and utter shambles and move on to destroy Iran next, at the behest of Israel, which should REALLY make us a whole lot of friends in the Arab world:
The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.
“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”
Welcome to Bush II: The Nightmare Continues. May God have mercy on our souls.
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