The Pentagon, for one, won’t let it happen. Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz are no longer there, though other PNAC types have burrowed in.

How will you be spending your Fourth of July? Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt will be spending his with former congressman and convicted felon Jim Traficant and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney at an event hosted by the Holocaust-denying frontman of an anti-government rock group with ties to the Hutaree militia.

Wow — Jim Traficant? The guy who used to be one of FOX News’ favorite Democrats to put on the air whenever they needed a “Democrat” to bash another Democrat, usually someone who was caught doing the right thing?

Hoooeeee.

A-yep. So far, what NSA’s getting looks to be logs, not the calls themselves, which still need warrants.

Time will tell. If he insists that Iran is its own nation, I predict he’ll be vilified by the US press just as was his predecessor.

Yes, the movement that Bush with his hamfistedness managed to kill by cuddling up too closely to it.

At this point, the US is so (and for cause) despised in much of the Middle East that I fear the worst thing Obama could do to any moderates would be to publicly embrace them.

It will be interesting to see if he’s still called a moderate if he does things like politely but firmly continue to reject multinational sovereignty over his nation.

By the way, you might be interested in this.

What’s more, they were far nicer about it than the Spanish would have been, were the situations reversed.

Game, set and match. :-)

Can you think of any reason why trying to remove it would be allowed by the same Republican Congress that happily pulled the trigger of the sequester and now wants to cut even more? The Senate just can’t ignore bills the House passes — especially must-pass bills.

Thanks, D.

Point taken. (And it would set up some nice screeching from the Blue Dogs.)

I have a friend who works in greater Minnesota, and one of her biggest peeves is having to go in and undo the damage wrought by certain folks, mostly from the bigger cities or from outside of the state, who think that all rural folk and all non-progs in general are illiterate rubes who need things progsplained to them, generally in the most condescending way possible.

That’s a very good point. We’ve gone well past “destroying the village in order to save it”, and in the meantime what we’re really doing is making it easier for the Chinese to win the hearts and minds of Afghans — which is not the intended outcome, as the main reason we’re in Afghanistan is to keep its rare earths and other mineral treasures out of China’s hands.

What, you thought it was to fight the Taliban? The Sunni Al-Qaeda allies?

If we were really serious about fighting Al-Qaeda, why do we, following the Saudis’ and Qatar elites’ dictates, back the Al-Qaeda-allied Taliban-like Sunni rebels seeking to overthrow Assad?

True. She’s the governor of state, though, and not of the entire US.

You have a point there. Unfortunately, that presumes that Republican congressmembers and the people that vote for them care whether Gitmo inmates starve to death.

How Manichaean of you. If someone isn’t totally 100.0% on your side, they’re a neocon evil being in your view.

I keep thinking of Sir Pterry’s rule concerning exclamation points.

Indeed.

I’ve found that one cannot live by rage alone.

Look at the more effective progressives, people like Gar Alperovitz. They’re constantly talking about the good things we can do and have done, not just harping on the bad. If the bad’s all you talk about, you don’t spur people to act, you in fact sap their desire to act — they figure “what’s the use?”