Playing Chicken:

When I was a kid, a favorite game of neighborhood bullies was chicken. Follow me doing this really dumb thing or I'll call you a coward. No ten-year-old boy wanted the other kids to think he was chicken. The Bush administration has been pulling the same stunt for a number of years now. Follow us into Iraq or you're a traitor.

My hero when I was a kid was my older cousin, David, who stood up to more than one bully for me and the other neighborhood kids. David took a lot of dares himself, but he wouldn't stand for some jerk who thought it would be funny to see you get hurt trying to pull something like that. As a result, everybody in the neighborhood respected David. He was a little guy for his age, no bigger than I was although he was three years older, but he took after his Biblical namesake and stood up to the Goliaths in the neighborhood when he believed he was right.

Now maybe there's another giant killer in the neighborhood. Sen. John Warner of Virginia may not be in sink with everything I believe, but he's got the fortitude to stand up the administration. You can read about it in today's Washing Post. The administration has resorted to its usual tactics of claiming anyone who doesn't support everything they want to do is by definition a traitor to the country. Just remember, Sen. Warner, "sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you." Keep standing your ground, Senator. Courage is a rare commodity. We need to honor it whenever we encounter it.

Words Matter:

Garry Wills published an important commentary on today's New York Times Op-Ed page, "At Ease, Mr. President," pointing out what most of us never notice: The President is not our commander in chief. The Constitution names the President as "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" only. He is not my commander in chief. Although I am a veteran, I was honorably discharged many years ago.

This might seem a point of little concern, but the truth is that the constant tossing around of such verbiage serves to undermine the average citizen's political power. If the President is our Commander in Chief, we exist to serve his ends. If he is our elected official, he's in office to serve ours. But I guess that's a difficult concept for a boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

This Just in!

The 50 billion dollar war with Iraq actually cost 1.2 trillion dollars. Now that's inflation! Gosh, Prez. Bush! Whut hoppin'd?

You can read about it in today's New York Times. By the way, the price just keeps going up and up and up.


More Money Matters:

You don't want to miss this one. Johnnie M. Burton, the director of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, "who told a House hearing last September that she first learned about the royalties problem [wherein oil and gas companies drilling in public waters must pay royalties to the government] in January 2006," was trapped by e-mail in a confession that she actually knew of the problem as long as three years ago. This allowed the oil and gas industry to avoid paying $865 million into the government's coffers.

This is hardly a drop in the waters in terms of paying for the completely unjustifiable war in Iraq, but it sure helped make a few people rich, those people who like to finance a certain you-know-who's political campaigns.

Too Good to Pass Up:

Lawrence Downes writes in today's New York Times in praise of the Ramen Noodle creator. No one who has ever struggled through college wants to miss this one.

Material Girl Strikes Pose:

Dems proudly announce crackdown on congressional connections with deep pocket lobbyists. (Note: Please send blank checks to P. O. Box 666 to purchase bridge in Brooklyn.) As The New York Times notes, the new changes address goodies like free golfing sprees in Scotland but do absolutely nothing about the most egregious problem—campaign donations. The big bucks will keep rolling in, along with the requirement that your representatives in Washington will represent, not you, but whoever dumps the most money in your representative's campaign coffers.


Go Ahead, Fire Me, Just Give Me a Couple Hundred Million to Go Away:

The average American Joe is sickened when a grown man is paid a million to ten million dollars to play a boy's game, like baseball, but how about getting $210 million to be fired after doing a mediocre jog? Home Depot dumped CEO Robert L. Nardelli with a going away prize that would stagger the imaginations of all but the very richest among us.

Julie Creswell and Michael Barbaro report on this sad state of capitalism in today's New York Times. The money, by the by, comes from the company's investors, many of whom are pension funds from Mr and Mrs Average Joe. No wonder the Republicans were so hot on shifting Social Security funds into the stock market where they could be raided by CEOs like Nardelli and the boards they hold in their back pockets.


Will America Just Walk Away:

Brent Scowcroft, former security adviser to Bush 41 and Gerald Ford, Op-Eds in today's New York Times, arguing that the U. S. has got to fix the broken pottery in Iraq. Please note, we went into Iraq to control the flow of oil and maintain the dollar as the monetary value of exchange for oil. We ain't leaving Iraqi oil in the hands of whatever dictator/strongman comes to the fore in that country. Go ahead and strike a pose, Dems.


Quote of the Day:

On Language: "Americans puzzle over Britons keeping their spare 'tyre' in the 'boot' of their car, but most admit that they sound clever doing it." — Kevin Sullivan in The Washington Post.

Death Penalty:

Legislators in New Jersey have recommended that the death penalty be removed from the books in that state. Interestingly, no one has been executed in New Jersey since 1963, and only a handful of prisoners are currently on death row.

According to The New York Times, the "report found 'no compelling evidence' that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it 'is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.'"


A Revolution inside Google:

Google, the folks that revolutionized Web search by pushing the stuff they wanted to push at you instead of what might be most useful to you—they shoved advertising down our throats—is going through their own revolution in the way they hire employees.

Traditionally(odd word choice for such a corporation), Google has focused on hiring PhD.s with 4.0 GPAs and perfect SAT scores, and they've had a lot of luck with that, but not wanting to sit on their laurels, they're trying to come up with a new algorithm to make use of in their hiring procedures. Not everyone, it turns out, fits in perfectly who scores perfectly on tests.

The New York Times reports Google vice president Laszlo Bock as saying, “More and more in the time I’ve been here, we hire people based on experience as a proxy for what they can accomplish. Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 G.P.A.”

Iraqification Finds Same Boat as Vietnamization:

The policy that failed 30 years ago has officially failed again. In an article entitled, "Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in '06, Bush Team Says," David Sanger et al of The New York Times lay out the administration's apology (place quotes around that) for having failed to heed the advice of their critics way back when. (That glass was broken before, and you're still gonna own it.)

Sanger reports W as telling his commanders, "What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave." So the question you've gotta ask yourself is "Does chaos reign in Iraq or the White House?" (Hint: the White House seems to be empty.)