While those who pride themselves on living in a reality-based world may feel validated to know that the Guttmacher Institute just released a study saying that 95% of Americans engage in pre-marital sex and that those findings are pretty consistent going back to the 1950's, not only does it not end debate on sex-education vs. abstinence only education, it only intensifies the debate. 

Why?  Because no amount of facts or statistics will overcome the people pushing abstinence-only programs and to the extent that they do take the statistics at face value it only reinforces their conviction that our society is sick and immoral and someone needs to change that, so why not both preach and institutionalize abstinence.  Remember this whole thing is not about what real people are doing in their real lives, its about what someone else thinks they should be doing.

Check out this post from Josh Marshall about the split in the Senate "Centrist Coalition" and the birth of the new "Bipartisan Members Group".  Before you ask, yep, Joe Lieberman was involved.  This almost begs the question what does it take for the body's leading "political party of one" to get even more notice in the press and did he clear this with Party Chair, John Orman?  Better yet, who knew that "Centrists" could be so fractious?

Getting back to the Dick Morris quote I noted earlier about leaving the country if Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency in 2008; if its anything like all the talk of liberals going to Canada after the 2004 elections, where can we expect a mass exodus of disappointed conservatives to go?  South America?  "New Europe"?  Where?

Somewhere in the Oval Office:

The President calmly set down the latest issue of the National Review, looked down, sighed, and then slowly, pensively, raised his head and said to a nearby aide,

"If I've lost Rich Lowry, I've lost middle America."

Rich Lowry, working hard to keep his own head from blowing up from cognitive dissonance:

In Iraq, the media’s biases happen to fit the circumstances.

Read the rest.  Comedy rarely gets better than this:

President Bush accentuated the positive for far too long. Bush allowed himself to be cornered by his media critics. They wanted him to admit mistakes, so for the longest time, he would admit none. They wanted him to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so for too long he kept him on. They wanted him to abandon “stay the course,” so he stuck to it. In so doing, he eroded his own credibility and delayed making the major strategic readjustment he needed to try to check the downward slide in Iraq.

The “good news” that conservatives have accused the media of not reporting has generally been pretty weak. The Iraqi elections were indeed major accomplishments. But the opening of schools and hospitals is not particularly newsworthy, at least not compared with American casualties and with sectarian attacks meant to bring Iraq down around everyone’s heads in a full-scale civil war. An old conservative chestnut has it that only four of Iraq’s 18 provinces are beset by violence. True, but those provinces include 40 percent of the population, as well as the capital city, where the battle over the country’s future is being waged.

Can't imagine what's going on at Free Republic.

Anne Applebaum is waiting for "Old Europe", ie. Rumsfeld for France and Germany, who told us repeatedly it wasn't a good idea to do this Iraq thing, to get off their butts and come up with a solution to the trouble we find ourselves in after invading and occupying Iraq.    Anne gets points for using an already discredited phrase coined by a thoroughly discredited and disliked former defense secretary, but frankly this opinion piece pretty much answers itself as to why what it advocates isn't going to happen, so what was the point?  In fact, it reminded me of plodding through Jay Winik's much overhyped April 1865 which continuously presented you with the possibility that Robert E. Lee would head for the hills and continue the war probably into the next century even after painting a portrait of the man which pretty much ruled that out from ever happening. 

I'd be more interested in hearing Anne's take on how Tony Blair's disasterously one-sided relationship with George W. Bush pretty much makes it a given that the next British government, Conservative or Labour, will reevaluate the "special relationship" between our two nations in such a way that even the British are less likely to be of help to us in our future foreign policy endeavors.

Holy crap, the Democrats haven't even taken control of Congress or passed any legislation and we're already seeing stories about a "do-nothing" Democratic Congress.  Its easy to say Lou Dobbs is an idiot but it seems as if there is this generalized, almost desperate need within the media to keep the "Dems have no ideas or policies and are obviously not up to governing the country" story frame alive regardless of facts... kinda like how the Democratic Party had no chance of winning in the "Heartland/Real America" for the rest of the GOP's inevitable thousand year reign.

Seeing this Greg Sargent post about Dick Morris over at TPM made me wonder what else we could do to induce him to leave the country sooner, not later?

I think I'll just wait for Tony Snow's explanation of how the President did not actually admit we are "losing" in Iraq.  Look for the update.

Its been a while but it looks like "gunboat diplomacy" is making a comeback.  The Pentagon is making plans to increase the U.S. Navy presence in the Persian Gulf as a means of putting pressure on Iran.  The last major U.S. naval buildup of this kind in the Persian Gulf occurred in the late 80's when the Iran-Iraq war spun into attacks on oil tankers and commercial shipping. 

Despite all the news about mines and speed boat attacks on oil tankers and the great lengths at which the U.S. went to both lessen the damage and make such attacks costly to the Iranians, one of the most underreported incidents of our last naval build- up in the Gulf was Operation Praying Mantis, when in response to an Iranian mine damaging the missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts, the U.S. Navy destroyed two Iranian oil platforms and the Iranian Navy in the largest surface to surface naval battle since the Second World War.  Wonder if we're going for a twofer? 

Note to Media:  I know it would be an amazing turn around if Tim Johnson's illness would flip control of the Senate back to the GOP, but somebody stop and think for a minute. 

To the best of my knowledge its not up to anyone but Sen. Johnson as to whether or not he is "incapacitated" and unable to serve out the rest of his term.  I don't think you'll find any document, be it the federal or South Dakota state constitution, that defines "incapacitated" or gives another official or politician the power to declare a sitting member of Congress incapacitated. 

Want a recent example of an "incapacitated" politician?  How about Strom Thurmond?  The Senator from South Carolina spent his last few years on life support at Walter Reed Medical Center except when they wheeled him out to vote, and even then the inside joke was that his mental capacity was so limited he rarely knew what he was voting for.  At his age it was considered a novelty that he was breathing and his staff worked overtime to make it look like he was actually performing his duties but I don't remember any move to remove him.  There are so many examples of long serving politicians holding on through illness like this and only leaving when they die so do us a favor and chill out. 

Hey, what's good for Chile has to be good for the rest of us, right?  Okay, just kidding, but I can't help wondering why conservative bloggers and pundits have been tripping over themselves to heap praise on a corrupt and murderous military dictator like Pinochet.  The latest expression of American conservative love of military-backed right-wing authoritarianism is this LATimes editorial by Johah Goldberg advocating an "Iraqi Pinochet", not an "Iraqi Castro", to take charge of the country and build some sort of ultimate free-market democracy in the heart of the Middle East! 

Besides the silly, ideologically necessary comparisons between Chile and Cuba, Goldberg, among others, seems to think that Chile not only didn't have a history of strong democratic institutions and civil society before Pinochet but that the general did everything to build and strengthen a democratic Chile.  Much as the effectiveness of his economic reforms have been overstated, Chile already had a history of strong civil society and democratic institutions before Pinochet and was one of the only countries in Latin America in which the military traditionally respected the rule of law and stayed out of politics, once again, before Pinochet.  It is a testament to that history, over the benevolence of a dictator who actively disrupted and suppressed that tradition, that Chilean democracy survived. 

Nevertheless, I suspect Goldberg could care less.  These editorials only reinforce in my mind that conservatives instinctively admire "strong men"; admire authority, order and domination, worship a hierarchy in which those already at the top are "naturally" superior and deserve to rule.  They have no real attachment to democracy or the rule of law, in theory or practice, unless it further entrenches that rule or their own sense of moral superiority, and when it doesn't then historically there's always someone like Pinochet to put things back in order.  In fact, constrained by America's evidently misguided experiment in constitutional democracy, they're particularly fond of those like-minded souls in other countries who've got the balls to take power and rule ruthlessly and in such a manner as "defends and strengthens" their principles and all the more so if they promise to create some sort of capitalist utopia in the process, thus enshrining St. Pinochet in the conservative pantheon forever. 

And no, this is not some sort of sour grapes rant by an "angry leftist" who hated Pinochet because he was "so successful".  I speak only for myself when I say my dislike of Pinochet and those who evidently revere him so is motivated by my abhorrence of dictatorship in all its forms.  I make no distinction between "authoritarian and totalitarian" dictatorship like the dearly departed apologist Dr. Kirkpatrick.  I believe dictatorship is not some benign necessity but the enemy of basic American values of like freedom, liberty and democracy and I am repulsed by it; even more so in this case given the lengths our government went to aid and abet General Pinochet's reign.  Spare us your misguided praise; the man was a brutal thug and criminal and the world is a better place without him, not because of him.

Man, what happened to the good old days when the Saudi's just went ahead and cut off our supply of oil when they got pissed off at U.S. foreign policy?  At least the House of Saud while pledging they will help Sunni insurgents, thankfully drew the line on giving money to al-Qaeda in Iraq.  The Bush "listening tour" continues...

This wasn't easy to find in today's news but last night Democrat Ciro Rodriguez beat Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla to take Texas' 23rd Congressional district.  This was the last undecided House race and puts the number of Democratic pickups in the 2006 midterms at 6 Senate seats and 30 House seats.  Welcome back, Ciro!

This White House denial that they're trying to get rid of Nuri al-Maliki  is pretty meaningless given we seem to be passing the point where we have any sort of control over events in Iraq, but what if we were able to push for the removal of al-Maliki, what then?  What move would we make that would neither further strengthen Iranian influence in Iraq nor ensure another failed Prime Minister and governing coalition given the make up of the current political environment in Iraq? 

I don't know, either? 

This may come as a shock to thousands of American farmers who grow soybeans every year as well as for over a billion Asians who've founded civilizations upon and eaten it as a staple for centuries but... uh, brace yourselves.....uh, "soybeans are making our kids homosexuals."

(h/t Americablog)

Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay.  What do they have in common?  Well by the misguided reasoning set forth in this Washington Post editorial they should be three of the most prosperous nations in South America due to all the positive effects decades of military dictatorship have had for economic development in that part of the world. 

In fact the entire South American continent should seemingly be the most modern and prosperous in the developing world, but its not, and most of these countries are abandoning free market reforms put in place in the 1980's and 90's and even earlier.  What, you say Chile was different and Pinochet did it right?  Well then maybe we'll see future military coup's justified not merely for the need to restore social order and stability but as a means of bringing Pinochet-style political and economic reforms.  As this 1998 article by Mario Vargas Llosa makes clear that has already happened in Peru, Guatemala, Paraguay, Columbia, Bolivia and Venezuela and few of those countries ranks the kind of praise heaped by the Post on Chile. 

The problem with this editorial is that the Post tries to find the positive in U.S. foreign policy support for South American military dictatorships during the Cold War in order to needlessly praise the recently deceased Jeane Kirkpatrick, so the last thing they want to do is delve into the considerable wreckage left by these authoritarian regimes across the continent and the needless political polarization and extremism, both left and right, they generated.  In the end we won, so we're led to believe Pinochet was a good guy and democracy and free-markets are flourishing not regardless of these regimes but because of them.  Nevertheless, what does it say to the rest of the world when the opinion page of the Washington political and foreign policy establishment basically praises a particular type of military authoritarianism as a legitimate and necessary stage in the path to democratization and economic development for the Third World? 

 Arthur E. "Gene" Dewey, who was President Bush's assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs until last year, said that "for political reasons the administration will discourage" the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the United States "because of the psychological message it would send, that it is a losing cause."

We've reached a sad crossroad in which an ever-increasing number of Iraqis are choosing to leave their country with few prospects of ever returning and the U.S. government is actively discouraging their resettlement in the United States due to the fact that it "might look bad."  

Since we've already liberated them once, we're evidently under no obligation to do so again, but despite assurances that policy might change, the more interesting thing not said in the article is that our current policy means that we probably aren't even planning for the eventuality of a major influx of Iraqi refugees.  For example, the article uses Vietnamese refugees as an example of how U.S. policy can change but neglects to mention that a resettlement plan happened only after the situation had evolved into a major crisis of international proportion.  Hell, there wasn't even a real plan in place before the fall of Saigon to evacuate Vietnamese employees of the American embassy and consulates, also for political reasons.  In fact, things went so badly that despite the best efforts of a handful of very courageous State and Defense Department employees on the scene we still managed to leave well over half of our Vietnamese employees behind. 

For Christ's sake, the President's poll numbers are so low that sending the wrong "psychological message" is almost meaningless right now.  In the short term, increasing the quota and planning for a worst case scenario are merely acknowledging that millions of Iraqis are already fleeing the country and the U.S. will honor its commitments in respects to protecting the Iraqi people while taking some pressure off neighboring countries.  If the situation on the ground stabilizes in the near future then many of those who can return probably will.  If this is one of the consequence of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, so be it, but let's not pussyfoot about and play political games with those in harms way.

Unfortunately, many D.C. insiders are simply incapable of looking outside the capital beltway for fresh opinions and new approaches that might otherwise help our nation.

That's true.  Too bad the new blogger is the Ultimate D.C. Insider:

Longtime readers might remember this post from January of 2005:

Death Squads.  That's right, Rumsfeld's newest solution to the Iraq problem are “Salvadoran“ style death squads.  Crazy tinfoil hat conspiracy theories from nutjob leftist websites?  No, its straight from Pentagon background briefers to the pages of Newsweek

Here we are some two years later and speculation has become reality.  One of the key points that comes out of Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, is that the South Vietnamese Army could never step up to the plate and defend the country against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army.  Its clear that the security forces of the Iraqi government cannot defend the country against the insurgents.  It is no coincidence either that the response of the Shia faction has followed the same strategy that the U.S. and South Vietnam followed in that conflict--death squads.  The Phoenix program used targeted assasinations to eliminate the supposed enemies of the South Vietnamese state.  Its Iraqi counterpart are the Shia militias of al-Sadr and his Badr Brigade rivals.

I've always been a little intrigued by the new ACU uniforms developed for the U.S. Army a couple years ago and now in general issue to the troops.  While I applaud the reconfiguration of pockets, collars and such, for the life of me I can't figure out why you'd come up with a general utility camouflage pattern supposed to work in all types of environments that obviously doesn't. 

Anybody else think that this guy in the picture blends into his surroundings?  Me neither? 

The ACU camouflage pattern itself was modelled on the MARPAT pattern used by the Marines, ditching the brown for tan and gray and then eliminating the black all together.  Now, the color black, which historically has been helpful in breaking up form, was gotten rid of because quote, "...it is not a color found naturally in woodland areas."  As you can see from the background to the picture above, shade evidently doesn't count as a naturally occurring instance of black yet it is there nonetheless. 

Now, while you wouldn't want to wear this uniform in a woodland or jungle setting, if you're expecting to fight in arid or desert and maybe scrub mountainous terrain for the foreseeable future, this camouflage pattern may just be your cup of tea....