Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

No one could have predicted…

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

The willow is too close to the house.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Bark louder, little dog.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

“Squeaker” McCarthy

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Second rate reporter says what?

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

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Reader Interactions

10Comments

  1. 1.

    jake

    I hope the next President leaves his ass there after the troops GtFo:

    He then points out that we still, after 8 hours of testimony, have no definition of success….Crocker’s weak response its “hard and complicated.”

    Shorter Crock: Waging unnecessary war is hard!

  2. 2.

    cleek

    wait, the administration’s reasons for continuing the war are as hollow and self-serving as their reasons for starting the war ? that seems impossible.

  6. 6.

    Delia

    Crocker’s weak response its “hard and complicated.”

    Yeah, it’s hard and complicated all right. The hard and complicated truth is that the Iraqis are perfectly capable of fighting bravely and intelligently. They just don’t want to do it for an American puppet regime. The recent battle in Basra illustrated that hard and complicated fact rather well. The hard and complicated fact is that this administration still wants to have things its own way in the Middle East no matter how much reality exists in getting in the way. None of them have apparently ever paid any attention to the noted social philosopher, Mick Jagger, who taught us all long ago that you can’t always get what you want.

  7. 7.

    Tax Analyst

    TenguPhule Says:

    I hope the GI on the helicopter out remembers to kick Crocker off as they leave.

    That creates a priceless picture image.

    would that it t’were.

  8. 8.

    Rick Taylor

    That sums it all up; you can skip the rest of the hearings. They gave no scenario for success, no description of what our long term goals were and how we were going to fulfill them, except to stay in Iraq until things get better, with the ever-present knowledge that leaving would be a disaster. It wasn’t actually Kevin’s observation, he was quoting Democracy Arsenal.

  10. 10.

    Rick Taylor

    Intel Dump is one of your links, so you’ve probably already this, but Philip has a good commentary on the hearings, and the whole thing is worth reading.

    “The reality is, it is hard in Iraq.”

    That statement by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker pretty much sums up what he and Gen. David Petraeus presented to Congress yesterday. Iraq is hard, but we are making headway; victory is possible, if we only persevere.

    Except that in making this pitch, Petraeus and Crocker overplayed their hand. They overstated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in an effort to justify the mission — a mindset that has generated a deeply flawed strategy. They also overplayed the surge’s success — downplaying or discounting factors that likely did more to create today’s improved security conditions. . . And, perhaps most tellingly, the two men made the case for perseverance without placing Iraq in the context of vital U.S. national interests, offering only apocalyptic predictions of what would happen if we don’t stay the course.

    . . . Our skewed visualization of Iraq — and overemphasis of the AQI threat — has pushed us to adopt an extremely risky strategy of standing up Iraqi security forces and local partisans that will, if we ever withdraw or downsize our forces, create the conditions for a massive civil war. . .

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