Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Let there be snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

When we show up, we win.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

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

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Republicans in disarray!

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

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More on the French Position

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And the position is not marching westward with their hands raised in surrender. Instead, I am talking about their indefensible position regarding Turkey. This op-ed in the Telegraph nails it:

What is sickening about French behaviour is not so much that they genuinely intend to deprive Turkey, a vital Nato ally, of the Patriot missiles. It is not as though they really mean to hold up the war until the desert is so scorching that our boys’ boots melt within minutes.

What is so cynical, and so French, is that they know they won’t push their position to its logical conclusion. They know that America and Britain are so overwhelmingly committed to removing Saddam Hussein from power that no other outcome is possible. They know that they will join up in the end, and in their hearts they accept that the world would be a better place without him.

And that means that they know that they have a diplomatic free hit. They can posture, and preen, and strike neo-Gaullist attitudes, safe in the knowledge that they will never have to make sense of their policy, or justify it to posterity. They have simply decided to play to the gallery of public opinion.

I was thinking of creating a special category for the French, but all I could come up with was ‘The God-Damned French.” If I can think of something more clever, I might use it.

Link via the Blogfather

Please note that all use of the term France and the French is to be interpreted solely as referring to the French government and their irritating policies, and not the idiot civilians who keep electing these jerks. That didn’t come out as gracious as I meant it to sound.

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Mr. Pollack Speaks

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I know many of you don’t believe me when I state, repeatedly, that the positions France and Germany are taking is not going to reflect badly on us, but will, in the long run, diminish their stature to the point of them being essentially irrlevant. Maybe you will believe Kenneth Pollack:

Pollack called the Turkey issue “a no-brainer.” He said some in the U.S. administration must be thinking that NATO’s utility is ended. Built to deal with the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, if NATO cannot deal with such an obviously bad case as Iraq, that will build the case for doing without it, Pollack said.

“It is in NATO’s charter that it must provide for the threat to members, given that the threat is legitimate,” Pollack said. “Plus,
Turkey’s going to believe that racist Western Europe just doesn’t want Turkey to be a part of

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Peter King Speaks His Mind

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Rep. Peter King (R- NY), got his dander up, which is unusual, as he is normally very laid back. At any rate, the target of his ire was the French:

King, a Republican on the House International Relations Committee, accused France of using its influence in the United Nations Security Council and NATO to hobble international cooperation aimed at disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

“We may have to restructure the alliance, form a new alliance which the French will not be a part of,” said King. “We cannot allow a second-rate country to have a veto power or obstructionist power over American foreign policy.”

The congressman argued that France also delayed successful military intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.

“France is posturing itself as a moral guardian, when they would have lost World War I, and they set a world record in World War II for the quickest surrender by a world power.”

King said he has had “all these French people calling me up and attacking me” since making similar comments in a BBC radio interview late Monday night, in which he said the French could go to Iraq “to instruct the Iraqis in how to surrender.”

King said he is not worried about offending French sensibilities because “they are yesterday’s people.”

The congressman’s family is so upset about France’s Iraq position that his wife and daughter recently canceled a planned vacation to Paris, King said.

A spokeswoman at the French embassy in Washington did not immediately return a call for comment.

He cancelled his trip to Paris? The horror of it all.

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Paging Josh Marshall

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This will no doubt distress Josh Marshall, who is at the height of his game when he is examining the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Here is a taste of his thoughtful analysis:

The president and his crew are acting like that not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is high school kid who’s always running into reverses and always blaming it on someone else. At first you think he’s getting a bad shake until you see the same thing happening over and over again. It’s always someone else’s fault. The South Koreans are lame. The Europeans are lame. Our Arab allies are lame. Everybody is lame. We’re given excuse after excuse. But at the end of the day the result seems to be our historic alliances, if not in shambles, then at least thoroughly beat-up.

At any rate, we have this news flash:

The International Atomic Energy Agency today declared that North Korea had failed to meet its nuclear commitments and sent the issue to the United Nations Security Council.

The resolution, passed by the IAEA’s 35-nation governing board with Russia and Cuba abstaining, had been sought by the United States as a way of increasing pressure on North Korea and providing a forum for resolving the standoff with the reclusive regime. The North Koreans have demanded direct talks with the United States, but the Bush administration has refused to negotiate unless the North Koreans first take steps to dismantle their nuclear weapons programs.

Got it, Josh- the North Koreans are not complying with agreements or international law. This is not because the president is stupid, or a high school kid, or can not accept blame. It is because the president is not going to stand for the nonsense that Albright and Clinton took for the previous 8 years. You keep your word, or you get called on it. You don’t get credit for saying the right words and doing the wrong thing. Get it?

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Useful Myths

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One of the most repeated (and most annoying) refrains from the anti-war left and the Eunichs is the nonsense about American unilateralism. Daniel Drezner has a wonderful post defending the Bush administration today in The New Republic. A relevant piece:

The problem is that when you separate actions from rhetoric, this administration has doggedly pursued a multilateralist foreign policy since September 11. The reaction to the terrorist attacks themselves has been besotted with multilateral institutions. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan took place with the full blessing of both NATO and the United Nations Security Council. And the administration’s approach to combating terrorist financing was to strengthen the relevant international bodies–the Financial Action Task Force, the Egmont Group, and the International Monetary Fund.

We are not behaving in a unilateralist manner- quite the contrary. The eurocrats are merely used to the Clintonesque approach to foreign policy, best described by Porphyrogenitus yesterday:

For all that people like to claim that this is a “Bush problem” and “we didn’t have this when Clinton was in office”, that’s not quite true. Sure, everyone was more jovial. But (again as I’ve mentioned before) while there was more good cheer and bonhomie on the surface when Clinton was in office, that didn’t stop them from designing treaties (rather deliberately) stacked against the United States. Clinton would say “hey, buddies. You know, if we could just get a clause in that treaty on land mines allowing us to have them along the Korean DMZ, I could get the Senate to pass it” and they would refuse to compromise. Clinton would say “you know I want a good Green record. I’d love to have this Kyoto pact ratified. Any chance we could negotiate for America some of the cozy deals you stuck in for yourselves?” and they would say “no”. They liked Clinton just fine as a person. But they weren’t about to do America any favors, and even during that period were (openly among themselves, reported in the European press if not given much notice in the American press) talking about building the EU so as to oppose the United States. So this isn’t really out of the blue, all the sudden.

Simplistic Europeans.

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Yglesias Gets the Game

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This is why Matthew Yglesias will end up going places- he refuses to deny the obvious, whereas others in his ideological realm continue to spin, spin, spin. I’ll let Matthew speak for himself:

If Saddam woke up one morning, had a sudden change of heart, and decided to abandon his WMD programs because he was all the sudden a good guy, then of course it would be absurd for us to invade. That, however, is not going to happen. Insofar as Saddam might make concessions to the UN, he’d be doing it because he felt threatened by American policy and was trying to save his ass. Thus he might really open up to the inspectors and let his entire program get destroyed. And then the inspectors would leave. And the US troops built up in the Gulf would leave. And the sanctions on Iraq would be lifted. And the attention of the world community would drift elsewhere.
And then Saddam would start his program up again.

And then some hawkish American president would start making noises about war again. And folks would say that war must be the last resort. And that the US has to proceed multilaterally. And so we would go to the UN again. And there’d be a new resolution. And Saddam would obstruct the new inspections team. And we’d threaten to go to war. And some would call to give the inspectors more time. And there’d be talk of a new resolution. And talk about how the president was determined to have a war one way or another.

And thus the cycle would proceed, over and over again until either Saddam dies (but maybe not even then if he just hands off power to a successor) or else without the inspections and the no-fly zones Saddam builds a nuke before US intelligence can figure out what he’s up to.

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