Joe Gandelman has the latest Robertson/Chavez news.
Ouch
Remind me never to cross Mark Kleiman, because he just UNLOADS on Juan Cole.
Speaking of the End of Vacation
WVU’s fall semester started, and Morgantown is a flurry of frenetic activity once again. There are just people everywhere, and the traffic is terrible (by local standards). The bus I take to work and back usually takes 20 minutes to get there (which is still faster than driving, because you don’t have to spend 30 minutes finding a place to park), but yesterday it took 50 minutes.
Because I will be busy, expect this blog to slow down during the days. I will still have all my morning posts and updates at night, but since I work during the days (and on Wednesday, from noon until nine), daytime updates will be minimal to nonexistent.
Still, this is my favorite part of the year. You can feel the electricty and energy in the air, Mountaineer and Steeler football are about to start, and every semester is a chance to start anew. One of the things I really enjoy is watching the students. As they get younger every year (I stay the same, of course), it is endlessly amusing to watch them try to assert their own identities and struggle to express themselves.
There is no better life than on the college campus.
Sullivan Is Back
Andrew is back from the beach, and starts off on a dour note:
Hey, we’ve exploded the size of government, legitimized an insolvent nanny-state for a generation, guaranteed a huge future tax increase, missed an opportunity for seriously trying to move toward energy independence, and made the biggest intelligence error since Pearl Harbor. Not bad, eh? The emails on Frum’s blog are very telling about the mood of the conservative base. My own evolving view of what’s happening in Iraq is that there’s still a reasonable chance of a pretty depressingly illiberal constitution, folllowed by low-level civil war, policed in part by young Americans. Better than Saddam? You betcha. Better than a crumbling regime under Saddam’s sons during an Islamist upswing? Absolutely. But a long way from what many of us had hoped for.
And that is after a several month vacation.
Straw Poll Update
If you haven’t already, go vote in Patrick Ruffini’s straw poll.
The overall results can be found here, with Giuliani, Allen, and Gingrich leading the total vote getters.
Results from Balloon Juice voters (107 of you have cast your vote as I write this) can be found here, with an almost even split between Hagel and McCain with Giuliani trailing in third place.
Go vote.
Greatest Ads
I am not sure where this ranks in the annals of history’s greatest commercials, but it is up there.
More Cindy Sheehan
If you can possibly stomach any more of this interminable story, go check out Patterico’s op-ed in the LA Times.
Frank Rich heads in the other direction.