It's been awhile since Barack Obama announced he was no longer wearing a flag pin. You may have forgotten the whole flap. I know I did.
But as I listened to a conservative talk show on the radio the other day, the host -- aside from seeing how many times he could squeeze in "Barack Hussein Obama" -- went back to flag pin, the Anthem "controversy", and the bigger "question" of Obama's patriotism.
And suddenly, I thought of Star-bellied Sneetches.

Read on . . .

This morning brings ugly news.

Turkish ground troops - I've heard rumors of as much as 10,000 - have crossed into northern Iraq in an operation against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
I'm no expert (for that, watch for this guy's analysis), but I know there's more sympathy among the peshmerga than there should be for the PKK, and the strong nationalism of the Kurds in northern Iraq isn't going to take this well. And at the very least, I'd think this would deeply strain the relationship between Kurdistan and the Iraqi "government" unless the Iraqi Arabs step up.

Though I do have to point out this ironic response posted on FreeRepublic:

Invading another nation is not the stuff of rational states...muslim or not.

I concur.

Update Read on . . .

Just a short little reminder that, while we still recover from the quivering rage that Huckabee pushed to let loose a violent rapist, and that he's a class-A religious bigot, there's oh, so much more reason to keep this guy away from any future government office.

Read on . . .

"Arkancide".

It's a wingnut term for any suspicious [to their fevered brains] death of anyone [they can imagine is] connected [by any stretch of the imagination] to the Clintons.

They are fictions, the best example being the utterly bogus Clinton Body Count -- wide-eyed "scandals" cobbled together from rumor, lies and gullibility and propagated throughout the right-wing fringe as "facts the liberal media won't tell".

But there is a real case of Arkancide, and it's tied not to Bill Clinton, but to GOP candidate Mike Huckabee.

Read on . . .

We all love a little conservative infighting.
Five authors are suing Regnery Publishing on claims the company short-changed them by dumping their books through sister companies and book clubs.

Read on . . .

I was happy to see Rove go, though I don't think it means much more than that we're not paying him anymore.
I was happy to see Al "Habeus? We don't need no stinkin' habeus" Gonzalez go.

But now Tony Snow has gone. And I'm getting a little nervous.

Read on . . .

I'm sick of Fox News. Just sick of them.
I can't even bring myself to hate these people anymore. Seriously, I'm done.
You should be too.
Read on . . .

In response to this front page story from Meteor Blades, I just wanted to go on record with "Yes, it can happen here." The evidence is already out there -- and not just in the anecdotes of violence by rightwingers, however scary many of them might be. There's more, and it's even scarier.

Read on . . .

You've tried.
You pushed for benchmarks, pushed for a timetable for withdrawal, pushed for a saner strategy in this godsawful war.
It's not going to happen.

So it's time to take it to the people. It's time for the speech.

Read on . . .

The 2008 candidates for the GOP may be doing everything they can to separate themselves from the current occupant of the White House, but they don't seem too squeamish about pulling out his playbook.

Read on. . .

Officially, today, I am -- at the age of 40 -- a first-time victim of crime.
Our house was burgled today, while my wife and I were at work.
So partly for myself, partly for whoever may care to read it, I'm venting my flooding thoughts here.

Read on . . .

So I saw that this diary made the Recommended list today.
I had to respond to it, because I think it's this kind of broad-brush condescension that's the reason the Democratic Party consisted of something like four states until the 50-state strategy got up and running.

Read on . . .

On July 6th, 1535, English scholar Thomas More was beheaded for the then-nebulous crime of "treason". Legend says that, as he ascended the scaffold, he asked the officers standing by to "See me safe up: for my coming down, I can shift for myself".

Gallows humor.

It's born in despair. It's the jest of the forsaken.

And it's one of the few things we can say we have, in fact, successfully built in Iraq.

Read on . . .

Yes, the election gives us hope.
Yes, we're closer than ever to a new direction that saves both American and Iraqi lives.
But stop celebrating for a moment. The world may look different here, but for the moment, Iraq is still the Iraq it's been.
You think the unrelenting daily murder is bad? That militia-driven sectarian violence, leaving broken bodies by the dozens, is horrific?
Well, it is. But believe it or not, It's Worse.

Read on. . .

Stop calling it a "wave".

It's not a wave. Waves roll, slowly eating away at themselves, until they break on the shore and are done. They fall back into the sea with all their energy gone and leaving the beach littered with things that will smell really bad after a few hours in the sun.

This is not a wave.

It's a change, in both the country and the Democratic party, and we can keep it going. It's a change, and within it is the most amazing thing about some of the House and Senate pickups - not that red-staters voted for Democrats, but that they wanted to.

Read on . ..

In the movie, it goes like this:

The heroine watches the videotape - a bizarre collage of nightmare images - then the phone rings, and the ubiquitous creepy-little-girl voice on the other end of the line whispers "seven days". Thus begins a countdown and, for the heroine, a frantic progression from disbelief to terror as she races to unravel a ghostly mystery before it claims her.

So today, appropriately enough on Halloween, you have to wonder if the phone in Karl Rove's office is ringing, and whose voice will be on the other end of the line?

Read on . . .

Lt General Amer al-Hashemi, brother of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, was killed today in his home by the ubiquitous "men in police suits". Less than two weeks ago, the governor of Basra province escaped an assassination by "men in police suits".
Like the mythical Men In Black, they strike and vanish, fake cops somehow keeping up with a recent uniform change made specifically to thwart their efforts to spread violence and undermine the Iraqi National Police.

Sadly, no.

It's Worse.

Read on . ..

With the flurry of the recent news cycle, and the quick switch to watching Denny Hastert do a Sgt Schultz impersonation to the shock and horror of an awful lot of the GOP, I've not had a lot of time to catch my breath.

But once I got a chance, I stumbled across a blast from the past vis-a-vis Foley, and it's just a little more of a window into a sad, sick case.

Read on . . .