Saddam Swings...

and still ends up goin' for the proverbial terminal dirt nap.

Won't change a thing though, the sectarian shoot-outs will go on unabated with our own soldiers as referees and targets.

I suppose George Bush thinks he has accomplished something at long last...some Hamlet like attempt at showing up his father.
Whether that was worth 3,000 American lives and 20,000 casualties is another matter entirely.

John Edwards in in

details can be found hyar:

Well, he needs the early start quite frankly, Senator Clinton has already piled up a huge fundraising lead whilst the Anti-Clintonistas are tossing bigger and bigger bouquets to Senator Obama.
A lot of money and numerous volunteers are in play for the candidate who can beat Hilary and win the general election...and with Edwards its all about delivering on his personal promise from '04 and showing some steam below the Mason Dixon.
Meanwhile the Wise Guys all say this puts pressure on JK to make a decision, Humble Elias has his doubts about any urgency in the Kerry Kamp. He still has a nice chunk of change socked away in his national campaign account and certain geographic advantages as far as the New Hampshire Primary is concerned.
If there are concerns they are in respect of his volunteer base and getting his ground game up and running in the vital cities and suburbs between Concord and Nashua.
Thats if Kerry piles in, I suspect he will, he's faced longer odds than this...but yuh never know.

Tributes pour in lauding the late...

James Brown.
The heinous geeks at Channel Zero even have some kind words.

Jerry Ford is dead

The details can be found here:

Much will be made of Ford's bid to restore dignity and honor to the US Presidency in wake of Nixon's resignation. I've always thought Ford played it for simplicity and a certain degree of populism larded up with as much transparency as a Republican President could manage.
These were all themes his successor President Carter would emphasize until the apotheosis of Reagan who restored glitzy presidential bombast to prominence.
At his best Jerry projected a comforting haze of middle class respectability and integrity, at his worst he was a bit of a freeper hatchet man even if he evidenced no talent for the role.
Still and all that, there was nothing low about Ford, like Truman he genuinely did not seek the office (He wanted to be US Speaker of the House...badly), Tip O'Neill a shrewd judge of character counted Ford as a friend and a man whose word was good.
Today, a stolid suburbanite like Ford would have a hard time getting started in politics thanks to the rapid proliferation of frantic showbiz type politicos in the style of Newt Gingrich.
Not much room at the table these days for honesty and an Eagle Scout's devotion to duty.

RIP Mr. President, say Hi to Ike and Harry for us willya?

Dubious Ideas Department...

The armed forces are looking into recruiting foreigners with a promise of citizenship upon completion of service.

Ah...y'know, the Romans tried this, recruited German mercenaries for their legions on the Rhine, they turned around and made a Hun Emperor.
Likewise the Greek and the Italian city-states made heavy use of paid foreign troops to fight in the field...The results were to say the least indifferent.
Hell there was a time when Spartan infantry could be bought out by the highest bidder.
Nicolo Machiavelli rails against the use of paid mercenary troops in his renaissance era treatise "The Prince".
My thoughts on this are simple, citizenship and the franchise aren't conditional on military service for the native born so why should they become an incentive for our perpetually meat hungry army?
What no one wants to acknowledge here is that if the Pentagon is conjuring with such outlandish notions, then yes, we ought to admit we have a manpower crisis in the ranks.
If that is the case, then I'd just as soon confront the issue squarely and reinstate the draft so long as the levies are raised honestly with no exceptions based on wealth or connections.
At the very least this would reconnect the Middle Class to the realities of American Foreign Policy and force everyone to reconsider current priorities.

Give Jeff Jacoby credit...

at the very least he adds a great deal on unintended hilarity to the Globe's Op-Ed page.
Yesterday he took environmentalists to task as doomsayers and hysterical preachers of impending global catastrophe.
Jeff even loaded up the whole shebang with a nice juicy quote from Mencken asserting that fear is used to manipulate democratic polities.
This IS of course, the same Jeff Jacoby whose sheer bowel-loosening terror of "Islamofascism" has been a hallmark of local punditry nigh these past six years.
I mean, to read Jeff's copy you'd think the Sons of Ragnar were gonna sail up the Charles River to sack and burn downtown Waltham.
From that old coot Fidel Castro to the disheveled President of Iran, Jeff's mental landscape is crammed with gulags, progroms, suicide bombers, mushroom clouds and heavy knocks at the door come midnight.
But when the World Wildlife Fund asserts that the shriking polar ice caps are a bad thing, suddenly they are wallowing in hyperbole so sez Jeff.

Pundit heal thyself sez Humble Elias.

And otherwise, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Boston Progressive Talk Radio

goes for the terminal dirt nap....
AM 1200 & 1430 have both flipped over to music formats as of yesterday bringing to a close Air America Radio's presence in the Hub.
Sad...but given the horror stories I've heard about managerial ineptitude at AAR, it is to be expected.
It is a miracle that Boston Progressive Talk lasted as long as it did with it's commercials for obscure restaurants in Somerville and spots promoting the purchasing of gold.
Still for all that, AM 1430 had a great line up, the Stephanie Miller Show and Ed Schultz being the stellar stand outs on the schedule. And if Al Franken never quite mastered the medium's quirks, he did attract classy guests from David Brock to Josh Marshall, pundits who don't normally get heard on the radio at all.
If, down the line someone wanted to revisit progressive talk in Boston, I think what we need is independent ownership of the station and a stronger local angle.
That was AAR's conceptual flaw, it was a national radio franchise at a time when aggressively liberal & local voices were needed.
Or else we can start podcasting...maybe thats what we need a sort of "Blue Mass Group" for local liberal podcasts.
Just don't ask Humble Elias to organize it, he is just technically competant enough to hit "Publish Post" at the bottom of this page.