A Little Catching Up For the New Year

Yeah, I've survived the new year. I'm actually preparing for two new blog entrants to the world as we know it, so blogging is about to pick up at a rather frenetic pace. For now, I'm still playing catchup on the news I care about. Bear with me.

» NYT: "Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says"

Not a bad read here on the assorted messes that Bush has created with regard to Iraq. Here's one money clip that, to me at least, sums up the Bush years ...

By May 2006, uneasy officials at the State Department and the National Security Council argued for a review of Iraq strategy. A meeting was convened at Camp David to consider those approaches, according to participants in the session, but Mr. Bush left early for a secret visit to Baghdad, where he reviewed the war plans with General Casey and Mr. Maliki, and met with the American pilot whose plane’s missiles killed Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He returned to Washington in a buoyant mood.

The visit meant that the reconsideration of strategy was not as thorough as some officials hoped.

...

Mr. Bush came to worry that it was not just his critics and Democrats in Congress who were looking for what he dismissed last month as a strategy of “graceful exit.” Visiting the Pentagon a few weeks ago for a classified briefing on Iraq with his generals, Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.

"What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win," he quoted the president as warning his commanders, "not how we’re going to leave."

In the first instance, we get a sense of the President's desire to incorporate spin over substance ... in the second, we get something that the reporter(s) don't follow through with. Namely, the fact that Bush meets with Pentagon leaders on a plan for victory despite the rather widespread recognition on both sides that a solely military answer is not enough. The 'how we're going to win' part won't come from the Pentagon ... it'll come from the State Department. Just a shame we won't have a President that realizes that for at least two years.

» NYT: "As New Congress Nears, House Democrats Could Be Headed for Own Divide" (Carl Hulse)

A pretty good read here on the divide between Democrats in terms of seniority (and a decent proxy for age). I think there could be more covered in terms of foreign policy outlook among the post-Vietnam class and the older electeds. Issues like that (and retirement security) will likely be issues where that divide kicks in more significantly over the long term. For now, how fast to proceed on internal reform is a nice enough story I suppose.

» I refer you to Kuff for the play - by - play on the Texas Speaker's race. My own two cents is that McCall is in position to win it, but only if his GOP support doesn't get all wobbly due to the coalition being majority-Dem (a big if, though). Notably, I think it's telling that while both McCall and Craddick claim enough support to win, McCall is in talks with Team Pitts, likely to see about making the winning coalition more balanced in partisan makeup. Next week ought to be rather interesting either way, though.

» TPM Muck: "CNN: Osama Found on Senate Floor!" ... "liberal" media. HA!!!

» I'm amazed that the blogHeathers devote not one, but two posts to cracking on the city's decision to not have a New Years Eve celebration. Surely you would have thought that so-called "conservatives" might appreciate that such things are better left to the private sector ;-) Amazing because it sure seems like they love to portray any action the city takes as a sign that Mayor White is "soft on crime" for putting other items on the agenda above crime ... or so the thinking goes. Now that they don't do something ... it's bad that they don't. In other words, there's nothing that Bill White can possibly do to win plaudits from the 10-percent crowd. Of course, buried in the lede of a supposedly White-friendly Chronicle article, we get the following (emphasis mine):

As the year progressed, the rise in homicides was not nearly as dramatic as it appeared during the first six months, city officials said. In October, November and December, the number of killings dropped by 30 percent from levels recorded during the last three months of 2005.

"We did have a surge in population from a city where the homicide rate is eight times the national average," said Houston Mayor Bill White, referring to New Orleans, hometown of many of the evacuees. "The last 2 1/2 months, we have seen a return to homicide rates typical of the 2000-to-2004 period prior to Katrina."

So, if an increase in homicides somehow confirms the rightwing nutbases' view that Bill White is "soft" on crime, shouldn't it also hold that a more recent decrease is a sign that he's now suddenly "hard" on crime? Oh where do I get off expecting intellectual consistency from so-called "objectivists"?