New Things

It's a new year and a new Congress. I'm sporting a new haircut. And I have a new blogspace (courtesy of my new employer).

For my political thoughts (in a more focused vein) you can now visit the blog at Independent Action.

IA is an organization that funds progressive Democratic candidates in federal and state races. It does not fund incumbents, only those who are challengers for Republican-held or open seats.

This mission makes IA unique (most political money flows to candidates who are seeking re-election) as well as uniquely relevant. The only way the Democrats took control in November 2006 and the only way for them to expand their majority in 2008 was/is by winning new seats in Congress. This is far more difficult than holding on to those seats already in Democratic hands, which is why Independent Action's mission is so important.

In keeping with IA's mission, my writing on the new blog will focus a bit more on political nitty-gritty and a little less on snark. But I will still have space to wax pseudo-poetic about the larger trends and tremors shaping retail politics over the next two years.

So tune in.

In keeping with the division of labor, The Itinerant Canuck will now tilt more towards the theatrical/journalized end of the spectrum.

Plus the snark, of course.

Hope for Habeus Corpus

Patrick Leahy is hoping to undo a little of the massive damage done by the previous Congress. Here's hoping he succeeds. But even if a veto results, for the sake of history it's worth it to go on the record as having tried.

Care of Daily Kos

We Won. Big.

It's been an eventful, sleep-deprived 48 hours. On a macro level, I'm a very happy guy.

I'm particularly excited about Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill, who I latched on to as the candidates I wanted most to pull out wins on Tuesday. I was at the HRC get-together on Capitol Hill when the razor-thin margin between Allen and Webb finally flipped in Webb's favor, right around midnight. A spontaneous cheer broke out.

At home later, while looking online at CNN's county-by-county vote numbers, it was clear that most of the outstanding votes in VA and MO were Webb's and McCaskill's. I went to bed worried Allen (or Burns) might request recounts, leading to a protracted mess, but fell asleep confident that we had defied the odds and run the table to come away with both houses of Congress.

I first started spending time in DC in 2000, and I was here on election night that November. I remember the crowd at my election party sighing in disappointment when Allen won over Chuck Robb. It was a nice reversal to be able to see that seat taken back by a Dem six years later. And in general, it was my first election while in DC that can be unequivocally called a Democratic victory - a great thing to be part of here.

Yay.

Like Sand Through the Hourglass

Juan Cole's barometer for judging failure in Iraq, a la David Letterman:

Top Ten Ways we know We have Lost in Iraq

Eerily Prescient

The A.P. is reporting on a just released F.O.I.A request showing that U.S. war games in 1999 substantially predicted the current outcome in Iraq - only it was predicted based on an occupying force of 400,000 troops. That's about 250,000 troops more than were committed.

The gist? An American occupation would fail to produce a stable and secure Iraq and would essentially look a lot like what we're now seeing. Of course, this pretty much what many of us were saying back in the Fall and Winter of 2002-2003. And it exposes the fallacy behind the excuse currently being peddled the neocon boosters of the war, Perle and Adelman, that the plan would only have worked if it had been better executed. (Sorry, Andrew.)

It turns out - even with massively more troops - their own models indicated chaos was the likely outcome. Of course, history, geography and a bit more curiousity and skepticism at the top might have led our misleaders to the same conclusion. But hey - what are cold hard facts when put alongside the intoxicating theories of the true believers?

Here's the story, from the Globe and Mail:

U.S. war games predicted chaos in Iraq

Shakespearean Luck

Good piece by Michael Hirsh of Newsweek on the historical accident of this presidency - an accident that has cost us so much and will continue to cost us much more long after it has finally ended:

A Luckless Nation

The election of 2000 will be recorded in tragic terms when the history of this period is written. At first it was a crushing disappointment and a horrible injustice for those of us who would have preferred a different outcome. As time passes, it begins to look positively Greek in its world historical significance.

Gratuitous theatrical tangent: It appears we've been living through Henry IV, but a version in which Hal never turns into Henry V. He remains Falstaff's lazy, unthinking, incurious drinking buddy. Only in this telling, all the world's the stage. And it's the Islamists who may yet have their Agincourt.

Or maybe it's Henry V Deconstructed - after all, the English ruled northern France for less than a decade after Henry's victory before their claim was declared invalid and their troops were expelled. Maybe Shakespeare was prescient...

PS - I thought this was an interesting image.





It's entitled:

"Falstaff and His Page"





Sort of reminds you of the Republican Congress, doesn't it.










(Phil English anyone?)

The Year of The Gay

Can this mid-term election get any queerer?

2006 has officially become The Year of The Gay. (Or, in Wonkette's clever formulation: The Cocktober Surprise.)

Republicans are right - homosexuals have taken over. And what better authority on the matter than the Gay Old Party itself?

Remember that scene in the 80's TV series "V" when someone finally pulled the skin off the face of one of the benevolent-looking "visitors" revealing the lizard-alien underneath?

This is sort of like that.

** To be clear, in the above analogy "lizard-alien" = "self-righteous, self-hating, meth-loving hypocrite." Not "gay man." Unless you're an evangelical Christian. In which case, it's probably the latter.

Here:

Religious right preacher Ted Haggard allegedly wanted orgy with 18 year old guys

And here:

ABC News: RNC Accepts Money From Army Porn Movie Distributor
(Both from Americablog)



A picture really is worth a thousand words...

BRILLIANT

Bill Maher at his hilarious best, taking down Bill Kristol, PNAC, and the neo-con clan and their disastrous, unfailing wrongness.

From Crooks & Liars.