http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/bush-says-us-

favors-strong/story.aspx?guid=%7B05ED39D2-8803-4E02-

9DC8-8A8296121BA1%7D&dist=msr_4 

--Listen, dummy: The value of the dollar is not something you have faith in like God or WMD in Iraq but something that exists independently of your thoughts on the matter. 

And if you really want for that value to be high then you don’t spend eight years cutting taxes while increasing spending but ignoring deficits as they mount.  The fact that we’re taking our wallets into the bathroom with us in case we’re out of White Cloud is on you, baby, and you ain’t talking your way out of it.

 The actual meaning is, the US increased troop strength:

 WHILE ramping up a program to pay off Sunni resistance leaders

 WHILE Iraq’s warring ethno-religious factions finished completely remaking Iraq’s demographic patterns (owing to tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of exiled and internally displaced),

 WHILE the US turned the capital into a warren of barricades. The net result of all those changes has been a less obtrusively violent Iraq for the time being, and the whole arrangement is “The Surge” in practice, but its' cheerleaders talk as if it was all due to The Surge in pretense.

 
Meanwhile Iraq’s “calm” would count as calamity almost anywhere on earth but Darfur or Zimbabwe.

Clearly that is the "christian" man to lead this nation.

Baptist Minister Asks McCain: "Did You Call Your Wife A C**t?" (VIDEO)

"the man who asked the question is a Baptist minister worried about McCain's temper:

Clive businessman Marty Parrish was escorted from Sen. John McCain's town hall meeting by Des Moines police and members of the Secret Service after asking McCain if he had called his wife Cindy an expletive in 1992.

Parrish, an ordained Baptist minister who holds a master's degree in political science, was questioned by Secret Service agents before being released. He was not charged in the incident. Parrish asked whether McCain called his wife Cindy an expletive related to the female anatomy, as has been alleged in the book "The Real McCain," written by Dem strategist Cliff Schecter.

McCain's response got him a round of applause from the crowd: "There's people here who don't respect that kind of language, so I'll move on to the next questioner in the back."

In an interview with IowaPolitics.com, Parrish said his intentions were simple in posing the question to McCain. The former Joe Biden campaign worker stressed he is very concerned about the Republican presidential nominee's temperament.

"We have a man whose temper can get the best of him," Parrish said. "What I am worried about is his temper. Our country is in a serious crisis. This election is the most significant one since 1860. It appears America is asleep -- so I stood up and asked the question."

"The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops Bush launched in January 2007, government investigators said yesterday.

...the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062302050.html?nav=rss_world/mideast

Hoocoodanode? 

It's become so appalling that even the nyt's thomas friedman, he of the endless "just-6-more-months" will tell "friedman unit", has finally faced reality and become 'shrill' about taking action in iraq.

Sadly, the continued tour-extensions for the troops were extended for the sole reason of buying bush more time "not to fail", like he has domestically (oil, mortgages, jobs, foreclosures, bankruptcies, repos, the economy). The vaunted surge has indeed reduced the somewhat reduced the violence, but to what purpose?

The reduced violence is most directly attributable to the US paying (bribing? lobbying? market incentivizing?) some 30+ thousand sunni's $300/month not to attack us. Some day that will end.

The shiite filled iraqi army proved helpless against their shiite opponents in basra and baghdad, until US forces and airpower beat them back. Can't see that lasting much longer either. 

The iraqi govn is no more cohesive or effective than pre-surge. iraq is no more stable than before, though basra has been pacified and being occupied by the govn forces. Iraq is basically in a holding-pattern, w/ opposing groups positioning themselves for their fall elections.

All on the US's dime (or 1,500,000,000,000 dimes, if anyone's still counting; that's Trillion, btw).

In other words, the surge...or escalation...bought the gop a 1 yr grace period of avoiding obvious failure, and the political breathing room for this fall's elections.

Which is what the "surge's" real purpose was all along.

Oh, that, and the oil contracts awarded. 

--Umm, I might be out of line here, but is it unreasonable to expect the USDA's undersecretary to be familiar w/ food safety and regs? Who appointed this joker?

Oh, that's right...