Eat The Press

Good morning and welcome to your liveblog of the Sunday Morning Mouth Excretions! My name is Jason, and I hope you all are enjoying this holiday season. I'll tell you, I am thankful for all of you who were happy to give me last Sunday off so that I could traverse in northeast in a car, for hours and hours. That was very nice of you! I understand I missed quasi-religious infomercialist Rick Warren on MEET THE PRESS. Well, I'm sure that was some courageous television, right there, that room full of titanically brave mofeaux -- Rick Warren and David Gregory. Bet most of you had a hard time deciding which one you wanted to be when you grew up. Or which one you wanted to be when you regressed to a quivering child state, to grow up from again at the urgings of loved ones who had staged an intervention.

Gay's gettin' indiscriminately killed in Uganda? Boy, I don' know! Seems to me that a moral man had better think awful long and hard about what's right, in that situation. I mean, if you too quickly commit yourself to the side that indiscriminately killing gay people is wrong, well, there's no coming back from that, is there? Tough and searing choices, right there. What if you say the wrong thing, and reveal yourself to be nothing more than a diseased sack of distended swine rectums, who should be shunned in polite society.

Well, sure that's not true. He was at the Inauguration and everything!

Anyway, gah. Let's start this puppy up. I seem to recall that you can send me an email, or leave a comment, and that it'd be cool if you would like to follow me on Twitter.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

Oh boy! Afghanistan with General David Petraeus and a Durbin/Cornyn duet on the same dumb topics we've been hearing about for the past eleventy kabillion months.

First, live from CENTCOM, here's Davey P. How does he define success? Oh, easy: Afghanistan has its own security, revived governmental structures, general awesomeness. He says the president is resolved, and resolute, and steadfast, so why won't the terrorists just give up already?

There are differences between Afghanistan and Iraq, apparently? Like Afghanistan is the "longest campaign in what I call the long war," which sounds lickety-spit, to me, given the three decades of war and crushing poverty that folks live with there. So what about this withdrawal date then? Petraeus says it's a "beginning" and "conditions-based" and a "responsible draw down." Like Iraq! So, that a way in which they'll be similar -- the leaving.

Apparently, "logistics planners" in Qatar are speeding up the deployment. And there are no orders to withdraw any specific amount of troops in 2011. Wallace asks, but could we please maybe have troops there forever? Petraeus says "conditions-based, conditions-based." Wallace rejoinders by saying that the General's "former colleagues" in the Bush Administration hate the July 2011 timeline and so did he once, but Petraeus doesn't bite the hook: "read the President's speech...read Gates' testimony," and shut up.

Is it a "surge?" No, it's a "compressed bell curve." Did Obama ever confide in you and admit that the Iraq surge was awesomesauce? Petraeus says yes, but he doesn't want to re-litigate past conflicts. Petraeus says that their meetings were "good discussions" and involved "team buildings" and trust falls.

Chances are actually, that a bunch of military experts and government officials sat down to a series of planned meetings, worked very hard, treated the matter with seriousness, and the discussion, no, sadly, did not furnish gotcha material.

"YOU ARE UNDER LIGHTNING ROUND RULES," Wallace says, to which Petraeus says, "NO YOU ARE." And Wallace's sycophancy gland kicks in.

Hey. I think something just fell off the roof of my building!

Petraeus no longer votes (weird!) and isn't going to run for office. He invokes a country song called, "What About No Don't You Understand."

OK. What just fell off the roof of my building??

All right, guessing it was just a huge chunk of snow, dropping off the roof all at once, maybe? That was weird. Durbin is on, and he tosses something of a hard one at Wallace, saying the limits to the Afghanistan deployment are something he finds, "encouraging...probably you find it discouraging...And that is the fact that he has said to the leader of Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai; 'There is a limit beyond which we will not leave American troops. We are not going to make Afghanistan a protector of the United States. You have to change your government. You have to show that you are willing to stand up and fight for your own country.'"

Anyway, Durbin is spinning July 2011 as a moment that limits our involvement. "But I would like to believe that by July of 2011 that we will be in a position where we are going to see our troops really coming home," he says. Wallace thinks July 2011 doesn't mean very much. Cornyn says he likes the change in strategy, but obviously, we should stay there forever, until the troops find the Lost Temple Of All The Money, or something.

"Thanks to Harry Reid's leadership..." -- I'm going to let that sink in -- "We are down to two issues with health care, abortion and the public option." And Judd Gregg's Amazing Technical List of Daffy Amendments. Cornyn hates health care reform, beyond obvious.

Wallace asks, "Is there a compromise out there to bridge the gap between Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln?" That sounds like the set up to Washington, DC's saddest key party.

Durbin says that the "public option" is not a government run plan but a non-profit company. Cornyn blames Durbin for "demonizing the private sector." And even Wallace is bored with the constant repetition of talking points, so it's on to Copenhagen. Cornyn hates cap and trade, and he hopes that it doesn't get passed. He'd rather have natural gas (probably from his home state) and nuclear power (probably in everyone else's state).

Durbin says China and India present an opportunity to work together, create economic opportunities, and achieve energy independence and efficiency. Durbin doesn't let Wallace "pre-suppose" what a climate change legislation would do. Cornyn says BLAH LET THE PRIVATE SECTOR SOLVE EVERYTHING NOW THAT THEY TOO ARE UNDERPINNED BY BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS YET WON'T HIRE ANYONE.

PANEL TIME. With Kristol and Liasson and Juan Williams and Dana Perino. First, Copenhagen. Kristol says that the summit won't amount to much and no treaty will be signed, and it will be pointless talk, like Kristol's op-eds. Liasson says the President will go to the summit at the end instead of the beginning, which is apparently a move from making a symbolic appearance to "throwing his lot in." I sort of see it as a choice between two symbolic appearances, bounded by logistical needs. But who knows. Maybe Obama will Always Be Closing.

Dana Perino is not a scientist, and hedges on blowing hot gas all over the ClimateGate scandal, calling it a "communications problem," and asserting that maybe the Bush administration wasn't manipulating facts and data and science all the times they were accused of doing so. Williams says that the emails sort of revealed a pissiness, but now actual evidence of a massive conspiracy to commit scientfic fraud. Kristol takes the "nature trick" argument to the full Three-Card Monte extreme, and Wallace cuts him off to say, well, there's no evidence that it was a thing that brings down the entirety of climate change. Williams agrees, and Kristol pissily yammers at Williams for interrupting. POOPING ON JUAN WILLIAMS is always Kristol's main goal, in these segments.

And Mara Liasson basically says, "Whatever," and Perino says, "Well, President Bush once said that man was causing global warming, so it must be true, la la."

OK. Afghanistan. "I tend to support presidents when they send troops to fight and win a war that is a just cause," Kristol says. Williams praises Kristol for being intellectually honest and, of course, given their relationship, I'm surprised that Kristol doesn't snap back and say, "SCREW YOU JUAN, I AM NOT INTELLECTUALLY HONEST. GAH, WHAT A JERK."

Wallace says, OH NOES THE BAD DOODZ COULD BE IN SOMALIA, OR SUDAN! Perino says, General Petraeus said that the bad doodz are up in Afghanistan so why are we not believing him, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! Liasson points out that Obama has bought himself eighteen months, and if he shows progress, there won't be a "domestic political program." Plus he's said all along that he'd do this, so why is anyone surprised.

Wallace asks if Kristol is worried whether terrorist doodz will just lay low until the deadlines comes and the troops withdraw and then they can emerge and make a billion more 9/11's happen by magic? Kristol says, "Well, it would be great" if the terrorist doodz lay low for eighteen months, because it would give the U.S. a chance to revitalize local communities and rebuild Afghanistan's institutions so that they are insurgent resistant.

Okay, moving on.

THIS WEEK

Oh, hai! Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and Russ Feingold! Plus paneling with George Will, Peggy Noonan, Richard HAAAAAAASZSZ, and Katrina V-H.

Well, Clinton and Gates, rocking the mic jointly. Earlier this week, Interdimensional President John McCain War Hero yelled about timetables. What's the dilly? Gates says we'll know if our strategy is working in two years, then gradual, conditions-based shifts will BEGIN, I SAID BEGIN, in July.

Gates says the decision that determines whether or not an area will be turned over to the Afghans will be made by Generals On The Ground and when the GOTG make their say-so known, it's on to Tactical Overwatch and Strategic Overwatch. Clinton says that "we have a good integrated approach...between civilian and military" and it's time to get on with it. She's not happy-happy-joy-joy about Karzai, but she thinks we can strengthen the Afghan government and anyway, what's important is that this "is good for the United States."

Pakistan: they don't believe OBL is in Pakistan. Gates says he may not be, that it's been "years" since we've had any decent intelligence on bin Laden. He doesn't hold Pakistan responsible, saying that if OBL is in North Waziristan, that's a hard place for the Pakistani government to monitor. "We have had a steadily developing, better relationship," with the Pakistan military.

Clinton highlights two approaches to the Taliban. The first is "reintegration" -- peel off persuadables from the battlefield who are in the Taliban out of self-preservation, and keep them safe once they're out. Then there's the "upper levels" of the Taliban, who have a whole slew of things they need to renounce if they want to reintegrate. Are "high-level negotiations impossible?" Clinton says, "We don't know, yet." Gates says that the likelihood of getting Taliban leaders to accept Clinton's terms depends on "reversing the momentum" militarily. In Southern Helmand (not sure I've spelled that right, please forgive) Gates insists we are making progress, even now.

How about paying for this thing? Clinton says that Obama promised it would be paid for, but she says only that there will be cost projections and generic budget hawkery. Money seems to come from ending the Iraq War, but that is basically an excuse to spend money, not to save it.

Happily, I've gotten to the point where I hear the word "Taliban" and think, "I hate those guys and that's a really dumb name." Sadly, when I hear "Janjaweed," I do think, "Ugh, I hate those guys," but I begrudgingly admit that "Janjaweed" would be an awesome band name.

Gates says that we won't get bogged down in the graveyard of empires like the Soviet Union because we didn't "invade" Afghanistan, we just sent thousands and thousands of troops there, like you'd go to a timeshare or something. Also, people don't hate us as much as they hate the Soviet Union.

Hillary Clinton hasn't been paying much attention to Italian sexy knife crimes, so, sorry Foxy Knoxy!

Meanwhile, here's Senator Russ Feingold, who has called this move to re-up in Afghanistan an "expensive gamble."

"Well, Pakistan, in the border region near Afghanistan, is perhaps the epicenter, although Al Qaida is operating all over the world, in Yemen, in Somalia, in northern Africa, affiliates in Southeast Asia. Why would we build up 100,000 or more troops in parts of Afghanistan included that are not even near the border? You know, this buildup is in Helmand Province. That's not next door to Waziristan. So I'm wondering, what exactly is this strategy, given the fact that we have seen that there is a minimal presence of Al Qaida in Afghanistan, but a significant presence in Pakistan?"

"It just defies common sense," Feingold says. And his central concern is that the build-up will "alienate" Afghanis and drive extremists into Pakistan. "It doesn't make sense to put all of our resources into an area" where terrorists are not.

Feingold doesn't understand why anyone would fight in Afghanistan today. GS says, OH NOES THE TERROR DOODZ who hit the World Trade Center were from there. Feingold says, basically, that those same doodz are in Pakistan.

Segue to public optioning! Feingold says that there are "great ideas on the table," but that there "must be a public program." The "talks are exciting" and he's "cautiously optimistic" that the Senate will come to an agreement. I challenge the Senate to decorate a single Christmas tree!

GS starts off by saying that the polls of Presidents at war times are "basically ski slopes," which I think is secret code that everyone on the panel will be enjoying some cocaine after the show. LUCKY.

Will says that the "surge" in Afghanistan will be harder than it was in Iraq because the Iraq population was literate and there were native counter-insurgent groups. HAAAAAAZSZ says "odds are to me that the United States will be in Afghanistan for some time to come." K V-H says that this decision to re-up in Afghanistan will fracture Obama's base and that "wars suck the oxygen out of reform presidencies." "We could have done a very smart counter-terrorism" operation for less money.

Peggy Noonan says, "THE NUMBER NINE. NINE. IT'S GERMAN FOR NO. BUT IT'S AMERICAN FOR NINE. THINK ABOUT THAT. THAT'S MAYBE WHY GERMANY HAS SENT ZERO TROOPS FOR EVERY NINE WE SEND? WHAT A WORLD. THIS IS A NUMBER. A QUANTITY. AN AMOUNT. NINE."

HAAAAAZSZ says that "this is not 1991!" Also, it's not "2001, right after 9/11." It's not May 12, 1847. It's not the year 3000. "Will the Pakistani government show the mettle to crack down" on their own security problems? Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. We need time machines.

K V-H: "You cannot wage conventional war on an odious, horrifying set of ideas or tactics...until we end that, America will have" basically a footing of permanent war.

GSteph says that isolationism is on the rise. Noonan says, "WITHDRAWAL IS A VACUUM. A VACUUM OF SUCKING. THE SUCKING OF INSTABILITY. SUUUUUUUCK."

K V-H says that diplomatic work is needed in the region, and Gorbachev agrees.

Meanwhile, Will says the day that Obama picks up his Nobel Peace Prize will be "surreal." Maybe more like a Bunuel movie, less like a session of automatic writing.

Job creation, will thay tap the TARP? Pelosi says maybe? Boehner says no. Obama may tap the TARP. Will says Thune will try to keep the TARP untapped. Just keep Max Baucus from tapping the TARP, because then the TARP will become a U.S. Attorney.

Why aren't we talking about Max Baucus' cocksmanship this morning? Is that more of a "This Week: After Hours" story?

Noonan says: "OH, THE GUYS WITH THE WIRES ARE GETTING THE MONEY. WE ARE JUST BIRDS ON THAT WIRE, OCCASIONALLY POOPING ON THE PUBLIC IMAGINATION."

K V-H points out that deficits are just not on the minds of people outside the Washington, DC pundit class. Will snarks, "Says she from Manhattan," but she's right. One in six people are out of work -- the deficits they worry about are HOUSEHOLD DEFICITS.

Then they start talking about those partycrasher people, who should be thrown in a pit of mud. After years of wondering about whether there should be limits to executive privilege, THIS IS WHERE WE START TALKING ABOUT IT. Makes me wish that these Salahi people had come to the party and immediately started waterboarding detainees. K V-H says that if you check, she'd bet there's as many mentions of Crashergate as there are Afghanistan. GSteph says not likely, and shuts down the panel. But I bet K V-H is right and Steph is wrong.

On Doctor Nancy Snyderman's show, the host added a complaint about the partycrashing couple, saying: THESE TWO HAVE ALSO MADE IT SO THE NEWS HAS TO SPEND TIME COVERING THIS. No, Dr. Nancy: THAT IS A CHOICE YOU MADE. You can stop anytime you want to!

MEET THE PRESS

So, via TVNewser, look at what happened this past weekend!

For the first time since August, ABC's "This Week," the Sunday public affairs program he hosts, topped the Sunday show ratings in Total Viewers.

Boosted by a strong lead-in from "Sunday Morning," CBS' "Face the Nation" was first in the 25-54 demographic followed by ABC, leaving NBC's "Meet the Press" third in the demo.

See what happens when I don't liveblog MEET THE PRESS? Dave Gregory gets his lunch eaten. I MADE YOU, DAVID GREGORY. And I can take away your cookies whenever I want!

Ha. Burn. Today: Afghanistan! All day. The whole hour. SUPER SERIOUS. So, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates are here. Plus Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain. And GREAT: Tom Friedman and Bob Woodward.

HOARY NEWSMEN! A GUY WHO'S VIEWPOINT ON THE MATTER WAS ROUNDLY REJECTED IN AN ELECTION! TWO PEOPLE WHO'VE ALREADY BEEN ON TEEVEE TODAY! Get ready to slice open your throat on the cutting edge of all this journalism!

Gates and Clinton have switched sides, I think! I mean, IN CHAIRS, relative to THIS WEEK.

Gates says: No deadline, it's a process, generals assess, power transferred to Afghanistan, Overwatch, "cavalry over the hill," conditions-based withdrawal, Generals On The Ground. It "will begin in 7/2011."

Gregory pulls his GOTCHA! What about Iraq and timelines, yo! Gates, you told Jowly Dave Foley: "I think a specific timetable would...tell [terrorists] how long they have to wait." Clinton said it's a "green light to bide their time." What's changed? Clinton says, this is a transition point, not a deadline. In Iraq, there is a firm deadline, now, that Iraqis instituted. She wants the Afghans to feel just as confident, yet just as urgently pressured.

David Gregory, realizing he's losing his "date certain" gotcha, attempts to close this gap by inventing a new term called "a time certain" which I guess means a specific period of time, vaguely bounded by July 2011, after which the 'date certain" could happen at anytime.

By the way, the whole "terrorists will chill out if we suggest that there will ever be a time we'd decide to leave a foreign country and instead save blood and treasure and so we must fight them, hard, forever" position is a huge error in logic.

Gates: "I was opposed to a deadline, in Iraq. If you'd listened to what I said..." OH, SNAP IT OFF BOB GATES.

Gates says, "There will be an increase in casualties at the front end of this process, but fewer over time." Counterinsurgency requires soldiers to embrace additional risks in the hope that it will yield greater rewards.

Gates says there was an "outstanding resource request" on his "watch" from General McKiernan, which could not be resourced because of the Iraq War.

Clinton says that no, the war on terrorism is not getting "downsized." "Once our combat responsibilities end," a "civilian commitment" will endure. "We're not going to be walking away from Afghanistan."

Then Gregory maybe steps in it, and hopefully one of these two won't let him off the hook. He starts his question, "But if you have a situation where if you're gonna begin the withdrawal of troops regardless of conditions on the ground..." Sweet fancy Moses. The one thing you should have been able to learn this week is that everyone involved in the strategy has said, again and again, that any decision to remove troops will be conditions-based? OH, I SEE, HE READ THE INFOMERCIAL THAT DICK CHENEY RAN IN POLITICO. That explains it.

Gates seems like he's getting pissed off, and it's hilarious. "First of all, we're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We're talking about something that will take place over a period of time." Does Robert Gates know that he would become a beloved American folk hero if he just cracked David Gregory across the mouth with that coffee cup, right now?

Gregory does this vapid thing where he asks a question, then immediately flips the premise. It's really annoying to listen to, because it demonstrates that he has not thought through the topic or planned any sort of series of questions with a prosecutorial throughline, where he tugs at a thread in order to get an unraveling or uses misdirection. He's just out there shaking trees. It's empty headed concern trolling. One minute ago, he was asking about "withdrawals regardless of conditions" -- troops coming home willy nilly. Now he asks:

"Beyond July of 2011, there's gonna be a significant amount of-- of U.S. troops there. There's gonna be about 100,000 once this surge-- is finished. How many more years should Americans expect to have a significant force pre-- presence in Afghanistan?"

See, now he's concern-trolling on troops staying forever. There's no logical mooring to this line of questioning. No adherence to a higher form of interrogation. He just has a sack of wet turds and he wants to throw them all.

Naturally, this just allows Gates to offer a variation on the same answer, again. "But again, during that period, we will be, just as we did in Iraq, turning over provinces to-- Afghan security forces. And that will allow us to-- to bring the number of our forces down in a steady but conditions-based circumstance."

This show is so terrible! I'm sorry that I'm liveblogging it and making it's ratings so high! I'm even sorrier that I'm just 14 minutes into this.

Gregory asks, "Can the mission be accomplished without capturing Osama bin Laden?" Clinton says she thinks it's somewhat important, but "you can make enormous progress absent that."

Gates gets the "Aren't we going to die just like the Soviet Union died, in Afghanistan, graveyard of Empires?" Gates saved a better version of the answer for MEET THE PRESS: " It's pretty straightforward. First of all, the Soviets were trying to impose an alien culture and-- and political system on-- on Afghanistan. But more importantly, they were there terrorizing the Afghans. They killed a million Afghans. They made-- refugees out of five million-- Afghans. They were isolated internationally. All of those factors are different for-- for us. Completely different."

OH, DID YOU HEAR? IN WASHINGTON, THERE'S THIS WHOLE LEFT-AND-RIGHT BATTLE OVER POLITICS? David Gregory has!

If you want to get into a serious Afghanistan-related topic that nobody on Sunday morning is smart enough to even bring up, despite it's critical importance? Read up on "dwell time." Start here!

Gregory asks Gates is "failure is an option." This is a dumb rhetorical phrase, of course, but asking a rhetorical question could yield an interviewer something in terms of a follow-up question. Of course, if you are going to ask someone if "failure is not an option," then your followup should not be, BUT SRSLY, IS FAILURE AN OPTION OR NOT?

DAVID GREGORY: But you say failure's not an option. The President has said, "We will fight this fight and fight it hard only up to a certain point."

SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: And then we begin to transfer the responsibility to the Afghans.

DAVID GREGORY: Right.

SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: And a lot can happen in eighteen months.

This is not a fair fight.

And we're back, with Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain! Withdrawal: he's against it! Troops being jammed down into the gullet of war, he's for it! But seriously, Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain is going to pretend that everyone really means we beat an immediate retreat from Afghanistan in July 2011, even though we just had two people on the show saying otherwise.

Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain says that we need to have confidence we will not leave on a date certain, apparently because the first twenty minutes of MEET THE PRESS are not viewable in the MCCAIN PAN DIMENSION.

I bet earmarks are really a thing of the past in the MCCAIN PAN DIMENSION. Of course, there is word from the MCCAIN PAN DIMENSION that the economy of PAN DIMENSIONAL America has been destroyed after a massive earthquake on the New Madrid fault line, which no one was monitoring because funding for the monitoring dried up because some idiot made fun of it on his twitter account.

Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain has responded to the earthquake by ordering an immediate spending freeze and more tax cuts.

David Gregory is really mad at Hamid Karzai! He's just mad because his interview with Karzai is where this show hit the skids, ratings-wise. Don't worry, David! I'm liveblogging this again!

Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain says we're not making an open ended commitment to war. APPEASEMENT!

HEY NOW. I thought this show was a whole hour on Afghanistan! David Gregory lies! Now he's asking Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain about all sorts of other topics, like the stimulus and Ben Bernanke. Is stimulus working? Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain says, "Well I guess if you throw enough money at anything there's some result." Except in Afghanistan, I guess!

OH FOR FRACK'S SAKE. Now he's asking Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain about Going Rogue, and Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain has to lie and say he likes the book, even though the book is one long screed about how the McCain campaign was terrible and about jogging. Interdimensional War Hero President John McCain is "proud of her," but I guarantee that back in the MCCAIN PAN DIMENSION, he has dropped Interdimensional Miss Teen Wordpower Sarah Palin into the Pan Dimensional Hindu Kush from a very great height.

It's true. If you want me to immediately delete your email, make the subject of the email, "How Tiger Woods Marks An Ominous Future For America's Overclass."

Okay, homestretch time, with yammering from Friedman and Woodward. Stache wonders when we'll focus on the key issue, which is Hamid Karzai and his corruption leading to a resegence of the Taliban. If there isn't a "government that people want to fight for, nothing else works."

Woodward says the key issue is "whether or not Obama played his part, did his job." GOOD NEWS! Woodward says, "by all analysis, he did!" SO THE KEY ISSUE IS...RESOLVED? And yet, the word, "counterinsurgency" wasn't in the speech! So, did he not "play his part?" And some Afghans aren't "playing their part," but that's not the key issue? And will Richard Holbrooke be able to solve the problem of Hamid Karzai, which was Stache's key issue? Is that a key issue. MAKE THE WORD SOUP STOP.

David Gregory remembers that he cut a voiceover for the show where he promised to raise five big questions about Afghanistan, and he forgot to ask about them thus far, so now that there's fifteen minutes left...well, more like thirteen with commercials, and GOD THE SEGUE IS KILLING A WHOLE MINUTE, so twelve minutes. So, with about two minutes and change to address the five big questions, what do Mr. Hot, Flat, and Yammer-Stache and Mr. Scrabble Soup have to say about these things?

What defines success and how long? Stache says, DON'T ASK ME OKAY A MILLION STACHE UNITS I GUESS. "We could be there until Christmas 2050." Woodward says that the "X Factor" is "leadership in the military and the intelligence world and the State department." "Can they really do something...can the generals drive the ground?" CAN THEY? MAYBE. But don't confuse the "X Factor" with the "key issue" because the "key issue" is resolved so now we have got to get X Factory.

DUCK! THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS "WIDENING THE APERTURE!" This is how the New Madrid Earthhquake started in the McCain Pan Dimension!

Friedman says that it's a problem when Muslims don't protest when terrorists blow up mosques in the same way that they protest Danish cartoons. "Until that changes, there is nothing we can do to win this war." Ah, but: the reason thousands of people can protest said cartoons is because the terrorists who blow up mosques won't EFFING KILL YOU FOR PROTESTING THAT, whereas they will KILL YOU for taking to the streets against them. So, we could, through a long intervention, maybe make it safe for people to protest terrorism, or we could hope something akin to Iran takes hold and people decide enough is enough I will go and risk getting killed.

Now Woodward is talking about how the "lives of ordinary Afghans" comes into play, and Americans must apparently EAT GOAT, SMOKE BAD CIGARETTES WITH THEM, AND SHIT IN POTS. But that is neither the "key issue" or the "X Factor!"

I guess when CENTCOM launches OPERATION GOATSMOKE POOP-POT, you'll know where that came from!

Hey, kids! Do you live in the Washington, DC area, enjoy parodies of Sarah Palin books, and would like to see a bunch of actors mount a staged production of same? GOOD NEWS. You can join the DC Theatre Collective for The Palin Project. It goes down on December 12, 2009 at 10pm at Busboys and Poets, 2012 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC. For more information: hie thee here.

Obviously, if you don't like any of those things, go do something else!

All right people, I'm glad to be back, and I'm glad to be able to say, HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper offers up, via Twitter, a Washington Post correction that addresses what Tapper terms an example of "unreal idiocy."

Let's take a look:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Oh, yeah! That's some unreal idiocy all right! Especially considering the article in question was about Public Enemy, the band, and their work in outreach to the homeless. Such an article demands that the reporter have a least some passing knowledge of the subject.

The important distinction between "911" and "9/11" could have been made a number of different ways -- by either listening to the song, or reading the title of the song or simply noting that the song "911 Is A Joke" was on an album released on May 26, 1990.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

I have to tell you, when I heard that former Bush flack Ari Fleischer had been engaged as the new face of shillery for the college football Bowl Championship Series, I thought: "Well, truly, this is some FRABJOUS news!"

The combination is perfect: you take the chocolate of avarice, ram it into some peanut butter of mendacity and create a goopy, bilious confection of pure meretriciousness. And the thought of Fleischer spending his post-White House days in purgatorial trompings on behalf of the deeply reviled BCS (85% against, in a recent Gallup poll) was a happy reminder of the awesome cruelty of karmic alignment.

And let's hope that Deadspin's Tommy Craggs continues to highlight every pained statement Fleischer makes on behalf of the Florida Recount of competitive sport, as he did yesterday:

"It's like saying we should get rid of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and hold smaller parades all across America."

That's Fleischer, apparently attempting to mount the case that the despised, 21-year-old BCS system of star-chamber polls and computerized prestidigitation is, in fact, a longstanding and much-beloved American tradition that delights children and instills a holiday spirit in all who watch. Of course, what's weird about this comparison is that not only has the BCS not stemmed the tide of smaller college bowl games across America, the Macy's Parade also co-exists alongside other parades. For example, there's America's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Detroit, and the IKEA Thanksgiving Day Parade (nee Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade) in Philadelphia. Both of those lesser known parades, by the way, enjoy much grander traditions than the BCS.

Still, I can see where this comparison is quite apt. Both the Macy's Parade and the BCS have the propensity to exclude accomplished teams in favor of their favored pets. This year, the BCS will likely prevent three undefeated teams -- Boise State, Cincinnati, and, perhaps most egregiously, Texas Christian University -- from laying a claim to the national championship. Similarly, NBC, the exclusive broadcast partners of the parade, put the kibosh on a planned appearance from the cast of Fox's hit television show "Glee". So, it's fair to connect the two in their common fear of successful upstarts.

Obviously, the Macy's Parade is an apt comparison for Fleischer as well. Just like the parade's army of lip-syncers, every time Fleischer opens his mouth, you instinctively look for wires.

RELATED:
Ari Fleischer Has Settled Nicely Into His Job Of Spinning Wildly Unpopular Ideas [Deadspin]

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Raw Story and ThinkProgress both relate news today that strikes me as just a little obvious. But, OK: Fox News infotainer Glenn Beck premiered his new live show, "The Christmas Sweater", based on the book, "The Christmas Sweater" last night, and in major American cities where liberals tend to dwell, very few tickets were sold: 17 in Boston, 17 in New York City and 30 in Washington, DC. That said, "sales were better in more conservative areas." In other news, a period of darkness is expected to occur tonight, upon the setting of the sun.

But, OK. yes: these same cities are packed with millions of people, and surely there are more than 20 who are Glenn Beck devotees. That's where the old adage of "why buy the cow when I can get it for free, on Fox News Channel, every day?" kicks in. I don't know what else there is to say about it, other than that.

Oh, all right, there's this:

Despite purporting to be a champion of the "little guy," Beck set tickets prices at $20 -- more than double the average ticket price.

So, BREAKING: America is in the midst of a recession, and a massive unemployment crisis.

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On last night's "Daily Show", correspondent John Oliver followed up a segment on a recent vote in Switzerland to ban the building of minarets with an interview that displayed the sort of journalistic guts so sadly absent among the landed gentry in our press. I hesitate, greatly, to blow a comedy bit out of undue proportion, but there are nevertheless some key journalistic virtues at work in the piece that deserve some magnification, if you'll allow the indulgence.

Oliver used the news story to make a point about the overall character of the nation of Switzerland. Rather than take the glib remarks of Switzerland's UN Ambassador Peter Maurer at face value, presenting them as stenography and letting it stand as just another "interesting viewpoint" in the marketplace of ideas, he confronted the illogic and batted it back, unconcerned that it would make his interviewee upset or ruin someone's opportunity to have "access." This is precisely what "meeting the press" should look like.

The key exchange occurs at 7:50 in this video below, after several minutes of comedy beat-sweetening, that's all just a set-up to the actual prosecution of a viewpoint. Watch as Maurer attempts to advance precisely the sort of point of view that flourishes in a media culture that privileges nonsense at the same level of intelligence, and how Oliver reacts:

OLIVER: How hard was it to remind neutral during World War II?

MAURER: Well, I think this is always a debate and I think we do make a clear distinction between our neutrality as an instrument of foreign policy and what we think as individuals and what the country thinks.

OLIVER: But then, the neutrality issue seems complicated. Now obviously, Hitler did some very bad things, we know that. How do you focus on the positive things to balance that out?

MAURER: It's not a question of positive. It's a question of our neutrality has always been a state-driven concept of not participating in war.

OLIVER: Was there not just a little voice of humanity inside you saying this is terrible, we should really do something about it?

MAURER: As a question of principle, it's unadvisable for a country as small as ours to participate in war. Why should we?

OLIVER: So: Easy to take a position on neutrality, hard to take a position on Hitler.

MAURER: We did take strong positions on Hitler and many other things. We didn't participate in the war. That's two different things.

OLIVER: [imitating Hitler] "Would it be possible for me to keep my gold here?" [Imitating the Swiss] "Ah, Adolf! Of course! Lovely to see you again. Come back in! What have you been up to? Actually, don't tell me, I want to be able to say I don't know."

[uncomfortable pause]

OLIVER: Is this neutral anger, or real anger, Mr. Ambassador?

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In case you didn't know, President Barack Obama's West Point address, in which he announced his intention to escalate the war in Afghanistan, pre-empted the broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas on ABC. As it turns out, at least one person was crackpotted enough to believe that the whole point of the address was to prevent this cartoon from being shown. That person is Arlington, Tennessee Mayor Russell Wiseman. He actually exists. And he made the mistake of bleating out his strident, weird take on the matter on Facebook, and is acting all aggrieved that people noticed.

His Facebook message read in part:

Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim [sic] president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation [sic] about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'....

First off, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is a twenty-five minute dissertation on Jesus Christ being the Son of God. More importantly, in this time of giving, I'll point out that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is available on DVD from Amazon for $13.99. Maybe one of Wiseman's Facebook friends (maybe even the one with a conscience who sold Wiseman out to the press out of a higher obligation, perhaps instilled by his or her belief in Jesus Christ) should purchase it for him, and he need never watch a speech about a serious topic like war again.

Wiseman wasn't done expounding on the subject, by a long shot. He went on to suggest that "you obama [sic] people need to move to a muslim [sic] country," and adding, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

Yes. Many, many fine citizens of this great nation would be disenfranchised! Just like...Jesus would want?

So, here's the really deep thoughts about The Way We Live Now from Ellyn Angelotti of the Poynter Institute:

"A lot of people think Facebook is private so only a limited number of people can see their post," Angelotti said. "But the reality is that it can be made public.

"You've got to be careful. The same social rules that apply in real life should be applied to the virtual life."

This will probably fall on deaf ears, because Wiseman is up in arms that his thoughts that he typed onto a website are now something he has to own up to. His countering argument:

"It's ridiculous for someone to send my Facebook post...You guys are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill."

Are you afraid of responsibility, Russell Wiseman? If you are, then you have hypengyophobia. That will be five cents, please!

MORE:
Arlington mayor fires at Obama online [The Commercial Appeal]

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Tea Party activists got to play the part of the glitterati Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, DC, where FreedomWorks debuted "Tea Party: The Documentary Film" (a title distinguishing it, I suppose, from "Tea Party: The Three Act Drag Revue" and "My Little Pony Live! The World's Biggest Tea Party") to a crowd of activists, filmmakers, and, of course, the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel.

The stars of the film relaxed and talked with former House Majority Leader and FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) handed out business cards to a steady stream of well-wishers. All of the guests made their way into the auditorium on the FreedomWorks version of a red carpet -- a strip of green astroturf.

The most significant attendees, however, were various and sundry congressional Republicans, which included -- in addition to DeMint and Wilson -- Representatives Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Tom Price (R-Ga.):

Price, the sponsor of a resolution paying tribute to the 9/12 march, credited Tea Party activists with giving Republicans "the courage to do what we need to do." After his short remarks, he asked more than a dozen activists to join him onstage to accept framed copies of the resolution, which has been sponsored by 148 members of the Republican conference but has not come up for a vote.

Price's efforts were not merely symbolic. All across the electoral landscape, self-styled Tea Party candidates are springing up, and they're drawing down on GOP incumbents. ThinkProgress' Lee Fang offered up a run-down of the potential matchups. Some of the more significant highlights include:

- Earlier this year, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) had the audacity to criticize Beck. Beck has marshaled his supporters into a crowded primary to take out Inglis. One of the challengers, college professor Christina Jeffrey, directly cites Inglis' criticism of Beck as part of the reason she is running.

- Liz Lauber, a former aide to tea party leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey, is challenging Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO).

- Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) is being challenged by Jason Sager, who said he is running because of Brown-Waite's support for moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, the opponent of Beck mentee Doug Hoffman.

- Even NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), charged with recruiting Republicans to challenge House Democrats in 2010, is facing a contested primary. Conservative activist David Smith says he will rely on the tea party movement to bring down Sessions.

Fang notes that another vulnerable Republican is Arizona Senator John McCain, who was last seen "clinging to a two-point lead over a possible challenger, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.)."

That's a lot of people who maybe shouldn't wait to catch the movie on Netflix.

[WATCH]

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Last night, Julia Corker, the eldest daughter of Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was carjacked by a pair of suspects in Washington, DC's Penn Quarter neighborhood. I'm very glad to note that while Corker was roughed up when she was dragged out of her car and thrown on the pavement, she escaped the incident without serious injury. And happily, law enforcement authorities apprehended two suspects in short order and returned the stolen car.

Our own Ryan Grim was among a group of reporters who got to talk with Senator Corker about the incident, and the senator (who lives in the neighborhood where the incident occurred and was quick to come to his daughter's aid) offered up a bracing account of the evening, where he explained what went down and praised police for their efforts. Based upon Corker's account, which Grim recorded, the key aid seems to have been rendered by the folks at OnStar.

[Click to listen.]

CORKER: She was shaken up, but she remembered that she had OnStar. You know, this was my campaign car, back in 2005. It's got 180,000 miles on it. And every month, you know, I keep thinking, I'm not going to pay the OnStar bill again -- it's like 12 bucks or something --

REPORTER: Wow. You're like a commercial for OnStar!

[...]

CORKER: The OnStar folks [snaps fingers] found them just like this.

That would be a great testimonial for an OnStar commercial. And it would go a long way to alleviating the concerns of people who think OnStar is some sort of tyrannical government intrusion:

[WATCH]

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Hey, kids! According to Michael Calderone of Politico, a "debate" has been "sparked" over the "new [White House] pool rotation." This debate is raging, I'm sure, among the handful of people who are deeply invested in White House pool reporting, a subset of humanity that excludes the millions of Americans who are living their lives, happily ignorant of what "White House pool reporting" even is.

For the benefit of those millions of Americans, a brief explainer. There is this thing called the "White House Press Corps" and its members are more or less embedded at, duh, the White House. And they regularly question White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in briefings, and are responsible for providing their news organizations with detailed reports about the president's actions and meetings and pronouncements.

This work also necessitates keeping account of the picayune details of the president's daily activities. But it's not economical to make every single reporter in the corps cover this minutiae, and God knows it would only take time away from their ongoing efforts to nail the Salahi party-crash story, among other pressing stories.

So, on a daily basis, one member of the print press corps has to shadow the president and compile a report about what time Air Force One took off and landed, when the president played golf and where the president ate a hamburger and what condiments he used. It can look like thankless work -- and crucially, it's mostly unnoticed work -- but it's an important part of press politesse, in that nominal competitors work as a team for the betterment of all. It's also the sort of work that lots of people would consider themselves lucky to get to do.

But, now, concerns have been raised about new pool assignments. And, yes, this is about to get somewhat meta. Per Politico:

...White House reporters have privately discussed and debated the recent addition of sites like Talking Points Memo and Huffington Post into the White House in-town press pool. It's not that reporters are criticizing the work of either Christina Bellantoni or Sam Stein, but some have expressed concerns about pool reports coming from left or right-leaning news organizations that will then be used by the rest of the press corps.

Let's note: When Christina Bellantoni does pool reporting for the right-leaning Washington Times, no one bats an eyelash. But when Christina Bellantoni does pool reporting for leftward Talking Points Memo... OH LORDY BE, MY GARTERS, THEY BE POPPIN'!

Stepping forward to lay out "concerns" is Peter Baker of the New York Times:

Baker said he has no problem with outlets like Huffington Post, which he described "an important part of the marketplace of ideas." But the site, he said, has a mission "to produce pieces with strongly argued points of view" and that puts the Times--or other non-partisan news organizations--"in a position of relying on overtly ideological or opinionated organizations as our surrogate news gatherers."

But no one in the debate has made clear exactly how "overtly ideological or opinionated organizations" might fail in the task of reliably recording the details that get written up in the pool report.

Calderone raises some concerns of his own:

But still, some White House reporters question that if TPM and HuffPost join, who might be next? Already this year, the pool has grown with the addition of Politics Daily, Salon and Ebony. (POLITICO joined in 2007, the same year of its launch). And there's likely to be more additions in the near future, including news organizations that may not even exist yet.

Who knows what these imaginary reporters will do, to the JOURNALISM, once they finally get around to existing? THE DEBATE RAGES.

But if you're out there still wondering what sort of shady shenanigans go on with White House pool reporting, I have some interesting examples which nobody (outside of the reporters who strive to take this work seriously) ever seems to be concerned about:

The press likes to engage in self-indulgent bitchcraft about the way they are treated!

August 27, 2009: "Pool Report 6," by Elizabeth Williamson, Wall Street Journal (excerpted):

The verdant entry to the entry road to the entrance of the Vineyard Golf Club is as close as we get to potus right now, colleagues. Given the deteriorating state of our bus toilet, a number of us have chosen to stand outside. So we are holding (it) for 18 holes and watching a very social woman from the club screen members as they drive in. She just told a woman dressed in pink and green that she needs to strip search her. She is joking--but what happens in the Vineyard stays in the Vineyard. Tourists/residents keep walking/biking up to watch and ask questions. But the secret service--and likely the bus miasma--is driving them off.

The press likes to pointlessly snark each other out (for freedom!):

May 13, 2009: "Pool Report 1," by Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal (excerpted):

The one near-casualty of the departure was the Politico's Jonathan Martin, who, after a leisurely last-minute jaunt to McDonald's and a cool stroll to the press charter, left his one change-of-shirt on the Andrews Air Force Base bus. It was rescued and brought on to Air Force One by CNN producer Erika Dimmler for a tearful reunion in Tempe, no doubt. No word on his change of underwear.

To think that Sam Stein and Christina Bellantoni might upset the delicate balance of this super-serious journalism!

Finally, here's a curiosity worth noting! On July 4, 2009, pool report duties fell to a gentleman named Paul West, of the Baltimore Sun. He reported on the White House's Fourth of July party, from the vantage of a separated press pen. Here's what he filed:

Faces spotted at random in the crowd included AG Eric Holder, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs (gamboling with his son on the big West Wing play set), social secretary Desiree Rogers, Obama chums Martin Nesbitt and Dr. Eric Whitaker, and Mike Allen of Politico.

Mike Allen, who is also a member of the White House Press Corps, did what reporters do with pool reports: repurpose them for their own reporting. But when Allen pasted West's report into his "Playbook" column, look at what he did (via Gawker):

File that away, Politico, if you're concerned about people using the pool report to be manipulative!

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Much has already been said about Politico editor John F. Harris's recent idiotic "7 stories Barack Obama doesn't want told" article. Matt Yglesias makes one of the most important points here:

Harris says that "presidential politics is about storytelling" and "[n]o one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition." More recently, however, "Obama's gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering."

Harris has no evidence whatsoever for any of this.. And there's just no reason to believe that winners win because they're "better storytellers" than the opposition. Obama was from the opposite party of an unpopular incumbent, running at a time of economic distress. Under the circumstances, his victory was very predictable.

Of course Harris has no "evidence." His whole exercise is one of creating a meta-narrative (in this case, about meta-narratives!) out of whole cloth. This is a common practice in the political media, whose members ply their trade as if the goal was to mystify the political process in the most ornate and pointless ways possible.

Most political wags have the deeply-held need to be regarded as super-smart people who are constantly at work penetrating byzantine mysteries for the sake of Americans who, in their view, could not possibly understand all the amazing complexities of contemporary politics. The problem is, elections are typically decided according to predictable voter patterns, candidate popularity and whether or not a candidate exploits the former or compounds the latter by avoiding or making the greater share of structural campaign errors. Chronicling that in straightforward fashion is not much fun!

So, they manufacture stories. Sometimes about storytelling!

This was in play, big time, during the brief and mostly unremarkable election season of 2009, when the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey were shoehorned into an operatic saga about the first 10 months of the Obama White House, and What The Country Had To Say About It.

But what actually happened? Well, voters followed predictable patterns and unpopular candidates compounded their lack of popularity by making lots of mistakes. THE END.

How's this for storytelling? Once upon a time, a gentleman named Tim Russert wrote "Florida, Florida, Florida" on a whiteboard. He turned out to be right about that, and his whiteboard was enshrined at the Newseum as the political media's official Shroud Of Turin. And since then, pundits and touts by the score have attempted to replicate this feat, believing that it can be accomplished not through shrewd analysis of available facts but by tossing as much Delphinic crap at the wall as possible in the hope that something will stick.

In this world, a guy can be consistently really, really wrong without any fear that his colleagues will point it out -- and if you bleat out something provocative enough, you can earn the rich rewards of Drudge-baiting.

And, wow, now we have this narrative about narratives. We are truly down the rabbit hole, people. Know what's down there? Mostly rabbit shit!

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So, here's your update of what's going on at the increasingly chaotic Washington Times.

A few hours ago, the entire staff of the Washington Times was sent an email by Vice President of Human Resources Sonya R. Jenkins, alerting them that an "all staff meeting" was being called at the order of Publisher Jonathan Slevin. That meeting went down at 3:30pm today. The early word, via Politico's Michael Calderone, was that serious staff reductions were in the offing to the tune of 40 percent.

Calderone also reported that the paper would refocus on "exclusive reporting and in-depth national political coverage, enterprise and investigative reporting, geo-strategic and national security news, and cultural coverage based on traditional values," and that the paper would embrace a new circulation model:

There will be "controlled-market local circulation," with the local print edition free in certain areas of Washington with a premium price for home-delivery. "No-cost distribution will focus on targeted audiences in branches of the federal government as well as at other key institutions," the release said, although there will be single-copy sales in newspaper boxes and select retailers.

DCist's Sommer Mathis has more:

Times employees tell us they were required to sign that they had received a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act letter, which is required before mass layoffs at a company of more than 100 employees. So that means that no employees can legally be laid off until 60 days have passed from today, under the WARN Act.

Looks like Times staff is set to endure a very wary Christmas, and, potentially, a crappy New Year.

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The narrative that seems to be emerging from the most bellicose critics of last night's speech by President Barack Obama is that his setting a start date for the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan is a gift to al Qaeda and an invitation for them to wait out the enterprise, watch U.S. forces leave, and declare victory.

This conviction overwhelms any satisfaction the hawks might have gotten from his Bush-like decision to send 30,000 additional troops there for the purposes of "break[ing] the Taliban's momentum," "increas[ing] Afghanistan's capacity," and "disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda."

Here's Senator John McCain, advancing the Obama as surrender monkey line:

"Dates for withdrawal are dictated by conditions," Mr. McCain told reporters on Capitol Hill. "The way that you win wars is to break the enemy's will, not to announce dates that you are leaving."

McCain seems to have missed the part where, other than that July 2011 start date, all the withdrawals are, to the great disappointment of critics of the war, based on conditions on the ground.

I'd personally add that anyone who has watched America unroll war-on-terror policies under the current and previous administrations and argues that Obama's current "exit ramp" dates aren't subject to a lot of mutability are deluding themselves, or fibbing.

But let's address the gigantic error at the heart of the argument: That our terrorist enemies now have the upper hand, knowing that the United States will, starting in 19 months, begin the process of leaving. Taking this to its logical extreme, we conclude that in order to fully cow terrorist organizations abroad, the United States must, at all times, demonstrate the willingness to commit to an open-ended, deadline and benchmark-free, everlasting-if-need-be occupation, wherein, I suppose, we beat the terrorists down with indisputable displays of "steadfastness" and "resolve," damn the costs to our nation in blood and treasure.

Well, in 2003, the United States mounted just such a campaign, when President George W. Bush invaded Iraq. Iraq, he said, would become "the central front in the war on terror" and we would fight on that front unrelentingly, until every terrorist had been sucked in to this cunning stratagem and wiped out. There were to be no timetables, no deadlines, no exit strategy. Just one loud, lingering yawp of resoluteness, lasting until evil was defeated. The immediate result was the creation of a huge and effective insurgency in Iraq, and dramatically increased militancy abroad. Far from cowing terrorist networks into surrendering under the threat to go hard, forever, the invasion of Iraq touched off what could only be described as a boom time for global jihad.

A study conducted by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, found that there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) since the Iraq invasion. When Iraq and Afghanistan, which together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of fatalities, were excluded, there was still a 35 percent per year increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks.

The hawkish critics of Obama's war policy believe any talk of dates or deadlines or exit strategies makes life easy for terrorists. But as you can see, as actual facts indicate, our previous adventures in open-ended wars were no impediment to jihadists who desired to carry out worldwide terrorist attacks. Kind of the opposite, actually. These unending occupations enable terrorists by providing a key cause for recruitment.

By the way, such open-ended military engagements cost the United States real money, and places a real strain on our armed forces. If al Qaeda succeeds in breaking our bank or our military infrastructure, I'd venture that they'd call that a strategic victory, whether or not they pull off any more terrorist attacks in the meantime.

We shouldn't be worried about whether we're accommodating terrorists by providing them with a two-year window to lay low -- we should be worried about the fact that they've managed to thrive just fine under the threat of indefinite engagements.

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Of all the things that have ever been said about famed Vice Presidential nominee and occasional Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, none have been as trenchant or as poignant as this: "Her presence underscores the impact and importance of bowling." HER VERY PRESENCE DOES THESE THINGS.

That's from the statement proffered by the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America, who "announced today that the bowling industry rolled a strike [ed. note: WITTICISM!], securing Sarah Palin as the keynote speaker at this summer's International Bowl Expo 2010."

UHM...BREAKING, I THINK(?!):

"Sarah Palin is a great friend to the bowling industry and we're so proud and honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker at International Bowl Expo 2010," said Steven Johnson, executive director of the BPAA.

Of course, the BPAA may end up being disappointed when the obvious benefit of having Palin as a speaker -- hyper-intensive, nonstop media coverage of the event -- comes to naught when Palin refuses the "gotcha" media entry to the event.

Oh, and here's real-live bowling columnist Dick Evans, questioning the BPAA's decision:

If Sarah Palin or any other politician would jump in and help bowling become stronger financially, I would vote for her or him.

But to be honest I think I am dreaming. Politicians don't seem to give a hoot about championing the great sport of bowling and that bothers me when politicians who know nothing about bowling are invited to speak at a bowling convention and barely mention the sport.

I would venture a guess that a keynote speaker at Bowl Expo earns between $25,000 and $50,000 for maybe 25 minutes of jokes and their beliefs about what is happening in the country...views they probably have expressed numerous times on numerous cable and network TV shows.

In the old days, before 24/7 political related cable shows, I was interested in what politicians had to say at political rallies because that might be the only time you got to hear them speak on national issues.

Now you can't turn on TV without hearing one political candidate or another speak so I have found three political candidates telling BPAA members the same thing they have been saying on TV for 12 months while serving as keynote speakers at Bowl Expos over the years.

Seriously: Dick Evans is ALL KINDS OF AWESOME. I encourage bowling enthusiasts to bookmark him immediately.

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Approximately 60 people showed up yesterday to watch Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) brandish a plastic bucket of acorns as his colleagues Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) breathlessly described community-organizing organization and all-around GOP bugaboo ACORN as a "criminal enterprise."

The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel was among them, and the scene he describes can only be called "magical," beginning with Smith's opening invocation.

"I'm glad to see this turnout so early in the day," said Smith. (The hearing began at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday)

The lawmakers may have been late to rise, but that was probably because they were up all night, prepping for this super-serious taxpayer-funded evocation of untrammeled paranoia. On display was a new 81-page "supplement" to Issa's previous 99-page anti-ACORN opus, created in accordance with the traditions of November's National Novel Writing Month, apparently.

Attendees got to hear all the old showstoppers:

"President Obama previously served as ACORN's lawyer, participated in ACORN training sessions in Chicago, and presided on the board of two organizations that funded ACORN's Chicago chapter," said Smith. An old picture of Obama in an ACORN office was posted near the hearing stand to bolster his point. "The president's ties with ACORN taint any conclusions the Department of Justice may reach with regard to whether or not to investigate ACORN employees. That's why I've requested that the attorney general appoint a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN."

Plus, they got a new criticism, from Issa: "The current administration is becoming, in reality, the war room for ACORN's political machine." Well, no wonder health care reform is taking so long.

Weigel provides many highlights to enjoy, including one of the best kickers you're likely to read today. As usual, hie thee hence. But my favorite highlight has to be this:

"All of us, maybe with one exception, knew Albert Wynn," said Issa, referring to unpredictable former congressman from Maryland's African-American suburbs of Washington, D.C. "He was well-liked, a good man."

In a short round of questions, Moncrief charged ACORN with conspiring to aid progressive candidate Donna Edwards -- who's currently serving in Congress, having defeated Wynn. "Albert Wynn was pictured next to George Bush," said Moncrief, describing a PowerPoint presentation she saw. "They tried to paint him in a light that he was friendly with George Bush. They wanted to support Donna Edwards, who happens to sit on the board of one of the organizations that supplied money for one of their campaigns."

Of course, what helped immeasurably in the task to "paint him in a light that he was friendly with George Bush," is the fact that Albert Wynn was, in fact, friendly with George Bush. Wynn supported the Iraq War (he was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote for the joint resolution that authorized it), voted for the Bush/Cheney energy bill and supported the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2006. It was these decisions that largely played a role in his being thwacked in the Democratic primary by Donna Edwards in 2008, by a 60 to 36 margin.

Rather than fill out his term, Wynn immediately announced his resignation and abandoned his post so that he could go to work for lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro just as fast as his little legs could carry him. So, yeah, the guy that Issa is lauding was a real stand-up guy.

Louisiana Republican Joseph Cao was on hand as well, but he said his presence was solely to "gather information." He further attested that ACORN "has done some good things in order to address the issues of minorities." So, look for Cao to get pilloried again for being reasonable.

MORE:
Republicans Demand More ACORN Hearings, Special Prosecutor [Washington Independent]

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News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was in Washington, DC this morning, appearing at the Federal Trade Commission's "How Will Journalism Survive The Internet Age" conference, where he brought a strong message for members of Congress: Don't even think about bailing out journalism with taxpayer money! And then, Murdoch delivered a whole bunch of other, decidedly mixed messages to those lawmakers!

Obviously, to anyone in journalism who doesn't want the White House Press Office to be their personal assignment editors, standing up to a massive government intervention in journalism has some merit. But while Murdoch paid lip service to "Constitutional sensitivities," he was more emphatic in his dislike of extant "bailout" models, most notably those that have propped up the auto industry for the sake of -- in Murdoch's words -- propping up "products that consumers do not want."

Of course, the irony here is that Murdoch would like the government to pave the way for News Corp. to become the first-ever too-big-to-fail media conglomerate by doing away with the current FCC regulations that impede cross-ownership. Murdoch insisted that these regulations block innovation, and that deregulation in this arena would actually pave the way for new competition for "people like me." Competition that would spring up by magic, I guess!

Of course, it's not like Murdoch has no use for the heavy hand of government intervention! If lawmakers could just see their way to radically change copyright law, and gut the current interpretation of "fair use"... well, that would be swell! That would allow Murdoch to win his battle with "aggregators" who "think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production... The wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not fair use," Murdoch told the conference attendees, "To be impolite, it is theft."

Just not a form of "theft" that's covered by existing legal statutes, hence the desire for what Jeff Bercovici correctly terms "a legislative bailout."

Despite the carping at fair use and the contradictory marching orders for lawmakers, Murdoch is nevertheless bullish about the future of journalism. His vision for News Corp. is that of an organization committed to expanding with frictionless flexibility into newer and more innovative platforms that fit the "lifestyles" of as many users as possible. "Consumers," Murdoch said, "do not want to be chained to a box in their homes." Murdoch extolled the virtues of enabling users to read content on the move, and while he emphatically denied any interest in getting into "the hardware business," he signaled that he'd be aggressively expanding into the burgeoning e-reader market.

He also indicated that he'd make good on his threat to get behind pay walls: "Your business model, based on advertising, is dead." He then went on to restate his intention to eventually extend the Wall Street Journal's pay model to all News Corp. properties.

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Murdoch to Washington: Stay out of the way, but please help [Daily Finance]

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