Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, the definition of a civil war is a "war between political factions or regions within the same country."

(Whew!  For a second, there, I thought he was describing the U.S.)

That is exactly what is going on in Iraq, not a global war on terrorism, as the President continues to portray it.

93 percent of those fighting in Iraq are Iraqis. A very small percentage of the fighting is being done by foreign fighters. Our troops are caught in between the fighting. 80 percent of Iraqis want us out of there and 45 percent think it is justified to kill American troops.

The ethnic and religious strife in Iraq has been going on, not for decades or centuries, but for millennia. These particular explosive hatreds and tensions will be there if our troops leave in six months, six years or six decades. It is time to re-deploy our troops and to re-focus our attention on the real threats posed by global terrorism.

Third, Al Gore, framing his speech for MLK Day around the current Constitutional crisis:

"We are at a point of constitutional crisis.  The president who has violated the law is acting above the law. It's a wakeup call for Congress, the American people and the courts. If we continue down this road we will have a different constitution."

For those of you with a strong stomach, here's David Brooks' latest summation on the Democrats (and no, I won't link; you can't make me):

The big story of American politics, which was underlined by every hour of the Alito hearings, is that sometime between 1932 and 1968, the DNA of the Democratic Party fundamentally changed. In 1932, the Democrats had working-class DNA. Today, the Democrats have different DNA, the DNA of a minority party.

Send him your thoughts, or post any here.

Perhaps best of all, Harry Reid has some choice words in his op-ed today, which Brooks might need to read (my emphasis, because it's good.):

Our nation's capital has been overrun by organized crime -- Tom DeLay-style. The gangsters are the lobbyists, cronies and lawmakers who have banded together and abused their power to serve their own self-interest. The casinos are the Capitol, which has had its doors thrown open for special interests to waltz in and help themselves, and the victims, of course, are the American people.

There is a price to pay for the culture of corruption, and we can see it in the state of our union.

And finally, for your reading pleasure, on what is turning out otherwise to be a WH photo-op day  bombarding us with state-controlled media messages on Alito, Iraq, Iran, and our own Gulf Coast, take a moment to appreciate the directness and clarity of Molly Ivins:

The governor of Texas is despicable. Of all the crass pandering, of all the gross political kowtowing to ignorance, we haven't seen anything this rank from Gov. Goodhair since, gee, last fall.

Then, he was trying to draw attention away from his spectacular failure on public schools by convincing Texans that gay marriage was a horrible threat to us all. Now, he's trying to disguise the fact that the schools are in freefall by proposing we teach creationism in biology classes.

But here's the best part, after whacking the latest hypocrisy of Tom DeLay's insistence on his "ethical" behavior :

Equally stupefying is the attempted emergence of Newt Gingrich, of all people, as an arbiter of ethics. Gingrich has been going about the media, holding forth on the shortcomings of today's Republicans. Let's see, that would be the same Newt Gingrich who originally started using the lobby as an arm of the Republican Party, right? Same Gingrich had the distinction of being the only House speaker to be reprimanded by his colleagues for ethical wrongdoing? Same Gingrich who was accused of misusing nonprofit organizations for political purposes, personally benefiting from political contributions, cutting a sleazy book deal and giving false statements to ethics investigators? Same Gingrich who was fined $300,000 for said lying? I thought it was that Gingrich.

They must really think we're morons.

Hey, maybe it's not such a dreary day after all!

Read, write, post, comment, enjoy, and celebrate.