It’s one of those stories where you can read just the headline of the article then move on. Because, honestly, do you really need to delve into the body of a story that boasts the absurd (but true!) headline: NATO chief asks for Russian help in Afghanistan?

The NATO chief later said that he had asked Russian leaders to allow the alliance to fly cargoes — including possibly military ones — over Russian territory to Afghanistan and to provide more helicopters for the Afghan armed forces.

“I indicated that we would like to see a widening of the transit conditions,” he told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Medvedev would consider NATO’s requests, but gave no indication that Moscow was willing to increase cooperation and Rasmussen said he did not expect an immediate answer.

Students of history will recall that the Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted some nine years, led to the deaths of 15,000 Soviet soldiers, and is widely credited as one of the factors that led to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Russian reticence to get more involved is understandable, then, and the nine year conflict that broke the Soviet Union’s spirit has often been referred to as the Soviet Vietnam. The only question now is whether Afghanistan will turn out to be our Vietnam… er wait, I mean… that didn’t come out quite right.

(Via Michael Moore)

t’s ON! As the Senate health care reform bill nears a possible-maybe-if-Joe-Lieberman-isn’t-paying-attention chance of passage, a dispute is breaking out in the liberal blogosphere as to whether the bill in question (and the reconciliation bill that would result from the Senate/House conference) is an awful, shitty, rotten,
low, stinking, kick below the belt with a pair of steel toed boots right smack in the beleaguered crotch of working Americans, that’s worth supporting because, Goddamit it’s better than nothing; or whether it’s far worse even than that and should be put out to pasture next to the stinking corpse of Joe Lieberman’s sense of shame.

On the one hand, we’ve got every progressive’s favorite statistician, Nate Silver, crunching the numbers and suggesting that without the Senate bill, Americans will shortly find themselves wallowing in a hell-hole swamp of misery and disease as premiums for a family of 4 shoot up to somewhere north of $19,500.00 by 2016. With the Senate bill, Silver argues:

A family of four earning an income of $54,000 would pay $4,000 in premiums, and could expect to incur another $5,000 in out-of-pocket costs. The $4,000 premium represents a substantial discount, because the government is covering 72 percent of the premium — meaning that the gross cost of the premium is $14,286, some $10,286 of which the government pays. Read more »

As if anyone really needed a reason to despise Joe Lieberman even more… David Herszenhorn’s New York Times blog helps flesh out just how odious Lieberman (I. – Insurance Lobby) really is. By now it has been widely reported that Lieberman’s opposition to a Medicare buy-in plan for Americans aged 55 and older stands in sharp contrast to positions he took just a few months ago, and seems to have emerged just as the possibility of such an arrangement began to take fruition. What Herszenhorn newly reveals, are Lieberman’s stated reason for the flip flop: Read more »

In a move that will surely come as a surprise to everyone in America who hasn’t figured out yet that she is little more than a shallow, dimwitted, opportunistic coward, part-time Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin has publicly announced that she is too chicken-shit to face Al Gore in a one on one debate on the subject of Global Warming. Read more »

onfession time: When I was but a lad I spent a few years studying at a relatively well known Northeastern university which shall remain nameless except to say that it wasn’t Yale because, Jesus Christ, I’ve got standards, OK? Cut me some slack. At any rate, in the process of becoming “well rounded” I did take a political philosophy course with a Professor named Cohen. In fact, there were two Professor Cohens in my alma matter’s Political Science Department: one who was often invited to chair Presidential advisory panels and dated super models, and one who didn’t. My professor Cohen was the latter. And the reason my Professor Cohen didn’t chair Presidential Advisory Panels or date supermodels, I suspect, is because he lacked a certain… er… how shall I put it… intellectual rigor. If you asked him to, for instance, define “fascism,” the guy would ramble on for ages about militarism, cults of personality, authoritarianism, institutional racism, and blah, blah, blah. And when it was all over you were no closer to determining whether your RA confiscating your roomate’s water bong was an act of fascism or not. You knew it was fascism, of course, but Professor Cohen had done precious little to help you argue the case. Read more »

The problem: Hanukkah songs are all uniformly lame, unlike Christmas songs which are, without exception, awesome.

The solution? Choose one from the following list:

A) Commission Southpark co-creator and Jew Matt Stone to pen a handful of humorously offbeat additions to the seasonal canon.

B) Arrange a Hanukkah themed musical collaboration between ex-Dire Straits guitarst Mark Knopfler (Jewish father) and Jewish singer songwriter Janis Ian.

C) Have ultra-conservative Utah Senator and devout Mormon song-smith Orrin Hatch pen a few ditties in honor of the Festival of Lights.

You know what’s coming next without me even having to tell you, don’t you? That’s right: If you picked C… congratulations.

Sorry my Jewish friends, but this Hanukkah thing of yours just got a teensy bit lamer.

Given recent developments on both the domestic and international front, it is easy to become dispirited, shaking our heads at many of the decisions of the current Administration and wondering whether all our efforts and hard work were really worth the election of a President who, in retrospect and all too often, seems  far removed from the hopeful agent of change we enthusiastically supported. At what point and by whom were we informed that we should  set aside expectations nurtured by an energetic campaigner’s steady diet of “hope” and “change”  and instead satisfy ourselves with cold plate of “not as bad as the other guy?”

Leaves a bitter aftertaste, doesn’t it? Read more »