At the End of the Day - February 28, 2008

No tears with the histrionics this time but still in all, it was a pretty good rendition of a hissy-fit. At a closed-door gathering of The Coven meeting of Republican House members, Minority Leader Boehner berated GOP lawmakers and told them to "get off their dead asses" and raise more money for the GOP. When he was done haranguing, he passed the baton to Roy Blunt and Tom Cole for a little more browbeating. (--BG)

Q: How do you effectively use military force against these guys? A: You can't. Former CIA case officer and forensic Psychiatrist Mark Sageman has published a new book, Leaderless Jihad. Take everything you think you know about terrorism and throw it in the dustbin. The crux of Sageman's thesis is that we have whipped ourselves into a frenzy and set the kitchen alight, then poured gasoline on the fire by invading and occupying Iraq. The first link takes you to the Ignatius column, and the second one takes you to Amazon to order the book. You should probably click them both. (--BG)

The more things change, the more they stay the same...Yet another witness against the officers thugs who ran the "dirty war" has turned up dead. It was the latest act of intimidation in a wave of killings and kidnappings that are being undertaken to try to stop the historic trials in Argentina from going forth. (--BG)

3/4/5...The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment (3/4) based at Twentynine Palms, CA, has deployed to Iraq for their fifth tour. Reportedly, they are the first, but certainly won't be the last. The DoD is trying to spin a bright side to all these repeated deployments by maintaining that the fore is now the most battle-hardened in decades. But this is only true at the CO level. Fully 60% of the 3/4 are on their first deployment. This makes me ache for the Sergeants, especially if they have more than a couple of green Lieutenants. No matter, the Sergeants will do their best to keep every mother's son safe and get him home alive. (--BG)

Claire, would you please, for the love of Truman, sit down and shut the hell up? This is the stupidest issue ever. If you are born on a military base overseas, while one or both of your parents are billeted on foreign soil, you are born a citizen and you are eligible to be president. Period. And as soon as it was mentioned, the appropriate response should have been mockery and derision, with a healthy dose of incredulous"how f*cking stupid are you"??? But our junior senator from Missouri saw an opportunity to kiss a little Publican ass, so you know she jumped on the opportunity with both feet. (--BG)

Don't you get the feeling that the people of Iran are probably about as embarrased and humiliated by their president as we are by ours? Bush sneaks into Iraq, Ahmadinejad announces his trip with fanfare and flourish and will attend religious shines. (It's like Malta in slo-mo, with sand instead of choppy seas...) Seriously...If a genie came to me with three wishes, one of them would be for a steel-cage death-match between Bush and Ahmadinejad. Five will get you ten, the first to die would be from dehydration, because I don't think either one of the puffed up weenies has any actual, you know, fight, in 'em. (--BG)

According to Wired Blog Network, the ACLU estimates that U.S. Terror Watch List now surpasses 900,000 names. That is up from 755,000 in May 2007. That number is disputed by Terrorist Screening Center spokesman Chad Kolton who says actually contains about 300,000 people due to aliases and that only some 5 percent -- approximately 15,000, are U.S. persons. If there were 300,000 terrorists in the whole damn world or there were 15,000 in the United States all of our cities would have long ago been turned into killing fields. Heck of a job Michael, heck of a job.

Wednesday HR 5351, The Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008, passed the house 236-182. Now it heads to the Senate.

And finally, we close tonights End of the Day with some good news - There is a power sharing agreement in Kenya that could bring an end to the ethnic violence that has plagued that nation since elections several weeks ago. (--BG)


That's it for Thursday, and Friday dawns...What, o what, will the newsdump bring? Leave your predictions in comments.