Frank Rich: Shuffling Off to Crawford, 2007 Edition

And so the president, firm in his resolve against “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” heads toward another August break in Crawford while Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan remains determined to strike in America. No one can doubt Mr. Bush’s triumph in the P.R. war:

There are more American troops than ever mired in Iraq, sent there by a fresh round of White House fictions. And the real war?

The enemy that did attack us six years ago, sad to say, is likely to persist in its nasty habit of operating in the reality-based world that our president disdains.

Claws are out for 'First Ladies'

'Puppy killer', 'pole-dancer', 'scheming': the spouses of America's presidential candidates are facing tough criticism and intense scrutiny as the campaign turns dirty.

It is a brutal battle of whispering campaigns, gossip-laced leaks and highly disciplined PR machines.

It is a world where image outweighs reality and where any sign of weakness or an unscripted gaffe could derail a bid for the White House.

The US presidential nomination process? Not exactly. Instead it is the battle royal being waged between the candidates' spouses. As the Republican and Democratic parties are both choosing presidential candidates for 2008, never before have so many potential First Ladies - and one First Gentleman - battled it out so publicly.

In a mirror image of the candidates' race, the fight has spawned an industry of advisers, lobbyists, hangers-on, focus groups and spin doctors. It has also provided acres of column inches for an American media that seems every bit as obsessed with the future President's other half as it is with the next occupant of the Oval Office.

Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare.

Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis.

Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep.

Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio.

He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written.

And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.

When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.

How We Won the Mainstream

Three years ago things looked bleak for the Democratic Party. George Bush had just won a second term while his party consolidated its grip on Congress. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay crowed about a "permanent Republican majority," and Beltway Democrats acquiesced as Republicans built their unchallenged (and lawless) unitary executive.

Democrats appeared to be on the run, disorganized and demoralized. But outside of Washington there was hope.

Grass-roots Democratic activists had seen the future of our politics in Howard Dean -- plain-spoken and unapologetic.

His presidential candidacy had come up short, but its fresh, optimistic approach -- predicated on offering clear contrasts between the two parties -- was poised to redefine the party.

Romney Wins Iowa's GOP Poll

With a convincing victory in the Republican straw poll here Saturday, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney vaulted himself into the next phase of a presidential nomination battle pitting his traditional early-state strategy against a more unorthodox approach by national front-runner Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Romney's win in the nonbinding Ames contest, sealed by his appeals to the party's conservative base and generous spending all around the state, underscored his attempt to concentrate time and resources on the opening states of Iowa and New Hampshire, believing that early victories will propel him to the nomination.

Giuliani, who is at odds with GOP conservatives on abortion and gay rights, skipped the Iowa test run as part of a blueprint for victory that is less dependent upon winning the first two voting states.

Giuliani strategists see a flock of big states holding their contests in late January and on the first Tuesday in February as the former New York mayor's best chance to secure the nomination.

Democrats Say Leaving Iraq May Take Years

Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in the region to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north.

These positions and those of some rivals suggest that the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict — however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies the problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief. Antiwar advocates have raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats.

George Bush is a True Glass-Half-Full Kind of Guy

No matter how obviously dire a situation, there is usually some idiot on hand, someone who is bewilderingly able to "put a new perspective" on horrifyingly high civilian death tolls, or suggest that one can't make a big democracy omelette without breaking a few hundred thousand eggs (I paraphrase slightly).

Yet occasionally a statistic comes along that seems indefensibly absurd.

.And so it was with this week's news that the United States has lost 190,000 weapons issued to the Iraqi security forces since the 2003 invasion.

George Bush is going to have trouble spinning this one.

No doubt he'll pull something out of the bag. I see yet another of those speeches in which the president feigns surprise and frustration at the media's failure to report the good news coming out of Iraq.

I see him grinning: "I welcome the Iraqis' eagerness to embrace a market economy." A black market, admittedly, on which the main commodity traded is stolen US weaponry, but it's a truly significant step. Or perhaps he could couch it in different terms.

"I look at Iraq and I see strong growth in key sectors." The weaponry transaction sector, sure - but really, we can all see a definite spike here.

Gail Collins: Republicans in the Straw

Today 40,000 Republicans are expected to make a pilgrimage to a large tent in Ames, Iowa, where they will eat an enormous amount of free food and vote for a presidential candidate.

Mitt Romney is going to serve barbecue, and one of his sons has just visited all 99 counties. I don’t think we need say more.

The Iowa Republicans are known for being socially conservative, and the candidates are dragging in every relative they can get their hands on to demonstrate their familial credentials.

“Mom and Dad will be up on Saturday,” promised Senator Sam Brownback, possibly embarrassed that he had come to the Iowa State Fair armed with only one daughter. Romney moves around with so many photogenic sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren that they look like one of those singing families that were so popular in the ’70s.

(“Now here’s the Romneys with their No. 1 hit, “I Woke Up in Cedar Rapids This Morning.”)

Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but all the divorced candidates have taken a pass on the straw poll. The rest have been fighting over who opposes abortion the most.

(There are eight Republicans campaigning here, and if you can name them all you need to re-examine your priorities.)

Bob Herbert: A Bloodbath in Newark, and Beyond

The mayor was talking about the violent crime that, like a dragon from some Medieval fairy tale, continues to devour the lives of young Americans, especially those in poor black and brown neighborhoods. This is a tale with no happy ending in sight.

Newark has been convulsed since last weekend when the dragons materialized late at night in the rundown playground behind a public school.

A 19-year-old college student, Natasha Aeriel, was gravely wounded by a gunshot to the head. Her three companions, including her 18-year-old brother, Terrance, were then marched at gunpoint down a flight of stone steps and ordered to face a 6-foot-high concrete wall.

The youngsters were told to kneel and then were executed with shots to the back of the head in a tableau that seemed too insane to be real.

Staring at the wall in daylight, under an extremely hot August sun,

I found myself resisting the idea that this really happened, that three young people really died right there, like casualties in a war zone.

Republicans Are Sex Perverts

There's something sick and perverted about the right-wing mind set. These people have an obsessively sexual agenda. They are way more fixated with sexual transgression than me and my porn star friends put together, and in a gross exhibitionist way.

Reviving the Anti-War Movement: Support the Iraqi Resistance

Has the Left been neutered? It struck me that the greatest taboo of the antiwar movement is to show the slightest empathy for the resistance fighters in Iraq. They are never mentioned as people for whom we should show concern, much less admiration.

The Gospel According to St. George: 50 God Quotes from Bush

"I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." THus spake our crazy Christian-in-Chief

Rudy Giuliani: Probably the Most Laughable Presidential Candidate Ever

The downside of a possible Rudy Giuliani presidency is that one could see him blowing up significant portions of the world and attempting to lock down the rest. The upside is that until he did these things, he'd be awfully entertaining.

Stock Market Crisis Could Become Crash & Catastrophe [Caustic Video]

Many analysts say the real test will come in September, when private equity firms and investment banks will need to find investors for an estimated $330 billion in bonds and loans needed to finance corporate buyouts that already have been announced.

"Pretty Vacant'' Bush on Vacation

You may think It's unbelievable that Congress has left for its traditional August recess and that Bush is heading off to Kennebunkport and then to Texas for an undeserved rest. None of this really matters, because the war in Iraq is on autopilot.

NYT to Abandon Op/Ed Subscription Charges

The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

Personal Note; I've been fighting to bring down the subscription wall since it was put in place [nearly two years ago] by posting most Op/Ed articles.

I was threatened with a lawsuit a year ago if I continued publishing.

I've been doing it indirectly since, by linking to blogs that were still managing to publish

I like to think that we played a part in bringing to the NYT 'wall' down. Ed

Paul Krugman: Very Scary Things

Yesterday, President Bush, showing off his M.B.A. vocabulary, similarly tried to reassure the markets. But Mr. Bush is, let’s say, a bit lacking in credibility.

On the other hand, it’s not clear that anyone could do the trick: right now we’re suffering from a serious shortage of saviors. And that’s too bad, because we might need one.

What’s been happening in financial markets over the past few days is something that truly scares monetary economists: liquidity has dried up.

That is, markets in stuff that is normally traded all the time — in particular, financial instruments backed by home mortgages — have shut down because there are no buyers.

This could turn out to be nothing more than a brief scare. At worst, however, it could cause a chain reaction of debt defaults.

David Brooks: The Straw Poll Man

romney is the world’s worst culture warrior. George H. W. Bush’s son could resent the coastal cultural elites, but George Romney’s son just can’t.

He’s a 1950s consensus man — he asked his grandkids to call him Ike, after his hero — who is play-acting at being Pat Buchanan. He’s unable to do anger. I asked him recently who he hated, and he dodged the question.

Finally, Romney’s real passions seem sparked by issues he rarely gets to talk about.

When I asked him why the G.O.P. is in such bad straits, he said it’s because the party had ceded issues like the environment, education and health care to the Democrats.

Somehow the Romney campaign seems less like an authentic conservative campaign than an outsider’s view of what a conservative campaign should be.

It oversimplifies everything, and underexploits the G.O.P.’s vestigial longing for efficient administration. I suspect the Romney campaign would do even better if it let the real Mitt Romney out to play.

E.J. Dionne: The Politics of Fear Live On

The episode was the culmination of a shameful era in which serious issues related to national security and civil liberties were debated in a climate of fear and intimidation, saturated by political calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage.

Politically, Republicans won this round in two ways. They got the president the bill he wanted and, as a result, they created absolute fury in the Democratic base.

Pelosi has received more than 200,000 e-mails of protest, according to an aide, for letting the bill go forward.

Democrats concede they made an enormous tactical blunder by not dealing with the issue earlier, forcing the question to the fore in the days before the recess.

One anxiety hovered over the debate: If a terrorist attack happened and Congress had not given Bush what he wanted, the Democrats would get blamed for a lack of vigilance.

"Could something happen over August?" Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) asked in an interview.

"Sure it could. What bothered me is that too many Democrats allowed that fear to turn into a demand for some atrocious legislation."

Noam Chomsky: How Propaganda Works in the West

The American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it deserves a new name. It not propaganda any more, it's “prop-agenda.” It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about.

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