Between work and paying my poll tax,* I’ll be pretty busy today. Quick prediction: big Obama win, in the 330-350 electoral vote range. We’ll know by 8 or so whether or not I’m right. What say you all?
*Seriously, liberals are such GD whiners. Suck it up.

The London Times has the most detailed write up of the raid into Syria that netted us Abu Ghadiya, a write up that includes this little nugget:
According to one source, the special forces operation had taken place with the full cooperation of the Syrian intelligence services.
“Immediately after 9/11, Syrian intelligence cooperation was remarkable,” said the [...]

Scenes from the most frightening movie of all time:

Best song ever? Quite possibly. And this video ain’t bad, either.

Yes, there is a difference between imperfect cooperation and no cooperation at all. See: Saudi Arabia. The problem with your argument is that, at this point in time, THERE IS NO COOPERATION FROM SYRIA. Ignoring the fact that American soldiers and Iraqi citizens are being killed in the blind hope that Syria might one day [...]

I’m just curious: Did anyone actually watch the Obama infomercial? I did because the good folks at Culture11 asked me to participate in a symposium about its impact. You can find that here.
But I don’t think it counts if you’re being paid to watch something. Any regular, politically-minded folks out there who tuned in? I’m [...]

…that Syria’s going to stop doing something it wasn’t doing anyway? Namely: patrolling its border and keeping terrorists from striking American citizens within Iraq? It’s going to continue to allow terrorists to make life a living hell for the Iraqis we’re trying to protect? Give me a break: It’s fatuous to make the argument that [...]

Over at DCist, Sommer has been writing about the MPD’s policy of random searches on the DC metro system:
So it’s a consent-based search, but if you refuse to be searched, leave, and then try to get on your way to your destination by another entrance, that’s suspicious behavior?
I mean…yes, that does sound suspicious. Doesn’t it? [...]

Perhaps it’s because I’m a bad person, but I took rare delight in this article about Bono, narcissist and overrated singer:
His humanitarian campaigning has earnt him the nickname St Bono. Off duty, however, the U2 singer seems to have been tempted into a spot of hell-raising.
Pictures show the 48-year-old with his arm round two bikini-clad [...]

But there’s no reason to assume that your actions will send things from bad to worse. You could formulate the argument about Iraq thusly: Saddam threatened for years to get a nuke, showed no real sign of slowing down in that pursuit, and we took him out as a warning to other tinpot dictators in [...]

A couple of months back, Matt Yglesias made the argument that Slate is a center right publication. As I demonstrated by totaling up the staff’s votes in 2000 and 2004, this notion is, on its face, imbecilic. Like, Simple Jack imbecilic.
Slate’s released their staff votes again, and guess who the winner is? Barack Obama, 55-1. [...]

Far be it from me to criticize a “foreign policy that works”–I must have missed that portion of history where Iran, North Korea, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories were filled with rainbows and sunshine and unicorns, please, excuse my ignorance. I mean, after all, if it wasn’t for Bush’s foreign policy fumbling, Iran would never [...]

Last-ditch, life-prolonging cancer medication: $4,000.
The suicide pill: $50.
Confirmation of all those slippery-slope arguments against assisted suicide: Priceless.

I don’t really want to belabor this, because David and I have very different conceptions of America’s duty to keep her people safe. But we have a situation where the following facts are, essentially, not in dispute:

Terrorist/insurgent groups are operating out of Syria, striking Americans and Iraqi citizens while also importing weapons into Iraq;
These groups [...]

David points out that someone in the military has confirmed that the U.S. struck a site in Syria that appears to have been a safe haven/entry point for terrorists into Iraq. Allow me to say first: Good. If the Syrians aren’t able to/won’t stop terrorists in their territory from crossing into neighboring countries and wreaking [...]

It seems Tom Waits is one litigious artist. He has filed (and won) no less than four lawsuits against such corporations as Frito-Lay, Levi’s, and Audi for copyright infringement. The Frito case is particularly great because they actually approached Tom Waits about using one of his songs (who would ever think a Tom Waits song [...]

I feel a new series of posts coming up. First there was this lady’s decision to deprive her kids of organized sports (because the icecaps are totally going to melt if you drive those thirty minutes to and from practice). Now there’s this piece up at Slate suggesting you “date local.” Like “eating local,” “dating [...]

Matt Yglesias bemoans the problem of children having access to proper dental care here, saying
16 percent of all children and twenty percent of children under the age of six live in households that are below the poverty line. A family of four is below the poverty line earning $21,200. If you’re a woman earning $21,200 [...]

Via Rod, I see there’s a lady who is quite upset that the New York Times poked fun at her propensity for thrift when it comes to energy consumption. She frames her argument in the usual apocalyptic terms environmentalists use–The icecaps are melting! The end is near!–and suggests that Americans are simply greedy pigs who [...]

Passing through campus today, I noticed a copy of Chicago Weekly, an independent University of Chicago newspaper, with a cover story on community-supported agriculture, tastefully titled “The Great Leap Forward.”
Hm. Having skimmed through the article, I satisfied myself that the title was not an expression of crytro-Maoism, nor a salvo in the why-won’t-people-realize-communists-are-as-bad-as-fascists? war. It [...]