Just Another Manic Monday...

Michael Barone states the obvious: “A Bitter clash is coming over Iraq.” Interestingly, he opens with this thought:

Cynics surely found the words of good will exchanged by the new speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the new House minority leader, John Boehner, at the opening session of the new Congress to be hypocritical and insincere. The two leaders are grizzled veteran pols, after all, who have not been known to be on close, much less candid, terms with each other over the years. But I know them both, and I believe they were speaking genuinely from the heart.

Count me as one of those cynics. I attempted to watch the House opening ceremonies last week (twice, even: once in real time and once in a re-run) but simply could not. Mr. Barone has a leg up on me, though, as he knows the individuals involved and I only know them through what I’ve seen on the Tee Vee and read in the media. But, yeah…Pelosi’s remarks, in particular, struck me as very hypocritical. So much so that I voted with my feet the remote and changed channels.

Mr. Barone continues:

Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have made it clear that they take the Democratic victory last November as a mandate for withdrawal from Iraq. That's a point you could argue with -- you could make a case from the polls that what voters want most of all is victory and success. But Pelosi and Reid and almost all of their Democratic colleagues are sincere in their view, which is at the least plausible.

George W. Bush, from all accounts, seems to take a different view. He evidently sees the November result as a verdict of dissatisfaction with unsuccess and lack of victory, and so is promising a "new way forward." He has been prompted by his party's "thumpin'" to change the way he manages.

I agree with the President’s view, if that is indeed the way Dubya views things. Madame Pelosi and Mssr. Reid ought to tread very carefully here. Misunderestimating the American public’s opinion, which, to my way of thinking, is much more about the lack of success in Iraq than the fact we’re still there. Americans simply hate to lose. And that goes double when the stakes are so high. I’m sure at least some of the Dems realize their majority is a fragile thing and could be lost every bit as quickly as it was gained.

Related… Today’s featured article (A Heavier Iraq ‘Footprint’) on the WSJ’s Opinion Journal site. Excerpt:

If the stakes in Iraq are as great as Mr. Bush says--and we believe they are--then he should commit whatever forces are needed to achieve success. The public's support for the Iraq campaign is waning, in major part because the casualties and expense have been producing no visible progress. Even with Democrats running Congress, Mr. Bush has a political window to pursue a more robust security strategy. The paradox is that the fastest way home from Iraq is a bolder commitment now.

On that score, it is appropriate that Mr. Bush is replacing his Iraq military team. Centcom Commander John Abizaid, who is retiring, can point to successful campaigns to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. His oft-derided "light footprint" strategy for securing Iraq has also been right for much of the country, with Kurdistan able to handle its own security and southern Iraq now transitioning to Iraqi control.

But General Abizaid and ground commander George Casey--who is leaving for a Pentagon post--never found the formula for the insurgent-troubled Sunni areas, and in recent months for Shiite death squads in Baghdad.

There’s much more, and it’s all good.

So…didja see P.J. on “In Depth” yesterday (video here)? I watched the whole three hours; some of it twice when the show was re-run at midnite (ET) last evening. The interview was every bit as good as I thought it would be, and for once my great expectations didn’t result in a great disappointment. I was disappointed to find Mr. O’Rourke holds bloggers, and blogging, in contempt, describing blogs as “free. And worth it.” and “‘What I did on my summer vacation,’ for adults.” Another revelation that didn’t surprise me is P.J. hates to write, stating that writing is hard work. That’s something of a no-brainer when you write for a living, and I relate to that sentiment from experience. He also added, in an off-hand way, that he suspected only bloggers really enjoy writing. True enough, I suppose. I do enjoy the writing I do for the blog.

One of the better lines from the interview: P.J., who was raised in a Republican household, quoting his grandmother’s response to his question about the difference between Republicans and Democrats: “Democrats rent.”

Mr. O’Rourke is something of a Luddite, freely admitting he doesn’t use the internet and does all his writing on an IBM Selectric, of which he owns “at least five.” Damn, P.J….you need to come into the 21^st century! It’s nice in here!

This is both amusing and sad…

THE "DIRTY DOZEN" list of "America's Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses" is out — and Los Angeles-area institutions of higher learning have walked away with one-fourth of the ranked honors (or dishonors). Occidental College, an 1,800-student liberal arts school in Eagle Rock, is the only college on the list to collect not one but two citations for excellence at offering trendy theories of gender, skin color and white-male oppression at the expense of actual academic content.

I laughed, I cried. What the Hell ever happened to Basket Weaving?

And so it goes…