Leave of Absence (Sort of)

I'm not going to be here much over the next two or three weeks -- it's art fair season in Chicago, and I'm working for Art in the Park, starting today. With any luck, I actually will have a day off somewhere along the line -- I think. Maybe.

However, I did run across this excellent post by Digby. It's mostly about Joe Klein, who seems to be another highly-touted nonentity, but I found this section resonating:

But most Democrats are not pacifists, even the liberals he seems to loathe with such a passion. Most of us simply do not believe that the United States' security, "honor" or credibility has been well served by hardliner hawks who are in a constant state of hysteria agitating for war all the time to prove the country's military prowess. They've been doing this as long as I can remember and it's always been absurd.

The vast majority of the country supported the Afghanistan operation, as did most of the world. But the left and the rest of the world checked out over Iraq, and obviously not because we believed that all use of American force is immoral --- it was because the plan was fucking hallucinatory. If there were intelligent, well-informed, tough centrists around you sure as hell didn't find them in the DC wading pool where Joe Klein was climbing into George W. Bush's codpiece as fast as his chubby little arms and legs would carry him. There were plenty of smart, well-informed tough liberals around the country, however, who understood that the Iraq war was a huge strategic error from the first moment the administration began doing the war dance.

I found it particularly interesting since I had just read this post from Jane Hamsher:

Newt didn’t just support the war. In addition to sitting on the Defense Policy Board and being one of its more enthusiastic cheerleaders, he created a climate where it became impossible to question the war, the rationals given for it or any of the disastrous decisions made by George W. Bush by branding people who did so as anti-American turncoats. . . .

So we should embrace Newt’s apostasy? I don’t think so. He’s admitted no culpability, taken no responsibility for his role in all of this. As Bill Sher argues, he’s probably just dancing around trying to find a new neocon frame for the whole mess that will wash with an increasingly disillusioned public. One that, I suspect, will include the wisdom of going to war with Iran ("you see, the war we really wanted was…")

I guess I’m just not the "forgiving" type when it comes to the likes of Newt. Don’t expect me to joining any kind of applause chorus any time soon.

It's not just the Republicans who are in disarray. It's everyone except us -- the great unwashed.

I've also been getting some good feedback on my post about Russ Feingold, which may wind up being another post here. Look for it.