This is not the special election post-mortem I wanted to write.  Not even close.

I'm not going to bother trying to offer analysis of who's to blame for the loss -- as Nate Silver points out in one of his posts today at 538, there's plenty of blame to go around.  But I do have a couple of things to say.

To my friends on the right:  Enjoy your victory ( Read more... )

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is now saying that he felt pressured by others in the Bush Administration to raise the nation's terrorism threat level on the eve on the 2004 Presidential Election.  The only thing I find surprising about this is that anybody could be surprised by it.  The worst kept secret in America during the ( Read more... )

I'm still not ready to return to the full-length BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award entries I was posting during the political campaign.  But I did want to give out this special Inauguration Week BOW Award, because it seems so richly deserved.

No, I'm not giving it to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, for his mangling of the ( Read more... )

Let me start with this:  I have many friends and acquaintances who are conservatives and Republicans.  I disagree with all of them on most issues, but I believe them all to be thoughtful, intelligent people.  My mother-in-law and father-in-law are both Republicans.  I have tremendous respect for both of their intellects.  There are many on the GOP ( Read more... )

Yesterday we learned that U.S. Forces in Anbar Province, Iraq will be pulled out on -- what a coincidence! -- Monday, the opening day of the Republican National Convention.  Today, just hours before Barack Obama gives his much anticipated acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, and just a few days before the RNC, the Bush ( Read more... )

Yeah, okay, I'm in political mode.  But this is just too outrageous to ignore.  Want to know why David Petraeus is John McCain's BFF?  Just check today's news headlines.  It was announced today that U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq will be handing over military control of the Anbar Province to the Iraqi Army on Monday, thus marking the culmination of the ( Read more... )

Today I bring back the BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award, after a hiatus of several weeks. I feel a bit refreshed and I’m ready to go after Buffoons wherever they may hide. Fortunately, Buffoons are no better at hiding than they are at doing much of anything, so this shouldn’t be too hard. And, as it happens, there was enough Buffoonery on display ( Read more... )

This will be my last BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award for a few weeks.  I'm going on vacation and the BOW is going on hiatus.  I'll get back to it eventually, but I have to admit to being a little burned out on the award right now.  Why?  A couple of reasons.  I put a lot of work into the weekly posts and after a week of writing whatever book I ( Read more... )

What a week!  It seems that with this being an abbreviated work week because of the 4th of July holiday, the usual idiots in the media and politics went out of their way to fit in a full week's worth of buffoonery.  So we have lots of choices for this installment of the BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award.

We begin, as we did last week, with a ( Read more... )

A delayed BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award this week.  I was going to post it yesterday afternoon, but (this is a true story) just as I sat down to write the thing, a thunderstorm moved into the area and we lost power.  No computer.  No satellite, no internet.  Fortunately I hadn't actually started writing, so I didn't lose anything, but that's why ( Read more... )