A Monday Mashup Of Neocon Nuttery

Doing what I do so you don’t have to – to begin, Oliver North at creators.com tells us here (in response to what President-Elect Obama may do concerning Iraq) that…

…a "total pullout" from Iraq invites the theocrats in Tehran, who are the world leaders in exporting terror and are intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, to further ambition and adventure in the region. This week, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, obviously concerned about a premature U.S. retreat, said that candidate Obama "reassured us that he would not take any drastic or dramatic decisions." In case the point was missed, he added: "When there is a reality check, I think any U.S. president has to look very hard at the facts on the ground. The gains that we have attained and won with hard struggle and a great deal of sacrifice need to be sustained."

Based on this Times Online story, though, I think Zebari seems at least as concerned about what we would be able to do legally within his country under the status of forces agreement (which apparently has not been ratified because of squabbling over a withdrawal date – my source on that is the K.O. video from here) as he is about “a premature U.S. retreat”…

In one of the most detailed insights yet into the content of the deal, (Zebari) has also told The Times that the US military would be barred from unilaterally mounting attacks inside Iraq from next year.

In addition, the power of arrest for US soldiers would be curbed by the need to hand over any detainee to a new, US-Iraqi committee. Troops would require the green light from this joint command before conducting any operation.

The Pentagon refused to comment last night on the proposals laid out in the draft agreement between Baghdad and Washington that covers the status of US forces beyond 2008.

By the way, for anyone wondering why I’m commenting on someone like Oliver North, it is because in this New York Times Magazine story yesterday about the flawed, fetid reign of Bushco, retiring Virginia Repug Senator John Warner is discussed, and the article notes how Warner refused to campaign for North when the notorious Iran-Contra figure ran for the U.S. Senate in 1994; with that, it’s safe to say that Warner did his state and the country a favor (it would have been so far beyond a joke if North had actually won, seeing as how he lied to members of the very body in which he hoped to serve – Wikipedia tells us here that North was convicted of three charges related to Iran-Contra, though those convictions were eventually overturned with the help of the ACLU, strangely enough).

(And speaking of Iraq, Atrios tells us the following from here, just before Joe Scar's "F" blast.)

Next, we have Kimberly A. Strassel of the Murdoch Street Journal telling us the following (so much here to wade through, but I’ll concentrate on this excerpt for now)…

All but one of (Sen. Harry) Reid's 51 caucus members voted last year to proceed with legislation eliminating union secret ballots, and all 50 knew it would never become law. (Chief “Roadblock Republican” Mitch) McConnell has his own list of vulnerable Democrats who he -- with the help of the business community -- will remind of the electoral consequences of enacting a measure hated by 80% of the country, according to polls.

Really? 80 percent of the country opposes the Employee Free Choice Act?

Not according to economist Mark Weisbrot, who tells us here that…

A poll by Global Strategies Group this month found that 68 percent of middle-class Americans support the Employee Free Choice Act. Polls also indicate that tens of millions would join a union if they had the choice.

And finally, what would the “Monday stupids” be without the latest piffle from the New York Times’ conservative quota hire Kristol Mess himself here…

…there was virtually no change in the voters’ ideological self-identification: in 2008, 22 percent called themselves liberal, up only marginally from 21 percent in 2004; 34 percent were conservative, unchanged from the last election; and 44 percent called themselves moderate, compared with 45 percent in 2004.

In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country. Conservatives and the Republican Party will have a real chance for a comeback — unless the skills of the new president turn what was primarily an anti-Bush vote into the basis for a new liberal governing era.

I guess it would have been too much for Irving’s boy to read his colleague Frank Rich yesterday, who tells us here that…

We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.

Well, at least, among the “faithful,” you can count on Mike Huckabee pal Chuck Norris to be honest here; wrong, but honest.