Obama row hits Howard – National – theage.com.au

Prime Minister of Australia: “Obama opposed the troop surge in Iraq.  I bet the terrorists sure hope he wins the presidency in ’08”

Barack Obama: “Tough talk from a guy who’s only got 1400 of his own troops in Iraq when we’ve got 140,000 already.  Let him pony up 20,000 for his own damn surge and then we can talk.”

Those are my own paraphrases, not actual quotes.  Point is, Obama isn’t going to just sit back and take it when people try to slander him.  That’s a point in his favor over Kerry.  Poor Kerry.  I think he would have been a great candidate if he’d told his handlers, “bite me,” and defended himself from the right-wing lie machine.  Hearing this from Obama gives me some hope he’d be a good candidate in 08.

I mean, I think ’08 is a Democratic shoo-in anyway, but then, I thought that about ’04 for a while so I don’t want to get too cocky.

The New York Times is printing mysteriously unsourced statements about the fearsome evil of Iran — specifically, Michael R Gordon is passing on rumors from “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.” Via the Huffington Post, we look back on Michael R. Gordon’s previous work for the NYT — turn the clock back to September 8, 2002:

“More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administrations officials said today. In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.”

Ah, those aluminum tubes.

My first FAWM.ORG song.

We didn’t leave the house today.  Several of our nearby friends with kids brought them over for our kids’ birthday party.  Several friends who lived more than half a mile away had to cancel, cause there was just no way. Lots and lots of snow falling, and more importantly, lots of wind causing frequent whiteouts.  Hopefully it will be better tomorrow.  We’re supposed to have several days of low-single-digit high temperatures to go along with the snow though.  I guess it’s payback time after our green Christmas.

All of this blizzard stuff makes me want to get an SUV. Cause I want to do my part to encourage global warming.