Back from Vegas...

...had I known that the Stardust was getting imploded, I'd have walked down The Strip a bit further to check it out. As it was, I still walked about 350 miles over four days and three nights...not enough to burn all the calories I ingested, but not bad...

Anyway, after about six days off the grid for Vegas-related reasons, I’m back. I figured the best way to jump back on board as I catch up on all my important (Digby) reading is just to make a few quick links and observations...

* A new Low Post! Well, new to me anyway...

What we have to remember about America's half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. When a war goes wrong, the reason can never that the invasion was simply a bad, immoral decision, a hopelessly fucked-up idea that even a child could have seen through. No, we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. That's why to this day we're still hearing about how Vietnam was lost because a) the media abandoned the war effort b) the peace movement undermined the national will and c) the public, and the Pentagon, misread the results of the Tet offensive, seeing defeat where there actually was a victory.

After a few decades of that, we were ready to go to war again -- all we had to do, we figured, was keep the cameras away from the bloody bits, ignore the peace movement, and blow off any and all bad news from the battlefield. And we did all of these things for quite a long time in Iraq, but, maddeningly, Iraq still turned out to be a failure.

* Krugman talks about what's left of the middle class (via Avedon)...

* I do like how all the scandals are starting to interact...which figures...as much lying that goes on, it was bound to start happening. Then again, Clinton did it, that makes it okay...oh wait, you mean that's not true?

* Great quote...

I don’t quarrel with anybody’s right to believe, but passion isn’t a synonym for truth. Must I respect a woman who believes that oysters sing? Or the man who believes that his mother was married to a koala bear? If it’s the intensity of the emotion that I’m being asked to praise, presumably with adjectives like those affixed to expensive wines and precious jewels, then how can I fail to admire the richness of Adolf Hitler’s feeling (authentic, fervent, deeply felt) for Polish Jews?

* The Senate disappoints yet again. And this time, the House gets in on the act too...

* Valerie Plame = Juanita Broaddrick now. Nice.

* And finally, eventually Missourians might elect a strong governor (via Fired Up! Missouri)...