The Iraq War is over. Flames still burst from various sources and wild cards remain, such as the potential that Muqtada al-Sadr might stomp his feet and encourage his diminished militias to attack us. Yet support for Sadr among Shia is hardly monolithic. In fact, many Shia view him as a simpleton whose influence derives strictly from respect for his father. Others cite the threat from Iran, but the Iranian participation in the fighting here remains overstated.
Nobody knows what the future will bring, but the civil war has completely ended.
The Iraqi army and police grow stronger by the month, and even the National Police are gaining a degree of respect and credibility.
Iraqis are tired of war and ready to get back to school, to business and to living life as it should be.
- Independent correspondent Michael Yon, in the New York Post
Michael Yon is braver than the rest of us for declaring the war over, but it’s important to understand that there are no final battles in counterinsurgencies and it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact dates when wars like this end.
The anti-Iraqi insurgency – a war within a war – really is effectively over.
As long as another such war within a war doesn’t break out, Yon will appear more perceptive than the rest of us in hindsight when the currently low levels of violence finally do taper off into relative insignificance.
None of this means terrorism and violence in Iraq are over. Violence is never over in the Middle East, and Islamist terrorism will be with us for years, if not decades.
There may yet be another war, a different war, in Iraq. It would be foolish to dismiss that possibility or assume there is no more work to be done.
- Michael Totten, commentarymagazine.com
Marcia Nielsen, executive director of the Kansas Health Policy Authority, issued a valuable caution about a recent audit of the state’s Medicaid system. Though the audit found irregularities that need further review, some media reports of substantial fraud were “not supported by the facts,” Nielsen said. The audit used data processing techniques that looked for anomalies in billings but did not look into individual cases. Most of these anomalies were caused by data entry errors and were not the result of “unethical or intentionally criminal behavior,” Nielsen said. The state needs to follow up with these red flag and make sure that the Medicaid system is operating efficiently and has proper safeguards. But, as Nielsen noted, “the process needs be driven by solid, data-driven analysis, not anecdotes or cursory reviews.”
I tried my hand — not always so successfully — at writing some satirical Christmas carols based on 2008 events. Here is a sample:
To the tune of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
I saw Sebelius kissing up to Barack Obama
On the campaign trail throughout this year.
Yet she didn’t hear a peep,
About the Cabinet or being veep.
So now she’s stuck in Topeka with those legislative creeps.
To the tune of “The Wassail Song”
Here we come a-shopping
For Sarah Palin clothes.
Here we go a-wandering
In stores to and fro.
Off to Saks Fifth Avenue
And to Neiman Marcus, too.
And we’ll buy her and send her a snazzy wardrobe
So that she can appeal to Average Joes.
To the tune of “Let it Snow”
Though the district’s needs are frightful,
Anti-bond groups are rather spiteful.
So as long as schools want more dough,
They’ll vote no,
They’ll vote no,
They’ll vote no.
Comedian-turned-politician Al Franken has a slim lead in the never-ending recount of the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. As of Monday, Franken was ahead of Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by 48 votes out of about 2.9 million votes cast. But the Coleman campaign claims that election officials double-counted more than 100 ballots, and about 1,600 absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected must still be counted.
The new year apparently will bring another quixotic attempt to repeal the law allowing some qualifying children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at state universities and colleges. Rep. Lance Kinzer (in photo), R-Olathe, and some other conservative lawmakers plan to take another charge at the 2004 law next session despite the fact that past efforts to repeal it have failed. Or that costly court challenges to the law have failed. Or that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would veto any repeal that happened to make it out of the Legislature. Or that the state universities support the law. Or that law benefits the state’s economic development efforts. The only encouraging news is that Kinzer and others don’t plan to revive — at least not next year — this past session’s failed attempt to turn employers into immigration police.
At least one business is thriving during this global economic downturn. Turkish shoemaker Ramazan Baydan, who claims that his company designed and produced the shoe that the Iraqi journalist threw at President Bush, says he is swamped with orders and had to hire 100 extra workers. “People are calling from all over the world to order this shoe I designed a decade ago,” he told Forbes.com. “We have so far 370,000 new orders from Europe, the Middle East and the United States compared to only 40,000 orders of this particular model in December last year.” Baydan has renamed the model the “Bush shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush.”
Vice President Dick Cheney is unapologetic about disastrous and, in the case of torturing detainees, potentially criminal actions of the Bush administration. But then again, that’s what we’ve come to expect.
In recent interviews Cheney offered no regrets about warrantless wiretapping, torturing or his expansive view of presidential power — essentially, that a president can do whatever he wants during wartime. Cheney also still backs former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and suggested that the administration would have gone to war with Iraq even if it had known that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Cheney also isn’t sorry or embarrassed about telling Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to go “bleep” himself. “I thought he merited it at the time,” he told Fox News Sunday.
Meanwhile, the latest FOX News poll shows Cheney with his lowest approval rating yet — 29 percent — and a new CNN poll found that 23 percent of those surveyed think Cheney is the worst vice president of all time.
The selection of Rick Warren, whose Saddleback Church in California was the site of a candidate forum with Barack Obama and John McCain in August, is an early taste of the Democrats’ post-election effort to reach evangelical Americans.
White evangelicals supported McCain over Obama by a huge margin, 73 percent to 26 percent, but that was a 4-percentage-point improvement over John Kerry’s showing with that group four years earlier.
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies also announced that Joseph Lowery, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., will deliver the benediction.
Warren and Lowery make for interesting bookends to Obama’s inauguration: a reminder of liberals’ faith-based past and a promise for what they hope can be a faith-based future.
- Dan Gilgoff, usnews.com
Obama is, for the time being, without a pastor of his own, so we knew he’d have to turn to someone else to deliver the inauguration invocation. Unfortunately, Obama chose Warren.
This is not too big a surprise, but it is disappointing. Obama and Warren have been friends for some time, and Obama accepted an invitation to appear at Warren’s presidential forum over the summer.
So why is it disappointing? Because, though Warren is certainly more tolerant of discussion than activist leaders such as James Dobson and Pat Robertson, his beliefs run counter to Obama’s on most of the major social issues of the day. Warren is opposed, on religious grounds, to abortion rights, gay rights, stem-cell research and euthanasia. In 2004, he described these issues as “non-negotiable” and “not even debatable.”
- Steve Benen, WashingtonMonthly.com
A memorial service Sunday was a needed reminder of the hardship the homeless face this time of the year and our responsibility to help them. The service, held by Advocates to End Chronic Homelessness, was for those who died while homeless — at least eight people in Wichita this year. Thankfully, the city’s faith community has stepped up to provide an overflow shelter during cold months. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, also announced last week that Kansas was awarded $1.3 million to assist individuals and families needing food and shelter. But the city government needs to follow through with its commitment to provide more assistance to the chronically homeless and help them move into permanent housing.
The Big Three auto companies certainly deserve blame for some bad management and production decisions. But what many critics and politicians haven’t acknowledged is that the current crisis is much bigger than Detroit and is not primarily a referendum on the quality of American-made automobiles.
Sales of foreign cars are down dramatically, too. For example, Toyota sales dropped 34 percent last month, and it expects to have its first operating loss in 70 years. Canada and Europe are approving multi-billion dollar aid packages for auto manufacturing companies in their countries.
Given all that history has learned about Watergate, it’s remarkable that some people would see Mark Felt, the former FBI insider aka “Deep Throat,” as having been wrong to tell the Washington Post what he knew about the burglary and White House cover-up. Felt’s actions surely were motivated, at least in part, because he’d been passed over to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director. But Felt deserves credit for doing the right thing in an administration full of people doing the wrong thing. As Post reporter Bob Woodward said of Felt, who died Thursday: “This is a man who did his duty to the Constitution.”
If Kansas Republicans really do see a 2010 primary clash of the titans for the U.S. Senate seat, between Reps. Todd Tiahrt of Goddard and Jerry Moran of Hays, the western two-thirds of the state may not see much of either of them that summer. As Kansas State University political science professor Joe Aistrup told CQPolitics last week: “They’re facing off in a situation where Moran will do well in the 1st District. I think you’ll see Tiahrt do well in the Wichita area. Really, it will be the Kansas City area and the 2nd Congressional District that will determine who is winner of that primary.”
There has been a lot of talk of the Big Three automakers as if they’re all in the same sinking boat. Columnist George Will views Ford as an exception because of upbeat CEO Alan Mulally (right), a native Kansan and former Boeing executive. Will notes that “Ford is not asking Congress for money. It is asking only for access to money if there should be what Mulally delicately calls ‘a significant industry event’” – meaning a GM bankruptcy, which would threaten parts manufacturers. Will suggests that if there was to be a car czar, which he called “silliness on stilts,” the person’s job would involve supervising GM’s downsizing. He concludes: “Anyway, the most qualified person for that ill-conceived and unenviable position already has a more promising job, as Ford’s CEO.”
The response to President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet choices remains very positive, with 83 percent of respondents in a Marist survey Wednesday saying they approved of his performance so far. Politico.com called the Cabinet “a middle-of-the-roader’s dream.” Even Bush guru Karl Rove has called Obama’s choices “reassuring.” Some perspective, though, can be gained with two flashbacks:
George W. Bush’s initial picks looked good, too, especially all-stars Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Christine Todd Whitman. (Though reflecting the contested election result, an Associated Press poll in January 2001 found that just 52 percent approved of his handling of the transition.)
In a Gallup poll in December 1992, 67 percent approved of Bill Clinton’s transition. Yet, as the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza recalled, “most politicos believe that to be the most unorganized – and mismanaged – handover of power in recent memory.”
It was no surprise to Kansans, but Sen. Sam Brownback’s formal announcement Thursday that he’s giving up his seat in 2010 has the national political media talking. Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza said it “gives Democrats a real chance at a pickup.” And if the term-limited Gov. Kathleen Sebelius runs for the Senate, he writes, “she would start the race as the favorite with Reps. Jerry Moran (R) and Todd Tiahrt (R) both far less well known than Sebelius. Still, Democrats haven’t won a Kansas Senate seat since 1932. That’s, um, 76 years.”
“The budget is the No. 1, 2 and 3 issue. We’re not going to waste a lot of time and protracted debate on issues du jour.” – Incoming House Speaker Mike O’Neal (in photo), R-Hutchinson, on 2009 legislative priorities
“There are very few clean hands here. Everybody in this building knew that 9 percent (spending) increases were unsustainable.” – Alan Cobb, state director of Americans for Prosperity, as Kansas borrowed $250 million last week to pay its bills
“They’ve always been fat and happy over there compared to other agencies.”- Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, on a report that the Kansas Department of Commerce is more top-heavy with managers than at least five other state agencies
“How much does a guy have to pay for a mistake of personal proportions? You can beat a dead horse forever but for what purpose?” – Former Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephan, hoping people will move on now that former Attorney General Paul Morrison has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing in a sex scandal
President George W. Bush’s artful dodging of an Iraq journalist’s hurled shoes brought back memories of other infamous podium assaults. Strangely, former Wichita congressman Dan Glickman was the target of a number of them. At a food conference in Rome in November 1996, then-Agriculture Secretary Glickman was pelted by nongenetically modified soybeans thrown by three naked protesters. At other times, he was variously splattered with rotten bison entrails and showered with carbonated soda and glass (the last as a protester threatened to kill himself with a broken bottle). After a tofu cream pie narrowly missed his head at a 2000 nutrition summit, Glickman famously turned to former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and quipped, “I think we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has changed, or perhaps changed back. In counting him among the congressional Republicans upset about the White House’s Big Three bailout, MSNBC’s First Read blog recalls that “this is the same John McCain who ‘suspended his campaign’ to try and strike a deal on the Wall Street bailout – which was roughly 41 times the size of Detroit’s.”
McCain said of the massive auto loan: “I regret the president’s decision to give away over $17 billion to the domestic automakers. Just last week, the Senate rejected a bailout plan because it failed to provide assurances that the domestic manufacturers would fundamentally change the way they do business to ensure their long-term viability. I find it unacceptable that we would leave the American taxpayer with a tab of tens of billions of dollars while failing to receive any serious concessions from the industry.”
Amid the economic gloom and post-Madoff rage, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan finds reasons for consolation that go to the root of what it means to be American. She writes: “This is a good time to remember who we are, or rather just a few small facts of who we are. We are the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, the leading industrial power of the world, and the wealthiest nation in the world. ‘There’s a lot of ruin in a nation,’ said Adam Smith. There’s a lot of ruin in a great economy, too. We are the oldest continuing democracy in the world, operating, since March 4, 1789, under a vibrant and enduring constitution that was formed by geniuses and is revered, still, coast to coast. We don’t make refugees, we admit them. When the rich of the world get sick, they come here to be treated, and when their children come of age, they send them here to our universities. We have a supple political system open to reform, and a wildly diverse culture that has moments of stress but plenty of give.
“The point is not to say rah-rah, paint our faces blue and bray ‘We’re No. 1.’ The point is that while terrible challenges face us – improving a sick public education system, ending the easy-money culture, rebuilding the economy – we are building from an extraordinary, brilliant and enduring base.”
“Mexico City has begun working on expanding its subway system. That’s right. Apparently, they’re adding stops in San Diego and Los Angeles.” – Conan O’Brien
“And the Mexican government has opened up a telephone hotline here for illegal immigrants living in Arizona. Yeah. Here’s the best part, the calls are answered by a guy in India.” – Jay Leno
The Iraq War is over. Flames still burst from various sources and wild cards remain, such as the potential that Muqtada al-Sadr might stomp his feet and encourage his diminished militias to attack us. Yet support for Sadr among Shia is hardly monolithic. In fact, many Shia view him as a simpleton whose influence derives strictly from respect for his father. Others cite the threat from Iran, but the Iranian participation in the fighting here remains overstated.
