Can there be peace between McCain and Conservative Talk Show Hosts?

I hope not. But Mike Gallagher is giving it a try with his latest article imploring McCain not to be upset at Conservative Talk Show Hosts for attacking his opponents.

Was it you, sir? You actually felt a need to formally apologize for a speaker to refer to Obama by his full name?

I spoke to Bill Cunningham right after this entire episode. As you might have heard, he is now positively furious with you. I believe his exact words were, “There is now no way I will vote for Juan Pablo McCain after he threw me under the wheels of the Straight Talk Express Bus.”

There was an article yesterday at Salon about how many Presidents and notable Americans we've celebrated who had Semetic Names. It urged Obama to be proud of his middle name, which is Hussein. Kind of misses the point in my opinion. When Cunningham underlines Obama's middle name it's to paint Obama as foreign and muslim and therefore unworthy of being President. And while you and me are smart enough to see through that ploy, Cunningham and his listeners aren't.

But back to Gallagher, Limbaugh Conservatives want a candidate who will really stick it to liberals. They want a Candidate who will run as dirty a campaign as possible; to the Limbaugh Conservative we are to be defeated and eliminated, not gotten along with. That doesn't seem to be McCain's style, but he's made so many changes over the last few years maybe he'll come around on this one as well.

Saddam Hussein's Dead

Undead Undead Undead.

This is going to be an annoying week coming up. We are going to get a bunch of articles by Conservatives congratulating themselves on ridding the world of this murderous tyrant and castigating Liberals for not wanting to rid the world of the murderous tyrant. So that will be fun.

Juan Cole has an interesting article on the death over at Salon, in which he talks about how the Bush Administration and the new Iraqi administration may have bungled this (at least from the point of view that it would be better to avoid sectarian violence).

The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday –- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a “sacrifice” for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha.

So that's nice. Of course some people in this process might be in favor of sectarian violence (at least until their side wins) and others, presumably, just don't care.

The Generals

Sidney Blumenthal's latest article covers the revolt of the generals (as the media have taken to calling it), and it contains some interesting tidbits.

Serving their civilian neoconservative superiors, they endured contempt. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's closest aide, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, joked that the problems of the Army "could be solved by lining up fifty of its generals in the Pentagon and gunning them down," report Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor in their new book on the Iraq invasion, "Cobra II." It was the sort of joke that Uday Hussein could have made. On Sept. 10, 2001, Rumsfeld held a Pentagon town meeting at which he declared the "bureaucracy" -- the career military professionals -- to be "a serious threat to the security of the United States."

I don't know how that sounds to you - but that just doesn't sound very good to me.

While you are logged into Salon you might want to check out a pair of articles on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article for the London Review of Books, entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." The article has raised a lot of hackles and Salon presents two opinions on the subject. Jaun Cole generally agrees with the article and Michelle Goldberg thinks it makes some good points, but overplays it's hand. Anyway both articles are pretty interesting and meaty, so if this is a subject that interests you, they are well worth checking out.

The President and Al-Jezeera

For those of you who don't know, there are reports coming out of England that President Bush discussed plans to bomb Al-Jezeera headquarters in Qatar. The reports indicate that British Prime Minister Tony Blair talked President Bush out of it. I'm not personally sure what to make of this, as a good two thirds of the proof consists in saying that the Bush Administration has it in for Al-Jezeera. Which they do.

But for a good review of this possibility, you might check out this article at Salon by Juan Cole. Personally I am going to wait for more solid information before making up my mind one way or the other.