Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Note from a practicing scientist: if your experiment doesn’t meet any of the evaluating criteria that you set out in advance, then the experiment didn’t work. Appropriate statistics exist if one absolutely needs to change standards after the fact, but post hoc tests are even harder to pass than the usual kind to account for the fact that you can shop around to find the one that best fits the data.

As a scientist happy-talk surge boosters like Kagan rank somewhere between the disappointing undergraduate assistant whom you mostly try to prevent from injuring himself, and a beaker.

-- TIM F.

A quick summary of the facts tells us that the Iraqi military is broken, the police force is even worse, we have ceded the south to the Shi’ites, Anbar province is under the control of the Ba’athists, our military is stretched to the breaking point, corruption is the norm, there is a cholera epidemic, high levels of violence against the civilian population, we can not provide basic services (like, for example, electricity or water), and the national government is squabbling (when not on vacation) and led incompetently by a man Bush thinks is under his tutelage (that alone should scare the hell out of you).

The sole force doing well in Iraq are the American contractors.

Personally, I blame the liberal media, and clearly it is time to bomb Iran.

-- JOHN COLE

President George W. Bush’s campaign to stay the course in Iraq is taking a new and constitutionally dangerous turn. When Senator John Warner recently called for a troop withdrawal by Christmas, the White House did not mount its usual counterattack. It allowed a surprising champion to take its place. Major General Rick Lynch, a field commander in Iraq, summoned reporters to condemn Mr. Warner’s proposal as "a giant step backwards."

It was Major Gen Lynch who was making the giant step into forbidden territory. He had no business engaging in a public debate with a US senator. His remarks represent an assault on the principle of civilian control – the most blatant so far during the Iraq war.

-- BRUCE ACKERMAN

Is he really live, or is Osama Memorex? Only his hairdresser knows for sure! What other work has Osama had done? Osama bin Metrosexualing in Waziristan?

-- ED MORRISSEY

Hobbled by inadequate funding, unclear priorities, continuing reorganizations and the absence of an overarching strategy, the U.S. Homeland Security Department is failing to achieve its mission of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, according to a comprehensive report by the Government Accountability Office.

-- SPENCER S. HSU

There is an obvious irony in George Orwell's being spied on by Britain's police intelligence unit that can only be called Orwellian.

-- THE NEW YORK TIMES

Barack is very much human. So let’s not deify him, because what we do is we deify, and then we’re ready to chop it down. People have notions of what a wife’s role should be in this process, and it’s been a traditional one of blind adoration. My model is a little different -- I think most real marriages are.

-- MICHELLE OBAMA

Political gamesmanship at the expense of moral clarity is what frustrates so many Americans today. If the GOP wants to declare itself to be the party of virtues and values, it should act like it. David Vitter evidently broke the law and cavorted with prostitutes and then got caught. The fact that he didn’t plead guilty in a court of law doesn’t make his actions any less illegal, and certainly no less immoral, than what Larry Craig did . . .

Cheering for Sen. Vitter was a shameful thing for Republicans to do and perhaps might sum up what’s wrong with the GOP today. Until David Vitter meets the same political fate as Larry Craig, we’re no better than the Democrats.

-- MIKE GALLAGHER

A sharp drop in foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds over the last five weeks has raised concerns that China is quietly withdrawing its funds from the United States, leaving the dollar increasingly vulnerable.

-- AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD

Prosecutors in the trial of U.S. music producer Phil Spector presented mere "speculation" about who shot an actress dead at his home, the defence said.

In her closing statement, lawyer Linda Kenney-Baden said the prosecution had put on a "stage-show" trial to cover up the lack of scientific evidence.

She urged jurors to acquit her client, saying police wanted to convict the US music mogul because of his fame.

-- BBC

No link here, just the observation that it seems to me that Verizon is working with a strangely unambitious business strategy. Basically, they've got themselves the best cell phone network out there. Their calculation seems to me that, given the superiority of their network, they ought to put forward a product that's inferior in other respects, secure in the knowledge that their network will always give them a healthy market share. A much better strategy, it seems to me, would be to offer the best network and the best phones and just drive everyone out of business. They seem to have reconciled themselves to trying to be like Toyota in the auto industry when they could achieve Microsoft-esque levels of domination if they wanted to.

-- MATTHEW YGLESIAS

So how many iPhones did Apple sell? Who knows, but apparently not enough to keep Steve Jobs from kicking the early adopters in the teeth. I mean . . . how hard must it suck to not only own a crippled device but to hear that Apple dropped the price by $200 just 60 days after the initial release?

-- KVATCH