Watching the Hilton video, a few questions came to mind. First, why is that Paris Hilton’s fake ad includes more substantive talk about energy policy than John McCain’s real ad? Second, if writers helped Hilton with her script, and writers helped McCain with his script, why is it that Hilton seems to have a better grasp on policy details than McCain does? Shouldn’t that be, you know, the other way around? And third, why is it that a 27-year-old heiress/reality-show star can read a teleprompter better than the presumptive Republican presidential nominee?-- STEVE BENEN
While Americans and Iraqi civilians alike are increasingly eager to see combat operations turned over to the Iraqi Army, interviews with more than a dozen Iraqi soldiers and officers in Diyala Province, at the outset of a large-scale operation against insurgents led by Iraqis but backed by Americans, reveal a military confident of its progress but unsure of its readiness.
The army has made huge leaps forward, most of the soldiers agreed, and can hold its own in battles with the insurgency with little or no American support. But almost all said the time when the Iraqi Army can stand alone as a national defense force is still years away.
Iraq is piling up a projected four-year budget surplus of $80 billion from exporting oil at rising prices, but the government is still too fragile to manage its own reconstruction, requiring US billions to do the job.
That proposition may not thrill Americans feeling pain at the pump, as a bipartisan gripe from Sens. Carl Levin and John Warner foreshadows oncoming outrage: "It is inexcusable for US taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves."-- ROBERT STEINWe're wasting our time beating up on John McCain for suggesting that his leathery ol' wife should participate in a topless/bottomless beauty pageant. Yes, Obama couldn't say it—but then Obama isn't a notorious ladies man and adulterer that dumped his first wife when she went and got all ugly and shit.-- DAN SAVAGEHow badly do you want all of the major actors in the Olympic farce to fall flat on their faces over the next fortnight?
No terror attacks, of course – that would be tragedy. Rather, I wish for nothing but the worst for the Chinese government, the International Olympic Committee, NBC, and the insufferably arrogant International Olympic "movement" that touts the games as proof that rather than being "Killer Angels," mankind is, in fact, capable of playing nice with each other.
Never mind that every single sport (or nearly all of them) have a World Championship every couple of years or so where athletes and gamers from all over the world come together and have a gay old time without anyone calling out the tanks. The winners are feted just as gloriously at these championships. They get to stand on podiums and hear their national anthems played. The difference is that NBC usually isn’t there pawing at you for a vacuous interview as some blow dried bimbo asks you how it feels to lose your race, coming within two tenths of a second of winning a gold medal thus making you immortal.
-- RICK MORAN
[M]ost voters, on both sides of the partisan divide, undoubtedly would prefer that the next president bring an entirely different skill set to the job. Even if one is inclined to doubt the notion that the Bush war team would actually fake a document in the service of better propaganda, [author Ron] Suskind's broader theme has long rung true - that Bush has spent much of the last seven years seeking only the kind of evidence that would square with his certitudes.
He's still at it, by the way. Two nights ago, he was asked to comment about Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's recent endorsement of a 16-month U.S. withdrawal timetable. Bush's response: "That's not what I heard."
Or, as Paul Simon sang in "The Boxer":
"All lies and jest / Still a man hears what he wants to hear/ and disregards the rest."
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