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Friday, November 27, 2009, 10:34 AM
The_Anchoress

As we have seen with Climategate (and with the ACORN expose), the US Press does not report on stories it does not like; perhaps that is why we have not seen headlines about what this Benedictine nun, who is a medical doctor, specializing in internal medicine, is saying. [English Subtitles]

Stick with this first video, as Sr. Terese Forcades, OSB, begins with her credentials and some flu/virus basics. It ends with a bang. Then move on to video two:

In video two, Sister talks about irregularities in the vaccine, then explores the “second irregularity” at about 5 minutes in…and it certainly seems rather startlingly irregular.

Video 3: Looking at political fall-out from these irregularities:

You can watch all 6 videos of Sister’s talk, which is very systematic, serious and level-headed, here


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 2:09 PM
The_Anchoress

Before I sign off until sometime tomorrow-night-or Friday, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of my regular readers (and new visitors) for continuing to bother reading me, even when I annoy; even when you hate yourself for doing it; even when I’m writing about politics, instead of religion; even when I’m writing about religion, when you wanted politics; even when I’m writing about baseball, when all you like is football, plus you hate the Yankees; even when I’m busy being all Catholic-y when you don’t much care for Rome.

I am truly grateful for the civil debate in my comments sections; you guys are the best; even when it gets hot, it never descends into name-calling or true nastiness.

I am thankful for the occasional hitting of the tip jar and for the way you guys use Amazon and buy Monk Coffeethrough here, just to help out. I’m grateful that you buy nun soap and hand creme to help nuns you don’t know.

I’m grateful that you’re those kinds of generous folk, because you humble and teach me. I just had an email asking if I knew any cloistered nuns who could use a little financial help this Thanksgiving? Of course I do. But you see what sort of great readers I have? Most people don’t even think that way!

The attitude of gratitude; it’s the broadest and most direct route to Joy:

To be imbued with Joy is to be a missionary to the multitudinous “everyday people,” people who are perhaps not burdened in an especial way, but who have just lost track of “what there is to be happy about.” If you work the thread backward, a fruitful Joy can help beget the gifts of Wisdom and Understanding upon others.

If one does not have some measure of Understanding, one cannot find and feel gratitude. I have a friend like this. Ask her what she’s grateful for, she can come up with her kids, her health and her car, and that’s about it; she is always in a semi-funk and slightly depressed. She tells me that outside of giving birth, she has never felt joy, and that did not last, as the joy was soon consumed by anxiety. It does not occur to her that the fact that she can lift a cup of coffee to her mouth, unassisted, is something for which to be grateful. If you said it to her, she’d roll her eyes and say, “well, of course,” but knowing that the ability to feed oneself, or shave, or breath without help is a good thing is not the same as really understanding the gift of independence. And if you cannot understand that gift, you can’t feel proper gratitude for it. And if you can’t find things for which to feel grateful, everyday, you will never feel a sustained joy, or even a deep-but-unsustained joy.

But if you can feel gratitude, even if it gets a little wet and teary sometimes, then you are on the track to owning real joy. You are blessed.

I dislike the cooking and work of Thanksgiving, but I love what is behind the day. Today, while I am chopping celery and mashing root veggies, I will be whispering up all of my thanks to God, for all of the myriad blessings He has bestowed on me, including the very humblest ones: I can cook. I can use a knife and fork. I can walk on my own power; I can raise a cup of coffee to my lips, unassisted. I can move my fingers with a fair amount of speed, to articulate my gratitude for my profession, and for your kind visits.

I love my life!

Feel free to ponder the things you’re thankful for and share them in the comments section. See you Friday. Or Thursday night, perhaps!


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 1:18 PM
The_Anchoress

Last year, I was out of ideas for vegetables, and blegged a few recipes.

Then Gabriel Malor at Ace got into the mix and we had a lot of fun with folks exchanging recipes. Let’s try that again!

This year Gabriel is giving us another one for the sweet tooth, and I’ve already put the ingredients on my list. Check out his Pumpkin Cheesecake Dip! It’s a dessert I think my littlest nieces will love (it’s fun to dip cookies!) and it’s nutritious, too. Got yer Beta-Carotene, yer protein, dairy…good stuff!

Here is one if you’re reading this at work and have no idea what to bring tomorrow. You stop off at the store, pick up a few things and you’re off and running:

MASHED TURNIPS AND CARROTS

2 lbs carrots
2 lbs turnips (or rutabagas)
light cream
butter
brown sugar (optional)
salt
pepper

Peel the carrots and slice them any way you please – you’re going to boil the hell out of them, anyway.

Peel the turnip and do the same. DO NOT try to peel the turnip with a veggie peeler, you’ll just break your hand. Take a sharp knife and carefully cut the rind away. Carefully is the operative word. I still have a scar on my left hand from the slippery knife.

Boil, boil, boil the veggies until the turnips are soft.

Drain water (try to catch the drainage into a pot and then freeze it; it’s a wonderful veggie broth base for soup)

Using a mixer (or by hand if you are a glutton for punishment) mash veggies, adding butter, salt, pepper and a little light cream, or milk, to taste. Since these are not “thick” veggies, you don’t want to add too much liquid, or the whole thing gets watery.

The brown sugar is totally optional. If you add it, be sparing – use 1/4 of a cup or so – it gives a sort of glaze to the whole affair, but it’s not essential.

This is a delicious way to sweeten turnips, and it is a very “Irish” sort of dish. I particularly like it when serving fresh ham, but it’s a staple on our Thanksgiving table, too!

Related: Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Feel free to leave your own veggie recipes in the comments section!

And pray your Thanksgiving is not like this one


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 12:16 PM
The_Anchoress

Via Instapundit (again), this is a pretty remarkable chart.

Nick Schulz looks at difference between Obama’s cabinet and all other presidents beginning with Teddy, with a background in the private sector. He writes:

When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15% and 19% of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet — over 90% of its prior experience was in the public sector — is remarkable.

To which one can only add: how can you respect or relate to the private sector, when you have so little exposure to them? How can you help the private sector when you don’t think they have anything worth listening to?

Remaking America.


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 11:45 AM
The_Anchoress

This would have been even better if they’d have managed to mention carbon-offsets and private jets (see how easily they go together?) but I still think this is pretty good on short notice:

(Via Glenn Reynolds who seems to be gettin’ on the NY TIMES’s last nerve!)

Related:
Alarmism and Fraud
Rand Simberg
Taking apart the smoking gun
Climate Emails and the Politics of Science
Climate and Transparency
Climategate and the Social Validation of Knowledge
It’s all Bush’s Fault


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 2:16 AM
The_Anchoress

I love, love, LOVE this dress on Michelle Obama. It is beautifully designed, flattering, elegant and effortless-looking.


Michelle Obama wearing Naeem Khan, AP Photo Susan Walsh

And Mrs. Obama’s posture, which sometimes seems a bit slouchy, is perfect. She makes an altogether superb picture as First Lady.

I know the gaga press considers everything she wears to be perfect, but Michelle Obama has been hit-and-miss, to me.

This is a hit; a very palpable hit!

And I know, I know…the economy is in dire straits, and yes when unemployment is high, a First Lady can certainly run the risk of seeming insensitive if she is perceived to be spending too much on clothes; even the most applauded fashion sense can suddenly seem out-of-touch when one wears $540 dollar sneakers to a food bank, or are rumored to be buying thigh-high-boots. No one wants to be tagged as an Eva Peron, wearing excessive baubles and haute couture, while the people are underwater.

But, you know, this was a State Dinner welcoming India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, and on such an occasion, we want our First Lady to look drop-dead gorgeous; it honors our guests, and it does right by America, too. Sometimes, you have to spend the money, and this is well-spent, indeed.

It’s nice that Mrs. Obama chose a dress by India-born, U.S. based Naeem Khan. But it’s even nicer that Naeem Khan looks so great on the First Lady.

More of that flattering silhouette, please, Mrs. O, and that wonderful color. The big rubber belts are really played out.

Oh, and the President looks good too; the tux fits well. I do wish he’d learn how to stand with his hands to his side, though. The body language is sort of, goofy adolescent-at-the-prom.

More Dinner Details here

Fausta has more details on the dress.

I always said MO would look best in gold.


Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 5:36 PM
The_Anchoress

There is a lot to read about Climategate, but none of it is in the Mainstream Media, with the exception of the Obama-Administration described “not real news” organization. That would be Fox News, which is covering the story.

The New York Times, in a stunning bit of hypocrisy, says they won’t report on Climategate because they didn’t like the way the information was discovered. To the NY TImes, the real story, if they ever deign to cover it, will be about the method in which the story was found, and the ends not justifying means.

There is a valid nit to pick over hacking and how it threatens not just programs but governments and individuals. But when an entire global movement, with accompanying financial interests and public bullying has been founded on “science” that is -at the very least- now confirmed to be “unsettled,” that information, regardless of how it was brought to light, needs to be reported on and investigated.

The NY Times’ prim distaste for the means of disclosure on this issue rather reminds me of a few years back, when someone leaded a memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee, whereby Sen. Jay Rockefeller suggested strategies to undermine “Bush’s war,” and the mainstream media ignored the content of the memo, while waxing indignant over the leak.

The standard media, it seems, only like leaks when they serve their own agendas, or take down their perceived enemies, foreign and domestic.

So, they don’t like this Climategate Story, not at all. Troubling links and trouble, trouble for the narrative.

Let me tell you why the press is blacking out the Climategate story:

In a nutshell, Climategate is a destroyer of world-views. As someone who has always maintained that the AGW hype was a matter of politicians and grifters seizing an opportunity to use unsettled science as a means of getting filthy rich while imposing harsh measures against human freedom, I am very familiar with the world-view of the alarmists. Whenever I wrote about the “hoo-hah” of AGW (and particularly of Al Gore’s stupendous, international fake-out and hypocrisy), my email would load up with people telling me I was “a stupid hick,” unschooled in scientific method (just like Al Gore) and therefore unentitled to opine on anything, so I should just “shut up” and “go away” and of course, I was a “nazi.” These emails occasionally ended with a diatribe against George W. Bush for good measure, and suggested he and I were both “criminals” against humanity. One person even accused me of being Barbara Bush, in disguise.

All of that was standard-issue hate, but nowhere as amusing as the occasional “Sinner, fry in hell” emails I will get from a Jack Chicker, so I stopped reading them long ago.

But I also had a journalist I admired, and who I still consider a friend, privately and gently suggest that if I doubted the truth about AGW then I was as deluded (and perhaps as evil) as a “holocaust denier.”

Yes. The left went that far. The press went that far. They embraced this unsettled science, this unproven theory, with a fervor of moral righteousness; to dispute AGW was to be a bad and stupid person, even if were a dissenting scientist.

To question the point of “environmentally sound” lightbulbs that give bad light and create a dangerous and toxic risk when they break was to “not get the point,” which was that the planet was “dying” thanks to Hanukkah candles and incandescent lightbulbs.

To suggest that large-numbers of privileged people flying scores of private planes to exotic locals, gorging themselves on fine fare while deciding how the common folk ought to live, in order to “save” the planet from AGW was bizarre, wasteful and hypocritical in an era of video-conferencing, was to be sniffed at as “insipid.” Didn’t one understand the power of the Gore Indulgence carbon-offset? Just pay some money to the man with the absolute moral authority on all things green, and your sins are covered. Somewhere, a tree is planted.

The scam of AGW was permitted to gain the foothold it did, because of George W. Bush.

It’s Bush’s fault: if Bush had not fought back when CBS News called Florida for Al Gore before polls in the panhandle had closed, if Bush had not taken Gore’s selective re-count to the Supreme Court, if Bush had just taken those hanging chads like a man and allowed Al Gore to ascend to the presidency (as he’d been groomed to do before he sighed and fumed his way through debates, put his common sense into a lockbox and stumbled into the Buddhist convent, discovering the existence of “no controlling legal authority,”) whether the Vice-President actually won or not (the NY Times eventually admitted “not”) then Al Gore would not have had to seek redemption and his fortune in climate hucksterism, and the left would not have had to over-indulge him in it, overcompensating in order to “kick Bush in the leg.

That’s basically it. The AGW/Climate Change question became a rigorous boondoggle that got out of control not because the scientist who first suggested a connection between human carbon emission and a change in climate were bad people, or that the question was not worth asking, but because bad people then took the uncertain hypothesis, put it on media-fueled steroids, demonized anyone who disagreed with them, made it political -so much so that even the scientists got caught up in the good/bad, smart/stupid, Gore/Bush, Left/Right identifiers- and found real power there; they allowed the AGW movement to become the dubious centering pole upholding the giant circus tent of their worldviews.

As such, it is not permitted to be shaken. Shake the centering pole, and everything could come tumbling down: Oh. My. Gawd! If the Gore-doubters were right about this, what else might they be right about? And if they’re all stupid, and I’m smart, but they’re right and I’m wrong . . .

Implosion.

If the true-believers of AGW got this wrong, and they’d attached it to all of their politics, all of their hate, all of their superiority, then everything is in a free-fall.

And this is why the mainstream media cannot possibly report on Climategate until they have an acceptable counter-narrative that they can haul out in order to either debunk the story or soften its edges, even as they break the news.

The press, who spent a huge portion of their credibility convincing America that President Bush was a “liar” and a “power-abuser” and an “arrogant chump who made the world (read Chirac and Schroeder) hate us” and then spent the balance of their capital carrying into office a man whose every utterance comes with an expiration date, who seems to have very quickly abused his power and has treated our traditional allies (who were partnering well with the United States from 2004-on) with contempt or disinterest. The press really cannot afford to admit that almost nothing they have said in the past 9 years has escaped ideological or political framing to suit their agenda. Implode, they will.

So the story must not be told, until it can be told from their self-protective angle which is undoubtedly under development as you read this.

This reminds me of Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, back when Iraq had its first successful election -when even the press could not snarl too much at the pictures of women in hijab pointing their purple fingers in the air as they grinned. “What if Bush was right,” Stewart mused, with a horrified expression.


“What if Bush – the president, ours – has been right about [Iraq] all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may – and, again, I don’t know if I can physically do this – implode.”

There is an anvil-heavy irony to all of this. Part of the smart/stupid, left/right narrative was built on the fantastic strawman that the AGW-doubters on the right were “enemies of science,” that first they were not allowing science to use human embryos for experimentation, and now they were daring to doubt the most imperative scientific advice in the history of mankind.

But if the excesses of the weather-sciences are about be discredited to the degree that -as some worry- may “bring all science into dispute”, then that harm comes not from the right, who simply dared to question, but solely from the left, who refused to permit questions, openness, transparency.

Well, let’s get to the bottom of all of this, and then let us try -if it is possible, any longer- to become a saner world, say I.

Let Al Gore keep his ill-gotten booty and his stupid Academy Award and his worthless Nobel Peace Prize, and let him go away, somewhere, to an abode that is at least as “green” as President Bush’s despised ranch in Texas.

Let people once more get on a commercial air flight without being pestered about how they are guilty of earth-murder.

Let’s name the grifters, disassemble the dubious global policies that have been hovering for landing in Copenhagen, admit that the greatest threat to the world and its people is predicated on bombs and hate rather than some feckless, unprovable idea, and then let’s prepare for the cold, cold winter with some good old-fashioned oil-drilling while we finally begin to debate a nuclear future.

In truth, I just want my incandescent lightbulbs back, please.

Related:
Start Here: This is plain fascinating
PJM -Martin: Climategate violates social contract of science
PJM- Murray: 3 Things You Must Know about Climategate
Monbiot: AGW Rigged?
RCP: The Fix is In
CBS: looking into the leak, natch
Melanie Phillips: Green Totalitarianism
Andrew Bolt: The Global Conspiracy
James Delingpole: The Great British Climate Fraud
Obama’s Science Czar: Involved in Climategate?
True Believer: “Shaken” by Climategate


Monday, November 23, 2009, 4:51 PM
The_Anchoress

Thanks to reader Dick, who has certainly got me curious about these, and I needed something new to bring for Thanksgiving!

Tequila Cookies, Wheeeeee!

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup or brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality.

Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one peastoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it’s best to make sure the Cuervo is still ok, try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy.

Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Pick the frigging fruit off the floor.

Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters just pry it loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who geeves a sheet.

Check the Jose Cuervo.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.

Add one table.

Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find.

Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.

Don’t forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the wishdasher.

Okay, joking aside, Julie has a real cocktail recipe for the holidays

Okay, and to really get into the spirit of things:

If you’re trying to keep up, that’s Fay McKay, and she’s singing about 12 dry Martinis,11 Bloody Marys, 10 dry Manhattans, 9 Margaritas, 8 sweet Old Fashioneds, 7 Johnnie Walkers, 6 Cuba Libres, 5 dry Rob Roys, 4 Old Fitzgeralds, 3 Old Crows, 2 Cutty Sarks…

First time I heard that I was driving, and had to pull over because I was laughing so hard.


Monday, November 23, 2009, 3:09 PM
The_Anchoress

I love this lady. I love the fact that in her 90’s she is still cooking and taking on new challenges. Look at how comfortable she seems before a video camera! And check out her website and wares.

We all should be so ripe and ready when we are in our 90’s!

Here Clara, then age 91, (look at her beautiful, unlined skin!) is making Pasta with Peas, what people in my family used to call “Italian Soul Food.” She relates stories about bootleggers, too, so while the pasta is cooking, you get a little historical flavor!

I could watch her all day!

Clara reminds me of the older ladies in my family and the way they cooked (and I often still cook). If you need a cup of rice, you measure with a coffee cup. If you’re scrambling eggs, a fork is as good as a whisk. You’re dicing a potato or an onion? You do it over the pot! And always wear the wedding rings!

My Auntie Lillie would have loved Clara, and granny and mom; I like that so many of her recipes involve one pot, or one skillet!

One of the videos has Clara (she’s in her 90’s remember) demonstrating how to dig up dandelion roots for salad. That may explain, in a nutshell her vigor and longevity. Consider that for the first half of her life Clara likely ate mostly whole foods with few preservatives, and she talks about her garden, so we know her vegetables were fresh and not hothouse-grown.

When I was a little girl, there was a German couple in the neighborhood. They only passed within the last ten years, having lived to 99 and 100, respectively. They ate pork, butter and eggs and drank whole milk (and a glass of beer) every day of their lives. When I would visit, the wife would serve me a delicious lunch that included a ham sandwich (butter on one slice of bread, mayo on the other), deviled eggs and a healthy slice of her made-from-scratch cake. Dandelion salad was sometimes on the menu in summer, because there was a woods nearby, untouched by chemistry, and they were plentiful. “A good liver tonic,” they would say. “Dandelion roots cleanse the liver and the blood.”

According to this site they do more than that. I probably should have eaten them instead of bitching about their bitterness. I haven’t seen a dandelion root for salad in decades, but I would try them, again. Likely my childhood horror would be stilled.

They always had a garden. “Pop” would go outside to smoke his cigar and he’d pull a few weeds while he was out there. She would make her own puddings, her own jellies and cakes, and she always said that if you just make your own food -rather than rely on packaged goods- you can eat anything you want, and not get fat.

She never was the least bit heavy, but “Pop” grew a bit of a gut in old-age.

Clara has a cookbook, and, of course, the whole series on video which I’m thinking my MIL would enjoy. I’m also thinking that one SIL, who doesn’t allow her girls to watch commercial television, might be parking her kids in front of Clara, who is very easy to watch:

Go Clara! How utterly adorable is that little treasure of a woman? As I watch her, I realize I am smiling.

Excuse me while I go watch her two-parter on Peppers and Eggs!

[FTC Disclaimer - if you buy either of the Clara items though these Amazon links, I may make sixty cents a book or so from the sale, for which I thank you. I would recommend Clara to you, anyway, because I love her -admin]


Monday, November 23, 2009, 12:48 PM
The_Anchoress

:::POST UPDATE, 11/24/09:::
Steve Schippert posts that the US Embassy in Kabul denies this story. Like Steve, I’ll take them at their word. We’ll see soon enough. -admin:::END UPDATE:::

I am not sure what to make of this, but my first gut-instinct is, “oh, please, don’t appease.”

Steve Schippert over at Threats Watch keeps an eye on all those places I refer to as “guy sites” (well, they never have recipes) and he writes:

It comes to our attention that the MEMRI Blog highlights an article from the Saudi _al-Watan_ in Arabic that – according to an Afghan source – the United States is talking to the Taliban seeking to trade control of 5 provinces in exchange for the cessation of attacks on US bases. MEMRI summarizes:

An Afghan source in Kabul reports that U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is holding secret talks with Taliban elements headed by the movement’s foreign minister, Ahmad Mutawakil, at a secret location in Kabul. According to the source, the U.S. has offered the Taliban control of the Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Kunar and Nuristan provinces in return for a halt to the Taliban missile attacks on U.S. bases.

Kunar province borders the Khyber Pass region where the majority of US and NATO supplies pass enroute from Pakistan. And the4 remaining four provinces constitute fully the southern 25% of Afghanistan’s territory.

This, if true, is a disturbing development.

Do go read Steve’s post and see why he is disturbed. Rick at Brutally Honest (and Wizbang) writes, “perhaps this explains the dithering?”

Schippert again:

I have tried to come up with scenarios of why someone would lie about it in a leak. What would be to gain? Who would gain, and what would they gain? Without sleeping on it, the options for such appear narrow at best.

What does seem logical is that an Afghan privy to the negotiations could have become (rightly) spooked that they might just pull it off, and leaked word in hopes that it might so anger American public opinion that the entire endeavor might be scrapped. That’s the most logical explanation for motivation I see at the moment.

It would also fit in consistently with Ambassador Eikenberry’s leaked cables recently railing against a ’surge’ in forces in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t voice such without thinking he has his hands on something else. Could this be it? The surrender of 25% of Afghan territory in exchange for some form of ceasefire?

One would hope not.

I am sure it is all much more complicated, much more “nuanced” than any of us could possibly realize, but to a layperson like me, one question matters: did the president, who called Afghanistan “the war of necessity mean it when he said -only weeks ago- that the war in Afghanistan was “crucial” to the safety of Americans, or was he blowing smoke, looking for the most expedient way to pull out of an action he appears to have no stomach to fight?

If America cuts a deal with the Taliban, giving them control over regions in exchange for their keeping Al Qaeda in check, she instantly confers credibility upon them – at least for as long as America’s credibility remains. Can they be trusted? If the Taliban can be trusted -and recall, Democrats have used the example of these human-rights-oppressing religious fanatics to characterize Republicans, so their sudden trustworthiness is both convenient and suspect- can they, in a theater as large as Afghanistan, actually disallow and prevent Al Qaeda from using that vast land-of-caves as their planning and training base?

I suggest the Taliban will not be able to keep its end of this face-saving bargain, and that the whole tactic is simply a way to blow smoke in front of our faces.

Understand, it’s not that I love war; I don’t. I hate war. But pulling out of a theater before accomplishing the serious goal of utterly disabling an enemy and coaxing their surrender does two very detrimental things in war:

First, it sends a message that resonates to an enemy like Al Qaeda, which understands only power: we are again a weak horse.

Second: It tells the families who have lost sons and daughters in Afghanistan that their loved ones deaths were in vain, because the enemy is still able to thrive and nothing has changed.

Schippert writes: “. . . this demonstrated type of ‘effort’ in Afghanistan would prove to be the strongest indication that it may be time to advocate the full pullout of American forces from Afghanistan.”

Can’t say I disagree. If we’re not serious enough about victory to give the Generals on the ground what they say they need in order to win, if we do not have the stones to surge -even the example of its positive outcome in Iraq- then let’s just bring our troops home, rather than leave them there without a strong sense of mission, a declining morale, and the possibility of slaughter by a newly emboldened foe.

We’ll find out soon enough, then, whether winning in Afghanistan was “crucial” to the safety of the United States. But at least we’ll all find out together.

Related:
Four Troops Die in Afghanistan; some 200 have died since August. Somehow military deaths don’t get the headlines like they used to.

Iraq confronts Syria over Terrorism while US Dithers. That’s interesting. Iraq could be a powerful ally, if we don’t fold.

From UK Telegraph: Taliban says “Cut us a deal”

Pakistan: Yes, talk to Taliban!

Domestic Terror Threats: and we’re unprepared in various ways

Der Spiegel: Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on World Stage. No, he’s restored our standing. He said so!

Obama treated Asia like a Campaign Stop: It is all he knows how to do

Michelle Malkin: 9/11 Trials will be Platform to Bash USA

Money-obsessed Congress: A War Surtax because after we pay off the special interests, takeover banks and corporations, fund the pork, and buy the votes of Mary Landrieu and Blanch Lincoln, there’s nothing left. At least it is a tax I can support.

Obama hearts Hollywood:
It’s so much more fun to be a celebrity than to be president

Slightly O/T: Gary Sinise makes time for the Troops (H/T)

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