Needlenose

Remember this?

About friggin’ time:

This was too funny not to post – a county government in the PRC ordering officials to smoke to help the local economy – talk about a stimulus package!!

Those who failed to meet smoking targets or were caught smoking brands from other provinces would have been fined, the reports added, citing a government document issued earlier this year.

I knew President Obama’s photo-op at a burger joint with VP Joe Biden yesterday would be a likely source for a caption contest… but I didn’t expect the choices would be this rich!  (Note: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It has already gotten a jump on me with a couple of these.)

Just offer captions on the ones that inspire you, or if you’re daring you can try to offer a complete narrative…

Photo 1:

Photo 2:

Photo 3:

Photo 4:

Photo 5:

Photo 6:

Photo 7:

(Photos 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 by Kevin Lamarque for Reuters; photos 4 and 6 by Charles Dharapak for the Associated Press; click photos for links.)

The Fascist Weiner

Versus

Wishes he were a pirate in Somalia

Our trans-Atlantic cousins just published a list of extremist bastards that are banned from their country – and it includes several wing-nut U.S. ‘personalities’ such as Michael Weiner.  Keep in mind even a potentially rabid dog can enter the UK after 6 months of quarantine!

Of course it’s hard to get too embarrassed – after all, the UK harbors that one-eyed, one-armed Islamic looney, Abu Hamza al-Masri, for whom every day is ‘talk like a pirate day’ and recently harbored the other looney Omar Bakri Mohammed who called for jihad against the government that supported him on the dole.

We really need to kidnap some of these guys, take them to an undisclosed location, and have them do some extreme cage fighting – it would be interesting to see which of them could actually practice what they preach, and which would soil themselves in fear.

Interesting factoid – Omar Bakri’s daughter is waging her own personal jihad against the immoral infidel club-goers of London as a topless pole-dancer!  Allahuakbar!

Since the late Jack Kemp probably doesn’t rate one of Green Boy’s “Welcome Home” posts, instead we offer a pair of old-school caption contests (Caption Contest Classic??)…

Photo 1, Kemp and Ronald Reagan in Sacramento in 1967:

Photo 2, Kemp with Reagan and George H.W. Bush in 1984:

Six years ago today, on May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in an elaborately executed photo-op and proclaimed, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

At that time, 140 U.S. soldiers had died in Iraq; six years later, the number of 4,281 (with three more deaths reported today), and the toll of Iraqi fatalities is perhaps a hundred times higher or more.

Today’s anniversary is all the more troubling since President Obama, who came into office firmly promising to end the U.S. occupation, seems to still buy into the idea that there is an American “mission” to be accomplished. In his press conference Wednesday night, he said:

Part of the reason why I called for a gradual withdrawal as opposed to a precipitous one was precisely because more work needs to be done on the political side to further isolate whatever remnants of Al Qaida in Iraq still exists.

And I’m very confident that, with our commander on the ground, General Odierno, with Chris Hill, our new ambassador, having been approved and already getting his team in place, that they are going to be able to work effectively with the Maliki government to create the conditions for an ultimate transfer after the national elections.

But there’s some serious work to do on making sure that how they divvy up oil revenues is ultimately settled, what the provincial powers are and boundaries, the relationship between the Kurds and the central government, the relationship between the Shia and the Kurds. Are they incorporating effectively Sunnis, Sons of Iraq, into the structure of the armed forces in a way that’s equitable and just?

Those are all issues that have not been settled the way they need to be settled.

I have bad news for you, Mr. President: those issues are not going to be settled, because the Maliki government has no interest in settling them to the other factions’ liking. I’ve watched since 2005 as the Bush/Cheneyites — with more leverage over the fledgling Iraqi government, and fewer scruples — tried to browbeat the Jaafari regime, and then Maliki, into adopting the kind of reconciliation measures just described.

I predicted then that U.S. pressure would fail, and there’s even less chance of it succeeding now. For better or worse, Iraq’s Shiite leaders view power as a winner-take-all game, and they’re not going to take any chances by sharing. Which is why, by talking up “work to do” and “conditions for an ultimate transfer,” Obama is painting himself into a dangerous corner.

As Spencer Ackerman wrote yesterday, “What was true for Bush is true for Obama: devising responsible approaches to Iraq require a firm handling of the facts involved, not wishful thinking.” For all the talk of conditional engagement, the only way Obama’s policy in Iraq will differ from the previous administration will be if he says flatly that reconciliation or no reconciliation, the U.S. is leaving. Six years after the disastrous “Mission Accomplished” stunt, it’s time for Obama to make that clear.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

From November 5th, 2003 to sometime in 2005, Swopa used to regularly post ‘Groundhog Day’ news bits covering what seemed to be the same news of one or a few US soldiers blown to bits or some attack on civilians in the Iraqi Quicksand.

Then for a time, things seemed to stabilize.  Shrubya claimed it was his surge, Petraeus claimed credit for the military’s initiative to bribe the Sunni insurgents, and the reality-based community reckoned it was because most conflict neighborhoods had already been ‘cleansed’ and the US troops withdrew into their fortifications (removing easy targets).

Well it seems that minus the intra-Shi’ite political maneuverings, Groundhog Day appears to be making a comeback.  In today’s news, 3 more US soldiers were killed in a bombing, and suicide attacks are back to being regular news stories.

Swopa really called it when he mused that Obama had walked into a policy trap set for him by Shrubyian dead-enders in the military.

Obama really needs to take a lesson from Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon a few years back – otherwise, he could well be facing another several years of Groundhog Days as various Iraqi factions pull off stunts designed to keep us trapped in Quicksand.

*Update* UK PM Gordon Brown apparently doesn’t read the same news that Swopa & I read – apparently the British there was a ‘success!’ As a village idiot once said: “Heckuva job, Brownie!”