The truth hurts, lots: If Senator Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically. Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheikhs who had begun to cooperate with us, and the “Sunni Awakening” would have been strangled at birth. Al Qaeda fighters would have safe havens, from where they could train Iraqis and foreigners,

Converts family into potted meat product. UPDATE: Fucker. via happyfeet, Progg Hero Kidnaps Kids, holds them in Yemen. Yay, team!

Oxymoran has a list of those thrust beneath the bus by Obama, so far. A moment of silence, please.

On gender “bias” and being “underrepresented”… What’s interesting is that Tierney still frames the question in terms of women being “underrepresented” in certain professions and areas of study. But this rather begs the question. How do we know that 1:1 gender parity is some natural, default state, from which any deviation must be construed as evidence of bias? On what basis – besides ideology – can we determine that there

Alex Trebek: “This long-handled garden tool is also the name for an immoral pleasure seeker. Chuck?” Chuck: “What is a hoe? Alex.”

La Hamsher at NPR: Hamsher is especially angry about the changes to FISA. Proponents say those changes actually strengthen privacy rules for certain phone calls, but in fact, the bill also streamlines the government’s ability to sweep up large amounts of data without court warrant. What really gets Hamsher’s goat is the fact that congressional Democrats agreed to give immunity to phone companies that may have cooperated with past illegal

I am happy to offer up my quips and pearls of wisdom, my lapidary analyses and spot-on insights on these front pages of Protein Wisdom, but I wish to bring to your attention once again and after a too-great hiatus the tremendous efforts of our colleagues at the Protein Wisdom Pub. Among those deserving notice are RTO Trainer with positive news from Afghanistan, where hopiness and changeitude, it is said,

Mr. Obama: “For a long time now, and — most tellingly — amid a political climate suffused in the kind of macho militarism that is antithetical to peace and prosperity, I’ve been saying that the so-called ‘surge strategy’ devised by the Bush administration would not work in Iraq. As it turns out, I was completely correct in my assessment: on the surface, sure, the strategy looks to be a success.

It has been almost a month since I last reminded folks that to help you get your weekend started, you can access hours of streaming music — the good, the bad and the ugly — via the page I have set up for my other web gig, via the fantastic Hype Machine.  You can access tracks individually, or let them play through as a jukebox.  The new additions for this Friday are mostly

MSNBC’s First Thoughts: So was this week a turning point in the presidential race? The Obama campaign certainly believes it was, and that this will be the moment that Obama grabs the lead for good. If McCain never catches up at this point, his campaign’s actions this week (its blistering criticism of Obama and the media, the visuals it picked, its body language, its VP games) will get second-guessed for