Full disclosure:  embarrassing as it is to admit, I —like Nora Ephron—am practically in love with Chris Matthews.  This does not make me blind to his faults (with his Hillary-hatred topping my personal list), but it does impel me from time to time to compose a poetic tribute. This one, for which I tender in advance my profoundest apologies to the late and very great Wallace Stevens,  was composed in honor of Matthews’ recently announced political aspirations and their (apparent) ...

There is no one on earth I hate enough to want to watch him or her being mauled by a bear, so I’m not laughing or anything at this sorrowful tale of the woes of “Big Rich” as Michael Schnayerson calls them. Cue the mournful scraping of a solitary violin! With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers...

The September 2007 massacre in Nisoor Square was one of many shameful chapters in a long history of discreditable/tragic incidents. Private contractors —or, as some call them, “mercenaries” — spooked by an unfortunate incident, opened fire into a crowd of civilians who were milling around the street trying to go about their lives. We’re relieved that some of those responsible are being made to answer for this act of recklessness and indifference to human life and we...

McCain’s done a good job of deflecting attention from Obama’s speech by his birthday VP pick. It’s hard to focus on writing about Obama while giggling incredulously. And—though many are puzzled, a few are happy. Indeed, Jonah Goldberg over at The Corner is so excited he is ” having some flop sweats at the idea it’s actually happening.” Okay:  ew.  But though I must pause again to scrub out my brain, I refuse to be deflected. I was a Hillary supporter...

Russia turned to its fellow members in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (formed to build relations between China and former Soviet republics) for backing in its actions against Georgia and specifically in its recognition of the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.The member states of the SCO are Russia, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. States with “observer” status are India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia. (Bloomberg) Eurasia.Net predicted that...

Well, anyone who has been paying attention knew this was coming. President Dmitry Medvedev has declared that Russia formally recognises the independence of the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The move follows a vote in both houses of parliament on Monday, which called on Moscow to recognise the regions. The move, in defiance of a specific plea from the US president, provoked a wave of protest from Western countries. (BBC News1)

In Denver, four men have now been arrested in connection with an apparent assassination plot against Obama (9 News.com). The police are downplaying the threat, saying that the man who made the threat was trying to sound important. (9 News.com)  A press conference is scheduled for 4 pm today.

Just as it seems that the Bush administration is on the point of signing off on that draft security agreement with the Iraqi government (WSJ), there are disturbing allegations that a cornerstone of the surge—the success of the “awakening groups”—may be on the point of collapse (McClatchy).

When McCain’s people called Obama an “elitist,” the Obama campaign pointed out that the GOP man of the people isn’t exactly living the life of your average middle-class American (let alone your average blue collar one). After all: eight houses? But some days the stupid is almost too thick to see through.   “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post. (TPM) Seems as if we’ve...

In 1988, he was TIME’s man of the year and in 1990—for his role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the Man of the Decade. In 1990, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s weighing in on the current crisis. I was curious to see what he had to say. Before doing so, I thought it would be interesting to start with a ride on the Wayback Pony. It’s instructive to recall how the elder statesmen who emerge to school us in a current crisis were viewed in their glory days....

First, a question: Why did the representative of a church—and one specific sort of Christian church at that—moderate a debate between political candidates for the highest office in the land? What on earth is the underlying message of holding such a forum, if not to establish that the American people hold in common a particular set of religious/ethical beliefs which ought to be reflected in the president? As a religious person—a Christian, in fact, though of the left-tilting...

The answer may well be “yes.” (NYT) When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that “ ‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American...

Here’s The New York Times: Even as Russia pledged to begin withdrawing its forces from neighboring Georgia on Monday, American officials said the Russian military had been moving launchers for short-range ballistic missiles into South Ossetia, a step that appeared intended to tighten its hold on the breakaway territory. The Russian military deployed several SS-21 missile launchers and supply vehicles to South Ossetia on Friday, according to American officials familiar with intelligence reports....

As a supplement to yesterday’s news round-up on Georgia, I thought I’d post on a comment at The Washington Post, where Paul J. Saunders discusses the role of President Saakashvili in the Georgian conflict. Saunders is executive director of the Nixon Center. (WaPo) He also served as senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs from 2003 to 2005. (WaPo)

“[T]he alienation between the United States and Russia has rarely, if ever, been deeper,” says Steven Lee Myers. (NYT) He further states: “The cold war is over,” President Bush declared Friday, but a new era of enmity between the United States and Russia has emerged nevertheless. It may not be as tense as the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, for now, but it could become as strained. Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has shattered, perhaps irrevocably, the strategy...

I am becoming quite worried about McCain. RockRichard at VetVoice says bluntly:

Jon says what needed to be said about the short term memory problems affecting Bush, Rice, and McCain and about the complete non-presumptuousness of McCain’s dispatching a team of envoys to Georgia.

Last week, Georgia’s President Saakashvili accused Russia of intending to destroy Georgia, and take control of energy routes to Europe. (BBC Aug. 9) And last week, Steven Eke, the BBC News Russian Affairs analyst, pointed out that Putin—enraged by Western support for Kosovo’s independence—would treat Kosovo “as a template for its own actions in the pro-Russian, separatist regions of the former USSR.” (BBC News 8-8-08; cf. 4-30-08) Even before then, “there...

Note: There have been a number of posts at TMV during the last few days on the Russia-Georgia conflict. I’ve listed them at the end. At The New York Times, Andrew E. Kramer discusses the peace plan brokered by the French (as the country holding the rotating presidency of the EU). According to him, it provided the Russians with a rationale for pushing further into Georgia as part of a “peacekeeping” role they demanded under the agreement. Mr. Sarkozy also “failed to persuade...

Currently, the motive for the murder of Arkansas Democratic party chair Bill Gwatney is unknown. (NYT) Gwatney, a supporter of Hillary Clinton and a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, was shot in his office at Democratic party headquarters in Little Rock. (NYT) He was rushed to the hospital, but died several hours later.(NYT) The police said that the gunman was Timothy D. Johnson, 50, of Searcy, Arkansas. (NYT) After going to Democratic headquarters he asked to meet Gwatney....

Would that he were right. You can see the video (via Think Progress) below.

After a blogger filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the military last week released photographs of the crates (”segregation boxes”) into which it segregates violent Iraqi prisoners: Three grainy black-and-white photos show the rudimentary structures of wood and mesh. Some of the boxes are as small as 3 feet by 3 feet by 6 feet tall, according to military officials. There was no image released of a box that size. The average Iraqi male is 5 feet 6 inches tall, according to the...

The Guardian’s correspondent reports on the rampaging of irregulars and the advance of Russian tanks and soldiers (allegedly there to “keep peace”). Here’s peace for you: Villages in Georgia were being burned and looted as Russian tanks and soldiers followed by “irregulars” advanced from the breakaway province of South Ossetia, eyewitnesses said today. “People are fleeing, there is a mood of absolute panic. The idea there is a ceasefire is ridiculous,” Luke Harding,...

Georgia reports that the Russians haven’t stopped fighting, despite the accord. If so, so much for their protestations that they are there because they had to intervene to stop the killing in South Ossetia. It’s important to note that reports concerning their intentions in continuing toward Tbilisi conflict. (This update makes the Russians’ statements about what they think they’re doing appear ever less credible.) News agencies reported that a column of Russian tanks...

I wrote yesterday about the conflicting ambitions and hatreds in play here (which Russia is manipulating to further its own ambitions). The situation is an immense tangle of conflicting ambitions—in the form of the desire for land and resources— and furious ethnic hatred. As I noted yesterday, Georgia is now bringing a lawsuit against Russia for ethnic cleansing: “Today, the Georgian ambassador to the Netherlands filed a law suit to the International Court of Justice called ‘The...