An open letter to the GOP from guest blogger Rod T. Straight: Recently, I was at the grocery store, buying childrens’ cereal. Having perused the cereal boxes and given them sufficient consideration, I can only say that I am shocked, outraged, and disgusted. Only now do I realize what a sick and perverted world we live in. It is a world where innocent children are used as mere pawns in the twisted social and political agendas of the homosexual movement. That’s right. ALL OF THE CEREAL...

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, has announced that “he may call for more troops to be sent to Baghdad, possibly by increasing the overall U.S. presence in Iraq”. But don’t misunderstand what’s going on here. John McCain and the neocon hawks may want troop levels to be substantially increased, but there is neither the military might nor the political will for that to happen. Instead, the U.S. is preparing to pull out of Iraq or at the very least to decrease...

And the lying continues. Following right on his boss’s heels, White House Counselor (mouthpiece) Dan Bartlett yesterday denied that there was ever a “stay-the-course strategy” in Iraq. Think Progress has the video, the transcript, and a lot of rather damning evidence. Again and again and again, Bush and those who speak for him, like Press Secretary Tony Snow, have stated that U.S. policy is to “stay the course”. As late as August 30 of this year — that is, less...

At Think Progress, Joe Cirincione reports (from an article in the Post) that “[s]enior Bush administration officials wanted North Korea to test a nuclear weapon because it would prove their point that the regime must be overthrown”. According to the Post article, these officials were actually “rooting for a test” (my emphasis). Cirincione interprets this revelation as “evidence of how the administration’s national security policy has become completely divorced...

Let’s face it, Nancy Pelosi has long been taking a brutal beating at the hands of Republicans and their character-assassination machine. As a surprisingly positive profile of the House minority leader in Saturday’s Washington Post explains, “Republicans have sought to scare voters by portraying Pelosi as a liberal extremist who would be weak on national security and prone to raises taxes if her party were back in control”. Republicans hope to win next month by portraying...

Last month, I wrote about the nature and degree of Iraq’s sectarianism — see here. Responding to a (conservative) proposal that the U.S. send more troops to Iraq, I argued that there has been “an underestimation of the severity of the sectarian divides that have re-emerged in Iraq since Saddam’s fall”. Like other tyrants, Saddam had brutally controlled Iraq’s sectarian groups, often through mass murder, but the failure on the part of the U.S. to plan effectively,...

There’s a great post up by guest blogger Jack at my friend (and Reaction co-blogger) Creature’s State of the Day — see here. Jack compares George W. Bush to John F. Kennedy and finds, as you might expect, that the former comes up short. In contrast to Kennedy’s emphasis on diplomacy, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bush is “indifferent to the history he is making,” waging “the wrong wars” against “the wrong enemies,” “unwilling...

It’s been a rather tumultuous past year or so for the French. Last November, there were the riots — a state of emergency, if not quite another revolution — that, with multiple triggers sending alienated and in some cases highly politicized youth into the streets, exposed the deep cultural, political, and economic rift between mainstream French society and the largely ignored and depressed immigrant communities throughout the country. Then, this past March, barricades were once...

Heraclitus: [T]he real divide between America and other countries on health care is, of course, on the question of universal health care… There’s already a “let them eat cake” attitude, intentional or otherwise, in the focus on expensive medications and treatments rather than prevention. That attitude is much more explicit in the rejection of universal health care… [The] argument about the horrors of illegal immigration also ignores that the children of the immigrants,...

At Outside the Beltway today, James Joyner has an excellent post on blogging that I highly recommend to all of you, bloggers and non-bloggers alike. Responding to the concerns and frustrations of fellow bloggers Stephen Bainbridge and Steven Taylor, Joyner addresses “the day-to-day grind of maintaining a blog of political commentary”. A major problem is that “the increasing dominance of blogs that are the Internet equivalent of talk radio, with their predictable hyper-partisanship,...

Are Democrats poised for victory in November? A new NBC/WSJ poll says yes — well, maybe. The Dems are in pretty good shape — or, rather, the Republicans are in truly terrible shape. Indeed, “the Republican Party is on more unstable ground than Democrats were in 1994″. And you know what happened back then. History may be about to be repeated. Unless Republicans, as seems ever more likely with each passing political disaster, succeed in terrifying voters with the specter of...

It would seem so. See Michael Bérubé, then some additional commentary from Heraclitus.

Yes, things are still bad in Darfur.

Which many of you know this already, but consider the latest evidence (from Think Progress): Dick went on Rush yesterday and discussed Iraq. He admitted “[i]t’s still very, very difficult, very tough,” which is obvious to anyone who’s paying attention to the chaos that is that country, but he also made two extraordinary (or, by his standards, really quite ordinary) comments: 1) Iraq is “the ‘major front’ of the war on terror” — To the extent...

Get ready for a second North Korean nuclear test. (The Times reports here, citing South Korean and Japanese officials.) The first one may or may not have been a great dud, but, regardless, Pyongyang, which views sanctions as a declaration of war, will be out to prove itself this time. And then what? Therein lies the dilemma.

It’s getting worse: The escalating violence in the Tigris River towns in many ways serves as a microcosm of the daily violence roiling Iraq. Sectarian attacks have increased more than tenfold since the start of the year and now claim more than 100 victims a day, according to the Iraqi government. This is an important article. It reveals a country on the brink of collapse. Please read it in full.

Over at The Reaction, Heraclitus is reporting on a story in The Australian suggesting that some in China are discussing the possibility of a coup in North Korea, possibly a China-backed coup. He sees this as “saber rattling,” but, needless to say, it’s an intriguing story. For more, see here.

Because Venezuela must be kept off the U.N. Security Council. Guatemala did well enough to hold off Chavez’s rogue tyranny yesterday, but voting to fill the Council’s open Latin American seat resumes today. A compromise candidate may emerge. Just so long as Venezuela, which surprised with its poor showing, doesn’t somehow pull out a victory. ********** Also, check out this interesting interactive map on politics in Latin America.

As a follow-up to my earlier post on David Kuo and Bush’s hypocrisy, I wanted to send you over to The Reaction, where co-blogger Heraclitus has just posted a complementary piece looking at Kuo’s naiveté and the political context that surrounds his book. See here.

Funny you should ask. As you may know, we at The Moderate Voice (and at The Reaction, my home base) devote some of our blogging to international election coverage, and — wouldn’t you know it? — Ecuador held a presidential election yesterday. Voting was mandatory, for such is the law, and there were 13 candidates running for the top job. With about 70 percent of votes counted, as reported by the BBC, Ecuador’s wealthiest man, Alvaro Noboa (a banana tycoon, no less), and a...