The situation in Afghanistan is bad and getting worse. Young Americans are losing their lives in a war that may soon lose the support of the American people. Fellow Americans, will we give in to despair, or will we find a new HOPE? Will we accept a painful defeat, or will we have the AUDACITY to seek a brighter future? Will we surrender to the partisanship of the old way of politics, or seek innovative BIPARTISAN...

David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Sonny already plugged Matt Labash’s great article about America’s most notorious mayor. I second that. The strangest thing I learned about Barry was that he came within one year of finishing a PhD in chemistry. He was an Eagle Scout. He recited poems in church. He went to college, and stopped one year short of getting his doctorate in chemistry, quitting to join the civil rights movement. “In...

George Will called for an end to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, provoking a flood of responses from conservatives. The Wall Street Journal has given their opinions top billing. Fred Kagan writes that the future of Pakistan depends on Afghanistan. Max Boot reminds us that we already tried to win on the cheap — that’s why it’s such a mess today. Dan Senor and Peter Wehner call on Republicans...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

President Obama this weekend at Camp David is studying a classified report submitted by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, that some say could be a game changer by putting a larger emphasis on “protecting the Afghan people.” You can bet he will not take my advise and that of a growing number of both liberals and conservatives that the U.S. should pull its forces...

Continuing with our European coverage of the 70th anniversary of World War II, Izvestia columnist Anna Kaledina complains that while debate rages among Western leaders about who is most responsible for starting the war, most of their populations haven’t the foggiest notion of who fought, when they fought or who was at fault – nor do they care. And this, she warns – is dangerous – because...

My neighbor and I both have daughters in middle school. Both of our daughters came home from school today with a permission slip asking if we wanted our children to participate (or not) in the viewing of President Obama’s “National Address To The Students” on September 11th (school recording it from September 8th). My neighbor walked over to me and said: You got to be kidding me?? We both...

A lot of websites and blogs including this one have run stories and blog posts about President Barack Obama going south in the polls. But is that already outdated? Gallup sees him on the upswing. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of impact the latest broo-ha-ha has on Obama’s ratings. Will it peel off some more of his independent voter and Republican support? Or will it have the opposite impact:...

Mile Keefe, The Denver Post This post is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

In a satire piece, “Obama’s Health Care Reform Will Decimate Our Population,” I posted a compilation of quotes by GOP and anti-healthcare reform officials, personalities and organizations. It started out as follows: No wonder Americans are increasingly opposed to Obama’s socialist, radical vision of a nationalized health care system. Just look at what Obama will do to you, to me and to our loved...

Inside Higher Ed wonders, What’s that saying about glass houses? The chief lawyer for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has sent letters to Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina asking about their use of state-owned or leased aircraft, and who travels on such flights, The Greenville News reported. The article noted that the governor’s new...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Time’s Joe Klein, who attended a health care reform town hall in Arkansas and asks the question I’ve asked here at TMV many times: just where is America’s accelerating trend towards political ugliness headed? Klein expresses shock at the number of people at the meeting who were convinced that President Barack Obama is a communist — he talked...

There may well be no stranger figure to arise from the election of 2008 than Levi Johnston. One minute he was just another high school jock, bragging to his buddies about how he was “getting some” from the Governor’s daughter. The next he was a soon to be father with a soon to be Mother-in-law who was running for vice president and quickly becoming one of the most divisive figures in the nation....

Where’dja get those guts, guys? They look good on you:

“Atonement is a process that never ends,” Ted Kennedy writes in his memoir, confronting the shame shadowing his life that was avoided in a weekend of tributes–the death of a young woman at Chappaquiddick. In a preview of the 532-page volume to be published later this month, the New York Times discloses that Kennedy “called his behavior after the 1969 car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne...

Politico’s Michael Calderone reports that MSNBC has taken down Pat Buchanan’s article claiming that World War II was Britain’s fault, and that Hitler really never wanted to murder six million Jews. Of course, abruptly yanking the piece in response to a storm of outrage on the Internet (including a tweet to Rachel Maddow from yours truly) does not explain why MSNBC promoted it on their site...

With President Obama confronting a confluence of issues that appear to threaten his chances of having a successful term in office, his supporters in Europe are also sounding alarmed. For France’s Liberation, columnist Bernard Guetta writes in part: “The likelihood is that Obama has already failed to become a new Roosevelt, an architect of a modern New Deal that without increasing health spending...

David Broder asks, in the context of possible criminal trials for high-ranking Bush officials who ordered and sanctioned torture (a word he does not use, of course):

With a face perhaps reflecting contrition, German Chancellor Merkel lays a candle after giving a speech at a ceremony in Poland on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WW II. She said, ‘We caused unending suffering in the world. I bow before the victims.’ Even after 70 years, the wounds and rivalries that triggered and resulted from the last ‘war to end all wars’ still fester in...

While many Americans were accused of not supporting our troops, of being unpatriotic, and worse, for criticizing our involvement in Iraq and the way that war was being managed, I will not accuse Conservative George Will of anything. In ‘Why are we still in Afghanistan?”, (replace “Afghanistan with “Iraq” and see how familiar that sounds), George Will is having second thoughts about...

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

It wouldn’t be news if someone on one side of the debate gave some on the other side other the finger at a healthcare reform meeting. But it IS news it someone bites off someone else’s finger. KTLA reports: - A 65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s investigators...

Described by the NYT as “a veteran health care expert who oversaw the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for the first President George Bush and advised Senator John McCain in his presidential campaign last year,” Gail Wilensky tells the paper: … the entire health care system should stop paying doctors an individual fee for each service they provide patients — something experts say encourages...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball’s guest columnist Alan I. Abramowitz who notes that Obama is holding onto the base that got him elected: Despite the grumbling on the left, however, there is little evidence thus far of erosion in support for the president among the groups that comprised his electoral base in the last election. [Gallup poll] results indicate that...